nf1091: anyway so there was Professor Guillebaud and he was explaining that [0.
5] er [0.6] the contra-, and [0.2] see well again he wasn't being terribly well 
understood [0.4] because [0.2] er [0.6] Humphries had a set of questions he was 
supposed to ask this unfortunate man [0.5] and he was going to ask them 
regardless of what it turned out this guy had actually been saying so it went 
in the usual way of try the guy's trying to make point A [0.6] and Humphries is 
asking question X [0.7] and there's just no way that point A and question X can 
be got into the same ballpark [0.8] and what [0.5] Guillebaud's great idea was 
he actually said i mean [0.2] it's just like doctor speak he is a doctor i 
might say [0.6] er he said well you know [0.3] most people try to be good [1.1] 
but they don't always succeed so we're going to try and help them [0.4] take 
care of things when they're not being so very good [0.4] most pe-, we're going 
to help them be careful was what he was saying [0.4] and i thought [0.6] how on 
earth do you decide [0.3] that [0.2] er [0.5] in order to be good you have to 
resist the constant pressure to 
sexual activity in this society in what way is it good [0.3] to resist it [0.4] 
the agenda is actually do it [0.7] but [0.2] he's still got the idea that 
you're good [0.3] if you don't it's like people who say that the baby was very 
good [0.4] when what they mean is the baby was very silent [0.3] possibly dead 
[2.4] [laughter] er which is not my idea of good at all so and there was all of 
this stuff [0.3] and he said er that most of the people in the world [1.1] were 
born by accident [1.5] which isn't true either [0.9] we know the proportion of 
accidental conceptions more or less from er the endless surveys that women are 
so [1.1] good as to supply data for and it's somewhere about [0.5] it's still 
too high it's about a quarter i think but it's certainly not [0.2] all or even 
most [0.6] so there was all of this going on and what is his contraceptive of 
the future his contraceptive of the future is an implant [0.5] that will be put 
in [0.2] adolescent girls so that they won't get pregnant [1.7] and i just [0.
4] nobody identified this as a gender issue [0.8] and there's only 
me in the car shouting [laughter] across Hertfordshire saying [0.2] why don't 
you caponize the fucking boys why have you got to caponize the girls [0.2] why 
is it always the girls [0.5] the thing is i kind of know the answer as well 
because it's the girls [0.4] who have been programmed to desire sexual intimacy 
at any cost [0.5] it's the girls who can't ask for a condom to be used who 
don't feel sufficiently [0.5] desirable or in control or anything to be able to 
[0.5] er [0.3] demand [0.5] or impose conditions to sexual intimacy [0.4] so i 
kind of knew the answer but i wanted somebody to say to him [0.7] er you know 
have you never heard of chlamydia have you never heard of human papilloma virus 
[0.3] do you really not care [0.3] about herpes in young women [0.3] er [0.2] 
do you consider as a member of the Family Planning Association [0.3] that you 
have a duty to protect the fertility of young women so that they [0.3] have the 
option of planning a family [0.3] instead of exposing them to sterilizing 
disease [0.3] because [0.2] of your [0.3] hidden agenda [0.2] which is to 
stop them having any children whatsoever as far as i can see [1.3] so having 
failed to identify the extraordinary gender bias in this [0.5] or however [0.7] 
the way in which Guillebaud's attitudes were completely [0.2] unregenerate [0.
6] er so that it's [0.5] er and of course who did they put up against him they 
put up a defender of family values who i may say [0.7] did not a bad job [0.3] 
of defending feminist values [0.5] er [0.3] but [0.2] would have [0.3] been 
horrified to have been told that that's what she was doing and she said you 
know [0.5] er [0.4] we're turning these girls into sex objects i thought you 
might as well s-, you know acknowledge where this notion comes from [0.5] this 
is making them and i think that's right i mean it's making them think that 
their [0.4] their primary their primary social function is to be [0.3] involved 
in [0.2] penetrative sex that [0.2] without that they might as well be dead [0.
7] and so and she had a real point and she made her points [0.5] fairly well i 
thought [0.5] er [0.2] but what was interesting to me is that the people [0.3] 
d-, dealing with this 
issue just could not see [0.9] the gender aspect of it and yet they want to 
tell us [0.3] that feminism has nothing to teach them [0.6] they were literally 
and they sa-, if they say feminism is dead [0.5] i'm prepared to agree because 
it's dead in their heads there wasn't a fizz there wasn't a button [0.3] marked 
gender on their keyboard [0.6] and so there was no way they could actually [0.
4] understand the [0.2] the discourse they were having [0.5] so then we got to 
[0.2] and i was asked to be in this ridiculous is feminism dead debate [0.5] 
and said that er no [1.3] [laughter] didn't explain just said no [0.4] and so 
it was Kathy Lette instead another [0.2] gabby Australian gets sat in the hot 
seat [0.8] [laugh] and the editor of cosmopol-, [laughter] [0.3] and the editor 
of Cosmopolitan [0.4] said [0.8] er which is still the best selling women's 
magazine in England so if feminism is dead we'd better galvanize it and 
frankenstein it and get it back on the road if that's still the case [0.7] er 
so she was saying oh well you know women [0.3] have achieved all the things 
they want to 
achieve more or less [0.3] and the thing that i can't bear is all this ranting 
on about men and [0.4] all this assumption that men are the enemy er [0.6] and 
you know it was so terrible in the late sev-, somebody always identifies a time 
when feminists told you what to do [1.1] it was and in the late seventies and 
early eighties it seems is the time when feminists kept telling people what to 
do [laughter] which i thought was really funny [0.4] because every time i hear 
it it's a different set of years apparently we've always been telling people 
what to do [laughter] and they've never done any of it [laughter] as far as i 
can see [1.8] and Kathy Lette was very funny the so that er Kathy was asked are 
you still kicking and screaming and God bless her she said well i am [0.7] but 
then of course she made it entirely a matter of [0.7] pay inequality [1.5] er 
so that the whole dimension of misogyny which is what really preoccupies us the 
most i think [0.6] er so that it was all done in the Natasha Walter frame of 
careers and how we can have it all 
in a career [0.4] as if careers are the point which of course they're not [0.2] 
the point is a life worth living not a career necessarily [0.7] so that was 
that was interesting because [0.4] Kathy's instincts were all in the right 
place [0.4] but it was very apparent to me hurtling along the A-five-o-seven [0.
6] that what was needed was some [0.3] new [1.0] slogans and some [0.2] new 
awareness of where the [0.6] the hot spots are where the punto dolente as 
Italians say where the painful points are [0.6] er because Kathy wasn't 
anywhere near [0.2] angry enough er i mean even though [0.4] she's well aware 
of what happens to the birthing woman and what happens to the rearing mother 
and [0.4] so forth [0.4] er that she didn't think that that was part of it 
because it was already couched in that term and i've already had my say about 
[0.4] it was all in [0.8] in the rhetoric of equality [1.3] which [0.2] to me 
becomes [1.2] really without substance after a while because [0.4] it's not 
even a question of [0.2] of pay equality [0.7] there was also there was m-, [0.
2] er [0.7] other stuff too of course about [0.7] er [0.2] mothers and 
teachers and the child care sector and so on [0.4] but again not identified as 
a feminist issue [0.4] or indeed a gender issue [0.5] okay so that's my proem 
[0.9] now please could i have a question [3.1] you're all sitting i was going 
to go like this though [laughter] 
sf1092: oh right [1.3] you keep talking about this gap i think [0.3] you know 
we've all felt this gap [0.4] between [0.3] academic feminism where i think 
feminism's very very much alive 
nf1091: mm 
sf1092: [0.3] albeit [0.3] threatened at [0.2] at points and whatever [0.4] and 
[0.3] popular feminism which seems to be a very different kind of species [0.3] 
can you [0.5] do you see any way of bridging [0.3] that gap [0.9] or is it that 
we all have to [0.3] frankenstein our [0.2] discourse i mean how can we get [0.
5] the debates [0.3] that have been conducted in the academy for the last 
thirty years [0.3] somehow into the public realm [0.5] because the questions of 
things like the what you've been talking about such as equality and sexual 
difference have been very much burgeoning debates [0.3] 
nf1091: mm-hmm 
sf1092: within [0.4] the feminist 
academy [0.2] for some time [0.3] but they don't seem to have made any impact 
at all [0.5] on [0.5] the public [0.9] if that's a [0.6] workable distinction 
[1.0] 
nf1091: well i think it is a workable distinction [0.2] and i think some of the 
reasons are are [0.2] very well set out by namex [0.2] in the stuff that you 
have written for [0.5] i can't remem-, the handbook [0.8] er [0.2] because it's 
true that [0.2] academic feminism has to follow certain models of academic 
discourse [0.6] and they are controlling models and they're also debating 
models [0.4] so they don't allow much [0.3] er [0.4] room for recasting ideas 
and behaviours [0.5] they [0.2] they almost insist upon well they do insist 
upon a measure of detachment [0.4] and this comes into conflict with the whole 
feminist [0.4] insistence on first person evidence [0.3] and of what it 
actually feels like [0.5] now i mean i would justify what i have done [0.2] in 
writing The Whole Woman [1.5] as an attempt to bridge that [1.2] gap but also i 
mean what will actually happen is what happened to me before [0.4] which is 
that the academic feminists will ignore me [0.2] it will be as if 
the book had never been written [0.4] and they'll get a lot of their student 
intake because of the existence of the book [0.4] but it will not be discussed 
seriously and in fact [0.4] i mean it has actually happened in the past it 
works both ways this gap [0.4] that what i write is [0.2] er [0.4] interpreted 
[0.6] by [0.3] academic feminists as it was interpreted by the tabloid press 
they take on board the tabloid press caricature of the argument [0.7] so they 
[0.2] they talk about er you know The Female Eunuch being [0.5] er [0.5] a sex 
manual [0.7] it's not a sex [laughter] manual at all [0.6] the fact that it's 
sometimes [0.7] talked of in that way [0.7] er is something that you would 
think [0.2] that a feminist [0.3] w-, [0.5] would be aware of that she'd be 
sensitized to the possibility of a book that actually claimed that women were 
sensu-, sexual beings [0.4] might be interpreted as er a sex handbook [0.7] or 
you know a a [0.2] and er you as i get serialized by people like Cosmopolitan 
in a way i've deserved it [0.7] and [laughter] [0.2] if n-, i mean this was the 
whole point about the er [0.8] the 
interaction with things like Playboy [1.2] i mean one er Playboy made me 
journalist of the year which i think is hilarious [laughter] [0.6] because they 
were trying to buy respectability all they managed to do was to purchase for me 
an a certain amount of disrespect or [0.2] unrespectability so [0.6] and the 
same thing is going to happen again [1.1] i'm [0.5] horrified [0.9] by the hype 
[0.2] that is going to be given to this book [0.7] er [0.5] just because [1.0] 
i don't like hype and i just think of myself as a reviewer i would go for the 
jugular [0.2] i would read this book looking for all kinds of hypocrisy and 
self-serving and so forth [0.8] and everybody else is going to do exactly the 
same i think or certainly all the people who i would think of as my [0.9] my 
native [0.2] allies will [0.5] go to town on it which will cause me a good deal 
of grief [0.7] but [0.5] you have to do it [0.5] because there'd been lots of 
good books [0.4] published that had [0.2] that would have had an effect upon [0.
3] the level of [0.2] feminist discourse in the public arena [0.4] but the but 
the public never read them [1.4] the public [0.5] 
never even knew that they existed they weren't reviewed they weren't 
foregrounded at all [0.8] and so here am i you know in bed with The Daily 
Telegraph [0.2] which [0.3] er i can assure you my bed is one place The Daily 
Telegraph has never been [0.7] [laughter] er [0.3] and i cannot read the paper 
for embarrassment [0.7] i feel [0.2] soiled after i've read a Daily Telegraph 
[0.3] editorial [0.3] and there i'm going to be in all my glory [0.7] er [0.2] 
but still [0.7] er [1.1] preaching to the unconverted which is a good place to 
be [0.6] er [0.8] i don't get the money from the serialization it's nothing to 
do with me [0.7] and i can remember weeping and wailing to David Hare on [0.3] 
at an airport that i couldn't i just couldn't bear the thought of March [0.9] 
because the book is going to be given away on railway stations they're going to 
give people chapters to read on the train [0.6] and he said God can you imagine 
how happy i would be if that had ever happened to any of my plays don't you 
[laughter] dare complain [0.8] but you don't understand i'm going to feel so 
shafted by the 
whole thing [0.6] i spent all of Monday [0.7] pretending to be myself for a 
photographer [0.3] who kept saying shake your fist look angry i thought oh 
[laughter] [1.3] [laughter] 'cause they want to have you know the demented 
picture [laughter] there she goes again rave rave rave [0.8] well [1.1] i don't 
really care all that much they i don't they can [0.3] they'll i don't know what 
they'll do we'll see i mean it will be an exercise in [0.6] in er [0.9] media 
manipulation to see how they present this thing [0.6] but [0.6] the exciting 
thing is that the [0.2] very few people have read it because of the embargo and 
the exciting thing is people do feel excited by it [0.2] they feel energized by 
it [0.6] and that's really what i'm trying to do i'm trying to galvanize this 
discourse i'm also trying to make people realize [0.4] God you know my 
hysterectomy is a feminist issue [0.5] it's not just something that happened to 
me [0.7] er and that maybe we should start talking maybe instead of all sitting 
there you know in the outpatients department of the [1.0] of the national 
health hospital 
we should all start talking about what we're actually going through here [0.6] 
and just how this ordeal is presented to us as a privilege [2.9] okay 
om1093: may i ask a question [0.2] 
nf1091: sure 
om1093: er [0.3] to the audience [1.0] would it be all right if i put the 
camera on [0.2] the audience if if you're going to be asking a lot of questions 
[2.0] is that okay 
ss: 
om1093: yeah [0.3] okay thanks very much 
nf1091: they're a bit cross because some of them are a bit cross because they 
didn't get a chance to g-, have their hair done [1.6] [laughter] i'm even 
crosser 'cause i had a chance to have my hair done and didn't [laughter] [1.4] 
p-, and people say [0.2] how could you let yourself be photographed i think do 
you realize these people arrived at ten-thirty in the morning [0.5] and stayed 
until seven-thirty at night [0.7] and i needed to get dog food [1.5] [laughter] 
so [0.6] i had to invent food for the dogs at seven-thirty at night [1.3] and 
after a while you just don't care after a while you just they just say stand 
here do this do that and they made me [0.3] put on clothes to go out they said 
wear what you would normally wear in the garden and i said i am wearing what i 
normally [laughter] wear in the garden [0.5] they said oh we want you in a long 
flowing coat i said you're going to tell people i garden in a macintosh 
[laughter] they're going to think i'm completely mad [0.6] and i think the aim 
is to make me look completely mad [0.6] [laughter] this woman is a New 
Zealander that may explain it [1.1] [laughter] so if you see these weird 
pictures in The Daily Telegraph [laughter] [0.2] they i think they've been set 
up in order to be extremely weird [0.4] okay namex's question next 
nf1094: no no i'm going to pass 
nf1091: okay next [0.2] 
sf1095: i'm passing as well 
nf1091: [laughter] oh no [1.1] 
sf1096: i haven't really thought about one but [0.4] i've read Natasha Walter's 
New Feminism lately [0.5] 
nf1091: mm 
sf1096: which [0.3] i didn't enjoy at all [0.4] and also er [0.3] Fay Weldon's 
made some quite [0.2] kind of [0.8] extreme [0.2] you know expressed some quite 
extreme opinions that i've also found quite shocking [0.4] so in a way is The 
Whole Woman a kind of [0.3] reaction against [0.8] 
what's happening to feminism [0.5] in popular [0.5] 
nf1091: well yes of course it has to be [0.2] er [0.6] i'm i must say i'm 
puzzled about Fay [0.4] because Fay [0.2] wrote you remember The Fat Woman's 
Joke [1.0] which was the first really feminist novel [0.2] and it it predates 
[0.3] practically everything and it just appeared [0.2] chunk [0.7] this [0.3] 
transgressive bad girl book [0.7] and she's been wonderful ever since [1.0] 
until about [0.2] five years ago when she started saying that feminism had gone 
too far i just don't see how you could ever say that [0.7] but if you actually 
looked about you and saw the f-, the fate whether you look at the world's women 
whether you look at the feminization of poverty whether you look at 
reproductive politics whether you [0.4] wherever you look you will see [0.4] 
that women [0.6] are powerless [0.5] and this is er to me it's very clear for 
example that women [0.4] surge into the parliamentary Labour Party [0.4] at 
exactly the moment when power ebbs out of the even the executive [0.4] into the 
hands of the oligarchs [0.3] who've now got a kind of mandate to 
run it as if as if it was a Chinese government of the twelfth century [0.4] 
because somehow people understand that if you [0.2] if you actually discuss 
things openly all these mad women i mean God knows what they might say [0.4] i 
don't know if anybody does think like that but i think they are very homosocial 
these people [0.6] er and they don't re-, and the women that they've [0.2] got 
close to them they have extremely difficult relationships with if you think of 
Clare Short [0.3] and Mo Mowlam [0.8] er [0.8] so it seems to me that instead 
of saying see see all these women have got into Parliament i mean anybody with 
half a brain must realize [0.5] that we have never had such silent back-
benchers [0.5] these back-benchers are mute [0.5] and we're doing all sorts of 
insane things without a mandate from the people or from the U-N or from anyone 
[0.4] and still this [0.2] silence [0.8] er [0.3] and [0.3] the three monthly 
attacks on single mums [0.8] there are single mums sitting in Parliament [1.1] 
what is going on [0.8] so i didn't understand what [0.3] Fay was up to but [0.
3] one of my 
problems as deciding to be the person who stands on this [0.6] like the 
Colossus at Rhodes with one foot in the academy and the other foot [0.2] in the 
popular media [0.8] is er that i kee-, i have [0.2] always to support [0.2] 
another [0.2] woman let alone feminist [0.5] in a public debate i will not mud 
wrestle for the media [0.5] with occasional [0.5] startling exceptions like 
when i lost my temper with Suzanne Moore and smacked her about a bit [0.8] i 
think senior feminists can clip people round the ears occasionally [0.9] 
[laughter] it'll do them nothing but good [0.6] er [laughter] but so that i 
can't although i really would like to say to Fay oh [1.5] i don't doubt at all 
you know that men are suffering [0.3] masculinity is a terrible system [1.2] 
but why do you think it's women's fault [0.2] how do you get [0.2] how do you 
get your mind round to that position [0.4] i mean even if you say look [0.4] 
women used to support men [0.5] any man no matter how beaten up by his trade 
union or by his employer or [0.2] by the police [0.6] could rely on a 
supportive little woman who'd 
put [0.2] a hot meal meat and two veg on the table in front of him and tell him 
he was marvellous [0.6] er [0.3] and now she's saying er excuse me but i want 
something for myself [0.2] this is the fantasy that that's what's happened i 
mean a lot of what's happened is women saying listen [0.3] i've got to go out 
to work 'cause otherwise we don't pay this mortgage goodbye [0.5] er your tea's 
in the oven or y-, indeed your tea's in the freezer [0.7] er [0.7] and [0.5] so 
that but somehow even if you could say [0.4] that women have withdrawn their 
support of men and therefore men are in free fall [0.5] then it just goes to 
prove the justice of the women's case that [0.2] the entire system was resting 
on their backs [0.4] they were the tortoises that were holding up the elephant 
[0.3] and the tortoises walked away and the elephant has fallen over [0.5] er 
[0.2] and of course it's painful and difficult if that's what's happened but i 
don't think it's what's happened [0.5] i think the way in which the argument 
about men's malaise [0.4] their suicide attempts their successful suicides 
their unemployability [0.4] their level of criminal activity and alcoholism and 
so on [0.4] the way this discourse is couched [1.1] it just ignores factors 
that are really important [0.5] like [0.2] poverty [0.2] like [0.3] er [0.2] 
unemployment [0.2] we know that unemployment is a cause of [0.5] of disease [0.
5] i-, [0.2] and we know that poverty is a cause of disease [0.3] but for some 
reason [0.5] if we see a disproportionate [1.1] reaction to [0.8] a change in 
fortunes by men we'd sort of [0.2] look [0.2] towards women and say [0.3] that 
must be your fault [1.2] which is [0.2] i mean it's so gratuitous it's amazing 
[0.7] and every time you actually deconstruct the language of inculpation of 
women [0.8] er you see how gratuitous it is and you also see [0.3] how it goes 
from [0.2] guarded statements [0.7] to [0.4] absolute certainty in the course 
of a single discussion [0.2] thus didst thou [0.7] er and i don't understand 
quite i mean i have [0.2] occasionally i say darkly that it must be the effect 
of H-R-T flooding the brain [0.7] er because Fay is on H-R-T Fay has had a 
facelift and Fay does [0.4] have a new husband all these things can be 
guaranteed 
to turn a girl's brain [0.2] i think [laughter] [1.7] so i'm waiting for her to 
come to her senses [laughter] [1.4] and i don't want to have been so terribly 
rude about her in the interim that i [laughter] can't we can't have any further 
[0.4] dealings [0.6] and as for Natasha Walter [1.0] i i th-, i think Natasha 
Walter has no idea what it's all about [0.9] er th-, [0.6] that's another thing 
as well i mean her the [0.5] there is a conviction in this country that 
feminist discourse occurs in the newspapers [0.7] er [0.8] and that that's it 
[1.1] that there er so that Natasha Walter didn't bother [0.2] to bone up on 
feminist theory or gender theory [0.5] er she just sort of wrote about [0.3] an 
idea of feminism as a kind of grim puritanical era sometime in the past [0.3] 
from which she as a butterfly had just emerged [0.3] and could s-, go from 
flower to flower [0.4] in her [0.4] her er [0.2] nice dresses and strappy 
sandals [0.6] [laughter] made by child labour in south-east Asia [0.4] which 
isn't going to cause her a moment's [0.4] er [0.9] malaise or [0.3] anxiety so 
[0.6] yes it w-, i was probably the new feminism [0.4] that did it [1.3] 
because i just couldn't [0.3] belie-, it was like [1.1] it was like reading [1.
8] it was like reading the inside of a pumpkin or something [0.4] it was just a 
space enclosed by words there was nothing there that i could recognize not 
about [0.5] the lives of my god-daughters or my nieces or my [0.6] sister or my 
mother or it was all conducted in [0.2] the Groucho as far as i could see [2.4] 
sf1097: yeah [0.4] er my [0.2] my question [0.6] er [0.5] you've referred to [0.
2] transsexuals a few times 
nf1091: mm 
sf1097: during these sessions and i wondered if you could say a bit more [0.5] 
about your general [0.6] view [0.2] on transsexuality [1.6] 
nf1091: well [1.1] perhaps i should i-, [0.4] i thought that i might have [0.2] 
in fact given this last lecture on sexuality er all of this is such a difficult 
area for feminist academic and other [0.6] because of the ambiguity [0.3] 
between ideas of gender sex and sexuality and sexual orientation [0.5] it all 
becomes a tremendous muddle [0.3] and this is partly because [0.5] of [0.4] a 
really wrong habit of thought again a tabloid idea [0.6] that [0.3] er w-, [0.
3] s-, women who 
love their own sex are [0.7] masculine that they're an intermediate sex 
somewhere [0.4] and that men who love their own sex are feminine [0.2] they've 
become an intermediate sex as well [0.5] now i think that's [0.2] wrong [0.2] i 
think [0.3] er homosociality and [0.2] homosexuality are [1.1] extreme forms [0.
2] of [0.6] the cultural entity call-, that i call masculinity [0.4] they're 
actually [0.2] hypermasculine [0.2] there's not they're not gender free they're 
actually gender intensive [0.6] and they [0.7] in the case of male 
homosexuality gender relationships [0.4] are acted out in a very power oriented 
way [0.6] now i take the Dworkin line although you've got to be very careful 
with this 'cause it alienates people very quickly [0.6] that penetrative sex is 
a power relationship [0.3] that that's [0.3] part of its grammar [1.0] er and 
you can't until we actually [1.2] completely transform relationships you can't 
get rid of that that's there [0.2] it's right inside the idea as long as you 
can say to somebody you don't like [0.4] get fucked [0.3] or bugger you [0.2] 
you're actually endorsing [0.3] this destructive view of 
penetrative sex [0.8] er and i don't think [0.4] that penetrative sex can [0.4] 
redeem itself [0.3] from this association it's too closely [0.8] bound up [1.9] 
so [0.9] if i take wo-, [0.3] women lovers of their own sex [0.4] it they're 
seems to me they're not part of a raw sharp lot [0.3] with [0.2] homosexu-, 
male homosexuality in fact it's always struck me [0.4] as a really difficult 
relationship [0.5] between male homosexuality and [0.2] if i may use the term 
[0.2] female homosexuality they just don't match [0.6] they don't even have the 
same [0.2] view of relationships they don't have the same [0.4] set of 
priorities it's a very awkward relationship [0.5] but it's typical [0.2] of 
women [0.4] that they would actually work harder [0.3] for H-I-V and AIDS [0.5] 
than they do say for cervical cancer [0.5] they're very willing to understand 
what is in fact in large [0.2] it's actually a very strong expression of 
misogyny [0.9] but we pardon [0.5] homosexual misogyny or we ignore it [0.5] or 
we don't understand the profoundly [0.3] nuanced nature of the kind of 
relationship [0.2] that we have [0.4] with the homosexual [0.5] er s-, er [0.5] 
stylists you know the 
lifestyle theorists [0.4] but all of this is really [0.3] for me [0.4] 
difficult and interesting [0.5] because [1.1] as i say in my book i haven't 
given up hope of meeting the woman of my dreams and loving as i have never 
loved before [0.6] because if i look at the story of so many [0.2] gay women [0.
2] they have actually [0.4] been through real transformations to become active 
as gay women [0.5] whereas a homosexual man [0.2] is more likely to be out [0.
2] very young [0.6] and [0.5] t-, [0.2] if he's in the closet to be [0.4] er [0.
4] faking [0.3] heterosexual life [0.7] women tend to have actually lived 
heterosexual life and then to make a choice or [0.8] some essentialists would 
say that the real her has come out [0.8] i think that the real her connects the 
two things the heterosexual her [0.4] and the homosexual her [0.5] er that she 
h-, and she may have changed indeed she may have grown up [0.5] in the sense 
that she has finally rejected the patriarchal paradigm [0.4] wanting to love 
her father [0.5] and she is now loving someone [0.4] of her own generation she 
has at last come into [0.5] spiritual equality and equilibrium 
with herself [0.7] i don't think these things are innate i do think they are 
cultural i think [1.1] looking for differences in the cochlea or the you know 
the anterior something or other [0.4] fissure of the corpus cavernosum and so 
on [0.4] that all this is fascist nonsense [0.5] er [0.2] and [0.6] we have the 
right to be [0.2] gay [0.3] and the possibility of being gay as women [0.6] 
with men it's slightly different because there is such an extraordinary set of 
power relationships revolving within [0.4] gay culture itself [0.5] er [1.8] so 
this then brings me to the whole question of transsexuals now if we think about 
my gay friends my gay friends get terrib-, men i mean get terribly angry about 
transsexuals they say [0.5] they're just gay men [0.2] who can't come to terms 
with the fact that they're gay [0.4] and they have and and that they desire men 
sexually so they have to have themselves mutilated and make themselves into 
fake women [0.6] this is a very hard view [0.6] er but i don't think it should 
be automatically discounted because for me [0.4] the core of this is 
in the mutilation of the body [0.3] as i've said to you i i take the body as a 
repository of feminist value [0.8] because we build it [1.2] the things you see 
around you have all been built out of one out of a woman's bodily substance 
whether they're male or female or [0.5] tattooed or pierced or [0.5] 
transsexual or whatever [0.7] er and that all the things that technology does 
to them [0.5] are in some ways an attempt to prise [0.6] to prise away the 
maternal principle [0.4] and to devalue the maternal principle [0.6] er the 
patriarchy although we're being told we've got equality what i think has 
happened at [0.5] as we approach the millennium [0.5] is that patriarchy is 
triumphant [0.5] and it is triumphant in the sense that it has managed to [0.7] 
bleed all the meaning [0.3] out of [0.5] maternity we don't have matriarchy so 
there's no point my even using the term [0.4] it's managed to bleed the 
significance out of it [0.4] to criminalize it and marginalize it as [0.4] a 
kind of survival [0.2] kind of evolutionary survival that we can improve upon 
[0.4] we can improve 
upon it with [0.4] er [0.6] forced contraception for fourteen year olds [0.4] 
er we can i-, we'll make them sterile even though they're not [0.2] you know 
we'll keep them like that and ma-, and they'll be totally in our power totally 
dependent on us [0.6] then when they come to bear children we'll [0.2] first of 
all we'll vet them [0.2] then we'll genetically counsel them and then we'll 
scan them and so they go on all the time [0.3] and what is being borne in on 
them is that their bodies are unsatisfactory [0.2] that without the technology 
they don't function at all [0.6] so it's become really important for me to say 
they do they s-, they function better than [0.2] any of the substitutions [0.9] 
that all the effects of the technology are dubious [0.6] now one of the most [0.
5] crucial points is this one [1.1] of [1.4] treating [0.6] o-, of in first of 
all of arriving at a malady called gender dysphoria [1.2] now i reckon all 
women suffer from gender dysphoria [1.0] but the problem isn't in [0.3] as it 
were their sex [0.6] it is in the construction of gender [0.4] that denies so 
many 
aspects of their [0.2] corporeal reality [0.5] that the problem is not the body 
[0.5] the problem is the gender [0.6] and i would say that for casualties [0.2] 
of the masculinizing system [0.4] the same thing is true [0.5] that what they 
should be doing [0.4] is revolutionizing masculinity rather than [0.7] 
attacking the body [0.9] and destroying it destroying healthy tissue 
sf1097: can i just say what [0.3] what partly [0.2] what is your opinion of 
female to male transsexuals [1.3] 
nf1091: isn't it it's very interesting [0.2] again there's a [0.2] terrific 
contrast [1.2] if you look in any phone booth in Soho you will see [0.2] that 
half the people working as prostitutes in Soho are transsexual [1.3] male to 
female transsexual [0.3] there is not a single one there [0.2] who is [0.6] 
female to male [1.8] a female to male transsexual [0.2] does not call attention 
to her own state [0.8] one of the interesting dialogues that goes on with male 
to female transsexuals is that they demand the right [0.3] to describe their 
condition [0.3] but they won't let anybody else [0.2] mention it there's this 
sort of [0.3] 
tremendous censorship you have to pretend [0.7] that you haven't noticed 
anything [0.4] and then they get a chance to tell you and to [0.2] give you 
their text about it [1.3] female to male [1.3] very few [0.3] phalloplasties [0.
2] very very few [1.0] the the the operation really doesn't work [1.1] and one 
of the things the surgeons say to women presenting for phalloplasty [0.2] is [0.
5] that they may never have an orgasm again [0.3] because of course it destroys 
the structures of the clitoris [1.2] er so [0.5] you've actually got [0.8] a 
group of people first of all very many fewer [0.7] than the men [0.6] and the 
other thing is they nearly [0.2] all have some adrenal [1.2] dysfunction [2.0] 
so that they are actually physically intersexual [0.2] usually they have [0.2] 
polycystic ovarian syndrome so they're short of oestrogen [0.5] so that already 
they are masculinized and probably sterile if they have these [0.2] adrenal 
condition 
sf1097: now how do you know that though [0.6] 
nf1091: because they're all 
sf1097: how do you how do you know they're syndromes [0.2] 
nf1091: well there's endless 
papers written on it there are some people who work on nothing else [1.4] and 
they're forever i mean [0.5] they publish [0.3] hundreds of papers on [0.2] 
vulvovaginoplasty [0.4] 
sf1097: i mean i'm i'm i mean i would be [0.9] fairly sceptical [0.2] sceptical 
about that really [0.4] 'cause i would want to know how many female to male 
transsexuals they [0.7] er did tests on [0.7] to find that information out i 
mean i would like [0.2] i mean i would like to place [0.2] a bet that [0.2] 
there would be more [0.7] female to male transsexuals that have no [0.5] er [0.
5] you know [1.8] no no such physicalities really [1.9] 
nf1091: well we can only talk about the ones who actually put themselves in the 
hands of the of the medical establishment who are actually seeking [0.4] 
surgery 
sf1097: mm 
nf1091: about e-, er [0.2] other groups we know nothing 
sf1097: mm [0.5] 
nf1091: er but it's also interesting [0.4] that [0.2] er [0.8] what [0.3] male 
to fe-, what female to male transsexuals most want [0.2] is to be able to [0.6] 
pass as men in the sense for example they're very anxious about [0.2] being 
able to urinate standing up that's one of their reasons for coming for [0.3] 
some form of of 
genital surgery [0.7] er [0.5] but the the other thing is that [0.6] er they're 
very much less exhibitionist [0.7] too [0.8] and [0.3] one [0.4] it would seem 
very much less sexually active [0.2] they're [0.7] completely contrasting group 
[1.0] and their [0.2] problems and their ways of defining them are very 
different [0.7] now there are there are the people like Mark who has written 
his story [0.8] er [0.4] but they are very rare [0.2] whereas [0.5] the [0.3] 
er [0.2] male to female transsexuals who have [0.7] told their story [0.6] er 
publicly are [0.2] very common [0.2] 
sf1097: mm [0.8] 
nf1091: and you see there's lots the the research is awful [0.9] the [0.4] if 
you really want to give yourself a [0.2] a nasty turn all you need to do is 
have a look at [0.4] the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery to look 
at what they're constructing as vaginas and they make you feel absolutely giddy 
[0.9] er [2.0] and then er [0.6] nowadays of course they're diag-, they're 
diagnosing now think about this from your own position if it was a child of 
yours they're diagnosing gender dysphoria [0.3] in sixteen year olds [0.4] and 
putting them on hormones as a preparation for 
surgery and they're carrying out surgery younger and younger [0.9] i mean at a 
certain point i think we have to stop and say no hang on surgery is not the 
treatment for this problem [0.9] what you're creating you're actually 
destroying this person's fertility [0.8] the papers are very odd i mean the 
papers say things like [0.6] there is no higher index of psychiatric disorder 
after surgery than there was before [1.1] but that's all they can say [0.3] 
they can't say they cured anything [1.5] you see and there's been lots of [0.3] 
there's lots and lots of research [0.4] Johns Hopkins have [0.8] published [0.
4] several papers on [0.3] their single operation [0.6] er [1.2] paradigm for 
sex change [0.6] er which has turned out to be something like three-point-five 
operations they're difficult operations to do [0.8] and they're not justified 
on health grounds they're not therapeutic [0.5] unless you really believe that 
there's something called gender dysphoria [0.4] and unless you believe that er 
creating a sterile female in place of a fertile male is the treatment for 
gender 
dysphoria [0.6] in ordinary hippocratic terms it really shouldn't be [0.8] er 
[0.8] and then of course they make things really complicated by making no 
distinction [0.5] between [0.2] transvestites and transsexuals [0.4] or between 
the sorts of transsexuals who work in the sex industry in Latin countries [0.4] 
who have breasts [0.3] and have [0.2] hips that are pumped up with silicone oil 
[0.4] and also have penises and are expected to bugger their clients i mean the 
whole thing is a [0.6] nightmare [0.5] but in terms of [0.2] intellectual 
respectability the whole field i think is pretty [0.5] pretty crummy [0.6] and 
then there's the other aspect which is when somebody like Janice Raymond [0.4] 
writes seriously and thoughtfully about it [0.7] the er People For Change web 
site [0.2] says things like [0.5] er she had better invest in flameproof 
underpants [0.9] i don't think [0.8] that that bears out their case very well i 
mean it's so sadistic [0.6] and so [0.2] genitally fixated when it comes to 
thinking of a punishment for a woman who's spoken out of turn [0.8] i think it 
indicates that certain 
things haven't changed at all [1.2] so i think this is [0.2] m-, my own feeling 
about all the sex change operations that are happening now [1.5] and you have 
to understand that there's a pathology attached to them as well they're 
terribly expensive [1.6] they are part of a polyoperational [0.6] syndrome [0.
6] because it's not enough to have vulvovaginoplasty [0.5] you then have [0.3] 
er breasts [0.2] chin reduction nose reduction a nose job is said to be more 
important in a sex change m-, [0.2] male to female [0.4] than the phalloplasty 
[0.3] because it's what changes the contour of the face [0.5] you can have your 
cheeks plumped out you have your hairline electronically altered [0.3] you have 
[0.2] h-, [0.3] fifty sixty sessions of el-, electrolysis [0.7] and a lot of 
people work in the sex industry because they're trying to pay the cost of all 
these operations [0.5] so in terms of of the ordinary therapeutic discourse [0.
3] it's time someone took a really hard look at what is being done to these 
people [0.6] er [0.2] and i see them [0.2] as victims of the same system [0.4] 
of [0.2] gender injustice [0.3] that affects every woman [0.5] 
who has to think about her body in this same u-, [0.3] distrustful way [0.5] 
and who is encouraged to think of it as something that surgery could fix [0.6] 
you know what [0.3] i've got [0.3] i've got heavy bleeding [0.3] get it out you 
know the whole [0.5] cut me open and i'll be better idea [0.6] which is 
something i think that we've [0.6] we're losing the battle against i mean one 
in f-, [0.2] one out of every two women in California will be buried without 
her womb [1.2] it will have gone west somewhere along the line [0.2] and it's i 
think it's all part of the same thing [0.7] that the problem is about current 
pieties there's a you can't say this is [0.2] pathological behaviour [0.5] stop 
and look at what you're doing stop and think [0.8] and the the five Dutch 
doctors who [0.2] make the prettiest vaginas that is to say the least 
horrifying ones [1.3] are gods [0.7] and they're all [0.5] need i tell you [0.
3] male [1.3] so [1.9] it's a tricky discourse i know and i'll get hate mail 
but there's nothing new about that [1.5] [laughter] [2.2] 
sf1098: well i have problems with women [0.2] i 
have [laugh] problems with this notion that that [0.2] there's there's some 
kind of natural woman who exists the the womb thing 'cause you you've brought 
your [0.2] your er [0.3] publicity material i understand [0.4] is that right 
nf1091: no i didn't [0.3] 
sf1098: 
nf1091: we have got it here today [0.3] they're here [0.4] 
sf1098: yeah [0.3] that's what i said 
nf1091: they've just come today [laughter] [0.9] yeah 
sf1098: 'cause i [0.2] i mean i'm not sure what kind of message we're sending 
out especially if we're thinking about generational difference and such like if 
we're locating women as some kind of natural [0.4] womb carrier [0.8] and [0.2] 
that's what we're are that's where we're located so maybe you'd like to talk a 
bit about that [0.3] is that the political stand that we need to take is that 
the box that we stand on to place ourselves in the world [2.7] 
nf1091: well now this is what the first talk i gave was really about [0.2] er 
the whole problem about what a woman is [1.3] er [0.9] i mean there's there's 
really [0.2] difficult problems for feminists all along this [0.3] parameter [0.
6] er men are able to say they exist as the sort of 
generic human being we are it [1.0] er but in fact it turns out that men define 
themselves as people with penises [0.5] and we have found this out because of 
what happens [0.3] at the level of [0.3] boys born with insufficient evidence 
of presence of a penis [0.5] they get surgically changed into women [0.4] so [0.
2] i have to reject the definition i think of a woman as a person without a 
penis [1.1] er [0.9] i am not just a non-man [0.2] this is why we rejected the 
term woman or tried to [0.8] er [0.7] what i try to say is look the X-X 
chromosome is the [0.5] the whole one [0.3] the X-Y chromosome is the damaged 
one i mean every biologist knows that [0.7] er [0.2] 
sf1099: but it's not as simple as that is it we're not just X-X or X-Y we're X-
X-X-Y X-X-X-Y Y-X or i don't know 
nf1091: well not very many of us [0.3] it's 
sf1099: i think a lot of people are 
nf1091: but [0.3] but i think [0.2] oh well that's not true [0.7] 
sf1099: but [0.3] 
nf1091: er but it is 
sf1097: we're not tested are we we're not all tested 
sf1099: but you 
rely a lot on science this is what [0.2] one of the things that bothers me is 
you rely a lot on science [0.3] knowledge that [0.2] 
nf1091: well [0.3] 
sf1099: that can well my friend the scientist comes in a lot and tells me that 
this is right and this is wrong [0.7] so we have a kind of good science that 
follows the stories we like [0.5] and a bad science that follows the stories we 
don't like well we all do that [0.2] we're selective about what we pick [0.3] 
nf1091: mm [0.2] 
sf1099: so you kind of you seem to me to want to have the authority of the 
argument but throw away the products of it [0.9] except in those cases where 
it's easily fitted [0.9] into a kind of division that's maintained there are 
men on this side and women on this side [0.7] men have willies and women have 
wombs and that's it [0.6] and that's what people are 
nf1091: but i didn't but i didn't s-, actually say that [0.4] what i actually 
said there's lots of women are still women and don't have uteruses 
sf1099: and you can't oppose a uterus against a penis like you were to a [1.3] 
yeah [0.2] and i want to i want to kind of [0.4] foreground this body [0.3] 
instead of this body [0.9] but doesn't that just kind 
of [0.4] lock us in that conflict all the time how are we going to escape it [0.
6] 
nf1091: well i don't think we can you see i think the conflict is a real one [1.
1] er it'd be nice we've we've talked about the world as if it's post-gender [0.
3] but actually it's not [0.7] and [0.3] er tricking us into talking about it 
as if it were [0.4] means that we there's no way we can defend our own interest 
we have to agree that there is no interest so [0.9] if i point out to you that 
the womb [0.2] is actually a locus of misogyny [0.8] that it is e-, women's own 
misogyny is expressed through their attitude towards their wombs and appendages 
[0.6] then that seems to me a point that has to be made [0.6] that [1.1] it 
interests me that women have no imagery of themselves as [0.4] potently sexed 
[0.3] creatures [0.5] that they are being [0.2] presented to themselves as if 
they had in their [0.5] if you think of Barbie Barbie has no genitals at all [0.
3] i'm told that Ken has [0.5] something he has a bulge of [laughter] some sort 
[0.8] er Barbie has these [0.2] peculiar tits i've met my i met two Barbie 
dolls [0.6] on 
Monday Tuesday whenever [0.8] er [0.2] and very strange they are too [0.4] i 
i'm amazed that you can't stand them up [0.4] [laughter] they've got to be 
carried at all times [0.5] er [0.5] so [laughter] [1.5] no i don't i don't want 
to i don't want to say that you are your womb [0.9] but on the other hand i 
don't want to say [0.3] that women are not real [1.4] you see it seems to me 
that as long as [0.2] femaleness was a marker for inferiority [0.5] it was 
recognized [0.5] when we said [0.3] femaleness is not a marker for inferiority 
[0.6] er [0.4] then it was denied [0.3] okay you don't want to be a marker for 
inferiority you needn't exist at all [0.6] we'll have men and we'll have non-
gendered people [0.5] we'll have men and we'll have this big grab bag in which 
we put all the other people who aren't us [0.4] and we won't trouble our heads 
too much [0.3] about whether they're [0.3] genetically or [0.5] er 
chromosomally intersexual or not that's all unimportant we don't care [0.4] now 
[0.2] i realize [0.2] what [0.2] i realize the essentialist [0.4] risk in this 
discourse [0.6] but [0.2] it seems to me [0.9] that even if you're a if you're 
a girl [0.7] 
born without a womb [0.7] then this is a partic-, is [0.2] is a [0.2] a destiny 
[0.2] and this is you're a female a wombless [0.2] female [0.5] just as a boy 
born without a penis is a penisless [0.4] male [0.4] somewhere along the line 
[0.8] if i'm to protect my subject at all [0.2] i have to say [0.5] that i 
consist in something [0.5] and what i [0.2] arrived at [0.2] was [0.9] this 
notion of X-X chromosome now there are [0.5] there are lots of interesting 
things about it [0.8] i was fascinated to see that [0.3] all the first I-V-F 
babies were girls [1.1] and they did seem to be very much more viable than boys 
at that level [0.6] there is a big difference in being a creature [0.2] that is 
organized to nourish other creatures [0.7] and a creature that isn't there's a 
huge contrast there [0.7] er i don't like the [0.3] the sociobiological 
arguments that say that all men are in reproductive competition therefore [0.4] 
they're going to be promiscuous and therefore they're going to be warlike and 
so forth [0.3] as these strike me as being very oversimplified [1.4] and i 
don't want to apply them at that level [0.6] but then i do [0.3] have to 
look at how women live [0.5] and [0.2] how for example [0.5] homosociality is 
not [0.8] possible for women [0.2] because they bring up [0.2] boys they live 
they're the ones who live in an enforcibly heterosexual environment [0.4] 
whereas men choose [0.2] a homos-, a homosocial [0.2] environment [0.7] so [0.
4] i see i'm i'm very well aware of that [0.2] danger [0.4] but it's [0.2] 
because i think women are being [0.8] oppressed through their female bodies and 
through the denial of those bodies [0.4] and that is still that was the 
argument of The Female Eunuch you see [0.9] er what i say in this book goes 
further in the sense that i say look [0.6] femininity is better done [0.2] by 
transsexuals they're more feminine than we are [0.7] they've got what you want 
they've got no hips you've decided that hips are disgusting [0.6] er and 
they've got hard breasts you've decided that soft breasts are ridiculous [0.6] 
you see when you hear i hear my god-children saying you know i ran along the 
beach the other day [0.7] and the boys were all laughing [0.8] because they 
said my breasts slopped up and down [0.6] this is a sixteen 
year old [0.9] because Baywatch tits don't slop up and down [1.3] they stay 
firmly anchored on the ribcage [1.9] so you've got to say to her [0.2] y-, y-, 
what i need to do it's part of my crusade [0.6] is to reinvest that body [0.3] 
that [1.0] leaky incontinent smelly [0.3] hairy [0.4] hippy body [0.5] with [0.
2] beauty grace and dignity [0.5] because the price of [0.3] post-gendering it 
[0.7] so that [0.4] Dana International is more beautiful than any woman built 
woman in the world [0.6] is being paid by our children [1.0] and i am [0.8] 
horrified [0.5] at [0.3] the misery [0.3] of little girls which is much worse 
than anything that it wh-, that it was [0.2] thirty years ago [0.5] we have a 
report from again [0.2] a gen-, a a gender issue that wasn't dealt with in this 
morning's news [0.7] the report that te-, er twenty per cent of children are 
suffering mental disease of one sort or another [0.3] and ten per cent of them 
are in need of clinical help [0.3] what are the diseases they're suffering from 
[0.2] depression and anorexia [0.3] you know the figures girls more likely than 
boys by nine to one to suffer from anorexia [0.3] and four times more 
likely to suffer from depression [0.3] that was a gender issue [0.9] but it was 
presented as [0.2] this [0.2] post-gender [0.9] er [0.3] category of [0.2] of 
sf1099: it's also a class issue [0.3] also a class issue and a race issue as 
well isn't it [0.4] 
nf1091: sure 
sf1099: the the there's the there's always the problem when you [0.6] take a 
political stand which universalizes [0.4] that a good proportion of the people 
[0.2] probably the majority of people speaking don't fall into the category 
that you're trying to attract [0.6] you're trying to address [0.9] you know 
nf1091: i'm not i'm not very worried about that i mean 
sf1099: well [0.2] you know that er i think it's one in twenty-two if we're 
going to use statistics one in [0.2] two-hundred-and-twenty-two girls in a 
comprehensive school are likely to be anorexic one in fifteen in a private 
school one in fourteen if they go to a dance school [0.2] it's very [0.4] 
culturally defined 
nf1091: you know i don't agree with that figure [0.4] i gave prizes in a state 
school 
sf1099: mm 
nf1091: three weeks ago [0.7] and [0.4] two-thirds of the girls 
in the top [0.8] er at the top A [0.5] er level of the er [0.8] of A-levels so 
ones who got starred As and so on [0.2] two-thirds of them [0.4] were emaciated 
[0.3] 
sf1099: mm [0.4] i've i mean you can you can bandy figures from personal 
experience 
nf1091: mm 
sf1099: well i'm just saying it's probably not as not as straightforward as 
simply saying well we're there are women [0.4] and we're like this 
nf1091: i'm well aware of that 
sf1099: and a 
nf1091: but the point is if you [0.3] that [0.2] my argument is about [0.3] 
gender [0.8] i am not qualified to [0.2] to [0.3] to take the race issue on for 
example 
sf1099: why [0.5] 
nf1091: because [0.2] i'd have to argue it from the point of view of of [0.4] a 
white [0.2] woman and that and racism is not my problem 
sf1102: s-, [0.2] it's everybody's problem 
sf1103: 
nf1091: well [0.3] but you under-, what you understand the meaning of what i'm 
saying here 
sf1099: no [0.4] i don't [0.8] 
nf1091: well look [0.2] you could i-, it's it's this is the sort of thing that 
happens to feminists all the time [0.5] you know i'll be asked why i'm not 
writing it from 
a vegetarian point of view and why i'm not writing it from a green point of 
view and why i'm not writ-, [0.3] because that's not what i'm writing about [0.
4] i'm actually writing about gender here because i think gender's an important 
issue [0.3] and i think this the presumption of post-gender [0.4] gender 
freeness [0.3] is simply denial [0.2] of femaleness and denial of all kinds of 
female functions 
sf1099: mm 
nf1091: so you know now we don't have mothers we have parents [0.3] except that 
when you look at those parents they turn out to be mothers isn't that strange 
[0.4] and it goes on like this all the time [0.3] you know [0.4] er now we talk 
about the nursing profession as if it was unisex [0.4] very interesting the 
nursing profession you know the complaints against nurses are up by five-
hundred per cent or something [0.3] and n-, fifty per cent of the complaints 
are against male nurses [0.3] likewise if you actually look at although they're 
only one in seven of the intake or something like that [0.4] if you look at [0.
2] who sits on the boards and who speaks for nurses [0.3] 
they're disproportionately now male [0.4] er [0.3] we cannot presume a post-
gender world [0.2] 
sf1099: i don't 
nf1091: we don't have one [0.4] well neither do i [0.2] and and what i've 
actually written about [0.5] is [0.4] the disguised gender issue to be sure 
this is not to deny that other issues exist [0.3] but i can't [0.2] one of the 
things that's happened to feminism [0.4] is that it fights on all fronts at 
once [0.7] so you find 
sf1099: because you can't fight on a single front any more because the it's 
shifted [0.5] 
nf1091: mm well [0.2] 
sf1099: that ca-, 
nf1091: i'm going to have a pretty good go with this book 
sf1099: mm 
nf1091: that's what this book is doing it's not all books it's not the only 
book 
sf1099: mm [0.6] 
nf1091: it's not your book [1.2] so go ahead and write your book [0.3] and i 
shall read it with interest [0.2] 
sf1099: okay 
nf1091: but in this case this is the argument i'm making because i think people 
are just [0.5] being blind about gender they are [0.4] they're taking the easy 
way out they're denying [0.6] gen-, the gender aspect of of [0.8] situations 
that actually cause women visceral pain and physical [0.2] harm [0.7] so this 
is where i go right back to stand on my own flat buniony female feet [0.4] 
saying we are real we are here [0.3] and we are hurting and we are hurting 
because [0.4] of the attitude you take [0.7] to the aspects of our reality that 
you find revolting and i'm going to push them [0.3] in [0.2] your [0.2] face [0.
8] so that every girl with a big bum out there [0.8] suddenly feels that maybe 
there is a battle she could join instead of feeling that she's got to keep 
herself a-, [0.2] out of all human contact whatsoever [1.5] and that may sound 
excessive but i do know of at least one case of a girl [0.3] who wouldn't come 
out of her room [0.3] because of the breadth of her hips about which she could 
do [0.3] nothing [0.6] didn't matter if she starved herself to death [0.6] she 
still had [0.2] hip bones which are [0.8] anathema [1.0] okay [0.4] another 
question [0.3] 
sf1104: i haven't got one [0.4] [1.6] 
nf1091: no [1.2] 
sf1105: i ha-, i can't think of a good enough one but i keep thinking about the 
fact that [1.0] when you talk about young women [0.8] and and i keep going back 
a bit 
further and thinking about [0.4] young people in infant playgrounds and about 
how they play and how [0.7] all [0.6] what what you've talked about today is so 
set in [0.9] by then all the behaviours and [0.6] all what's happening and all 
the stuff that you're talking about young girls [0.9] it it's happening much 
earlier as well and [0.6] i wonder what you think about that [1.5] and how come 
[0.5] you know [0.2] how come it's [0.4] you know you're talking to [0.2] fo-, 
five and six year old [0.3] girls [1.1] will say all this stuff [0.5] you know 
who relate to Barbie dolls [0.7] boys relate to violent Ken dolls [0.3] 
nf1091: mm 
sf1105: i mean it's so powerful [0.7] er and scary [0.2] 
nf1091: and i'm belong to the generation of women who tried to bring their 
children up without any gender streaming at all [0.7] so that my god-child who 
was born in my house always wore trousers never had a doll [0.4] 
sf1105: mm [0.3] 
nf1091: mind you every time her grandmother came to see us she said how 
terrible the poor little thing hasn't got a doll and i said well she's got a 
rabbit it's much more interesting than a doll [0.6] and in the end it became 
a question of her civil rights and so the doll appeared [0.9] there was a very 
funny moment because i found the doll soaking wet at the foot of the stairs [0.
2] with no clothes on and i said i found myself saying [0.5] oh namex look at 
poor [5.9] [laughter] so i just picked up dolly and sort of got her off the 
stairs and thought [0.5] that was a close shave [0.7] [laughter] and little 
namex when she fell over [0.6] er if she cried we [0.2] did-, [0.3] didn't 
react much but if she was very brave we reacted so we got to the stage where 
poor old namex would fall over and go [gasp] [0.3] hup [0.3] come on namex 
[gasp] hup [0.5] and i think oh namex i'm sorry you are allowed to cry but it 
was [0.2] it was really 
hard [0.6] and i'm we failed completely because the peer group er [0.5] culture 
was so strong [0.7] and then [1.1] you think about at what [0.6] we're coming 
up to Valentine's Day just have a look at the cultural aspic [0.5] of 
Valentine's Day of infantilized women [0.5] and silly fetishistic toy talk and 
so on where did it come from [0.4] they didn't learn it in school [0.5] er they 
learned it from [0.3] the ambient culture which means more to them [0.2] than 
school or parents [0.7] er [0.5] and then but then there's the other thing i 
mean i've mentioned this a few times because it i'm so struck by it [0.5] the 
numbers of studies that have been done [0.2] on the behaviour of w-, [0.4] 
mothers with children according to their perception of the gender of the child 
so [0.4] they're given a bundle [0.5] they're told it's a boy [0.8] and they 
actually treat it quite differently [0.6] than they would treat the same bundle 
if they were told that it was a girl [0.7] and you know this business of being 
gender blind one of the things that always cracks me up about vet programmes [0.
5] is the first 
thing they find out about an animal when it comes into the surgery is whether 
it's a little boy or a little girl [0.3] and then they mir-, they meticulously 
call it her and him [0.4] when they might just as well call it [0.3] it [0.8] 
because somewhere out there the great public has communicated that they don't 
like itifying animals that the animals have got to be gendered [0.7] which [0.
5] as they are not gendered in their social behaviour to anything like the same 
extent that humans are if you think of cats male and female they don't sort of 
have [0.3] sharply contrasting behaviours [0.6] er it's it's kind of weird it 
[0.2] it's [0.5] reminding you that gender consciousness [0.9] is not something 
that can be outlawed if you outlaw it it gets stronger it doesn't get weaker [0.
8] but i am interested too i mean at at what stage is it true i-, is it still 
true [0.4] that mothers [0.4] breastfeed crying boy babies in inverted commas 
if they think they're boy babies [0.3] more readily than they breastfeed girls 
[0.3] breastfeed them for longer [0.3] interpret [0.2] all 
utterances by the child as utterances for food [0.7] and subconsciously or 
consciously expect girls to wait longer and to feed less can this be true [0.8] 
and if it's true where the hell did it come from [0.4] because most of us only 
have [0.4] one-point-four babies or whatever it is [0.4] we don't get a chance 
to actually form ideas of how [0.4] boy babies might be different from girl 
babies [1.1] but then people who do have both will tell you that they're 
different from the very beginning [1.2] but [0.3] i'd i mean i would be 
sufficiently post-gender to not believe that [0.2] that you would have [0.5] 
lusty demanding girls who fed robustly [0.8] but i wish i had a shilling for 
every time a breastfeeding mother has told me that her girl doesn't feed 
properly and fiddles about and wastes time and so on [1.3] and we've got we 
would have to do a lot more work to find out how that [0.2] all happens [0.6] 
er and i'm not too sure that i want [0.5] a lot more of this scrutiny in the 
sense that it's a it's an oppression for the people taking part in it [0.9] but 
[1.2] 
it looks as if gender typing [0.4] happens [0.3] at a very vulnerable [0.2] 
stage [0.4] but you see the other thing is that now we're being told [0.6] 
mothers having become a thing called the uterine environment [0.7] 
intersexuality is now our fault because we're flooding the fetus with [0.4] sex 
hormones in utero [0.6] and affecting [0.2] development so [1.6] if we have 
feminized boys it's 'cause we produced the wrong juice in utero which [0.5] is 
[0.4] er [0.2] it's all entirely speculative [1.0] so who knows [0.6] it's 
certainly true that boys are more violent in playschool and hit little girls 
over the head with instruments [0.7] pick things they seem to think that the [0.
2] the purpose of anything remotely stick-shaped is to hit somebody with [0.8] 
er some little girls are like that but [0.3] really not very many [1.0] so [0.
9] i think we will find that there are some [0.2] residues but we're in terms 
of talking about [0.2] cultural behaviour we're a long way from those residues 
so i don't think we need to [0.4] cons-, [0.5] to convince ourselves that 
they're immutable [2.7] next [0.9] 
sf1100: er i'm interested in 
what you started off talking about about the Radio Four [0.3] [0.3] about 
teenage conceptions i was just wondering [1.0] er [0.4] put in its [0.4] kind 
of wider context [0.5] it seems to me that er [0.5] the situation where [0.2] 
the rate of teenage mothers can actually [0.3] have dropped off in the last 
twenty-five years [0.5] and has actually [0.4] come down to some extent but [0.
3] seems to be [0.2] to me [0.9] er seems to be a real focus on one point [0.4] 
right at the moment [0.2] just in the last week or so [0.3] er [1.0] and 
generally [0.9] sort of during i was wondering whether [0.2] whether you agreed 
with that or you've got your s-, [1.2] whether that had changed at all [0.6] er 
[0.4] would you so do you have any comments on that [2.1] 
nf1091: the whole thing i think is terribly painful [0.4] there is so much 
suffering involved in all of these [0.6] i [0.2] really could not believe [1.2] 
that anybody [0.8] even Jack Straw [0.2] could start talking about [0.4] 
pressuring young women to giving up their children which is what he was 
actually talking about [0.5] now one of the reasons i can't believe this [0.4] 
is that [0.3] after the Australian Aborigines [0.9] mounted their great [0.3] 
attack on the Australian [0.2] on Australian society [0.4] for taking their 
children away because they were considered 
unfit parents because they were inverted commas savages [0.8] that after the 
Aborigines did that for us all [1.3] the young the women who had given away 
babies in their teens in Australia suddenly realized [0.5] that in the 
Salvation Army which was the worst offender [0.4] and the other religious homes 
[0.4] they had never been given the option of going it alone even though state 
[0.6] support existed for unsupported mums [0.4] they weren't told about what 
was available [0.5] they were simply given the impression [0.2] that they'd be 
unemployable unhousable destitute in the gutter with their children [0.3] and 
so with the usual [0.3] anguish they gave their children up [0.3] so they could 
[0.5] go back and work [1.0] they are now demanding [0.5] or they have demanded 
and got [0.5] but it's typical they didn't ask for compensation [0.5] they have 
demanded and got an apology [0.2] in Australia [0.5] this same Natural Parents 
Association notice they've degendered their own name [0.5] have come to England 
to do the same thing for the English women who were forced to give up 
children [0.3] thirty [0.2] forty years ago [0.6] er and they've just begun 
their campaign [0.5] and in the middle [0.2] of the beginning of this strong 
campaign which is really the mothers wanting to say to the children they gave 
up [0.3] we loved you we would have kept you if we could [0.4] which is why 
they do it i mean they're not doing it 'cause they want to be [0.3] their 
heartache to be paid for [0.6] er they actually want their children to know 
which i think is a very [0.5] typical sort of attitude [0.6] and in the middle 
of this they started it a month ago or something and Jack Straw stands up and 
says we're going to make the same mistake all over again because we think most 
teenage girls can't cope with children [1.7] well [0.4] h-, where where where's 
the evidence [0.7] well the evidence is you know we have children in care we 
don't want to take them into care yes we don't want you to take them into care 
either because you bugger them all the time for Christ's sake [0.6] er amazing 
stuff [0.6] and the they're they're now telling us they're worried about 
children in care [0.8] but they're worried about children with their natural 
mothers even more [0.4] i mean it's just so wrong-headed it's unbelievable [0.
4] but it's [0.2] it's part of this attempt to assuage middle class 
consciousness that er [0.2] this new government is not going to be easy [0.2] 
on crime and the causes of crime which are of course poverty [0.4] are they 
going to let poverty get even worse [0.8] [laughter] and the disaffection and 
grief and misery [0.7] it's i i couldn't believe it i was astonished [0.2] i 
mean i just wished they'd say that er they'd earmark [0.2] a significant 
portion of the [0.2] revenues [0.4] for the support of mothers [0.2] married or 
otherwise [1.0] er [0.2] if we don't do that we're going to have a [0.5] a 
society composed entirely of poor children [0.8] which is just stupid because 
poor children cannot cope [0.6] in a society which requires such a high level 
of education and preparation [0.3] even to [0.4] exist to survive [0.6] so and 
they talk about social exclusion and at the same time they're actually [0.4] 
they've actually invented it as a 
concept [0.7] there's no such thing as social inclusion society is people [0.3] 
but they've decided that there's society and then there's [0.3] excluded people 
ah [1.0] it's it's all s-, i think it's all done in such bad faith [0.9] it is 
so cynical [1.1] so manipulative [0.2] of the electorate i'm ashamed of this 
Labour Party 
nf1091: i've always found it [0.5] really interesting [0.2] that [1.1] at the 
time when the family the [0.2] elder generation starts to fall apart [0.6] the 
burden naturally falls on the shoulders of [0.3] the menopausal female [0.4] 
the older [1.2] sister or whatever the daughter [0.6] and then at a very 
difficult time in her own life when she's having to come to terms with the 
endings of things and er and no new beginnings [0.5] she's also having to 
embark on this stressful business of [0.8] shepherding her parents [0.7] 
carefully and comfortably out of the world if that's what she can do [0.4] and 
there's an aspect of this which i find very interesting and i h-, i daren't 
discuss it in a loud voice because it's going to cause a [0.5] bit 
of a sh-, [0.7] scandal [0.7] that in those cases that i know of where a sick 
parent has agreed that she wishes to end her life [0.9] er [0.2] she has chosen 
her daughter [0.2] as her accomplice [0.8] and that part of the battle between 
the doctors who now want to take it over and do it [0.3] is actually again a 
concealed sort of gender battle [0.3] we can't just it's like women controlling 
the birthplace and then suddenly says [0.6] well Christ they're also 
controlling the deathplace [0.3] we can't have that [0.2] get in there get in 
there now [0.3] we should be deciding when these people end their lives we 
can't just have this [0.3] you know saving up your [0.4] your narcotics for the 
big [0.5] bang and and your daughter coming and holding you in her arms and n-, 
and so whatever it is that you've decided to do [0.5] so there's this [0.3] you 
daren't talk about this of course it'll be a tremendous fuss if i did [0.4] but 
i find it very interesting [0.5] and i [0.2] it's terribly hard to find out 
about because like so much of what women do like abortion used to be [0.4] we 
don't talk about it [0.4] 
a daughter who has just killed her mother [0.7] is not going to sit on the bus 
stop and say oh by the way last week i knocked my mother off i mean it's [0.5] 
[laughter] you hear about it in very privileged circumstances and it's a very 
privileged discourse [0.4] so i'm thinking as i always think because [0.4] this 
is why i write at all [0.5] women don't know that what's happening to them is 
happening to everybody else [1.2] so they have a Caesarean and you say why did 
you have a Caesarean and they say oh well [0.4] the baby was labouring and blah 
blah blah and so forth and i'd been in labour for two-and-a-half hours and 
whatever [0.3] and you say oh really [0.5] er [0.4] and she believes that her 
[0.2] her Caesarean is [0.2] totally necessary [0.3] and then you look at the 
figures and realize they can't be totally necessary how can the healthiest 
women in the world be needing so many Caesareans [0.4] so you have to go back 
but [0.3] the statistics can never be made to fit cases [0.4] and everybody [0.
2] takes advantage of that gap [0.6] and the same 
thing is happening now i think with the question of women in the deathplace [0.
6] so that we haven't even realized that maybe there is a relationship and a 
function to be protected here [0.4] like there was in the case of abortion [1.
1] er [0.5] it is still interesting to me how much of our lives is secret [0.9] 
from [1.2] other women [0.5] even other women who are quite close to us [0.5] 
and that we still haven't managed to [0.3] foreground this [0.8] er and if we 
did it would be transgressive just like black culture [0.2] we they would 
decide that what we had been doing was transgressive and we couldn't do it any 
more [0.6] er [0.5] and if you actually if you then think ab-, [0.4] of the 
nanny crisis in terms of this [1.4] what are we what are we saying about the 
nannies [0.4] not that parents kill children much much much more often than 
nannies do that is amazingly rare [0.3] we're saying [0.2] we want more system 
of control of nannies we want nannies to be [0.3] X-rayed fingerprinted 
tattooed you know we want to be able to [0.4] track them day and night we want 
closed-circuit television 
on these murdering nannies [0.4] just think they're bec-, and what actually 
that all means [0.4] is that the issue is [0.2] control [1.1] women are to be 
[0.2] controlled any way that we can [0.4] and we will put them through one 
system of control after another [0.4] but most of that control in the late 
twentieth century [0.5] is directed at the female body which is transgressive 
in [0.2] essence [1.2] and this is my argument [4.3] okay well we've got lots 
more time if you want to [2.4] 
sf1101: i wanted er 
nf1091: or are you getting hungry yet what is it in my i'm probably i've been 
given this watch 
sf1106: quarter past one [0.4] 
nf1091: quarter that's what i thought it hasn't got proper numbers on it so i 
sometimes get it wrong [laughter] [1.6] 
sf1106: well i'll just say i i i er agreed with some of what you were saying 
about er [0.6] children and single mothers [0.2] er [0.5] wholeheartedly and i 
think it's very contradicting that on the one hand [0.3] children get 
constructed as a private [0.4] er [0.3] a private space a private cost a 
private benefit if you like [0.3] when actually i think they are they have to 
be of social consequence of 
social benefit [0.3] but then that isn't very telling because the state 
intervenes in all sorts of interesting ways and of course we know that it 
doesn't intervene with all parents in the same way so that there are class 
issues and race issues and et cetera [0.9] i think i had a question which came 
out of your first [0.5] talk [0.3] er [1.8] and it it might just be a too big a 
question i don't know [0.7] i [0.2] i understood you to be saying that [0.5] 
that you would like to keep the sex-gender binary [0.4] and that [0.2] er [1.6] 
what happened with kind of a a Judith Butler take on that is there's a 
confusion between sex and sexuality [0.5] but you didn't have a chance to to go 
into that and [0.2] i wondered if you wanted to pursue it [0.6] er [1.2] i mean 
[1.4] yeah [0.3] [laughter] [0.3] 
nf1091: well [1.2] i mean in a gen-, [0.6] my idea is [0.5] and has always been 
and may one of these days be [0.2] seen as immensely archaic [0.8] er that 
there is a thing called male and there's a thing called female there's the 
strip in between which m-, [0.6] may or may not be highly populated or not [0.
8] but what [0.2] i-, is extrapolated from both these things is [0.5] 
masculinity as a cultural entity on 
the one hand and femininity as a cultural entity on the other [0.8] er and 
neither of these has to do with [0.7] er the way you express your sexuality 
which is a a separate question [0.5] er they have to do with [0.6] the way that 
you perceive your they have to do with the cultural [0.4] structures in which 
your life makes sense to you [0.8] so that [0.2] the m-, the male [0.2] 
cultural structure is one which is [0.5] er hierarchical [0.4] er [0.4] which 
is has a number of cementing and bonding mechanisms and [0.2] that are not well 
understood by people outside or even necessarily by people inside but the 
people notice [0.6] you know that men [0.9] er joke all the time [0.3] rather 
than speaking seriously that they don't really confide they don't have real 
conversations [0.4] er and that they share certain kinds of transgressive 
behaviour [0.4] er [0.2] and that they are very quick to [0.3] create leaders 
and then to line up behind leaders and then to compete for positions of greater 
closeness to leaders [0.3] or indeed to replace leaders and so on and so forth 
[0.7] and that they're capable 
of building these structures in all sorts of circumstances in prisons in the 
street in playhouses in [0.6] in er nursery school [0.5] and so on but this [0.
5] these tendencies [0.4] agglomerating tendencies of men men in groups [0.5] 
are important i mean this has been argued for a long time that feminists needed 
to understand them [0.2] to defend themselves [0.8] er because they have ways 
of dealing with marauders [0.6] that we still haven't quite understood so they 
reform and regroup in e-, ever more arcane locations [0.7] er [2.1] where [0.4] 
the problem about being women is we don't have those structures [0.4] we've 
never had them historically that and so i argued that maybe we should look at 
[0.5] segregated societies to see how women construct [1.3] er [1.3] how they 
make social cohesion within the female group or indeed if they make it may be 
that they don't [0.7] but i think they do [0.8] and they do around the figure 
of a senior woman and so on [0.9] er but when [0.2] i mean the connection with 
sexuality [0.3] is [0.5] is one that has that [0.2] that has to be made i 
think with [0.9] er [0.7] delicacy because [0.8] of this habit of thought [0.7] 
that takes transgressive forms of sexual expression by which i mean [0.5] not 
[0.2] the regulation [0.8] heterosex [0.7] er as indications of [0.3] 
transsexuality or transgenderism when they're not indications of anything at 
all [1.4] er of anything of the kind i should say they're actually [0.6] 
expressions of relationship [0.9] er which [0.8] make themselves new all the 
time or one would hope that they did [2.3] but [0.3] the whole idea of being 
you know [0.2] a sort of [1.0] cyberborg or something and suddenly being a 
machine rather than a body [0.7] this is presented occasionally as a desirable 
outcome i don't find it desirable at all [0.5] but i may very well be in a [0.
3] huge minority [0.8] there may be lots of women looking forward to being [0.
4] cyberborgs [0.8] cyborgs [2.0] but i am what i in what particular aspect of 
this [0.6] travailed relationship are you interested [0.4] 
sf1106: well i i mean i don't know the debate terribly well but it just [0.3] 
it wasn't something that i remember thinking while i was reading that so i just 
wanted to hear a bit more and i think i've got [0.8] and i also got from 
namex's question some of the stuff that you were saying then [0.4] i think i 
can see some of the connections [1.4] 
nf1091: yeah i mean it's a problem for me i don't want to see women defined as 
wombs but i don't want to see the womb denied all the time either because i 
really think there's an attack on it [0.9] er and it's exp-, there has been for 
hundreds of years that it's a dark region like Africa [0.4] and they want to 
colonize it they want to get it under control and the result is going to be 
something like Africa [0.4] you know an absolute [0.7] er social disaster from 
the point of view of the people struggling to live there [0.6] what with you 
know [0.8] social dislocation outwork prostitution AIDS the whole [0.3] thing i 
mean [0.5] that [0.4] they've got the same attitude to the unseen part of women 
that they're busily denying that it's there [0.8] and i've [0.2] i am cynical 
enough to think [0.5] that at such time as they they can grow babies outside 
the uterus they will [0.5] and that when they do that there'll be even 
less reason for women to exist [0.2] and they won't put up with our 
changeability or [0.3] they've already criminalized the menstrual cycle i mean 
i don't even talk about this in my book at all [0.6] er [0.7] but it's very 
remarkable to me how that has happened [0.5] so that everybody i mean people 
this high know about something called P-M-T [0.4] and that have to tell you 
that your behaviour which they disapprove of is actually mediated [0.4] by your 
menstrual status [0.8] i mean that's a very obvious case they don't un-, 
they've never understood the well woman they don't know even know what 
menstruation is [0.2] for [1.5] and it's just now people are beginning to say 
that maybe [0.4] it's to protect the sloughing womb from infection [0.2] maybe 
menstrual blood has a naturally disinfectant [0.2] function [0.3] so instead of 
being filth that's being sloughed off it's actually [0.3] the cleansing medium 
[0.8] all of these words don't mean a lot all you have to do is flip a switch 
and think about it that way [0.4] but remember that i'm still the feminist 
who's 
being s-, [0.6] sneered at because [0.6] i read in the Guardian i told women i 
told women [0.3] to drink their menstrual blood [laughter] [0.4] and said that 
if they if they didn't do it they weren't feminists [1.4] [laughter] what i [0.
4] [laugh] [0.5] what i actually said was [0.6] if the idea of tasting your 
menstrual blood makes you sick [1.1] then you've got a long way to go [0.7] 
because it's just one of the expressions of body hatred [0.4] that women have 
to deal with [0.6] and we are encouraged to think of menstrual blood as 
excretion [0.6] and it's so disgusting it's as disgusting as shit [0.5] you 
know you sell toilet paper and babies' nappies and women's sanitary napkins [0.
3] by pouring blue water on them [0.9] [laughter] my [0.3] i don't have blue 
water [laughter] i don't know about you [2.0] but it to me it's really 
interesting and when the P-M-T you the P-M-T discourse is very is about is 
quite a lot later than The Female Eunuch [0.5] and i can remember thinking oh 
my God [0.2] not knowing whether to laugh or cry i mean here 
we are trying to trying to understand the cycle trying to understand [1.1] m-, 
[0.3] m-, [0.4] as it's an aspect of health [0.8] how does it work [0.4] i mean 
we're in the same position as a motor mechanic who d-, had no idea of how the 
internal [0.2] combustion engine worked [0.5] we're sort of [0.5] looking at 
our bodies and as we didn't know how they went [0.6] we didn't know [0.3] when 
there was anything wrong with them [1.1] and so this is the discourse that 
developed around menstruation we didn't know what it was for [1.1] so we were 
forever finding it disorders involved in it [0.3] and blaming it for things [0.
2] that i think probably [0.3] it had very little to do with [1.2] and then 
feminists began saying well maybe menstruation is problematic [0.3] because of 
women's problematic attitudes to menstruation which have been culturally 
mediated [0.9] so then you have to ask you know h-, oh hang on in societies 
where there's segregation for menstruating women [0.4] maybe they've got really 
bad P-M-T in them because menstruation is so unclean [1.0] doesn't follow 
necessarily [0.7] because 
it also gives you a source of power [0.2] and if you're working as an unpaid 
kitchen menial for twenty-eight for twenty-three days a month [0.7] and 
spending five days in the company of other women because you're menstruating it 
may be a holiday it may be the nicest time of the month for you [0.7] and you 
also might be damn glad to see it because you weren't necessarily going to be 
pregnant for the next nine months and so on [0.7] er [0.7] we're still when if 
you think about the whole business of our understanding of menstruation [0.6] 
we're still [1.1] very little better off than we were thirty years ago [0.5] 
because although we keep being told that everyone's interested in the well 
woman [0.8] they're not interested in the well woman at all [0.9] the well 
woman hardly exists [0.2] as [0.3] an idea [1.2] i'm going to close now because 
i can see people are getting a bit weary but i want to tell you a story of what 
happened yesterday this is a real namex story it's very funny [1.5] i was going 
to the supermarket and i always park in the 
chemist's car park 'cause it's next to the supermarket i can get out faster [0.
4] you're not supposed to so [0.4] i went into the chemist's shop to buy some 
shampoo [0.6] but [0.4] just to excuse my being in his [0.4] thing [0.7] and 
there was this huge sign in the window saying [1.3] er [0.7] test your risk of 
osteoporosis [0.4] and it was literally [0.3] a third of the window this big 
blue thing [1.4] so i went in with and i got my shampoo and then [0.8] i sort 
of took a deep breath and i said er [0.7] what's this D-I-Y test for 
osteoporosis [0.7] and the girl said [0.3] and it said at the bottom it said 
ask at the medicine counter [laughter] [0.4] so there i stood at the medicine 
counter and i asked [0.4] and the girl said what [0.2] osteo what [1.0] 
[laughter] and i said you've got this bloody great sign in the window telling 
me to test my rist for osteo-, risk for osteoporosis [0.6] so she went and 
asked somebody else she said oh i don't know anything about it [1.0] said i'll 
i'll just get the pharmacist [1.8] out came the pharmacist and i said [1.2] 
you've got this thing in the 
window [0.4] for a D-I-Y test [0.2] for osteoporosis [0.2] he said i know 
nothing about it i said look it's a sign in your window [laughter] [0.3] you've 
got women coming in off the street to find out about this [0.3] here's one of 
them [1.0] [laughter] so he went outside it's just amazing [laughter] as if to 
say oh [0.6] went outside and looked at it and he couldn't deny that it was 
there because it was this big [0.5] and he came back in and he said well now he 
said now [0.3] osteoporosis is and i said er [0.5] and there i'm standing in 
front of him [0.3] six feet tall nearly [1.2] and er [1.1] he said er [0.7] yes 
well this is this is a test that you do to find out if er if you're er likely 
to suffer from osteoporosis [0.6] [laughter] he said if you if you see that 
your shoulders are getting a little humped i said well that'd be a bit late 
wouldn't it it's the risk [laughter] of osteoporosis i'm talking about [0.3] 
not the presence of terminal osteoporosis [0.6] and it never occurred to him 
that i might know something about the subject he 
just went straight ahead into absolute disastersville [1.4] so i said well er 
[1.1] i want to what is involved in this test [0.2] er he said well i don't 
know i said well [0.3] [laughter] i i was told to ask so i'm asking what is 
involved in the test so he went out of the room and he came back [0.8] with 
this bag which i could see had a plastic cup in it [0.2] [laughter] and he sat 
down on a seat and he carefully read the pamphlet [1.2] then he put the 
pamphlet back in the bag and he came out and he said to me well [0.6] er what 
you do is you pee into this plastic cup [laughter] and you send it off to this 
laboratory and they will tell you whether there's [0.4] a certain er [0.7] 
substance in your urine [2.0] so i said what a metabolite of calcium or 
something [0.7] he said no i think he said it's a sort of protein [0.4] so i 
said oh well they're testing bone resorption aren't they [0.3] not [0.9] not 
bone density [1.0] and he said [0.8] oh [0.9] ah i suppose they are [0.3] so i 
said well that means that all you find out from having this test is that you 
need another test [3.2] [laughter] which i said can't you just get the other
test by asking the doctor for it [1.2] the bastard was totally blank at this 
state [0.9] [laughter] so then i said er [0.3] er i was going to buy the test 
just for in-, just for information 'cause i do that just keep it [0.3] you know 
so i can [0.2] talk about it somewhere else [0.6] so i said how much does it 
cost [0.2] to have this test to find out if you need a test [2.5] [laughter] 
and he said nineteen-pounds-ninety-nine [1.7] [laughter] i said [0.5] there's 
nothing new under the sun [0.2] now this is just a naked attempt to exploit 
women's anxiety [0.4] to the best of my knowledge what they are testing [0.5] 
as far as i could see [0.3] was er [1.0] one of the [0.3] substances associated 
with osteoclasts [0.5] and there could be lots of reasons i guess 
why you are pissing those out [0.5] and as far as i know and i'm my research is 
not that old [0.5] there's [0.9] no proof that they actually [0.9] strongly 
related to osteoporosis at all [0.9] anyhow i promised you these [1.0] 
[laughter] now the problem is i've only got twenty [1.0] because they're all 
been given away to er [0.9] Richard Branson and people i don't know [laughter] 
[0.7] well i they're given away by the publicity people and they've got the 
dreariest idea of who counts 
sf1107: on the train with one [0.8] 
nf1091: [laugh] [1.3] [laughter] so what i'll do is er i'll stand here and if 
you want one [0.6] i'll give you one as you come out