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