Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: If you're listening with a child in the car, you
Speaker 3: might want to turn this down. But a man came
Speaker 3: into my DMS and I could see who he was, like,
Speaker 3: I could literally see, I know who he is and
Speaker 3: what he does for a living and everything. And he said,
Speaker 3: you are an ugly, stupid, dangerous, disingenuous. You are literally
Speaker 3: the downfall of the Western world. All I can do
Speaker 3: is pray for you, praying hands emoji. Deborah Francis White
Speaker 3: is a Swiss army knife. She's a comedian, a best
Speaker 3: selling author, a podcaster, and a woman who's built a
Speaker 3: career asking hard questions the kind most people are too
Speaker 3: uncomfortable to ask out loud. She's the creator of The
Speaker 3: Guilty Feminist, a global podcast phenomenon. She's performed to sold
Speaker 3: out theaters around the world. She's hosted panels at the
Speaker 3: United Nations. She's written plays and screenplays, and now a
Speaker 3: new book. It's called Six Conversations We're Scared to Have,
Speaker 3: and it's exactly that. A guide to the big, messy
Speaker 3: uncomfortable topics we often avoid. In this conversation, we talk
Speaker 3: about why Deborah believes in curiosity over outrage, dialogue over silence,
Speaker 3: and how comedy remains her way into everything. Deborah also
Speaker 3: shares how her early life shaped her worldview, from being
Speaker 3: adopted as a baby and raised as a Jehovah's witness, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, I also was, to eventually walking away
Speaker 3: from everything she was taught and building.
Speaker 2: A life and voice of her own. She's thoughtful, she's fearsed,
Speaker 2: she's funny, she's flawed, and she's doing something not many
Speaker 2: people are brave enough to do right now, She's creating
Speaker 2: space for nuance. This is Deborah Francis White.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: Your tradition is I'm a feminist. Bus the game that
Speaker 2: everybody loves to play, to play, loves to play, and
Speaker 2: you're already gone. I'm a feminist. But in the substance,
Speaker 2: I would have loved the sub I would have just listened.
Speaker 3: At the beginning, in the first ten minutes of the film,
Speaker 3: I was googling, can I get the substance? But obviously no,
Speaker 3: it doesn't look that fun because you don't get to experience. Also,
Speaker 3: you do get to be yourself. I don't want to
Speaker 3: be some starlet doing an aerobic show. I want to be me,
Speaker 3: but just looking as glamorous as possible.
Speaker 2: Well, this is what we all want, and this is
Speaker 2: the natural tension between you know, as you always point
Speaker 2: out in The Guilty Feminist, there's that tension inherent in
Speaker 2: so many of.
Speaker 3: Us because we've been raised to think that youth is
Speaker 3: somehow better than age.
Speaker 2: But it is still.
Speaker 1: It's absurd, though, I feel like it is. Do you
Speaker 1: know what?
Speaker 3: I wonder how much people felt like that before advertising existed,
Speaker 3: because imagine if you just lived in a village where
Speaker 3: there was no photography, very few mirrors, and there was
Speaker 3: no constant messaging that younger is better.
Speaker 1: When they started selling.
Speaker 3: Youth to us, anything that they want to say, they
Speaker 3: constantly selling you you want to buy, so you know,
Speaker 3: we just getting here today. I would have gone past
Speaker 3: umpty in billboards, bus stops telling me I'm worth it,
Speaker 3: But the messaging within I'm worth it is Jennifer Aniston
Speaker 3: who's just had her hair blow dried by someone who
Speaker 3: charges five hundred dollars a blow dry, so you know,
Speaker 3: and then also been photoshop So there's a there's a
Speaker 3: there's a sense that I think we just have no
Speaker 3: way of knowing how brainwashed we are because we've all
Speaker 3: been born well after advertising really took hold. So we
Speaker 3: just we'll never be able to unpick how much of
Speaker 3: us aspiring for youth?
Speaker 2: No is that how much is nature and how much
Speaker 2: he's nurture.
Speaker 1: I just don't think there's any way of knowing.
Speaker 3: But what I will tell you is this, Sometimes when
Speaker 3: I think about us all aspiring to look twenty one
Speaker 3: the whole time, even though we wouldn't say that, there
Speaker 3: is part of us going. My jawline used to be high,
Speaker 3: My jawline used to be there. See how lovely and lovely.
Speaker 1: And type that is now?
Speaker 3: Obviously, when I look at myself in the mirror, I go, hmm,
Speaker 3: it would look better if it were where it were
Speaker 3: when I was twenty one, which is probably there. But
Speaker 3: a twenty one year old twenty one year old is
Speaker 3: an emotional fuck with Yeah, twenty one year old. Why
Speaker 3: do I want the face of someone who doesn't know
Speaker 3: that it's going to cause trouble if she kisses her
Speaker 3: best friend's boyfriend? Why Why do I want the face
Speaker 3: of someone who thinks she knows more than her own mother.
Speaker 1: Why why do I want that face?
Speaker 3: It is and it is a mystery because a woman, really,
Speaker 3: I think a human being doesn't come into their own
Speaker 3: until they've had quite a bit of autonomy. Why do
Speaker 3: I want the face of somebody who is less clever,
Speaker 3: somebody who is less emotionally involved, less knows herself less?
Speaker 1: Well, I do have a question for the universe.
Speaker 3: Why does confidence arrive just as college and is leaving
Speaker 3: the building?
Speaker 1: And my guess is this because you only need one
Speaker 1: or the other.
Speaker 3: And when you're eighteen, you don't have a lot of confidence,
Speaker 3: or if you do, it's misplaced because you don't yet
Speaker 3: have that self knowledge, you don't have any experience. So
Speaker 3: I think the universe gives us either college or confidence.
Speaker 3: And if you've got both, hey, and you're eighteen, you're
Speaker 3: twenty five, whatever.
Speaker 1: It must be a sweet you go for it.
Speaker 2: There's a sweet spot for some. But it's the day
Speaker 2: then they never converge.
Speaker 3: It's the day you turned thirty four, and then the
Speaker 3: day after that immediately if you enjoy your thirty fourth birthday,
Speaker 3: it's literally the one day when you have both.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like those comedy actresses, the SNL actresses, it's
Speaker 2: the Last Fuckable Day.
Speaker 3: Oh god, that's incredible funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's incredibly funny.
Speaker 2: But it isn't. It's an interesting thing because you know,
Speaker 2: you talk about a twenty one year old and I
Speaker 2: remember that being a very desolate part of my life
Speaker 2: where you're looking for really yourself. Probably, yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: It's a time when you don't know which direction. You're
Speaker 2: like an untethered compass, the compass that's broken. It's just
Speaker 2: flipping around in every direction. So you might meet.
Speaker 3: A man or a woman or somebody who you're you're thinking,
Speaker 3: I'm going to follow this person. It might be a lover,
Speaker 3: it might be a best friend. It might be someone
Speaker 3: you have a crush on that doesn't know you're alive.
Speaker 1: It might be a job offer.
Speaker 3: It could be I've got to do a master's or
Speaker 3: a you know, some kind of professional qualification, and that's
Speaker 3: when I'm going to find myself. And what you keep
Speaker 3: telling yourself is it'll be the next lover, or the
Speaker 3: next project, or the next triple. I'll be a different
Speaker 3: person if I cross Europe with a backpack. And we
Speaker 3: keep telling ourselves that because we're thinking. But if I
Speaker 3: complete this task like I'm in some video games, everything
Speaker 3: will be all right. But actually it takes years of
Speaker 3: experience and experimentation to find out who you are, what
Speaker 3: you want, and you're always being shaped by the mistakes
Speaker 3: along the way. Sometimes they can make you bolder, sometimes
Speaker 3: they can make you more timid. Sometimes they can make
Speaker 3: you more extroverted. Sometimes they can make you more introverted,
Speaker 3: So that the mistakes and the successes along the way
Speaker 3: shape who.
Speaker 1: You arrive at.
Speaker 3: You know and when you find yourself, and some people
Speaker 3: never do. But if you do the work and you
Speaker 3: get past and you're lucky enough to live in a
Speaker 3: time and place where you have a certain amount of
Speaker 3: emotional space.
Speaker 2: Where were you at twenty one? Oh? God, were you
Speaker 2: still in Brisbane? No, you'd fly in the coupe. Oh,
Speaker 2: because people may not know that you're one of us,
Speaker 2: one of us, one of that.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was born in Brisbane.
Speaker 3: I was raised on the Gold Coast most of it,
Speaker 3: most of my time, and then I moved to Sydney
Speaker 3: in my early twenties and then moved to London. But
Speaker 3: I was a Jehovah's witness when I was between mid
Speaker 3: teens and.
Speaker 1: Mid twenties.
Speaker 2: Can I tell you something. Yes, I was raised to
Speaker 2: Jehovah's Oh my goodness, and when I was reading your book,
Speaker 2: this remarkable book, by the way, and your story generally,
Speaker 2: in some ways, it was like meeting myself.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It's very rare in the media to meet another former Jehovah's.
Speaker 3: Although what I will say is there is a disproportionate
Speaker 3: number of very small religions, there's a disproportionate number of
Speaker 3: extra hos witnesses in the public eye.
Speaker 1: It can either crush you or make you rise.
Speaker 3: And I feel like there are a lot of people
Speaker 3: it's so hard to get out. It's so hard to
Speaker 3: stay in, and it's so hard to get out. And
Speaker 3: I think also, once you've knocked on the door of
Speaker 3: some stranger in Sunday morning and said, with Sharon, you're.
Speaker 1: Going to die horribly and arm again unless.
Speaker 2: You take this magazine The secret to a journal life.
Speaker 3: Stand up comedy says nothing like at least they've left
Speaker 3: the house. That's what I think with a stand up
Speaker 3: comedy audience, at least they've left the house. Can you
Speaker 3: imagine knocking on someone's door or a Sunday morning and going
Speaker 3: I've got some jokes, So I think I'm paid to
Speaker 3: be here like this is a this is as nothing
Speaker 3: to stand up on stage after you've done all of that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, wow, whereabouts were you?
Speaker 2: So I'm also from Brisbane?
Speaker 1: Oh wow?
Speaker 2: And my dad was an elder good lord and my
Speaker 2: brother was a ministerial servant. He's now a petitian on
Speaker 2: the Gold Coast's what one club for.
Speaker 1: Actually that he's a politician.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people who are in the public
Speaker 3: eyeho have some kind of profile or job in the
Speaker 3: media or sports job, or singers who are Extrahovah's witness
Speaker 3: It's really common.
Speaker 2: And I am curious about I mean, I know you
Speaker 2: speak about this also in your book, but how much
Speaker 2: of having been cultified, yes, and freed yourself from that
Speaker 2: led to you being a curious and critical thinker now
Speaker 2: because your book Six Conversations We're scared to have, Yes,
Speaker 2: nervous hands holding the conversations is very much a product
Speaker 2: of someone who who learned to question early.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, I think the thing for me about
Speaker 3: the Jehovah's witnesses is because all your thoughts are thought
Speaker 3: for you know what you think about everything? Yes, and
Speaker 3: there's there's there are no, there's no free thinking alound,
Speaker 3: So you couldn't say. And I tell this story about
Speaker 3: someone called Sister Pamela who was in my congregation and
Speaker 3: on a Sunday.
Speaker 2: That's not a nun by the way, for people who
Speaker 2: don't know witnesses. No, we would call it all each
Speaker 2: other's sister. So you'd be sister Deborah, I'd be Sister
Speaker 2: Kate exactly. And we will have been to district conventions together,
Speaker 2: and yes, we would.
Speaker 1: We would have been at a Lange Park.
Speaker 3: We would have been we go to these big football
Speaker 3: stadiums and you dress up because I got baptized at
Speaker 3: lang Park.
Speaker 2: Did you? Yes? And even at the time, I knew
Speaker 2: that it wasn't right, because you know how sometimes the
Speaker 2: maybe would come, they'd take the newspapers would come and
Speaker 2: take photos of like the freaks, the subjects of freaks
Speaker 2: getting baptized. I remember thinking, oh, I hope this isn't
Speaker 2: in the paper. And none of the kids from school
Speaker 2: see it's not the right way to approach a baptism,
Speaker 2: is it. No?
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, did you get baptized? I did?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was done in like more Wall
Speaker 3: and bar somewhere like somewhere done in northern New South Wales.
Speaker 3: But I was only sixteen, so I was a minor
Speaker 3: and I don't think that should be allowed.
Speaker 1: I think you need to be of age.
Speaker 2: That's very interesting actually, because it's not like, for instance, Catholicism,
Speaker 2: where there's a baby christening. It is supposed to be
Speaker 2: when you're conscious, and you can make the choice about.
Speaker 3: Increasing their baptizing them younger and young. Some of them
Speaker 3: are getting baptized at nine and eleven years.
Speaker 1: The reason it's.
Speaker 3: Different from Catholicism, and you know, listen, there's a host
Speaker 3: of problems with any extreme religion, any fundamentalist religion. But
Speaker 3: the reason it's different is once you're baptized di a
Speaker 3: Jehovah's witness, if you decide you want to leave or
Speaker 3: you are thrown out. Essentially you're excommunicated because they decide
Speaker 3: that you've sinned. They could just decide you've got a
Speaker 3: Rebelli's attitude. You could have broken one of the rules
Speaker 3: and they can decide you're not repentant enough. The elders
Speaker 3: can make an announcement that sister Kati is no longer
Speaker 3: one of Jehovah's witnesses in this congregation fellowship, and then
Speaker 3: you're just fellowshiped, and then you are cut off from
Speaker 3: your friends and family. And your family can I think,
Speaker 3: speak to you about family things, but they can't socialize
Speaker 3: with you. If you're under the roof too, yes, isn't it,
Speaker 3: But it's not warm or welcoming though you'll be iced out.
Speaker 3: But if you're not living with your family and you're
Speaker 3: of age, they may not speak to you at all.
Speaker 3: They may completely cut you out. And I think there
Speaker 3: is an encouragement to do that lately, so lightly relaxed
Speaker 3: the world. But that's I think because Norway made it.
Speaker 3: I think Norway cut their tax exemptions off because they
Speaker 3: said it was coerci of control. So often if the
Speaker 3: tax situation changes, you see them making little concessions.
Speaker 1: But now it's something like you can ring a.
Speaker 3: Disfellowshipped family member and say please come to the meeting,
Speaker 3: but and you can say hello, but if they burst
Speaker 3: into and say I'm really struggling, you can't talk.
Speaker 2: To them, which it's literally just worse.
Speaker 3: It's more emotionally abusive to say hello, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm not well, actually.
Speaker 1: Bye bye, I mean just better rock ghosting me.
Speaker 2: You know, also when you came to your family adopted,
Speaker 2: that's right, yes, and that in what way has that
Speaker 2: informed you? Do you think it's a really.
Speaker 3: Interesting one adoption because I would have sworn it hadn't
Speaker 3: affected me. But then you know, as you develop, if
Speaker 3: you are doing network on yourself, you start to identify things.
Speaker 3: And I somebody who else was adopted sent me a
Speaker 3: lecture about adoption and addiction.
Speaker 1: If you just look it up on YouTube.
Speaker 3: There's a guy that he's an expert on adoption and addiction,
Speaker 3: and he says that nearly all adopted children have ADHD,
Speaker 3: and lots of them are addicted to something. Nearly all
Speaker 3: of them addicted to sugar, and some of them addicted
Speaker 3: to crack. And luckily for me, that would be sugar
Speaker 3: over crack. Really lucky that I don't have an addictive
Speaker 3: personality for booze or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very very lucky like that.
Speaker 3: But I've always had a sort of dopamine desire with sugar,
Speaker 3: and I had no idea, and lots of people do.
Speaker 3: It may not, it's not that I wouldn't have had
Speaker 3: it otherwise maybe, but it's a really common thing in
Speaker 3: adopted children. And I once worked with a Lebanese film
Speaker 3: director and he just looked at me and he went,
Speaker 3: how old were you when you were adopted? And I
Speaker 3: was like, how did you know I was adopted? And
Speaker 3: he just said how old were you? And I said,
Speaker 3: I said, oh, ten days? And he said, and where
Speaker 3: were you for that ten days? And I said, I
Speaker 3: was just alone in the hospital, you know, in those
Speaker 3: rows of cons that babies are in. And I said,
Speaker 3: just whatever nurse was on shift would feed me on
Speaker 3: a clock and otherwise I was just lying there. And
Speaker 3: he went, that is why you like attention, and that
Speaker 3: is why you like food.
Speaker 1: Food.
Speaker 3: Rude, accurate, probably like because actually a normal newborn, the
Speaker 3: mother's going do you want a little bit more milk?
Speaker 1: Or she's not, like, oh is she cold?
Speaker 2: Is she?
Speaker 3: But I was just lying there and waiting for the
Speaker 3: milk to come. I guess, and I guess when the
Speaker 3: milk comes, you learn very quickly drink all the milk
Speaker 3: because you're outside the womb for the first time, so
Speaker 3: you're learning what is life outside the womb like? And
Speaker 3: they know with newborns, they can tell their own mother's
Speaker 3: breast milk, because they can turn their head. If you
Speaker 3: put drops of different breast milk out for them, they
Speaker 3: go towards the one that's their mother's, and they are
Speaker 3: expecting to hear be held by the person who's voice
Speaker 3: they've been hearing. Yes, that's what they're expecting. And if
Speaker 3: that isn't there, what you're learning for the first ten
Speaker 3: days is outside, I'm on my own, and if milk comes, quickly,
Speaker 3: drink all the milk. Don't leave any because you don't
Speaker 3: know when it's going to come again. That's not to
Speaker 3: say I'm sure I was hugged by the nurses and things.
Speaker 3: But my father always used to tell the story of
Speaker 3: I always knew I was adopted, and my parents always
Speaker 3: made it this, you know, when you've got your stories
Speaker 3: as kids, like.
Speaker 1: Tell me the story of when you came to collect
Speaker 1: me love story. It's love, the same story as told
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I'd say, tell me the story of when
Speaker 3: you know, And there's this whole rat exactly. There was
Speaker 3: a whole ritual about you know. Dad was at work
Speaker 3: and the phone lines were down because there'd been a storm,
Speaker 3: so my mum had to send him a telegram, come now,
Speaker 3: And his colleague at work said, when he got a telegram,
Speaker 3: so unusual to get a telegram. His colleague said, have
Speaker 3: you won the lottery? And he said, no, it's better
Speaker 3: than that. And then he raced home, picked up my
Speaker 3: mom and my sister and they raced to the to
Speaker 3: the hospital, and they had to stop to get formula
Speaker 3: and bottles and everything on the way because this was
Speaker 3: just out of the blue.
Speaker 1: Come now, yeah, and you know, and so on and
Speaker 1: so on.
Speaker 3: So this whole story was told, and my father always
Speaker 3: used to say, and you were blue with the cold
Speaker 3: and so thin, and.
Speaker 1: Last time that happened, I'll tell you that for nothing.
Speaker 1: You get home and you're like, great, I'm in a
Speaker 1: safe I'm in a safe home now, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think there are things like.
Speaker 3: That that you you don't realize that affects you. Like
Speaker 3: I always knew that story, my father saying, you were
Speaker 3: in this really kind of old hospital gown that wasn't
Speaker 3: it wasn't very nice, and they dressed me in these
Speaker 3: clothes that presumably had been my sisters that, you know,
Speaker 3: really nice baby clothes and took me away.
Speaker 1: So I was very lucky.
Speaker 3: I think you know to have that, because you know,
Speaker 3: if someone doesn't come and claim you and say you're ours, yes,
Speaker 3: then you know. But some babies of my generation went
Speaker 3: orphanages and as newborns, and you can only imagine what
Speaker 3: a horror show that would have been.
Speaker 2: After this short break, Debris speaks about antl culture and
Speaker 2: reveals the emotional toll it can take when someone is
Speaker 2: cast out given the trajectory of your life and the
Speaker 2: work that you've created. To me, it goes a long
Speaker 2: way to explain why you're quite fearless.
Speaker 3: Do you think maybe maybe? I think how your nature
Speaker 3: is nurtured exacerbates what was there. Anyway, So when I
Speaker 3: see former Jehovah's witnesses, I notice because it is a
Speaker 3: trauma when you leave an organization that won't let you.
Speaker 3: You're not allowed to have any friends outside, and the
Speaker 3: punishment for leaving, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, is shunning, which
Speaker 3: means you end up with nobody. That is a trauma.
Speaker 3: It's a trauma to be shunned. So one of the
Speaker 3: things I talk about in my book is councel culture
Speaker 3: is a form of shunning. And I don't believe you
Speaker 3: can create a society that is compassionate. The compassionate society
Speaker 3: progressives want using uncopassionate means. And so I look into
Speaker 3: the neuroscience of what happens when you shun somebody.
Speaker 1: It is a trauma. There is just no getting away
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 3: And it's a trauma for the people doing the shunning
Speaker 3: because they have to turn off their empathy.
Speaker 1: So it's a horrible thing shunning.
Speaker 2: You said this thing that really made me laugh in
Speaker 2: the book where you said, Coca Cola don't advertise by
Speaker 2: saying fuck you if you drink pepsi, you asshole. That's right,
Speaker 2: that's right, which is so true. That doesn't change anybody's
Speaker 2: mind or an extension of that their behavior exactly.
Speaker 3: It's that screw it, screw you if you drink pepsi.
Speaker 3: It's like, no one would say that because it's not persuasive.
Speaker 3: And how how can we as progressive people be so
Speaker 3: unskilled if we think the world is unequal, if we
Speaker 3: think the world is unfair? Kind of how dare we
Speaker 3: be so unskilled as to go online and insult people
Speaker 3: and call them names or say you are not welcome here,
Speaker 3: you go over to that other community because we don't
Speaker 3: want you here.
Speaker 2: Or because we're going to aspect of the ideology that
Speaker 2: they may struggle with.
Speaker 3: And you instead of persuading and asking questions and empathizing
Speaker 3: and or and even there's different kinds of empathy. I
Speaker 3: thought received wisdom is basically that social media makes us
Speaker 3: less empathetic. Keyboard worries can't see someone's face, you write
Speaker 3: something rude, or you get into an argument with them,
Speaker 3: and it.
Speaker 1: Makes you less empathetic.
Speaker 3: But what I discovered in my research when I was
Speaker 3: writing the book is that actually isn't true. What I'm
Speaker 3: arguing is that every day social media makes us demands.
Speaker 3: Social media demands that we become more and more empathetic
Speaker 3: to fewer and fewer people.
Speaker 1: And that is a culture.
Speaker 3: So every day it says, the people on our team
Speaker 3: who agree with us must be empathized with to the max,
Speaker 3: must be must be solidarity, They must be defending, there
Speaker 3: must be endorsing. But if you were outside this circle
Speaker 3: in any way, outside this community in any way, or
Speaker 3: you defer in any way, or you deviate in any way.
Speaker 1: Then no empathy at all.
Speaker 2: You're cast out.
Speaker 1: And as a former Jehovah's witness, what does.
Speaker 2: That remind you of yeah, dispellowship being right.
Speaker 3: Do you remember when we were told the sheep like
Speaker 3: ones or the Jehovah's witnesses.
Speaker 2: Yes, the goods were the outsiders.
Speaker 3: Yes, And if you don't know the New Testament, you
Speaker 3: will be surprised to hear that being sheep is a
Speaker 3: good thing. But Jesus said he's separating the sheep and
Speaker 3: the goats. The sheep are the good ones that followed him,
Speaker 3: and the goats were the bad guys who did their
Speaker 3: own thing. And so we were always told that the
Speaker 3: Jehovah's witnesses were the sheep like ones. So we must
Speaker 3: stand up for have solidarity. For if a sheep like
Speaker 3: one didn't have any food because they were struggling financially,
Speaker 3: you must bring them food.
Speaker 1: You must look after the sheep like ones.
Speaker 3: But if it was a goat like one, yes, they're
Speaker 3: on their own, no empathy at all, and that that
Speaker 3: is a cult.
Speaker 1: It's like we must look after our own.
Speaker 3: But if you were to look after someone who wasn't
Speaker 3: a witness, it would only be so you could give
Speaker 3: them a witness, do you know what I mean? So
Speaker 3: you could take them something. If you were then also
Speaker 3: take them and watch how to say see Jehovah's witnesses
Speaker 3: are compassionate because we follow Jehovah.
Speaker 1: You two should follow Jehovah. You can't just give you
Speaker 1: a neighbor a cake.
Speaker 2: But what you're talking about now, that doesn't even really
Speaker 2: happen when people are trying to win people over to
Speaker 2: their points of view, like they're not even coming to
Speaker 2: someone with a cake.
Speaker 1: No, there's no cakes.
Speaker 2: Bludgeoning.
Speaker 3: Progressives have to get past thinking telling people off is
Speaker 3: going to change anything, because when you tell someone off,
Speaker 3: when you when you when you shout at someone, or
Speaker 3: when you tell them that they should be ashamed, they're
Speaker 3: a MiG dealer is activated and then our fight and
Speaker 3: flight goes into effect. Now, the worst time to try
Speaker 3: and teach someone thing or to change their mind is
Speaker 3: when their fight or flight is activated. Is that their
Speaker 3: brain which part of the brain is so the mid
Speaker 3: dinner is specifically about danger, right, So when you're scolding someone,
Speaker 3: when you're telling them off, they're a midila gets activated.
Speaker 3: They want to fight or flee. They want to fade themselves,
Speaker 3: so they want to run away, and that's not a
Speaker 3: good time to learn anything. Have you if you are
Speaker 3: trying to learn I don't know a TikTok dance, So
Speaker 3: think about that just trying. Okay, got to learn this
Speaker 3: TikTok dance for a fun thing at work, or your kid.
Speaker 1: Wants you to do it or whatever.
Speaker 3: Now Immediately, probably your anxiety goes up if you're not
Speaker 3: a dancer, where you think, oh, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be very good at this.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to learn the.
Speaker 3: Steps right now, think about your best shot at learning
Speaker 3: the steps of a TikTok dance. Is it going to
Speaker 3: be if everyone's in a good mood, everyone's laughing together,
Speaker 3: you're being encouraged, and the person's going that's it, You're
Speaker 3: getting it, that's great, and you feel that let's try
Speaker 3: it again, as opposed to someone going no, not left right,
Speaker 3: Oh my.
Speaker 1: God, I've told you this before.
Speaker 3: Think about what happens to your brain and think about
Speaker 3: how much less likely you are to understand what they're saying.
Speaker 3: And that's just a sort of basic example of why
Speaker 3: we need to be more skilled. Because you can't change
Speaker 3: people's and MiG dialers.
Speaker 1: You can only change their minds.
Speaker 2: So when you had the idea and executed the six
Speaker 2: conversations were scared to have? Yes, were you scared about
Speaker 2: flagging some of these and your approach to them?
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, I agree to do this book in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty when I could see things were becoming more flammable.
Speaker 3: By the time it came out in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: I thought I never would have taken this on. So
Speaker 3: much more flammable, I was like, And then I thought, no,
Speaker 3: I can't not bring this book out because I've spent
Speaker 3: the advance.
Speaker 1: Kate, it's too late. I would like getting that back.
Speaker 1: Good luck. So no, I thought, No. I thought, I
Speaker 1: have to be brave and I have to say what
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: And so the conversations we've touched on cancel culture.
Speaker 3: So the first one is about why we can't have
Speaker 3: conversations anymore, like what's happened to divide us? Yes, why
Speaker 3: we desperately need each other and we really really do,
Speaker 3: Like I think, what we have to understand is that
Speaker 3: community is what makes us human. We would not be
Speaker 3: the top of the food chain and.
Speaker 1: Running the world.
Speaker 3: Arguably we shouldn't because we're destroying the earth, But human
Speaker 3: beings would not be the top of the food chain,
Speaker 3: in the top of the top.
Speaker 1: Running the world if it were not for community.
Speaker 3: Because one human cannot be to line in a fight, Yes,
Speaker 3: but six people can out smarter lion.
Speaker 1: Look at us. We don't have shells, we don't have scales,
Speaker 1: we don't have claws, we don't have venom. We are
Speaker 1: a soft speech.
Speaker 3: We've got venom, but if it comes to you in
Speaker 3: a stake and a fight, you will not win. So
Speaker 3: the reason that we soft, not very fast creatures can
Speaker 3: run the world is because we were clever enough to
Speaker 3: team up. So society is the reason that we are
Speaker 3: good survivors. Number one, that's how much we need each other.
Speaker 3: Number two, it's what makes us fundamentally human. If you
Speaker 3: are Tom Hanks stranded on a desert island, you need
Speaker 3: to create a volleyball head friend to survive. You need
Speaker 3: to talk to somebody or you will lose your mind.
Speaker 3: The UN has declared longer than two weeks in solitary
Speaker 3: confinement a torture. Because we desperately need community, and so
Speaker 3: that's our starting place. That's why we are so keen
Speaker 3: not to be expelled from our communities.
Speaker 1: And we will.
Speaker 3: Often online or in our real world, we will say
Speaker 3: that we agree with something in order not to be
Speaker 3: cut off that we do not agree with, and we
Speaker 3: will just shove down our doubts or will tell someone
Speaker 3: we're really close to, but we will not admit it.
Speaker 3: Now that is unsustainable because eventually it's going to bubble
Speaker 3: up and come out. So a lot of people approach,
Speaker 3: you know, inflicting their ideas really on the world with
Speaker 3: like weedkiller.
Speaker 1: They're like, you're wrong, you're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong.
Speaker 3: You're wrong, You're wrong, And actually we need to be
Speaker 3: asking how have you come to this conclusion? And we
Speaker 3: need to be reasoning and telling stories. And the progressives
Speaker 3: are so good. We're on the progressive.
Speaker 1: Side of things.
Speaker 3: We have all the storytellers, we have all the TV writers,
Speaker 3: the novelists, nearly all, not all, but nearly all the
Speaker 3: people who are really good at telling stories, painting pictures, conceiving.
Speaker 3: You know, a movie with a sad ending that moves
Speaker 3: you and makes you think differently about something, persuades you know,
Speaker 3: you watch something could be as simple as and as
Speaker 3: broad brushstrokes as dirty dancing. But that is essentially a
Speaker 3: story about a young woman who could not access an
Speaker 3: abortion and nearly died on the table.
Speaker 1: That's what the center the story is.
Speaker 3: We're very good at stories, but just not when we
Speaker 3: are trying to convince other people.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, because it has almost and I think
Speaker 2: that there's a great cynicism now amongst people because there's
Speaker 2: a feeling that they've just been getting instead of being entertainment,
Speaker 2: it's taken on some form of brainwashing, or that there's
Speaker 2: only one way to think about things.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm saying in the book, I really really hope
Speaker 3: that my readers don't agree with everything I say, because
Speaker 3: that would be weird.
Speaker 1: Like everyone's a different person.
Speaker 3: You've all had different life experiences, you've had different educations,
Speaker 3: you've got different thought processes. So I hope when people
Speaker 3: read Six Conversations, we're scared to have that. There are
Speaker 3: things that where they go, oh, I hadn't thought of
Speaker 3: it that way before. That's very interesting. Things where they go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's won me over. But other things where
Speaker 3: they go, I don't know about that, and I have
Speaker 3: an argument with me in their head, and other things
Speaker 3: where they go, no, that's definitely not.
Speaker 2: Right, because that's a conversation.
Speaker 3: All valid critical thinking is holding two ideas in your
Speaker 3: head and debating them, and there are all across the internet,
Speaker 3: all across the world now, people fixed in one way
Speaker 3: of thinking of things. And sometimes when I've been doing
Speaker 3: live events, I have seen people, when certain subjects have
Speaker 3: come up that I'm discussing in this book, put a
Speaker 3: woman put her sunglasses on, like, I will not.
Speaker 1: Even consider this, Oh what was it?
Speaker 3: It was about trans writes right, which is a big
Speaker 3: chapter in old chapter in this But I'm trying to
Speaker 3: recreate a framework for thinking about it, and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to come in at it from different angles.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, my podcast has always been trans inclusive.
Speaker 3: I think it's very difficult to be transcence well, I
Speaker 3: think anecdotally it's obviously hard to be trans. If I
Speaker 3: get on a bus late at night, a guy might go, oh,
Speaker 3: but if you're trans, if you're visibly a transgender woman,
Speaker 3: clearly that is a harder.
Speaker 2: What's the man saying when you get on the bus
Speaker 2: at not just you know, careful, Just like I didn't understand.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe was no just you know.
Speaker 3: I can see and I can feel from my transfriends,
Speaker 3: it is hard to be trans in this world because
Speaker 3: people are like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, how to box you. I don't know
Speaker 1: who you are.
Speaker 3: So I think it's obviously hard to be trans. And
Speaker 3: I didn't want to come with the same arguments i'd
Speaker 3: heard made before. As Jehovah's witnesses, we were always told
Speaker 3: if you hear ideas outside, you know, apostate ideas they
Speaker 3: used to call it, you'll catch it.
Speaker 1: You can't even look at it. You can't hear it,
Speaker 1: or you'll catch it.
Speaker 3: You won't catch someone else's ideas by hearing them.
Speaker 1: You can hear them, you can consider them.
Speaker 3: You can there's some really new frameworks for thinking about
Speaker 3: transwrites in this book. You can read that and you
Speaker 3: can think, hmm, okay, that's interesting. Okay, let me pick
Speaker 3: holes in this one. You can do that with your
Speaker 3: own thinking. You are not in danger of catching anything.
Speaker 3: It could if you could just take the armor off.
Speaker 3: Because what I want to do is invite people into
Speaker 3: a conversation. I don't want to impose something on them
Speaker 3: wholesale and say you've got to think about it like this,
Speaker 3: or you're or you're a bad person.
Speaker 1: And so this is my attempt to do that. In
Speaker 1: this space.
Speaker 2: Coming up, Debra shares her thoughts on gender nonconformity a
Speaker 2: topic that's become one of the most polarizing in today's world.
Speaker 2: I think a real way to change people's points of
Speaker 2: view of things, And maybe it goes back to the
Speaker 2: amigdala that you were talking about, is if people are laughing, yes,
Speaker 2: they're receptive in a different.
Speaker 3: Way, yes, And if you're not asking people to take
Speaker 3: on wholesale views, but you're saying, here's here's a parallel,
Speaker 3: here's an argument, here's a story, here's an idea, here's
Speaker 3: a different way of looking at it. And that's what
Speaker 3: I'm doing in the chapter about gender nonconformity. I'm looking
Speaker 3: at a number of things. One is I went looking
Speaker 3: in indigenous communities around the world for gender nonconformity and
Speaker 3: fully expected that some Indigenous communities would have would have
Speaker 3: had that as a way of life, and some would
Speaker 3: have been frightened of the other.
Speaker 1: And being like no, no, no, I couldn't find.
Speaker 3: Any Indigenous communities that didn't have gender nonconformity as a norm,
Speaker 3: as a sort of unremarkable norm. And that really I
Speaker 3: was like, Wow, it's been there for many, many, many
Speaker 3: thousands of years, and all through history you can find
Speaker 3: gender non conforming people. In addition, I was looking at
Speaker 3: the history of being adopted, of orphan rights and adoptees'
Speaker 3: rights and trans rights, and I was looking at the
Speaker 3: parallels of those things. And this is an argument that
Speaker 3: a lot of people have said to me. Actually, this
Speaker 3: did changed my mind. And I've had a lot of
Speaker 3: people write to me and say, this is the one thing.
Speaker 3: Even though was quite a famous man who has very
Speaker 3: you know, he's very sure of his ideas, and he
Speaker 3: said to me, this is the first thing that's made
Speaker 3: me shift slightly on this.
Speaker 1: As an adopted.
Speaker 3: Child, I in any other generation before my own, would
Speaker 3: have been an orphan right. So if you look at
Speaker 3: someone like Jane eyre Yes Victorian, she was adopted, but
Speaker 3: she had to call her guardian missus Reed. She didn't
Speaker 3: call missus Reed mum no. And she wasn't allowed to
Speaker 3: say this is my brother. She was the ward, the lucky,
Speaker 3: privileged ward who was lucky enough to have been adopted,
Speaker 3: even though she didn't deserve anything except the gutter.
Speaker 1: And she was constantly reminded of that.
Speaker 3: And when there was trouble in the family and they
Speaker 3: decided that she wasn't she didn't deserve to be there, really,
Speaker 3: because her adopted brother was being horrible to her, she
Speaker 3: got sent to a really awful reformatory and was constantly
Speaker 3: told you're an orphan, you should be grateful. Now, that
Speaker 3: was just absolutely standard at that time. If I had
Speaker 3: been adopted and my parents had said, this is our daughter, Deborah,
Speaker 3: and I'd called them mom and dad, and anyone had
Speaker 3: found out I was adopted, they would have thought my
Speaker 3: parents were fantasists and liars.
Speaker 1: They would have just wasn't acceptable to do that.
Speaker 3: That would have been really weird, because you can't argue
Speaker 3: with biology and biologically I am not my parents' daughter.
Speaker 3: Now I am my mother's daughter. I am my parents' daughter,
Speaker 3: because yes, you actually says I am.
Speaker 2: And when you met your biological mother, you had far
Speaker 2: more in common with your mother, your adopted I have
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: In common with my mom.
Speaker 3: But my I you know, I've loved getting to know
Speaker 3: my biological family, and I look exactly like my biological mother.
Speaker 1: How was that amazing? Amazing?
Speaker 2: How long ago was that? That? You may years ago?
Speaker 3: But I The interesting thing about that, though, is because
Speaker 3: the laws allowed me to be holy my mother's daughter,
Speaker 3: because the language allowed me to be holy my mother's daughter.
Speaker 3: I was always My mother never said well, this is
Speaker 3: my these are my children. She had two biological children
Speaker 3: and me, and so you know, she never had to
Speaker 3: say this is my son, this is my daughter, this
Speaker 3: is my ward. I would have felt different all my
Speaker 3: life I other I wouldn't have felt like a full child.
Speaker 3: So because the laws, the language endorsed me being one
Speaker 3: hundred percent theirs, I am my mother's daughter far more
Speaker 3: than I am not. Now there's one significant way in
Speaker 3: which I'm not. If she needs a kidney, I'm no help. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's not that we ignore that I'm adopted, and
Speaker 3: adopted children do have some different needs, as we've discussed.
Speaker 3: But it is more, far more true to say that
Speaker 3: I'm my mother's daughter than it is to say that
Speaker 3: I'm not. And people can say that I'm not but
Speaker 3: I am. It doesn't change anything. And I think the
Speaker 3: parallels with transgender people are really obvious there that if
Speaker 3: you constantly say, but you're a.
Speaker 1: Man, but you're a man. But you're a man, but
Speaker 1: you're a man.
Speaker 3: Like people kept saying to me, but you're not your
Speaker 3: mother's daughter, you're an orphan, you're an orphan.
Speaker 1: You're an orphan.
Speaker 3: There would be a certain structural violence in that that
Speaker 3: would It would get to me, it would undermine me.
Speaker 3: It would ultimately have really changed my self esteem and
Speaker 3: my possibilities in life, and also how my school saw me,
Speaker 3: and also how the wider world saw me and treated me.
Speaker 3: And we should not treat orphans as if they're any different.
Speaker 3: Of course we shouldn't, but orphans were escape go to
Speaker 3: I mean before I was adopted, you know, some decades
Speaker 3: before I was adopted, people were told, do not adopt
Speaker 3: an orphan. They will corrupt your biological children. There's something
Speaker 3: inherently wrong with them. They're likely to have conditions, mental conditions,
Speaker 3: be morally corrupt. They'll probably be immoral like they're but
Speaker 3: birth mothers. They're probably borne out of wedlock. They could
Speaker 3: be criminal. Everyone was told that, like there were there
Speaker 3: was a massive other thing that went on. Seventy percent
Speaker 3: of the UK criminal population were orphans.
Speaker 1: Oftans were while they.
Speaker 3: Overrepresented in sex work, they were total scapegoats and within
Speaker 3: a generation or two completely endorsed and able to be
Speaker 3: adopted and just seen as regular kids with no big deal.
Speaker 3: That changed my possibilities, my self esteem. That changed my map,
Speaker 3: the map of my life. So I just want us
Speaker 3: to think about that when we're thinking about transgender people,
Speaker 3: They've always been transgender people throughout history. And that may
Speaker 3: be not an argument that fully convinces you, but it
Speaker 3: may make you reframe it a bit and go, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can see some value in this and so, and
Speaker 3: I think there's a value in those conversations happening. And
Speaker 3: that's why I've written a book, because I want to
Speaker 3: start reasonable conversations where people can enter into a new
Speaker 3: way and new framing of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: So for people who want to perhaps embark honor one
Speaker 2: of these tricky conversations, Yes, what suggestions.
Speaker 3: Do you have, Well, there's various in the last chapter,
Speaker 3: there are various ways of breaking it down. One thing
Speaker 3: I suggest is thinking about a paradigm. Like, for example,
Speaker 3: if you have a neighbor from a different culture and
Speaker 3: you were having cup of tea with them and then
Speaker 3: they said something you thought was not feminist, you wouldn't
Speaker 3: say that's not feminist. You shouldn't say that because you
Speaker 3: understand as a cultural divide and you understand that's not
Speaker 3: very cool to kind of you know, but you might
Speaker 3: over time ask some questions, have some kind of cultural exchange,
Speaker 3: probably see some things more from their point of view.
Speaker 3: Maybe you think, oh, actually they think this isn't very
Speaker 3: empowered of me, and you might over time have those conversations,
Speaker 3: but in a very respectful way. But now think about that.
Speaker 3: If that's your mum saying something at Sunday lunch, Mum,
Speaker 3: that's not feminists. But sometimes culture is geographic. Sometimes culture
Speaker 3: is geography, and sometimes it's generational. So you understand this
Speaker 3: person from a different culure because they're from a different country,
Speaker 3: but your mum or your graham might be from a
Speaker 3: different generation, and that is also a cultural divide.
Speaker 2: Now that's often not respected, particularly by younger generation.
Speaker 3: That is correct, young people talking to older queer people
Speaker 3: actually BTQ plus people. It's like those people got us
Speaker 3: through aids. Those people fought for You know, when I
Speaker 3: was growing up in Queensland, where we both grew up,
Speaker 3: it was illegal to be gay. So there's people who
Speaker 3: fought for that, and there needs to be a respect
Speaker 3: and a curiosity in openness. That doesn't mean that older
Speaker 3: people should just go we've got it perfectly right, because
Speaker 3: what you thought was radical when you were young, is
Speaker 3: was not respected by your seniors either. So you can't
Speaker 3: go radicals closed now what young people think is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: So whether you're thinking about people a generation ahead or
Speaker 3: a generation below, to realize that there needs to be
Speaker 3: respect paid and curiosity engaged, and for conversations to be
Speaker 3: respectful and dialogue to be open is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 3: So just sometimes shifting your paradigm and thinking, instead of
Speaker 3: biting my mum's head off, why don't I imagine she's
Speaker 3: from a different culture, and then ask questions about what
Speaker 3: was it like when you will live through a different culture, right,
Speaker 3: because it's a temporal culture, it's not a geographical culture.
Speaker 3: And then looking at history. So for example, we are
Speaker 3: now in a state where if you are very pragmatic,
Speaker 3: often radical people on the internet will say, no, you're
Speaker 3: just compromising.
Speaker 1: But if you are very.
Speaker 3: Radical, often people will say, no, you're just you're making
Speaker 3: things worse. So if we can look at examples for that,
Speaker 3: like there was a movement in America when all the
Speaker 3: politicians were ignoring aids and gay men particularly, but other
Speaker 3: groups too were just dying of this terrible plague. The
Speaker 3: most hideous way to die and there was a movement
Speaker 3: to get more experimental drugs in play and to find
Speaker 3: management system and or cure for HIV AIDS. And that
Speaker 3: movement was made up both of people out the front
Speaker 3: shouting with signs and the people inside those buildings persuading
Speaker 3: and you know, talking to people, and the people in
Speaker 3: the white coats, And it was made up across those
Speaker 3: all of those lines. Did they disagree sometimes, of course,
Speaker 3: But did they let it slow the movement down? Did
Speaker 3: they let did they let it fracture the movement? Did
Speaker 3: they make those arguments public?
Speaker 1: No, they did not.
Speaker 3: They just understood that the radicals needed to be radical,
Speaker 3: the pragmatists needed to be more pragmatic. And so sometimes
Speaker 3: radicals need to get more pragmatic and pragmatists need to
Speaker 3: get more radical.
Speaker 2: But you don't always have to call people out. No.
Speaker 3: In fact, if you don't have the people out in
Speaker 3: the front of the building shouting, the politicians will not
Speaker 3: realize that people really care and do anything about it.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have the.
Speaker 3: People inside the building persuading and compromising and never get anywhere,
Speaker 3: you always need both. And this was the case with
Speaker 3: the suffragettes and the suffragists in the UK. The suffragists
Speaker 3: were like, let's talk to the right people, let's influence,
Speaker 3: let let's fill out the right paperwork. The suffragettes were like,
Speaker 3: we've been doing that for generations.
Speaker 1: We're doing that. They've been doing it for sixty years.
Speaker 3: Before they got the vote, they said, we need to
Speaker 3: start throwing bricks through windows and blowing stuff up, and
Speaker 3: without either party we never would have got the vote.
Speaker 3: We actually it actually created it created bookends of influence
Speaker 3: that actually ultimately got it over the line. But they
Speaker 3: understood they needed to come together sometimes and they well,
Speaker 3: now if Emmeline Pankhurs retweeted medicine force it, everyone would
Speaker 3: be like, I can't believe she's one of them now,
Speaker 3: and we wouldn't allow it. And we need to rethink
Speaker 3: that because if we want our world to not be
Speaker 3: completely taken over by far right forces, which really could happen,
Speaker 3: we need to start understanding that they are much more
Speaker 3: pragmatic and strategic than we are, and we need to
Speaker 3: start getting more strategic, brilliant, brilliant. But there's lots of
Speaker 3: there's lots of suggestions in the book break down techniques
Speaker 3: for talking to people and thinking about how we could
Speaker 3: exercise us for critical thinking, for taking it right back
Speaker 3: so that we're not just going I know what I
Speaker 3: think about that, but pulling apart everything we think in
Speaker 3: critically discussing with people who agree with us, discussing with
Speaker 3: people who disagree with us, across the isle, all of
Speaker 3: that is, in, all of that is it's really important.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you when when you're going to
Speaker 2: into the fray of this. It's one thing for you
Speaker 2: to do it, that's hard enough, but how is it
Speaker 2: for you for the people who love you, like Tom, Yes,
Speaker 2: your husband, how is he through the process.
Speaker 1: He's really encouraged me. He's very proud of me.
Speaker 3: I did a kind of right wing podcast to kind
Speaker 3: of have a difficult conversation across.
Speaker 1: The aisle, and I got a lot.
Speaker 3: Of attacks from the they call it the Manisphere, which.
Speaker 1: Is a.
Speaker 3: Men that have been I think trained by Andrew Tait
Speaker 3: or similar kinds of misogynistic podcast.
Speaker 2: Is that the Trigonometry podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I have had death threats from that.
Speaker 2: So that's hard for him, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's been really it was really hard for him.
Speaker 3: I mean some of them, some of the messages I
Speaker 3: got were kind of so absurd they were funny in
Speaker 3: a way. As a man came into my DMS and said,
Speaker 3: so is it okay to quote it's a very aggressive sure, dear, Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: So if you're if you're listening with the child in
Speaker 3: the car, you might want to turn this down. But
Speaker 3: a man came into my DMS and I could see
Speaker 3: who he was, like, I could literally see I know
Speaker 3: who he is and what he does for a living
Speaker 3: and everything. And he said, I just heard you on trigonometry.
Speaker 3: You are an ugly, stupid, dangerous, disingenuous cunt. You are
Speaker 3: literally the downfall of the Western world. All I could
Speaker 3: do is pray for you, praying hands emoji, and I
Speaker 3: just went, oh my.
Speaker 1: God, what would that pray be?
Speaker 3: A beloved Lord, dear Lord, through the name of Jesus,
Speaker 3: can I beseech you to bless this ugly, stupid, dangerous,
Speaker 3: disingenuous cunt who was.
Speaker 1: The dowbtfall of the Western world. I want to not
Speaker 1: stop laughing.
Speaker 3: But I actually screenshot that because mostly I just blocked
Speaker 3: dele b because people say the worst that men say
Speaker 3: the worst things, and occasionally one was.
Speaker 1: Very very very very very occasional, and I.
Speaker 3: Put this screenshot on my grid, and I actually made
Speaker 3: the guy who wrote it a collaborator on it so
Speaker 3: he could see that I'd posted it, and I kind
Speaker 3: of wrote a funny post about because that's quite a
Speaker 3: funny thing. But the thing that upset me was not that,
Speaker 3: because that was se absurd. It was that lots of
Speaker 3: people underneath were writing in support, but a couple of
Speaker 3: guys were saying nasty things underneath.
Speaker 1: I just deleted them.
Speaker 3: But one man said every single thing that man said
Speaker 3: was true, Like he was really extreme. It was like
Speaker 3: every single word of what that man said was true.
Speaker 3: And the guy who said that, because sometimes I look
Speaker 3: through and I go most of them, I think they're
Speaker 3: either bots or they just troll accounts because they have
Speaker 3: their private accounts. There's no profile picture, they've made, no posts.
Speaker 3: They're just there to say nasty things or their bots
Speaker 3: or something, And it's like, how can you be upset
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 1: Really? But this guy was a family man.
Speaker 3: And he had pictures of his you know when people
Speaker 3: put up a little montage picture or collage of their baby,
Speaker 3: and he said, this is my daughter, sweet sixteen. It
Speaker 3: had baby pictures and stuff, and I love her so much,
Speaker 3: and has says, sixteenth birthday, this is my son who's
Speaker 3: going into high school. This is my beautiful wife. And
Speaker 3: here we are in date night And there was a
Speaker 3: picture of them at the Lion King and he had
Speaker 3: all these kids and he was such a happy family man,
Speaker 3: and I just went, oh, so it's not necessarily just
Speaker 3: these guys who were there just there to kind of
Speaker 3: deliberately shake someone up in a misotistic fashion, who's been
Speaker 3: listening to too much Andrew Tate, this is a wholesome guy,
Speaker 3: the family man next to you at the Lion King endorsing.
Speaker 3: And I did, as I say, a normally block on
Speaker 3: de Leek, but I did write to him because his
Speaker 3: dms were open, and I just said, your beautiful collage
Speaker 3: of your sixteen year old daughter, Imagine if a man
Speaker 3: wrote to her that she was an ugly, stupid, dangerous
Speaker 3: can't imagine that, and imagine a family man endorsing every
Speaker 3: word of it. And I said, I want you to
Speaker 3: read out these posts to your wife and your daughter,
Speaker 3: and if you can't do that, you're ashamed. And if
Speaker 3: you can do that, you need help. I said, I
Speaker 3: really ask you, will you delete what you've written if
Speaker 3: you're ashamed and not and not post like this to
Speaker 3: women again? And can you teach your sons to be better?
Speaker 3: Because he's got two sons, and then he did delete,
Speaker 3: and I think sometimes just saying if I do ever reply,
Speaker 3: which is very very rare, I'll say, could you read
Speaker 3: this out, get a male therapist and read out what
Speaker 3: you're writing to women and see if you can get
Speaker 3: to the bottom of why you're doing it.
Speaker 1: Because there's nothing to do with me.
Speaker 3: I'm just going on a podcast and saying, Hey, I've
Speaker 3: written a book, I'm thinking this way, I'm thinking this way.
Speaker 3: And they did cut provocative clips where they would just
Speaker 3: show my reaction and not show whatever that's their thing.
Speaker 2: My question was, how is that for Tom? Not that
Speaker 2: it's about but the person that loves you. It's often
Speaker 2: harder for them to weakness the I mean that they lie.
Speaker 1: He's used to me putting myself out there.
Speaker 3: I think, to be fair, I've never had a lot
Speaker 3: of trolling because I tend to stay in my lane
Speaker 3: and I provide for my audience. I'm not a provocateur.
Speaker 3: I never name anyone, so you don't see me going
Speaker 3: on Twitter going Taylor Swift hasn't spoken up about this
Speaker 3: or you know, I just don't see that. I just
Speaker 3: don't do it. I don't name people. I don't shame people.
Speaker 3: My whole book is about not naming, not shaming, not
Speaker 3: you know, to build something, build a work you do
Speaker 3: want to live in, rather than constantly having goes at
Speaker 3: people because they're not you don't think they're saying the
Speaker 3: right thing or doing the right thing. I am a
Speaker 3: positive person. I am someone who's trying to build something connected.
Speaker 3: I do not I do not participate in rage bait.
Speaker 3: I do not participate in a rage economy. To me,
Speaker 3: that only benefits the billionaires running these platforms. It is
Speaker 3: not my way. So I don't get trolling. Even if
Speaker 3: I do television, you might get one guy going, oh.
Speaker 1: She's annoying or something, but that's fine.
Speaker 2: You're on television, you know, it's that's what television is for.
Speaker 3: A big deal, and they don't see anything particularly awful.
Speaker 3: I have never in my life had death threats. I've
Speaker 3: never in my life had had people telling me to
Speaker 3: kill myself on a live stream so they can watch.
Speaker 3: And is that how I because I did trigonometry, not
Speaker 3: before trigonometry. Oh, I know, and that is that is
Speaker 3: that that is their audience, and you know that is
Speaker 3: that is I've never had it before.
Speaker 1: I had it for a brief period. They were very specific.
Speaker 3: They were almost always saying it was because they'd heard
Speaker 3: trigonometry or watched.
Speaker 1: It and that is their choice.
Speaker 3: And I have other big profile podcasts coming up, so
Speaker 3: I may get some of that.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, I'm just I see it as
Speaker 3: a curiosity. I'm sort of like, Wow, they must be
Speaker 3: very unhappy, that is I but it worries me about
Speaker 3: the world girls are growing up into. It worries me
Speaker 3: very much the manosphere that because that violence has to
Speaker 3: go somewhere, as the violent talk has to go somewhere.
Speaker 3: And we are still in a situation where far too
Speaker 3: many women and girls are being killed by men. And
Speaker 3: hashtag not all men. Most men will never hurt anybody.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what we need to.
Speaker 1: Be very clear about. It is not all men. It
Speaker 1: is not all men.
Speaker 3: But women know that like one hundred percent of the
Speaker 3: men that I've been with have not killed me. You know,
Speaker 3: I doesn't mean they haven't killed anyone, but they haven't
Speaker 3: killed me, And ah.
Speaker 1: You know, we know it's not all men.
Speaker 3: What we need is for the men who it isn't
Speaker 3: to tell the men who it is, because what we
Speaker 3: know for a fact is that the men who do
Speaker 3: hurt women or want to hurt women. If they're in
Speaker 3: a comedy club and there is somebody doing jokes about
Speaker 3: hurting women, when the whole audience laughs out of shock value,
Speaker 3: out of like, we can't believe it said that it's
Speaker 3: so edgy, even though they would never hurt anybody. The
Speaker 3: couple of guys in there who would hear that laugh
Speaker 3: as an endorsement because they genuinely do think all men
Speaker 3: do or want to but aren't man enough.
Speaker 1: That's what they think.
Speaker 3: And we know this for a fact because the people
Speaker 3: that try and rehabilitate those men genuinely think all men
Speaker 3: do it. So it's those men who need to know,
Speaker 3: not all men.
Speaker 2: That's why do you think there's a reluctance from men.
Speaker 2: I believe off in your strength is your weakness, And
Speaker 2: men do afford themselves like they're able to navigate relationships
Speaker 2: without poking too much in the dark corners. But no one,
Speaker 2: I'm not speak up No.
Speaker 3: One likes conflict, I think, and no one likes uncomfortable conversations.
Speaker 1: That's why I read the book.
Speaker 3: And if two guys and I think women and I
Speaker 3: don't know that. I think it's largely cultural and social.
Speaker 3: But if Sometimes my husband will go off and play
Speaker 3: pool with a friend for six hours and he'll come
Speaker 3: back and I'll go, how's John And he'll go great, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll go how's the divorce And he'll go, oh.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it didn't come up. But I like, you,
Speaker 1: we're together for six hours, What did you talk about?
Speaker 3: And he'll go just pool And I'm like, no, pools,
Speaker 3: what you were doing? What you're talking about?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 1: We be like doctor Who and I'm like no. And meanwhile, I've.
Speaker 3: Had a coffee with Kathy for twenty minutes, and I
Speaker 3: know the exact state of the divorce. Has eyone moved
Speaker 3: on sexually? Are the children dealing with it?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: I know the whole thing because we go straight there
Speaker 1: and we really what.
Speaker 2: In care she's using?
Speaker 3: Of course, And so I feel like I would love
Speaker 3: there to be more education for boys at school and men.
Speaker 3: One of my friends, Jina Martin, does this. She goes
Speaker 3: around with an organization in Australia. She's brilliant and she
Speaker 3: came on the Guilty Femis to talk about how hold
Speaker 3: space for conversations with teens to make them more emotionally
Speaker 3: literate and able to talk about these things, able to
Speaker 3: talk about loneliness, able to talk about inner conflict, fears,
Speaker 3: all of those things, because the more we can talk
Speaker 3: about it, the better.
Speaker 1: And I want that for men because.
Speaker 3: I love men that I have men in my life
Speaker 3: who I adore, and I even I can hold empathy
Speaker 3: for the men who wrote horrible things to me, because
Speaker 3: I'm like, something's making you unhappy. Because I see people
Speaker 3: on the Internet all the time I disagree with I
Speaker 3: see people on TV I don't like. I would never
Speaker 3: think about what's what's their Instagram? Can I go into
Speaker 3: their dms and say something mean? I can't even imagine that.
Speaker 3: I cannot like someone not need them to know. I
Speaker 3: can disagree with someone and not need to write to them.
Speaker 1: And it fascinates me. And listen, women disagree.
Speaker 3: With me, but they write me strongly worded emails, very articulate,
Speaker 3: strongly worded emails.
Speaker 1: They don't write kill yourself on a live stream. They don't.
Speaker 3: I've never had that from a woman, And I think
Speaker 3: that's something about not being able to deconstruct your feelings,
Speaker 3: what's underneath?
Speaker 1: Yes, what's going on there for you?
Speaker 3: Because it cannot be about a woman expressing her opinion
Speaker 3: on a podcast and.
Speaker 2: That for some reason, you're tapping into this wellspring of rage,
Speaker 2: this impotent rage. Yes, and this is the outlet for ith.
Speaker 1: Yes, something's going on. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: Another book, yes, But also Laura Bates writes amazing stuff.
Speaker 3: She's got a book called Men Who Hate Women, and
Speaker 3: she's also got a new book about AI and the
Speaker 3: New Frontier for misogyny. And it's about like cyber robots,
Speaker 3: sex robots and stuff and it's deeply disturbing.
Speaker 2: But you should all read it. Everyone should read it.
Speaker 2: So we want to be just.
Speaker 1: We have to know, we have to know. Well, if
Speaker 1: we're not disturbed by knowing about it, we'll be disturbed
Speaker 1: by living it.
Speaker 2: That's really scared of the robot.
Speaker 3: Have you heard this saying that's going around now? If
Speaker 3: you don't do politics, politics will do you. And that's
Speaker 3: unfortunately where we're at. We better read about it, get
Speaker 3: ahead of it, teach our sons have the conversation. Teach
Speaker 3: the young men in oallus and you know it's a
Speaker 3: two way street again, ask them what's going on and
Speaker 3: really listen, create space for them to tell you how
Speaker 3: they're feeling and hashtag not or boys. Some of them
Speaker 3: are doing amazing stuff and going forward. But if they are,
Speaker 3: you did you see adolescents the Netflix?
Speaker 2: Shay, Yes, this is.
Speaker 3: What's happening without And that's a brilliant example of a
Speaker 3: drama that can help us empathize for him as well,
Speaker 3: like we need to be coming to the table with kindness, openness, compassion,
Speaker 3: curiosity and holding space for Can I reveal this to you?
Speaker 3: Can you hold some empathy for that? And if you can,
Speaker 3: maybe there's a further conversation down the line. You do
Speaker 3: not have to take on all of my ideas wholesale,
Speaker 3: but I ask you to take off a little bit
Speaker 3: of armor and be open to them. You won't catch
Speaker 3: an attack of the goats like we were taught as
Speaker 3: the Jehovah's witnesses. You don't catch my ideas from reading
Speaker 3: them if you take off a bit of armor.
Speaker 1: And go, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: That's interesting because I have to do it too to
Speaker 3: other people's ideas. I've got armor if you change your
Speaker 3: mind about oh God, all sorts of things while I
Speaker 3: was writing the book, but like a key one being,
Speaker 3: the Internet doesn't make us less empathetic. It makes us
Speaker 3: more empathetic, but just to fewer and fewer people. And
Speaker 3: so that's and also the way that I sometimes communicate
Speaker 3: I can. It's so easy for me to go in
Speaker 3: sometimes and get annoyed. I had I did a round
Speaker 3: table with Steven Bartlett, and it was with two women
Speaker 3: who say that they're feminist, but to me, a lot
Speaker 3: of their positions were not feminist.
Speaker 1: But I had to sit and listen, and.
Speaker 3: I wasn't always able to come back with my ideas
Speaker 3: because there was three of us plus Steven, and sometimes
Speaker 3: Stephen would guide it, you know, onto the next question.
Speaker 3: There was a limited time and things will get edited out,
Speaker 3: and I had to sit and go, I don't agree
Speaker 3: with you, but I'm going to try and ask you
Speaker 3: a question or present something this way. And of course
Speaker 3: ever since then, I've been lying, awake, going debating further.
Speaker 3: I could have said this, I should have said that,
Speaker 3: and I will put some of the further arguments on
Speaker 3: my Instagram because I think it's really important that women
Speaker 3: stand together at the moment and we create space for
Speaker 3: ourselves to come together, because if we are heading on
Speaker 3: a road to gilliad, like when you look at what's
Speaker 3: happening in America with women's rights being stripped away, with
Speaker 3: anybody's rights being stripped away. Who frankly, you know we're
Speaker 3: looking at you know what's happening with immigration there. There's
Speaker 3: just so many rights being stripped away. I'm very worried
Speaker 3: about the farm Right Party in the UK. I know
Speaker 3: you just had an election here and you steered away
Speaker 3: from that kind of thinking, which well done Australia was
Speaker 3: a great relief, but it's always bubbling underneath that fear
Speaker 3: of the other, fear of women, fear of fear of progress.
Speaker 2: And the people are generally disenfranchised as well because they've
Speaker 2: been let down really by every political past.
Speaker 3: And there's a big red button there they want to
Speaker 3: press out, and I think that's what reform is in
Speaker 3: the UK. It's a big red button that says here's
Speaker 3: an alternative, which is what happened with Brexit. Brexfit's made
Speaker 3: everybody poorer, Brexit has not given us anything that I
Speaker 3: can see. When you ask people who voted Leave, what
Speaker 3: one thing if you got from Brexit that you didn't
Speaker 3: have before, they can't name anything. Maybe someone will write
Speaker 3: in and say I can, but certainly I've asked people
Speaker 3: and they cannot say what they have got from it.
Speaker 3: But when we have lost so much money from our economies,
Speaker 3: so many opportunities, opportunities.
Speaker 1: But it was a big red button.
Speaker 3: It was like, I'm not happy and I understand that
Speaker 3: people are disenfranchised, and it's so easy then for them
Speaker 3: to just go whack a mole that.
Speaker 2: I'm unhappy about this, But I'll hit there.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and you know, I again, I want to create
Speaker 3: a better world so that people don't feel like that.
Speaker 3: I don't want to just other people and go you're
Speaker 3: a bad person, you're a good person. Stop it, You're
Speaker 3: a good person. Deborah Francis White, thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm full of respect for Deborah Francis White, and not
Speaker 2: necessarily because I agree with her on every topic, because
Speaker 2: quite frankly, who agrees with anyone on every topic. But
Speaker 2: I know it's not easy to speak with clarity about
Speaker 2: socially thorny topics and still holds space for other people's discomfort.
Speaker 2: But that's exactly what Deborah does. She asks questions, she
Speaker 2: makes room for the complicated bits, and most importantly, she
Speaker 2: keeps showing up to the conversation with humor and goodwill.
Speaker 2: The executive producer of No Filter is Naima Brown and
Speaker 2: the senior producer is bre Player. Audio production is by
Speaker 2: Jacob Brown and I am your humble host Kate Langbrook.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to No Filter.