A shouting match in the Oval Office probably should have been on everyone’s Trump 25 bingo card – but the extraordinary breakdown in relations between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy shocked the world. Keir Starmer rolled up his sleeves and spent the weekend in full-blown diplomacy mode – leading to Politico calling him the “unlikely leader of the free world”.

But with Trump pulling the plug on military aid to Ukraine, leaving the UK and Europe scrambling to increase defence spending – will Starmer’s peace plan work? And what does it all mean for the future of the war? Coco and Nish discuss.

With International Women’s Day this week, Political Editor at PoliticsJoe Ava-Santina Evans calls in to discuss what the government has achieved when it comes to women’s equality.

And with less than one in five young women identifying as a feminist and self-described feminists like Kemi Badenoch calling maternity pay ‘excessive’ – Coco wants to know if changing labels and groups would make a difference. Author Sophie Lewis digs into the true heart of feminism and how we can reclaim it.

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Useful Links

Sophie Lewis – Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen and Girlbosses against Liberation

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2440-enemy-feminisms

Guests

Ava-Santina Evans
Sophie Lewis

Audio Credits

BBC

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TRANSCRIPT

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Nish Kumar Hi. This is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. And I notice you’re not wearing a suit today, Nish. Very disrespectful.

Nish Kumar Well, I’m on tour in New York as we record, but by the time people listen to and watch this show, I will be in Washington, D.C., and I do not have a suit and tie with me. And I imagine I’ll be heckled by J.D. Vance from the audience, though I would say, given some of the material, I’ll be surprised if my clothing choices were the biggest problems he had with the show.

Coco Khan Can you imagine if J.D. Vance came to one of your shows?

Nish Kumar I can’t imagine it and ends up with me in a Trump branded gulag. Well, listen, today, we promise, its not all going to be about Donald Trump. We’re going to be chatting to PoliticsJoe’s political editor, Ava-Santina Evans, about the government’s policies for women. Are they making people’s lives better?

Coco Khan And later, I’m talking to feminist thinker Sophie Lewis about how the good name of feminism has been tarnished by some no good reprobate. It really gets my hackles up.

Nish Kumar Like JD Vance looking at a man in a sweatshirt.

Coco Khan All right, everyone, straight to the biggest bombshell of the week. Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky meeting last Friday was an absolute disaster. Ben and Tommy from Pod Save The World even called it maybe the worst meeting in the Oval Office ever.

Nish Kumar And I always think at these junctures, it’s worth turning to the great modern political thinker, Homer Simpson. Whenever we talk about what’s going on in the US right now. So I’d suggest that it is, in fact the first meeting in the Oval Office so far.

Coco Khan Well, I’m glad you were with that Homer Simpson quote and not like nuts and gum together at last. But anyway, we’re going to assume that you’re all mostly up to date. So as a very, very brief summary, the shared press conference got derailed. Totally derailed after a journalist implied that Zelensky was disrespectful for wearing his trademark army fatigues. And there was an intervention from J.D. Vance that suggested he hadn’t been grateful enough. And then that led to Zelensky attempting to correct him. You know, presumably in the style of Macron and Starmer earlier that week, which was fine then, but it didn’t actually go too well.

Nish Kumar Now, Trump blew up, called the press conference to an end and sent Zelensky packing and triggered a diplomatic frenzy across the pond. Starmer called a conference of European leaders in London and swiftly arranged a state visit for Zelensky to meet the king, something that Trump will presumably be very envious of.

Coco Khan So Europe is scrambling to increase their defense spending. Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced a €550 billion plan to borrow for defense, and president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has announced plans to rearm Europe. Meanwhile, Trump announced a freeze in U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

Nish Kumar So as we record on Wednesday afternoon, UK time the latest as it Zelensky has issued a letter to Trump, which the president quoted in his address to Congress on Tuesday saying nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. Trump went on to say that they’ve been having serious discussions with Russia, and he claimed that he had received strong signals that they are ready for peace. Let’s talk a little bit about the UK’s place in all of this, because just before the kind of catastrophic Zelenskyy meeting, Starmer had gone to the States, had a meeting with Trump and the British press certainly was really willing to celebrate it as a win for Starmer. Then the concessions that both Starmer and Macron seem to have got out of Trump were completely exploded. And it’s sort of the problem with dealing with Donald Trump is that he is an incredibly changeable man. And so you might think you have a deal with him in 24 hours, like the whole thing might blow pretty face. But just let’s specifically talk about the UK. It’s forced us back into the heart of a European conversation this weekend.

Coco Khan Yeah, it really has. There was a really interesting piece in Politico, actually, with the the headline that kind of sums it up. And it’s Keir Starmer, unlikely leader of the free world, you know, in this very piece actually, they highlight a thing where Keir Starmer’s trademark, you know, he has that like that trademark delivery of Keir Starmer. We mock it here in the UK. But actually, you know Trump has said he’s got a beautiful accent. And it does appear to be that despite us making fun of him all this time, saying he’s absolutely charmless internationally, globally, that hasn’t been the case.

Nish Kumar I think if you stood next to Donald Trump, it’s very, very difficult to not look statesmanlike. It’s, logically speaking, complete sentences and say things that can be said to have a discernible relationship with the truth. You already look like a combination of FDR. Mahatma Gandhi like, it’s like. It’s like the the I’m afraid to say. Case 12. It was clear, like a low bar this week. But yeah, listen, it is important that we move towards a situation that ends this conflict, that there’s lots of progressive people who are very rightly coming out and saying, we need to find a way to end this conflict. And the only problem within that is that, you know, there are bad actors at the heart of all of this, and we do want an end to conflict. But how do you how do you do that when one of the people involved is Vladimir Putin? Like, I just don’t know how you do that.

Coco Khan Last week, I interviewed Ed Davey, and he made a case for why more military spending and ultimately more militarization of Britain is important, for defense is important for peace. But I keep thinking about how, like, you know, the thing about being anti-war, if you want to call it that or pro-peace or whatever language you want, a hippie peacenik like me is you have to do it when it’s hard, you know, when it’s and when it’s really hard is when everyone is saying, no, this is the only way. I don’t have the answer, but I really have been heartened when I do see politicians talking about ceasefires and talking about more diplomatic resolutions, because it can feel sometimes that the only options being laid out to us are you think Donald Trump is right and his deal is great, which is clearly ridiculous. It’s a terrible idea and Trump is not great. And Putin not having to do anything at all seems completely absurd and unjust. Or you have to support. You know, militarization of Britain and rearming Europe and all this quite scary stuff. Don’t know the answer for that, but those were just some things I was thinking. Is there another way? And as progressives, you know, can we be brave enough to say it when we find it?

Nish Kumar Well, after the disaster of the white House being questions being raised as to how compromised the US administration is when it comes to Russia, after Trump announced the withdrawal of military aid to Ukraine, the US has demanded that the UK no longer share any US security information with Ukraine. And the new director of national security, Tulsi Gabbard, once suggested that Putin was provoked into entering the war, prompting tricky questions for government ministers about our intelligence sharing alliance with the United States. Here’s the Minister for the Armed Forces, Luke Pollard, being asked about the risks to our national security. On Radio Four’s Today program on Monday.

Clip Do we trust that intelligence we give to the United States won’t get to the Russians? Yes. We have a deep and serious relationship both on intelligence, security and defense matters. This is a daily and continuous relationship. It keeps the UK safe. It keeps America safe from us having this deep relationship.

Nish Kumar I understand that government ministers have to come onto these TV programs and say we have a deep and meaningful relationship with the United States, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I understand that that’s what they say. But I hope to God in private. That is not the tenor of conversation, because if it is the Labour Party and this government is behaving like a pack of absolute magic bean buying motherfuckers because you cannot have a relationship based on mutual trust with Donald Trump, it’s it’s impossible. No one has managed to do it. None of his wives have managed to do it. Why? The name of God? We think we would be able to do it is beyond the pale, and our relationship with the US is no longer something that can be taken for granted. And I do think that there need to be serious questions about intelligence sharing, and I hope to God that those conversations are big and in private. One thing that has really grated on me this week is the number of people from the UK government describing this as a way of helping smaller businesses access investment across the country. Please don’t treat us like we’re idiots. Don’t pretend. This was all originally part of your plan for growth. You have essentially a bad actor in the white House that is essentially, seemingly on a whim, realign the entire global world order. You are now scrambling to adjust to that. Don’t pretend this is part of your plan for growth. Also, you can’t talk about this helping smaller businesses. I’m sorry. My local. Yeah, my local corner shop is not going to get a contract to deliver anti-aircraft missiles to Lockheed Martin. I think there are lots of legitimate questions to ask about the wisdom of cutting international aid in the first place. But on top of that, to layer this in is a kind of way of helping the British high street. Has absolutely blown my mind.

Coco Khan So look, we mentioned earlier that Trump just gave his first joint address to Congress, where he declared himself just getting started. Oh, yeah. I don’t know. Well, some highlights include a repeat of his threat to annex Greenland and reclaim the Panama Canal. He also boasted about his escalating trade war. And of course, he price Elon Musk.

Nish Kumar If, like me, you listened to the speech and essentially felt like it had been written in Winged Dings and want to understand vaguely what on earth he was talking about. Head over to Pod Save America, where hosts Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan dissect the speech so you don’t have to.

Coco Khan Listen to Pod Save America Now. And for ad free episodes, head to their feed on Apple Podcasts for a free seven day trial.

Nish Kumar In other news, Coco, we are not English.

Coco Khan Well, I think my level of baked bean consumption would beg to differ. What do you mean?

Nish Kumar This baked bean test is not passing the muster with Suella Braverman.

Coco Khan Oh, right. Yeah.

Nish Kumar There has been this debate that’s been chewed. Chateau re eaten and re shat out by a fringe whack job section of the right wing internet that sort of started in a podcast that’s hosted by two morons. Had conversation with Fraser Nelson about whether or not Rishi Sunak was English or not, and that sort of started a conversation. And as with everything throughout human history, nothing has ever been improved by the arrival of Suella Braverman. Like, literally nothing is improved by the arrival of Suella Braverman. So she’s now waded on this debate. She’s written I was born here, raised speaking the Queen’s English and educated in England. Yet I’m not English. She goes on to say my heritage, with its rich cultural racial identity, is something distinct. I am British Asian and I feel a deep love, gratitude and loyalty to this country. But I cannot claim to be English, nor should I. Rob Menzies, it should be noted, have even attracted the condemnation of former prime minister Rishi Sunak. Look, I think the important thing to say here is, in spite of the fact that we have had a prime minister of an ethnic minority background, it shows you we’ve got a long way to go to bring our conversation around race into the late 20th century. Forget about the 21st century. I would settle for 1986 at this point. It’s perfectly possible that your parents could be born somewhere, that you could be born in a different place, and you are completely capable of assuming the identity of both places without diluting either of those identities. I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. I was born in England. I am English. I have other elements to my identity because my parents come from a different place. If you are born in London but your parents were born in Liverpool, there is a chance that you feel strongly that you are both a Londoner, but also have a strong attachment to the city of Liverpool. It is both less and no more complicated than that, right?

Coco Khan Exactly. And we all know why they want to overcomplicate it, because they want to try and legitimize a perspective that is fundamentally, if you have brown skin, you can’t be English, right? That’s basically it. So then it speaks to all their theories about great replacement in England no longer being for the English, because the idea that there’s actually loads of English people that are black and brown doesn’t suit that narrative. And it has been a little bit depressing to see that. It does feel like every conservative party Asian now has to answer this question. So Rishi Sunak’s answer to Priti Patel is answer that Priti Patel is English, Rishi Sunak is English, Suella Braverman not English. And they’re just going to go through every single one. It’s yeah, It’s not not the finest moment, but at least they’re doing the issues that don’t matter to anyone. That’s great. Yeah. They’re just in their little vortex of cultural cutting through to no one. So that’s.

Nish Kumar Great. There is a sort of interesting and important conversation to be had within this. It’s about the sort of shallowness of representation, politics and the idea that you can have a, you know, a South Asian British prime minister. It has not followed that. It is automatically raised the tenor of conversation around race in this country. In the 1980s, the conservative MP Norman Tebbit said that you should test whether South Asians in England supported India or England in cricket, and that was a way of proving national loyalty. And the problem is that, as stupid as that sounds, take it in isolation now. That’s not a million miles away from the conversation about race that’s been happening in Britain this week.

Coco Khan Maybe I’m being glib when I say I don’t care. I guess I just mean that, like, you know, it’s it’s it’s fluid. It’s a spectrum. It’s personal in many ways. I don’t yeah. Every politician needs to stand up and say, this is exactly. It’s just it’s ridiculous, you know. Yeah. So very English when England’s winning in the sports.

Nish Kumar Yeah. Exactly.

Coco Khan When team GB is doing great. Never felt more British. You know I’m a glory hunter. That’s really.

Nish Kumar Yeah yeah yeah yeah. The answer to the Tebbit test is it has always been I suppose whoever’s winning. What are you, a moron? I feel like Bill Murray at the point in Groundhog Day where he’s trying to jump off the table. That’s how I feel in terms of this conversation. It’s like I’m waking up every day and I’ve not reached the point of enlightenment. I am nowhere near winning the heart of Andie MacDowell in this specific Groundhog Day. Back to thought about race based conversations in Britain boxer Tony Phil.

Coco Khan Punxsutawney Phil yes, yes, this conversation has got big, but the 20 fill energy.

Nish Kumar Okay, for our lovely listeners, we are actually doing a mailbag special where we look at a bunch of the things that have been said. So if you have a question for us, now is the time.

Coco Khan Political questions very, very welcome. Stupid questions also very welcome. I know that Nish gets a lot of comments on the YouTube about his luscious hair, and we are all waiting for him to spill the routine. Is it leaving conditioner Nish? Is it leaving conditioner?

Nish Kumar I’ve got curl shampoos. There’s a lot to talk about. It’s a lot to unpack.

Coco Khan Okay. So send your questions over to PSUK at Reduced Listening dot. Co.Uk. Very much looking forward to hearing what you’ve got for us. And now after the break we promise it’s not just Donald Trump.

Nish Kumar It’s not. We’re actually gonna be speaking to PoliticsJoe’s amazing political editor, Ava-Santina Evans, about the government’s policy moves for women, how our politicians can cut through to a younger audience. And Jordan Peterson.

[AD]

Nish Kumar Now joining us on both sides of the UK is Ava-Santina Evans, political editor at PoliticsJoe. Welcome to the pod, Ava.

Ava-Santina Evans Hi. Thank you for having me.

So, Ava, we and our lovely listeners are sick to death of talking about Trump. But we do have to ask you to start off. How badly did the disaster in the Oval Office on Friday and how it did spoil your weekend on a scale of 1 to 10?

Ava-Santina Evans Okay. So I hate questions like this because the reason I’m in this job is because I am a news junkie. And so you have to sort of park the the aspect of this, which is like, you know, we’re about to change the global world order. And this is a geopolitical nightmare. And I enjoy it purely off of the back of so much news was happening at the same time. You know, I mean, the Pope nearly died as well. I noticed you didn’t mention that. I mean.

Nish Kumar That’s barely on the undercard of this weekend.

Ava-Santina Evans I felt it was a reaction to the Oval Office. But I don’t know. I don’t know.

Nish Kumar I thought it was a particularly extreme piece of Oscar campaigning by the conclave film team.

Ava-Santina Evans I love that.

So, Ava, it’s International Women’s Day this coming weekend. And we wanted to look at what the government has promised and what it’s actually achieved when it comes to women’s equality. Rachel Reeves, the first female chancellor in history, promised to close the gender pay gap once and for all and make flexible working the norm. This week, we heard that the UK is getting awarded its lowest ranking for workplace gender in a decade, though. So why are we going backwards? What’s happening with, you know, one of the most female centric parliaments we’ve ever had and yet declining standards for women?

Ava-Santina Evans So it’s funny because there’s two stories that are published today. The first one is what you have just laid out, which is that the OECD has ranked us lower in in terms of gender pay gap. But there’s this also this other story that the Telegraph have gone very hard on, which is about how young women are now outperforming young men for the first time in history. And this is catastrophic. And I was trying to think to myself, like, why does this story bother me so much? And I, I turned towards Jordan Peterson because he had no interesting source. He normally has the answers.

Nish Kumar You could have given me infinite numbers of guesses. I would have gone. I could be going to names about to come up about this Jordan Peterson.

Coco Khan Or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah. I mean, first I would have guessed Lynn. But anyway. Sorry. Yeah. What? What did he say?

Ava-Santina Evans Well, Andrew Tate was unavailable because he’s over in Florida, so I had to go to and to go to Jordan. So I was watching this clip where he was asking the question, why do women outperform young men? And his argument was that women are more obedient and that’s why they do better in school, because they’re quieter and because they they get on with their work a lot better than young boys do. And I think that’s a fair argument. But where Jordan Peterson loses me is when he starts talking about how there’s actually only a set number of jobs. And now women and men are both competing for those set numbers of jobs. And so he’s sort of borderline wandering into grievance politics, and he’s trying to make young men angry, and he’s trying to say, look, you’ve now got this entire cohort of women who are taking and stealing your jobs from you. And it’s really interesting when you consider that that’s the argument that is being, you know, sort of disseminated around social media. That’s the one that young boys are viewing when concurrently, we’re seeing on paper the gender pay gap has widened. It’s gotten worse. It’s almost like we’re living in this sort of distorted reality where you can convince young boys that they are being hard done by when. The reality is actually, it’s still not a great place for women to be.

Coco Khan And also, you know, if employers are choosing women over men, okay, well, as is traditional with the right, they always like to look at cultural problems rather than look at the economics of the situation like, well, maybe that employer likes underpaying and women get exploited, right? We get paid less, we are less likely to get our promotions despite asking for them. There’s all sorts of data around pay, transparency, and just the issue of women asking for more money and simply not getting it. But you would think that that would make you think, okay, let’s let’s take working class men. Working class women all get together and take on the busses. But no, actually, we’re going to have a little fight. It’s really sad.

Ava-Santina Evans But doesn’t that speak to what Jordan Peterson was talking about, about women being more agreeable in the classroom? That means that when they get into the workplace, they are more obedient. And so perhaps they’re not pushing for pay rises, and they don’t feel that they can use their agency in the way that perhaps a young man might feel that they can. Because there’s certainly evidence, if you look at the statistics, that while women may out on med when they first graduate from university, by the time they get to the late 20s in their early 30s, that drops off, men skyrocket and they continue to skyrocket. And then women start having children. And at that point, that’s the point of no return. Unfortunately, we still do live in a country where if a woman takes maternity leave, even though there are checks and balances that are supposed to prevent this scenario, a woman rarely stays on course on the trajectory of her career in the same manner in which a man can.

Coco Khan Whenever we have a conversation about gender equality, a thing that frustrates me is that what is missing is, again, you know, talking about the money situation. Women are more likely to end up in poverty. Women are some of the, you know, dealt some of the roughest, bluntest, most brutal cards when it comes to cuts to benefits. If you’re a single parent, 45% are living in poverty. 90% of those parents are women. Do you think we can have a conversation about gender equality without redistribution of wealth?

Ava-Santina Evans Oh, that was a great question. I loved that. We went real radical there.

Coco Khan Oh, yeah. I’d like to, you know, start off sweet and then just put the knife in the patriarchy.

Right. You know, I mean, you know. Yeah. I mean, I’m a big fan of the redistribution of wealth. And, you know, one thing that we, you know, we should definitely talk about is the second shift. And you touched upon that there when you were talking about care responsibilities, and you were talking about women being mothers and perhaps taking up a larger proportion of the of the share and childcare responsibilities. But also just in terms of laundry, it sounds incredibly trivial, but the second shift is real. A woman across generalizing. I’m going to get so many hate comments for this. Women do tend to take the heavier burden when it comes to the household tasks, and that that is the second shift and often what will not often that is unpaid. You know, I was speaking about that Telegraph article that I had brought up earlier. I was looking at who commissioned that research to show that young boys weren’t doing as well as young women, and it was the center for Social Justice, which is this fantastic think tank. It’s their patron is Miriam Cates, who you might remember is a Tory MP who’s like a native to like, she’s like, we really need to repopulate Britain with British babies and like, women get out of the workplace and go and have children while she has a job. And while she doesn’t do any of that. And it was sort of making me think I was lucky, I was thinking about what she had to say in this article, and it was really brought up again, what’s going on in America at the moment and the sort of crackdown on women that we’re seeing there. You know, we saw the overturning of Roe v Wade last year. And we’re also seeing, you know, the closure of access to sexual health across the United States. And we’re always like a few years behind America. So I definitely think it’s going to be a debate that will we’ll have in the next couple of years. And I just sort of wonder if we keep going on about the pay gap, the women’s pay gap. Are we going to get to a point where commentators pivot and they start arguing instead of fighting for higher pay at work? You should actually just be at home having babies.

Nish Kumar There’s a lot of worrying signs coming down the line in terms of what the government can and should be doing. One ambitious target that was championed by Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips is to halve violence against women and girls within the next decade. However, the autumn budget has made no specific commitment to funding to tackle these issues. So we often find ourselves in this position and we are asking this question not in the spirit of frustration, but in the spirit of genuine inquiry over what’s the government actually doing on this.

Ava-Santina Evans Well, last week there was the crime and sentencing bill that was introduced into Parliament that was laid down for its first reading, and it passed. And within that there is this anti spiking law. And there is also an expansion on powers to criminalize stalkers, which has been an extraordinary issue. I mean, this was something that Jess Phillips first introduced properly in November. And there are extra powers as of then, but this bill will strengthen those powers for police to crack down on stalking. But that that’s really one of the sides of the law that has been generally very unfavorable or unfair to women, because the law up until now has essentially been you can follow a woman around as long as you don’t touch her, you can follow her around. You’re not going to be done for it. There’s absolutely no problem there. But within that bill as well, there’s the anti spiking legislation, which actually would be that would be huge if that passes. Because at the moment the onus is on the establishment to protect against spiking. So if you run a pub or a nightclub then you are required morally to protect your patrons from being spiked. But in terms of legislation, there’s actually nothing really there that’s concrete. And then I know that you did. You are right to say that there wasn’t an allocation extra in the budget specifically for Vogue, but that has been devolved now. So local authorities are actually instructed to fund their areas. So the mayor of London is very big on this. He has an entire section is dedicated to violence against women and girls. And that comes out of the the GLA funding. And so it’s it’s more insular. And one of those policies is actually about 999 call handlers. So some of the extra money that has been allocated that didn’t, wasn’t apparent in the autumn budget is for providing a domestic abuse specialist in every 999 call handling room, which means that if someone picks up the phone and it’s suspected domestic abuse, the signs might not be entirely clear. There is always someone on hands now who’s specialist trained and would be able to identify that very early on. That’s a good move forward.

Coco Khan I do worry sometimes that politicians tend to reach for the legislative two because it’s one that they have at their disposal. And I understand that. But, you know, whether they’re effective to correct the underlying problems, I don’t know. So, for example, spiking that absolutely should be a crime. And it wasn’t before. However, when we think about spiking, the normally is a crime that comes with it, a kind of a physical violence, a sexual violence, something happens with it. And so there has been tools in place to prosecute these perpetrators. We have got laws in place for men that commit sexual violence. But what we don’t have is a police system that prosecutes it. And we don’t have a judicial system that brings these trials to to the court quickly, basically adding to loads of distress for the victims. So there’s a part of me that is like, okay, yes, I’m glad about these new offenses. But again, I come back to this, this question about like, okay, but how are you going to fix everything else?

Ava-Santina Evans I think you’re bang on. I mean, the court system is backed up a bit at the moment. If you were to. I don’t want to put anyone off from reporting an incident of sexual violence. But at this point in time, because the courts are so backlogged. If you reported today, you might not see trial for at least 2 to 3 years. And the conclusion of that trial, if they go to appeal, may not be completed for, you know, five years from today, which is extraordinary. So if you’re going to allocate funding, it really should be to to clear that backlog.

Coco Khan Hi there. Future Coco here with a small update. Just this morning, the government has actually announced measures to increase the number of court sitting days in the next financial year in an attempt to drive down the court backlog, which has almost doubled in five years to 73,105 cases at the end of September last year. Justice Minister Shabana mahmood says that despite this increase in sitting days, the sad reality is that even sitting to this unprecedented amount, the backlog will still go up. So back to the chat with Ava.

Ava-Santina Evans And then there’s this whole other component, which I think is more dangerous because you can’t really throw money at it, which is it’s become almost sexy to be misogynist again online. I mean, if you log on to most social media sites, but particularly on to Twitter acts, sexual violence is probably one of the first few posts that you’ll see at the top of your timeline. And we’re almost. You probably haven’t even noticed it because you might have been desensitized to seeing it, so you just sort of scroll past it. Tackling the sort of the young boys who are seeing that day in, day out and tackling how they respond to that and whether that drip feeds into their personal lives. I think that’s the more difficult issue that we have at hand at the moment.

Nish Kumar And that sort of ties everything we’ve talked about so far together. Right, because you have this kind of very heavily radicalized manosphere. And that links us back to Jordan Peterson and then at the, you know, I guess, more palatable end articles in The Telegraph stoking grievance politics in young men like this is all. Those are not disconnected phenomenon by those that all of that is part of a continuum of misogyny.

Ava-Santina Evans You know, I would I would absolutely agree with you. And until the government are brave enough to regulate big tech, which I can’t imagine is going to be in the next couple of years until something truly dreadful happens, which is extraordinary to say, because we’ve already seen the merger of two members of Parliament. And, you know, Jess Phillips is actually who just spoke about the Minister for safeguarding, has just had someone sent to prison for sending her a vile tirade of abuse over email. Until you regulate big tech and you make them act as responsible social publishers. You’re not going to see the end of this.

Coco Khan So Ava, I’m sorry to bring this up, but I wanted to talk to you about Laurence Fox, just for clarity. He is one of our least favorite people. But.

Ava-Santina Evans Oh he’s a mate of mine. I don’t know what you’re thinking about. I’ll let him know.

Coco Khan But I guess it’s just about. I could just. When I heard you talking about just this unleashing of misogyny that is everywhere, it sprang to mind. Just to fill in our listeners in case they haven’t caught it. Back in September 2023, you became his focus. He unleashed a stream of, I think it’s fair to say, hatred towards you live on JB news. It ultimately led to his firing. Ofcom ruled that the incident was clearly and unambiguously misogynistic. But you know from your perspective and you are at a really good vantage point for this because presumably all that hatred you talk about on X, you have experienced it. What are we seeing at the minute? Are we seeing an uptick? Is this still going up and up? Is this getting worse or or was that that time in 2023 a particularly unique time for misogyny against women, particularly women in the public sphere?

Ava-Santina Evans I think, oh, by the way, if you’re listening to this and not watching, if you’d like to go and check whether you think I am shaggable or not and then let me know, that’s great. Inbox is open.

Coco Khan No! Don’t do that! Do not. Do not do that.

Ava-Santina Evans I’m ready to. Feel free to correct him.

Coco Khan If any of our listeners do that. I don’t know. I have no lever to pull, but know that I would be disappointed.

Nish Kumar Coco Khan will come around your house and beat you up. She says she has no levers to pull. She has levers to pull.

Coco Khan She has levers. I’ve got slippers. I’ll throw them. Don’t do it.

Ava-Santina Evans I think I mean, you do it on that. I find it so embarrassing. I have to joke about it because it’s just so. I don’t know, it’s really odd being at the center of a story when I’m normally the one bitching about other people, like being the one bitched about. It’s just like it’s very, very odd. And it’s sort of like on a on a larger scale just for, let’s just say I can’t get her name out of my mouth when I say, let’s just make this the Jess Phillips podcast. Earlier this year, Elon Musk launched this vile tirade on her, suggesting that she was at what he called a rape genocidal apologist. And the outpouring of heinous messages that were directed at Jess Phillips. Threats. I mean, real threats that were directed on the platform X that was stirred up by this man who owns a social media company at that point in time. That’s when the government should have been checking itself and saying, is this something that we can allow to continue for much longer? My incident was very different because it happened on a national broadcaster. I mean, it happened on something that is that is regulated and where you know that that is not palatable and you’re not allowed to do those things within the within the parameters of the law. The more worrying thing for me is what happens on social media. And I think, you know, I turn I pretty much Coco, you must have this all the time. Like I just turn off my replies like, oh yeah. And I just like so I have no idea what they’re saying about me less. My sister tells me about it.

Coco Khan But is this level of misogyny? Is it new? Do you feel like it’s new?

Ava-Santina Evans I don’t think it’s new, but I certainly think the volume is new. I think that what’s, you know, in about 20 years ago or even ten years ago, you perhaps wouldn’t have been able to find someone who agrees with you or supported your argument. You just be sort of sitting in your bedroom thinking, oh my God, I hate that woman. I hope she dies. But you wouldn’t have someone on social media liking your comment to validate you. And I think that that’s perhaps contributing to the increase. But then there’s there’s also this other side of it. And I don’t want to sound too earnest, but I do think that we’ve had I’m going to sound incredibly honest. We’ve had 14 years of austerity. You know, we had a financial crash in 2008 that we never really recovered from. Wages have stagnated during that time. Job prospects have decreased. And I do think that contributes to the way that people interact with each other. And I do think that that has created a very febrile atmosphere and a very febrile, well, society where we’re sort of naturally angry and on edge and you’re sort of looking for a pressure point or for a spin to, to set you off. And unfortunately, sometimes that is the woman who is on Twitter.

Nish Kumar Before we go Ava, I just want to ask you specifically about PoliticsJoe. And it’s an outfit that’s experienced huge growth in the last few years. And also, its audience skews younger than a lot of media organizations. And that feels like quite an important audience to be reaching at the moment. Because, again, the kind of current running through all of this is that we have these bad actors in mainstream political parties and mainstream elements of the kind of regulated media. And then on top of that, we have the kind of misogyny being stoked by unregulated tech platforms. So those two organizations are working essentially in Congress with each other to stoke grievance politics, specifically in the area of young men. As a media outfit that is reaching a younger audience, how can political parties and campaign groups that are trying to essentially de radicalize young men, Actually access that audience.

Ava-Santina Evans I think you meet them where they are, which is something that a lot of political strategists don’t tend to do. They sort of I do think it’s really as basic as young men are on Reddit and they’re on other social media platforms, and so you take your content to them, you don’t expect them to find you. And this is, you know, to be quite frank, I’ve spoken to many advisers over my time, and my argument to them has always been, well, why on earth are you taking a story to The Telegraph that’s about new housing that you’re about to build? Put that on social media where they are so they can see it. Because yeah, I do think that a lot of this is very, very simple. When you’ve got poor economic prospects, I do think you start looking around for someone who can validate you not only as a person, but possibly as a man who might be there to tell you it’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it. And that’s how you end up in these echo chambers and in sort of, you know, enclaves. So I do think, you know, if Labour are going to be successful over this Parliament, they have to start targeting their policies at younger people.

Coco Khan Yeah. And it’s not enough just to say “I’m Brat.” That’s not enough.

Nish Kumar Ha!

Coco Khan How stupid do you think we are? You can’t just go around saying “I’m Brat” and expect a vote anyway.

Ava-Santina Evans Or saying that I’m LGBT friendly. I mean, just saying that in principle doesn’t then make all young people go, well, you got my vote, then. You know it has to be. You have to be in practice. You have to put policies into practice for young people to buy into them.

Nish Kumar Ava-Santina Evans, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. And if you’d like to hear more from Ava, you can catch her on the PoliticsJoe podcast.

Coco Khan After the break, I’ll be speaking to feminist thinker Sophie Lewis about why feminism has become so divisive and how we can reclaim it.

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Coco Khan So, love it or loathe it, it’s International Women’s Day this weekend. I’ve always had a soft spot for the what are we calling it? Event public holiday, a commemoration of all the things that women have done throughout history. But then again, since I’ve been 16, 16 years old, can you believe it? I’ve been calling myself a feminist, and it’s been interesting to be calling yourself that. For so many years, I’ve seen how different groups have interpreted this term. You know, when I was at university, I think people just used it as shorthand for dresses quite frumpy. But then there was this emerging 2016 moment where it felt like feminism had gone mainstream. But now, today, I see some challenging statistics. Only 1 in 5 young women would call themselves a feminist. You got figures like Kemi Badenoch. She calls herself a feminist, but then she also labels maternity pay excessive. What does it even mean to be a feminist anymore? And is this a term that we need to fight for? So joining me today to discuss this two part of feminism and how we can reclaim it is Sophie Lewis. Her new book, Enemy Feminism’s Terfs Please Women and Girl Bosses Against Liberation, looks at why some forms of feminism have diverged so fundamentally from others as to become what she calls enemies, and opens up new possibilities for what feminism could be. Sophie, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Sophie Lewis Thanks for having me, Coco.

Coco Khan So how do you feel about International Women’s Day?

Sophie Lewis I’m pretty romantic about it. I’m like, yeah, international working Women’s Day. I’m kind of into it.

Coco Khan Because I only learned this myself recently that, you know, as you put it, that international work is Women’s Day. It’s from the Soviet Union. Right. And I think it was from the Lenin that they create in this day. They landed on this day to celebrate the role of the women in the Russian Revolution, which sounds much more taking up arms than possibly buying a new makeup palette.

Sophie Lewis Well, yes. And you know, I am pretty committed to the idea, as they used to say in the 70s among Marxist feminists that every woman is a working woman.

Coco Khan I just want to return to my makeup palette thing, because I feel very guilty that I’ve said this as a high consumer of my companies. I suppose really what I mean is, is about the consumerism element of it. It seems that feminism now is about buying products that empower you rather than, you know, improving your social conditions. And of course, as part of that, being able to express yourself and express your bodily autonomy. Does that sound less like I’m going to get canceled now.

Sophie Lewis Yeah. I mean, I completely agree that you’re good.

Coco Khan I just want to check check. It’s important to me. So, Sophie, part of the difficulty of defining feminism is because it means different things at different moments in history. I guess what I wanted to ask you, and I know this is such a big question, but like, if you had to give a potted history of the different feminist waves in the UK, could you do it in, say, 90s? Well.

Sophie Lewis I think the things that will really raise eyebrows about my my history, which is 200 years worth of ways in which feminists self-described very much in the history books as suffragists. That’s the first wave, I suppose, as bona fide a women’s liberationists. If you’re going to talk about the second wave, they’ve been more dedicated to things like racism, even fascism, than we have hitherto really acknowledged. There’s been a big conversation about white feminism, And that’s been really, really generative, I think, in many ways. But I think there’s something almost more that needs to be said, because the way that we tend to understand the times when women’s rights activism appeared to be a form of, yeah, white supremacism is that we say that the feminists were in bed with or seduced by, or weaponised by, or confused into, or instrumentalized by, or, you know, used by the real baddies or they were just of their time and they made some mistakes, and then we can still keep the ideas. We can still keep feminism as a word that means good politics. That just means good, which is how I was. You said you were a feminist since 16. I don’t know, I’m not trying to one up you. I think I was a feminist since I was four.

Coco Khan Yeah, well, I was one in the womb. Yeah. Okay.

Sophie Lewis Yeah, I mean.

Coco Khan I might have been. I have no clue.

Sophie Lewis  You know, it’s so funny because.

Coco Khan Taking up space is. Sophie. Actually, I think we’re fine.

Sophie Lewis The anti-abortion, self-described feminists in the US have a sign that says feminist from conception. So the turkey just may I run this year?

Coco Khan I’m just thinking more. Just like physically, I’m in some someone’s womb. I guess that’s feminist in a way, isn’t it?

Sophie Lewis You know. Yeah. Well, yeah. The space. Oh, quite right.

Coco Khan I interrupted you about your being a feminist from for. Please tell me more.

Sophie Lewis No, I mean, in a way, I wanted to sit down and write this book because I wanted to work something out. I was not particularly satisfied with the way that all of my friends and I tend to look at the things that get done and get called feminism today, whether it’s discourses and policies about jobs and Islam or discourses and policies about trans women. And when we say, that’s not feminism, I get why we do that approach has merits. Prominent British commentators are out there quite often saying there’s no such thing as right wing feminism, which is quite ironic because I really understand much of the anti-trans, you know, sex based rights, as they call it, quote unquote, activism to be profoundly right wing. In a way. I think I’ve got receipts to, to show over 200 years. But what I wanted to do was reinvigorate a way of belonging to feminism that understands that feminism is such a capacious thing, because gender itself is such a confused concept. The concept of women has never been unified, has never been non contradictory. So the ways that people build on top of it to say, let’s liberate this thing, gender is going to be capable of being so contradictory as well that they’re actually not just problematic differences, that they’re the enemies. You can build things on top of the idea of gender inequality that are so radically different. But then they’re actually. Opponents of one another based on history. Unless you unless you’re telling me we’re going to say, you know, Susan B Anthony, not a real feminist, Millicent Fawcett, not a real feminist. We could do that. If you want. We could do.

Coco Khan That very fun game, since at the end of it, there be no feminist left.

Sophie Lewis Yeah, exactly. We could go that route, but then we wouldn’t really have anyone left. Because you know what? Feminism, like everything else in history, was formed, you know, in the crucible of his of other historic forces like imperialism, like white supremacy, like capital accumulation and its class and its bourgeois and its right, of course, it’s going to be marked by these things at the same time. There’s always there’s always the other people who we don’t tend to remember in that way, doing feminism in a way that is for everybody, in a way that is about sharing the resources of life making and finding ways to take back control from bosses, patriarchs and communities care.

Coco Khan Well, look, we know for sure that reproductive rights has definitely been a an issue that has been of great concern to feminists for a very long time. So at the start of this year, we had President Trump becoming president again. Of course, famously, he overturned Roe v Wade in the states, plunging a lot of American women into a terrifying system where they’re not sure they’ll be able to access reproductive care. It’s been quite terrifying. There was also in this, this presidential term, an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology, Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. And yet, sometimes I hear that people say that Donald Trump is a feminist because he is defending women. I just wondered if you could explain what is that thinking? And is it feminist?

Sophie Lewis Yeah. So this is exactly the kind of problem that leads one to go and sit down and read a lot of books to say, Can we exclude those people doing feminism in ways that seem pretty fascist to us? From the category feminism, which is which would feel much nicer. Yeah, I mean, it’s surprising, isn’t it, Coco? Like the number of high profile British feminist commentators who applauded the the Trump executive order defending women against gender ideology extremism as a win for women’s rights. You know, J.K. Rowling was tweeting approvingly about the executive order and then a whole host of others as well. And it was actually in Trump’s first term that his daughter Ivanka called called him a feminist. The self-described radical feminists applauding the anti-trans politics mushrooming in the United States and around the world. If you ask me, you can’t take this strand of politics out of feminism without losing all coherence. What I’m interested in is not so much, though, whether you think these actors are quote unquote real feminists. What I care about, though, is whether people think real, real feminists stops them from fighting them in the full throated way that one has to actually confront fascism. It sounds very provocative, but I think when you see how British feminist ideas, frameworks, policy, language and moral alibis have given the right wing, you know, its juice, its power. It’s very hard to say that, that these British feminists have any responsibility. But as we just started this little, you know, part of the conversation by noting many of them are quite happy to acknowledge that, right? They see their goals as completely aligned with MAGA, with Trump on this particular issue, and they see the left as having deserted women’s rights, leaving feminism as a thing open for the right to sort of pick up and do so.

Coco Khan Am I right in thinking that essentially you’re suggesting that it’s the anti-trans feminism in the UK that is leading the charge for anti-trans feeling? I mean, I think so often in the UK we think about a lot of our politics being influenced by America. But actually on this, on this occasion, you’re saying it’s kind of the other way around that it’s the voices here in the UK that have reinvigorated, well, or certainly breathed new life into an idea that perhaps in the States was was not really picking up much steam. And now is.

Sophie Lewis I’m careful to say that I think the language, the frameworks have been crucial in the mushrooming of anti-trans politics. I’m not saying leading the charge. There’s also something about the whole book that I. I think it’s important that to note that the objection one might reasonably have is, okay. So if you are talking about the role of feminists and feminisms in all of these violent projects of domination, that wife single out feminists ko responsibility. And to that I say, yeah, I mean, it’s a valid sort of concern because, you know, it’s it’s actually genuinely true that women get monster disproportionately. Yeah. And we need to be really careful about this. At the same time, women are not not part of history. When I explained in The New York Times in 2019 why British feminism became anti-trans or how it became anti-trans, there was some British pundits, some some terfs, if you want to call them, that self-described gender critical women who tweeted at me. Newsflash women were not really involved in that whole Empire thing, right? And that’s just, you know, not true. It’s just not true at all. I think I would not say that feminists have led the charge when it comes to things like anti-trans panic today, but nor would I say they have not had a crucial role. Right. And if we understand that feminism is not a domain of purity, I think we can get actually more comfortable claiming ourselves as, you know, liberatory, critically utopian feminists today. And that’s that’s what I see actually all around me. You know, people are looking after one another distributing DIY hormones. You’re doing prison and migrant solidarity work, and that’s feminism. They just don’t see themselves in it.

Coco Khan I kind of agree. You know, I’m a woman of color myself. I grew up in a muslim family. You know, I I’ve always felt really sad when, like cousins of mine have been like, oh, feminism. That’s that’s for Westerners, isn’t it? And I just think, no, that it’s not, it’s for everyone. It’s for every culture around the entire world. Yes. There has been a a strain of feminism which likes to finger wag at women from different communities and basically patronize them, who say that their relatives who are male, that they love are just barbarians. And so that sort of drives them away from me. But I agree that, like, you know, there is something for everyone. It’s utopian that I’m glad you use that word. And it’s not also about hating men, but hating patriarchy and unfairness and things like that. So, you know, I’m glad we have this chat because it makes me feel revived in my pride of being a feminist. But I am aware that it does feel like a bit of a dirty word now. Do you think the term feminist is still useful politically, or do we need to let it go and get a new word, for example?

Sophie Lewis Yeah, I do have interest in all the different ways that people have found a word that suits them, because many people have not been happy and they’ve not thrived in the house of feminism. You just mentioned your Muslim background. You know, plenty of of trans women have also not felt good in that house as I’ve just described it. You know, and there are different geographies and, you know, cultural backgrounds that lead people to take up different words like womanist. Some people just prefer women’s liberationist. And then there’s this word that the trans philosopher Jules Gill Peterson gives us at the end of her book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, which is Ruggeri schema, which is this Brazilian street queen theorized time that means the most women. And it’s about leaning into the excess and the the joy and the most ness and the extra ness of being woman, even though you can’t afford to be all of the time. And that’s something that’s actually really expansive, and that allows everyone to really, you know, stop with the the purifying and the fantasy that, you know, some of us are whores and some of us are good girls, and some of us are sort of, you know, betraying something dignified about respectable womanhood by putting makeup on where we started and just really sort of take up a practice of, of gender abundance.

Coco Khan That’s such a beautiful final image. Sophie Lewis, thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Sophie’s book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen and Girlbosses against Liberation is available now.

Nish Kumar And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. And a quick reminder that we want your questions. If you’ve got a burning question for Coco or me, drop us a line at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.uk. We’re going to be pulling out these in a couple of weeks for a mailbag special.

Coco Khan Also, don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. We’re also on Blue Sky now, so follow us at Pod Save the UK dot Crooked dot com and if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listing production for Crooked Media.

Coco Khan Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer May Robson.

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Madeleine Herringer and Katie Long with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

Nish Kumar And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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