Woman's Hour - Writer Heidi Thomas, Angela Saini on the origins of patriarchy, Codeword Mascara

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

On last night’s Panorama, Twitter insiders told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolls, following lay-offs and changes under the owner Elon Musk. Lisa Jennings Young is the former head of Content Design at Twitter, and worked on safety features aiming to protect users from online hate, including misogyny. In October 2022, Lisa's entire team was laid off, and she herself chose to leave in late November. To find out more about her time at Twitter, and how proactive design can protect women and girls on social media, Nuala speaks to Lisa from her home in San Francisco.Heidi Thomas is best known as the writer and creator of Call The Midwife. Her newest project is a film adaptation of the Alan Bennett play Allelujah. Set in a much-loved geriatric hospital in Yorkshire – The Beth - that’s been earmarked for closure, it stars Jennifer Saunders as the formidable sister in charge. Heidi joins Nuala in the Woman’s Hour studio to talk about what it’s been like to go from writing about the start of life to the end.Feminism isn’t as modern as we might think, and the patriarchy is more fragile than it appears. That’s the basis of a new book by science journalist Angela Saini. In The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, Angela uncovers stories of female-led societies, and tells Nuala the lessons they might teach us.Young women are using codewords to describe their experiences of sex, and in some cases assault, on social media platform TikTok. The hashtag ‘Mascara’ has racked up more than 100 million views over the past month or so, and is the latest code that’s developed to avoid TikTok’s censorship filters. Sophie Smith Galer joins Nuala to discuss this latest trend.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Good to have your company. You may have seen that Wayne Cousins has been sentenced to 19 months in prison for exposing himself on three occasions. One of those just days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. Former victims of Cousin's indecent exposure berated the police for their inaction, despite their coming forward with details that could have led to charging Cousins. The Metropolitan Police has now apologised for not arresting Cousins for that indecent exposure

and some say it may have stopped him from murdering Sarah Everard. The new sentence, I should say, doesn't change Cousin's existing whole life sentence for that murder. But I would like to know whether this latest sentencing of Wayne Cousin's for indecent exposure makes you feel more confident, perhaps,

if you were to report an incident of indecent exposure to the police. You can get in touch on our texts. It's 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website. If it's a WhatsApp message or a voice note you'd like to send, that number is 03700 100 444. We are going to explore a question also during the programme that maybe you've asked yourself, how did men come to rule? My guest, Angela Saini, the author of The Patriarchs, has taken a trip through history and also around the globe to try and understand what happened to put the current structures in place. And also, what would it take to dismantle them? So that conversation is coming up. And also, are you a fan of Call the Midwife?

Well, we have the much-loved series writer Heidi Thomas, now OBE, I should say, with us. Heidi has adapted Alan Bennett's play, Alleluia, for film. So it's a hospital drama. It's about the plight of elderly patients and also about the plight of the NHS. It's so thought-provoking. I'm looking forward to that discussion

that will be coming up during this hour. And also today, if you see stories about mascara on TikTok and you think it's about makeup, my guests will make you think again. It's a code word to talk about sex as the word sex can be filtered out due to algorithms on the social

media platform. Now some feel though that perhaps using a code word for issues and conversations around sex which at times can include abuse or violence is not appropriate or helpful. Again if you'd like to chime in on that or any of our other stories the text is 84844. But let me begin with Wayne Cousins. He could have been stopped from murdering Sarah Everhard if reports of his indecent exposure had been properly investigated. That is according to his victims. After the Met officer was sentenced to 19 months, as I mentioned, for indecent exposure, that was between November 2020 and February 2021.

The Met police apologised. It was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundey, who leads the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards. And he said, like so many, I wish he had been arrested for these offences before he went on to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard. And I am sorry that he was not. At yesterday's sentencing,

Mrs Justice May said the victims spoke about feeling like their freedom and security had been taken away from them, with one woman experiencing survivor's guilt. To find out more, I spoke to Harriet Wistrich, who is a solicitor and director of the Centre for Women's Justice, and also Sonia Jessop, Home Affairs correspondent at BBC Radio London. And I began by asking Sonia what had happened in court. At the sentencing yesterday, I mean, obviously, Wayne Cousins is already serving a whole life sentence for murdering Sarah Everard. He will never be released. But I think obviously what we saw yesterday was him sentenced to 19 months over these three incidents, these three cases of indecent exposure, which he had pleaded guilty to prior to Sarah's murder. And what came across, I think, was we heard the victim statements. We heard the impact that indecent exposure had had on them.

I mean, one of them talked about the horror will remain with me for the rest of my life she says and she talked about this was the cyclist that he exposed himself to she talked about not wanting to step outside her home without fear anymore a selfish aggressive act which has had a serious impact on her life uh one of the the victims he exposed himself to at mcdonald's had said, it shouldn't be up to me to take measures to keep myself safe. I should not have to be in fear of somebody attacking me. I should not, I should be able to feel able to walk home at night. So this was, you could hear the impact that it had on them. The judge praised the resilience and courage of those women and also crucially made clear, the judge said that the police failings to investigate these incidents properly

appeared to embolden Cousins. And we know that it was, in fact, that last incident, that final incident at McDonald's that was reported that he pleaded guilty to, that four days later, despite the fact that staff gave police his registration number of his car, despite the fact the police had those details, four days later, he went on to murder Sarah Everard. As we know, kidnap, rape and murder. Harriet, the Met has apologised. That has been seen widely for failure to act. And we've heard, of course, from Sonia there, the impact it had on the victims

and may have, if he were arrested, people say have prevented Sarah Everard from being killed. Do you think, however, this sentencing and that apology, will it give women more confidence to come forward reporting indecent exposure? Well, I think women's confidence in police is at an all time low at the moment with all the revelations we've had over the last couple of years with the murder of Sarah Everard and more recently the offending of David Carrick. And, you know, why should anyone even feel confident reporting to a male officer at all? On the other hand, I think the decision to proceed with the prosecution in these cases, when clearly it wasn't going to make any difference to Cousin's ultimate sentence, hopefully sends out a signal that this is a crime that can be investigated and can be prosecuted.

And that may be a message which will encourage more women to report indecent exposure, because I think it is something that happens. We know it's something that happens to many women. I mean, probably at least half your listeners will have experienced it at least once, as I have. And perhaps you have as well. It's a very prevalent crime, which has been laughed off. And in fact, isn't even regarded. It wasn't even criminalised or regarded as a sex crime before the 2003 Sexual Offences Act. So perhaps the prosecution and sentencing in this case

will send a signal that it is a crime that can be treated seriously and that it is also an indicator of potentially of somebody who is committing more serious crimes or may go on to commit more serious crimes. So there is a pressure there, which I think we have to keep the momentum up on the police to now understand that this isn't something that can just be dismissed as some silly women's problem or something, but is something that actually may help them stop serial offenders and escalating sexual offences and put that data together as a sort of suspect-focused investigation. I'd be curious, Sonia, what you have been hearing from the women you've met.

Yeah, well, interestingly, we spoke to a woman. BBC London had first spoken to a young woman, Georgina, at the vigil following Sarah Everard's murder. You remember when so many people came together on Clapham Common and she'd been at the vigil and a man exposed himself to her at that vigil. Now obviously there were a lot of police there as we know and she went over to some police, she told them what had happened, she said that she felt very frightened and she asked them to take action and she says that they ignored her. She says she couldn't believe it. She was saying, you know, he's right there. Can you stop him?

Now, after she talked to BBC London at the time and we reported on it, the police apologised. They did investigate. An e-fit was put out um but no one was ever identified and no one was arrested and I'm told the Met told me that that police the local police had been given some extra training around this um but I I spoke to her about obviously this this particular case and I asked her whether in in the light of all this she would now feel comfortable confident going to the police and she said I don't think I would because it's it's it feels quite humiliating to report it you know it takes a lot to kind of come forward and and you kind of think well actually if nothing's going to be done is it worth it now that's um you know speaking speaking yesterday, when the Met basically gave their apology yesterday,

they made it very clear that they wanted, they did want victims to come forward. They wanted, as Harriet says, for women to feel confident and to know that although mistakes have been made in the past, that they do want women to feel that they can come forward and they've promised to be better. But they sort of know that they do need that kind of, for Londoners to have that trust and confidence. But of course, you know, that is a challenge. And of course, that is one force you're talking about, but there has been allegations of inaction by others as well. What do you think, Harriet, if there was somebody

who was worried about coming forward and reporting an incident of indecent exposure? Well, I think if anyone is concerned about it, they can obviously, you know, if they've got somebody, a friend or a relative who can go with them to report it. Sometimes there are support services i i know they're under a lot of pressure as it is but that can provide support and if if uh their their allegation is not taken seriously then they they they can and should um escalate that by making a complaint a formal police complaint um or alerting their mp or local councillor um and and and basically i think the only you know the only thing we have really if or alerting their MP or local councillor.

And basically, I think the only thing we have really if the police are not doing as they should do is to try and escalate that. But clearly it's important for these men to be reported where possible. The emphasis has to be on police accountability rather than on any responsibility on any victim. And it was really heartbreaking to hear one of the victims of Cousins in Deaton exposure experiencing survivor's guilt.

Obviously, it's not her guilt at all. It's the police's guilt. They're the ones that have to hang their head in shame. She has done nothing. She's done so that have to hang their head in shame. She has done nothing. You know, she's done so much the right thing, a courageous person. But, you know, this is a really terrible state of affairs, which we see across the board, actually, with sexual offences, that women are feeling guilty somehow, if their cases aren't taken forward. And that has to change. The guilt has to be with the failures of investigators.

I'm also wondering, because we heard these victim statements, it got me to thinking there must have been people who have reported previously and perhaps that there was inaction. Of course, impossible to know specifically what that might be. Do you think this will have an impact, Harriet, on previous reports? We know the figures are minuscule, really, of those that experience indecent exposure reporting, and they're also pretty hopeless where they are reported,

although there is more opportunity now to capture offenders than previously because of the CCTV being everywhere. And often we've seen reports of offenders being identified in that respect. So I think just the fact of the sentencing exercise that we've seen is a signal that this is a crime, that it is a crime that can be prosecuted. And even though there was an abject failure by the Metropolitan Police when he was reported originally, that we keep the pressure up now

and really try and shift things along so that indecent exposure is seen as a serious sexual offence and as an indicator of more widespread offending and escalation of offending. I think a lot of my listeners as well, when it comes to indecent exposure or flashing, as it's also called, might be thinking about cyber flashing. It's something we've talked about on the programme many times. I had one guest, Emily Atack, who has been subjected to it numerous times, and she is concerned about it being a precursor to something, some more serious action, horrible as that is to experience. And there was research by Professor Jessica Ringrose from 2020 that found 76% of girls aged 12 to 18 had been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men. Is cyber flashing treated differently to flashing in person? Cyber flashing is a proposed new offence under the online safety bill. I don't think it's as yet a criminal offence. I may be wrong on that,

but I understand it's still going through Parliament. So it isn't actually something that can be treated more seriously because it's not actually a criminal offence. Clearly, it's extremely widespread. And I think the criminalisation of cyber flashing is a very important development because we have to basically send these messages out to men who feel that this is perfectly acceptable to say, not only is this not acceptable, but actually it is criminal and you will face the consequences. I want to also turn, Sonia, to another aspect because we're talking about confidence in the police, whether women would be more confident coming forward to report indecent exposure. The other part of

yesterday was that WhatsApp messages were released. They were exchanges between Wayne Cousins and six other Metropolitan Police officers. They were sent these messages between March 2019 and October 2019 in a WhatsApp group. They were investigated by police when Cousin's phone was seized after he was arrested for Miss Everhart's murder in March 2021. The investigations resulted in criminal proceedings for two of the officers involved who were jailed for grossly offensive messages in November. But I think these messages, as people read them, will reveal a horrific part, really, of some of the culture for some of the officers within those forces. What do you think we're learning from them?

Well, I think, interestingly, I mean, I was at the trial for the officers, Jonathan Coburn and Joel Borders, who were eventually jailed over their part in the WhatsApp group. And I think, you know, we were listening to the detail of those messages in court. And of course, a lot of them are too uh too offensive to to actually broadcast but you know in them they they made racist homophobic remarks misogynist remarks they insulted disabled people um they joked and and discussed sexually assaulting women they made jokes about victims of domestic abuse and and racist remarks as well about specific areas of of london hounslow and felton for example and there was there was one awful message where they talked about um domestic

violence victims enjoying being sexually assaulted and saying well that's why their repeat victims are often as not um so really um grossly offensive messages um and four other officers in that group also faced gross misconduct proceedings and were barred from policing now i mean i think what came across at the time was yeah you know what does this tell us about the mindset and the culture of people in that group and some people have questioned i mean excuse me I've been looking into kind of the rise in cases where social media and whatsapp has also been kind of part of either misconduct proceedings and and there has been a rise in the number of incidents that have been investigated by police over the last couple of years some have have sort of suggested, you know, does this mean that kind of,

that sort of canteen culture, perhaps things that people would have said openly in canteens is actually moving online? Do officers, the IOPC, the police watchdog, have said, you know, officers need to understand that obviously not to be sharing offensive things, but also that this is not some sort of private safe space to express these disgusting

views. But of course, that's also what the Met has said we need to try to root out. So they've been talking about tackling these issues, but, you know, whether this, whether that also, of course, again, puts off people coming forward to police is very, very worrying. And I think when you consider, you know, if you are, for example, one of these communities in Hounslow and Feltham, how safe do you feel going to an officer if you've read that that's what those officers in charge of those areas think about the people that live there or if you're a domestic violence victim how does that make you feel so the Met knows that there's a huge a huge problem there they've said that they are obviously rooting out rogue officers

but this shows the scale of the problem. Harriet what confidence do you have that they will root out rogue officers? I mean, the bit that I think struck me is how these people found one another within a WhatsApp group or created a WhatsApp group that they knew that language would be acceptable within that group and within those people. What we've learned over the last couple of years about the level of misogyny and racism and homophobia within police, I mean, we've known about racism over the years, but the emergence of the kind of blatant misogyny, it's something we've talked about as you as you've described as canteen culture perhaps perhaps the the only optimistic thing we can say is that that the the technology uh better is able to capture offending um you know so that if if that kind of language and and discussion is on social media, on WhatsApp, that puts the officers more bang to rights.

So in the past where you overheard the sort of disgusting discussions going on, it was harder. It does provide an opportunity to capture this type of offending. But it's so widespread. And I think that is also a consequence of the widespread availability of hardcore pornography across the internet, which is so widely used by boys and men now. is just giving permission really as though this is sort of normalizing this kind of language and attitude towards women. So it's a huge huge problem around culture more broadly and it's reflected in policing and of course police like any institution but perhaps even more so in some ways attracts men who want who who are drawn to being macho and uh you know that that there there will be within male police officers um some who are

drawn to policing because it gives them a sense of power that they can abuse other people harriet wistrich there also we had sonia Jessop. You have been getting in touch, I was asking at the beginning of the programme, do you feel more confident after the sentencing of Wayne Cousins for indecent exposure? Let me see, no name here, but they say, unfortunately, this doesn't make me feel more confident to report indecent exposure. If Cousins had been arrested beforehand, then sure, but it feels like a gesture for his other victims because it's so high profile. Another says, when someone is caught speeding, they have to go on a course to educate them. What happens to men who expose themselves? Do they get a psychological

assessment? Do they get any help? And another got in touch and says, I was in a long-term relationship when I was in my 20s with a man who confessed to me he had been exposing himself. Of course, I was horrified. For him, it was part of really low self-esteem and self-loathing. He didn't hate women and didn't seem aware of the impact it might have on the women he exposed himself to.

He needed psychological help, which wasn't easy to find or access back then, but did manage to get eventually. I hope it worked. This was 25 years ago. I hope that men now can get help more easily. 84844,

tell me your stories. We are here to hear them. I want to turn to my next guest, Heidi Thomas, who's in studio with me, best known as the writer and creator of

Called the Midwife. It has just finished its 12th season on BBC One and it continues to go from strength to strength, which is wonderful. Her newest project is a film adaptation of the Alan Bennett

play, Alleluia. So it's set in a much-loved geriatric hospital in Yorkshire called The Beth, Bethlehem, but Nick named The Beth. And it has been earmarked for closure. It stars Jennifer Saunders as the formidable Sister Gilpin. Let's listen to a little.

I don't know why your school have even sent you here. You don't offer work experience in nursing. I shall have to attach you to the portage. I asked careers for computing but I applied too late. I've brought him some theatre pants and an occupational therapist top half.

That's all I could find in a medium. What's this? We endeavour to rise above leisure wear, Andy. Helps the old folks keep their bearings. I hope those trainers are wiped clean. They'll be getting urine on them. Jennifer Saunders there. I was watching it last night.

What a character. So she's talking to the work experience boy there about what is what. Welcome to the Woman's Hour studio, Heidi. Great to have you with us. I know my listeners will have watched so much of your work, whether it's Soldier Soldier in the early 90s,

Cranford, Call the Midwife, as I mentioned, also been recommissioned. But this film, it's at the other end of the age spectrum. So instead of little babies, we're talking about people at the end of life. Absolutely. How did your involvement come about?

Well, it came about through a very ordinary route, which is I was approached by the producers. Would I be interested in adapting an Alan Bennett play from the stage to the screen? And that's an ordinary route from an extraordinary request. I'm a huge Alan Bennett fan. I didn't have to be asked twice. But I miss seeing the play in the theatre because ironically, I'd been nursing my mother through her final illness when it was on at the bridge in London. So I'd had tickets and the night I should have gone, there was an empty space there. So I caught up with the play by reading a copy of the

script. And it was wonderful. It made me laugh. And you don't think a drama about old age and mortality is going to make you laugh. But Alan Bennett is a genius. And I could also see that there was something I could bring to the story and that I could get my teeth into. Because it was just a few months after I'd spent several weeks with my mother at the end of her life on a palliative care ward, which very much had the kind of atmosphere that's coming across in the Beth. The idea that the system, the NHS, is struggling, but the people who keep it going are absolutely fantastic. And I saw it as an opportunity to bring to the screen a drama that's about spirit in the elderly, spirit in the NHS, and above all else,

it's ask the question, how do we care? Yes, it's very moving at parts, and that you had that personal experience makes total sense as I watch it now as well. Because you were getting into the minds of people that were of an advanced age. Obviously, you had your mother to draw on, maybe some of the other people that you met in that palliative care ward. But what was that process like? Because I think it's hard sometimes to imagine ourselves old.

Oh, well, it's funny because I'm 60 now and I don't mind the physical ageing process because I look in the mirror and I see people I love. I see who are no longer with us. I see my mum on occasion, which is rather unsettling. And I also see my auntie Lily. I even see my grandma. And I'm getting, I would say I'm in robust middle age, but I can now imagine old age in a way I couldn't when I was younger. And by younger, I mean 40. You think you aren't going to age and you think the people you love aren't going to age. And then you think, oh my goodness, it's relentless. It's inevitable. And yet there is a passion and a spirit that rises to the surface. Even if people are dissatisfied and grumbling and discontent

with old age, there is still, sometimes it just comes across as righteous anger, but there is a passion for living that I think is intensified towards the end of life. It's so interesting that you say that, because I'm thinking that's from the inside out. But then you have the outside in, which is how society treats older people. It is very, excuse me, it is very striking. And I was, when I was nursing my mother, I was shocked by the extent to which people encountering her for the first time as someone who was mortally ill and becoming frailer by the day they perhaps missed the point that this was a deterioration in

her this was not her this was what was happening to her and I loved any moment I could share with my mother or with the people I met when she was on that rather special ward I cherished any moment that gave strangers that flash of who she really was. It's like every morning I would get there and she will be lying in bed with a full face of makeup. And you're talking a woman with two weeks to live. And she was getting the care assistants, the health care assistants to put her lipstick on for her. And the day she died, my brother got to the hospital first and he said, she has no lippy on. I think it's the end. And, you know, it was lovely.

Alan already had in his play scenes with women putting their makeup on, talking about whitening the sepulchre. And it was lovely for me to pick up those threads of the female personality and the female experience and build on them a little bit. The characters are very distinct within Alleluia. Just for my listeners as well, there's a host of stars, Judi Dench, Derek Jacoby, David Bradley. And Judi's character Mary, I believe the writer belongs in liminal space, you should be watching. I think if ever, as a writer, you're tempted to write a searing drama about a writer, you've run out of ideas. I love the idea that Mary has always been a librarian, she's quiet, she doesn't have a lot to say. But she has a lot to see. And I think that was a lovely device for me to work with within the context of the film. And Judy plays it magnificently.

You never doubt for a moment, although the role is initially small, you never doubt that Judy is absolutely central to the story. I know, she is an amazing actress, isn't it? Just a small raise of an eyebrow and it can save volumes. I want to turn to another woman in it, and that is, we heard, Jennifer Saunders. So her role, she's comical, she's serious, she is the nurse that's in charge of the sister,

should I say, of the Beth. What were you trying to explore with Sister Gilpin's character? I think Sister Gilpin was very much an enigma in the stage play and delivers a tremendous twist in the drama towards the end. I was keen to examine her and to reflect the amount of care and expertise that goes into a 40-year nursing career. I was fascinated by her professionalism. I was fascinated by the way in which she seems to put up a carapace or a front, but underneath she is as moved as anybody by the people she's dealing with. And I also saw her as a personification of NHS staff fighting with the system. She's endlessly battling for beds.

And you can see it's driving her wild there's one scene where jennifer is struggling to find beds in her hospital for patients incoming and beds in the community for them to go out to and jennifer's performance is marvelous and she eats a chocolate covered tea cake in a really angry frustrated way like rips into it i know and i love that particular moment in the screenplay because I felt Jennifer had really intuited what I was trying to deliver with the script. The line she said that kind of stopped me in my tracks was, she's in a car chomping down on Chinese as the treat at this moment.

Don't leave it too late to die. I know. What did that line mean for you within the film? I have to say that line was originally in the stage play and it was one I very much didn't want to lose and I took a clue from it as to Alan's intention which is really about the terror and the pity of mortality and I think we see that carried out most by the lovely character Ambrose played by Derek Jacoby he is in intense pain and that was something I looked at in some detail what it is like to live with severe ongoing pain where you're morphine dependent Ambrose is lonely there's never been

a Mrs Ambrose I think one of the ladies says, waiting for visitors who never come. And I think he did depict with great tenderness the experience that is old age for many people. Within that context, we also see people from other cultures or who have devoted family visiting constantly, or there's a woman who is nursed by her daughter who gets more and more desperate as the situation unfolds. So I think there's a variety of is nursed by her daughter who gets more and more desperate as the situation unfolds. So I think there's a variety of experiences at the end of life. And whilst we mustn't lose sight of the wit and the passion of Alan's characters and the characters that I tried to develop, there is real sadness in there as well.

And we have to address those things. Yes, it is sad. Tender is an appropriate word, I feel, thinking back on the film. So it is this examination, as we're speaking about, to survive old age, but it's also Alan Bennett's love letter to the NHS. People would say an unashamedly political piece, as we see with some of the monologue towards the end as well. How did it work with you and Alan? Well, Alan, one of the reasons I took on the job was because I hoped to meet Alan Bennett and then lockdown intervened so we only met over the phone.

It was brilliant actually because the play did need a certain amount of work to convert it to the screen. Everything needs work when you convert it from one medium to another. So Alan said to me over the phone you must do what you think and imagine that I am dead. And I thought, I can't think of anything worse than a world where Alan Bennett no longer exists. So I found that quite traumatising. Anyway, we had a lovely chat, made each other laugh. And then at the end of the conversation, he said, yes, you must do what you think is right. And I will tell you what I think of it. I thought, oh, crumbs, that's the reverse of me. Exactly. Alive and kicking. So actually, you know, it is a burden. He's a genius and you mess with genius at your peril.

I also have a very passionate view of the NHS. I have relatives, younger relatives who are nurses. And I felt I was able to bring that to my study of Valentine and his anger towards the end of the film about how the NHS needs our support if it is to survive. So that was something I was able to pick up and run with. And overall, when I broadly finished work on the screenplay, as we started to approach production, Alan did read it and his response was very positive. He said, normally I wince when people change things I've written, but I didn't wince once. And that was just so brilliant to know that I hadn't offended him, I suppose. And also he said he laughed out loud when he was reading it, but he didn't always

know if he was laughing at my lines or his. And that was even better because I thought, you know, he's not angry with me and he seems to have enjoyed it. But then, of course, it's passed on to Richard Eyre, who's a wonderful director. And the ultimate author of any film is the director. Richard didn't overwrite the script, but he shapes it. He colours it. He edits it, you know. And ultimately, Alan wrote a play. I wrote a screenplay and Richard made a film. Wow.

I just want to let our listeners know as well, that's Alleluia. That will be in cinemas from the 17th of March. I began seeing the posters all over London town as well, which must Alleluia. That will be in cinemas from the 17th of March. I began seeing the posters all over London town as well, which must be exciting to see. And I will also let them know that the 12th series of Call the Midwife

have finished airing on BBC One. But the next three series, the next three have already been commissioned. Just before I let you go, did you think it would have that sort of staying power when you started in 2012?

Oh gosh, no. If I had, I would have slipped my throat. The idea of doing it for 15 years, which it will be by the time we get to the end of Series 15, was unthinkable. But it's a labour of love. I will keep coming back to it again and again, whatever else I do. Labour. Heidi Thomas, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Nuala. Now, I want to turn to our next topic, patriarchies.

Feminism isn't as modern as we might think, and the patriarchies may be more fragile than they appear. It is the basis of a new book by science journalist Angela Saini. In The Patriarchs, How Men Came to Rule, Angela uncovers stories of female-led societies and the lessons that they might teach us. Angela, welcome back to Woman's Hour. Thank you. Good to have you with us. Okay, so how did men come to power?

I mean, it's such a big fundamental question. And actually, you know, when I tell people about the book, the instant reaction is always, why isn't there a huge literature on this already? There must be hundreds of books written on this topic. Where did patriarchy come from? How did men come to have so much power? Actually, it's so thin. There's hardly any books written on this topic at all. It was a big question in the 19th century. And the reason it took that long to become a big question, at least in the West, is because we naturalized it. We just assumed that male domination was perhaps part of our makeup, that humans had always had this kind

of system of gendered oppression of some sort, that this is the oldest form of oppression. And it was only really in the middle of the 19th century that people started to ask, as they were fighting for more rights, as you got kind of women's rights activists calling for emancipation, that people started to wonder, well, actually, where does it come from? What are the roots of all of this? And there were lots of answers. I think many of us have our own assumptions. If we don't naturalize it, then perhaps one big theory is that we were all matriarchal once and there was this big catastrophic event in history. And then we all became patriarchal.

That was what Friedrich Engels said. Another view is that agriculture or civilization was the turning point because then we get property and then men want to control the property and that that was a turning point. And as I learned through writing this, we have a lot more evidence now in archaeology, anthropology, history, we just look at gender and history very differently now. None of those are really true, or at least not fully. But the true story, the fundamental story of how we came here, how we got to here, is just utterly fascinating. And it's completely changed the way I think about the world. Because it seems like it hasn't been one linear story, that there has been this complex web of evolution in various societies

over which male or female might have the upper hand, for want of a better term, or domination. How much do you think, ifie is down to biological differences which comes up pretty early well um we have to ask ourselves you can rest this assumption on biological differences you could say okay on average men have more upper body strength they're a little bit, so maybe that was what gave them the edge. But actually, when you go into prehistory, one of the places I traveled to when I was writing this book was Çatalhöyük, which is very famous as being one of the oldest settlements on the planet. It's 9,000 years old. So by thousands of years, it predates the pyramids in Egypt.

It predates Stonehenge by thousands of years. It predates written language. And what you see there, at least this is what the archaeologists who worked on this site in the 1990s told me, was that all the measures that we have to gauge gender inequality show that men and women lived pretty much the same way. They spent around the same amount of time indoors and outdoors, that they ate the same food, they were buried in the same way. We spent around the same amount of time indoors and outdoors, that they ate the same food, they were buried in the same way. We see lots of female figurines. So women, by no means were invisible in these societies. So we don't see a huge, very gendered way of living. Even if there were other hierarchies, we don't see gender being a predominant one. And certainly in other

parts of the world around the same time in the Neolithic, for example, if you go to the Americas, there have been loads of excavations of female hunters, female warriors. now we have matrilineal and matrilocal societies in which power is divided in very different ways from patriarchal ones, then if it is a biological rule, why is it not universal and timeless? So that's what I wanted to put forward in this book is that you can believe it's biology, but at least let's give us some alternatives for thinking about it. Let's see what else can explain the world as it is. What other evidence do we have? Some of the issues I was interested in is how does or how do patriarchies survive despite the constant resistance to that structure? Well, I'm glad you used the phrase patriarchy rather than patriarchy, because I think we imagine patriarchy as it's become this quite abstract term. It feels monolithic, huge, as though it's all pervasive. It impacts every single aspect of your life, that however much we chip away at it,

there'll always be a little bit left. And what I wanted to do with this book is just say, well, actually, what is it really? If we break it down into its constituent parts, what does it actually look like? And what you see remarkably is that there's a huge picture of variation, even in antiquity, in some of the most sexist parts of human history, for example, in ancient Athens, you can still see resistance, you can still see people pushing back and negotiating power and things changing over time, in pretty much the same way that we see now, that over the last 100 years, that push and pull would have existed right throughout history in every part of the world. And it's true

that in Europe or in parts of Europe, these patriarchal customs and these ideologies span thousands of years. In other parts of the world, they are within living memory. Let's talk to some that will be within living memory. And I love looking through the history as well of patriarchies around the world. I was reading that Soviet Russia was the first country in the world to legalize abortion. That was new to me. But how did the Soviet Union change the gender power balance? And we can also talk, I suppose, a little bit about recent times as well.

You know, this was one of the most fascinating things. And it still surprises me that when people read that section of the book, it comes as a shock to them to hear this. But I travel, I've traveled quite a bit in Eastern Europe. And I remember once, I was in Prague with my husband. We had a baby who had left with our grandparents. And we were having lunch with some academics, some local academics, and we were telling them, complaining about childcare, you know, how expensive it was, and saying that, surely this is a universal problem, how do you deal with it? And the women just looked at us and laughed and said, actually, you know, over here, we have the opposite issue is that women

want to be traditional housewives. because under socialist rule, under the Soviet Union, we had all the childcare we wanted, and we were expected to work. And that was the, that was how society was organized. When the Soviet Union began, like you say, it became the first country in the world to legalize abortion in 1920. It very quickly, because it wanted to radically change the state and the family. And I have to be clear here, I'm not in any way whitewashing the brutality of these authoritarian regimes. They were terrible, and it's clear to see why women and men both turned on them. But at that time, this was in the 20th century, perhaps in modern times, the first attempt we'd ever seen to smash the patriarchy. Gender norms were changed within a generation. You know, women were expected to work, they were shunted into higher education,

they were given all the same opportunities as men, and expected to do the same work as men. And that legacy of changing gender norms survives even to this day. So among Eastern Europeans, you can see much higher rates of women in science and engineering careers. If you look at women chess champions, even you see much higher rates in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. So it really had, this really had a profound effect on people. One of the people I interviewed for the book who grew up in Budapest, she was saying that her parents both worked. They lived in Hungary. And she never remembered her mum cooking because they would go to work,

they would eat in the canteens, bring food home from the canteens. Their linens would be sent to the public laundry where it was super cheap to have them done. And that was how they organised their lives. She was shocked when she travelled to the US and saw women domesticated and having to cook. That's so interesting. You also talk about Iran as well, everything from the 1979 revolution to also what's happening with women's freedoms in the country today. We've been watching those protests. But I do wonder, when we see the structures, we see the resistance, also how gender norms can change so quickly, as you describe, how fragile are patriarchies? Far more fragile than we imagine. I really, I mean, the way I describe it in the book is that this is a grift. You know, these are not some kind of monolithic, this isn't some big conspiracy. These are ideas that have been slowly fed into all our different parts of life, from legal frameworks, the way the state works,

our religions over a very long period of time. The existence of matrilineal societies today is proof that we can live in different ways. But it's the, you know, the stretch of empires and colonialism, not just European colonialism, but all the empires stretching back, you know, well into antiquity, that have spread these very, you know, when we think about it, really warped, rigid ways of thinking about what is appropriate for men and women, how we should be living, that can feel like straitjackets to many of us even now, and still felt like straitjackets then people always push back against it. So when I was writing The Patriarchs, I really desperately wanted people to see the alternatives,

which is why one of the opening chapters are based around the Haudenosaunee in North America. I live in New York now, so this is their territory. And in the 19th century, women's rights activists, American women's rights activists were fighting for the vote. And yet, they recognized that right among them were communities of women who had always had authority. These clan mothers predated by hundreds of years, the US founding fathers, they had agency, they were in charge of agriculture, they had enormous power in their own societies. All these things that women's rights activists who believed themselves to be living in the most modern and cutting edge, equal society on earth, actually in these societies already existed. And that created this huge anxiety people couldn't understand they couldn't square this circle because you know these Americans really believed how do we then frame ourselves as being

modern when there are these societies that aren't and the way they framed it of course was to say that they were primitive so this is often how matrilineal societies have been consigned is that they're primitive they're kind of remnants of the past, which is an incredibly racist and derogatory way to think about living societies that have just organised themselves differently. The matrilineal puzzle, as they put it, which I know you don't like that term either,

but so interesting as you take a trip around the world. It's Angela Saini. Her book is The Patriarchs, How Men Came to Rule. Thank you so much. Thank you. I want to move on now instead. The word mascara.

Familiar with it on TikTok? Here's the line. I don't know about your best friend, but mine has never tried to steal my mascara. And if you do think that's a quote about makeup, think again. The hashtag mascara has racked up more than 100 million views on TikTok over the past month or so.

And it's the latest code word that has been developed to avoid censorship filters. But the euphemism is causing confusion and nobody can quite agree on whether using coded language to talk about painful experiences is helpful appropriate or not sophia smith-gaylor has written a book called losing it sex education for the 21st century and is a senior vice a senior journalist at vice world news welcome back to woman's hour spia good to have you with us hello we also have esther della ford who's a sex and relationship educator and therapist welcome esther hi so okay so we have lots of people they're coming new to this i know you've been talking about it on TikTok, but explain what mascara really means. Really important caveat here is that, of course,

there are plenty of people who are still talking about mascara and posting about it on TikTok who very much are talking about the cosmetic product, including myself. I made a video about it a few weeks ago talking about the etymology of the word. However, back in January now, we saw the first video where someone was using the word to talk about something that wasn't in fact mascara. They were actually using mascara and

mascara wand as a code word for talking about a vibrator. And over the next couple of weeks, this code word changed a bit and you're right to highlight the confusion. Some people chose to use mascara as a way to talk're right to highlight the confusion some people chose to use mascara as a way to talk about sex without using the word sex some specifically used it to talk about specifically sexual abuse and the fact that the word had quite broad meaning ranging between positive and negative experiences of sex is why till this day you still have search requests on TikTok of people saying, what does the mascara trend mean? But while mascara is still causing a lot of confusion,

there are many, many words that lots of us on TikTok, with me and my reporting and my book, and when I try and share education or information around sexual and reproductive health rights in particular, we come against this all the time. If you use certain words, you may find that your content could suffer a range of consequences. This may be that the video will be removed. That's probably the most severe. You may find that comments are shadow banned, which is if you chose to comment using a particular word word TikTok would remove the

comment this actually once happened someone once asked me what's the name of your book I said losing it with a cherry emoji because I had a cherry on the front cover and that comment got removed by because of possibly cherry emoji possibly the cherry emoji I've had other comments where I've posted them and they've not been removed but they have been shadow banned so I'm the only user who can see them and a lot of the time yeah a lot of the time you you might change the spelling of sex to segs that's something I've done before but it's infuriating because this work is about tackling taboo and we shouldn't feel the need to self-censor around these very important topics. Let me bring in Esther here. What do you think the conversations that are taking place using the word mascara or other code words?

I think it's really important to allow people, especially victims of sexual violence, to use whatever language feels comfortable to them. And I think that there are issues with certain words being censored. Anything that allows people to have a conversation and feel that they can share their experience and be validated by other people's experiences has to be a positive thing, even if there is a risk of potentially some confusion. Yeah, I mean, I think that's it. Some people talking about the confusion, some people also asking us whether it's trivializes, for example, a topic like sexual assault, instead of being able to talk about it in a more open way, you know, being able to be specific, even if that may have to be graphic at times instead of using the word like mascara? I think it's really important that we don't force people to use language they're maybe not ready to use. Words have a lot of power and especially the words around sexual violence, words like rape, sexual assault, they carry a lot of weight and once you've used those words to describe your experience it's

quite difficult to take them back um there's lots of layers to this there's there's the kind of being open about being a sexual assault survivor online and using those that language online and then there's kind of the personal internal experience once you've used that language i don't think that we can say to people, this happened to you, so you need to use these words to describe it, because the healing process is so personal. And the layered process of taking back your power and acknowledging what happened to you isn't something that happens overnight. Because I know you've had your own experience of assault as well. And for you then, talking in this way, did that help? Talking in... Like in a way, whether it's with code words or trying to me. I've always used rape. I've always used sexual assault, sexual trauma, sexual violence. That was important to me. But it's also important to me to advocate

for other people's right to choose. And right to choose expands to so many things. When you've had the power to make the decisions about what happens to your body taken away, I think it's really important that you have the power to hold the narrative around the conversations about that afterwards. So that is also within the community. But coming back to you, Sophia, I think there might be people, maybe that are parents or guardians of younger people that are using code where it's stuff that they don't understand on TikTok. And I don't know how parents can even decode some of the messages that perhaps they see. I think it's, of course, it's really important that parents take an active interest in these platforms.

But it's also very important to not always be reactive and to think, my goodness, I do not understand the words that my child is using in this respect. Be proactive, be on TikTok, following accounts yourself and try and keep an eye on news about the platform. For this story in particular, it was a fantastic investigation that was done in 2022 by German public broadcasters that found words that are repeatedly flagged. They're internally flagged on TikTok to be shadow banned these include words included words such as porn and sex which explains why creators have such a tough time talking about sex education which they shouldn't but secondly it also had words um like gay and homosexual and imagine being a young person trying to talk openly about your sexual orientation for example and then finding that tiktok as an app and as a platform policy would shadow ban that content. So it's really important for you to understand why young people may be resorting to having to use an anti-language,

a coded language to try and express very important information about their identities. Just before I let you go, how quickly do the code words change? Oh, rapidly. And sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work. But there are some staple ones, I would say corn, for example, is a byword for porn. And I unalived, we are seeing people instead of saying dead or killed, unalived to those are some common ones. Sophia Smith-Gaylor, Esther Della Ford, thank you so much. And we like to say that every day on this programme is International Women's Day but having said that

tomorrow the 8th of March is I will be talking to Foreign Secretary James Cleverley MP as he travels to Sierra Leone to launch the UK's new international women and girls strategy

I hope you'll join me tomorrow for more Woman's Hour That's all for today's Woman's Hour join us again next time Hello I'm Brian Cox, and we are back for season 26 of The Infinite Monkey Cage. And we begin, where do we begin, Robin?

We start in a galaxy far, far away and a long time ago. It's Australia. Oh, OK, Australia then. We start, it felt like a galaxy to me, but we were in Australia where we talked about, well, spiders. You were scared of spiders. I wasn't actually scared of spiders,

but you'll hear many trailers for this thing where they say, I wasn't scared of spiders. Oh, we also did astronomy, actually, in Australia, which is fantastic. And then we came back to the UK, and we had guests like Ross Noble, Susan Calliman, Russell Kane, Ed Byrne, Joe Brand, Sally Gunnell.

Yeah, Anna Fry. Sue Black, Randa Munro. And we found out, amongst other things, how to commit the perfect murder, which still hasn't really worked for me because I'm still upset at him. Listen on BBC Sounds. What a great platform. It is wonderful, isn't it?

Unless you've got that Robbie Nims and Professor Cox I'd leave that poor pussy alone in its box That cat may be as dead as a rat You can wage in the infinite monkey cage I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.