Latest / The Soap Box Podcast / Enthusiastically waving goodbye to White Feminism, with Lucy Lucraft

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Enthusiastically waving goodbye to White Feminism, with Lucy Lucraft · The Soap Box Podcast

• 1:16
  Peta: What does your bookshelf look like?
• 1:19
  Peta: That pile by the side of your bed.
• 1:22
  Peta: The.
• 1:24
  Peta: The big stack of paperbacks and hardbacks that you.
• 1:30
  Peta: Bought with such good intentions.
• 1:32
  Peta: But haven't quite managed to crack that covers off.
• 1:36
  Peta: Well, maybe your.
• 1:38
  Peta: The digital type and everything's on your Kindle.
• 1:42
  Peta: Streams and streams of.
• 1:46
  Peta: Interesting things to read.
• 1:48
  Peta: Orderable downloads.
• 1:52
  Peta: All these kinds of things.
• 1:55
  Peta: One side of my house is is pretty much completely covered with books.
• 1:59
  Peta: On every single floor.
• 2:01
  Peta: And I'm not with them.
• 2:02
  Peta: I have read don't get me wrong.
• 2:04
  Peta: But probably a third of them.
• 2:06
  Peta: We're bought with those good intentions.
• 2:09
  Peta: And amongst those books.
• 2:12
  Peta: Uh, a big chunk of texts that cover.
• 2:16
  Peta: Allyship.
• 2:17
  Peta: And anti-racism.
• 2:20
  Peta: Some of which were bought around the black lives matter protests.
• 2:25
  Peta: Um, and some of which I've been recommended by incredibly.
• 2:29
  Peta: Interesting.
• 2:30
  Peta: And.
• 2:31
  Peta: And lovely and intelligent and much clever than me.
• 2:37
  Peta: anti racist.
• 2:38
  Peta: speakers and thinkers.
• 2:43
  Peta: But.
• 2:45
  Peta: As great as it is to support people's work.
• 2:47
  Peta: By buying the books.
• 2:51
  Peta: Them sitting on a shelf, doesn't help.
• 2:54
  Peta: Anybody really.
• 2:58
  Peta: And then once you have read them and I have read.
• 3:01
  Peta: A few of them.
• 3:04
  Peta: What you doing with alert information?
• 3:06
  Peta: Because I was my guest and I talk about this week.
• 3:10
  Peta: Buying more books is not enough.
• 3:13
  Peta: Reading more books is not enough.
• 3:15
  Peta: What really matters are the changes that you make based on what you read, what really matters is whether people's lives around you are better based on the information that you have crammed into your head.
• 3:27
  Peta: Otherwise, you might just as well have been flicking through the phone book.
• 3:32
  Peta: Not that they have those anymore.
• 3:35
  Peta: Today, I'm talking to Lucy, Lou craft.
• 3:38
  Peta: A podcast producer.
• 3:39
  Peta: Who.
• 3:40
  Peta: Focuses on platforming people whose voices don't get heard generally.
• 3:47
  Peta: We talk about running an online business as a marginalized person on an ally.
• 3:52
  Peta: And then we also talk about.
• 3:54
  Peta: Deconstructing and decolonizing your mind.
• 3:59
  Peta: Identifying the parts of your thinking.
• 4:04
  Peta: And the ideas that you.
• 4:06
  Peta: Have built a lot of your life on that actually spring from the patriarchy that spring from the.
• 4:17
  Peta: White supremacy essentially.
• 4:20
  Peta: We talk about white feminism and how, at least he thinks that white feminism has done a huge amount of damage to the world that we live in right now to individuals and to society.
• 4:32
  Peta: We talk about the links between white feminism on the prosperity gospel.
• 4:37
  Peta: And honestly, While I had the best time talking to Lucy and it could put the world to rights with her for a long, long time.
• 4:46
  Peta: Lucy did post some pretty tough questions.
• 4:49
  Peta: But I came away from this discussion with a greater understanding of how I can move forward as an ally.
• 4:55
  Peta: Actually move forward rather than just buying another book that sits on my shelf and makes me feel better when people come to stay and notice it.
• 5:05
  Peta: So.
• 5:07
  Peta: Brace yourself.
• 5:09
  Peta: And you are going to need that notebook.
• 5:11
  Peta: Setback or carry on folding the washing and listen to Lucy.
• 5:16
  Peta: Get on her soap box.
• 5:19
  Peta: Lucy, it's so good to have you on the podcast.
• 5:21
  Peta: I'm really excited for our chat.
• 5:25
  Lucy: Thank you so much for having me.
• 5:26
  Lucy: Thank you.
• 5:27
  Lucy: I'm really excited to chat.
• 5:28
  Peta: Yay.
• 5:29
  Peta: That's what I like.
• 5:30
  Peta: Cool.
• 5:31
  Peta: So for people who don't already know you can you give them a little bit of, um, an intro into who you are and like what you do and how you got here?
• 5:40
  Lucy: so bad.
• 5:41
  Lucy: I've never been good at like elevator pitches, but, um, I guess I'll just say some words and hopefully it'll all make sense.
• 5:49
  Lucy: I, I'm Lucy Ludecraft.
• 5:51
  Lucy: I, um, my background is that I was a journalist and I wrote for tabloids, uh, for many years and.
• 5:59
  Lucy: Then I sort of pivoted into podcast production, which is something that I kind of was consulting on anyway.
• 6:07
  Lucy: I was quite an early adopter of podcasts.
• 6:09
  Lucy: And I've been doing that full time since 2020.
• 6:15
  Lucy: and I like to specifically work with people whose voices aren't typically platformed.
• 6:21
  Lucy: That's.
• 6:22
  Lucy: The, the goal, the aim, it doesn't always work out that way, but I ideally only like to work with women.
• 6:29
  Lucy: And I prefer to work with women of color or, uh, disabled people.
• 6:37
  Lucy: I, so I have fallen into a bit of a niche of charities, which is great.
• 6:43
  Lucy: So I kind of have a mix of charities and small business owners.
• 6:49
  Lucy: Um, Who tend to be the sort of people who, oh, can I swear,
• 6:55
  Peta: Yes, of course.
• 6:57
  Lucy: who give a shit about stuff.
• 7:00
  Lucy: So yeah, that's me.
• 7:02
  Peta: That sounds fabulous.
• 7:03
  Peta: I'm very similar to, yeah, the work that the kind of work that I love to do.
• 7:07
  Peta: So that's great.
• 7:08
  Peta: Um, cool.
• 7:09
  Peta: So, for people who have listened to the podcast before a reminder and people who haven't what I like to do is get my guests to to kind of share with us what their soapbox is.
• 7:20
  Peta: The thing that they find themselves at like 10 o'clock at night in the corner of a kitchen with a glass of wine, talking away to someone who might have like a slightly glazed look over their face at this point.
• 7:32
  Peta: Like the thing that they can't stop talking about.
• 7:35
  Peta: So, um, so party, kitchen or not, what is your soapbox?
• 7:41
  Lucy: I have so many.
• 7:44
  Lucy: As somebody, uh, as somebody with autism, I have a few special interests.
• 7:49
  Lucy: So actually, but I wanted to find something that kind of encapsulates all of them, actually.
• 7:56
  Lucy: Almost all of them.
• 7:57
  Lucy: And that is white feminism.
• 7:59
  Lucy: Because I personally believe that white feminism is just the root of so many evils and it's very minimized in our society.
• 8:10
  Lucy: So yeah, that is my soapbox, white feminism.
• 8:13
  Peta: Well, tell me more about that.
• 8:15
  Peta: Yeah.
• 8:16
  Lucy: when people hear the word white feminism, I think They maybe misconstrue kind of what it is and it feels almost like it's an individual attack on, on people who are feminists and are white.
• 8:32
  Lucy: And that's not what it is.
• 8:33
  Lucy: It's essentially, it's a tool used to uphold white supremacy.
• 8:43
  Lucy: And you know, people of color can also fall into white feminist tropes and traps.
• 8:49
  Lucy: Um, certainly white passing people.
• 8:51
  Lucy: Um, and I think the thing with white feminism is that it's so insidious and It, it makes it, it's such a barrier for unlearning and starting to deconstruct and decolonize your mind and start seeing beyond your bubble of feminism.
• 9:17
  Lucy: I think that white feminism can be also a reason why businesses end up marketing really, really unethically.
• 9:28
  Lucy: And I think a really good example of this is.
• 9:31
  Lucy: manifestation or, you know, the women who are like, you know, I, and I used to believe some of this stuff as well.
• 9:40
  Lucy: So I just want to say that, like, no shade.
• 9:42
  Lucy: You know, I think that we should all be earning six figures.
• 9:48
  Lucy: More women should be billionaires because women spend their money more ethically than men do.
• 9:55
  Lucy: And that is a trope of white feminism, because what it doesn't take into account is that to become a billionaire, like Taylor Swift, for example, you've, you simply cannot become a billionaire without exploiting people.
• 10:06
  Lucy: And I'm not saying that she herself is.
• 10:10
  Lucy: Individually exploiting somebody she is on a really grand scale because she's a billionaire it there's no way to make that kind of insane amount of money without exploiting somebody along the way so for me white feminism is just The root of all evil.
• 10:33
  Peta: that's really interesting.
• 10:36
  Peta: Big statements.
• 10:38
  Peta: Well, big headlines.
• 10:39
  Peta: I love it.
• 10:42
  Peta: It reminds, the thing that you were saying at the end though, reminds me of like the prosperity gospel.
• 10:47
  Lucy: Yes,
• 10:48
  Peta: it was around kind of a lot when I was, I don't know.
• 10:52
  Peta: I mean, dates have no meaning to me anymore.
• 10:53
  Peta: Like it could have been like five years ago, come in 15.
• 10:57
  Lucy: I know what you
• 10:58
  Peta: But, like, a while ago, there was this idea, like, amongst, amongst Christians, people of faith, like, God wants you to be rich, and God wants you to do this, and this is your birthright, et cetera, et cetera, without any of the, um, uh, kind of, without lifting the lid and, and, and deconstructing, as you said, what that means, like, what that would actually mean for you, what that would actually mean for other people, the impact that it would have, all that kind of
• 11:24
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 11:25
  Peta: So, so for people who Like, okay, so I am white.
• 11:32
  Peta: I am a feminist.
• 11:34
  Peta: Or for people who thought feminism is just generally a good thing.
• 11:39
  Peta: Just like, it's just essentially just good.
• 11:41
  Peta: Or everything about it is good.
• 11:44
  Peta: how do you have those kind of conversations to get them to think a little bit deeper?
• 11:49
  Peta: Yep.
• 11:52
  Lucy: it's so hard, isn't it?
• 11:54
  Lucy: I think I am.
• 11:56
  Lucy: Well, first of all, I just wanna say that I am of the opinion that kind of shaming people and.
• 12:02
  Lucy: Those kind of conversations aren't conducive to people learning.
• 12:10
  Lucy: At the same time, it is not people of color's job to package things up in a nice way that makes it comfortable for white people to learn.
• 12:21
  Lucy: So those two things being true.
• 12:24
  Lucy: I think the easiest way to start, or the easiest way to think about unlearning and to get comfortable with the fact that feminism, intersectional feminism is kind of a better route to go than white feminism, is to think about, you know, Well, first of all, if you're feeling comfortable all the time, then probably nothing's happening because you're staying in your comfort zone.
• 12:54
  Lucy: And also, white feminism is not a person.
• 13:00
  Lucy: It's not a good or a bad thing.
• 13:02
  Lucy: Having these binaries has led us to kind of have this idea of, but that person isn't racist.
• 13:08
  Lucy: They're really nice.
• 13:09
  Lucy: You know, like, good and bad is not I don't think when we're talking about this, I think accepting and having a lot of compassion for yourself when you're going through things like this is really, really, it's crucial, actually, you've got, you've got to realize that you have grown up in a society that has normalized and.
• 13:36
  Lucy: upheld these systems of oppression, including white feminism, without you even realizing, through every single strand of, of, you know, your education, hospital, police, everything, everything.
• 13:48
  Lucy: And so it would be kind of extraordinary if you hadn't absorbed all of this information, or at least some of it.
• 13:57
  Lucy: So thinking about it like that, like it's not your fault, but.
• 14:02
  Lucy: I think you have to, at some point, choose to say actually I'm gonna get a bit uncomfortable about this and it's gonna make me feel weird and maybe I'm gonna feel shame.
• 14:16
  Lucy: And maybe I'm going to have to reevaluate some of the friendships and some of the books that I read.
• 14:21
  Lucy: Maybe I won't want to read Brene Brown anymore.
• 14:23
  Lucy: And I'll, I'll cringe at some of the stuff that I used to do, but I'm still going to do it because none of us are free unless we're all free and that's.
• 14:35
  Lucy: That's so true.
• 14:36
  Lucy: And it's never been truer than right now, but, um, yeah, that would probably be how I would say start.
• 14:44
  Peta: Okay, so when we, when we talk about white feminism, we dive into some kind of concrete examples of how that as a framework, and that as kind of Something that's in existence has, has, shaped the world that we live in, in a negative way.
• 15:02
  Peta: So, because I find sometimes, sometimes it's great to talk about like big philosophical things, but a lot of people need something concrete to kind of hang that on.
• 15:09
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 15:12
  Lucy: So, a really good example that I literally just saw, just before we recorded, was the actress Julie Delpy who had been asked by a journalist to do this.
• 15:21
  Lucy: Ostensibly something about what it's like to be a woman in the industry.
• 15:25
  Lucy: And she said.
• 15:27
  Lucy: It's so hard to be a woman and, I'm paraphrasing here, sometimes I wish I was a black woman because then, and then she kind of went on to say, I don't know what, but obviously, uh, and that Kieran Culkin was next to her and he had his head in his hands.
• 15:45
  Lucy: That to me is just the perfect example of white feminism where it's like, it's so hard to be me.
• 15:51
  Lucy: If only I could be a black woman and people would listen to me.
• 15:56
  Lucy: I, I, it's so difficult for me to explain why that's such a good example of white feminism, but if you are unable to acknowledge your privilege in a situation and you're annoyed at the person who has a lot less privilege than you because you're not getting even more airtime than you would have been getting anyway, like that is white feminism.
• 16:24
  Lucy: It's so tone deaf.
• 16:25
  Lucy: It's outrageous.
• 16:27
  Lucy: But I mean, I've probably, maybe that's a bit too abstract.
• 16:30
  Lucy: I think also a very easy way to understand white feminism is that if you think about some of your favorite influencers, let's say, white influencers, people who may speak up about politics, but then when it comes to something like Palestine, for example, like perhaps they've talked about, I don't know, maternal mental health.
• 16:56
  Lucy: And then as soon as, and I have seen this a lot from like kind of people within the motherhood sphere, whose job it is to talk about, you know, making sure women's wellness is, you know, mother's wellness is spoken about more and then they stop when it comes to.
• 17:17
  Lucy: Mothers in Palestine, that is white feminism.
• 17:21
  Lucy: Because if your activism and if your social justice and if your liberation stops at the point where that person is no longer white and no longer looks like you and it doesn't affect you anymore, that's white feminism.
• 17:37
  Peta: think that's the key, isn't it?
• 17:38
  Peta: That last bit that you just said.
• 17:40
  Peta: That it doesn't affect you anymore, like if your, if your activism of whatever sort is limited to things that affect you or affect the people close to you,
• 17:53
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 17:54
  Peta: then yeah, then it's limited.
• 17:57
  Peta: Then it's not, it's not liberation.
• 17:59
  Peta: It's not, um, it's not encompassing.
• 18:03
  Peta: It's not equal.
• 18:05
  Peta: It's yeah.
• 18:06
  Peta: There is this still that element of separation and that element of hierarchy, I guess.
• 18:13
  Lucy: Yeah, 100%.
• 18:15
  Peta: That's really interesting.
• 18:17
  Peta: Okay.
• 18:18
  Peta: Um, and as someone who, and I've mentioned this on a podcast I did a while ago, as someone who was brought up in the era when we were all very much, you don't see color,
• 18:31
  Lucy: Mm hmm.
• 18:31
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Peta: like that was, that was the, that was what we were told at the time.
• 18:35
  Peta: That was kind of the, the acceptable, I'm using my little, uh, great bunny ears things.
• 18:40
  Peta: That was the acceptable way of approaching difference.
• 18:44
  Peta: Like we're all equal, so we're all the same, to, to step out of that and to unlearn like you were saying earlier, to unlearn those ideas and to, to objectively and critically look at the way that you have understood the world and realize that it is lacking is, is a tough thing to do.
• 19:09
  Lucy: Mm hmm.
• 19:10
  Peta: And can feel very confronting and can feel, um, and if I'm being perfectly honest on some days it can feel unfair,
• 19:19
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Peta: even though it's not like it's, yeah, but it can feel that way.
• 19:25
  Peta: But I think that, to me, something like, like, things like feminism or things like anti racism or things like the struggle for LGBTQ plus rights, all of those bigger kind of movements that are moving us towards some kind of society that, like, you know, you actually want to live in, are constantly growing and constantly changing and we're constantly kind of re evaluating different things.
• 19:53
  Peta: And feminism is no different than that.
• 19:55
  Peta: Like if you can't, if you can't make it bigger, if you can't learn, if you can't kind of deconstruct, then, then what's the point?
• 20:03
  Peta: You're still like, you might as well just be back in the 1950s.
• 20:07
  Peta: We've not gone anywhere.
• 20:08
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 20:10
  Lucy: I mean, I would challenge you a bit on the first thing you said, when you said it, this was kind of the acceptable
• 20:19
  Peta: hmm.
• 20:19
  Lucy: and that acceptable for white people.
• 20:22
  Peta: Oh, definitely.
• 20:23
  Peta: Yes.
• 20:23
  Peta: Yeah.
• 20:26
  Lucy: and, and you're 100 percent right in the, I think, I agree with you, that feminism, all movements, will evolve, and they'll move, like how many waves of feminism have there been, and that they've been named, and, um, there has to be space for things to evolve.
• 20:45
  Lucy: And I think that comes down a little bit to, I heard somebody say this on a podcast I was editing recently, um, beginners mindset, which I hear a lot of kind of motivational speakers, like mostly white men use that, but actually it, um, it does kind of describe exactly the mindset that you probably need to have in that we all need to have, right.
• 21:12
  Lucy: Is The mindset of, I literally don't know it all.
• 21:16
  Lucy: In fact, probably I don't know anything on this day because it's changed from yesterday.
• 21:21
  Lucy: But that's hard.
• 21:22
  Lucy: Like nobody was brought up that way.
• 21:23
  Lucy: Schools, if we went to mainstream education, we were not told that it was okay to change our minds even, or, you know, get things wrong.
• 21:34
  Lucy: That's, so it's, it is really hard.
• 21:36
  Lucy: You have to have compassion with yourself.
• 21:38
  Lucy: Well,
• 21:40
  Peta: Um, as Someone who works with marginalized communities and kind of marginalized individuals, like, as an ally.
• 21:48
  Peta: How does, how does white feminism negatively affect those groups in your experience?
• 21:57
  Peta: I know that's a huge question and there are many, many ways.
• 22:01
  Lucy: I suppose specifically about the people.
• 22:04
  Lucy: That I work with, who might be business, their businesses who want to start podcasts, want to have their voices heard.
• 22:11
  Lucy: Traditional media has always platformed white people above all else that I'm talking about in journalism.
• 22:21
  Lucy: Um, and, and also there's Even when there is diversity because people will obviously always talk about that, you know, there's a black person who does this or whatever and or, you know, like when you look at politics, if you look at Kemi Badena, like the Tories have more people of color or had more people of color in their cabinet than Labour do.
• 22:41
  Lucy: But, um, I'm talking diversity of thought as well because you can absolutely be a black person who is perpetuating harm.
• 22:50
  Lucy: You can see David Lammy, Kemi Battinong for that.
• 22:54
  Lucy: so I suppose specifically for the people that I work with, the, If you look at the podcast charts, people at the top of the podcast charts, at the moment, it didn't used to always be like this, but the people at the top tend to be white men or they are people either with a huge social media following, or they're people who are backed by You know, publishers houses or agencies or whatever, they're celebrities, they're already big names.
• 23:26
  Peta: Mm hmm.
• 23:26
  Lucy: All of those things are harder for a person of colour, a disabled person, an LGBTQ person to achieve.
• 23:36
  Lucy: So already they're starting behind everyone else.
• 23:40
  Lucy: And that's not to say that there aren't amazing people of colour who have been recognised in the field, but, um, There's always going to be exceptions, right?
• 23:48
  Lucy: But it is so much harder for those people, for, uh, marginalized groups to have their voices heard.
• 23:56
  Lucy: And there's a budget barrier as well.
• 23:58
  Lucy: You know, if you want to hire a podcast producer, I cost money.
• 24:03
  Lucy: And as much as I try and make kind of moves to be ethical, I'm also a small business, so I have to be sustainable.
• 24:12
  Lucy: It's not always possible.
• 24:15
  Lucy: And so, and even, you know, equipment, all of these sorts of things.
• 24:18
  Lucy: And of course you can do all this.
• 24:20
  Lucy: Cheaply, but these are all the ways that marginalized groups are hampered in comparison to white people.
• 24:27
  Peta: Yeah.
• 24:30
  Peta: When, so this is a thought that's been ticking in my head for a while now.
• 24:36
  Peta: And, and it feels, it feels linked to a thought that's been ticking in my head around Palestine as well.
• 24:43
  Peta: I think it feels to me.
• 24:46
  Peta: From my perspective as a cis het white woman who kind of lives in a safe country and, and, all of the, the privileges that that gives me, it feels like white feminism is almost a reaction to the patriarchy that pulls with it an awful lot of the patriarchal structures and understandings, and then uses that to build, um, white feminism.
• 25:19
  Peta: And that means that actually a lot of the work, a lot of the problems with the patriarchy are not undone in white feminism.
• 25:26
  Peta: They are perpetuated in a way that makes it slightly nicer for white women.
• 25:34
  Peta: and, and that makes it almost as bad for people who are not white women as the patriarchy was for, for women.
• 25:45
  Lucy: Yeah,
• 25:46
  Peta: And it feels like that as a species, we are not very good at being in a difficult, marginalized situation and coming out of that situation in a healthier way.
• 26:02
  Peta: We are much more likely to come out of that situation in a way that means that we perpetuate the harm that we had put on us, on other people.
• 26:11
  Peta: That was a very convoluted way of saying that.
• 26:14
  Peta: I think I got there.
• 26:15
  Peta: and it, and it feels a little bit like this, This idea that that gets thrown around that kind of Israel as a state felt, attacked and felt unsafe and the way that they have dealt with that.
• 26:32
  Peta: feeling is to lash out at everybody else and to perpetuate that harm on other people, because then that puts them in a position of strength.
• 26:43
  Peta: So this idea that like white women now feel like they have more of a position of power, more of a position of strength because of the, the, the things that they've built, but really that keeps us safe.
• 26:56
  Peta: It doesn't keep anybody else safe.
• 26:59
  Peta: In fact, it hurts everybody else.
• 27:01
  Lucy: And I would argue that it hurts white women too, in the same way that, um, how the state of Israel behaves and how it has evolved harms Jews everywhere.
• 27:12
  Lucy: It doesn't make them safer, it, it makes them, Like, far less safe.
• 27:19
  Lucy: In that same way, white feminism doesn't It keeps, okay, so it keeps white people in power.
• 27:27
  Lucy: It keeps, it upholds white supremacy.
• 27:30
  Lucy: But the flip side to that is that white supremacy literally harms us all.
• 27:35
  Lucy: Um, in the way that we Are forced to work the way that we are forced to leave our needs at the table, the way that we are forced to kind of bring up children alone without our village, even the, the way that we're forced to make decisions about our bodies that harms everyone.
• 27:58
  Lucy: And that includes men.
• 28:00
  Lucy: People will often use the statistic that The men have the highest rate of suicide or the, I can't remember what the stat is.
• 28:10
  Lucy: Yes.
• 28:12
  Lucy: And the, because the system was set up that way.
• 28:17
  Lucy: The system was not set up to support men.
• 28:20
  Lucy: The patriarchy is a tool that keeps men, keeps men's mental health hidden and liable to spiral out of control to the point where they feel that they have to kill themselves.
• 28:33
  Lucy: The patriarchy helps no one apart from very, very, very few who have the most.
• 28:40
  Lucy: so yeah, I would completely agree with you that white feminism is not, it's not helpful for even white feminists.
• 28:51
  Peta: So how do we make the leap from thinking that, that feminism is a wholly good thing and that our perspective on feminism is helping make the world a better place to what you and I have been discussing today.
• 29:06
  Peta: So the leap to that different perspective and then the leap onto doing something about it.
• 29:17
  Lucy: Hmm.
• 29:18
  Lucy: I think
• 29:19
  Peta: to put at your feet, by the way.
• 29:20
  Peta: Solved
• 29:22
  Lucy: solve it all.
• 29:23
  Lucy: Um,
• 29:24
  Peta: problem.
• 29:26
  Lucy: it kind of comes down to the same.
• 29:30
  Lucy: The same way that we kind of change our mindset, well not even change our mindsets, um, You know, when you realize that your feed, your Instagram feed is really upsetting you and you're like, Oh my God, I have to unfollow these people with the beautiful houses or I'm, these people are making me feel, and it's, it's, you know, it's not that you hate them, but you, you think, Oh, I need to change the people that I'm following.
• 29:55
  Lucy: I think it's the same thing.
• 29:57
  Lucy: Um, but kind of in everyday life.
• 29:59
  Lucy: You kind of have to look at your circle, look at yourself, and think, like, where am I perpetuating harm here, and where am I kind of actively seeking to break out of my bubble?
• 30:18
  Lucy: I mean, this isn't super practical, it's not very helpful.
• 30:20
  Lucy: Obviously, um, There are very practical things you can do like follow certain accounts or whatever to start educating you, read books.
• 30:29
  Lucy: But I think it probably comes down to, because the reason that I kind of hate, like, I don't want to necessarily say read the right books and all the rest of it is because something that I really remember is in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter gained a lot more traction outside of just, uh, marginalized groups.
• 30:52
  Lucy: Um, Lots of white people bought a lot of books on anti racism, and from experience, I know that the black liberation movement has always been very closely tied to the Palestinian liberation movement, and I think you'll find in a lot of those anti racist books that are all being recommended and that people bought, there would be a lot of interest in them.
• 31:16
  Lucy: Something about Palestine in there because it's just that there's a storied history of black people supporting the Palestinian liberation movement and talking about it.
• 31:26
  Lucy: So when it came round to October 2023, when more than The sort of select few started understanding a bit of the history of Israel and Palestine and were shocked.
• 31:41
  Lucy: I knew that they had never read any of those books.
• 31:44
  Lucy: They posted that black square.
• 31:45
  Lucy: They bought those books, but the fact that they were shocked.
• 31:49
  Lucy: about it, told me that they probably didn't get more than a few pages in.
• 31:55
  Lucy: So that's kind of why I don't always want to say buy the books because people do buy the books and then they don't do anything with them.
• 32:03
  Lucy: I think you just have to make the decision.
• 32:06
  Lucy: With yourself that you don't want to participate in white feminism anymore.
• 32:12
  Lucy: And if you're not ready to make that decision, then, you know, fine.
• 32:16
  Lucy: Uh, probably this conversation isn't for you, but if you do making that first decision that you don't want to participate in it anymore, and then looking at where you're perpetuating harm and therefore how you can change it is.
• 32:32
  Lucy: A good place to start.
• 32:33
  Peta: Yeah, I, yeah, that's, um, buying the book is, buying the book is great, but, but essentially if you don't read it and then act on it, you've just bought a really rubbish ornament,
• 32:47
  Lucy: Yeah, exactly.
• 32:49
  Peta: uh, especially if it's on your Kindle, and then it's not even
• 32:52
  Lucy: Yes.
• 32:53
  Peta: Um, and I think that, Yeah, there is this idea still that you, that more knowledge is what we need, that we need to know more stuff, that like, even, even when it comes to the Palestinian liberation struggle, like that, that was the reflex.
• 33:11
  Peta: The reflex was I, like, I don't know.
• 33:14
  Peta: And so I will go and find out more.
• 33:16
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 33:17
  Peta: And that is like, that's a laudable thing.
• 33:20
  Peta: Like knowledge is important, but knowledge that just sits in your head or on somebody's story that you've reposted on your Instagram feed is not, is not helpful.
• 33:32
  Peta: It's, you're just collecting words.
• 33:36
  Lucy: Yeah.
• 33:36
  Lucy: It's a bit of a form of procrastination, isn't it?
• 33:38
  Lucy: I think, because it's very comfortable to delve into a book that nobody knows whether you're going to have read it or not, especially if it's just, you know, yeah, like you say on your Kindle.
• 33:48
  Lucy: But again, that's another tool of the patriarchy.
• 33:54
  Lucy: To, to tell people, and it's certainly a talking point, a Zionist talking point that is pushed time and time again, that Israel and Palestine is so complex.
• 34:03
  Lucy: It's so complex.
• 34:04
  Lucy: It's literally not complicated.
• 34:06
  Lucy: Every single country has a complicated history.
• 34:09
  Lucy: If you want to talk about, you know, when this happened and who said this and what, but if you look at the bare bones of it, I don't.
• 34:17
  Lucy: think it's very, in fact, I know it's not complicated at all.
• 34:20
  Lucy: Nobody was talking about how complicated Ukraine and Russia was before they started saying, I want to welcome Ukrainians into my home.
• 34:28
  Lucy: Even though the history of Ukraine and Russia and the USSR, like that, that could be considered complicated.
• 34:36
  Lucy: And I'm sure lots of people who, who supported Ukraine didn't know the history and why Putin is so obsessed with.
• 34:44
  Lucy: Crimea and all of those sorts of things, but, and they, they don't need to know that.
• 34:49
  Lucy: It's a human response to be able to say, there's a lot of people being killed.
• 34:55
  Lucy: I don't agree with that.
• 34:57
  Lucy: That's the, that's kind of the end, isn't it
• 35:01
  Peta: And that, yeah, that focus.
• 35:02
  Peta: No, definitely.
• 35:03
  Peta: And that focus on knowledge is, is kind of doled out as a, as holding people back from being able to voice their opinions or being able to tell their stories or being able to kind of join movements.
• 35:17
  Peta: Because the shot that you get back is always, well, you don't really understand.
• 35:22
  Peta: And that in itself is, is quite, um,
• 35:26
  Lucy: it's kind of confronting, isn't it?
• 35:28
  Peta: Yeah, well, just and also for for more marginalized communities who maybe don't have access to education, information platforms.
• 35:40
  Peta: So they're already kind of set back and now to say, well, unless you've, unless you've read these books or unless you've been to these universities or unless you've kind of consumed this material or had these conversations in these particular places, then you can't have an opinion.
• 35:57
  Peta: That in itself is, is kind of disempowering to most of the population of the world.
• 36:03
  Peta: And when I'm working with, with business owners who, who have things that they care really deeply about, whether it is Palestinian liberation or whether it is LGBTQ plus rights, whether it's environmental sustainability, whatever it is, without fail, one of their major sticking points for talking about it is don't know enough.
• 36:26
  Lucy: Hmm.
• 36:27
  Peta: and I have to wait until I know enough before I can start talking about it.
• 36:32
  Peta: But like, number one, you're never going to know enough.
• 36:34
  Peta: You can't, you can't ever know every single detail about the particular, even if you just pick one, like.
• 36:41
  Lucy: It's not possible.
• 36:42
  Peta: It's just not possible.
• 36:43
  Peta: My son has been, so my son is autistic and he has been learning about Pokemon for, I don't know, the last kind of eight years.
• 36:51
  Peta: Like, I've never met anyone who knows as much about Pokemon as he does, but he still doesn't know everything about Pokemon and he's been at it for that long.
• 36:57
  Peta: If he, with that amount of focus, can't make it, then the rest of us have no luck.
• 37:03
  Peta: So yeah, if you, if that's what you're relying on, gathering enough information through reading books, through following accounts, through doing all this stuff to give you a firm foundation to then be able to do something, then you're never going to get there and you're kind of, yeah, you're kidding yourself.
• 37:21
  Lucy: And I think I do understand why people feel that way, because I think we feel, especially if we're talking about talk, actually not even if we're just talking about social media, but when you're talking about it with people, it can feel really frightening to have somebody say, Hey.
• 37:38
  Lucy: Say you're wrong, you've got it wrong, and people will do that when it comes to politics, or, or, and certainly anything to do with racism, because it threatens them.
• 37:51
  Lucy: So if you're in your group of white friends, and you've never brought this up before, and you say, Oh, actually, that makes me feel really uncomfortable when you say that, or I don't agree with you, and they hit back with, you know, Some kind of bluster, which makes you feel like you don't know enough.
• 38:09
  Lucy: That can be really frightening.
• 38:11
  Lucy: And certainly with Israel and Palestine, any, any of us that, you know, I'm Arab, but this is something that I've been talking about for kind of my whole life, so I'm used to it, but people who were kind of fairly new to it would get hit with the, you're anti Semitic and that's terrifying if that's the first time you've, Been told that like, this is an awful thing to, you know, think you might be.
• 38:37
  Lucy: so I, I do understand why people feel that more knowledge is the answer, but I think the answer is getting comfortable with the fact it goes back to just being comfortable with the fact that you're going to get it wrong and you're going to feel uncomfortable and, and you're going to be challenged.
• 38:54
  Lucy: And that's okay.
• 38:55
  Lucy: That's a good thing.
• 38:56
  Lucy: Um, learning how to kind of.
• 39:01
  Lucy: pick apart the good faith arguers and the bad faith arguers is a skill Reflect and say, Oh, like that triggered me, but why did it trigger me?
• 39:15
  Lucy: And am I wrong?
• 39:18
  Lucy: And also I've harmed this person and whether I'm, you know, whether I was well intentioned or not, I've harmed them.
• 39:27
  Lucy: Like these are good skills, but you know, you don't learn them overnight.
• 39:32
  Peta: No, that is true.
• 39:34
  Peta: Okay.
• 39:35
  Peta: So, if you are, so you work with business owners, I work with business owners Every business owner I know is trying to kind of build their visibility to, to kind of get in front of their audiences, to build their brand.
• 39:50
  Peta: How do you, how do you do that whilst still talking about these kind of things?
• 39:58
  Lucy: I think there's no one size fits all, but I have found.
• 40:05
  Lucy: Some kind of tools quite helpful.
• 40:08
  Lucy: I think making sure that you're comfortable enough, like I think you don't feel unsafe is important.
• 40:15
  Lucy: So maybe if you wanted to, for example, if you actually really, really care about Palestinian liberation and you, and offline, you've been watching a lot and whatever, but you haven't spoken up and you really want to, then you could dip your toe in.
• 40:34
  Lucy: By speaking about it on stories, Instagram stories, where it's obviously only going to last a little bit of time.
• 40:40
  Lucy: and seeking out people who look like you and who are also talking about it to give you confidence, I think is really, really key.
• 40:48
  Lucy: So, I would always recommend Kerry Jarvis, who I know has been a guest on the podcast.
• 40:53
  Lucy: She's incredible.
• 40:55
  Lucy: She's just wonderful.
• 40:56
  Lucy: And also she's an incredible coach and is so good at navigating all these sorts of things.
• 41:02
  Lucy: She has a newsletter, which is fantastic.
• 41:04
  Lucy: So, you know, sign up for that definitely.
• 41:07
  Lucy: But seeking out people like that who can kind of help give you confidence.
• 41:14
  Lucy: and support you as you start speaking up.
• 41:17
  Lucy: And also Siobhan, This Sister Scribes, she has a kind of group program called This Sister Speaks, which is specifically about this.
• 41:28
  Lucy: And I mean, that would be a fantastic place to start.
• 41:33
  Peta: Oh, that sounds great.
• 41:34
  Peta: Yeah.
• 41:34
  Peta: Um, Siobhan, I've recorded an episode of the podcast with Siobhan a couple of weeks ago.
• 41:40
  Peta: So, um, yeah, by the time that this one goes live, it will already have aired.
• 41:45
  Peta: Um, yes, two very brilliant people who you should definitely all go and follow.
• 41:48
  Peta: Thank you.
• 41:49
  Peta: Cool.
• 41:50
  Peta: Okay.
• 41:50
  Peta: So, this has been fascinating and I could talk about it for hours and hours and hours, but you know, we've got businesses to run.
• 41:55
  Peta: If people want to come and find you to reach out, where is the best place for them to do that, Lucy?
• 42:02
  Lucy: Well, Instagram or TikTok, I'm at lucielucraft.
• 42:06
  Lucy: Very easy to find.
• 42:08
  Lucy: If you want any kind of podcast support, I'm fully booked until the new year, but you can find that on my website, which is lucielucraft.
• 42:14
  Lucy: co.
• 42:14
  Lucy: uk.
• 42:16
  Peta: Brilliant.
• 42:16
  Peta: Nice and simple.
• 42:17
  Peta: That's what we like.
• 42:19
  Peta: Oh thank you so, so much for spending time with me.
• 42:23
  Peta: I massively appreciate it.
• 42:24
  Peta: And, um, it was brilliant.
• 42:26
  Lucy: I loved it.
• 42:26
  Lucy: And I, I just want to say you're a brilliant podcast host and I really love what you're doing with your platform.
• 42:32
  Lucy: I think it's, it's really great.
• 42:34
  Peta: Thank you.
• 42:35
  Peta: That means a lot coming from you.