Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Are Men Toxic?" with Clementine Ford

Transcript

"Are Men Toxic?" with Clementine Ford · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans. This is an uncomfortable conversation. This is an uncomfortable conversation at many times throughout it.
• 0:09
  Sometimes you listeners will hit me up and say, well, uncomfortable conversations are very uncomfortable really.
• 0:16
  You know, you were talking to someone who you agreed with quite a lot.
• 0:19
  To which I have to point out that the name of the show refers to conversations about uncomfortable things that are difficult to tease out in a nuanced way
• 0:28
  without alienating some people or triggering some cultural trip wires, things that we don't want to talk about, that we don't want to be honest with each other about, that we'd rather sit inside our silos of predetermined ideology on.
• 0:41
  So it doesn't necessarily mean that the conversation itself is uncomfortable. It just might mean that I'm speaking with someone who I agree with completely in a totally comfortable way, but about some sort of subject that is likely to make some of our listeners uncomfortable.
• 0:54
  Well, not this episode. This episode is, well, I'll let you listen to it.
• 1:00
  Clementine Ford is a feminist. That's an understatement. She's a very, very prominent, much beloved and much loved Australian feminist who has, she exploded onto the scene with a book called Fight Like a Girl.
• 1:21
  And her follow-up book was called Boys Will Be Boys. Fight Like a Girl was a real shot across the bow, saying that women and girls need to stand up and fight the patriarchy.
• 1:33
  And Boys Will Be Boys was a broadside against the way that we bring up boys. And I guess what you might call toxic masculinity.
• 1:41
  She has gotten into many, many, many social media stashes and controversies in Australia.
• 1:50
  Here are just a few tweets that I've seen compiled online from Clementine. All men are scum and must die. Kill all men. Men are gross and also rapists to kill all men.
• 2:03
  And I only want stupid men to die. She writes, all men must die. Kill all men and then kill them again. All men must die. The feminist doctrine decrees it.
• 2:11
  Congratulations. You found me out. All men must die. These are jokes. Obviously she doesn't want all men to actually die. She did however tweet last year during the coronavirus pandemic that the coronavirus isn't killing men fast enough.
• 2:28
  Which seemed like a slightly insensitive thing to say in May of 2020 when it really was killing a lot of people that caused a few roar about some funding that she was getting from the city of Melbourne to do some work for them.
• 2:43
  The Lord Mayor said that her statement was deliberately divisive and incredibly unhelpful when trying to keep the community together.
• 2:51
  Clementine had to resign from her role as a columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald in the age newspapers in 2019 because of a tweet that she'd made about the prime minister.
• 3:01
  She had to bow out of a lifeline event, which is the anti-suicide charity the year before that after there was a petition calling for her removal because of those tweets about all men must die. You get the impression like this is part of her stick and yet underneath that offensive man hate.
• 3:20
  Stick is the mind of a very clever feminist thinker and academic and someone who sees her role in the culture wars as being a critically important one and one that excuse me would not be as useful as it is.
• 3:39
  Worsey more of a reasoned nuanced wilting flower.
• 3:46
  Now I haven't been able to see what Clementine does online for some years because she blocked me on Twitter.
• 3:53
  I don't know why and I don't know when but I was just sort of looking at something I was looking up something that she tweeted and I realized that I've been been blocked.
• 4:00
  So I fall it heartily into the category of toxic males who are insufficiently observant of the kind of feminism that Clementine wants to pursue.
• 4:12
  But this is exactly why I wanted to have a conversation with her and have one we did we see eye to eye on a lot and we disagree about strategy and tactics so this is a very amicable conversation don't worry it doesn't get offensive or insulting or anything.
• 4:31
  But as you'll notice there are differences of opinion about how to how best to move forward towards a more tolerant and respectful and egalitarian future that we tease out in ways that are hopefully useful.
• 4:45
  Clementine's new book is actually something of a memoir and it's a bit of a departure for her it's called how we love notes on a life and it's anecdotes about love of men love of women and all things are in between.
• 5:00
  I hope you enjoy this conversation with the one I'm only Clementine for.
• 5:05
  Yeah no I asked about your enemies because I wonder whether or not I mean I'm not enemies critics or whatever because there's also a sense that as long as you're indomitable like they've got something to bat around and play with.
• 5:25
  But the moment you're vulnerable they feel like assholes for attacking you potential I don't know I think that's being very generous to some of the people who have enjoyed attacking me over the years I think that actually there are some people who love seeing me in a vulnerable state because they don't I'm these are very specific kind of kind of people you know I'm thinking.
• 5:45
  Um the news limited who get the whole stick is to like be further right wing than the dollar pump and attack everybody on the left.
• 5:55
  I remember this this wasn't even a moment of vulnerability but it would show will show you how he would treat me in a moment of vulnerability Tim Blair who I don't know if he's still right to the daily telegraph but sort of a I guess a shock job not not many people outside of Sydney would know him I think maybe not many people in Sydney know him.
• 6:13
  But for whatever reason he had a column in the daily telegraph for a long time and I remember his blog one year I posted a photograph of myself I was in Bali for the writers festival and I posted a photograph of myself drinking a drink as people do when they are on holiday.
• 6:29
  And he had been sent this picture by one of his readers and this was in the daily telegraph blog this was considered I suppose newsworthy or blog worthy at least was a close up photograph of my face and I have hair on my upper chin as so many humans do.
• 6:48
  And the title of the blog was transitioning and the suggestion therein was that I was either secretly a man or that I was transitioning into being a man I mean obviously like that's just grotesquely transphobic that's what the joke is right and it also.
• 7:08
  He knows that neither of those things are true not that they not that it would matter if they were but the joke being of course that I am the way that I am because I'm just so inherently masculine and that's really where the source of all my trauma lies and that was in the daily telegraph.
• 7:26
  So I mean I'm still wondering about that yeah who knows about Tim Blair but like there are parts of the there are parts of your new book which I find more confronting than anything that you've ever written because like.
• 7:40
  The you articulate a point at which you are essentially being groomed by an adult married man who fed you booze and invited him back to your apartment when you were like 14 years old which is so raw and kind of viscerally terrifying that.
• 7:56
  It would be harder I think you have to be a true asshole to attack somebody who was exposing something that vulnerable about themselves versus attacking somebody who you think is choosing to be a punching bag.
• 8:09
  Yeah I mean that's a really interesting story because the the women who've read it prior to publication and even my editor Ali.
• 8:19
  There's a part in that chapter where I reflect on how this is this is where the danger lies for so many of us because when we young we respond to the grooming because it feels good and also we want to be seen in it we're so we're trapped in this moment when we're 13 14 where we're hovering between childhood and adulthood and we feel ourselves so much to be adults when obviously we're so much children.
• 8:47
  And these men come along for a lot of us and it happens to boys too and sometimes it sometimes it's women who does who do these things as well.
• 8:56
  But they tell us all the things that we want to hear about who we are and who we want to be you know they and they treat us like adults and you know in his case he took me out for drinks and would confide in me the problems of his marriage which of course made me feel terribly adult and trusted and.
• 9:16
  The only thinking back now I'm older than he was then I think he was 35 but you you realize how wrong that is but even writing those stories I mean I it became very obvious to me why those things work because of course 13 year old girls have crushes on older men and women.
• 9:37
  Of course we do but the problem is that those older men and women should always know to treat that crush with respect and kindness but never cross the line yeah.
• 9:49
  Yeah you know Dan Savage is an analogy of the campfire like make sure that you leave the campfire as well as you know in a better place than you found it that's the kind of rule for any relationship where there might be a power differential or an age differential.
• 10:02
  I mean I think it's tricky the way but I actually just happened to have watched an education again the other night have you seen that film oh I have yet it's like amazing film it's incredible and with the exception of the fact that I think the third act could be a little bit tighter it's an amazing film like the first portion of it is this incredible.
• 10:21
  If people haven't seen it it's it's a story of a teenage girl who gets seduced by a charming older man who also manages to seduce her parents her fairly conservative stuffy 1960s parents into allowing him to court her.
• 10:38
  And that I think was really revealing to me and made me reflect on things that happened when I was younger with all the people to where I realized it's not just like as you say it's logical that the younger person is going to feel privileged and honored and special by.
• 10:55
  Being a recipient of attention and affection from someone who seems so much more sophisticated but what's kind of odious and insidious is that there doesn't seem to well I guess that other people and bystanders and people who should know better can also regard it as somehow cute.
• 11:13
  It's funny because I was just talking with my son's dad about this yesterday because we've been chatting about you know that terrible case in WA as well which is just so horrific but obviously child abductions are also very rare.
• 11:28
  I mean it's a horrifically unusual set of circumstances it's very rare we know that the people that we have to worry about most are those closest to the child and to the family and we were talking about this yesterday and you know he said it's he'd been reading about it and how that's so often what happens is that predators groom the parents as well it's why the church has always been so successful at doing it.
• 11:53
  Any kind of you know it's why celebrities are successful at doing it the grooming of parents into being in the orbit of privilege and power it's you know I feel like unusually so in the case with me when I was working in that ice cream shop in England one of the reasons why I think that he sort of singled me out I guess was that my parents weren't really around you know my dad was working overseas my mom was we know now was kind of cool.
• 12:23
  I was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and was sort of not very involved which is not to say that I didn't have a great relationship with my mom ultimately but you know was she was a troubled person for many reasons that had to do with her own upbringing.
• 12:39
  And I think it was easy to slip through the cracks and you know I asked a woman I know a friend of mine from that time who worked at the same store as I did and I said did this ever happen to you because he said to me she's the one in the story who when I asked him who do you think as a very 13 year old question to ask someone who you're kind of doing this weird dance with.
• 13:02
  Who do you think the prettiest girl is here and I wanted him so fiercely to say me and I felt like you know we've been developing this emotional relationship with each other and he said oh I think I'm and I won't say a name but I think she is yes she's just really sexy she's my type she was 13 the same as me but the effect it had on me was not to go gross but to think oh yeah that you know that makes sense of course it's not me and and obviously that worked you know it made me want
• 13:32
  to woo his charm or he woo his favor even more but when I asked her about it recently I said did this ever happen she said no it never happened to me but and she believed me which was which was great you know because that's obviously so often where trauma comes from is people telling you that you're a liar.
• 13:52
  And she said I think he wouldn't have targeted me because my father was a police officer and he was well known in the town and he just wouldn't have gotten away with it but with me I didn't have anyone I was I was an implant we came from someone somewhere else we didn't have any family roots it was a small seaside town was very easy to pick off.
• 14:13
  And to reassure your listeners as well as the story goes into ultimately nothing happened but what ends up happening with what what that can leave you with is you know we have to sort of acknowledge that grooming doesn't just become bad when the worst thing happens to you that actually it leaves you with all these really complicated feelings of you know he did take me up to his apartment while his wife was out made a point of saying that she was out and he gave me hard liquor which he took.
• 14:43
  And he told me about beforehand so he should come up and have some with me sometime and then he essentially laid out an invitation for me to initiate something and I became so flustered and intimidated by the situation because I was so young that he he called it off you know we should go back downstairs and I then spent years feeling ashamed about how immature I was and how I must have disappointed him because it turned out in the end that I was just a kid.
• 15:13
  I mean part of what has happened in the past few years Clementine is that I feel like those kinds of anecdotes and those kinds of well perhaps not those anecdotes because I think that's pretty black and white as being a totally odious and creepy thing for it to have done even if it went nowhere but the sort of the universe the whole constellation of gender relations that have been skewed against women that have been dismissed as being just get just go along with the gag or.
• 15:43
  You know I didn't really do anything or it was just meant in jest or I was just being flirtatious and that's just what you have to put up with those daily indignities in the workplace or from your mates that that has been brought into stark relief in the past five years or so and we're hopefully constructing a civil society where there's more respect between the genders but I wonder what your thought is about where.
• 16:09
  Like what is sexism in 2021 where are we.
• 16:15
  I mean I think that we're definitely having much more open conversations about it and there's an acknowledgement that sharing these stories you know it is leading to productive conversations but as I said before something that still happens all too often as people are being called liars outright or being mistrusted and women in particular have learned through you know so many years of conditioning.
• 16:39
  To always frame things in terms of whether or not it was that bad you know it wasn't that bad this happened but it wasn't that bad because the because we've also been taught that the only things that we're allowed to really complain about and in fact the only believable woman is a dead woman that's the only time that people really exercise true sympathy because every other circumstance there'll be someone lining up to say that she's lying or that you know she wanted it or that she consented and now she's retracted.
• 17:09
  And that's when the worst of the worst happens or well you know barring murder and death but you know with just the kind of like every day or the things that we've been taught to accept is the every day.
• 17:22
  The every day symptoms of being a woman you know maybe being grouped here and there or being talked down to or being leared at on the street the things that make.
• 17:31
  An environment feels slightly unsafe for you and living your life in a way where everything feels just slightly unsafe is not comfortable even though the worst thing may not be happening to you and and particularly when you add to the fact that we so often have to kind of qualify those things you know I say in that chapter.
• 17:51
  I say to people reading it before we go up into the apartment there's a little disclaimer saying breathe out nothing bad happens to me here because I don't want them to read with that clenched not in their stomach.
• 18:04
  And then weirdly sort of ultimately be disappointed I guess when when the wave is kind of rearing over you but then dissipates to nothing because nothing happened that you know nothing bad happens to lots of girls but we remember it anyway.
• 18:24
  When that's a line I think that resonates with lots of people because we've all got those stories and what we're only what we're only allowed to complain about them if we can kind of present a really titillating voyeuristic image of destruction for people.
• 18:40
  Is that true anymore.
• 18:42
  I don't think it's as true as it was but I think that it's still we're still battling against a kind of mainstream tide of opinion that these stories ruin men's lives and so we have to be very careful about how we share them or you know we're still kind of accused is maybe a strong word but it feels like that accused in many circumstances of exaggerating or of misinterpreting.
• 19:11
  You know or I guess even outright making things up and we see things like all these allegations destroy men's lives and that's the common narrative when actually everything were presented with shows that no men survived these allegations very well unless I suppose they're marginalized by other things you know men of color have a lot harder time surviving these allegations than white men do.
• 19:40
  Unless they're sports stars but even then there's there's a tainting that happens because obviously we live in a very racist society still but even the other day I was reading that a teacher in New Zealand I mean these are I don't want to use like individual stories as being evidence for the whole but these stories do mount up a teacher in New Zealand pinched one of his students on the bomb and told her that she was sexy during a photo.
• 20:05
  And then the you know the disciplinary board that he's been taken before has decided that he shouldn't have to leave teaching because they've accepted it was a one off incident.
• 20:14
  I mean these things happen and you say well how are men how exactly are men's careers being destroyed by this.
• 20:21
  You know I guess you know Jordan to goy being arrested again in in the United States for assault and the Collingwood football club now deciding that they're going to take stone action well they certainly rallied around him when it was just a national story and it was.
• 20:34
  Just a female victim. Yeah I mean it depends what circles you swim in I mean when I I was having a conversation the other day about this this kid at nox who had graduated and then he had he punched a fellow he punched a girl who he knew while they were out of the pub or something after they left and he had one of these notoriously light sentences where a magistrate who's very much in the old boys club with the worst was sort of.
• 21:03
  Oh how how how boys will be boys you know which happens to be exciting your second book yeah extra school boy you know this is he's a good lad we don't ruin his life you know so just slap on the wrist and the fact that that became a national story.
• 21:20
  Indicated to me that there is still this clique of court of kind of white privileged sexist misogynistic power structures that exists you only have to look at what's been going on in Canberra and the sexual assault and harassment allegations there that seem to just be sort of the way of doing things in parliament house
• 21:40
  that the that whilst that still exists I don't I don't see that as mainstream I mean I work in an organization where both of my bosses are women both of my producers are women my bosses boss is a woman I mean most all of my friends are like dads who are who are sort of you know you would regard as being what used to be called a sensitive new age guy and the and when we see something like those power structures being abused in that
• 22:09
  kind of like that that very claustrophobic private school elite privilege is as alien to us as it is to you so for me the it doesn't it doesn't really resonate with me for the for the sort of cleavage between the the good guys and the bad guys here to be cast along gender lines it's more along really frankly class lines privilege lines and sort of our salary lines.
• 22:34
  I think that I think that that's there's definitely some truth to that and that is as a result largely I think of the work that has been done in the last I mean obviously this works been being done for decades but since the resurgence of I guess really since the since me to and also the the ability for more feminist voices to be prominent in mainstream spaces I think that.
• 22:58
  That those conversations are being had more readily but also probably what's happening in there is that men are now able to reflect and I'm interested in your opinion on this that men are able to reflect on all of the ways that they've been alienated by patriarchy systems of privilege and power it doesn't surprise me that the private school kind of the sheltered private school boys club feels alien to you because of course it's alienating to so many men.
• 23:28
  And and also a lot of the boys who go through that system and who are entrenched in that kind of institutional power are very threatening to other men in a way that I don't mean threatening even politically but physically threatening the recollection that so many adult men have of boys bullying them.
• 23:51
  I think it's a different kind of of trauma that's being carried around and men more and more men are able to talk about those things now.
• 23:57
  That's interesting again it comes back to I have such a I mean I think you and I see the world and our place in it just very differently in the sense that my I've just always had a kind of a version to regarding myself as in any way a victim of cultural forces and maybe you do too.
• 24:18
  But when you say like a fear of that kind of privilege to white guy who can get away with it all I regard them with a certain amount of pity I regard them with a certain amount of contempt like as a product of the public school system.
• 24:34
  I always just thought they were Nancy boys for one of a better word and that they didn't really understand the real world and they didn't have the richness of experience and they weren't bumping up against as interesting people as I was that they were sort of cloisted in this pathetic little
• 24:47
  silo of of their own making and whilst that silo exercises a lot of power. It's also a pretty boring fucking place like it's not it wasn't a place that I wanted to exist in and so whilst I could have sort of thought of myself as being on the outside and victimized by these power structures.
• 25:07
  I sort of chose to flip the narrative and have I guess I didn't want to be my grandmother who was holocaust survivor who went through the rest of her life constantly regarding the rest of the world as being oppressively anti-Semitic and her being like a victim struggling against it I was like fuck them fuck all these power structures I have absolutely no interest in abiding by their stupid rules which now that I say it does sort of sound like I'm channeling your sensibility.
• 25:31
  So do you think that I live my life as a final victim of everything because I don't I don't feel that way.
• 25:37
  No, I mean you're certainly you know you're certainly not shy about making your opinion known but sometimes when I read you I think this is someone who lives in a world in which the the dominant narrative and the dominant like cultural forces just a not the ones that I see.
• 25:55
  I don't see there's a I was listening to actually listened to your first book before over the weekend because I hadn't read it before fight like a girl and I thought it was fascinating but like there's a piece in it I just want to play you this which is you articulating what the what the kind of power structures and the dominant narrative sounds sounds like to you.
• 26:17
  How many times have you heard or seen someone dismiss a woman's opinion by calling her ugly by calling her a slut a dumb cunt a stupid fucking bitch who needs to get a decent dick up her.
• 26:31
  An irrational man hating feminazi with daddy issues who demonizes men because she's upset none of them find her attractive a dog a mut a hog a useless lump too old too dried up too aggressive too shrill too angry for anyone to take seriously a joke.
• 26:50
  Like the question is how many times I heard that I heard that and I was like never like I've never heard that as the main I've never heard that as a position that's put forward by a guy that hasn't been pushed back on.
• 27:02
  vehemently and instantly by all the other guys in the room.
• 27:06
  You should ask some women whether or not they've ever heard that.
• 27:12
  Yeah.
• 27:14
  Because I think that that's the difference.
• 27:16
  I don't doubt it but the isn't the question.
• 27:19
  I think that I've I and I'm not exaggerating at all all of those things have been said to me this week by numerous people.
• 27:28
  Even even the mut I've got I could send you a screenshot Josh.
• 27:33
  I mean that's appalling.
• 27:36
  But this is the thing is that we have different perspectives of the world because we move through the world differently and I know through through the world equally as you with a lot of privilege and I still hear all those things.
• 27:48
  From whom well from men mainly but from women to who you know kind of young women especially.
• 27:58
  But like is it is a man who are trolling you on Twitter or is it human beings who I don't use Twitter anymore.
• 28:04
  Well look it's I would say that it's men from all different kinds of demographics.
• 28:08
  I've had you know issues with students like public and private school boys.
• 28:16
  You know private to pre pandemic.
• 28:19
  I would always get a little influx of trolling from students whose schools I'd been to speak at.
• 28:25
  And it's not like I went into those schools and said look at all you boys you're all piece of shit like one school I literally just talked about like the presentation I gave was about gender inequality in the media.
• 28:38
  And I went through and like shared a bunch of statistics around Hollywood and you know and a lot of them were kind of shared from the junior Davis Institute on.
• 28:48
  So the gender Institute on in media.
• 28:52
  And even after that you know I was having boys writing to me and calling me a cunt and making for I mean it's sort of water off a duck's back but it is reflective of this way in which particularly I suppose when you put yourself out into the world like I do.
• 29:08
  But people who are uncomfortable with what you're saying but lack the ability to articulate an argument against it.
• 29:16
  Then reach for all of these traditional forms of language and just because you don't see it.
• 29:20
  And just because the men that you know as far as you're aware don't say it doesn't mean it's not happening because I can tell you it comes from all sorts of different people comes from boys it comes from
• 29:30
  dads of daughters you know who proudly have well pictures of them with their with their kids and their profiles it comes from I mean look it comes from Tim Blair at the daily telegraph.
• 29:40
  I mean I should clarify that I don't I'm not I mean first I can't I can't claim that something that you're claiming is happening doesn't happen.
• 29:48
  And secondly when I say that I don't hear that language I don't mean that I never experience it because I find myself at the at the receiving end of a lot of hate online and on social media for various positions that I might have about things.
• 30:00
  What I don't what I mean is that I don't hear those things as being an acceptable part of the conversation in any powerful cultural way they they would be laughed out of the room.
• 30:14
  I mean every member of our cultural elite regards that kind of behavior towards women as being completely unacceptable.
• 30:21
  There are no I don't tell parties you can go to where that's acceptable.
• 30:25
  Like with the exception of the shock shocks right the Tim Blair's whose whole business model is to spew reaction re nonsense at everyone to the left of Genghis Khan.
• 30:34
  I don't see anyone in the opinion pages of forget about the Guardian but even the Australian roof at Murdoch's broad sheet or I don't see anyone on the ABC or on Channel 9.
• 30:43
  I don't see anyone from Virginia tree only to even Benford or anyone in mainstream media who calls women that kind of thing and gets away with it.
• 30:55
  But rightly so.
• 30:56
  But Josh I mean I don't I don't expect that someone's going to go on to national TV and say well that's just because she's a dumb dog with daddy issues like that's not where that language and that discourse happens.
• 31:08
  It certainly happens in places where people can you know remove themselves from being accountable for it.
• 31:15
  I mean you mentioned Twitter before it's all across Twitter because people don't have to have their faces to what it is that they say.
• 31:21
  That's why it's so threatening for people when they are found out you know or they sort of they're real life identities are uncovered.
• 31:30
  And whether or not the I mean you said that you don't hear it being said at parties or whatever or you know outside of some men who you don't associate with but I don't think again that that means it's not happening.
• 31:44
  I mean but also you've you've read us a segment from a book that's articulating a very particular kind of method that is used to silence women and that is one that hinges on a pretty dated I think and this is why it's no longer I mean maybe this is why it's dying out is that it's not really working on a lot of women
• 32:05
  anymore because they've become so used to it or they've become empowered to speak out against it or even just to laugh it is a laugh at it as I tell women to do.
• 32:14
  But the idea that women's primary offering to the world is in the way that we look and in how well we perform and that's not like a radical feminist idea.
• 32:27
  That's one that's that's very well kind of embraced by capitalism if anything so you know we know that women's primacy is located in the way that we look and as such that will be the first port of call for many people who can't articulate an argument to try and yell us down.
• 32:47
  Yeah yes that's true you certainly see more judgment of women's appearance and women's mannerisms like the you know everyone will recall that when Hillary Clinton was running for president people would accuse her of being shrill which is something you don't hear men being accused of and endless fixations on what they wear in a way that you don't know.
• 33:06
  Yeah and the number of criticisms of carried chat is it chant or chat.
• 33:12
  I'm glad you have a problem with that as well anyway she's the chief she's the chief health officer of New South Wales.
• 33:18
  Yeah you know the grotesque things I've seen said and just the pictorial memes made about her appearance as if somehow because she fails to live up to people's I don't know what because they don't want to go home and wank over her that somehow she's unable to be a chief health officer or that the advice that she's offering is laughable in some way because you know
• 33:41
  you can zoom in on her upper lip and she's she's got like me she's got a little bit more even you know the idea that and it's so embarrassing I'm embarrassed for the making this argument but that conservative women are somehow more attractive than left wing women and that's why left wing women are so angry and shrill the time it's just because we're so ugly like that it's it's not uncommon to see yes and they may be shock jocks but it's not uncommon to see that I'm sorry.
• 34:10
  It's not uncommon to see that argument kind of sometimes these things don't have to be articulated in actual words but you know that that's what's going on.
• 34:20
  I guess maybe it's maybe there is maybe you and I agree on everything apart from strategy because as you say that I find myself nodding an agreement and then nonetheless I think of all of the times that I get attacked by the right and by the the left and I and my response is not to allow them to behave as representatives of the group that they think that they're representatives of
• 34:45
  reminds me almost a little bit of after the the Christ church massacre Jacinda I don't gave this beautiful speech where she stood up and she said you speaking to the to the attacker you think that you're defending us that you are a representative of us against them nothing could be further from the truth like we are not with you you are not a representative of us you are not a defender of us you are completely other and in so doing she removed the only thing that
• 35:14
  a mass murdering racist lunatic has to hang his hat on which is he's the only person who's brave enough to actually do what's necessary to be done to protect Western civilization or white people or more Christianity or whatever it might be.
• 35:28
  And similarly I think a shock shock or a sexist goes into the world with this kind of swaggering attitude of I'm going to you know I'm going to articulate the things that all of those wimpy men like the Josh steps of the world just aren't willing to say but I'm going to take up the mantle of manhood and I'm going to defend man against the onslaughts of the Clementine forwards of the world.
• 35:50
  And my most important my most like urgent instinct there is to go know you fucking won't speak on behalf of me like I'll sideline you I'll even I'll dismiss you I'll even maybe perhaps right now what I'm doing is kind of you know pretending that you exist less than you actually do because I want to live in a world in which it's possible to to sort of carve off the assholes.
• 36:12
  And find a reconciliation and a consensus between all the reasonable people from all genders sexes races and so on and my worry as I listened to your audio books and read your books is like not helping like allowing allowing the loudest angriest most asked holy voices to to get what they want which is to to perceive themselves as representatives of the whole.
• 36:36
  And you know sort of handing them I guess the authority that I don't think they deserve.
• 36:44
  I mean I think that you're making a flawed comparison between those two positions because the terrorist in Christ church.
• 36:51
  Yes, Jacinda Ardern was very correct in saying you don't represent us you're not defending us.
• 36:56
  I mean leaving aside the fact that there are actually lots of reprehensible people who would have cheered on what he did that day and that is that is been supported by political positions and by politicians who've stoked anti Muslim sentiment.
• 37:14
  He's not a shock job he's not paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to sit behind a microphone every day and disseminate those views to the public in the way that someone like Alan Jones was or John laws was or even Neil Mitchell still is or Ben Fordham to a much sort of more polite degree gets to kind of stoke some sort of sense of traditional traditional conservativeness or conservative ideals.
• 37:42
  But you can't compare those two positions because it's all well and good for you to sit there and say well I don't I don't accept you this shock job insert whatever your name is as being a representative of me but unfortunately they're being paid to be a representative for a lot of people.
• 37:57
  And the other question I would ask you is when you and it's totally fine I'm not I'm not offended by you thinking that my methods aren't helping I mean it's certainly not the first time that I've been told that.
• 38:09
  But I would I'm interested to know whether or not if you think that in the past few years things have changed and things have improved and that women are more empowered now to speak out and that society in general is becoming particularly in Australia becoming more.
• 38:24
  Articular and cognizant of these issues and more willing to stand up and speak out against them.
• 38:29
  Do you think that I have had anything to do with that I'm not claiming credit for all of it but do you think I have been part of that conversation that is enabled that to happen or do you think that my methods have actually prevented that from happening further or have been destructive to that.
• 38:45
  It's tricky I don't know how to answer that Clementine.
• 38:50
  I suspect that it's got that we've gotten to a point at which it's counterproductive actually if I'm perfectly honest at which the the I mean it sort of depends what this reminds me a little bit of the arguments about how to respond to Trump in the states were like.
• 39:07
  A lot of my friends in the states most of my friends being like me broadly on the left you know thought that the most pressing thing that they could do for the past five years was to expunge from civil society the half of the population who had been broadly sympathetic to Trump's presidency.
• 39:30
  And if it were true that Donald Trump was going to usher in a holocaust the likes of which my you know grandmother was always worried about.
• 39:43
  Then of course you would just have to do absolutely everything within your power to stand up against that and to and it wouldn't really matter how many bridges you had to burn or how many innocent people got torched in the process.
• 39:56
  The most important most pressing thing would be to prevent this man from wheeling any power at all and essentially to exclude anyone who might have voted for him from polite society at all to you know harass them whenever they came into restaurants to punch them in the face when you saw someone walking down the street with a make America great again cap on that would be completely legit just as it would be okay to knee cap a Nazi in 1930's Germany.
• 40:24
  And yet part of my concern I guess at the moment is that civil society is becoming so polarized and so hostile and we're becoming so hunkered down into our warring factions.
• 40:36
  That we're at at least as greater risk of some kind of civil war some kind of informal ongoing mediocre civil war as we are of the forces of oppression and patriarchy and racism and sexism creating authoritarian states.
• 40:57
  So I don't quite know how to respond to your question I mean you're I admire your passion and your commitment and your aggression frankly because so many of the people who I admire throughout history have exhibited those same those same traits from civil rights leaders in the 1960s to the feminists who I admire and who I sort of shaped my sense of feminism around.
• 41:22
  But there I do think there comes a point at which I suppose the the reconciliation instincts of a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi or a Mandela become to me more pressing than their revolutionary further and so I'm not quite sure at what point of the knife edge we currently sit.
• 41:44
  Is that adequately I guess what that something that that throws up for me is that oftentimes I think that and people might say well might say well this is a failure of your messaging Clementine except that I think that
• 42:04
  people take away from me what they want to take away and I'm curious at your position on that because actually a lot of what I do.
• 42:16
  Or a lot of where my focus is is on encouraging men to be more aware of the ways in which expectations on them may have harmed them you know even just yesterday I shared a reshared something actually which was this long.
• 42:35
  Reflection written by a man named Nathan Simmons who wrote about the sexual grief he felt that he had that you know 43 years old he found himself crying because he realized that as a young man he was conditioned into this idea of what kind of sex he should be having and how sex ultimately was a performance for other men.
• 42:52
  And that he feels like he spent the decades that he has done having sexual experiences being completely devoid of any kind of intimate connection to those experiences and that he truly believes that he's lost something because of that and he he grieves for what it is that's been taken from him.
• 43:09
  I'm having those conversations all the time and that's you know a large part of what boys will be boys about is not some angry treatise against men it does articulate some of the terrible things that men and that structural powers that favor men have done to women and to other men but it's also about the loss that men suffer when.
• 43:28
  When their connection to these things is taken away and how you know we need to we need to envisage a better world for men when you when you say that you your methods are unhelpful it's not it's certainly not an argument I haven't heard before but I'm always just very interested in whether or not that's coming from.
• 43:48
  And I guess a stereotype of me and a superficial understanding of what my work is concerned with and the very different kinds of approaches that I take people think of me and they think or she's just that angry feminist to says provocative things online and I actually think that that's a very unfair characterization of me and I feel like it's pretty lazy actually.
• 44:14
  That is fair I'll I'll cop that because you are not a model if and I wouldn't be talking to you if you were so I guess the I guess you we can think about our public personas as being.
• 44:26
  You know comprising at least several parts and the what I was talking about there was was I was referring to to your question which I think was pointing to this that the aggressive kill all men Clementine Ford from social media not so much the nuanced you know scholar of feminism who comes out when you actually.
• 44:50
  I mean has Twitter ever been nuanced look and I will own that there are things that I've said in the past I'm never shy away from that things that I wouldn't say now and that you know maybe we're born out of.
• 45:04
  My age my the you know when social media started when we really I mean we have to remember that these things are very recent you know it's really been the last 10 years that we've evolved through social media to have I think having more nuanced conversations now but there was a particular trend that during the kill all men to period in particular which I wouldn't tweet now.
• 45:31
  And I mean I don't tweet I realize that Twitter was a very bad and unhealthy place for me I think it's a bad and unhealthy place for a lot of people.
• 45:41
  It's horrible by the way I just went online and I'm blocked so I can't even see your tweets anyway I don't know what I have must have done at some stage but I was like why can't I say oh well I don't know maybe I was going through a day that day but I don't really use it anymore my accounts still there but I haven't I very very occasionally.
• 46:01
  We'll go on and retweet something for work you know like I might retweet some things about the book but I'm not having conversations on Twitter anymore partly because I find it a very difficult place to really have those conversations because if you've got numerous people replying to certain threads and things get lost.
• 46:18
  But also because I realized that every time I went on there I was being primed to defend myself and primed to attack and it leads to you making very poor choices about how you articulate yourself.
• 46:31
  And the you know the kill all men era where I know that there are screenshots of collages that people have made of me saying things firstly mostly I'm responding to people who say things you know the tweets I'm responding to and never included in them but mostly it's they're very hyperbolic I mean very crude humor but yes very basic I'm not saying it's clever but hyperbolic responses to people saying things like you just take all men or you won't stop to all men are destroyed or you know every day.
• 47:00
  Or you know a reduction of the feminist argument and the feminist the feminist project to well obviously it's just because you hate men it's just silly it's laughing at them for this silliness but there was also a period of time and I think that this is sometimes what people don't understand as well is that in the same way that means work and in the same way that that vocabulary kind of can sometimes reflect a particular moment in pop culture.
• 47:27
  So too is the same of Twitter that that was a period in time where everyone was being very ironic very kind of like you know those it wasn't uncommon to see those things said and did I join in on a a basic crude comedic meme yes I mean this is what again I'm not I'm not saying like I was very clever but no I get it I mean I've been there as well I've done thing you know there are tweets that people pull out of from from me completely out of context and I'm not saying like I was very clever but.
• 47:50
  No I get it I mean I've been there as well I've done thing you know there are there are tweets that people pull out of from from me completely out of context and you know now treat as if I've transgress some some trip wire that I should have known about at the time but actually I was tweeting it in 2014 and the more is actually were different seven years ago about whatever it was whatever provocative joke I was making and Twitter was supposed to be a place where you would like provoke and make ridiculous jokes it wasn't like this it wasn't like I was issuing a press release.
• 48:20
  That I was supposing everyone was going to take seriously 160 characters. Do you think that's I mean let's just pause there on social media for a moment because I think it's it's an interesting like what impact is that having on the tenor and the quality of our conversations about things.
• 48:38
  I think that they can be incredible tools you know there are people who even on Twitter there are people who love academic Twitter although mind you.
• 48:48
  It is quite funny sometimes to look at the drama that's going on in like spaces that you wouldn't think have drama you know the things that I've heard about craft Twitter.
• 49:00
  I don't even know that tell me what is it that's pretty funny I mean just you know fights in the crafting community.
• 49:08
  I can't tell you what those fights are because I'm not in the crafting community but when you hear something like that you're like that checks out that checks out it's very people's front of Judea.
• 49:17
  Yes yes and I feel like people's front of Judea really kind of and for anyone who hasn't seen the life of Brian it's a moment in the but even the life of Brian as a movie that has a lot of.
• 49:28
  I'll drop it in right. I'll drop it in right.
• 49:30
  Yeah.
• 49:31
  I don't want that Roman rubbish why don't you sell proper food proper food yeah I know I was reaching pure in this tippet.
• 49:48
  Oh don't blame me I didn't ask to sell this stuff.
• 49:51
  All right thank you for those noses.
• 49:53
  Can I get two?
• 49:55
  Thanks Rachel.
• 49:56
  Are you the Judean people's front?
• 49:58
  Fuck off.
• 49:59
  What?
• 50:00
  Judean people's front.
• 50:02
  For the people's front of Judea.
• 50:05
  Judean people's front.
• 50:11
  Can I join your group?
• 50:13
  Now piss off.
• 50:14
  I didn't want to sell this stuff it's only a job I hate the Romans as much as anybody.
• 50:20
  Are you sure?
• 50:22
  Oh dead short. I hate the Romans already.
• 50:25
  Listen if you wanted to join that PFJ you'd have to have really ate the Romans.
• 50:31
  I do.
• 50:33
  Oh yeah how much?
• 50:35
  A lot.
• 50:38
  Right you're in.
• 50:40
  Listen.
• 50:41
  The only people we ate more than the Romans are fucking Judean people's front.
• 50:45
  Yeah.
• 50:46
  The Judean people's front.
• 50:48
  Oh yes.
• 50:49
  And the people's front of Judea.
• 50:52
  The people's front of Judea split us.
• 50:55
  Where are the people's front of Judea?
• 50:58
  Oh.
• 50:59
  I thought we were the popular front.
• 51:01
  People's front.
• 51:02
  What ever happened to the popular front?
• 51:05
  He's over there.
• 51:08
  Yeah!
• 51:12
  But the life of Brian is a movie obviously that has things in there that now you would never.
• 51:18
  And I don't even want to say you would never get away with but you shouldn't get away with.
• 51:21
  There's some jokes in there that we have distinctly moved on from finding funny.
• 51:26
  And that's the same of you know things that were happening as recently as 2014 on Twitter.
• 51:31
  We have privileged and benefited from.
• 51:34
  We have been privileged by and we have benefited from.
• 51:37
  The incredible conversations that activists and advocates from marginalized communities.
• 51:43
  Have been forcing on the public through whatever means necessary.
• 51:47
  To you know articulate things like casual transphobia is not acceptable.
• 51:52
  Casual racism is not acceptable.
• 51:54
  We don't use the R word anymore because it's ableist.
• 51:58
  These are recent understandings that we've come to.
• 52:02
  And I would argue that what we need sometimes is those big sledgehammer moments.
• 52:08
  We need someone like me or like any other activist that does things that people say of their methods.
• 52:16
  Why just don't think they're very helpful to be standing at the side of the pool and throwing a giant boulder into it.
• 52:23
  To cause you know rather than gently placing a pebble at the edge and say excuse me could we please have a nuanced and kind conversation.
• 52:32
  Those conversations can happen later and maybe that's what we're moving towards now.
• 52:36
  But we need the initial bandage to be ripped off or the whatever.
• 52:40
  I mean I'm a very big fan of metaphor.
• 52:42
  We need the boil to be lance and all the pasta spill out before we can start gently tending to the wound.
• 52:48
  Yeah you just don't want the pasta spill out in such a way that it infects other parts of the other parts of the leg and becomes gangreness and the whole leg falls off.
• 52:58
  Well that's true but I mean I don't think that that's what's happening.
• 53:00
  I think it's very interesting the perspectives that we come from and I would say as well with all kindness meant that I think that one of the reasons why you're able to take that position is well particularly when it comes to sexism is that for you it's largely theoretical.
• 53:15
  You can go home at the end of the day and not think about it and you cannot worry about you can you have the luxury of being able to think about whether or not methods should be gentle or not because ultimately you're not really experiencing the full weight of them.
• 53:29
  Yeah that's true but my impression of sexism and feminism isn't informed by my experience but by the women who I speak to about it and by my female friends and my family members.
• 53:39
  So to some extent my my objection is never oh poor man why do we have to put up with listening to feminists talk about feminism.
• 53:48
  I mean I'm interested in ideas and I'm interested in equality so I'm interested in all of this stuff and I'm interested in women being treated as fairly as as as men are what I mean my only the only extent to which I would object to extreme lancing of boils is if it provokes the other side to be less receptive to the message of equality.
• 54:08
  So if it empowers if it empowers rightly rap ag men to dismiss equality by saying actually it's all just this hysterical like I guess what I'm thinking of is something like the criticism of the of the claim that that violence is not perpetrated by all men like the you know there's a chapter in them in boys will be boys entitled not all men and it's become like this cliche that a guy can't say not all men rapists because everybody is supposed to say that.
• 54:37
  Because everybody is supposed to roll their eyes at that and say we get it not all men but really that's just a way of dodging responsibility for a collective guilt that men actually do do hold on to like I know a lot of men who are less enthusiastic about joining me and taking up arms against sexism because they feel like they're being accused of guilt by association even when they didn't do anything wrong.
• 55:06
  So even if like even if not all men makes a lot of sense it doesn't necessarily make a lot of strategic sense to insist that all men are guilty for the misdeeds of a fraction of a percentage point of males who are rapists.
• 55:17
  But no one's insisted that all men are guilty the whole point of not all men in that joke is that of course of course implicitly it is understood that not all men are responsible for these things.
• 55:27
  What where the frustration comes from is why when women in particular are talking about sexual violence and the sexual violence we have personally experienced and that which we know our friends have personally experienced.
• 55:40
  We always require to fulfill the role of the carer from the outset and make sure that the men around us feel soothed through having that conversation.
• 55:50
  Why are we never the ones being soothed that's where the frustration is and I question how I mean this is the thing if you can't I understand what it feels like to have that little shred of indignation and her feelings pop up and well I don't I didn't do it you know and my perspective is a white person.
• 56:09
  My perspective is a white person when conversations about white supremacy are happening is of course that little shred well I'm not I'm not that bad person but part of being part of this conversation needs to be coming to the understanding that it's not about taking collective responsibility for people's extreme violence but about acknowledging that we're all part of the system.
• 56:33
  I do nothing to help the experience of people of color in this world or even to be really truly honest about my position of privilege as a white person in this world by coming to every conversation about racism needing to be excused from perpetrating the worst of it what why do I need to be cater to in that conversation and in the same way why do men need to be cater to if I'm not calling them personally a rapist I'm not talking about them.
• 57:00
  Right but isn't the implication that they're liable how is the implication that they're liable the implication is the patriarchy creates violence and that there are certain men who express the most extreme of violence is towards women but also that these things exist on a continuum men who don't rape women but who.
• 57:22
  Maybe laugh at rape jokes might not being rape it might not be the ones responsible for that violence but they're part of the system and I don't think that being honest about those things and having conversations about that and challenging yourself to be uncomfortable I mean it's really interesting how much men seem to focus on this discomfort that they have with these conversations as if their discomfort is the worst thing that's happening here.
• 57:48
  I don't think that's the implication though I don't think it's that they think that being uncomfortable about being you know being requested to stand up for women's rights that that is worse than rape I mean I don't think that's the implication.
• 58:02
  I think a lot of men seem to act that way particularly in the insistence that you know when you think about okay how will how do you expect me to be an ally if you don't acknowledge that I'm not part of the problem.
• 58:17
  That's conditional allyship and that's part of the structure of power that's why these arguments take place because it's firstly it's nonsensical to need to be excused from a problem that you know you are not actively perpetrating why do you need to be excused from that other than the fact that you have been trained in some way to believe that your allyship should come with congratulations.
• 58:42
  No I just think that it's that men don't feel like men don't think of that not all men think of themselves as a member of the group called men like I don't that's not an identity affiliation that I that I have and like if it were use if I thought it was useful in some way to get the maximum number of men on board to treat them all as being responsible for each other's misdeeds to such an ex you know to sort of steam role that what I understand what I appreciate is sometimes a slightly overly sensitive reaction.
• 59:11
  To these kinds of conversations like I'm just looking through like here's a this is from boys will be was it says in the aftermath of Eurydice Dixon's murder in particular she was the Melbourne comic who was tragically raped and murdered by a man it became a national story in the aftermath of Eurydice's murder in particular this is you writing in your book men everywhere fell over themselves to insist.
• 59:34
  That not all men are responsible for crimes such as these that in fact most men are good decent wonderful people who would never tolerate gendered violence and would always always always stand up to intervene when they saw it happen the truth is very different you write most men struggle to speak out against sexism and abuse.
• 59:52
  So in assessing the claim that not all men are responsible for rape and murder and that most men would intervene to stop gendered violence you say the truth is very different in other words it's it's untrue to claim that most men would intervene to stop gendered violence but the evidence is just that most men struggle to speak out against sexism.
• 1:00:12
  So I think it feels like a bait and switch feels like what hang on it's actually it feels like you're saying it's not true that that that we can say not all men because in actual fact all men are sexist and then the sexist then the person who's being accused of being sexist goes hang on but I'm not the same as the person who killed her how is that useful in getting me on side.
• 1:00:32
  But I do think that most men don't intervene when it comes to sexism and gendered violence and I think that there are two very different things like gendered I think most men definitely would intervene if there were gendered violence going on but might not.
• 1:00:47
  I don't have to completely disagree and that's not because they don't care about it necessarily sometimes the reason that people don't intervene is because they're afraid.
• 1:00:57
  We'll put it this way a lot raped on a train in America in the last two weeks in a carriage full of people and no one intervenes some people filmed it.
• 1:01:06
  I mean that's horrifying but I would say surely you would concur that more people are likely to intervene in an act of violence if they you know then in an act of what one might regard as being sexist joke.
• 1:01:18
  Was she just unlucky enough to be on the one train carriage full of people that day who wouldn't do that.
• 1:01:23
  I hope so hopefully but I mean I think what can happen here is there can be a bunch of guys who are all speaking in a slightly blue way and it may be being sort of blokey and sexist and then presumably a person's refusal to condemn them for that sexist language gets conflated with the refusal of people on a train to prevent a rape.
• 1:01:48
  No no no no no I'm not conflating those two things I'm not saying they're the same I'm saying that they are part of the same system they are there it's on a continuum.
• 1:01:57
  But you know the whole this isn't my theory the the idea of the pyramid of structural power whether at the very top there's a small point of the worst kinds of expressions of behavior and the worst act of violence and at the bottom is a much broader larger segment where the sort of casual indifference occurs but it's all part of the same structure you can't get to the top without having that foundation as a base.
• 1:02:25
  I want to let you go and and see your your son because I feel guilty about that taking your time but the give us your sense of the future where like my daughter is for your son is five if they meet when they're in their 30s what do gender relations look like are they different.
• 1:02:44
  I think they have to be of course they will be you know we're we've benefited so much from the incredible work of feminists in the second wave.
• 1:02:53
  The world looks very different now it hasn't made it to where exactly we need to be we've recognized that some of those some of those sentiments from them are ones that we've moved on from and as as will be the case when our children are adults they will look back on this time and they they may look back on this time go well well her methods were very.
• 1:03:11
  Very unhelpful except that it's all part of the sit we're all part of changing the system you know none of us we cannot hope for these things to happen in a state of inertia we're not just going to wake up in 40 years time with no.
• 1:03:26
  Hoping that things will be different if we're just nice enough about it but I think that when our kids are adults we're going to be a lot more advanced in terms of conversation about gender and gender identity hopefully will have moved on from this very kind of binary idea of gender.
• 1:03:43
  The entire world in the way that it's run will look different because technology is advancing so much that who knows what we would even consider a gender job in 30 years time hopefully the idea of hopefully we will have dismantled ideas around sex and how to have it and what.
• 1:04:04
  What sexual power looks like to the point where we can you know where where some of the things that we're seeing happening as casual expressions of sexual violence are reflected on with horror from people in that time what can you believe people used to do this or this was a thing that happened.
• 1:04:25
  I have faith I have hope you know I know that things don't change overnight things happen at a pretty slow pace but it's that old adage you know we're planting seeds for a forest we may never sit in.
• 1:04:38
  I'm a lovely analogy to end on climate time climate time forwards book is how we love notes on a life thanks for your time and thanks for having the guts to talk to me as well sometimes people.
• 1:04:49
  I'm a very gutsy person.
• 1:04:51
  Good on you. Thanks Tom.
• 1:04:53
  Thank you so much.