Triggernometry Meets Guilty Feminist

You wouldn't say Elon Musk or Donald Trump were far right? Definitely not. But he hasn't been saying anything positive about gay people lately, has he? Have you said anything negative about gay people? We killed them. Yes. We committed a genocide. Why were we able to do that? My visceral reaction to a white man sitting and saying to me...

and why were we able to commit genocide on them and then just pausing is very visceral to me. It's interesting that you brought up my skin colour because I thought that was exactly... opposite of the point you're trying to make in the book. You're very productive. I thought you were a lot more intellectual than this. I think this is very revealing. So you're not reaching anyone who's listening to this conversation by doing that, is my point.

You don't know that. If you listen to what I was saying, it's actually perfectly logical and reasonable. This is quite controlling what you're doing now. Well, what you said was quite significant to me. Was it offensive? It was quite... It wasn't... It's not that it was offensive, it scared me. Hey Francis, do you ever feel like you're missing out by not reading enough woke romance novels? Yeah, I often think, you know what's missing from my life?

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Deborah Francis-White of the Guilty Feminist podcast. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much for having me. Well, this is a surprising meeting of the minds because I think it's fair to say that your podcast is one of the kind of... arch pillars of progressive thought, certainly in our space. And you reached out to us saying you have a book out, you want to come and talk to us. It's fair to say that we're not one of the pillars of the woke space in our space. So what are you doing here?

Well, what a great question. My good friend Johan Hari told me I should come on your show. And I think had it been with my book, The Guilty Feminist, I would have said probably not. This isn't the right space for it. But my new book is called Six Conversations We're Scared to Have. And it's about... How I feel about the landscape now, I feel like the political landscape now, I feel like progressive movements and people who are broadly on the layer.

are fragmenting by constantly having, I would say, being obsessed with trivial pursuit. small level slights this use of language, that use of language. Meanwhile, there's this huge polarizing gap that is increasing every day. And we've seen this, you know, in the last couple of months in America and an extraordinary chasm has opened up between the left and the right. I feel like the far right, which is quite sinister, is really making games.

And so my book is about how to have conversations better, both with people on your side of the divide, but also reaching across the divide. So I can't really then say, oh, you think differently from me. I don't want to come and talk to you. That's exactly what I need to be doing.

And I listened to your podcast and I also felt like you guys were, like, reasonable and I could have a good chat to you. What I'm not interested in doing is, you know, when you go on the BBC and they say, oh, you've got to talk to this person for balance and there's somebody that is... actually quite... Like for me, someone who goes, I don't believe in climate change at all. I think...

feminists are bitches and witches. I'm like, well, it just would take too long in a 20-minute interview to get there. So what are we doing? And then I think we're just doing gladiatorial arena sports. But I want to talk to people who I think are intelligent, who think differently from me, because otherwise, what are we doing? Just sitting there congratulating ourselves in our little group.

And ultimately, the reason I wrote this book is because when I was 14, my family joined the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult. I say that because... It's true. Yeah, it is true. A useful definition of a cult is any group that won't let you leave with your dignity intact. And it's a shaming and shunning group.

So if the elders come around and tell you, and the elders are just some men who nominate each other in the congregation, that they have regular jobs, they're not particularly trained or anything. And if they come around and tell you your skirt's too short or you've got an attitude problem and you don't listen, you can be formally shunned. It means people will cross the road to avoid you, pretend they can't see you. It's a name, shame, shun religion.

It's very patriarchal. It's run entirely by men. And I lived in that. I had to get out of it. And I lost all my friends. I couldn't speak to anybody I knew and loved for many years. And I had to start over again. And then in the last 10 years, I have been feeling like I am in a cult again, because I think the world is now a series of interconnecting. where we're all in our little group. And in order to be part of this group, we have to say these things, repeat these things.

If we have questions about these things or we think, I don't think that part of it's right. Can I have a reasonable discussion about that? We're often going to be shouted down. And I see that on both sides of the political divide. I see that on the left and I see that on the right. Well, if you think that you're with them then. And so that's why I wrote this book. That's a very good point. And I think right now...

that is clearly happening on the right as well. Like, I experience this on a daily basis. there's a whole bunch of narratives that people on the right in America have about Ukraine. And anytime I'm like, well, factually, actually, oh, you're with them then. I see that a lot. And I think that's... human behavior. What I found interesting is, and this is what I'd be keen to explore as part of this conversation, if you don't mind, is you said in the blurb for your book that you're not anti-work.

I don't think I would have... Did I say anti-woke? I don't think I would have used the word woke, but maybe I did. It says in the blurb of the book, but we... I'm definitely not anti-woke, no. Yes. What I was going to ask you is why is that? Well, I think, what does woke mean to you? That's my question. What are all the very things that you said are the reason you wrote your book?

People would say we're anti-war. I'm certainly anti-war. I have no issue describing it. I'm anti the, oh, you used this wrong phrase. Oh, you made fun of this thing that I don't like. Oh, you're not sufficiently inclusive of this blah, blah, blah. oh, you know, you're a man, you need to be quiet while other people talk, all of this stuff. I reject this entirely. I reject the identity politics of it. I reject the censorship aspect of it. I reject the...

the obsession with victimhood, which I think is damaging and it's making people into victims. That's what I mean by woke, and that's what I'm against. So I think the reason I would describe myself as not anti-woke is because I think what a lot of people mean by woke, and it's all, it's a soup, it's a rich soup. So you can take out certain things and go, that's woke.

I think a lot of people see it and go, well, woke is an idea about gender or an idea about feminism that I haven't fully explored. It just sounds new or it just sounds, you know. like something that I don't have any particular knowledge of or empathy for. So that goes to the woke basket because it's new. To name something that... to pull something out of a hat off the top of my head. There's a lot of diverse casting now. So I see people getting very angry when they see...

a cast on television, and there might be a couple of brown and black people in the cast, and they say, well, they don't need to be there, or this is not historically accurate. And I get very, very angry about that. I feel very strongly that we want our... television to represent the people in our community. I live in London.

And I have very close friends, chosen family who are black and brown, some of whom are actors. And I want to see them on TV. They're brilliant. And I really notice that when it first happened... I might have noticed it. And then you get into a show and you don't notice. So even if something's set in Victorian times and you think, well, they might not have been black or brown, you just stop noticing and you just see that it's a great performance.

And then the other thing is, if when you look a bit deeper, you find out, of course, there were black and brown people in Victorian London at that time. And sometimes people say that person wouldn't have been black or brown. And historically, when you look into it, they actually were. So that's an example of something that I think people just go, whoa. And I think, no, that needs more analysis, surely.

Fine, but there's a lot to quibble with there, which we can. But I guess to most people, I don't think your characterization is quite accurate. I don't think most people's view of what woke is is this thing that they don't understand, but because it's new, they don't like it. It's more like... suddenly we all have to pretend that if you say something that...

about your identity, now it's true. Like, if I say I'm a woman, I become a woman in that moment. And a lot of people don't dislike that because it's new. A lot of people don't dislike that because they think it's factually inaccurate. Sure. Well, that's a very, very big subject. There's a very, very big, chunky chapter on that in my book. And I think that's something that... What's your argument on that? So what you just said there is...

If someone says they're a woman, you have to accept it. Is that what, is that? Yeah, but that's been the line. Trans women are women. Right. And if you say otherwise, you're a bigot. Okay, so what I'm arguing in my book... is I am looking at the historical fight for two other sorts of rights. that has happened. And I say in the introduction, actually, this is a book of ideas.

And I know a lot of people will go to this chapter first. It's called The Conversation About Gender Nonconformity. And I say, ideally read it in order because I'm building an argument. But if you do go here first, and if you are... triggered, to use the name of your podcast, by this, if this is something you feel very, very strongly about. whatever side of this, wherever in this kaleidoscope of this discussion you're coming from, please be aware this is some ideas in a book of ideas.

This is not the first to last word. This is not a new doctrine that I'm delivering for a new cult. This is some ideas in a book of ideas. So anybody coming in and going, You're not a woman. That's the end of it. I don't need to hear anything more about that. Or anybody coming in and going, you're not allowed to ask any questions about sport. That's just the end of it. Both of those I would question. And I would say...

This is a big, complicated topic, and in my book, this is a book of ideas, and this is some ideas about gender non-reformity. So what are your ideas about it? So I want to bed that down there, okay? Okay. What I'm doing is first of all looking at how the brain works. And why our brain is sort of a prediction machine. It's the autocomplete on your phone, really. It's always going through the world. And it's looking for things that aren't as the brain would expect them to be.

If you got on a bus and the bus driver was dressed like a clown, you would double take. There's no reason to suspect that clown is going to... hurt you or that there's anything there's nothing pejorative about the bus driver being just like a clown but you would notice if you got on the bus driver was dressed as a bus driver you probably wouldn't notice the bus driver at all

If you're in London where you get on off buses and you don't say anything to the bus driver, there's so many people. And someone said later, who was the bus driver? What'd they look like? You probably wouldn't know. But as soon as they're dressed like a clown, your brain goes, what? I've got questions. Now, the reason your brain can't do that every time, like a bus, you know, like toddlers go, a bus, a bus driver. That's because they're still learning what's normal, what's to be expected.

So we can't do that. Our brain's got stuff going on all the time and it needs to save itself for all this other work. So if it's what's expected, it doesn't remark. If 30% of bus drivers dressed like clowns for a year, you would stop noticing. I would continue to notice of the address like this. For how long?

For all eternity, because I know what a bus driver is supposed to look like. Ah, interesting. So your brain works different from other human beings then in that case. If we accept your premise of how people's brains work, yes. But my assertion to you is that a lot of people... have a standard that they expect that they learn at a certain point and they don't stop noticing things being different.

Like if everybody started walking around naked, I wouldn't start. I wouldn't at one point go. Actually, I don't remember a time when nobody. You see what I mean? I do, but I think there's a whole different bunch of semiotics that go with nudity that don't go with clown costumes. Fine. Whatever. Let's carry on with you, please. Okay. Here's an example. In the 1960s, Mary Tyler Moore had to fight really hard to be allowed to wear trousers on screen because...

people still double taking at women wearing trousers. When women first started wearing trousers, women were arrested in trousers. Now, and I'll tell you, and it's because... That's a gender signifier. And it repulsed people. It looked weird. Same as long hair. Think about a Victorian man. Have you got a picture of a Victorian man, Oscar Wilde, in your mind? How long is his hair? Pretty long. Pretty long. Right. Why is short hair masculine?

Can you take us back to the trans bit? Because I'm not following the connection here. OK, so I'm taking you somewhere. Trust me. It's all right. We're getting there. OK. So the reason short hair is masculine is because in the First World War... Men went into the trenches, had to have short hair because of the lice. And then other men who hadn't been down in the trenches wanted to demonstrate they could be as masculine, they could have survived the trenches.

By the 1960s, hair like Oscar Wilde's long Victorian hair was so femme. that when men walked down the street with that longer hair that came in the 60s, other men would shout, oh, it gives you Hohenberg love, and sort of sexist heckle. So that's how long it takes to get...

for something to be normal or for something to be seen as femme or mask. That's why I say if for all eternity you continue to notice clowns as bus drivers, even if you... you know, you still had comments on them, you would start to edit them out because nobody now looks at a man with this sort of length hair and double takes or looks at a woman in trousers and double takes. Because as a society, we get used to something. So anything that's outside the norm, what happens is...

We notice it. And each generation has those alarm alerts, which is this could be dangerous because it's different. And we have that with gender. You can see it again and again and again and again. And we know it's arbitrary because women were wearing trousers in Asia for hundreds of years when Western women weren't. That didn't look, it's not something absolutely normal or natural. So...

What we have to do then is look at, is there any history of transgenderism throughout the ages? And I looked into this because I looked at Indigenous societies. And I thought, well, there will be... You know, people fear what's different. There will be indigenous societies where there weren't transgender people accepted. And I looked and I looked and I looked and I could not find any. It was completely normal in most societies for this to be not a binary thing, for it not to be male and female.

but for it to be more like a scale. So if you walk past a building and, you know, a bar and someone says, is it loud in there? You understand. That that person is saying, yes, it is loud in there, but they mean loud for them because there's loud. And there's soft. There's high and there's low. There's young and there's old. We're all old to someone and we're all young to someone, right? We're all old to a seven-year-old. We're all young to an 80-year-old, right?

So there's very few things where we go, it's this or it's that. You might have heard of the American Two-Spirit people, a Native American Two-Spirit. You guys heard of that? Yeah. That was created like around in the 90s. at a conference, an LGBTQ plus conference, when indigenous people, Native American people were like, we have to explain it to the Westerners because they keep using, it was like a sort of slur for indigenous queer people that was often used.

They see it as this and that. So let's say we're two. So whenever you hear that third gender in indigenous spaces, it's not really, that's done through a Western framework of two and therefore a third. But if you talk to people in Indigenous cultures, it's usually it's like it's not a third for us because it's more like a piano scale. So if that is in Indigenous cultures... it seems unlikely that there are no people in the West who also fit somewhere up and down this gender scale.

And I think what's happened in the West is the legal framework is you've got to say you're male or you've got to say you're female. And that's it. So if I have to be in one of these boxes in order to get any right. This is the one I belong in, because that's the one that feels more like me. But if you take it back to its kind of human root...

We're so obsessed with our own frameworks that we really do think there's no truth outside them. But one of the lenses I'm looking at this through is I'm adopted. I was given away at birth. In any other time before now, I would have been an orphan. Oliver Twist had one living parent. It doesn't necessarily mean both your parents are dead. It means no one in your family can or will look after you. Orphan rights is something I've written about in the book. If you look at orphan rights...

It's absolutely fascinating. Orphans were massive scapegoats in Victorian times. If you adopt one, it will infect your children with immorality. They're not a natural child. Their mothers were immoral and poor and they will be too. And so if you were lucky enough to be adopted in Victoria times, you were Jane Eyre. So you had to say Mr. and Mrs. Reid. You didn't call them mum and dad.

And so if I had been adopted even some decades earlier, I couldn't have said mum and dad and I wouldn't have thought of my brother and sister as my brother and sister. I would have been constantly told I was a charity case, I was a waif, I was a stray, I was a bastard.

I was an orphan. And my parents would have been my guardians and I would have been their ward legally. And if my mum and dad had gone around saying to people, this is our daughter, and people had found out I was adopted, they would have thought they were fantastic.

or liars, because you can't argue with biology. Now, at some point, society just decided... that because orphans had such terrible low self-esteem and 70% of the criminal population in the UK in Victorian times were orphans, and because of stories like Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist, yeah, social activism and all that, just decided that children like me should be fully endorsed.

And so we did argue with biology and we won. And that is why I have self-esteem and have had a good education and feel completely endorsed by society. And I didn't even realize I was an orphan until I found my biological mother. and found out that from that time, some newborn babies of my generation went to orphanages. And I cried for like 48 hours because I was just like... Fuck, I'm an orphan. And I could have gone to an orphanage from birth.

And children who are in orphanages from birth have massive issues, as you can imagine, because they don't have that attachment. And that made me feel really, really, really sad and really like, oh, I would be a totally different person. And then you can parallel that with gay rights. If you look at the history of gay rights, in the 60s...

Many gay men were broken. You know, you watch something like The Boys in the Band, which is a play that's been made into a movie about gay men in the 60s in New York and how miserable they were and how much self-loathing there was and how they kind of... went for each other because there were two options.

be in the closet, be married, come and get handjobs under the bridge. The other was be out and be giving the handjobs under the bridge. And that was it. And so the misery those men lived with and the suicide rate and the mental health breakdown. So we've seen what's happened since we've endorsed. and legalised, and for gay men who now live in our society freely, and women, but it's easy to see with gay men because of criminalisation and decriminalisation.

So, I mean, you know, your and my gay friends now will be, you know, running the PTA and, you know. living their lives on the outside and being their full selves and not living in depression and marginalization. This doesn't mean there's no homophobia, but it means the legalization and the endorsing of language. has functionally changed who is capable of being productive, happy, whole members of society. And that's great for society as well as the individuals.

So I'm looking at trans rights from both of those. those avenues and saying, what would happen if we realised that our model is not the only model? There is absolute precedence for human beings to be... are fluid in gender and for them to be gender non-conforming.

Indigenous societies don't have, many Indigenous societies, they don't have the concept of orphan because the whole community will look after you and your aunt is also your mum type feel. And so it's a Western framework that delivers us orphans. Yeah. Do you see what I mean? I see what you mean, but I don't agree. And the reason is that I'm not a Western person by birth and Francis has experiences of outside. And the idea that male and female are Western categories is just not.

It's not true. In fact, I would... Not just Western, but you see what I mean about indigenous societies? Yes, but indigenous societies are like 0.0001% of the entire population of human beings on the planet. And the more east you go, the more the traditional societies are, and the more the male and female rigidity is enforced, actually. The West is actually pretty loose.

The other thing that I don't understand about the argument is that it sounds to me like we're confusing gender nonconformity. In other words... feminine man or a man who doesn't comply with the stereotypes of what we expect of a man and a woman who doesn't comply and wears trousers or whatever

with claiming that you are the opposite sex. These are completely separate things. And the third thing is, and we've obviously had a lot of people on the show to talk about this, the gay rights model doesn't work very well as a comparison, not least because it's...

actually gay people that are at the forefront of opposing trans ideology and say, if I had been... alive today as a young person, people would have told me I'm trans even though I'm gay or even though I'm autistic or even though I'm this. And the fourth difference is that decriminalizing homosexuality was about preventing the ill treatment of gay people.

When we're talking about transgenderism, the way that we've been talking about it in our societies until recently, until we're treating banned puberty blockers, is that because we have this ideology of compassion for people who may feel different... we then would prescribe very significant medical treatments to young children who are not actually capable of making rational decisions about their long-term future. So for all of those reasons, I don't really see the argument that you're making.

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but when that's pure-gold.co slash trigger take control of your financial future today I think you can see the argument that I'm making. You don't agree with the argument I'm making, but you've made four points there, so I need to take them one by one. What was the first one? So the first, well, I don't remember the order in which I made them. I think the first one was that in...

The idea that the male-female binary is a Western concept is just not factually accurate. Okay, so stop there. Yeah. I'm talking about... Indigenous people who lived all over the world until we had... So when you say... The trouble with saying it's not Western is colonisation did bring a lot of more fixed ideas. Hold on a second. Sorry, Nora, I'm not going to let that pass. Are you saying people in the Duchy of Muscovy...

2000 years ago? No, no, no. But I only just started the sentence. So I said, for example, colonization did export a lot of very Christian, quote unquote, Christian, not necessarily Christian ideals around the world. So my example was... I think it's hard to talk about the whole globe, but my example was in Australia. You may know Australian Aboriginals have the idea of brother boys and sister girls, and they are genderqueer people. But, of course, when...

you know, let's be honest, white Christian colonizers came and turned up. They said, that's not a thing and you're not allowed to do that. and said that that's wrong and there was a lot of shaming that's gone on. Now, that obviously has infiltrated into the Aboriginal population now.

There's still brother boys and there's still sister girls, but there's a lot of homophobia in the Aboriginal population that didn't exist before it was imposed. But you're not addressing my argument. My argument is not that there aren't Indigenous communities where these practices exist. My argument is that that is...

by far and away, a tiny minority of the global population of humans. I don't really understand how that matters, though, because it's still the archaic way people behave. 99% of people do something. and 0.1% of people do something different. Do you know why indigenous populations are so small though?

The point I'm trying to make to you is... Do you know why this is small? Hold on a second. Do you know why this is small? You're deflecting from the argument that I'm making. Not really. Yes, you are. The argument that I made to you is when you said this is a Western concept, I gave you examples, for example. the Duchy of Muscovy or Russia 600 years ago. So when I say Western, I'm speaking because that's where I'm having the arguments is in the West. Now, obviously, there are Eastern places too.

But I'm talking about Western frameworks. It's unlikely I'm going to come in here in Kent and start talking about, you know. Far Eastern concept. I think you're mishearing what I'm saying. You made the claim that outside of the West, in indigenous societies, these things are very normal. And the point I'm making to you is while it may be the case in certain tiny communities that exist, hold on, hold on a second, that exist in certain tiny communities, bless you, Francis, outside of the West.

There are also lots of other civilizations outside of the West where the gender binary that you were talking about as a Western concept. is actually much more firmly enforced than it is in the West, in the Islamic civilization, in the Chinese civilization, in Russia, all over the world, in South, pretty much everywhere.

So bringing up tiny Indigenous communities does not prove the case. OK, but Indigenous communities tend to be, I think, more... It's more archaic. It's more what it was before we brought in all these religious frameworks. You're still talking about the Muslim world. You're still talking about an Abrahamic framework. What about the Chinese?

I don't know. I haven't looked into the Chinese enough. They represent 1.4 billion people. Sure, but if you've probably looked into indigenous Chinese culture, you know, that archaic before we had a lot of... China now is not a great example. I think you'll understand why. Because of a fairly extreme regime with not great human rights. So I think what I'm trying to look at...

is that there are other frameworks that are perhaps more human. What makes them more human? They're less driven by control, by controlling regimes or controlling religions. I get it, but I don't think that makes them more human. If 99% of humans do A... It seems to me that A is more human. You must know. You're a bright man. You must know. You must know. You're a public intellectual. You must know.

that 99%, given the recent population boom, of people under draconian governments, under draconian religious, binary religious ideals. doesn't dwarf an indigenous culture that has been there. Australian Aboriginals are the oldest indigenous culture in the world. Do you know why there's so few of them? We killed them. Yes. We committed a genocide. Why were we able to do that?

Why were we able to do that? What are you implying? I'm just asking you the question. Are you implying because we're better? No. What are you implying? We were technologically far more advanced. That's what I'm implying. what's not clear about...

So you're saying... I'm saying we were technologically more advanced. So you're saying we're superior to Australian Aboriginals? That's quite the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm not saying we were superior. I'm saying we were technologically more advanced. So how is that the opposite?

Superior implies a moral quality. I'm not making any moral implication. You seem to be. But what I'm saying is... I think most people would hear it that way. Again, you're a very intelligent man. How would most people hear that? Most people would hear what I'm saying for what I'm saying, which is... As somebody who comes, my mother's South America, and I have indigenous heritage, I don't see it that way. A lot of my grandmother's ancestors were wiped out by the conquistadors, whether it's by...

executed them or it was disease brought in by conquistadors. I don't interpret it that way if I'm being honest. So what's the point of this question then? The point of this question is... Is because we came in with our better gendered binaries and therefore... We were able to kill them. This is going to work a lot better if you just hear the point I'm making instead of getting... I really cannot understand what it could possibly be other than we are better.

Well, let me explain it to you what it could possibly be. What's it got to do with the gender binary? Your argument, we're just talking about the argument and you seem to get quite heated about this, which is completely unnecessary.

You think it's necessary? I'm a bit stunned by what you're implying. No, you're acting in a kind of passive-aggressive way, which indicates that you're not happy about... I genuinely am being... 100% authentic, my visceral reaction to a white man sitting and saying to me... And why were we able to commit genocide on them and then just pausing? Yes. is very visceral to me. Well, let's go back. First of all, it's interesting that you brought up my skin color because...

opposite of the point you're trying to make in the book. But anyway, let's come back to the argument. You haven't read my book, so you wouldn't know what the point is. You said that the point of your book is it's all about you can't say this or this person or whatever. But anyway, it doesn't matter. You're very reductive. I thought you were a lot more intellectual than this.

I think this is very revealing, but let's come back to the argument. The argument you were making was that the Aboriginal society and other indigenous societies, as you call them, were more human. because whatever reason, and they were therefore models for emulation for us. I don't think I said more human. You did say more human. I said there is something fundamentally human about... There's something fundamentally of...

of how humans are before there's a whole heap of religious imposition and a whole heap of totalitarian imposition. That's what I'm saying. I think we can learn a lot from indigenous societies. I don't think you can say there's fewer of them, therefore they don't count. That's not what I said. I didn't say they don't count. What I said is if 99% of a population, if 99% of pandas eat bambushu... It's fair to say that eating bamboo shoots is the standard panda behaviour.

It's the more panda behaviour than the 1% or the 0.1% that eat dog turds for a living. Okay, so what about if pandas had been in an artificial environment for a long time and couldn't get bamboo shoots? and we're eating something else. But I could show you that pandas originally, and some pandas for thousands of years, the oldest pandas in the world live in Australia, and those pandas still eat bamboo shoots and always have done.

That would be something interesting for you as an intellectual, wouldn't it? So the fact that Panda's at 1.8, but something other than bamboo shoots... I mean, your idea that everything since the Aboriginals is an artificial environment, well, those societies were artificial in their own way too. Yeah, I'm not saying anything as rigid as what you're imposing onto me.

I am I'm talking through things and around things right at the top. Remember when I said, yeah, this is some ideas in a book of ideas. In a way, though, what you're doing is you're going, ah, you've said this thing and this thing isn't everything. And so I would love it if we could genuinely talk. I'm trying. And you could... I'm trying to address your argument, right? I gave you four arguments in response to the things that you said.

And we've only really got to one. Well, yes, because you got upset at me saying something about the Aboriginals. But what were you meaning by that? What were you meaning by why were we able to commit genocide? I already told you what I meant by that.

Technologically, far more sophisticated. And what's that got to do with it? Well, if a civilization is able to produce things like penicillin and the ability for its children not to die in childbirth, I think that indicates that that civilization has something positive.

The fact that the Western civilization has created the incredible material benefit... and also other benefits of every kind that we now enjoy, says something about the utility of that civilization and that worldview, which is that it is very good for human beings, which is one of the reasons that millions of people travel, many of them risking their lives.

from other parts of the world to our societies today. Okay, so Aborigines didn't need penicillin because they didn't have any of the diseases. and they were living an incredibly brilliant nomadic life.

So that they would, what they would do is it would use a certain area, then they would move on and then they would come back. So they didn't have any problems with holes in ozone layers, any problems with climate change. The incredible raging bushfires across America, across Australia right now, they didn't have that. So we brought in more problems than we did solutions, right?

Well, I don't know that that's true. It depends which indigenous community is talking about. If you look at Native Americans, for example, they were... They were just as brutal as Westerners in many ways. They had slavery. They murdered each other on a regular basis. They went to war. All of these things exist.

And they had, of course, their own diseases. It's a completely different discussion. No, it's not a completely different discussion. We brought the diseases that required the penicillin. Well, I didn't, but yes. Penicillin was certainly not invented when we committed genocide on Australian Aboriginals.

I don't understand your point. My point is we were technologically far more sophisticated. So the celebration of indigenous cultures as these possessors of all things of value from which we should now... take learnings and apply them to our society. And that's why we need to give 12 year olds puberty blockers. is not a very strong argument. That's not anything like what I said, though.

Well, that was the argument that I brought up. I really thought you were going to be open to me. I'm extremely open to you, but you have to make a rational argument to persuade. Okay, so I made lots of really interesting new arguments you'd never heard before. I have heard lots of those arguments before. You haven't heard about... How would you know which arguments I've heard? Because it's...

I live in this world and the adoption argument is I'm the first one making it. I am. I don't know. That argument is not one I've ever heard. And it was interesting. But that wasn't the argument that I responded to. I remember I responded to your argument about native indigenous people having some kind of great wisdom that we should learn from. That was the argument we were talking about. Well, but they do. Hold on a second.

You believe that. I don't. That's fine. I don't. But look at the... If you go to Peru, it's the indigenous people who are looking after the Amazon and who are defending it from just... Sure. With all that they can. Yeah, I should actually take back what I said in that I don't think we have nothing to learn from them. But I think the implication that because they're indigenous, we should learn for everything. But I am suggesting this is something we could learn.

It is not, I'm saying it's not the only framework. The only framework isn't women, men. It's not the only framework. So I'm demonstrating to you through my research that there are other frameworks that you may be interested. in examining in case there's something interesting there. So how is it that they woke up and felt like that, but nobody now in the 21st century is going to wake up and feel like that? It's impossible. It's impossible that we all fit into one of these boxes.

And the same people who don't like... Trans people saying I'm a woman don't like the non-binary category, which is an attempt to... to say, hey, I don't feel like either of these categories go, no, you can't be that either. You have to be in the one box we put you in. I've never said that at all. You may not have. Right. So we're having the conversation with me, so let's just stick with that. The second argument I made was about...

Unbelievable. In what way? You literally started by saying, why am I not woke? And I said, because people, these are the kinds of things that people who say I'm anti-woke say. And you might not say that, but you do know a lot of people who are anti-woke say non-binary isn't a category. They do. Yes, definitely. So I am suggesting... that it is not possible that indigenous cultures that have survived to this day, aboriginals being the oldest in the whole of the history of the planet.

have people within it who have had a tradition... of gender fluidity, but nobody feels gender fluid today or nobody feels gender non-conforming today. Of course some people feel gender non-conforming. What are they meant to do? Of course. And if you remember at the very beginning, I said that there is some confusion, I think, in our discussion here between...

people who don't fit into the stereotype of what a man should be and a stereotype of what a woman should be, and someone who claims to be the opposite sex. That's, I think, quite an important distinction. I don't see it as the opposite sex. I don't think there's opposites. I think it is far more fluid than that.

And I think... You don't think there's the opposite sex, so you don't think there's male and female? I just think it is more fluid than that, and I trust people when they tell me that is not how they feel inside. And much like... The idea of an orphan, which again did not exist in the indigenous cultures I've researched, that wasn't really a thing. It wasn't something you could identify as. You were taken care of by the community. It's our framework. I've got to feel like one of these two.

And so some people have now said, can I be this third category? And then people go, no, you've got to be one of these two. And it has to be the one you say you are. And that makes people unhappy the way it made. gay men unhappy to not be able to say who they were. It's making them unhappy. And I don't understand why we need to scapegoat people who say that they're telling you. I definitely don't think we should be scapegoating anyone.

At the same time, because we treat men and women in society different. The claim that you're a woman has consequences, not only for you personally, but also for the rest of society. It entitles you to certain protections that men don't enjoy and entitles you to access to certain spaces that men don't have access to. And that's really, I think, the big debate when it comes to adults. When it comes to children, there is a question about whether children are able to make these decisions.

in a way that the decisions that they make, which then have lifelong implications, particularly when it comes to medical changes. Sure, which I talk about in my book. Very, very, very, very, very few, tiny percentage of, it's not children, but of teens. do ever seek medication, and even a tinier percentage of those have gotten medication. If... If... If...

Puberty blockers have been given incorrectly, have been pushed on anybody. Which they have. Then that is malpractice and that should be stopped. That is malpractice. But it's a logical consequence of the claim that if somebody says that they feel a certain way, then they are that thing. It's not what doctors who prescribe them have said to me. They've said that they only give puberty blockers if that young person is...

absolutely adamant and on the cusp of, you know, self-harm and they just can't live any other way. It is just not common. You've had Hannah Barnes on here who did the BBC. report into all of this. And she was told that at the Tavistock clinic, some children were given puberty blockers, if I'm not mistaken, after two consultations. Yeah, well, I talk about the Tavistock in my book. But what I'm saying to you is it's a logical consequence. But that is not a logical consequence. It's malpractice.

Malpractice is two consultations and we give you... No, it's not a logical consequence. It's malpractice. And if we find that there's a hospital near here and there's been malpractice in... you know, hip surgery. We don't close it down and say no more hip surgery for anyone. We say we need more safeguarding. We need more training. We need to make sure there's no malpractice. Far more people... regret hip surgery than they do surgery to transition, actually.

All right, we're about half an hour in, and Francis hasn't said a word, so how about you have a go, mate? This reminded me of my childhood, so thank you both. The issue that I have with... wokeism is i think you're very accurate in the way you describe it as a cult and by the way like we've said before we see the same things on the right particularly when it comes to the right in america where some very ugly thing very ugly things are starting to manifest

things that we both feel deeply uncomfortable with. But let's just focus on wokeism for the moment. The thing that I have... The thing that wokeism really makes me feel really uncomfortable is... cancel culture, which seems to be part and parcel of that particular ideology. And as somebody who has seen communism and the ultimate form of cancel culture, I find it deeply sinister. And the fact that it's marketed as being kind or progressive.

It's not kind and it's not progressive. I'll use an example. Joe Lycett, the very famous UK comedian, said that cancel culture has made the UK comedy industry a kinder and better place. It's done none of those things. To strip somebody of their livelihood and destroy their career and impact not only them, but their families, their children. I'd see nothing kind or better about it. So I have a chapter about this in my book, a whole chapter on cancer culture.

The problem I have with council culture is the same problem I had with being a Jehovah's Witness. The wisdom is dispensed from on high. If you don't agree with it, you're told to listen, to apologize. If you won't apologize, you kind of get marred. If you continue not to apologize and you're even even though, you know, you're not really allowed to present your side of the story and you can be completely shunned. And that's the same model as a high control group.

And then we have to ask the question, what do we do if we know we have... a predator in our midst if, you know, I'm on certain comedian WhatsApp groups and women look out for each other and they say, look.

This happened to me. It was an unpleasant experience. I don't want to say anything about it. He's quite powerful comedian, but I just want you to know that if you are in a car with him or you, you know, you might want to get a lift with somebody else. That goes on all the time. We tell each other. Don't want to say anything about it. Can't prove it. But we give each other those heads up.

And because, say, Joe Lyce is talking about the comedy community, the comedy community has, for many years before the Me Too movement, it was just a free-for-all. There was literally nothing you could say, even if you made a sort of mild remark about, I remember doing it, about things being harder for women or there being no women invited onto this bill, even though so-and-so and so-and-so were free and they're very well known to be good.

You would be, I mean, I was basically shunned once in Edinburgh for saying something like that about an improv thing and people would not talk to me in the bar because that was the stranglehold.

Any time you get a kind of absolute power model, that power will be abused. And that power has been abused and it was abused. So I think the Me Too movement was very important to address that. So what do we do when there's a predator in our midst and the law doesn't really... want to do anything about it, or they say, well, there's no evidence for that, or there's no will.

to do anything about it or you can't prove it, what do we do? And so that's what that chapter is analysing. But ultimately, there's a whole section I've got on jurisprudence and how... There's a lot of evidence that prisons... are really, there's sort of an overhang from Victorian times when we warehouse people we didn't know what to do with.

So you'd put children in the orphanage and you'd put poor people in the workhouse and you'd put people who had mental health issues into a sanatorium and throw away the key. And prisons are sort of the only one layer. And certainly there are some people who need to be taken away from society because otherwise they will really hurt people. But most people are better off with community intervention.

Because otherwise what happens is you take someone out of the community who was causing trouble in the community or hurting people in that community. You put them in a place that is totally lacking in empathy.

And so their problem was they were lacking in empathy. You put them in a place where they are brutalized, where they are, even if they're not physically brutalized, they're emotionally brutalized. Then you say, OK, you've done your time. And we now, having made you less empathetic, put you back into that community. We know that community intervention is better. And crime doesn't go on. So I talked to...

a really interesting guy called Jared Bartle, who's a jurisprudence expert in Australia. And he said during COVID, they let a lot of people out of prisons. and gave them ankle bracelets and, you know, did community intervention stuff instead. And the crime rate didn't go up at all. Most people are much better off in their own communities. And so... What the problem with counterculture is, is we go, we don't want that comedian in our midst anymore, so we shun him.

And he goes over there. Where does he go? He doesn't leave Earth. So if he is a predator, he's now going over there to do predator things. He's not left. He's just, you've moved the problem on over there. But now he's getting more and more and more and more bitter. And he probably hangs out with the two or three other guys who are in the same position. They exacerbate each other. They get less empathy, not more. What they needed was more empathy to go, don't do that.

really horrible for them and then you've they get sidelined in the comedy community So you make the problem worse, you just shift it over there. So what we need in the comedy community, I think, is community intervention. If someone's done something criminal, we need to act on that. But if someone hasn't done something criminal, they're just... they're just making life awful for the people around them, then we need community intervention.

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it escalates and you will remain like that. For the rest of your life. We had Dr. Steve Peters talk about this. So if somebody is a rapist, I don't think that's the same as... I'm not saying it is, by the way. They're difficult. They're... There were lots of men in comedy before Me Too and some of them still do, but who were...

Kind of predatorial. I think that's a totally, that's what I said. If it's something criminal, we need to work on that. We need to actually get that sorted and get that solved. That person does need to be removed. rehabilitative work can be done should be done. I think that our whole justice system is screwed in that way and our whole idea of prison making anybody get better is absolutely screwed on that, I think. But that's a whole dismantling of a system.

But there are all sorts of things on the spectrum there. Again, it's a spectrum. It's not you are or you aren't, you're in or you're out. And so I think cancel culture, a lot of people who are abolitionists and... want to, you know, don't like the way, don't like prisons, don't like the way the police operate, are really, really happy to have some quite brutal cancel culture moves made. And I think they are at odds, aren't they?

Yeah, to me, and this was my problem with me too, not at the beginning, but where it ended up, where I had a friend who was in the comedy community, who was in the comedy industry. He's no longer in the comedy industry, and I'm not using his name. But he was effectively cancelled because... Women said that they felt awkward around him. Female comedians did because he stood too close to them and talked to them. He had autism. That's what he did to everybody. That's what he did to me.

And this entire campaign was then started. His reputation was destroyed. He nearly had a breakdown. He nearly lost his job. because he's socially awkward. Well, if that's the case, that's terrible. Like, I don't know the details of that case or what else women were saying, so I don't want to overly, you know, you can't say his name and I don't know the details. But if that's the case... That's terrible. And so the thing is...

I am a progressive person who's known to be a public feminist. And I am... It got to the point where I couldn't do the kind of work I'm doing anymore in that space without saying... what's going on with cancel culture. Because at the beginning of Me Too, it was really righting historical wrongs and drawing attention to something and shining a light. But like anything, any tool in the world... can be used as a weapon and will be used as a weapon. That's how human beings are.

So someone can have a, you know, great tool to get the weeds out of the garden or plant tomatoes or whatever, but that can be used as a weapon. And MeToo is an incredible tool that has been used. for great things. Otherwise, Harvey Weinstein would still be out destroying careers and sexually assaulting people. But like any tool, it can be used as a weapon. And if we don't want the baby to be thrown out with the bathwater, we are going to have to let the baby grow up.

I agree. And then also there was this, and it's still happening now, let's take the case of Alfie Brown. Do you remember that case of Alfie Brown? So I'll explain to you what happened to Alfie, and then we can discuss it. And I'm going to be... Alfie was doing a preview at a comedy club of his show. He did a number of jokes, basically jibes, very funny actually jokes, about Corbyn, the Corbynista government, insinuating that he was anti-Semitic.

It then went on to Twitter. There was a back and forth on Twitter. People then started to dig up old interviews of Alfie during podcasts. They also... an old routine was dug up where the premise of the routine was I think that if you wanted to have a good slur, you needed a hard consonant. A good racial slur, you needed a hard consonant. That's why all the racial slurs had hard consonants in them. And he just went through all of them. And he said, and that is why all slurs have hard consonants.

He didn't execute it particularly well. This was a routine that was over eight years old. It was then dug up and it was then used to prove that he was a racist. And then it was then used to cancel him. His shows got pulled. lost opportunities, blah, blah, blah. I have a real issue with that. And people claiming that they were offended. And that's the reason. As somebody who has been called many of those slurs, as someone who...

looks Jewish, I get more than my version of anti-Semitism online. And as someone with a Latin American background, I also get that as well online. Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. Social media is accessible, as we all know. And I have a real issue with that. I have a very, very real issue with that. That suddenly you can claim to be offended by something that happened years before and then use it to destroy somebody's career.

just because you felt offended. Well, I'm going to go on a large limb here and say I don't think Alfie's career is destroyed. Alfie's a... work in common. He's doing all right. No, he lost a lot of opportunities at the time. Gigs were cancelled. Sure. I'm sure it was unpleasant, but I don't think it's in the realm of... It's not in the realm of a Louis C.K. who is also back and has won a Grammy.

So I think that's the other thing we do need to contextualise. But that's an unfair comparison because Alfie did nothing wrong and Louis CK did do something wrong. But that's what I'm saying. It's a spectrum. So let's talk about it as a spectrum. It's not a kind of black and white. I think if people are going to go back in time and dig stuff up and, you know, with an agenda.

it's because they know what they're doing and that's a decision they're making and that is a part of modern life that's unpleasant. In terms of... I'd say it's more than unpleasant, Deborah. It's more than unpleasant. It is reputation destruction. No, I understand what you're saying. I'm just trying to think it through. Okay, fair enough. I think it... As I say, Alfie's working and Alfie's very successful. I don't think it's... I think it's not as...

It's not like a permanent cancellation. But I also think... So I have a book, I have a chapter in the book called Freedom of Speech in Comedy. And one thing that I say in that, because I'm a, I mean, I think people always, you know, sometimes the BBC will ring me up and say, they can't, you know, they, they... of Baby It's Cold Outside is being banned on the radio. And we want you as a feminist to say that that's a good thing, basically, is what they're saying. And I'm like, I'm not going to.

Why do you think they want me to be Mary Whitehouse? And I'm like, I'm a Gen X comedian. I'm not in for banning stuff. It's just not who I am. But they misunderstand. They see feminists and they go, you'll want to ban Baby It's Colossus. I won't want to ban Baby It's Colossus. And when you look into it, it's not being banned.

It's, you know, it was the Me Too era where they were like, let's curate something else this year. Let's just do Jingle Bell Rock instead. It's probably a little tone deaf at this particular time in history is all that's going on. I don't want to ban stuff. I don't want to dig stuff up on people. I also find it slightly disturbing when I see, but, you know, this guy's going to be booked on SNL, but 10 years ago he did this.

tweet that was clearly an edgelord joke. But also, I don't think that that man is genuinely gets up every morning and is motivated by racism. So it's an area where I go, I feel like it. It feels like a really unpleasant... part of modern life, that people are online trying to be private detectives to try and destroy you over this because I really want to get you for that. And I don't like it. I don't endorse it. I also think comics, some comics say stuff that...

They don't really understand or care. how what they are saying might land as every tool is a weapon, right? So a joke can be a tool, can also be used as a weapon. So I would say Jimmy Carr's joke. Did you see that big thing about Jimmy Carr? So in his big Netflix special. In his Netflix special.

It's called His Dark Material. And specifically, it's about being able to do dark material, about edgy stuff. That's what it is. And he really contextualised it. He goes, this is the joke that's going to end my career. And I break down the whole joke in the book, but he goes... He's like in the Holocaust and he looks to camera like, yeah, I'm going to go there in the Holocaust. And he says people always talk about six million Jews being killed, but they rarely talk about.

I can't remember what it is, but the hundreds of thousands or millions of gypsies that were killed. And then there's a gap. And then he goes, because no one ever wants to talk about the positive. When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that because no one ever wants to talk.

About the positives. And then he tries to explain why that joke is very clever, very funny, why it's educational and why it's so good. And of course, it caused a huge fury. And even the comedians that kind of stood up for Jimmy on a basic Jimmy's My Mate sort of basis, no one really stood up for the Jimmy. Because the joke is not funny enough. It's not to be worth that.

That's that level of nastiness when Amnesty International have said that Romani people, traveling people who Jimmy calls gypsies and some people own that term and some people don't. So I won't. Amnesty says Romney people are the most disenfranchised, the most overly criminalised population in this country. They have the least protections. They don't have famous people standing up for them and famous, they don't have representation. Now, that joke we know.

will no doubt be used in the playground against a kid because Jimmy said it. The audience has laughed because it's edgy and they've laughed in shock. They can't believe Jimmy said that. That's where the laugh's coming from and that's where Jimmy wants the laugh to be coming from. Jimmy doesn't want to hurt Romney people. Jimmy doesn't care about that. That's not what he's doing. He's doing a shock joke. And that's his joy and that's his bliss and that's what he wants to do.

But what I'm asking is, I don't want anything banned, but I want comedians and I want... broadcasters to ask about what they're curating. And to, again, like I say to the Me Too movement, if you're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, let it grow up. Because that will be used as a grenade, for sure, in the playground against Romney kids that are there. It's like, oh, no one wants to talk about the positives.

And then the teacher comes along, they go, I was just saying what Jimmy Carr said. And if multi-millionaire Jimmy Carr in his Amani suit, standing on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo with a multi-million dollar Netflix special can say it, why can't this kid? And that kid may come from a community where he hears a lot of racism about Romani people, right?

I'm asking, I'm not saying ban anything, but I'm just saying, think about what we're saying. Because, yes, we should be free in comedy to go wherever we want. That's the art form, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we're also free to drive a car. But we also understand there are rules and also conventions about not driving like an asshole.

if it's going to really inconvenience or hurt somebody else. We know that. That's understandable. A lot of comedians are better people driving to the gig than they are at the gig. And that just makes me go, hmm, I wonder why you're doing that. I wonder why you're not choosing to be as funny about something else that isn't going to probably have a real world knock-on effect.

I would say to Alfie, and I bet you anything Alfie would go, that joke wasn't good enough and I don't know why I did it and I was experimenting with being edgy. I doubt... Alfie would stand behind the joke or is still doing the joke about all the slurs and aren't they hilarious? No, he was from eight years ago. He no longer does that. Exactly. When he was a younger man. And this is incredibly pertinent to the argument at a different time, societally.

Absolutely, absolutely. This is going to sound weird coming from me, but I think on the most of it, you're actually agreeing. So me playing Peacemaker here is strange. But I think actually what I'm hearing from Deborah is... You agree cancelling people is a bad idea, but this is something Francis and I have said from day one, which is I think cancel culture, first of all, it's a human thing anyway, but also it emerges from the gap between what we can prosecute legally.

And what we know is wrong and immoral behavior that can't be punished. through the legal system the legal system does not cover all forms of bad behavior effectively right and so It was an attempt to deal with things that were sitting under the surface. that couldn't be dealt with through the criminal justice system. And sometimes just aren't. Let's be incredibly honest about the rape-rape conviction. It is so low. Most women won't report a rape.

because they just know their lives are going to be destroyed and they will not get any satisfaction. That's what Prima Facie, the play, was about. It's just... So rare. So yes, there will be men, for example, in the comedy community who are... criminals, but there's nothing we can do about it because they're not going to be convicted or we can't prove it in a way that the court...

expects us to. And actually, everyone also in the British judicial system now has to watch prima facie before they do a rape trial to understand, that is policy, to understand. how difficult it is for someone to come forward and then how difficult it is to go through that and how unlikely it is that they'll ever get any justice. So... We are dealing with an incredibly broad spectrum of from, and this is the problem with it really.

We all know that that man has been accused of rape by a number of women, but nothing is done. Nothing continues to be done. And somebody made a really quite nasty, tasteless joke, but it was eight years ago. He doesn't stand behind it. He'd like to get it taken off the internet.

He's happy to apologize for it. And someone's dug it up because they've got a different beef with him now. And can we see the kind of the spectrum that we're playing in? And this is why I think we need we just need more nuance. And in all of these things. I just think we need more discussion because it's not either or and it's not this or that. It's crunchy stuff that we want to think it all through. We want to... We want to really sit with it and go, what kind of society do we want to be?

And we want to take into account all of these things. We do want to take into account how Indigenous people lived and if there's anything we can learn. And we do want to take into account that comedy is crunchy and... contravening norms is something that comedy has always done, but society has changed. And now, you know, it used to be that Lenny Bruce would say the unsayable, and there was one space for that, and it was a basement comedy club.

And now look at the internet. What is unsayable? There's nothing that you're saying that's so edgy that isn't said every single day on Reddit. You do not need to perform the service of saying the unsayable every day anymore. People are saying all sorts of nasty stuff. And I think the idea that... you know, oh, we've got to all be transgressive in this space. I'm like, the most transgressive thing now is to be not transgressive, actually, when you look at...

people's daily life and what they're looking at on Pornhub and Quorum, Reddit, and all of these different spaces. If you're still on X, bloody hell. Everything is, every unsayable thing is being said all of the time. Well, the left did a thing about, it obsessed with virtue signaling for ages, which is signaling how good of a person you are. What's happening on the right now is there's an obsession with vice signals.

which is the more transgressive the thing you say, the cooler you are. And so people are starting to say all this moronic stuff. not even often because they believe it or anything else, not even if it's funny or not. They're just saying it because it's transgressive, and that's the only purpose of it, which is obviously totally pointless and a giant whistle. And it's made...

It's made a lot of social media, which I actually always enjoyed. There's always been robust debate and all of this stuff. I never mind people having a go at me and whatever. But I think it's just made the whole environment very... First, the worst thing about it is it's made it very inauthentic. It's made up very inauthentic in that you're not actually talking to human beings. You're just talking to people who are trying to say something like that. But anyway, we've talked about...

Two of the six conversations, we talked about trans as much as we could and we talked about cancel culture. What else have we not covered? So the first chapter, there's some interesting stuff in there about... how modern life is modelling cult. And one of the things that's said a lot is just picking up on what you said there is that people often say...

the internet makes us less empathetic or social media makes us less empathetic. And there was, in fact, a study done in 2009 that said people are getting less empathetic. And actually, when you look into it, and I've broken it down in the book. It didn't really prove that at all.

you know, you can read about it in the book. But what I'm arguing, there was another study, it didn't say that the internet had made, it just posited that, but it didn't actually look at that. And then there was another study that looked into it and found that social media made children more empathetic.

And so I started looking at that and what I discovered and what I'm arguing is that every single day social media, which we think makes you less empathetic, trolls and keyboard warriors, every single day. It demands that you be more and more empathetic. but to fewer and fewer people. So one thing I argued against in 2016 when it came up, so I started The Guilty Firmist in the end of 2015. 2016 it was kind of in full swing.

And this men are trash hashtag came up. And I was like, guys, what do you think a 14-year-old boy who's just trying to figure out how to be a man? I don't know, he's a nice guy or he isn't in his little self, but he's probably just a little complicated person.

He's just figuring out how to be a human being and how to be a man. How is that landing with him? I'll be honest with you, Deborah. As someone who was in their mid-30s at the time and has always, you know, I'm not saying that I've succeeded, but I've always tried to be a good person and do my best. That really pissed me off. It pissed me off because I and what I was saying at the time was, OK, so there's.

Again, it's not binary. I don't really believe in this sort of it is that or isn't that. We're all on a spectrum. We're all flawed. We're all fucked. We're all doing our best. There are some people, probably on polar opposites, who just get out of bed every day to make other people happy, or some people who are blatant sociopaths. and who are, you know, psychopaths who are not empathetic at all. But most of us...

are in the middle. We've got some love, we've got some fear, and all the other emotions are those two emotions in costume. That's what I think. It's just we're all trying to struggle through. So for me, a 14-year-old boy hearing that, just to use the most extreme example probably. I feel like what he's hearing is you can't be any better than you are on your worst days.

And if you're on your best day and you're really trying hard or you advocate for somebody else, it doesn't really matter because we're going to see you as trash anyway. And I said at the time, and I said it on other people's podcasts, I was begging people to stop using it, begging feminists to stop using it. And I think they were kind of riding high a little bit on what was happening in the world. And, you know, there was a time of, you know...

A little bit of getting our own back. I think that's what was going on at that time because women had felt not listened to, not heard. It was before Me Too. All we'd had is a march. If we'd even had a March then, we probably hadn't even had a March then. Did we have our March 2018? So we probably hadn't even had a March.

It was such a time of kind of clawing for something. But I was saying at the time, that 14-year-old boy, that's what he's hearing. And guys who are... really bad, who hurt women. When they are caught, I know this is true, psychologists, and also I had somebody in my show from the government where they specifically work on this problem. This is absolutely true. Men who hurt women.

when psychologists work with them, truly believe that all men do it or want to do it, but just aren't man enough, quote unquote. That's what they think. So when you tell men, men are trash, the ones who do hurt women are hearing that and going, yeah, all men are trash. So when men say to me, not all men, I go, yeah, we know. 100% of the men I've been with have not killed me.

I know. I live with men. I work with men. I get in a cab. I know it's not all men. I want men who are basically good guys who wouldn't hurt women. to tell the other ones not all men. Because the ones who do hurt women, they think it is all men. They're the ones you need to tell. You don't need to tell me. I know it's not all men.

I think it is the minority of men who are violent towards women. And by the way, male-on-male violence is much higher than male-on-female violence. It is a male problem. But the truth of the matter is, if men stop killing, killing would stop. Very, very few deaths are from women. And generally, it's either women in self-defense or in coercive control situations under the group of a man. That's the fact.

It is not all men. Please tell the men it is. It's not all men because they don't hear me because I am the other to them. We'll get you back to the interview in just a sec. But first, imagine this. You're walking down the street and there's a giant billboard with all your personal details on it. Your passwords, your credit card numbers, your bank login. just there for anyone to see. Sounds insane, right? Well...

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The thing that I knew was going to happen was there was going to be a backlash. There is only so long you can tell a group of people that they are wrong, evil... stupid, disgusting, simply through the fact that they have these immutable characteristics before they turn around and go, you know what? Fuck you. And I see Andrew Tate as part of that backlash, if I'm being honest. Well, because, and people, and by the way, I am no fan of Tate. I want to make that absolutely clear.

But to me, when people go, this is awful, of course he's awful. That is a symptom of a backlash. Tate isn't the problem. The problem is what is underneath that, that has given rise to his prominence. I would suggest that we cannot blame feminism for the manosphere. The manosphere is... far too I'm not blaming feminism I'm blaming all men are trash and that kind of punitive vengeful those punitive vengeful movements I think have created a back

That's my argument. I would say that misogyny is a deep and vast mine and I don't think you can really blame very recent feminist marches and some hashtags for it. It's much deeper than that. Andrew Tate is much deeper than that. And I was saying it. I was saying it all through that. I was going, you know, those 14-year-old boys now. They were 16 then. How old are they now? Going to be 24, 25? Yeah.

And a lot of them are looking to Jordan Peterson. A lot of them are looking to Andrew Tate. And that, to me, again, is a spectrum of... manospheric ideas. And then that bleeds into Zuckerberg going,

We need more masculine energy at Facebook. I've worked at Facebook. They do not need any more masculine energy. Well, actually, it's interesting you bring up Jordan and Andrew in the same sentence because I actually see the distinction between the two of them as very telling. Jordan Peterson was a... a male role model for men of our generation.

some men of our generation, a very constructive figure who told them how to be better and taught them certain values and importance of You know, there's a clip where we had somebody on our team who had a baby recently, and I sent him a video of Jordan's talking about the most important thing when your child is born is to look after your wife. That's your job. Yes, your number one job. So he had a very positive impact on young men.

The next generation's male role model is Andrew Tate. And I think that difference and that negative evolution is precisely the point that Francis is making. I never really felt that the all men are trash thing was an attack against me, but there are a lot of young men. younger than us, who did feel that. And that thing you're talking about, about vengefulness, it's the thing that we find Vera putting about the right nowadays, particularly in America.

They're like, oh, now we have the power and now we're going to show them. And that's exactly what men felt when a lot of men felt, especially young men who are not. As advantaged as people like to pretend in our society. We've just had various reports come out about the fact that the gender pay gap now works the other way and all sorts of other things.

I would like to see that. Yeah, you should look into it. I would like to see that. Yeah, you should look into it. So the point I'm making is that evolution from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tay. is exactly the thing that Francis is talking about as the backlash.

See, do you not think Jordan Peterson has missed the turnoff now? I've seen him say some really unpleasant things about women. Like what? Oh, just that men can't control insane women, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, no one can control insane women, that's for sure.

Do you not find that? No one can control insane men either. Insane people are quite difficult to control. Well, yeah, but it's said in a context of, you know, that's what they like. You can find, if you look, if you Google Jordan Peterson.

quotes about women you'll find anyone's quotes you can find things i have seen him say stuff that i i find unpleasant i know jordan very well uh i've been on tour with him uh i've seen 10 000 people turn out for his shows well-dressed and I've seen him talk to the people who come to his shows afterwards.

And all of them to a person say, you've made me a better person. Here's the girlfriend I met because of you, etc. He's made an incredible positive impact on millions of people. I'm not saying he has not said anything wise. I'm saying I... I find it kind of a bit scarier sometimes when somebody...

has this sort of respectability element of, look at all my well-dressed fans, and then they can start to say almost anything because they have convinced people. Jordan's done quite the opposite, though. He's become far more considerate and careful. Maybe I missed that phase of Jordan and I'll look back into it. But I've seen things that I haven't gotten to hand and I don't want to be misquoting. But I've seen things that have...

troubled me about Jordan Peterson. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. But that doesn't mean he's a bad person. It just might mean that you have a different view of things. Right. Like you and I have a different view of things, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I come away from this conversation thinking you're a bad person or you hate men. Likewise, the other way around. Right. So what I'm saying, the point I'm making.

Jordan's human. I'm sure he said things that you don't like. I'm sure he said things I don't like. But on balance, he's someone who's made a huge... positive impact on men. Andrew Tay, I see, is very much the opposite of that, right? And the point Francis is making is, I think there's a lot of truth to the idea that this constant, the thing that you were against, the thing that you were speaking against, is what's created that shift.

so that now we've gone from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate. I think it's a lot more sinister than that. I don't think it's helped, and I opened by saying this didn't help. No, no, I agree. This did not help. And the constant... them and us-ing, the cult like them and us-ing. And I do see this on both sides. I see it across the board, across the political scape.

And I feel like my side is the progressive left. And therefore, I want to keep my own house in order. And I also think the progressive left are meant to be empathetic and helping other people up. That's the whole name of the game for us. What are we doing saying anybody is trash? It's dehumanising. I don't know why we're doing it. And I fought against it for years. And I feel angry.

that it has exacerbated the situation. However, I also think when you look at Project 25 and the Heritage Foundation in America and the rise of the trad wife and the... unpleasantness of far-right politics that is rising up and Elon Musk trying to buy... elections across Europe for the far right. I think it's just so much more sinister. The Andrew Tate of it all is so much more sinister than...

well, if you're going to say we're trash, we're going to build an uber misogynist. I think there's so much else driving it and going on. And I think it's a little cosmetic to say it's the fault of. Honestly, I think... I had a really interesting conversation, which is in the book. I've got it as an interview in the book with a guy called Neil Datta, who is the head of the European...

a forum for sexual reproductive rights in Europe. So it's European, obviously, in Europe. And so it's basically a forum and he gets all the MPs that care that women have. It's really that women have... access to birth control, abortion and cervical smears, you know, for stop cancer and, you know, just basically that kind of package. And... Basically, he explained to me and then I looked into it and this does. check out, that around 2012...

And there was, I mean, I don't know how much I really want to say about this and maybe I should just let people read it in the book. But basically, there was some Christian far-right nationalists who got very angry that they were losing. based on the fact that both the UK and France brought in equal marriage.

And it was around that time and they went, OK, if it's the mad Scandies, the Danes will marry a chair. That's nothing to do with us. But when it's the United Kingdom and when it's France, we've got to do something here. And they came over and they had a forum in, they had a sort of conference in the UK around 2011, 2012, that time. And they said, we've got to stop asking, what do we want? And we've got to start asking, what can we get?

Because if we come into the UK saying no abortion, anti-gay rights, we'll be laughed at as crackpots. And one of the questions they asked was, what do feminists disagree on? Do you know what they came up with? Trans rights. But there'd always been a little bit of a, well, back to the 60s. Is that gay rights? Is that queer rights? How is this related to Andrew Tate? Sorry, I don't follow. So it's all part of the same sort of bubbling up of...

this is not how we want it to be. And I think there's a real, you can really draw a line between the... the kind of bubbling up of this extreme misogyny, and at the same time, that heritage foundation family values. And there's evidence that the Heritage Foundation are funding the triad wives. Do you know that Ballerina Farm? Yeah, I'm familiar with it. Forgive me, I'm genuinely not being difficult. I don't follow how Andrew Tate comes from that.

I think it's just like a landscape. Well, here's an example. Andrew Tate has now been given... He was here somewhere in... He was in Florida. Florida. He's been moved to Florida, but he was moved... No, no, he wasn't moved to Florida. He was granted leave by the Romanian court.

And he's a US citizen, so he went on holiday to Florida. I thought that was somehow given to him by Trump. No, no, it wasn't. Trump wasn't aware. No, no, I think Deborah's right. I think the Trump administration put pressure on Romania.

to release him to be able to go back to the US. That's what I thought happened. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is what happened. And that's, I mean, that's what I read and, you know, one must always check one sources on the internet, but that's what I read. No, no, I think that is accurate. And it just feels like a sort of rising tide to me. Okay, let me give you a different version because that sounds a little wishy-washy, but actually what you're getting at, I think, is not inaccurate.

A right-wing person, of whom I know many, would say that what you're describing is a reaction to progressive overreach. Now, I don't think gay marriage is progressive overreach. But many of the things, by the way, I think part of the part that we've talked about that's missing from this is the social media aspect, which comes along around 2014 and you see the rise of all of this stuff happening.

But there are lots of other things that people will describe as progressive overreach to which they're reacting. And Andrew Tay and all sorts of other social movements are certainly a reaction to that, which is the sense that like. You said it yourself, we now finally have the opportunity to get our message across. And there was a kind of crudeness to that. There was a vengefulness to that. There was a...

But that in itself is a response to patriarchal overreach, which has been intact for a very long time. You can't expect people to have no voice for so long and be kept in the dark. Then we're stuck in this doom loop. And then not come out and have something to say about it. If no one wants to forgo vengeance, then we're stuck in this doom loop. I think it's... unfair to say that women took vengeance. They took some glee, I would say.

Some women took some glee. But again, this is some women. Feminists are this tiny group, really. When you look at the most people in this country are watching the traitors. So the far right is just some men. It's just some men. But it's some very powerful men. Some very powerful women. That hashtag was trending and it wasn't just a hashtag. You cannot equate some very powerful men. Who's the equivalent?

of Donald Trump and Elon Musk who can actually change our lives. Name me that woman. And I'll tell you what it isn't. It's not Hillary Clinton. It's not Kamala Harris. Who is that woman? Set aside those two. I certainly wouldn't say either of those two men is far right. You wouldn't say Elon Musk or Donald Trump were far right? Definitely not. They're literally cancelling...

They're cancelling, they're destroying lives right now. Okay, perhaps we have a different definition of what far right is. What would you say, what's the definition of far right in your head? What about them isn't far-righters, I would ask you? What about what they're doing isn't far-right? I understand your question. In order to answer your question, we both have to agree on a definition of far-right. They've literally said... Deborah, just pause.

Just pause for a moment. What is your definition of far right? It's far further than fiscal conservatism. It is social conservatism that says... There is one proper way to live, and that way is a heteronormative family, 2.4 children, women should be having babies. This is all Heritage Foundation values. This is all Project 2025 staff. And also, if you don't agree with this, here's an example of something far right that Trump and Musk are doing. If you don't agree with this...

If universities allow illegal protests, by which they mean protests... The students will be instantly dismissed. This is what the American government are saying. So you're at Harvard. You want to protest. That government decided that's a legal protest. The students will be instantly dismissed. If they're foreign students, they'll be sent home. They may be arrested and imprisoned, no matter where they're from.

And if the university is allowed it, all federal funding will be pulled from that university. Does that or does that not seem to you to be verging into fascism? No, I don't think it's verging into fascism. But so... What would cause your alarms to go off then? The right to protest is incredibly important.

And if without it, what do we have? What kind of government do we have? Hold on a second. I'm answering your question. The right to protest is incredibly important. I think the interesting thing about those particular cases that you're referring to... is whether there is celebration, glorification or promotion of terrorism, which is illegal both in this country and in the US. And I think that's probably where the dividing line is on that issue.

But I'm a little bit confused. Please do not think for one second. This isn't going to hit. queer people, LGBTQ plus people. It is hitting them right now. There are states where they are arguing to take... take back the right to equal marriage and their estate. which are putting forward these sort of, I can't remember what they call them now, but sort of some kind of special trust marriages.

where we give you a tax break, but the marriage is one from which a woman cannot divorce a man, basically, without these really old-fashioned, like we're literally talking about... the rights that women fought for, that unless you can prove that your partner's been faithful or you can prove that they've been significantly abusive, you cannot divorce them. Yes. I mean, we are heading into Gilead.

We really are. None of those are things that anybody here supports. But I'm just coming back to this idea of Trump and Musk being far right. You initially talked about the Heritage Foundation, traditional marriage, all of that stuff. And then we talked about fascism. So is your definition, are you saying Trump and Musk are fascists? I'm saying that the government is making moves, which makes anybody who is frightened of fascism, which should be all of us.

Very scared. Like, I feel like saying if it's an illegal protest, and what kind of protest does Trump like? You know Trump. What is he like? I don't know Trump. Well, you know, you've seen him in power before. If the students were all out... protesting in a state where they were taking away equal marriage. And there were loads of gay students. I'm pretty sure Trump is pro-equal marriage, isn't he?

And Elon, certainly. I would imagine. They're all pro it while there's social capital in it. But he hasn't been saying anything positive about gay people lately, has he? Have you said anything negative about gay people? I'm pretty sure. Which way is the wind blowing, be honest, in America about gay rights? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And who's in charge?

Yeah, but this is the interesting thing because it's the worrying thing about the right now. Trump seems like a moderate compared to some of the people. who are outside of the halls of power. Well, then in that case, someone else is pulling the strings and he's allowing them to be pulled because it is fast going towards...

I don't like, neither does Francis, a lot of the things that are happening in America in particular on the right. You don't need to convince anyone here of that. I'm kind of a bit of a stickler for definitions because I think it's important. And one of the things... This is one of the big things that's happened that really always worried me with wokeness. And I think we're now seeing, unfortunately, the tragic results of that, which is...

When people throw around labels like fascist and Nazi and bigot and whatever, irresponsibly, as they did, and they continue. What then happens is there are now actual Nazis. actual Nazis, not people who say, you know, trans woman isn't a woman or whatever, but people who actually are doing Holocaust denial, people who are actually saying Hitler was a good guy, all of this stuff.

And we can't call them a Nazi anymore and be credibly believed because the left spend years calling people a Nazi for, you know, thinking pronouns are funny or whatever. Do you see what I mean? I think you can. It has no effect on the right anymore. It has no effect because the power of those words got taken away. I don't really think you can blame some young people who, like the internet is a vicious...

It wasn't young people. David Lammy called the ERG. He went on national television in Britain with Andrew Marr and said that the ERG, basically a group of conservatives who are pro-breakers, are worse than nazis it wasn't young people it was the entire left I do know that Boris Johnson is with Steve Banyan, who is a white supremacist. We do know that there are links between Viktor Orban, Salvini and others. I'm not backing off on that.

Never when I back on off on this on behalf of my constituents and the BBC should not allow this extreme hard-right fascism to flourish. And often the... These are elected Conservative MPs. I don't care how elected they were, so was... the far right in Germany. They're often elected, often giving a cover.

for the thugs on the ground. Look, I don't know that it was the entire left. I don't remember calling anyone a Nazi, and I would say myself on the left. I think we've all got a problem that we go on the internet and whatever the worst things that we see, even though there's fewer of them than... the best things. And there's fewer of them. Most people aren't even on social media in that capacity. They're just sharing their holiday snaps and their, you know, pictures of their grandchildren.

And we decide that's who society is and that's who the left is. That's true. But David Lammy and prominent left-wing politicians and prominent left-wing activists and prominent left-wing campaigners and prominent left-wing figures... all used these words and threw them around deeply irresponsibly, in my opinion. And now we have lost the language to describe the things that are happening.

Well, that may be the case. I'm not suggesting that people should have called people Nazis who were, in fact... who they felt a vociferous disagreement with or were perhaps, in my opinion, taking steps towards the space we're in now. But I don't think you can blame that. If I hear somebody described as a... As a Nazi, it doesn't make me go, I'll show you what a real Nazi is.

Nobody becomes a real Nazi who wasn't seething with those thoughts. That's not my argument. I'm not saying we've created Nazis. I'm saying we now can no longer call out Nazis for being Nazis. Because the word Nazi no longer has the meaning that it did because it got eroded. That's what I'm saying. But it sounds like you agree, which is fine. And that's why I picked up on the far right point, because I don't think Donald Trump is far right. I just don't.

The guy was a Democrat. If you look at his policies, some of which I like and some of which I don't like. On the broad scale of it, he's a pretty moderate centre-right guy. I don't think Donald Trump has any ideology except more power and glory for Donald Trump. I think we impose... We impose far more intellectual rigour on that man than... There's just nothing there except more for me. Elon Musk is the same. It's just more for me, more money for me.

How could anyone need that many more billions and still want more billions? I think it's about money, actually. And take a chainsaw. No, but it's about what money represents, which is I'm the best, I'm the biggest, I'm the most powerful. Take a chainsaw like, lol, I'm going to cut all the literacy programs. I mean, when you have that much... Like, one thing that I think does point to fascism...

Why is he there? Why is he making these? Why is he making these? Was he making any recommendations? Like, there's a... Well, the steelman argument would be that he is a very, very, very successful businessman who knows how to run and create things very powerfully. But an unelected...

It's pretty normal for governments to bring in business people to run certain things. Sure, but there's certain things and there's, this is my right hand, Dr. Evil. There's certain things and there's what's going on now. And I haven't met anyone. on any side of the political divide. And I am a pretty, I'm a pretty, I talk to lots of people from lots of, you know, I'm open to all discussions. I'm here today.

I haven't met anyone who's not scared of Elon Musk, who isn't going, oh my God, that guy's unhinged. That guy is... That guy is... shouldn't be in the position of power that he's in. He's making fast decisions about things he doesn't understand. And the economy is an ecosystem. And you can't just go, we'll cut every community centre in America because the government aren't funding that shit. And they don't understand, but the corner shop around the corner where the kids go and buy their coat.

and their sandwich is now going to go out of business. a lady who lives across the road who does the manicures and so on, where the mums come when the kids are in the community centres going to go to have business. What are they doing? What are they doing? I think everyone I know is looking at that and going... this isn't wise and this is insane and this is really going to cause... a terrible collapse of the economy. And I don't know what an unelected person is doing.

at this right hand in the White House, now apparently in charge of everything. And the way the wind is blowing towards queer rights, towards women's rights, is... scary. Women are dying in states where abortions are banned or now are virtually inaccessible. They're dying. And women coming in, I've talked to doctors about this, women are coming in going, I'm miscarrying. Please, can you? And the doctors are saying we cannot do anything until it is life threatening. And if we do it.

We have to sit there and watch and wait till the point of life-threatening, or we can lose our medical license and we can go to jail. And that's a very, very real fear for these doctors. Doctors are leaving the state because they're like, I can't do my job anymore, and I don't want to watch women die and watch women bleed out. and or have to prove in court she would have died. So women are already dying in America. And that's, this is why I would never say I was anti-woke.

Because to me, sometimes people, what people lump into wokeness is the concern that people have when... They don't have representation in the big buildings that count for people like them. They don't have anyone in there going, but people like me are dying. And that, to me, is why the word woke is misused to sort of like, oh, well, somebody criticised me because I forgot Jenny's pronouns, is not the same as...

I mean, obviously, use Jenny's pronouns, what's costing you? But it's not the same as we don't need to worry about women dying on tables of miscarriages because they're not allowed to have an abortion. I've never heard anyone make that argument.

But that's what I'm saying. I'm anti-woke because I want to prevent people from having an abortion. But it's just people do categorise it. People do categorise it all as the same thing. It's all your kind of values. When people say to me that I'm woke, it's like... You care about these things. The main thing feminism should be caring about is our... Are people's lives appreciably worse or appreciably better? Are people, is there unfairness?

That's what feminism should be about. Can there be justice where there is unfairness? Agreed, agreed. I think when you're talking about how people categorise wokeness, I think that's people who don't actually understand what it means to be woke. I think that's people who just...

have a very surface level analysis of it. Your definition is going to be different from mine. I mean, I, I, anyway, let's get off the topic of what, because what we're doing is nuance of a word and that's what we're criticizing other people for. That's not the problem. The problem is. We have two ways of looking at the world and then a million ways in between. And we are reducing and reducing and reducing to them and us. And we need to understand we are the human race.

And our world is getting hotter. My friend's house burnt down in LA. I've got friends in a cyclone in Australia at the moment. The world is getting worse. in so many different ways that we are at risk of war in Europe. We need to get on our own team and our own team is humanity. I also think as well, Deborah, and we talk about this a lot on the show, I think it's also people need to show courage.

I think for too long, we've seen either side go off the deep end. And a large part of it is because people don't say... We're going off the deep end. Part of the reason that whatever you want to call that side of the left went off the deep end is because not enough people on the center left went. Hang on a minute. Can we just calm down a bit here? Maybe not all men are trash.

Maybe we don't destroy someone for a joke they made eight years ago. This is not the correct way of doing it. And it's the same on the right. We need the people in the center, which I see was broadly being center left. us wherever we may identify as being. we need to actually be able to hold that center. I'm pretty hard left. That's what I was going to say. I don't think she has sent her left. I'm pretty hard left, but I also have been in a cult and I know when I'm in one. And so I want...

I want to prioritise what's important. By being in the centre, I mean that, not these fringe little movements, that. I'm happy to be on the left. I just want to build bridges to the right. And what I don't want to do, at least not burn the bridges we already have. We have suffered from burning some of the bridges we already had. Most people are just cracking on with their day and watching the traitors.

Looking at what's two for one in Sainsbury's and worried about what their kid's doing at school and all of that. That's what most people are doing. And so for me, it's those people in the middle where I want to say, hey, we are in danger in this country of losing our abortion rights. We are. Like, there are moves here to be anti-abortion moves and bring the weeks down and then bring the weeks down and then bring the weeks down. And they want it to be like America and there are.

There are forces in this country. So I want to appeal to people for whom that would matter, who are not... politically activated right at the moment because they're just cracking on with their lives and they've never had the time or the, you know, the... You know, it hasn't been a priority. That's who I think we should be talking to. And I think we need to be building bridges. And I think if we if we want.

a fairer world for people who are gender non-conforming, for gay people, for women who do have different needs, then we have to start building bridges to people who... are in the middle and not immediately scold them because they've come online and said something with the wrong turn of phrase.

And I think we need to be really figuring out how to build bridges to people on the rights that are reachable. Well, if you want to do that, then I have one suggestion for you based on what you've just said, which is I think the one thing that you will never reach people.

anywhere outside the hard left with is the idea that we want to build a fairer world for people from this community or this community or that community. If you want to reach people across the political spectrum, you should be talking about a fairer world for everybody. And this is the problem that the left has made over the last 10 years in particular, which is this obsession with identity.

it's incredibly divisive because anyone who listens to what you've just said, what they will hear is, you want a better world for these subsets of the population. Okay, well, I'm not one of the subsets of these subsets for the population. What does that mean for me? And they might, I don't know, reasonably or unreasonably, hold on, assume...

from that, that what you want is to take something away from them and give it to these people. That's what it sounds like. And this divisiveness along racial lines, sexual lines, it's just... The reason I'm against identity politics is not because I want whatever my identity is to be well protected. It's because I know that when people disappear down these rabbit holes and only care about this group and this group and this group.

that's when everybody suffers. Doesn't have to be only, but can you imagine a world... in which gay people have the rights that they do in this country now that you agree with, where gay people didn't get up and fight and say, we don't have any rights. And we're going to make that our focus. When you look at how gay people got rights in this country...

They had to say, for now, this is what we're focused on. That was identity politics. We just didn't call it identity politics. We didn't have that name. How would they have got them otherwise if they'd been like, but also for straight people, because straight people had rides. Fine. Then you're never going to reach the people that you're trying to reach. What do you mean fine? What do you mean fine?

What do you mean fine? How would they have got them? Do you agree with them having them? How would they have got them? See, you're demonstrating, and earlier in the interview, exactly the opposite of what you claim you're trying to do, which is the moment I say something you don't like, you become...

aggressive and highly emotional. Aggressive and highly emotional? I'm just having a debate with you. No. I'm showing passion. No, especially not at the beginning you weren't. But anyway, what I'm saying to you is... I didn't like... One thing that you said in a way that I found unpleasant. And I did react to that. But if I don't... So you're not reaching anyone who's listening to this conversation by doing that. That's my point.

You don't know that. You don't know who I'm reaching. Oh, I know. I know. I know audience pretty well. I know audience pretty well. I mean, can I just let me just finish. But you're asking me to sit here as if it's just entirely intellectual and talk like this. Sometimes I'm not asking you to do anything. What I'm saying is your claim is you want to reach people.

And I'm saying to you, if you want to reach these people that you're currently probably not reaching, here's some thoughts I have about how better to do that. But then what you can't do then is just go... I just sit, I just push to the side. You're an intellectual. You have to intellectually discuss this. I'm not pushing anything to the side. I'm saying the method that you are using is not going to be effective.

for reaching this particular group of people. I don't really believe you. I think passion is always loved. I think people don't want to see people go... Yes. I think people want to see people go, no, but how can you say that? I'm not against passion. I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I enjoy debate. Me too. I don't find it off putting it all if I see someone go, no, but how can you say that? As long as they're being good natured. Not do I, and that's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is you become... Hysterical. An hysterical woman. Is that what you're saying? Well, see, you're demonstrating it again. Now you're trying to put words in my mouth. You're trying to put me onto a template that already exists, which is a man calling... I'm teasing you. Yeah, you are. But every joke is only half joke, as we all know, right? So you're doing the thing that is going to put a lot of people off. What I'm saying to you is if you want to reach across the spectrum.

Across the spectrum. Okay. Well, look, let's be honest, right? You're very good at reaching people on the hard left. And you're very good at reaching women. And that's why they love your show. But a lot of my people will turn in to see this as well. Because I'll tell them it's on. But you're not trying to reach them. You already reached them.

You claim you want to reach people on either side. That's what you're saying. Now, I think it's fair to say that I'm probably better than you at reaching people who are on the center and center right. Would that be fair? Yes. Well, because you agree with them. It's not because I agree with them. It's because I articulate arguments that resonate with someone. So now you seem really pissed off. I'm not pissed off.

I'm not even remotely pissed off. I'm just trying to make clarity on this issue, right? So what I'm saying to you is if you want to reach those people who I know how to reach... I should agree with you. No, you shouldn't agree with me. I'm just saying the strategy that you are displaying with your behavior is not going to be effective for reaching you. I feel like, am I...

Am I, I don't know, Francis, am I shouting? Am I swearing? Or am I just going, how can you say that? I didn't say that you were shouting or swearing. What is the behaviour? It's just me leaning forward and going, come on now. That's not the way you behaved earlier in the interview. Anyway. Well, what you said was... quite significant to me. Was it offensive? It's not that it was offensive, it scared me. Okay. And so that did...

Right. So anytime I say something that scares you, this is how you react. Whereas if you listen to what I was saying, it's actually perfectly logical and reasonable. This is quite controlling what you're doing now. Controlling. You're controlling the way that I operate in the interview space where I've done nothing inappropriate. I've just debated you.

Most of the time I've agreed with you. And I've agreed with you. I've found masses of agreement with you. And I've found with you. And where I haven't, I may have shown some passion in a debate, but this sort of... say, now I control your behavior. I don't control your behavior remotely. You made the claim that you want to reach people on the other side. And what I'm saying is...

This is not a way that's going to work for the following reasons, because identity politics is divisive by its very nature. That's what I'm saying. Okay, but then what I pointed out to you was... Yes, the gay rights movement succeeded by focusing on gay rights. Right, so I'm asking you, how could they have done it? I'm not talking about how they could have done it. I'm talking about now.

How could they have done it otherwise? Because if you can't show me any other way, then you're just saying, it's divisive, so sit back and take what you've got. I didn't say. So what's the other way? What's the other way is what I'm asking you. I did tell you what the other way.

which is to emphasise as much as possible our shared common humanity. That's literally what I did. I said, we're all going to be on the same side. But when you say, well, I want a fairer world for this group and this group and this group. But I do. I also want a fair word for men. I've said that. I've said that at other points in this interview. But there are... I have.

I literally said I fought actively in my feminist community against the men of trash. But I have argued on national radio many times that women and children first is... What an odd rule. And what it means is if I'm in a rescue situation and I'm in a dinghy and out in the ocean and there's a 19 year old young man.

who has got his whole life ahead of him and is probably ways less than me. I'm not going to open up another branch. Men and women, women and children first is exactly the right policy. Anyway, let's move on to Substack. I mean... Say your final thing and then we'll move on to Substack where we'll continue the conversation. I am always like this, yeah. It's very controlling. Controlling. Yeah, it's very controlling. No, I... The producer's laughing. I, um... If...

If I am out in the ocean, I hope I would get out of the boat and say, look, you're 19, you stay in the boat, I'll drown. But... It's hard to get out of a boat of privilege and society tells me that that's my right. I don't have any children. Why am I in the boat? Why isn't he in the boat? I don't understand it. But it's hard to get out of a boat of privilege and it's hard for men to get out of their boats of privilege or even see them.

So there are spaces in which I argue for men's rights all the time. Men's rights activists always think feminists don't do that. I do. I argue for men's rights all the time where I see that there's a disparity. And so I am not someone who's going, I'm only fighting for this, I'm only fighting for that. But if you go onto the street and say more for everyone, and you don't say gay people can't get married, straight people can, it's never going to happen.

The only reason we have gay rights in this country is because somebody got out and fought for them on a specific... So there is also room for specific platforms. It is just not, there's just not a helpful way forward by going, we only feel for each other and everyone else is dehumanised.

The argument with gay rights is different, because what gay people wanted was equal rights with everybody. And all you have to say today is, I want equal rights for everybody. You don't have to talk about this community and that. That implies that all, because gay people can get married.

All other rights are sorted. No, but if there is legal discrimination, let's point it out and fix it. Okay, so that's what feminism's doing, abortion in America. Okay. And fighting to keep our reproductive rights here. Well, abortion is never a case of equal rights because... It's highly specific to one sex, although, as you say, everything is a binary. But it doesn't work that way. Okay. it's different because men can't have children.

Right, so therefore we need to fight for a community, and that community has an identity. And the more you talk about that, the more you push away everyone else, which is the point I made. Okay, so we can't fight for abortion rights in case... I didn't say you can't. I said the messaging ought to be, as much as possible, abortion is a different issue. but on all the other issues that you're talking about, this marginalized community, that marginalized community, etc.

The focus ought to be on the fact that we want everyone to have equal opportunities and equal rights. Sure, sure. And where it is a problem that all human beings, climate change, that's all human beings would benefit from. trying collectively to fix that problem, right? But abortion is specifically... about women and people of minority genders. So there are times when we do have to advocate for specific groups. Yes, but there are times when we don't and we have been.

DEI, for example, is a perfect example of this, right? When you push people onto, we started this conversation, right, with this very thing. where you push people into certain positions to increase their representation. Often, inaccurately, you make the point about London, it's true.

BBC in the 1980s did not look like London today, but BBC today doesn't look like Hastings today either. So when we talk about representations, it's much more complicated than people who live in big cities who have a particular vision. And my point is, the more we emphasize our shared humanity and the need for everyone to have equal opportunity.

the less divisive things become. The more we focus on individual communities, the more divisive things become. And that's just a fact. You may say that you need to fight for this group. I may agree with you. It doesn't change the fact that it's divisive. I feel very strongly that... Everything is not there. We're not there yet. We're not at a point where life is so equal we can just say human beings for the win.

I feel like there are still many, many things to be fought for. And we've lost stuff that we had. You know, you look at what's happening in America. They're losing stuff hand over fist right now. And so, and to me... DEI was only ever about. trying to right historical wrongs. And I feel like the gutting of it is really about supremacy for people like Musk and Trump. I don't really think it's anything to do with the fact that we've overstepped. If we'd overstepped...

the representation would be very, very, very different than how it is. We haven't overstepped. And we're not talking about the casting of David Copperfield on ITV1. We're literally talking about who's in the House of Commons, who's in the Senate. So I would... I would argue against... You want to enter politics, fine. But it's just divisive. I mean... You say things so categorically like it is...

But it's what you want. It's what you're arguing. Everyone has to stop talking. No, you don't have to stop talking. I'm just saying it's the logical conclusion of the thing that you're saying. You think DEI is about righting historical wrongs. So you want DEI. You think that certain communities don't have equal rights and you want to focus narrowly on those communities to bring them up to whichever position you think that they should be in. You want identity politics. That's fine.

But you have to acknowledge that it's divisive. Could it not be more nuanced than that? That's what I was saying at the beginning. It's not this or that. It's a big... crunchy, squishy, huge thing where we need this, but this can cause this. So then we try and do that. We try and do that. It's your very binary. Your very it is or it isn't. And it is. And there it is. Because some things are or they are.

Like male and female. And I am going to go out on a large limb and say... There are lots of things that are very nuanced. That there are very nuanced. And one of those is people's... people's gender identities. And one of those things is how we manage to fight for people like the history of gay rights, how people fight and still manage to... The hard work of creating acceptance, not just civil rights in their communities. It's a hard, long fight.

The straight community has not really done a lot. The gay community has done most of the work to make sure there's an integration so that now most people in this country go, yeah. Paul and Jack next door, they're really nice. Jenny's teacher's a lesbian and it's no big deal. That was a big old hard fight. And I just don't think we can minimise it by going, it's divisive, stop talking. It wasn't divisive. In the end, it brought a lot more humanity and harmony to...

to this country. And now you've got Donald Champanila. I'm saying we talked about this with Andrew Tate. We talked about this with other things. Progressive overreach is why Donald Trump is in power. So you would call gay marriage overreach? No, not at all. I'm saying all the things that happened. See, again, you keep putting words in my mouth so that you can make me sound like I've said something offensive.

No, no, I'm not saying you've said anything offensive. I'm trying to interrogate what you're saying. Because sometimes you do a bit of a leap where you go, so this. And I'm like, oh, hold on, that's way over there. Donald Trump was elected. Effectively. Do you know what his most effective campaign ad was? I think it was... The trans one. It was the Carmelas for them, Donald, that President Trump was feeling. Donald Trump was elected.

Yeah, but that's propaganda. It is propaganda. Most people don't know an out-trans person. Hold on a second. Most people don't know a trans person. That was propaganda. That's exactly what I was saying before about the far religious right and Heritage Foundation and Project 25. Most people in America...

reacted to that ad in a very powerful way which is why it was the most powerful ad right The reason that it's happening, the reason that Donald Trump is in power is that many, many people have had enough of this identity policy. have had enough of the obsession with victim, have had enough about all of this stuff that you are advocating for more of.

And my point to you is, if you carry on doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting the results you've been getting. It's as simple as that. Now, I don't like... much of the overcorrection that we're about to experience. And I've been predicting for many years and opposing the woke left for this very reason that this was inevitable.

I think there's something more sinister going on, which I've written about in my book. And I did a lot of research. I was quite surprised by what I found, actually. So overall, what I'm saying in my book is we're all in a cult, whether we're on the left or the right. We've got to break out of it. We do need to understand that we are being asked to empathize more and more with fewer and fewer people. That erosion of our empathy is an erosion of our humanity.

We need to rejig the, rethink the cancellation of the past and instead figure out what we can learn from flawed figures in the past who are never going to agree with us. They're in the past. I've tried to make a very human... I've tried to have a very human look at gender nonconformity and try and make some new arguments that I think haven't been made before. I am very interested in, as a comedian, in...

the freedom of speech in comedy, and I do want freedom of speech. I don't want censorship, but I am also interested in how audiences do often know the difference between the punchline of the joke and the point of the joke. broadly arguing that cancel culture needs to change. And then I've got a chapter about what we can do about it all. It is, I suppose, a book from the progressive left that says...

We're doing a lot of things wrong and we need to do a lot of things right. I hope we need to do a lot of things better. Great. I hope your listeners like it. All right. Well, thanks for coming on. Should we do...

Has this been two hours? Yeah. It's flown by, but that's because there's been a lot of disagreement. So I think we'll just do the final question, mate, and wrap it up there. Okay. Deborah, we always end the show with the final question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should do?

Oh, what's the one thing we should... I planned something for this and now I think we've already covered it. This happens every interview. Does it? Yes, very much. Yeah. Okay, the one thing we should be talking about... that we're not, is I think... Have you watched Couples Therapy? No. It's a show with a New York analyst.

who's talking to couples and basically romantic couples. And I don't know why they've agreed to have their therapy televised, but it's absolutely riveting. It's fascinating. And she always asks... sort of gets what's underneath that. So one of them is saying, he's a child. I come home and, you know, the table's covered with stuff and he's... you know, been playing with the baby, but he hasn't done anything else. And why can't he clean the bathroom like a grown up?

What's under that? What's the feeling? And sort of like, well, it's that I have to do everything. And what is that feeling? It's that I... I have no help. I'm alone. I'm lonely. And is there a time in your childhood when you were lonely? Yes. My mum left me alone. I was a latchkey kid. And it will sort of, she'll keep going underneath. That is what we are not doing. Like the three of us here today. It's like, if you push my button...

And I go, I lean across the table and go, no, but how can you say that? You immediately go, firstly, my buttons are pushed. Like, what's this man telling me about the way to communicate? And so what's behind that? Well, behind that is I was in a very patriarchal cult where men told me how to do everything. I don't want to be told by a man that I'm communicating incorrectly just because I'm leaning across the table and showing some passion and that I need to.

you know, calm down. Well, what's behind that? It's the fear that I'm going to be controlled and I was controlled before and I'll never be controlled again. And then... you get triggered and you go, you go. I wasn't particularly triggered. Well, you claim that you're not, but there are times when you really get cross. No, I get cross when people misrepresent what I say. That pisses me off a lot. And what's underneath that? What's that feeling? I don't like when people lie about me.

But OK, so but do you think I'm lying or do you think I'm misunderstanding? I think that in being offended or upset by something that I've said. you are then lashing out and trying to misrepresent me. Okay, so you think I'm trying to misrepresent you rather than what you've said has landed with me in a way that I think that's what you've said.

I think that's interesting. Well, the reason for that is to win an argument. The easiest thing to do is to effectively say that somebody said something else. For example, like when you said, are you being hysterical? Now, I know you were partly joking. I was joking. I was smiling. I know. Well, not quite. But part of that, part of the thing there is... When you do a joke like that, what you're really doing is you're hinting at a stereotype that exists in people's head, which is a man.

dismissing something a woman says because she's being hysterical, right? So you're trying to push me into that box where I don't want to go. What's going on for you? What's going on for me is I don't want to go in that box because all I'm doing is exploring your argument in a fair way. And why don't you want to go in the box? What's wrong with the box? Because the box is not representing what I'm actually saying.

When I'm simply taking... What's the emotion of, I don't like being in a box? Where's that come from? It's not a box. It's the box that you're trying to put me in, which is... a man who's telling a woman she is wrong because she's being hysterical. So that box, which is, you don't like things projected upon you, basically. I don't like people describing me in public in a way that's inaccurate.

OK, but I'm pretty reasonable thing to feel. OK, so you're not really playing the game, which is what's beneath that. What's the human thing? So my thing is behind that there's you might try and control me. That's nothing to do with you. Right. That's me vulnerably going. And if I went below that, I'd be like, why don't I like being controlled?

That makes me feel unsafe. And why do I feel unsafe? Well, that's easy for me. Look, as a public person, what people say about me is what people will then go and believe, right? So... People putting out false narratives about me is something that's necessarily something I'm going to be guarded.

Sure. OK, so you're not really playing the game because the game is the sort of vulnerability piece. So it's sort of like it's it's. Yes, but I'm not going to make something up to pretend to be vulnerable. I'm telling you that like. I regard somebody misrepresenting the core of my argument, right, as something that is dishonest in honest discussion. Do you understand? Is it clear to you that there were times when I felt you did that to me?

That I misrepresented your argument. Yeah, or you just misunderstood it. I don't think I have a misrepresented your argument. No, I didn't do that. That's so interesting to me. So when I say something and if you take it in your framework...

Sometimes you'll present it back to me and I'll go, but that's not what I said or that's not what I meant. So when did I misrepresent your argument? I thought, well, a bunch of times. If you watch it back. Could you give an example? You will, like the thing about... Indigenous people. Well, they're only... such and such percent they're a tiny percent and i'm like no but that's not what it's about it's not about what the percentage

But that's not misrepresenting your argument. I don't think you can get there. Watch the show, though. I think it'd be really, really interesting. I don't think you can get to the place that I'm trying to get. It's not about going over the arguments. It's about... how you feel, like when you say, oh, I get really... So that's why I think what we're not really talking about. I already answered the question. When somebody misrepresents what I'm saying...

I'm naturally not going to like doing that. Okay, I didn't try and misrepresent anything. I had a feeling... of that's not what I said, or that's what you meant, or it was a feeling, so I pushed the ball back to you. No one was trying to misrepresent you. You know what it reminds me of? We had this guy called Imran... Imran Ackman on the show. And we talked about online censorship. And he made some very good points. And we were agreeing for about...

And then I said something he didn't like. He didn't agree. And suddenly the mask came off and he instantly came out as this like, started calling me names and doing all this stuff. And your sophistry right now is both transparent... It's not. And deeply disrespectful. And I warn you that most of your listeners will think to themselves, actually, Constantine's being a bit of a dickhead. And to me, I experience that a lot with people who are arguing from the position of high empathy.

That happens quite a lot, where somebody pretends to be reasonable and they're having an agreement and whatever, but the moment I say something that makes them uncomfortable, as I said with the indigenous people and us being sophisticated... suddenly they show a different side to themselves. Yeah, but that's normal and human. If somebody says something that is sort of feels...

What I'm trying to say to you, the thing we're not talking about is what's behind all of this. And so online, when people are like, you said this, you said this, you said this, you said this, you did this, you did this, you did this, I'm right, you're left, you're in that box, I'm in that box, I'm an Andrew Tate fan, I'm a this. What's behind it all, I think? is I don't feel safe or I feel hurt or I feel...

I feel boxed or I feel projected upon too. And I think that's what we're not talking about. Really deep down, that's not what we're talking about. I didn't deliberately misinterpret anything you said, but it's interesting you thought I did, but I didn't. I genuinely can tell you this absolute honest place, I didn't. Deliberation is a complicated thing, though, because sometimes people do things subconsciously. Sure, but consciously?

I did not misinterpret anything. I heard it, and then either I felt like, hmm, I don't know what territory we're going into here, but this doesn't seem great to me, or that happened once, or all the other times. I was sort of like, wanted to like passionately engage. Sure, no, and I respect that. And I know what's, if I ask those questions of... I'll ask you, Frances, when you feel upset about... you know, I don't know what you might categorize as wokeness. Can you, can you...

dig down and go, what's the uncomfortable feeling for you? Oh, absolutely, yeah. What's the feeling for you? Well, I'm half South. Well, my mother's from Venezuela. I saw the rise of communism. BLM had the same slogans. that Chavez's government used, a government that means I will never get justice for my grandfather who was murdered. I had family members thrown into prison. Leaders of BLM did a Black Power salute with Maduro.

who is the current dictator of Venezuela. I see that side of wokeness as akin to socialism slash communism. which is what destroyed my country and means that my family now live in constant fear.

So you feel like this is a very personal, geopolitical, experiential fear that you live with. So you may see other things and... link them together in a way that you think is human and understandable and that I think there's a there's a political logic behind that if you see the words abolish capitalism for example which was BLM slogan I've actually seen capitalism being abolished. I've seen people being...

I've seen people be shot at during protests by people using the same slogans. I've seen Jeremy Corbyn openly support Chavez's government. I have a very visceral reaction. So it's very interesting. So, I mean, this is too long, but I think it's interesting. Do you think... Do you see now that unregulated capitalism...

has gone too far. I think you do need to regulate capitalism, absolutely. There needs to be checks and balances, of course there is. There needs to be a monopolies commission to make sure that there's just not one company in charge. Do you fear what's happening with unregulated capitalism around the world now? Yeah, of course I do. So do you think that BLM could be having a response to unregulated capitalism? No, I think BLM are communists and they want to impose a communist order.

They don't want to regulate capitalism. The meaning lies in the words, abolish capitalism. If you say something, it's like if I say, I believe the white race is superior. I will take you at your face value. You should take me at my face value when I say that, just like when they say abolish capitalism, which to me is communism. And when they go on and take photos of themselves with Eduardo Maduro.

a dictator who has effectively destroyed my mother's country and has imprisoned members of my family, I take people at their face value when they say such things. This might be a whole other podcast, I think. For me, it's exactly the same. I mean, we were talking about one specific incident, and my grandmother was born in a gulag.

And what's more, I'm a first generation immigrant to this country. So when I see all this racial divisiveness being stirred up, I think it's quite natural that I would be concerned. When you antagonize people along racial lines, we know what happens. If you actually read history, you know what happens.

which is when people are encouraged to go retreat into their identity boxes, they see each other as other, and then you begin to have conflict. It's very difficult, though, for black people in America who... suffering from a different level of state violence.

And have, you know, it's only a few decades ago that the civil rights movement happened and that there were hoses and dogs turned on them and they were up the back of a bus and not allowed to go to the same schools. And not enough has been done to address that. Inevitably, there will be uprisings because huge communities of black people are still stuck in socioeconomic...

So can I push back against that? No, I've not pushed back against that. I agree with what you're saying, but that doesn't mean an organization like BLM is a force for good. And I'll give you an example. Travis's government was elected in 1999. due to the fact that society was desperately unequal, white people are what... the version of whiteness in Venezuela, which is different to our whiteness. But anyway.

were in charge. There was a whole swathe of people who felt they didn't have access to resources. Society was deeply unequal, unfair. If you were born in what is called Los Ranchos, the ghettos, you're going to die there. All perfectly valid. He came to power in saying things were like, we're going to abolish capitalism. And people thought that it was going to be better for them. It wasn't. It just made everything far, far worse, which is what communism does.

Just because people have been marginalised and they have concerns and they want better outcomes for them, all perfectly natural, it doesn't mean that an organisation that purports to represent them is in any way good or noble. is my argument. I would suggest, though, unless the powers that be are going to create fairness, justice, space, and allow...

socioeconomic growth and prosperity amongst those communities, there will always continue to be uprising. Do you not see that that's exactly what the far right is saying? That's exactly what they're saying. Word for word. You cannot... Word for word is what they're saying. You literally cannot keep people...

suppressed without those people finding a voice. That's what young men are saying. That's why they're voting for Trump and that's why they follow Andrew Tate. I feel like that there is a different... marginalization for black people in America because of the not that long ago history of slavery. Definitely, of course. You can't enslave people, bring them there, strip them of everything, strip them of their name.

and then never let them get ahead. And then, you know, in the 60s, we all know what happened. This is not when... The 60s is living memory. Definitely. It's not that long ago. So what do you... What are you suggesting those people do? What I'm suggesting is Martin Luther King was right.

Well, Martin Luther King was a complicated figure. We don't have time to get into everything. I'm not saying he was right about his relations with women. I'm saying he was right about the core message of what he was saying, which is... He dreamt of a place where everybody would be treated on the continent. Sure, but that's not all he said. He also said that the silence of the moderate white was...

in some ways worse than the, I don't know the exact quotes, I shouldn't say it, but is, you know, the silence of the moderate white going, everything's fine now, you've got enough. But that's not what people are saying. When Francis says he has problems with BLM, he's not saying everything is fine. He's saying BLM is not a constructive force and it isn't and it wasn't. Okay, your and it isn't and it wasn't.

That's not debate. You can't just say isn't, wasn't. That's not debate. That's not debate. That's not debate. It's my opinion. In my opinion and in France's opinion, it isn't and it wasn't. That really helps me when you say it's my opinion because when you say it isn't and it wasn't... I'm making a truth claim, absolutely. Yeah, and I feel like your truth claims close down debate.

So, like, it makes... You're free to say you don't agree. You just did. But I do. And then you go, it isn't and it wasn't. And that's... It's slightly... It feels against the intellectual ethos of this show. How so? Because you just go, it is and it wasn't. And it's not like, well, of course, there are some ways in which and... You can say whatever you want. The intellectual ethos of this show, since it's our show, I can tell you what it is, is... You present a set of ideas. Yeah.

We interrogate those ideas. We present a set of ideas. You interrogate those ideas. And we all and our viewers, most importantly, come away with a better understanding of what you think and what I think. And it's not necessarily to create agreement between you and I. I don't think it's possible. What I think is possible is to expose.

my argument in all its falsity and accuracy and to expose your argument in all its falsity. And that's why I'm making truth claims in the way that I invite you to make your truth. Okay. Well, thanks for the truth claim opportunity. I've enjoyed it, kind of. Yeah, well...

It's hard, isn't it? In a book, you can be so nuanced and rigorous and you can argue both sides. And then as soon as you're out freewheeling, you're like, hold on, but I didn't say that. And now I haven't got time. And now we've moved past the argument. You've had more time than any guest we've ever had on the show.

Well, that's very kind. It's more, I know, it's my fault, because I've written a book called Six Conversations for Scared to Have, and there's six conversations. And most people come with a book with one conversation. That's what they're talking about.

So I'm very sorry that I've taken up so much time and I hope that the... There's absolutely no need to be sorry. They might have tuned out by now. No, no, no, no. Well, if they have, they're not hearing your apologies, so you're fine. It's true. Yeah, and if we wanted it to stop, we would have stopped it.

The intention was not to harangue you about stuff, but what we do is we try to interrogate ideas, and sometimes people interpret that as them being interrogated. That was absolutely not the intention. So on BLM, since we... You don't agree that... Are we done now or is this supposed...

thing or are we still recording? Well, I think we should wrap it up. Yeah, I think we should wrap it up. I think we've covered. I think otherwise you end up going into this other whole big subject and I think we've both... something about BLM. That was my feeling, I think. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. Time it out. We're done. We're done. Do you need to say goodbye or anything? No. No. We're done. We'll leave it there.

Francis, I want to take a minute to give a special mention to one of the best podcast interviewers out there. Okay, be quick though, mate. Who is it? It's me. No, it's a certain someone who's funny and smart. Oh, yeah? He's got an incredible knack for creating honest conversations with fascinating people. Go on. Do you know who I'm talking about? Is it me? What? No, it's Jordan Harbinger.

Oh. The Jordan Harbinger Show is a perfect complement to trigonometry, and we recommend you add it to your podcast rotation. Yes! Just like Trigonometry, Jordan hosts weekly mind-broadening conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the world. But a key difference that I'm a big fan of is that Jordan is focused on pulling actionable, growth-oriented advice.

Give Jordan's show a go today. Search for The Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R. On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.