Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mamma Mia out loud. It's what
Speaker 1: women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the third of June.
Speaker 2: I'm Hollyween, I'm Clere Stephens, and I'm Amelia Lost.
Speaker 1: And here's what has made our agenda for today.
Speaker 3: The boy mum controversy that has me terrified for the
Speaker 3: next phase of my life.
Speaker 2: The one thing you should never say when you meet someone,
Speaker 2: or is it?
Speaker 1: And women shouldn't be allowed to write books discuss but
Speaker 1: first just putting it out there controversial opinions Wednesday anyway, First,
Speaker 1: in case you missed it, suns shining in Europe and
Speaker 1: so the tennis is happening. I'm sports correspondent for today.
Speaker 1: Oh we've been passing that mic around last week.
Speaker 3: It was wow. I don't know how much I trust this,
Speaker 3: especially not with tennis better with football tennis not so much.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I'm going to give it a go. Because
Speaker 1: there is this thing, this tournament called Roland Garros, which
Speaker 1: is also Therench Open. I had to make sure they
Speaker 1: were the same thing. They are the same thing, just
Speaker 1: like Wimbledon.
Speaker 2: Land, Like who's rolling exactly?
Speaker 1: Who is Roland? An answer to that, weren't they and
Speaker 1: this week there was a bit of a ding dong
Speaker 1: at the French Open over some umpires being women.
Speaker 3: Oh oh my god, I know, I'm shocked.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: To be clear, the umpires who get to adjudicate over
Speaker 1: the big Grand Slam titles, so French Open, US Open, Wimbledon,
Speaker 1: not the Open, et cetera, are called the gold badge ones.
Speaker 1: So they are the top of their field, just like
Speaker 1: in any other sport. You don't just pull the volunteer
Speaker 1: referee from Saturday football and put them on the ground final.
Speaker 1: So these are the these are the big guns. But
Speaker 1: in a game that was played by Paraguayan Adolfo Daniel Valeo,
Speaker 1: he criticized his female umpire and said that this level
Speaker 1: of game should only be umpired by a man. His
Speaker 1: game was five hours long, which he's like, that's really
Speaker 1: really long, Oh my gosh. And it was hot and
Speaker 1: the crowd got rowdy. And we have talked a little
Speaker 1: bit lately, if we've talked about tennis at all, about
Speaker 1: how the polite like just sitting around and doing little
Speaker 1: finger claps, that tennis is over. Everybody yells now, and
Speaker 1: his words were a game like this, he got asked
Speaker 1: whether or not. He thought it should have been umpired
Speaker 1: by a woman, by a magazine called Clay Magazine, And
Speaker 1: he said it has to be refereed by a man
Speaker 1: because it's a very demanding crowd and you need a
Speaker 1: lot of strength to go against the crowd. It's not
Speaker 1: normal for the crowd to be shouting for a full
Speaker 1: minute without any play in a match where the physical
Speaker 1: aspect matters so much. If you give a player a
Speaker 1: lot of time, he's going to take a marriage of it.
Speaker 1: So basically, he's making the point that an umpire, A
Speaker 1: big part of what a tennis umpire does is they
Speaker 1: tell the crowd to shut up. And what he's insinuating
Speaker 1: here is the crowd wouldn't listen because the umpire was
Speaker 1: a woman, thoughts, and he lost. To be clear, he
Speaker 1: lost this patch.
Speaker 3: He lost, and he lost to a seventeen year old,
Speaker 3: and I think his ego was probably just a little
Speaker 3: bit bruised. My favorite thing about this story is that
Speaker 3: he got fined so much money he.
Speaker 1: Did, even though he went to notesap and apologized on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got fined like half his earnings from the tournament.
Speaker 3: But I saw a really good clip of Andy Roddick
Speaker 3: talking about this, and I just I love when it's
Speaker 3: men who come to the defense of a female umpire,
Speaker 3: And he just said, he was like, mate, focus less
Speaker 3: on the gender of the umpire and focus more on
Speaker 3: the fact that you couldn't beat a kid.
Speaker 2: Do you want it? Scot Form on this? Doesn't he
Speaker 2: in a good way? Hasn't he also spoken out in
Speaker 2: the past about making sure that women get the same
Speaker 2: prize money as men.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it is part of a I
Speaker 3: like that they've taken it seriously because it is a
Speaker 3: bigger conversation in tennis that there is not necessarily parody
Speaker 3: between men and women or there I think there is parody,
Speaker 3: but there's some controversy about that. There people who say
Speaker 3: that there shouldn't be and there are such a small
Speaker 3: number of female umpires at this level, and then to
Speaker 3: have them kind of stigmatized in this way. I'm really
Speaker 3: really glad they took it seriously.
Speaker 1: Okay, but here's a tiny devil's advocate here, right What
Speaker 1: if what his point that he's making, which is that
Speaker 1: the crowd isn't listening to her, isn't that on the like,
Speaker 1: doesn't that tell you a truth? About the crowd because
Speaker 1: maybe it's true.
Speaker 3: I went through the comment section on one of the
Speaker 3: articles about this, and everyone was like, you just have
Speaker 3: to think about that teacher you had in like year six,
Speaker 3: who could command the whole frickin' room. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 3: people listen to women, and people listen to women with authority.
Speaker 3: I just don't believe that that was the case. In
Speaker 3: a few weeks, I am going to enter a brand
Speaker 3: new clas and a recent online controversy is making me
Speaker 3: feel very, very weird about it. Once this baby is born,
Speaker 3: I believe a lovely midwife will fill out some paperwork,
Speaker 3: give me a badge, and officially christen me a boy mom.
Speaker 3: Boy mom, boy mom. I don't I do not consent.
Speaker 2: That's what they say when you have a boy mom.
Speaker 3: Somehow, the Internet has told me this is fundamentally different
Speaker 3: to being a girl mom, even though I believe that
Speaker 3: gender is mostly a social construct, and I don't really
Speaker 3: understand why I would feel any differently towards this little
Speaker 3: boy than I do towards my little girl. Apparently, the
Speaker 3: simple fact that during conception, it was a y chromosome
Speaker 3: that fertilized one of my eggs I am now going
Speaker 3: to be a boy mom. I'm a fundamentally different kind
Speaker 3: of person. Holly, you're a boy mom. Familia, you're a
Speaker 3: boy mom.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: And so is a woman named Jenny Molin. She is
Speaker 3: an actress. She was in the TV show Angel And
Speaker 3: she was also brief flee in Girls And she's a
Speaker 3: writer and the ex wife of actor Jason Biggs. She's
Speaker 3: also a mum to two boys. That is obviously the
Speaker 3: overarching identity.
Speaker 1: Yes, boy mo. I reckon too that there would be
Speaker 1: some boy moms who would be policing the identity of
Speaker 1: boy mom and say, maybe you have to have only.
Speaker 2: Boys, yeah, to be a boy mum.
Speaker 3: That's true, but you know whatever, I actually know that's
Speaker 3: very true. But I think we all are like half
Speaker 3: boy moms. This week, she has made headlines for sharing
Speaker 3: a photo of herself lying on top of her twelve
Speaker 3: year old son in bed, and the original caption was
Speaker 3: your eldest son will be the most toxic guy you
Speaker 3: ever date. She yes, so she ended up removing that caption.
Speaker 1: I don't mind the picture, but the caption is troubling me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So comments called the post creepy, wildly inappropriate, disturbing. The
Speaker 3: photo itself again was not that controversial.
Speaker 1: I do have although there are issues with this, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to. I do have an issue with people
Speaker 1: policing parental affection on the internet. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: see David Beckham kissing his daughter.
Speaker 3: It's eh.
Speaker 1: And if you see a boy posing with his mum
Speaker 1: in a bikini, it's ooh. It's like, you're making it weird.
Speaker 3: Guys, you're making it weird.
Speaker 1: All families are different in terms of their physical affection.
Speaker 2: She did put it on the grid. It's an odd moment.
Speaker 2: I should put it on the grid.
Speaker 1: Made also made odder by the camps.
Speaker 3: But it seems that the photo then reminded people of
Speaker 3: a substack post she had published a few weeks ago
Speaker 3: in early May, and it was called please Stay, I
Speaker 3: want you, I need you, Oh God. And apparently that
Speaker 3: is a Benson bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you, I need you, Oh God.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They so.
Speaker 3: I don't understand Holly and her pop music being up
Speaker 3: to date with everything anyway, that's another conversation. But it
Speaker 3: was about her twelve year old son. And here are
Speaker 3: some quotes from that post. It opens with call me
Speaker 3: old fashioned, but I only want my sons to marry
Speaker 3: women with dead mothers, so it's my only shot at
Speaker 3: staying relevant, of seeming useful, and of winning by comparison.
Speaker 1: Please tell me she's joke, she says.
Speaker 3: Several months ago, my eldest was texting with a girl.
Speaker 3: She was twelve, but I could already tell my brand
Speaker 3: of toxic. She was bossing him around and using big words,
Speaker 3: and he was utterly spun. I complained to Jason, her
Speaker 3: husband at the time, that I wanted to intervene before
Speaker 3: he got hurt, and that she wasn't even hotter than me.
Speaker 3: Please start joking, but Jason insisted I let him make
Speaker 3: his own mistakes. Then she writes about how the abandonment
Speaker 3: we eventually endure as boy Morm's is uniquely cruel because
Speaker 3: it begins as worship. They arrive obsessed, dependent, adoring. They
Speaker 3: think we're magic. We think we're magic. We spend years
Speaker 3: being the center of their emotional world, only to slowly
Speaker 3: watch them build one without us.
Speaker 1: That's true of all children.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's actually kind of like a human race, evolutionary
Speaker 2: thing that we have helpless babies, yeah, who then become
Speaker 2: less helpless as time goes on.
Speaker 3: Yes, not so much about needing them to then be
Speaker 3: with somebody with a dead mother. But the final couple
Speaker 3: of lines of her substract were I'm still in it,
Speaker 3: but also somehow outside of it, fully aware I'm living
Speaker 3: through the longest goodbye of my life. I pray that
Speaker 3: at least one of them is gay.
Speaker 1: That's referring to it.
Speaker 2: I worry that there's some part of her here that
Speaker 2: is not joking. And the line that sort of gave
Speaker 2: it away for me is when she writes, I've never
Speaker 2: been broken up with yeah, which, first of all, lady,
Speaker 2: you have never lived. Being broken up with is the
Speaker 2: greatest experience. I recommend it to everyone. She goes on
Speaker 2: to it, I've never been into someone who wasn't just
Speaker 2: slightly more into me, which is a really annoying sing.
Speaker 2: But now karma going to make me pay in spades,
Speaker 2: more likely in the form of some crazy bit. She
Speaker 2: was going to weaponize my flaws in therapy and melt
Speaker 2: or my jewelry. I have a little bit of a
Speaker 2: theory as to why she's sort of.
Speaker 1: That's a rich text me working through some.
Speaker 2: Boy mom feelings on the internet at this particular time,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of this has to do
Speaker 2: with her divorce from Jason Biggs. Now that name might
Speaker 2: be familiar. He was in American Pie. He was the
Speaker 2: kid in American Pie who put his penis in a
Speaker 2: pie or something. Yeah, what happened.
Speaker 3: I feel like he did a lot of things.
Speaker 2: But that divorce was confirmed to People magazine only two
Speaker 2: weeks ago, so clearly, I think this is a situation
Speaker 2: where a couple is working through some complicated relationship dynamics,
Speaker 2: triangulating those If you'll allow me to esk to parrel
Speaker 2: this situation through the suns, they have a weird dynamic.
Speaker 2: I looked back in twenty nineteen. Yeah, I went into
Speaker 2: Jason Biggs Instagram from twenty nineteen. There is an Instagram
Speaker 2: post where Jenny is embracing their son in happier times.
Speaker 2: They're on a holiday. They've go to Germany every year
Speaker 2: on holiday. The caption on this was there used to
Speaker 2: be a time when my wife wanted to ca noodle
Speaker 2: with me on a mountaintop. And at that point, I
Speaker 2: think the two of you are feeding off each other
Speaker 2: with this, because I get that that's a joke. I
Speaker 2: get that it's all said tongue in cheek. But when
Speaker 2: you are making jokes that are premised on the idea
Speaker 2: that your son has replaced you romantically in some way,
Speaker 2: that's just there's a kernel there if that's how he
Speaker 2: views their son.
Speaker 1: Yes, and but I think that's true. There's clearly a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on here, and I you know,
Speaker 1: we're getting to it later in the conversation with today,
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about women getting attacked for
Speaker 1: telling their stories and like she's allowed to write what
Speaker 1: she wants and think what she wants. But you're right
Speaker 1: that there's a specific dynamic going on. But this is
Speaker 1: much broader than that, the boy mom thing and the
Speaker 1: whole like I don't want them to get married, I
Speaker 1: don't want them to leave me. I don't like and
Speaker 1: the you know you can get a bumper stickers like
Speaker 1: daughters are for life and you know sons will break,
Speaker 1: like all that stuff. It's not specific to these two people.
Speaker 1: This is a much bigger thing, and I find it
Speaker 1: really interesting now. Mia wrote about this a few years ago.
Speaker 1: She one of the most viral things she's ever written,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about it on the show several times since.
Speaker 1: Was about how watching your son growing up will be
Speaker 1: like the longest breakup of your life. And that hit
Speaker 1: a lot of nerves with people in a good way,
Speaker 1: resonated with them, and got shared enormously well. It also
Speaker 1: got a little bit of criticism from corners, which was
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding of what Mia meant. But also I think
Speaker 1: it's a trap for girls because we talk about boys
Speaker 1: and girls so differently in this way where we say
Speaker 1: he's gonna grow up and leave me one day, he's
Speaker 1: going to live his own life and he's not going
Speaker 1: to be around to satisfy all my nurturing needs all
Speaker 1: the time. She on the other hand, he's going to
Speaker 1: stay close, never leave, never leave, fulfill all my needs,
Speaker 1: look after me. When I it's like, guys, haven't we
Speaker 1: moved past this?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 1: That might be what happens, but it also might not
Speaker 1: be what happens. Like this very stereotypical sort of jail
Speaker 1: we put girls in, which is that they are emotionally
Speaker 1: responsible for everyone around them all the time, and men
Speaker 1: are expected to go off and be emotionally responsible for
Speaker 1: other people. Can't we kind of move on.
Speaker 2: From that this?
Speaker 3: I remember seeing the criticism to MEA's article at the
Speaker 3: time and it was a very small proportion of people
Speaker 3: who read the article. There were so many who it
Speaker 3: resonated with and they shared it and there were lots
Speaker 3: of tears, But basically part of me was there. She wrote,
Speaker 3: there are so many batshit crazy things about being a parent,
Speaker 3: and one that definitely wasn't in the brochure is the
Speaker 3: way you don't actually parent one person, You parent many,
Speaker 3: many different people who are all your child. And that
Speaker 3: idea is something that now having experience parenthood, I am
Speaker 3: so aware of and thought that she stated so so
Speaker 3: so eloquently, and the fact that I mean, I've got
Speaker 3: a toddler and I'm seeing the distance that she's having
Speaker 3: experiences without me, and she's becoming a person where I'm
Speaker 3: not the only influence in her life.
Speaker 1: That's a very complicated thing that only continues to be complicated.
Speaker 3: Yes, but what I struggle with is there is a
Speaker 3: kernel of truth in this in that if I look
Speaker 3: at my life, and if you look at all the research,
Speaker 3: it is daughters who end up caring for parents as
Speaker 3: they age. It is daughters who do a lot of that,
Speaker 3: the mental load of maintaining the family not always, and
Speaker 3: men do less of it. So I think women's anxiety
Speaker 3: about it or mother's anxiety about it is somewhat valid.
Speaker 3: But the line between a sexual romantic relationship and a
Speaker 3: maternal relationship, I just don't see why that's being blursh.
Speaker 3: It's very confused.
Speaker 1: I find a bit very I know these things are true,
Speaker 1: but then I will always question how much of it
Speaker 1: is true, because it's just what we keep telling everybody
Speaker 1: all the time. Because women's lives have changed enormously. Their
Speaker 1: social mobility is different, their professional arcs are different, A
Speaker 1: whole lot of things are changing very quickly for women.
Speaker 1: And so if we just keep insisting though that these
Speaker 1: are truths, these are unquestionable truths, that your son will
Speaker 1: be swallowed up by some other woman. And it's this
Speaker 1: idea that I find strange, that men can be taken
Speaker 1: and stolen and they belong to you like none of
Speaker 1: our children actually belong to us, And that is one
Speaker 1: of the most enormous realizations you go through as they
Speaker 1: grow up. And so I just I wonder is that
Speaker 1: if we keep saying these things over and over again,
Speaker 1: we just continue to reinforce them. Right, girls can all
Speaker 1: so move off and move into the other worlds. Some
Speaker 1: men stay close. Some men run away from their overbearing
Speaker 1: mothers because they daughters do the same.
Speaker 3: They keep writing weird shit on the internet. As moms
Speaker 3: who have a boy and a girl each, is there
Speaker 3: something different about having a boy?
Speaker 2: No? I find okay, so mystifying okay, and I'm I
Speaker 2: want to ask you why you think the boy moms
Speaker 2: who have the bumper stickers, why do they want to
Speaker 2: tell us that they're a boy mom?
Speaker 3: Okay. I actually have a theory about this, and I've
Speaker 3: experienced it a little bit with this pregnancy. There are
Speaker 3: people where when you say, oh, I'm having a boy,
Speaker 3: they say, are you disappointed? And I think that I
Speaker 3: find that up setting, like.
Speaker 1: Like, are there really people who say that, yeah, because
Speaker 1: boys are hard at work.
Speaker 3: I've thought about it a lot and I find it
Speaker 3: really really distressing.
Speaker 2: And in fact, there was a study done at the
Speaker 2: start of this year that said, for the first time,
Speaker 2: this is an Australian study, for the first time, parents
Speaker 2: expressed a preference more for having a girl than having
Speaker 2: a boy. So there really is a bit of a
Speaker 2: sort of sense now that boys are hard work, trouble.
Speaker 2: They're all going to grow up to be like adolescents
Speaker 2: the TV show and that you just rather have a nice,
Speaker 2: well behaved go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But there's a flip side to that, which is, as
Speaker 1: soon as you have a girl who enters puberty, everyone
Speaker 1: will go, oh, you've got trouble.
Speaker 2: So you don't get that for boys entering puberty. It's
Speaker 2: a girl.
Speaker 1: It's different. So the stereotypes tend to be that little
Speaker 1: boys are a handful, So you'll hear a lot of
Speaker 1: boy moms and this is entirely valid. Again from my experience,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that blanket true because I have a son,
Speaker 1: for example, who doesn't like sport and a daughter who's
Speaker 1: crazy about it. So you know, the world moves in
Speaker 1: mysterious ways. But to generalize broadly, the stereotypes are as
Speaker 1: a boy mum when the kid is little, they'll never
Speaker 1: sit still, they'll be running around, You'll have a lot
Speaker 1: of balls in your house. It'll be you know, you'll
Speaker 1: constantly be apologizing to people because they've smashed a window
Speaker 1: or whatever. And there's definitely truth in that. Whereas girls
Speaker 1: sit nicely in color at the playdates, and you'll hear
Speaker 1: a lot of moms talk about that in a very
Speaker 1: real way, and it's true. Then when they get towards
Speaker 1: like teenage years, you'll get they're like, oh, but girls,
Speaker 1: there's so much trouble. I hope you've got a shotgun.
Speaker 1: I hope she's not going to wear that. I hope
Speaker 1: she's not going to go there. Like, so, you can't
Speaker 1: win in these gender stereotypes. My experience, my personal experience,
Speaker 1: has been that those stereotypes have not played out to
Speaker 1: be true. My personal experience in my family and my
Speaker 1: in law's family as not that it's turned out to
Speaker 1: be true that it's the women who do all the caring.
Speaker 1: My mother in law lived with her son right up
Speaker 1: to her death, and her daughter has never lived anywhere.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I think that all of these things
Speaker 1: that you know, and I've moved to the other side
Speaker 1: of the world and my brother lives around the corner
Speaker 1: from my parents, Like, I just think we get lazy
Speaker 1: with these stereotypes, even though of course there is truth
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a general there's a generalization. But I do
Speaker 3: think that the boy moms are trying to reclaim a
Speaker 3: little pat of their own and say that there's basically
Speaker 3: something sacred and special about being a boy mum, and
Speaker 3: I completely understand that response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, particularly since the tide has turned in terms of
Speaker 2: stereotypes and what people want.
Speaker 1: Do you think that I know, I keep asking the
Speaker 1: same question, but I just have to ask you because
Speaker 1: you might know more about her than me. Is sheer
Speaker 1: comedy writer? Is this satire?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: I have a thing I need to say about satire.
Speaker 3: You can't just write something and then say it satire.
Speaker 3: This happens so often where people are like, it's satirical,
Speaker 3: and it's like, I want you to define satire and
Speaker 3: then tell me how the thing that you wrote actually
Speaker 3: fit that, because I don't think that people saying it
Speaker 3: satire actually understand what satire is. Is she Is she
Speaker 3: seeing a little instinct that she has and exaggerating it. Maybe,
Speaker 3: but it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not making a clever comment, no point, And in
Speaker 2: the context of the divorce. It has to be seen
Speaker 2: in that context. Yeah, that this is the way people
Speaker 2: communicate when communication between them has broken down. This is
Speaker 2: all about what's going on between her and Jason out
Speaker 2: ladders in a moment. Is a whole generation using the
Speaker 2: phrase pov wrong, spend any time on TikTok or as
Speaker 2: I do, watch tiktoks on Instagram and you will see
Speaker 2: a video. Sorry, I'm sorry, Claire.
Speaker 3: No, see what happens is you're getting the tiktoks like
Speaker 3: six months.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I'm not getting the pure I'm enriched ship talks.
Speaker 2: I'm getting the distilled TikTok on Instagram. My bad. I'm
Speaker 2: reading books, Claire, that's the I digress. Spend any time
Speaker 2: on TikTok slash Instagram and you will see a video
Speaker 2: with a caption which begins POV. This has become a
Speaker 2: very common format, and that, of course downs for point
Speaker 2: of view. There's an article in the New York Times
Speaker 2: this week that says that everyone under forty is using
Speaker 2: this term wrong as Outlad's official most annoying host. And
Speaker 2: I say that because I'm always on time and I
Speaker 2: used to have the job title of fact checker. That
Speaker 2: is a true thing. This is the second in a
Speaker 2: series of mine, which began on Monday when I lam
Speaker 2: based it jen Z for not using enough capital letters.
Speaker 2: So now in the second of my series, it falls
Speaker 2: to me it seems to explain what POV actually means. Claire.
Speaker 2: I see you have a pen and paper please pick
Speaker 2: up the pen. If you caption a video POV you're
Speaker 2: too short to reach the top shelf. That should feature
Speaker 2: a camera tilted up at something just out of reach.
Speaker 2: It should not picked a short person hopping up and
Speaker 2: down in the middle of the screen trying to reach
Speaker 2: a shlf. You got that POV is being used as
Speaker 2: synonymous with fly on the wall, and that is just
Speaker 2: not right.
Speaker 1: Have you told everybody what it actually stands for?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, point of view? Holy keep up. Incidentally, the
Speaker 2: same thing, now I have your attention, The same thing
Speaker 2: has happened with aesthetic. That doesn't mean pretty or good
Speaker 2: looking or nice. It means what something looks like. It's
Speaker 2: like the look of something. So that's very aesthetic. Is
Speaker 2: not a correct use of the word as thing.
Speaker 1: God, my daughter says that all the time.
Speaker 2: You can see I am fun at parties. Any questions, Okay?
Speaker 3: Firstly, I went to pitch a branded content video recently
Speaker 3: and went to do the POV trend, and that was
Speaker 3: the moment that I went, no, it's not POV. It's
Speaker 3: not it's fly on the wall, and.
Speaker 2: Which is FOT. Let's bring, let's bring into the mix.
Speaker 3: It's not as catchy as it. No, it's not as catchy,
Speaker 3: and I had a full existential crisis, thinking, well, I
Speaker 3: want to be on trend, I want to be cool,
Speaker 3: but I shan't be doing something that's incorrect. But the
Speaker 3: annoying thing is that whenever you're pointing this out, because
Speaker 3: my mum's an English teacher and so she'll often have
Speaker 3: issues with all sorts of things that I said, and
Speaker 3: then she often has to pull herself up and say.
Speaker 3: Linguists will say.
Speaker 2: You know that. The linguist say, it's fine, I should
Speaker 2: say that. In this New York Times article, they interviewed
Speaker 2: a linguist, a cunning one at that, and they said,
Speaker 2: it's fine, just relax. It is basically relax.
Speaker 3: Language is what language becomes like if the young.
Speaker 2: People English languages. Apparently other languages which I don't speak,
Speaker 2: apparently they're more formal and rigid. But in English we're
Speaker 2: all meant to be lucy goosey. Whatever, man, Matthew McConaughey
Speaker 2: about it all, Holly, how do you feel? Look?
Speaker 1: It irritates me too, But I am done criticizing this
Speaker 1: generation because I just heard about a movie sensation called
Speaker 1: Backrooms Right that came out last week and it made
Speaker 1: eighty million dollars in its first two days. And that
Speaker 1: was made by a YouTuber who is twenty years old.
Speaker 2: And it's such a cool premise.
Speaker 1: And this is the whole thing, and we don't need
Speaker 1: to go. But like the thing is, is this generation
Speaker 1: who've grown up entirely just on TikTok and YouTube, who
Speaker 1: don't know how to use the terms, have started making
Speaker 1: their own work and it's freaking amazing and all of
Speaker 1: us old people need to sit down and shut up.
Speaker 2: Claire. This is why she's the popular one. Moving on.
Speaker 2: Oh Hannah, i'mbinder is a very funny comedian. She's the
Speaker 2: star of Hacks, which just came to a conclusion on HBO.
Speaker 2: But in the lead up to the finale, Hannah gave
Speaker 2: an interview on the show Subway Takes, and she dropped
Speaker 2: a take so controversial I cannot stop thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Here is what she said, So what's your taking? I
Speaker 2: say nice to meet you, and you say we've met.
Speaker 2: That is a violent act against me, Are you serious?
Speaker 1: Honesty is the best policy?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 3: If you tell me that we've met and you remind
Speaker 3: me in this way, with such a loathsome disdain.
Speaker 2: You are embarrassing us. Both you are embarrassing me for
Speaker 2: not remembering you, and frankly you're embarrassing yourself for not
Speaker 2: being memorable. Pollie, you're nodding a full agreement on this.
Speaker 1: As I've gotten older, my memory is not great, and
Speaker 1: when you meet people out of context, in situations out
Speaker 1: of context, I often don't remember that I've met them.
Speaker 1: And it's not offensive. It's not that I'm rude. Maybe
Speaker 1: it is. You'd probably tell me that I am. And
Speaker 1: so I sometimes say these days just to hedge it,
Speaker 1: have we met, or like I think we've met before,
Speaker 1: in order to kind of like open that door. But
Speaker 1: if I say nice to meet you and you come
Speaker 1: straight back with, oh, we've met, I am more, you
Speaker 1: have narrow to the heart.
Speaker 3: Don't you want to be reminded? You could have had
Speaker 3: a real important conversation last time you spoke.
Speaker 1: No way, I want everyone to pretend that it's fine.
Speaker 3: I totally disagree. For me, the violent act is not
Speaker 3: that we've met, it's the nice to meet you Like that's.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's that's a very common pleasantry. What is
Speaker 2: your problem with that?
Speaker 3: Like nice to meet you when you've when you've already met?
Speaker 1: That is?
Speaker 3: That is violent?
Speaker 1: Answer me this. If we have this encounter and I
Speaker 1: say nice to meet you, and you say we've met?
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to say?
Speaker 2: Let's just cooseplay it. I can not cosplay.
Speaker 1: If we were in cocktail dresses.
Speaker 2: That would be so I'm going to hold up my
Speaker 2: mug and I'm at a cocktail party and.
Speaker 1: I say, nice to meet you, merely Lester.
Speaker 2: Oh, actually, Holly, we met once before. Remember we met
Speaker 2: at a party. And no, see it's a conversation. What
Speaker 2: about it? What does Holly say in response?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3: Open y you say we met at the party.
Speaker 2: If you take this, it's actually harder than it seems
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Hi, I'm like, I forget how social.
Speaker 2: Interaction has gone.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Nice? Have you ever said nice to meet you, Claire?
Speaker 2: I think that's where we need to start.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 2: Actually we met before, Claire at a party. It was
Speaker 2: at that person's house and it was really and we talked.
Speaker 2: We talked about being brow moms.
Speaker 3: Remember, yeah, I love the person whose party that is? Yeah,
Speaker 3: they great. Now we're in conversation if you don't remember, Holly,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be honest, why don't you remember?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just don't remember.
Speaker 1: You have, like, particularly a professional setting, you have a
Speaker 1: lot of small talk conversations. By the time you get
Speaker 1: to my age.
Speaker 3: To a lot of.
Speaker 1: Things, and you have had a lot of small talk.
Speaker 2: Oh mother, what's something, bloody Blair? How'd you get here?
Speaker 2: Was it all right? I can't remember all of that? Okay,
Speaker 2: I have a question for the group. Since you're divided
Speaker 2: on this, can I suggest that you can say nice
Speaker 2: to see you instead of nice to meet I started
Speaker 2: doing it now. The problem with that is everyone knows
Speaker 2: what you're up to. When you're say nice to see you.
Speaker 2: You're not fooling anyone anyway. You're merely accepting that you
Speaker 2: can't possibly remember whether or not you've met this person.
Speaker 2: But does it kind of work to say nice to
Speaker 2: see you?
Speaker 1: Because it's like did you trip and fall? I'd remember that?
Speaker 1: Were you wearing like a bright red black feathers.
Speaker 2: You said something when we first talked about this, which
Speaker 2: I think was so true. You said it's about ego expand.
Speaker 3: Yes, like when they say nice to meet you and
Speaker 3: you're thinking or saying we've met. The reason you're upset
Speaker 3: is because you're like, why don't I always remember? So
Speaker 3: we actually separate conversation, had to chat about this a
Speaker 3: few weeks ago. I think I have this skill. I'm
Speaker 3: a super recognizer. I really recognize spaces, so I don't
Speaker 3: forget meeting people. But it is a big act of confidence. Sometimes,
Speaker 3: if you had a very fleeting interaction with somebody, it
Speaker 3: takes a lot of audacity to be like, so good
Speaker 3: to see you again, because it is really scary when
Speaker 3: they're like what, who the fuck are you and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it had quite a profound impact on me in our
Speaker 3: social interaction. But I do think it is far warmer
Speaker 3: to kind of lead with that. I think it's so
Speaker 3: cold you've.
Speaker 1: Just so if you're on the other side. So, if
Speaker 1: you're the person who's been forgotten, what do you say?
Speaker 1: Would you say to someone you've met me before and
Speaker 1: we talked about this, and you're a bad person because
Speaker 1: you don't remember. No, I mean obviously wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: last bit unless you're really grumpy. No.
Speaker 3: See, it goes the reverse for me. So I am
Speaker 3: not assertive enough to say do your role along with it. Yes. However,
Speaker 3: I love when somebody says that to me, when somebody
Speaker 3: corrects me, because I'm in the unique position where I
Speaker 3: need clarity, because if somebody says, oh, good to see
Speaker 3: you and give me a familiar hug, and I need
Speaker 3: to establish have you met my sister?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Have you there are two of you.
Speaker 3: Yes, you may have met my sister, and therefore you've
Speaker 3: had a conversation with her. And if we do not
Speaker 3: acknowledge whether we know each other in this moment, we
Speaker 3: will have an entire social interaction where you think I'm
Speaker 3: someone else and it becomes embarrassing for me, and then
Speaker 3: you start calling me Jesse, and then I play along.
Speaker 3: And it's just I need all the clarity in a
Speaker 3: world because it's happened a lot where people.
Speaker 1: I think you are both direct and have excellent social skills.
Speaker 1: So what do you say.
Speaker 2: I've been on both sides of this equation, incredible as
Speaker 2: it is. Some people have forgotten they've met me and
Speaker 2: impact in Australian celebrity who we interacted with recently, she
Speaker 2: and I had interacted many years ago and had in
Speaker 2: fact even a meal together. Oh and I saw her
Speaker 2: at a sort of like quasi professional gathering, and she
Speaker 2: she didn't say nice to meet you. But you know
Speaker 2: when you know someone has no idea who you are,
Speaker 2: and I could just tell that she just thought I
Speaker 2: was some kind of rabid fan. And she's looking at
Speaker 2: me like, why are you talking to me as though
Speaker 2: we've had dinner together? And so I did sort of
Speaker 2: say to her, well, we did have dinner together on
Speaker 2: a couple of occasions, like a decade ago. And you
Speaker 2: know what the worst is when you clarify that you've
Speaker 2: met them and they still don't I'm that happy.
Speaker 1: Had she recently been through perimenopause, Get out of Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: I'm going to I'm going to go with that brain fog,
Speaker 1: brain fog cast over pasts. I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 2: You know who wouldn't say that. You know who wouldn't
Speaker 2: say that to me? Simon Baker, who I meant once
Speaker 2: I may have told you about that.
Speaker 3: God remember, because he'd be like, I listened to this podcast,
Speaker 3: but like, surely then you can have a conversation that's
Speaker 3: got some context about where you were together or who
Speaker 3: you knew in common, or like it opens new windows
Speaker 3: for the conversation to go. I think that transparency is lovely.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you're living a lie. And Holy, I don't know
Speaker 3: how you have entire conversations where you're living a lie.
Speaker 2: I do like that you wrote in your notes on this.
Speaker 2: It's not an authentic social interaction if you're both living
Speaker 2: a lie.
Speaker 1: We have to have.
Speaker 2: Yes, we can't just be collute.
Speaker 1: Peace breaker after the break why women shouldn't write books?
Speaker 1: Guess what women shouldn't write books? And No, this is
Speaker 1: not a new edict from Trump's Department of Tradwives. This
Speaker 1: is a vibe emanating from a whole lot of discourse
Speaker 1: around some of the biggest books of the year so far.
Speaker 1: You've heard us talk about some of them. The novel
Speaker 1: Yesteryear by Kara Claire Burke, that's the tradwife book, and
Speaker 1: the memoirs Famesick by Lena Dunham and Strangers by Belle Burden.
Speaker 1: All of these books have been hugely successful in a
Speaker 1: very difficult market for books right books are struggling. These
Speaker 1: books have been unqualified successes, all written by women, all
Speaker 1: hugely successful. But they have Yesteryear and Strangers in particular
Speaker 1: attracted an enormous amount of criticism too. The author of Yesteryear,
Speaker 1: who has made a lovely amount of money from selling
Speaker 1: the rights to this book, and it's sold the film
Speaker 1: rights to ANH and all those things, has just wrapped
Speaker 1: up her promotional tour. So the more successful your book is,
Speaker 1: the longer that tour will go. If it keeps selling
Speaker 1: a different markets and territories, you're going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: can you now go to blah blah keep talking about
Speaker 1: it to such and such. So she's had a long
Speaker 1: promotional tour for this book, but it's over, and she
Speaker 1: wrote a notes app, oh its AP's very popular this
Speaker 1: week about it. I'm just going to read a couple
Speaker 1: of the things she has to say about the reaction
Speaker 1: that she's had. I find it genuinely interesting. Writes Kara
Speaker 1: Claire Burke that men can and do create art and
Speaker 1: analyze culture in such a fashion that drives fervent conversation
Speaker 1: and debate and disagreement without the art or analysis in
Speaker 1: question being so frequently relegated to a term, and she
Speaker 1: means rage bait by that term that literally means designed
Speaker 1: to piss someone off. The term rage bait has been
Speaker 1: used to describe three wildly different books the ones we
Speaker 1: just discussed, and the only real connection between them is
Speaker 1: that one they feature imperfect women, two they don't offer
Speaker 1: a clean moral and and three they've been commercially successful.
Speaker 1: When male artists pull this hat trick off, it's considered
Speaker 1: an intellectual achievement. When women do it, it's more often
Speaker 1: characterized as an accident, a mass orchestration, or a cheap
Speaker 1: parlor trick. She says that all these things have been
Speaker 1: qualified as a rage bait designed piece of people off
Speaker 1: when they're just women's stories. Now, as she says, these
Speaker 1: books all really different. Hers is a novel that was
Speaker 1: always going to be viewed as political because of its topic.
Speaker 1: Lena Dnom's, I would argue, has been massively well received. Actually,
Speaker 1: but it is the pov I think I'm using that
Speaker 1: correctly of a once very polarizing figure and Burdens So
Speaker 1: Strangers is about the breakdown of a marriage, and the
Speaker 1: Internet's decided that it's not as exciting as it sounded
Speaker 1: because the deserted wife in question is very rich, richie
Speaker 1: rich rich, and therefore the stakes fellow. All this leads
Speaker 1: me to a piece I read by UK writer Polyvernon
Speaker 1: called Women shouldn't write books, and in that she talks
Speaker 1: about her experiences of publishing a controversial book and getting
Speaker 1: lots and lots of backlash for it. My question is
Speaker 1: we can get to that in a minute. My question is, Amelia,
Speaker 1: are you not allowed to hate Strangers, for example, or Yesteryear,
Speaker 1: think it's not a good book, or that the premise
Speaker 1: is questionable because you are then not supporting the women's.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're allowed to not like these books. I
Speaker 2: couldn't understand where she was coming from on this. I
Speaker 2: have read Strangers. I have not read Yesteryear. Strangers to
Speaker 2: me fell flat as a book for various reasons. We're
Speaker 2: not sort of debating its merits here, but in essence,
Speaker 2: I didn't like that it was the story of a
Speaker 2: marriage breakdown where I got no emotional complexity or sort
Speaker 2: of details of how the husband and wife interacted with
Speaker 2: each other prior to the divorce. That's why I didn't
Speaker 2: like it. Does that make me a bad feminist because
Speaker 2: I felt that the men why I didn't have payoff?
Speaker 1: No? But no, it definitely doesn't. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that the people who are supporting this
Speaker 1: view of it would say is that rather than people
Speaker 1: just saying I didn't like this book. It wasn't for
Speaker 1: me shrug. They're like, she should never have been allowed
Speaker 1: to write this book, that the advance was ridiculous, she's
Speaker 1: making all this money, Stada, da da, and it becomes
Speaker 1: like a personal attack about her.
Speaker 2: The criticism I've come across of yesterday, which for the
Speaker 2: most part, I've just been seeing people say, read this book,
Speaker 2: it's amazing. One criticism I did see said that she
Speaker 2: displayed a certain lack of curiosity for the historical period
Speaker 2: which she is writing about. In the book, there was
Speaker 2: not a lot of detail about what life actually was
Speaker 2: like at that time, and it felt a bit flat
Speaker 2: in its depiction. I wonder if she's including negative reviews
Speaker 2: in this idea of women shouldn't be able allowed to
Speaker 2: write books.
Speaker 3: I think there's a big difference between criticism and criticism
Speaker 3: of a piece of art, if that's if that's a
Speaker 3: novel or a memoir, and public shaming. And I did
Speaker 3: a book event the other week with an author and
Speaker 3: we were both laughing about the fact that when you
Speaker 3: get the reason you can't look at good raids or
Speaker 3: anything like that is because when you get a two
Speaker 3: or a three star review. Very often you're like, ah,
Speaker 3: I agree, like like you know you you very much
Speaker 3: are aware of your own shortcoming, your own shortcoming, your
Speaker 3: own blind spots.
Speaker 2: That also applies to podcast reviews.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly the ones that hurt the most, and when
Speaker 3: you're just that was a bad point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But those are the ones that hurt the most,
Speaker 1: the ones where they get it right and they press
Speaker 1: on a bruise. But there are a lot of two
Speaker 1: star reviews and stuff that'll just be like I don't
Speaker 1: like her, yes, like about authors and about podcasters and
Speaker 1: about whatever, or I hate that female character because blah,
Speaker 1: Like there are I think that there is a there
Speaker 1: is a difference between the criticism that hurts you and
Speaker 1: like for context here, obviously we're all writers of different kinds,
Speaker 1: and Claire and I have published books.
Speaker 2: There is different don't publish bos because it's unseemly for women,
Speaker 2: you're not allowed.
Speaker 1: Which is good, is that there's a difference between criticism
Speaker 1: that hurts because they're right and you're like, I knew it,
Speaker 1: I knew it, yep, and criticism that hurts because it's personal.
Speaker 3: And criticism that hurts because it seriously is going into
Speaker 3: the category of public shaming it like it feels like
Speaker 3: it is trying to elicit a feeling of shame that
Speaker 3: you even tried and you had no authority or no
Speaker 3: right to even attempt to do what you did.
Speaker 2: And do you feel like you got that when you
Speaker 2: published your book at all? Like that bucket of criticism
Speaker 2: that's personal as opposed to literary in nature.
Speaker 3: No, But I think that if you have a book
Speaker 3: that explodes to the point of yesteryear, then that is
Speaker 3: the question that starts being asked. And Glennon Doyle puts
Speaker 3: it so well.
Speaker 1: She has a quote.
Speaker 3: That says, when a man puts out his work, the
Speaker 3: world asks is his work worthy? When a woman puts
Speaker 3: out her work, the world asks is she worthy of
Speaker 3: putting out work? So rarely will the criticism be about
Speaker 3: her work at all? It will be about her.
Speaker 1: Yes, now, But if you're if the piece in question
Speaker 1: is a memoir, isn't that valid? I know, like that's
Speaker 1: tricky there, because I think that she's absolutely right about that,
Speaker 1: like that, whether it's fiction or not. But if you're if,
Speaker 1: isn't criticism of a memoir being about you? Of course,
Speaker 1: inherently it's going to be about you and whether or
Speaker 1: not you should have got the memoir deal and D
Speaker 1: D D.
Speaker 3: I think there is a line like with Bell Burden,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, she doesn't not have a right to
Speaker 3: tell her story at all, but you're allowed to look
Speaker 3: at her memoir and think there were there were blind spots.
Speaker 2: Well, and the whole act of criticism is meant to
Speaker 2: be about taking the work on its own terms and
Speaker 2: then assessing its success on those terms. So Bell Burden
Speaker 2: wrote a divorce memoir. And what worries me is I
Speaker 2: don't want women's writing to be relegated to this category
Speaker 2: of is not worthy of criticism and is not worthy
Speaker 2: of real, informed and intelligent debate, because that is an
Speaker 2: act of respect to say, Okay, you wrote a divorce memoir.
Speaker 2: Let's assess it as a divorce memoir. Is it successful
Speaker 2: at what it's set out to do? That's we want
Speaker 2: women's work to be assessed in that serious minded way.
Speaker 3: And there is some language though around some of these books,
Speaker 3: and I think Yesteryear in particular. It's interesting. I have
Speaker 3: followed Carol Claire Burke, and I feel like I've seen
Speaker 3: the arc of her emotional response to this, which at
Speaker 3: first was very I've written this book. It no longer
Speaker 3: belongs to me. It is to go out there. You
Speaker 3: can say whatever belongs about it. It does, but it
Speaker 3: belongs to the reader, who decides how it lands for them.
Speaker 3: But then I understand that some of the commentary and
Speaker 3: criticism around it has been so personal and does seem
Speaker 3: so gendered that it would be impossible. She Okay, it
Speaker 3: keeps getting described as like, basically, of course it's successful.
Speaker 3: It's ripped from the headlines, it's ripped from the zion,
Speaker 3: and it's like every book ever is somewhat dependent on
Speaker 3: what the zeitgeist was. She hasn't done something malicious or
Speaker 3: like self serving by taking an idea.
Speaker 1: That was in the heat.
Speaker 3: Cuddy, Yeah, basically that she cheated.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about your point, Amelia, about which is
Speaker 1: a very good point about women's work being worthy of
Speaker 1: serious criticism. The problem with that is that serious criticism
Speaker 1: has changed. So that used to be like did you
Speaker 1: get a review in the New York Times or the
Speaker 1: Australian lower the literary supplement. Now it's like, are there
Speaker 1: twenty million substack opinion pieces about this? And everybody is
Speaker 1: writing algorithms, and everybody knows that Yester Year or Strangers
Speaker 1: or whatever is the hot thing, and that you'll get
Speaker 1: more clicked, more views if you say something negative than
Speaker 1: if you say something positive. So that kind of removes
Speaker 1: the pure intention of whether anyone really is assessing the work.
Speaker 1: Polly Vernon, in her article about with the very rage
Speaker 1: baby headline of women shouln't write books, which obviously I've
Speaker 1: stolen because it's great. She's talking about a specific experience
Speaker 1: that she had years ago where she wrote a non
Speaker 1: fiction book with the rage baby title Hot Feminist that
Speaker 1: landed at exactly the wrong cultural moment, and she got
Speaker 1: a viscerated, and she said it's taken her a long
Speaker 1: time to understand why, and she now just puts it
Speaker 1: down to woman and woman jealousy, which I'd love to
Speaker 1: get your take on. This is what she writes. I
Speaker 1: have much more clarity on it now. I really couldn't
Speaker 1: fathom would have gone so horribly wrong initially, But ten
Speaker 1: years on, I think women can just be awful to
Speaker 1: each other, and never more so than if one of
Speaker 1: us looks like she might be getting a smidge more
Speaker 1: attention than all the others think is fair. Now, that
Speaker 1: is very much true of these books that have been
Speaker 1: massive smashes, right, and I got a lot of attention
Speaker 1: with that book. She says, why her? Why not them?
Speaker 1: When will it be their turn? What if it's never
Speaker 1: their turn? Simple? Boring and depressing as that thoughts.
Speaker 3: I have to say, my life changed when I realized this,
Speaker 3: when I realized that a lot of my anger to
Speaker 3: or like wanting to and not in any public just
Speaker 3: internally wanting to criticize other women actually examining that and thinking,
Speaker 3: hold on, is this because I'm actually jealous of what
Speaker 3: they're achieving, and then seeing that as a bit of
Speaker 3: a sign of what I wanted to do and what
Speaker 3: I wanted to pursue, and therefore changing my perspective on it.
Speaker 3: Like I do feel like my life change when I
Speaker 3: realized that go on to.
Speaker 2: Women are better than this Gale. Men are not sitting
Speaker 2: around saying I didn't like the new James Patterson Airport thriller,
Speaker 2: But maybe that's because I'm just really jealous of James Patterson,
Speaker 2: said no man ever. Look on the other hand, it
Speaker 2: did make me pause for a second because I was
Speaker 2: about to sort of throw at you wholly the idea
Speaker 2: that fame sick, as you mentioned before, Lena Dunn's and
Speaker 2: got a near universal positive response. But then I thought,
Speaker 2: maybe that's because as a culture, we've already cut Lena
Speaker 2: Dunna down to what we perceive to be the right size,
Speaker 2: and so at this point she doesn't have that sort
Speaker 2: of cultural cachet. She's certainly not at the height of
Speaker 2: her influence right now, and maybe that makes everyone feel
Speaker 2: a little bit better about the fact that she also
Speaker 2: happened to write a superb book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's one hundred per cent true of me.
Speaker 2: Lean.
Speaker 1: I also think there's a bit of revisionist well I
Speaker 1: think not even revisionist history, the fact that we have
Speaker 1: perspective now and what we did to her, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's part of her book. The thing that this
Speaker 1: where this gets tricky, this thing about we all need
Speaker 1: to support each other all the time. I know from
Speaker 1: my perspective that I do not like to criticize, and
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say it. I know, like other
Speaker 1: women's work in this way, I don't like it because
Speaker 1: I do feel like I'm more of the mindset of
Speaker 1: celebrate what you like don't disparage what you don't and
Speaker 1: in that in terms of well, I might not have
Speaker 1: loved that latest book by so and so, but I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna don't. I feel really uncomfortable about that. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: then I'm just not going to tell people to read that,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? I don't feel I
Speaker 1: need to go online and write four hundred words about
Speaker 1: why I think she shouldn't have got the book.
Speaker 2: Deal.
Speaker 1: To me, I just feel like that is not my place.
Speaker 1: I think that there's serious criticism to your point, Amelia,
Speaker 1: that is actually addressing the work and not the person.
Speaker 1: And then there's just a whole lot of algorithmic nonsense
Speaker 1: that I don't want to be part of. Like but
Speaker 1: not I always remember, and I know this is a
Speaker 1: really weird comparison, but you know, I was briefly obsessed
Speaker 1: with that TV show Somebody Feed Feel right, where he
Speaker 1: goes around the world needs food and he always loves
Speaker 1: the food. His whole show is just him like eating
Speaker 1: food and going yeah whatever, in Japan, in Korea, in wherever,
Speaker 1: and people always say to him, where are the ship meals?
Speaker 1: And he says, I don't put the ship meals like
Speaker 1: antib Yeah, he's like, I know. I'm aware of my power,
Speaker 1: I'm aware of my platform. I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: to somebody's restaurant cafe and tell the world I think
Speaker 1: it's terrible and make their life hard like that isn't
Speaker 1: that isn't pure criticism. It's not worthy of respect, but
Speaker 1: it's responsible.
Speaker 2: No, I get that. I just want to be sure.
Speaker 2: There's a danger in that, which is that if every
Speaker 2: woman says, well, I don't want to ever actually sort
Speaker 2: of engage critically with a work by a woman, what
Speaker 2: that means and what that results in is the sidelining
Speaker 2: of women's voices, because if you can't take them seriously,
Speaker 2: and if you can't grapple with their shortcomings as well
Speaker 2: as their good qualities, you are going to end up
Speaker 2: with everything that women right being called chick.
Speaker 3: Lit, not worthy of interrogation. But I do think that
Speaker 3: there's an element here, and your James Patterson example speaks
Speaker 3: to this, and I do think it depends what kind
Speaker 3: of whether it's memoir where it does blur the line
Speaker 3: between who you are and the actual sent hand, whether
Speaker 3: you're touching on a cultural issue. I mean with Yesteryear
Speaker 3: that author was on she's a podcaster and she for
Speaker 3: a long time had been on social media talking about this,
Speaker 3: so there's also the personal connection.
Speaker 2: To the work.
Speaker 3: But I do think that as evidence that we are
Speaker 3: still prosecuting some big questions about feminism in real time,
Speaker 3: and whether women owe it to us to always reflect
Speaker 3: our experiences, and whether we have this instinct that we
Speaker 3: can't resist of fighting against other women's privilege, and like
Speaker 3: the Bell Burden example is fascinating because the idea that
Speaker 3: she is somehow protected from the distress of heartbreak and
Speaker 3: divorce because she happened to have money is something that
Speaker 3: I think women are doing. Women do to each other.
Speaker 2: She doesn't have to worry about not having a roof
Speaker 2: over it.
Speaker 1: I think that's not criticism of the book, but criticism
Speaker 1: of the situation. It's like, how high are the stakes?
Speaker 1: A lot of women go through divorce and they are
Speaker 1: on the streets.
Speaker 3: Right, But is it her job, woman's experience at all?
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: So what I meant is like I need to say
Speaker 1: that in that I think it is a different experience.
Speaker 1: But then you need to take away from the idea
Speaker 1: that this is a divorce memoir that speaks to everyone
Speaker 1: about everything. This is rich person's divorce memoir, which is
Speaker 1: pervy and interesting in itself right how the other half live?
Speaker 1: I love that shit. We could clearly keep talking for
Speaker 1: a week. Today on.
Speaker 2: We will do.
Speaker 1: This conversation will continue off my friends. Please tell us
Speaker 1: what you think in out louders or wherever you like
Speaker 1: to engage with us. Massive thank you to all of
Speaker 1: you for being here with us and to our team
Speaker 1: helping us put the show together. We'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Bye, Mummyer acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on
Speaker 3: which we have recorded this podcast.