Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have been interviewing a number
Joanne Lockwood: of amazing people who are simply having a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better
Joanne Lockwood: place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then
Joanne Lockwood: please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot
Joanne Lockwood: uk. You better catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify
Joanne Lockwood: and the usual places. So plug in the headphones, grab a
Joanne Lockwood: decaf and let's get going. Today is
Joanne Lockwood: episode 33 with the title, none of us have
Joanne Lockwood: included fully in the world until all of us are.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honor and privilege to be joined by Stacey Hart.
Joanne Lockwood: Stacey describes herself as someone who is a full time parent, sometime
Joanne Lockwood: actor and volunteers for the Women's Equality Party.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Stacey to describe her superpower, she said that she could
Joanne Lockwood: talk to anyone. Hello, Stacey. Welcome to the
Joanne Lockwood: show. Hello, Jo. It's really, really good to be here. But
Stacey Hart: if you don't mind, I will not be grabbing anything decaf
Stacey Hart: today. Going for the full strength, are
Joanne Lockwood: you? I will be. Yes.
Joanne Lockwood: Dark and strong. I know. Sometimes I feel like that, especially after a
Joanne Lockwood: long hard day. Yeah. I'm not satisfied to tell the bag to get
Stacey Hart: in for at least half an hour. I'm not really
Joanne Lockwood: a tea drinker. I'm definitely a definitely a bean shaker if you
Joanne Lockwood: like. Yeah, I like my beans. Yeah. I've I think
Joanne Lockwood: I I was put off my tea, by my
Joanne Lockwood: grandmother. She used it's back in, you know, this is back in the late
Joanne Lockwood: sixties, early seventies. She used to make tea with loose
Joanne Lockwood: leaf. And, I would always get to the bottom of the cup and
Joanne Lockwood: I'd end up with a mouthful of tea leaves because she didn't strain it very
Joanne Lockwood: well. So I think that that psychologically damaged me, the
Joanne Lockwood: tea, and I can't think about tea now without a mouthful of tea leaves and
Joanne Lockwood: it's it's just been so ingrained in me because it was every Sunday
Joanne Lockwood: we went to grandma's house and we had to have to drink this mouthful
Joanne Lockwood: of leaves all the time it was like a ritual.
Joanne Lockwood: So now I'm definitely a bean coffee person and, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: and I I think I drink it decaf more than CAF at the moment
Joanne Lockwood: just, purely because I think I drink too much of of it and it was
Joanne Lockwood: probably causing me to have palpitations from time to time. Wow.
Joanne Lockwood: Anyway, if we digress, we digress, we Jo off into
Joanne Lockwood: being in leaf territory here. So tell me
Joanne Lockwood: Stacy. When you said, in in the show notes, you you you you've used
Joanne Lockwood: this phrase, none of us are included fully in the world until all of us
Joanne Lockwood: are, and I love that. So tell me about that and your view.
Stacey Hart: Well, in a lot of the work I do and a lot of the
Stacey Hart: groups that I'm involved with, we say
Stacey Hart: this phrase and, you know, people will have heard this. None of
Stacey Hart: us are free until all of us are free. And
Stacey Hart: to me, what that means is that, you know, when
Stacey Hart: people who may be part of a group
Stacey Hart: that, that that I am not a part of, you know,
Stacey Hart: for example, let's say,
Stacey Hart: black people, you know, I'm a white person. When those people are targeted for
Stacey Hart: violence on the basis of who they are or discriminated against because of who
Stacey Hart: they are, that means that the same thing could happen to any one of us
Stacey Hart: on the basis of any of our own characteristics. So
Stacey Hart: I fight for people that don't necessarily look like me or have the
Stacey Hart: same background as me because until all of us are free from the kind of
Stacey Hart: discrimination that stems from
Stacey Hart: not looking like or being like someone else or coming from the
Stacey Hart: same place as someone else or living a different lifestyle, it
Stacey Hart: means that none of us are really free. None of us are safe
Stacey Hart: from that kind of discrimination. So I think for me,
Stacey Hart: the same applies to inclusion. If the world that
Stacey Hart: I'm in doesn't include everyone, doesn't include,
Stacey Hart: you know, people that look like me and don't look like me, people that live
Stacey Hart: like me and don't live like me, people from all kinds of
Stacey Hart: of of of backgrounds and walks of life and experiences, then it isn't the
Stacey Hart: world. It isn't the world. It's it's a
Stacey Hart: half a world or a bit of a world. And I don't I don't want
Stacey Hart: to be a part of a half a world. I want to be a part
Stacey Hart: of a fully rounded world that's representative of everyone
Stacey Hart: and welcoming to all people because that's a world that's safe and
Stacey Hart: happy and interesting and fair. Otherwise, it's just a bit crap,
Stacey Hart: really. And that's so I feel like the the the same
Stacey Hart: thing applies. Yeah. I completely agree.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean when I got into this DNI space about 3 or 4
Joanne Lockwood: years ago, I suddenly realized that it wasn't about me. You
Joanne Lockwood: know, I launched into it with the primary
Joanne Lockwood: objective of promoting trans awareness. I realized
Joanne Lockwood: that I was just one person or one characteristic in a
Joanne Lockwood: world where there are many people who are marginalized, discriminated against or denied
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity for who they are and I realized I didn't want to be so
Joanne Lockwood: self centered just to talk about myself. And I very
Joanne Lockwood: similar to what you said none of us are included fully in the world till
Joanne Lockwood: all of us are, I always say that I want the world to be inclusive
Joanne Lockwood: for everyone because I am everyone. I am just a person as well.
Joanne Lockwood: If everyone wins, I win. I think that's a great mantra and
Joanne Lockwood: I often talk about this about
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion being holistic. We have to who isn't included,
Joanne Lockwood: who chooses who's good enough, who's not good enough to be included. I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's it's very powerful that you say that and I think you're completely right
Joanne Lockwood: because there's another saying that, you can judge an
Joanne Lockwood: organization or society by the way it treats the weakest or the
Joanne Lockwood: less or the most marginalized people because that sets the
Joanne Lockwood: tone. And if I let this
Joanne Lockwood: propagate, will it be me next kind of approach? And,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, that's how genocides have been
Joanne Lockwood: formed. You know, some some of the the wars of the world have been
Joanne Lockwood: where it's incremental and it builds up and then suddenly the
Joanne Lockwood: they're coming for everybody and that that's kind of what we wanna stop, isn't it?
Joanne Lockwood: But, yeah, I I I completely agree and I think that's a that's a really
Joanne Lockwood: really powerful message you you said there. Yeah. It it is
Stacey Hart: that's that's why I don't understand, a lot of the time
Stacey Hart: where, because if I do have a flaw, which I do, you know, like
Stacey Hart: everyone have many, it's it's intolerance of the intolerant.
Stacey Hart: And I sometimes find that I can't understand that that opposing point of view. And
Stacey Hart: I think one of the reasons I can't understand it is because quite apart from
Stacey Hart: the fact that it's just the right thing to do to include everybody,
Stacey Hart: it's just the right thing to do. Put that
Stacey Hart: aside and look at it from a purely self interest point of
Stacey Hart: view. I mean, isn't it just more interesting
Stacey Hart: and easier and more successful? Businesses certainly are more successful when they're
Stacey Hart: more inclusive. You know, isn't isn't the
Stacey Hart: art better and and the the conversations, aren't they better
Stacey Hart: when people don't always look and sound like you? I mean, isn't
Stacey Hart: it just a bit bloody boring otherwise? Do you know what I
Stacey Hart: mean? And I like you, I kind of came into it,
Stacey Hart: to to my work initially, from a sort
Stacey Hart: of self interest, like to promote the rights of women. You know? I
Stacey Hart: I I lead the Basingstoke branch of the Women's Equality Party. I set
Stacey Hart: that branch up and and, and formed it. And and
Stacey Hart: we're working now locally doing
Stacey Hart: exactly what it says on the tin, working for for the rights of women. But
Stacey Hart: I'm also having come into the fight for equality,
Stacey Hart: very much thinking that it's not just about me and
Stacey Hart: it's about equality for everybody. And I'm included
Stacey Hart: in within the Women's Equality Party. I'm part of the
Stacey Hart: LGBTQI caucus. I am co
Stacey Hart: lead of the Race Equality Caucus
Stacey Hart: Allies, which is the group of white people within
Stacey Hart: the party who wants to be allies to the Race Equality
Stacey Hart: Caucus, and and and set ourselves up to,
Stacey Hart: to sort of learn and unpick our own biases and
Stacey Hart: educate people that want to learn and do anti racist work. So it it
Stacey Hart: truly is about everyone not just about
Stacey Hart: women, you know. Interesting. I I'm just picking
Joanne Lockwood: up on, you know, the being intolerant of intolerance, I use that
Joanne Lockwood: saying at all as well and it's, you have to know what you
Joanne Lockwood: stand for and you have to say what is what is acceptable, what isn't acceptable
Joanne Lockwood: and then being tolerant of that. But where do you stand on when people talk
Joanne Lockwood: about free speech and Jo platforming and turning people
Joanne Lockwood: off, When is your tolerance or intolerance
Joanne Lockwood: different to their intolerance? And, you know, we've got a recent incident
Joanne Lockwood: where, a well known presenter on a morning show
Joanne Lockwood: on ITV stormed off set, for
Joanne Lockwood: expressing his views and some may
Joanne Lockwood: say those views are intolerant of a certain
Joanne Lockwood: group, other people applaud those free speech,
Joanne Lockwood: say what he thinks type view. So where where do you think society should just
Joanne Lockwood: stand on this because we can't silence people, but we can't allow
Joanne Lockwood: everything to to be said, can we? No. We can't
Stacey Hart: do either one of those things. And it is yeah. It is
Stacey Hart: very much an ongoing conversation,
Stacey Hart: isn't it? I think that
Stacey Hart: there are in law fairly
Stacey Hart: well laid out boundaries between
Stacey Hart: the protection of freedom of speech and where that veers into
Stacey Hart: hate speech. Now those laws aren't perfect.
Stacey Hart: You know, misogyny, for example, is not yet classed
Stacey Hart: as a hate crime and, you know, catcalling and
Stacey Hart: bothering women on the streets because of their, you know, because they
Stacey Hart: are women is is is not yet common. That needs to be, that needs to
Stacey Hart: be fixed. But we, generally speaking, have a
Stacey Hart: fairly kind of well known framework that
Stacey Hart: says you can be unkind and
Stacey Hart: not break the law, but you can't speak to
Stacey Hart: someone in a hateful way because of a protected characteristic.
Stacey Hart: And I think that the kind
Stacey Hart: of culture war that is is going on at the moment
Stacey Hart: is it's being
Stacey Hart: sort of propagated on on a lot of sides and a lot of fronts.
Stacey Hart: But I don't think it's actually as much of a
Stacey Hart: problem as a lot of the,
Stacey Hart: shall we say, illy interests think it is.
Stacey Hart: I hear a lot about cancel culture, and
Stacey Hart: I don't believe that cancel culture
Stacey Hart: really exists all that much. The presenter that you
Stacey Hart: mentioned, for example, walked off of his own show.
Stacey Hart: Nobody canceled him. Nobody marched him out of the studio. He was
Stacey Hart: being criticized. He didn't like it. And he marched
Stacey Hart: off. And that was his choice. I hear
Stacey Hart: people talking about and I'm not gonna name names because I don't
Stacey Hart: like giving them, oxygen, frankly, but there
Stacey Hart: are people that we've all seen out in the media and they're usually
Stacey Hart: pale male and stale and they're complaining loudly and vociferously
Stacey Hart: in broadsheet papers about how they are being
Stacey Hart: cancelled and
Stacey Hart: not apparently failing to see the irony that they're being given
Stacey Hart: huge platforms all the time to say these things, to talk about how they're
Stacey Hart: being canceled and to talk about how their rights are being trampled on.
Stacey Hart: Meanwhile, you know, the voices that we hear, the
Stacey Hart: representation in our politics, the representation in
Stacey Hart: our businesses, you know, the arts that we see on
Stacey Hart: the television, these things are glacially slowly getting
Stacey Hart: better, but they are overwhelmingly the same voices that we've always
Stacey Hart: heard, the same class of people that we've always,
Stacey Hart: you know, been been ruled by,
Stacey Hart: they are overwhelmingly very, very,
Stacey Hart: very, you know, meet the new boss same as the old boss,
Stacey Hart: if you don't mind me quoting who. And, so I fail to
Stacey Hart: see, you know, there are instances occasionally where you might
Stacey Hart: get, I don't know, like a student union for
Stacey Hart: example saying actually we're going to disinvite you from this
Stacey Hart: speaking engagement because you've said something that we're not happy with.
Stacey Hart: Well for starters if we're giving, you know, young
Stacey Hart: people the freedom to speak
Stacey Hart: and to hear who they want to hear from You know,
Stacey Hart: nobody's entitled to a platform for their views. They're allowed to say those things,
Stacey Hart: but they're not entitled to a stage. And are we saying
Stacey Hart: that young people don't have the right to say, actually, I don't wanna listen to
Stacey Hart: you because you were unkind about my friend over there and and the people that
Stacey Hart: look like my friend over there. So I think I I think I wanna listen
Stacey Hart: to someone else. That that is a right as well. You know, nobody
Stacey Hart: has a right to a platform. A right to freedom of speech is not freedom
Stacey Hart: to to be heard. And we're very, very,
Stacey Hart: very overzealously worrying
Stacey Hart: about, about these things. And I
Stacey Hart: believe, and this is gonna be perhaps a little divisive and that's
Stacey Hart: why I'm hedging around it perhaps. I believe that the people that are
Stacey Hart: worrying about it the most are the people who are concerned that their
Stacey Hart: kind of politics is becoming
Stacey Hart: unattractive to the younger generation. And
Stacey Hart: they are realizing that young people are waking up looking around and
Stacey Hart: going, you have ruled everything for a long time
Stacey Hart: and you are really quite unpleasant and you are not inclusive and
Stacey Hart: this society is not equal. This economy is not working for
Stacey Hart: everybody, and I don't think we wanna hear from you right now.
Stacey Hart: And the people that are shouting loudest about cancel
Stacey Hart: culture are generally the people who are worried that they are going to
Stacey Hart: be shut out of the future of politics because of that
Stacey Hart: awakening and they are almost always also the people
Stacey Hart: that have historically had the biggest platforms and they're worried about losing them.
Joanne Lockwood: So, it's people with privilege what you're talking about. So
Joanne Lockwood: whoever holds the privilege of society are
Joanne Lockwood: pushing back. They're feeling under threat. They're feeling under attack. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: the woke culture is trying to tear down the patriarchy,
Joanne Lockwood: tear down colonialism, tear down white supremacy or
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it may be and that's making people uncomfortable. Is that is that what you
Joanne Lockwood: think? I do believe it is. Yeah. That is what I think. And, I
Stacey Hart: mean, much like a lot of
Stacey Hart: new movements and new vocabulary,
Stacey Hart: you know, the word woke started out as a positive thing. It
Stacey Hart: started in, you know, the black community as a way of describing
Stacey Hart: people who had their eyes open to the world around them and and
Stacey Hart: weren't blinded to their own privilege and if you were
Stacey Hart: you know awake and aware of that privilege then you will work and
Stacey Hart: like many words before it that started out as being a positive descriptor it
Stacey Hart: got very very quickly co opted by those with privilege
Stacey Hart: and turned into a sarcastic kind of, you
Stacey Hart: know, demeaning thing to say about someone who was
Stacey Hart: trying to be overly groovy about something. And I mean, what what is the opposite
Stacey Hart: of woke? It is asleep. I don't wanna be asleep to my
Stacey Hart: privilege. Joanne you call me what you like because of that and give a
Stacey Hart: pinch of your A fine way of life. Yeah.
Stacey Hart: I give a I don't give a rat's poop, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. No I agree and I
Joanne Lockwood: think I've probably heard the word woke a few times over the last 3
Joanne Lockwood: or 4 years and I googled it, I went on Wikipedia and did some research
Joanne Lockwood: on the origins of woke and I thought yeah, I want to be woke, I
Joanne Lockwood: want to be awake, I want to check my privilege, I want to
Joanne Lockwood: understand who I am. How can I understand anybody else necessarily
Joanne Lockwood: who I am? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: it's good to check your privilege and when someone calls you out for it, the
Joanne Lockwood: reaction that most people have is oh no not me no I'm I'm
Joanne Lockwood: yeah there's always this defeniveness and or people are worried about
Joanne Lockwood: being called out for privilege. And I think sometimes you need to bathe in it
Joanne Lockwood: and say, yeah, okay, I didn't see
Joanne Lockwood: that. Wow, thank you. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Now tell me how
Joanne Lockwood: that impacted you or let me let me process that. And I think many of
Joanne Lockwood: us when we're challenged on our privilege, even if it's just the fact we
Joanne Lockwood: speak English, the fact that we we could afford our weekly shopping bill
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it may be, we we we say well
Joanne Lockwood: but I've had a tough life as well is that me too or that what
Joanne Lockwood: aboutism that goes on isn't it? What about tree? And we try and defend our
Joanne Lockwood: privilege by saying, well, I've had to work for a living, I've worked all these
Joanne Lockwood: hours. And people often forget that they've had
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity from birth. And I describe privilege as something
Joanne Lockwood: a bit like a pension pot. If you're contributing into your pension pot from a
Joanne Lockwood: very early age, it gets enormous by the time you retire. And for those
Joanne Lockwood: who are born into privilege, that privileged pot starts
Joanne Lockwood: accruing within seconds of birth or in fact, it's probably reloaded before you're
Joanne Lockwood: born. Whereas people who acquire education throughout their
Joanne Lockwood: life, they still got that hole in the bottom of their bucket which is
Joanne Lockwood: dribbling out their personal capital. And they can
Joanne Lockwood: never fill up quick enough, whereas other people have got this watertight
Joanne Lockwood: container of privilege just keeps growing and growing and growing. And I think people
Joanne Lockwood: often forget that they say they're self made or
Joanne Lockwood: they've generated some themselves, but they've generated it on the understanding of that
Joanne Lockwood: privilege. Whereas other people who have not had that
Joanne Lockwood: fortune to be born into that world, always starting 10 paces
Joanne Lockwood: behind, they're always playing catch up. And when they're
Joanne Lockwood: saying that they've had to make it themselves, that they've had to do overcome all
Joanne Lockwood: of those barriers as well. And I think we often forget that. And
Joanne Lockwood: it's easier to it's easier to turn £1,000,000 into £2,000,000
Joanne Lockwood: than tell £100 into £200. Yeah. And that's that's
Joanne Lockwood: that's failing to the world, isn't it? It is. Absolutely. And,
Stacey Hart: I think it is an awkward thing to realize,
Stacey Hart: particularly when you come to the realization, perhaps a bit
Stacey Hart: later in life, you know, and that that's fine.
Stacey Hart: It's okay to be at any stage
Stacey Hart: of your kind of personal journey of trying to unpack
Stacey Hart: your own privilege. In, in the Race Equality Caucus Allies
Stacey Hart: Group, the women's equality party, we talk a lot about how,
Stacey Hart: it is uncomfortable, realizing the things that you've
Stacey Hart: benefited from over the years. And these aren't things that were handed
Stacey Hart: to you. No one's saying that, you know, you didn't work hard
Stacey Hart: for them. But it's a bit like being, you know, walking down a
Stacey Hart: corridor where you go through lots of sets of
Stacey Hart: double doors that are auto open ones and they
Stacey Hart: you reach it at a stride and and it just sort of opens in front
Stacey Hart: of you. You know, you're still walking down the corridor. You're still putting the effort
Stacey Hart: in. You know, your legs are still moving. Your muscles are still, you know,
Stacey Hart: working and all that stuff. But if you look behind you,
Stacey Hart: there are, you know, there are
Stacey Hart: black people and brown people and LGBTQI people and disabled
Stacey Hart: people and older people and working class people
Stacey Hart: who who for whom those doors are not opening and they're having
Stacey Hart: to sort of muscle their way through them. I mean, that's probably,
Stacey Hart: you know, an analogy that I've picked up somewhere in Sudan. I don't
Stacey Hart: know. I love it. As you were as you were saying it, I was thinking
Joanne Lockwood: about traffic lights and some days you go for a drive
Joanne Lockwood: and every traffic light is just green and what you just go home, you think
Joanne Lockwood: wow, that was so easy. But there are other days where every traffic light
Joanne Lockwood: is red, you have to change down gear, you have to stop, you're going, oh,
Joanne Lockwood: here we go again. Yeah. You're pulling away in traffic and you just know you're
Joanne Lockwood: gonna get caught by the next one, then the next one. Yeah. And just I'm
Joanne Lockwood: sure everyone can relate to the fact that just to just to picture those two
Joanne Lockwood: journeys how frustrating the red lights are. Absolutely. And how how
Joanne Lockwood: free thinking the green ones are, and that's a great analogy. I love your the
Joanne Lockwood: doors just open in front of you that you have to push or stop or
Joanne Lockwood: unlock. And it is it is awkward when you get to a
Stacey Hart: point and you might be in your, you know, you might be
Stacey Hart: a a bright uni student or you might be in your thirties or forties
Stacey Hart: or or later in life. And you come to that
Stacey Hart: realization and you you look behind you and you see those barriers. And
Stacey Hart: and it is awkward. We talk about that a lot in the race equality caucus.
Stacey Hart: It is it's painful. You do
Stacey Hart: sometimes the automatic reaction is is
Stacey Hart: of a lot of people when when, you know, they're they're they're asked
Stacey Hart: to unpack their privileges is defensiveness.
Stacey Hart: And you can you can feel awfully bad about that. And what we
Stacey Hart: always try and underline in the group is
Stacey Hart: that, provided that once
Stacey Hart: you have had this realization and you are aware of this,
Stacey Hart: wherever you are when that comes, provided that you commit
Stacey Hart: to continuing that learning and to not ignoring it
Stacey Hart: and to actually working to,
Stacey Hart: unpick those structures that make life so much
Stacey Hart: harder for other people than it was for you, then,
Stacey Hart: you know, give yourself a little bit of a pass because everyone's
Stacey Hart: experience is different and no one is
Stacey Hart: accusing you of anything unless you are refusing,
Stacey Hart: once you realize you have it, to unpack that privilege and to
Stacey Hart: and to share the wealth a little bit. If you're and a lot of people
Stacey Hart: do that too, but, you know, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of
Stacey Hart: the powers that be that do that too. And those people we can have a
Stacey Hart: go at. But, you know, for those of us that are genuinely trying, for those
Stacey Hart: people that are willing to do the work, generally
Stacey Hart: speaking, no one's accusing you of anything and you just you don't need to be
Stacey Hart: quite so defensive about it.
Joanne Lockwood: But many people who come from minority
Joanne Lockwood: backgrounds or not what you wouldn't consider having a
Joanne Lockwood: great deal of privilege don't even know that these rooms
Joanne Lockwood: or these opportunities or this access exists.
Joanne Lockwood: This is not that being denied access to an opportunity. They
Joanne Lockwood: don't even know the forum exists in which they can find that opportunity
Joanne Lockwood: because often, I mean, there was a program on Doctor. Mitchell on BBC the other
Joanne Lockwood: night about, PPE contracts. I have no judgment about
Joanne Lockwood: whether it's right or wrong or whether the people who awarded them not were awarded
Joanne Lockwood: them, but what it became clear was there's a whole load of people ideally
Joanne Lockwood: placed in their view to be able to supply, but they didn't even know how
Joanne Lockwood: they got on the list. Whereas other people who book were on the
Joanne Lockwood: list because they knew someone. And that's often the difference when we talk about privilege,
Joanne Lockwood: we talk about networking,
Joanne Lockwood: old networks, be a member of a club, you hear about things, there's people
Joanne Lockwood: you go to school with, you keep in touch with all your life, they're in
Joanne Lockwood: positions of power, they hand things out to people they know. Whereas if you come
Joanne Lockwood: from an environment where you don't have that access, you never know about those
Joanne Lockwood: opportunities. You you you've got no clue they even exist, let alone how to ask
Joanne Lockwood: for them. And that's where that keeps the divide active all the
Joanne Lockwood: time, isn't it? It does. And I agree. And I think that that,
Stacey Hart: sort of feeds back into what we were saying about that defensiveness.
Stacey Hart: I think a lot of people, if you say, well, that's
Stacey Hart: nice that you've achieved this thing, but, you know, you didn't have
Stacey Hart: any barriers because of, you know, the fact that you're able-bodied
Stacey Hart: or the color of your skin or whatever it might be. And you were able
Stacey Hart: to to achieve that thing through hard work but without the additional barriers of this
Stacey Hart: other person. That defensiveness is often
Stacey Hart: born of the fact that they have a belief in a
Stacey Hart: meritocracy. And that's that's another side of it. It's not always
Stacey Hart: purely selfishness. It's not always purely, you know, you're trying to take away
Stacey Hart: this thing. And I feel I've earned it. It's that reaction I do believe for
Stacey Hart: a lot of people is, is based in the fact that it is
Stacey Hart: really quite painful to
Stacey Hart: understand and appreciate that you don't live
Stacey Hart: in the country, in the world that you thought you did. If you have a
Stacey Hart: belief, in a meritocracy and then
Stacey Hart: someone is telling you, look, that really isn't
Stacey Hart: the the society that we live in. I'm sorry. That's not
Stacey Hart: only kind of feels maybe undermining to you and the work that you've
Stacey Hart: done, but it's also, like, psychically quite painful,
Stacey Hart: I think, to to feel that
Stacey Hart: betrayal by, you know, the country that that you thought you lived in, the world
Stacey Hart: that you thought you lived in, the world that the the newspapers always told you
Stacey Hart: that you lived in. And, you know, those rousing
Stacey Hart: cries of of land and hope and of hope and glory always told you that
Stacey Hart: you lived in. And a lot of people, I think, cling to that idea that
Stacey Hart: the meritocracy exists and that they were just the ones that did the best in
Stacey Hart: it because it's not just about them and
Stacey Hart: their work. It's also really painful to understand that you don't live in the
Stacey Hart: place that you thought you did because that meritocracy just does not
Stacey Hart: exist really. You know, it's who you know a lot of the time. We see
Stacey Hart: it every day. You know, look at the people that
Stacey Hart: and I know this isn't about politics but look at the
Stacey Hart: people who are making the decisions, the people who are making the laws, the people
Stacey Hart: who are writing the newspaper stories, and tell me that you truly truly
Stacey Hart: believe that those people, that the best people in the
Stacey Hart: country to do all of those things all of the time,
Stacey Hart: forever and ever our men are all middle
Stacey Hart: aged, wealthy white men.
Stacey Hart: I refuse to believe that that is the case.
Joanne Lockwood: You're shattering everyone's mist now. Yeah. The merit about the
Joanne Lockwood: meritocracy. I mean, I thought I thought the best person always got the
Joanne Lockwood: job. Are are you saying that this is bullshit? There
Joanne Lockwood: is the the baritox is it's just a myth created
Joanne Lockwood: by by the privilege Jo say the best person gets a Jo look at we
Joanne Lockwood: see in recruitment. We see in opportunities because the best person
Joanne Lockwood: must get the job. If we don't believe that, that undermines everything, doesn't it?
Stacey Hart: Well, it does. It it undermines the foundations of the of the society
Stacey Hart: that we thought we lived in. And, I think
Stacey Hart: what that does is is as it undermines a lot of
Stacey Hart: people's self worth because for a lot of people, their self worth
Stacey Hart: is tied up in a kind of,
Stacey Hart: a nationalism, a feeling that they stand for good British
Stacey Hart: values in inverted commas whatever that means and and their their their
Stacey Hart: feelings of self worth are tied up in that in that sort of you know
Stacey Hart: slightly jingoist, you know, we're the Brits fair
Stacey Hart: play kind of thing. So it's undermining.
Stacey Hart: And also it's not very pleasant to realize that actually
Stacey Hart: you can work as hard as you like and it might not mean that you
Stacey Hart: get anywhere. It's that that that's depressing, you know,
Stacey Hart: that does make you feel like collapsing into a ball of ennui with Netflix, doesn't
Stacey Hart: it? It's it's
Joanne Lockwood: nice. But the reality is, it's not just about
Joanne Lockwood: your capability. It's your name. If it's a
Joanne Lockwood: traditionally British Anglo Saxon name, we know that you
Joanne Lockwood: have to have more chance of achieving something that a
Joanne Lockwood: non British name. And we know that your gender, if you're
Joanne Lockwood: male, we know you stand more chance of being promoted to senior management,
Joanne Lockwood: especially if you're a tall man, you stand more chance. And we know all these
Joanne Lockwood: biases exist and they become sort of self fulfilling, don't they? We
Joanne Lockwood: believe tall white men have more authority than
Joanne Lockwood: short black men or whatever it may be. And
Joanne Lockwood: even amongst other women, we find that women don't rate
Joanne Lockwood: women as well as they rate a man in a leadership role.
Joanne Lockwood: So it's society's conditioning on us all, isn't it? We we can't just blame
Joanne Lockwood: men or privileged people for this. It's kind of we've also socialized
Joanne Lockwood: ourselves to believe in some respect. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And,
Stacey Hart: during my kind of, you know, this is
Stacey Hart: gonna sound so awful when you put it like this. During my feminist
Stacey Hart: journey, inverted commas, you know,
Stacey Hart: I've unpacked, but a lot of crap
Stacey Hart: that I that was socialized into me as a kid, as
Stacey Hart: a young woman. You know, I grew up,
Stacey Hart: you know, my I'm 41 now. I was born in 79. So my kind
Stacey Hart: of my formative years, what I think were my formative years were sort of the
Stacey Hart: bits where you start going out with other people for the first time and you're
Stacey Hart: not sort of just necessarily being at home. So you're talking, you know, later
Stacey Hart: school going into kind of college which Early nineties sort of thing. Yeah.
Stacey Hart: Well, for me, like, 6th form was where that that kind of really happened, where
Stacey Hart: I started really sort of forming as a person, I suppose. And,
Stacey Hart: and that was like 95 through 97. And so we're talking
Stacey Hart: Laudette culture and, Spice Girls,
Joanne Lockwood: Girl Pow. Girls and Heat Magazine. It was a very, you know, and I you
Stacey Hart: know, definitely wrong. I still get a little bit nostalgic for the Spice Girls and
Stacey Hart: some of the some of the early work, but, but it's isn't it a
Stacey Hart: very, very narrow view of what girls are and what girl
Stacey Hart: power is? It's girl power that is distilled very much
Stacey Hart: through a, traditionally,
Stacey Hart: male approved attractive, you know, narrow
Joanne Lockwood: Fit, sporty, attractive, as you say. Yeah. Yeah. And,
Stacey Hart: so all of those things. And we we are socialized,
Stacey Hart: you know, so successfully and conditioned so successfully as
Stacey Hart: young people by by the media and by the people around us. And, you know,
Stacey Hart: in my forties, I am unpacking
Stacey Hart: that still. And there are some great, great books.
Stacey Hart: Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine is one of the ones that I'm working through
Stacey Hart: at the moment that talks a lot about, you know, the studies,
Stacey Hart: that are out there that sort of prove that, you know, we aren't born thinking
Stacey Hart: that, you know, girls like pink and boys like blue and girls
Stacey Hart: like, you know, nurses' uniforms
Stacey Hart: and boys wanna be truck drivers, you know, that all of that stuff,
Stacey Hart: even by parents who do believe that they are, parenting equally and
Stacey Hart: in a gender neutral way is, is
Stacey Hart: just drip fed in there by absolutely
Stacey Hart: everything around us. And unpicking it is hard.
Stacey Hart: It is hard. And I find that now as a parent as well with
Stacey Hart: my 2 boys. Yeah. I often talk about the fact
Joanne Lockwood: that we should have pre parenting classes
Joanne Lockwood: to just help the future parents think
Joanne Lockwood: about how we socialize our children and how they can start
Joanne Lockwood: bringing those thoughts into play before even the child is
Joanne Lockwood: conceived. So they can start thinking about how they want to
Joanne Lockwood: bring their young boy, their young girl, whoever they they develop to
Joanne Lockwood: be into the world in a very equitable and an
Joanne Lockwood: opportunistic way rather setting that expectation almost from
Joanne Lockwood: the pink bedroom or the teddy bear they're given. And that's the beginning
Joanne Lockwood: of it for most people and because there's this feeling society that we
Joanne Lockwood: have to treat our little girl in a certain way or a little boy has
Joanne Lockwood: to be a bit rough and tough, no matter how woke you are
Joanne Lockwood: as a parent it's really hard to escape that programming isn't it? It is incredibly
Stacey Hart: hard and there was a great story in in the book I was
Stacey Hart: just reading where they were talking about, a set
Stacey Hart: of parents that said, you know, we do everything gender neutrally. We buy
Stacey Hart: our little girl. You know, we bought her just as many trucks and
Stacey Hart: dinosaurs as we did dollies, but she just went for the dollies.
Stacey Hart: She picks them up. She puts them to bed. She looks after them. She
Stacey Hart: changes their now piece. And but but we've given
Stacey Hart: her equal toys. So it must be that she just
Stacey Hart: has a predisposition for putting little dollies to bed as something that
Stacey Hart: she is is kind of conditioned, like, brain wired in there. And
Stacey Hart: then they asked, well, who puts your little girl to bed? And the mom said,
Stacey Hart: well, I do. And there you have it. You
Stacey Hart: know? It's So mommy is the role model. Yeah. Kids learn
Stacey Hart: far more from what we show them than what we tell them. And I
Stacey Hart: know that because everything I tell my boys goes in one ear and out the
Stacey Hart: bloody other. Right? So they learn far, far more
Stacey Hart: about about what they, should be
Stacey Hart: doing and, and should be, how
Stacey Hart: they should be behaving, by by watching us than they
Stacey Hart: do do by listening to us. And I think that's why
Stacey Hart: you know for the Women's Equality Party we have 7 core objectives and one of
Stacey Hart: them is equal parenting and caregiving because it's
Stacey Hart: important for fathers to have as much time at
Stacey Hart: home with their kids as is it is for mothers. You know of course speaking
Stacey Hart: in a sort of assuming the relationship is a traditionally,
Stacey Hart: heterosexual sort of nuclear family one, which not all families are and that's
Stacey Hart: great. But, yeah. So it's
Stacey Hart: really important for both parents to have as much time
Stacey Hart: with the kid because that is not only formative for the child but it allows,
Stacey Hart: you know, all the dads that have been denied that bonding over the years.
Stacey Hart: And then that, you know, that goes on to affect the entire family dynamic all
Stacey Hart: throughout everyone's lives. It goes on to affect, you know, the
Stacey Hart: fact that then that feeds into the pay gap which, you know, equal pay is
Stacey Hart: another one of our core objectives. It goes on to,
Stacey Hart: mean that as traditionally the higher earner, the
Stacey Hart: the burden of earning is then on on the dad. And that that can be
Stacey Hart: an incredibly powerful and and
Stacey Hart: and and horrific thing to have to carry. All of
Stacey Hart: these things, all of these inequities are tied up
Stacey Hart: together like a knotted ball of rubber bands is how I describe
Stacey Hart: it. There's no one issue that doesn't affect another issue. Equal pay
Stacey Hart: has to do with equal parenting, which has to do with equal
Stacey Hart: media treatment because when you look at the way that we
Stacey Hart: we talk about people in our culture when they don't fulfil
Stacey Hart: the roles that we, you know, the way that we talk about, oh, daddy's babysitting,
Stacey Hart: is he? No. He's looking after his kid, actually. Parenting.
Stacey Hart: Yeah. Parenting is is what it's called. Exactly. All of these things are tied
Stacey Hart: up together like a big old knotty ball of rubber bands, and that's what it's,
Stacey Hart: you know, kind of our work and and my work on our Basingstoke branch
Stacey Hart: and with our Basingstoke team. I have a great team of people here, that I
Stacey Hart: work with, is trying to unpick some of that bit by bit.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I mean, it's it's a fish
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't see the water it swims in until it's taken out. And it's
Joanne Lockwood: really difficult for people to see the privilege they breathe and live every day
Joanne Lockwood: until they lose privilege. And I know people who have
Joanne Lockwood: had a life changing injury or or they've got cancer or
Joanne Lockwood: some some of these significance happened in life. And that's often enough to nudge
Joanne Lockwood: them and jolts them out there off their traditional trajectory
Joanne Lockwood: to make them realize what it is to lose that privilege, that able-bodied privilege
Joanne Lockwood: or that financial stability. Because it goes
Joanne Lockwood: far beyond just the protected characteristics and this the non protected characteristics
Joanne Lockwood: are kind of the starting point that there's a whole load of other inequities
Joanne Lockwood: around your ability to provide
Joanne Lockwood: for your family or even the language you speak of the default there, all these
Joanne Lockwood: things impact. I think people don't really see that in
Joanne Lockwood: themselves. And when people are having conversations around the inequities,
Joanne Lockwood: around gender, around race or whatever it may be or about
Joanne Lockwood: ability or disability then people don't have any reference
Joanne Lockwood: point. They just, as we said earlier, they just they don't
Joanne Lockwood: see that privilege and that's a real it takes
Joanne Lockwood: someone to have that life changing moment either with themselves or someone in their family
Joanne Lockwood: to really, really understand it. And I think for many men,
Joanne Lockwood: it can happen when they have a daughter or they
Joanne Lockwood: their wife or partner experiences some sort of, discrimination
Joanne Lockwood: or violence or whatever it may be, then they become
Joanne Lockwood: woken up to that that scenario. And I think I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: I've I've where are we? We're we're middle of March and
Joanne Lockwood: the tragedy of the death of Sarah Everard in the last
Joanne Lockwood: fortnight and the fact it was a police officer
Joanne Lockwood: has woken up many women to start telling their stories.
Joanne Lockwood: And many men are pushing back, well, it's not me. Yeah. The not
Joanne Lockwood: all men is coming back in the same way we had the,
Joanne Lockwood: white lives matter, all lives matter to the response to the black lives matter.
Joanne Lockwood: And but yeah, I mean, we can say it's not all men, but actually
Joanne Lockwood: it is all women, isn't it? And that's part of the problem here that every
Joanne Lockwood: woman I know has a story. And I only
Joanne Lockwood: transitioned four and a half years ago. And I've got my stories
Joanne Lockwood: around being female. And I've woken up
Joanne Lockwood: to a world that I didn't know existed. And yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm not saying I was a significant problem
Joanne Lockwood: but I wasn't perfect. I don't think any man is perfect.
Joanne Lockwood: We all contribute to that social construct of gender.
Joanne Lockwood: But we don't know be doing it because it just is. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: it's I mean, you you must have heard lots of stories,
Joanne Lockwood: from or you've probably got your own stories, but you've heard lots of stories about
Joanne Lockwood: the people about just the everyday reality about being a woman
Joanne Lockwood: in the world in the UK right now. Yeah. Yeah I
Stacey Hart: have. I both heard
Stacey Hart: a million and one of them
Stacey Hart: and of course have my own as well. And
Stacey Hart: I think I do I do get a little we
Stacey Hart: talked about intolerance of the intolerant I do get a little bit impatient
Stacey Hart: with the not all men crowd because it's once again sort
Stacey Hart: of dragging that focus background to themselves.
Stacey Hart: And I have to keep the fact that we have to keep saying no one
Stacey Hart: is saying it is you is really frankly
Stacey Hart: depressing. The fact that someone is hearing
Stacey Hart: about a horrendous
Stacey Hart: horrific tragedy in
Stacey Hart: which someone lost their life that didn't and Jo, do you know
Stacey Hart: what, her life was taken. And that's another thing as well. We talk
Stacey Hart: a lot about these things in, in a
Stacey Hart: very passive language. And we do that, I
Stacey Hart: think because it's easier to tell a
Stacey Hart: blind eye to violence against women and girls when
Stacey Hart: we use it, when we use language like that violence against women and
Stacey Hart: girls, life was lost is very passive framing.
Stacey Hart: It's talks about it like it's a tiger wave or an earthquake
Stacey Hart: something that was horrible and tragic but couldn't be helped. Whereas actually we should
Stacey Hart: be talking in terms of male
Stacey Hart: violence because, you know, it is overwhelmingly I think
Stacey Hart: it's like 97% of lives
Stacey Hart: taken across the world are taken by men. And
Stacey Hart: and talking about, you know, lives taken rather than
Stacey Hart: lives lost. And as you heard, I just did it just now.
Stacey Hart: So all of that stuff is there for the unpicking. And it is,
Stacey Hart: it is frustrating when you hear about something,
Stacey Hart: a horrible case like Sarah Everard's and a person's
Stacey Hart: first reaction to being
Stacey Hart: asked, 'would you please help us so that this doesn't
Stacey Hart: happen more?' is, well, I don't do it.'
Stacey Hart: Are you saying I do it? That is their first
Stacey Hart: reaction. And
Stacey Hart: I will admit I sometimes have trouble keeping my
Stacey Hart: temper with people like that because again and
Stacey Hart: again and again, no we're not saying you do it, we are
Stacey Hart: saying you don't do enough to prevent it because none of
Stacey Hart: us do. You know, I myself have
Stacey Hart: been in positions where I wish I had stood up for other
Stacey Hart: women and yet I as a woman would would have been terrified to
Stacey Hart: do it but that doesn't mean that I couldn't have done more.
Stacey Hart: And I have you know been in positions where
Stacey Hart: I wish I'd stood up for other people, you
Stacey Hart: know? Not necessarily women just other people
Stacey Hart: in different scenarios and I didn't. But this is
Stacey Hart: such a big thing and it's such a hugely
Stacey Hart: split issue. Like it is predominantly
Stacey Hart: women that are being attacked,
Stacey Hart: that are being violated and it is predominantly men that
Stacey Hart: are doing it and we need all men to make
Stacey Hart: that not okay. Because it's
Stacey Hart: not about the high profile cases, it's not just about them, it's
Stacey Hart: about a scale of violence that ends with
Stacey Hart: those cases that we that we're hearing about, but that begins
Stacey Hart: with catcalling in the streets or a bit of a grope
Stacey Hart: in the bar. Love honker honker, whatever
Stacey Hart: despicable thing it is that people think that they could do. That they that
Stacey Hart: that's allowed. I I've had that honker
Joanne Lockwood: honker Yeah. In a bar. Yeah. And
Joanne Lockwood: the the the person knew I looked to them and they just shook their shoulders
Joanne Lockwood: and go, woah. Yeah. I go, really? And Really? It's
Stacey Hart: part of, you know, the the unpicking that I've had to
Stacey Hart: do in myself is is that now I'm obviously
Stacey Hart: at a stage where I would, you
Stacey Hart: know, I would raise the roof, you know, if
Stacey Hart: that were to happen tomorrow. But when it did happen and it has happened in
Stacey Hart: the past, you know, as I talked a bit about, you know, the
Stacey Hart: socialization of us as younger people in my
Stacey Hart: generation in the nineties when we were out drinking, you know, it
Stacey Hart: was like, wait, because you had to be one of the lads. That
Stacey Hart: was what you were taught was valuable. That was how you were of value. If
Stacey Hart: you were in on the joke, if you got with the program,
Stacey Hart: if you, you know, kind of went, yeah, come on lads and
Stacey Hart: and and did that because that was how you were liked.
Stacey Hart: That was how you were then 1 Yeah. It's the lads culture. It's
Joanne Lockwood: yeah. It's how to Unpacking that as I say it takes
Stacey Hart: it takes a lot a lot of time and it's really really
Stacey Hart: important. When we were talking, you know, we've obviously
Stacey Hart: talked a bit about Sarah Everard and that horrible case
Stacey Hart: but we were talking a little bit earlier about how other
Stacey Hart: people don't see their, their privilege.
Stacey Hart: And that, you know, the flip side of that is
Stacey Hart: that they literally don't see things like this when
Stacey Hart: they happen to other people. Because when you look at, you
Stacey Hart: know, it is an appalling tragedy that
Stacey Hart: Sarah Everard's life was taken away from her. But
Stacey Hart: it is also worth noting that this
Stacey Hart: particular case which has, you know, torn the lid off of
Stacey Hart: this debate and that has been in every single paper
Stacey Hart: on every single TV channel is the case of a
Stacey Hart: young, attractive, blonde, white,
Stacey Hart: professional, middle class woman who
Stacey Hart: absolutely did not, you know, deserve
Stacey Hart: to to have her life ripped away from her. But there are
Stacey Hart: all of the time you know in in in the week following her disappearance
Stacey Hart: there were 6 women and a little girl that lost their
Stacey Hart: lives and at least 3 of them were women of colour. And you
Stacey Hart: won't hear their names. You won't hear the same stories.
Stacey Hart: You know, if you think about the story of Nicole
Stacey Hart: Smallman and Biba Henry who were 2
Stacey Hart: Black women that were murdered
Stacey Hart: and their family, you know, is saying that they
Stacey Hart: their disappearance wasn't taken seriously. The search was
Stacey Hart: organised by their own family. They were actually found
Stacey Hart: by a member of their own family. And then
Stacey Hart: horrendous thing happened. Police officers that were
Stacey Hart: investigating their murder took selfies with their murdered
Stacey Hart: bodies. Yeah. I heard that. Yeah. They sent them to WhatsApp
Stacey Hart: groups. WhatsApp groups that included members of the public who
Stacey Hart: weren't also police officers. I mean, like, it would have been okay anyway. Of course,
Stacey Hart: it wasn't. And those police officers are still in posts. That was
Stacey Hart: a year ago. And we are not hearing these
Stacey Hart: stories. We're not hearing them in the same way that we will hear
Stacey Hart: about Sarah Everard or that we heard about that we
Stacey Hart: still hear about poor Madeleine McCann to this day. There
Stacey Hart: are very specific stories being told and those with less
Stacey Hart: privilege, you will not hear those stories.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. As you say, it's if you're blonde, you're white, you're attractive,
Joanne Lockwood: professional, or have a level of
Joanne Lockwood: privilege, then Yeah. Society sees you as more tragic.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And that's,
Joanne Lockwood: until you said until you said that, I I hadn't really
Joanne Lockwood: thought about it in those terms and that is really powerful. And
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, that that leads me on to talking about, the
Joanne Lockwood: Meghan Markle interview and and how she
Joanne Lockwood: has been the target of
Joanne Lockwood: hate, abuse from the media. I mean, let's
Joanne Lockwood: leave the family side out of it. Let's not let's not talk about the family
Joanne Lockwood: squab or whatever exists within the family but there's clearly mental health
Joanne Lockwood: issues going on there and how people are denying that
Joanne Lockwood: because she's not white, attractive,
Joanne Lockwood: blonde. She is a woman of color of mixed
Joanne Lockwood: heritage And the press seem to think it's okay
Joanne Lockwood: to target her because she is that person.
Joanne Lockwood: And again, it's this free speech, it's the
Joanne Lockwood: how often do we hear that the press aren't racist, yet we can see the
Joanne Lockwood: evidence of the way they compare how Kate was treated,
Joanne Lockwood: how first is how Megan was treated and the same story and how
Joanne Lockwood: it spun differently. And they said, well, that's not racism. It's just
Joanne Lockwood: we're selling papers. It's the justification, isn't it? It is.
Stacey Hart: And, I mean, they're lying. It is racism. It's
Stacey Hart: clearly blatantly racism.
Stacey Hart: Let's say that most importantly, first and foremost.
Stacey Hart: It's also the way we treat women in the public eye.
Stacey Hart: I mean, whilst there is clearly
Stacey Hart: a huge racist element to the treatment of Meghan Markle,
Stacey Hart: it is worth noting that, you know, Kate
Stacey Hart: Middleton didn't get an easy ride in the early days before she showed that she
Stacey Hart: was willing to ignore it, be demure, and they had
Stacey Hart: thrown everything they could at her and she was still willing to sort of sit
Stacey Hart: down with her head and and put up with it and then they decided that
Stacey Hart: that she was acceptable actually. And look at the way, you know, Diana was treated.
Stacey Hart: That's not to, take away from how blatant
Stacey Hart: it was. And Sarah as well. I mean Yeah. Any any role
Joanne Lockwood: that as you say Yeah. If you put you can poke and
Joanne Lockwood: provoke somebody then you keep poking and provoking. Once the person
Joanne Lockwood: submits, they're no longer they're no longer news are they? They're just ordering again?
Stacey Hart: Yeah Absolutely. And, that's not, as I say, to take away from the fact
Stacey Hart: that the treatment of Meghan Markle is blatantly and entirely racist as
Stacey Hart: well. But it's, there's
Stacey Hart: a word, misogynoir, which describes, the
Stacey Hart: treatment specifically of black women at the intersection of being a woman
Stacey Hart: and and being black. And that's very much what this is.
Stacey Hart: She's getting it, you know, from all those all those angles.
Stacey Hart: And it's just appalling. I mean, who are we?
Stacey Hart: Who are we that we read this?
Stacey Hart: I don't believe that this is a freedom of speech
Stacey Hart: issue. You know, freedom of speech
Stacey Hart: is not about bullying. It's not
Stacey Hart: about hounding. It's not
Stacey Hart: about treatment that is clearly when you compare it side by side
Stacey Hart: and if you go onto the internet I'm sure you've seen the same things I
Stacey Hart: have comparing stories about Kate to stories about Megan. It's not
Stacey Hart: being so blatantly biased against people for
Stacey Hart: very obvious reasons. And
Stacey Hart: that is not the kind of thing that it is okay to
Stacey Hart: platform. That's not the kind of treatment of people
Stacey Hart: that it is okay to hang under the freedom of
Stacey Hart: press banner and that's a problem. We have a huge problem in our
Stacey Hart: media with that and we really need to reckon with it. But we need to
Stacey Hart: reckon with it on a personal level as well because if you're picking up
Stacey Hart: Heat Magazine, and for the exposes on the
Stacey Hart: celebrities, and if you're picking up the tabloid newspapers
Stacey Hart: because they've got the headline there of, you know, with Meghan and you
Stacey Hart: if you're rolling in that stuff
Stacey Hart: like like a you know like dogs you
Stacey Hart: know. Yeah. If you're feeding off it then you're part of the problem. Then you
Stacey Hart: are a huge part of the problem and that's
Stacey Hart: a difficult thing to hear I think for a lot of people. They've
Stacey Hart: managed to successfully divorce their consumption
Stacey Hart: from the means that is used to get that to
Stacey Hart: their eyeballs. Mhmm. It's interesting you use the word demure and
Joanne Lockwood: and subservient and and basically giving up. And that's how women are
Joanne Lockwood: expected to behave when it comes to violence or
Joanne Lockwood: rape. Women standing up and say it happened to me. The first
Joanne Lockwood: reaction is disbelief or what did you do
Joanne Lockwood: to incite it? It's always pushed back to the woman. It's never somebody
Joanne Lockwood: else's fault. It's always the woman who is question first. And I was
Joanne Lockwood: on a debate the other day, talking about people's experiences on
Joanne Lockwood: social media, and I was talking about LinkedIn, and the number of unsolicited
Joanne Lockwood: male interactions I get on LinkedIn
Joanne Lockwood: that often are, well, they're early stage sexual
Joanne Lockwood: in nature, you know, Jo how darling I love your eyes, that
Joanne Lockwood: warm up act, you know, the kind of the soft intro was only harmless.
Joanne Lockwood: And one of the other people, the panelists on this was talking about
Joanne Lockwood: how they were shamed for calling it out. Jo
Joanne Lockwood: what about this man's family? What about this man's wife? What about this man's
Joanne Lockwood: children? By calling them out and shaming them verbally and
Joanne Lockwood: publicly, what about what you're doing to their life? And, well, the
Joanne Lockwood: reaction was basically, well, why shouldn't we call
Joanne Lockwood: this out? Why shouldn't we be vocal? Because unless we do, unless
Joanne Lockwood: we stand up every time and say, this is what's happening to me, this is
Joanne Lockwood: not acceptable, I, the person who's the perpetrator,
Joanne Lockwood: who's creating this problem will never learn. But it has
Joanne Lockwood: to become socially unacceptable for women to be treated in this
Joanne Lockwood: way because whilst it's hidden, whilst we're socialized
Joanne Lockwood: to say to us, don't make a fuss, don't call it out.
Joanne Lockwood: Maybe it's your fault. Maybe your profile picture is too attractive, maybe the clothes you're
Joanne Lockwood: wearing in your profile picture are too attractive, maybe it's the fact that you're a
Joanne Lockwood: professional woman, it's your fault for being there. It's often often
Joanne Lockwood: what's being said. And men are just being men. We don't mean anything by it.
Joanne Lockwood: It's just the way men are is a bit of fun. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's the excuse that's often given. And I find that really, really frustrating.
Joanne Lockwood: Now I sit on this side of the fence, if you like. I'm living in
Joanne Lockwood: a world where I never knew existed. 5
Joanne Lockwood: years ago, Jo one ever wrote to me like that, but now they do.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's not every second, every minute. And I know some women I've
Joanne Lockwood: spoken to get it on a daily basis and it becomes escalating
Joanne Lockwood: in the intensity of it. And then if you block, delete,
Joanne Lockwood: report, it just carries on. And it's so
Joanne Lockwood: it's so tiring. Yeah. And it undermines you. It does.
Stacey Hart: It is and it's exhausting and you know you can
Stacey Hart: Lockwood can you know sort of digitally stick your fingers in your ears of course
Stacey Hart: you can but that takes time to do maybe a few seconds
Stacey Hart: or maybe a little bit longer if you wanna file a report to to Facebook
Stacey Hart: or LinkedIn or whoever. That takes time out of your day and that time adds
Stacey Hart: up. And so the the the
Stacey Hart: time and physical energy penalty adds up over, you
Stacey Hart: know, days months years and sucks that out of you.
Stacey Hart: And what it does to you psychically
Stacey Hart: adds up. You know, you hear a lot of people going, oh, is wolf
Stacey Hart: whistling against the law now?' or whatever. And, you know, getting
Stacey Hart: wolf whistled at once in the street probably, you know, on
Stacey Hart: one occasion isn't going to do that many people that much
Stacey Hart: harm. But when you're being told essentially
Stacey Hart: daily that your value is whether or
Stacey Hart: not you get attention in the street from random guys
Stacey Hart: that adds up. That is, you
Stacey Hart: know, stone gets worn away eventually if you drip
Stacey Hart: water on it over a long enough period. And that is what this
Stacey Hart: is. It's that cumulative
Stacey Hart: nature of being told that your place
Stacey Hart: is to be
Stacey Hart: demeaned, belittled and judged.
Stacey Hart: And maybe you're one of the lucky
Stacey Hart: ones that if you're judged attractively enough
Stacey Hart: and you
Stacey Hart: get the right kind of attention in inverted comms. And, you know, that isn't,
Stacey Hart: it's not okay. It's not okay. And it, it has
Stacey Hart: huge income, you
Stacey Hart: know, issues. It has huge impacts
Stacey Hart: on pay throughout your life. It has huge impacts on you know your
Stacey Hart: working time and and just your mental and physical
Stacey Hart: health is it's really,
Stacey Hart: really damaging. And that's why
Stacey Hart: yeah I sort of I'm fighting the fights that we are here in Basingstoke
Stacey Hart: and, and why we have our our wonderful candidate Priya standing for local
Stacey Hart: elections in May. So yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Brilliant. Well, I can't believe the hour's almost up and we've been
Stacey Hart: Bloody hour. We've been we've been chatting away now. Time's
Joanne Lockwood: flown. I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who've who've been
Joanne Lockwood: listening to this who may wanna get in touch with you, find out more
Joanne Lockwood: about the work you're doing. So what's the best way of making contact? Do they
Joanne Lockwood: wanna find out more or or have a chat with you? Well, the best thing
Stacey Hart: to do is to get in touch via if you wanna get in touch
Stacey Hart: about the women's equality party, you can look at women's equality.org.uk
Stacey Hart: forward slash bazingsstoke. You can get in touch with us on
Stacey Hart: Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. We're at wepbazingsstoke
Stacey Hart: and find out more about what we're doing, not just
Stacey Hart: about gender inequality, but about racial inequality and representation.
Stacey Hart: We're doing work on the environment. We're doing work on school sports equality. We're
Stacey Hart: doing work on the economy. All kinds of things
Stacey Hart: to to bring everyone to the table. I
Stacey Hart: also have, we didn't talk at all about my acting, but
Stacey Hart: I am an actor. And as you know, Jo,
Stacey Hart: I co created a theater show called Jug Life,
Stacey Hart: which is all about is based on verbatim monologues
Stacey Hart: about people's experience with their own breasts. So we've
Stacey Hart: taken interviews from all sorts of people
Stacey Hart: and made a really funny and,
Stacey Hart: insightful, I think, and hilarious and heartbreaking show
Stacey Hart: about, about experiences with tits, basically
Stacey Hart: and there's all sorts of stuff in there but what I'm doing at the moment
Stacey Hart: since we're talking diversity and inclusion. As you know when we first
Stacey Hart: created the show we did so under a little bit of a time pressure because
Stacey Hart: it was to be initially a one off thing for a charity.
Stacey Hart: But what what I wanna do now, now we're sort of
Stacey Hart: have the time to do so is expand the show
Stacey Hart: and get more monologues, more stories, more
Stacey Hart: diverse and interesting experience in there and
Stacey Hart: make it more inclusive of basically more people.
Stacey Hart: So if anyone would be interested in being interviewed about their
Stacey Hart: boobs for whatever reason, It could be,
Stacey Hart: a silly thing, a small thing. It could be a huge thing. It Joanne be
Stacey Hart: funny or sad or yucky. It can be any experience at
Stacey Hart: all. We wanna hear it all. You'll find us at
Stacey Hart: juglifeshow on, Twitter
Stacey Hart: and Facebook and also, juglifeshow@gmail.com.
Stacey Hart: So get in touch. We wanna hear from you. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I I told the story about my relationship with my breasts. I know
Joanne Lockwood: this was probably about 3 3 or 4 years ago when we first met. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And, I remember going to the that event that you did as a result
Joanne Lockwood: of it and it was a fantastic evening. It was, very relaxed in the cafe
Joanne Lockwood: in the middle of Basingstoke. It's a very socially fair and you had lots
Joanne Lockwood: of different voice actors reading out people's stories. I remember
Joanne Lockwood: sitting in the audience actually with my wife and a couple of friends hearing my
Joanne Lockwood: story read out. I thought, wow, did I really say that? It's kind of really,
Joanne Lockwood: really powerful hearing your own story read. But to listen to the stories of the
Joanne Lockwood: other women or the people that had contributed was also phenomenal just to
Joanne Lockwood: hear the different relationship people have
Joanne Lockwood: with breasts, their own breasts. And it's really insightful that we're
Joanne Lockwood: not the same, are we? We have we have our own view of our own
Joanne Lockwood: bodies and and what things are mean to us. These these floppy bits that hang
Joanne Lockwood: in front of us. What we do with them and and how we see them,
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't it? It's a it's a really interesting, yeah, it was a fantastic night. So
Joanne Lockwood: if you're if you're taking that project and doing more with it, I think, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: get in touch. And it's not it's not just about women. If you
Joanne Lockwood: have if you're someone who identifies as male with breasts, if you've
Joanne Lockwood: got a story about your own boobs or your own nipples whatever it may be?
Stacey Hart: Absolutely, yeah. Since I, since that first show
Stacey Hart: that that you saw, Jo, we, in the sort of second round of
Stacey Hart: interviews, I have had discussions with
Stacey Hart: a couple of non binary people.
Stacey Hart: I have interviewed a cis man with gynecomastia.
Stacey Hart: I, you know, there's there's all sorts of people that have gotten involved. I've I've
Stacey Hart: done a group interview with a group of, old school friends who
Stacey Hart: are, you know, different now at different stages of their lives and that was really,
Stacey Hart: really good fun. I've spoken to,
Stacey Hart: someone who has like, a monitor,
Stacey Hart: a heart monitor, you know, sort of surgically
Stacey Hart: implanted inside of a breast. And all of these
Stacey Hart: different things, they're so important to hear. And, you know, when
Stacey Hart: we talked earlier about the fact that we are, more likely to hear certain
Stacey Hart: people's stories than others, that's something that we really, really
Stacey Hart: want to do properly with Jug Life. We really want to hear
Stacey Hart: from, people with all walks of life. And there's a lot more information
Stacey Hart: on the Facebook page. Jo, yeah, do have go and have a look
Stacey Hart: at @JugLifeShow. I'll make sure all
Joanne Lockwood: of these links are in the show notes so if you want to find out
Joanne Lockwood: more you can click on the links or get in contact with you as you
Joanne Lockwood: said via Instagram I'll put those links in there and
Joanne Lockwood: yeah drop me a private message Jo wow thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: We could have carried on for another hour or 2 I'm sure
Joanne Lockwood: people are still listening got this far that they would also
Joanne Lockwood: got a huge amount out of this. So thank you for getting this far for
Joanne Lockwood: listening in tuning in. Please do subscribe to keep
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Joanne Lockwood: share. I have a number of other, I was gonna say
Joanne Lockwood: more exciting, could they be more exciting than the guests we had today or
Joanne Lockwood: in previous times? But I've got lots of guests lined up who are
Joanne Lockwood: equally, if not, passionately exciting as well.
Joanne Lockwood: So please tune in, please subscribe. If you'd like to
Joanne Lockwood: be a guest, I mean, you are potentially an inspiring guest
Joanne Lockwood: yourself. So if you want to get in touch, please do contact me
Joanne Lockwood: at jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. And if you've got any
Joanne Lockwood: feedback or suggestions on how we can improve future episodes, then please do let me
Joanne Lockwood: know. So finally, it's for me to say my name is
Joanne Lockwood: Joanne Lockwood and it's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today.
Joanne Lockwood: Catch you next time. Bye.