The Online World is SO Unregulated | Sharon Gaffka

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0:38So grab your besties or your frenemies and head to Buffalo Wild Wings to get bottomless apps for$9.99 while you still can. On this podcast, we've had economists, sociologists, and politicians. A Love Island contestant isn't maybe the most obvious fit. But actually, there's been a tradition and a recent trend of contestants leaving the show and going on to do important work with their platforms and campaigning. And one of those trailblazers is Sharon Gafka, who I'm delighted to have on the episode today. Welcome to Bold Politics. Sharon, wonderful to have you in the studio. Now, you are a Love Island contestant alongside many other things, but that's probably something that lots of people will know you for.

1:20People might go, oh, are they about to have a conversation about influencing and branding? and the truth is you absolutely do influence but you use your platform particularly to talk about women's rights it almost sounds like a silly question but it seems a good place to start why is that important and then what aspects of women's rights particularly should we be talking about today i mean there is an element of influencing and personal branding when it comes to politics anyway right but um firstly i'm a woman i have very much lived experience of what it's like to grow up in the uk as a woman and actually hearing the experiences of my friends is firstly enough to make you angry and go, why is this something that we're told we basically have to put up with?

1:57Some people might not know because I think there's a conversation about the Love Island politics pipeline. I was a civil servant for six and a half years before I went on Love Island. So I kind of had the understanding of how government works, how policy is made. And then I knew that leaving a show like Love Island, British media are so interested in what you've got to say for whatever reason. So I was like, right, I'm going to use this moment to make my mark, I guess, because I wasn't interested in the stereotypical Love Island brand deals. And in my inbox, it just snowballed. So I got one DM and then I ended up having thousands at one point of just women just telling me things they've been through.

2:34And it feels like an injustice that someone was brave enough to disclose something to you and then just not do anything with it. That was like my motivation, basically. And then there's this acronym that's often used, VORG, which is Violence Against Women and Girls. One, it'd be interesting to have a conversation about the acronym in itself because I know for lots of people they go, actually they they don't like the fact that that gets acronymed if that's a word yeah and also what what specifically are you doing or highlighting around violence against women and girls yeah i think it's as an asian woman it's the same as the phrase bame like i hate being it being acronymed i prefer to call it male violence against women because that that is exactly what it is um you know it's not women on women violence um for me it kind of started talking about my own experience of being spiked so the year before I went on to Love Island I'd experienced drink spiking here in in London and I was ashamed it made me feel like it was my fault like is there something I could have done differently when actually no it's not my fault if I did something differently or behave differently it would have been somebody else and that other person might not have had the support system that I had in order to be able to to cope with it and to kind of break it down and deal with it emotionally and physically.

3:44So in a way, it's like semi-grateful that it happened to someone who has support, but I shouldn't think about it in that way. I always call myself a lucky survivor because the worst thing that was supposed to happen to me didn't happen. And again, it's why do I think that way? Why are women conditioned to think that way? And then also leaving Love Island, lots of misogynistic hate, lots of racial abuse actually that I received. And I've noticed that lots of young women in particular are taught that love is very different to what it should be with the rise of technology that because we're so used to sharing our locations with our friends as a safety mechanism from coming home from a night out that potential perpetrators are also using this as a sign of like I love you and I care for you so that I've noticed a trend where young women are struggling to differentiate between what is safe and healthy love and what is not so it's kind of a it's kind of taken lots of different angles and I was very fortunate I think it's four years now that I've been a an ambassador for refuge and they've done some amazing work and I've been able to help help change laws with them and bring online safety into actual legislative conversation as opposed to just something that we should it would be a nice to have what laws have you been working on with refuge and what what still needs to happen yeah so um with refuge it was mostly the online safety act we wanted to make sure that children are protected when they're online first of all but also that women can actually get justice for some of the things they're experiencing so for example if you flash somebody in the street that's automatically a crime whereas if you send if you sent somebody an unsolicited image not necessarily and it shouldn't be like that the real world and the online world are not two separate entities anymore they are very much one part of life in society and that shouldn't be like that and the other thing that i started talking about recently is that um i discovered a reddit thread of myself where men were using my images to ejaculate over them and that was not seen as a crime but obviously if that happened to me in the street that is very much a crime so it's about making sure that women feel like they are not removed from online spaces and they feel safe to to live a normal life and then as a result of spiking I managed to reclassify GHB to a class B drug so if you're caught in possession before you even do anything it's a strict prison sentence and have spiking as a standalone offense and not for victims or police officers to have to look through loads of different pieces of legislation to find where the crime sits in order for victims to get justice.

6:25It makes a lot of sense and in terms of the Online Safety Act because also it's had a fair bit of criticism though as well particularly the point that you know if someone wants to use a VPN or there's ways around things how involved were you with the act overall or was this very specifically these are measures for women that I want to make sure are in there? Yeah for me it was specifically about the measures for women the Violence Against Women and Girls code of practice was something that was a little bit toyed around with with the then government and it's not something that should be toyed around with you know majority of the hate that is online is geared towards women and girls so therefore we need to take that into consideration with the piece of legislation and that was the part that i played in it and you used the word survivor a few moments ago and i know that's increasingly the word used rather than victim if someone's not heard that distinction before would you mind outlining why why that's important i think when we talk about gender-based violence language is so important for me I always refer to someone as a survivor because that's something you have survived and that's something you've come through I think it's more empowering because that person is incredibly brave to have to go through what they've done through and to come out the other side and you are a victim you were a victim at that moment in time but you don't always remain a victim and the women that I've met in real life and and spoken to and seen they've transformed their lives they've come so far so to keep using the phrase victim does that hard work such a disservice and was there something that you started the episode by saying i'm a woman i care about this even growing up were these things that you cared about was it through your work through the civil service or various campaigns you've got involved with whether you've gone actually this is what i want to dedicate my life's work to i've always had an interest in politics i think when i talk to people i always say that the next election will be a social media general election it'll be where young people look for their their news because they don't watch mainstream news but I did as a kid growing up it was so normal to come downstairs and see I think it's whatever would have been Good Morning Britain or BBC News on and that's what I would watch and I always wanted to be involved in politics in some way but my family history probably led me up to that so I am a child of first and second generation immigrants um my mum's from Indonesia where democracy was not necessarily like a right for my grandparents' lifetime, definitely.

8:34It was something that you struggled to earn. When I used to go to Indonesia as a kid, the access to free education, the access to free healthcare felt like it was a luxury because over there they don't have that. There are lots of children living without birth certificates, therefore not able to access necessities that they need to live. And my grandfather actually escaped Nazi-occupied Poland to come to the UK. So I learned lots of stories about World War Two and all of those things. It kind of just made me who I am. And so there was no way that I was never going to be involved in politics in some way growing up.

9:11It just was waiting for me to find my own path in it, I guess. And then you were working for the civil service. Now, obviously, there might be only so much you can say about that. But without getting yourself into trouble, I'm definitely not intending to see that. How was the experience of working for government? Do you know what? I think it wasn't necessarily what I thought it was going to be. I went in thinking, I want to go in because I want to make people's lives better. I want to do something that's going to make the country better. But actually, as a civil servant, you're taking direction from the top.

9:41And that doesn't mean you don't necessarily agree with everything, right? Like I worked in Brexit for a long period of time, and I was quite avidly a Remainer. So I found that challenging. And also So there's some topics I just don't necessarily care about. So it doesn't feel the same kind of passions as the work I do now. In some roles I had, when you could see real life impact in things that you were actually doing, it made things feel worthwhile. So I actually met Gina Martin. We followed each other after my stint on Love Island, but I actually met her a few times as a civil servant, because when she was campaigning for the upskirting bill, I was working in the SPADS office at the Justice Department at the moment in time.

10:22So when I saw that bill become legislation, it was like, okay, I can actually make a difference, but maybe I'm just in the wrong place for it. That's really interesting. And were you in the civil service when Dominic Cummings was attacking the civil service? No, I think I narrowly escaped that one. Believe it or not, I actually went on Love Island for a career break from the civil service. So people always find that as a very interesting fact. And how was the experience of Love Island? How much care are you given afterwards? Because you talked about the kind of misogyny and racial hate crime that you experience afterwards yeah is a program set up to kind of support people after i think they try their best they did tell me when i was going through the process the process of getting onto a show like that in the first place is incredibly grueling they don't make it easy because they they need to let you know that it's going to be challenging when you leave obviously you're not in control of the edit you're given i wasn't happy with the edit i was given i didn't feel like it was an accurate representation of me and that can spike the hate and abuse you get so it felt like when I was coming out trying to do violence against women and girls campaign work and trying to show people who I really am you always get stuck with the love island tagline it felt when I was in there I describe it to people as if it was a covid lockdown except I've taken away your access to the internet I've taken away your hour walk a day books music everything and it's like a social experiment so you're not in control of your like mental and emotional faculties and that's what makes the show interesting so you know how you would deem a normal reaction to something isn't something you're going to do because your emotions are unstable so it's not something i would rush in to do again obviously i'm engaged now so i wouldn't be doing it anyway but um it's not an experience i i would i'd rush to do again but i think that i don't have any regrets from it because i've managed to turn it around but there is still a level level of misogyny i believe that i think if i found a cure to cancer it wouldn't be sharon gaffer finds cure to cancer it'd be love island sharon gaffer finds a cure to cancer so there is unfortunately nothing i can do for that to just disappear one day and um this isn't necessarily my frame but i'm thinking about people who haven't seen the show um you're someone who i presume would class themselves as a feminist but like is there something inherently misogynistic about the show or can you absolutely be a feminist and go on love island and and do what you're doing now i think there's an element of feminism in a sense that it's a choice i made the choice to go on there i think there is elements of it of it that is inherently misogynistic in a sense you are pitted against other women for the attention of men and which probably is the reason why my stint in there didn't last as long as some others that's my whole mo i'm really not that interested in it which kind of defeats the point of the show itself But I think my season in particular, the women representation or the women friendships that were there when I was there were so strong that it kind of made it hard to perform for what the show really wanted.

13:19And when you look at certain seasons of Love Island, actually what the women come out to do to go on and achieve outside of the stereotypical Love Islander label is amazing. There's lots of female campaigners that have come from Love Island that have gone on to do huge things in women's rights and animal rights. you don't necessarily see that with men which i think is a shame because especially when talking about women's rights you need male allies for sure so i think there's definitely two different pathways which i've seen for men and women coming out of the show as well and so that's a really good link to the next area i want to ask you about which is about male allyship um so there's certain issues around women's rights and and feminism that when i'm asked as a politician i often just think i'd rather listen to the women yeah and amplify their voices and make sure that they've got a microphone in front of them there's other times where it feels like actually allyship is really important here um and as long as you're speaking with women and not for women then that's the route for men who are listening to this or who want to be good allies what what kind of advice or suggestions would you make in terms of how to be a good ally i think they're already doing something amazing by listening um whenever i've gone to a gender-based violence roundtable and i'm shocked to see men around the room but they listen and that's something that's super important because when you're disclosing something, you usually disclose to women because they won't try and offer you a solution straight away.

14:36They just want to listen to what you've got to say and kind of gauge what you need from them at that moment. So, you know, if we're going to take it back to really basics, your friends, your family members, all of them have experiences of some form of gender-based violence in whether it be physical, verbal or emotional. And I think actually having those conversations with those people to make it seem like it's not a distant statistic that this is something that affects everybody it's actually even sad to say that you should only really like people should only be listen to if you have women in your life but I think it's a good place to start and I actually think as well is that the internet is a very challenging place right now particularly for men I think the algorithm can push you in a very very negative way and if there are issues in your own life you look for someone to blame and it tends to be women in certain areas and I think it's about you know also challenging your male friends around you unfortunately we live in a society where your male friend is more likely to respect you for saying something than they are for the woman that they are potentially catcalling in the street And I think it's nice for them to just step in and check in on their friends and check in on their friends' behaviour.

15:55Because that's, you know, every single perpetrator of very serious gender-based violence doesn't just wake up one day and commit what they've done. Like the perpetrator against Sarah Everard would never just wake up one day. It was a small pattern of behaviour that was persistently allowed to happen that was completely unchecked that ended in the result of Sarah Everard losing her life. You mentioned Sarah Everard, that leads me a little bit to how we make people safe and community policing. And obviously, policing is a contentious area, particularly around gender based violence. I suppose, what are the police getting right?

16:29What are they getting wrong? And what needs to happen? It's unfortunate because when we say not all men, it's not all police officers. I've met some really remarkable police officers, but unfortunately, they are tarnished by the ones that aren't very good. And they're the ones that we hear about the most, particularly in Zara Everard's case. We heard about all the police officers that were allowing her perpetrators' behaviour to happen. or if you look at the BBC Panorama and to Charing Cross police station, for example, where I'd like to see policing go is that in areas that impact women, I'd like to see more female police officers with better training to be able to deal with very sensitive issues.

17:07I mean, I remember myself, a man attempted to sexually assault me on a train a couple of years ago. And when I reported that to the police, I had a male police officer, which is fine, but he was consistently asking me questions that are completely irrelevant to actually dealing with the perpetrator and it felt like I was being victim blamed and shamed and I think that's where the language the police also use is super important so I'd like to see more female police officers and a lot better language and training. Refresh the rooms you love for spring with Pura's collection of floral citrus and fresh scents Bright, airy, and made for the season.

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18:30Bottomless apps for$9.99 are back at Buffalo Wild Wings, so you can mix and match favorites like modsticks, fried pickles, onion rings, hatched queso, and chips and salsa. It's perfect for a girls' night, a double date, or just a full-on yapping session. Order your apps and keep them coming while you spiral on the same gossip from every possible angle. So grab your besties or your frenemies and head to Buffalo Wild Wings to get bottomless apps for$9.99 while you still can. You've done a lot of campaigning specifically on domestic violence. What would you want people to know particularly around domestic violence?

19:05And how does that differ from kind of more broader forms of gender-based violence? it's such an old-fashioned view that we think gender-based violence is is physical that is something you can see um it's not anymore with the rise of technology unfortunately domestic violence is taking a lot of different forms and that is like part of my relationship with refuge that we we try to educate people on um actually at international women's day they released a really I found incredibly tough watch movie short film um but it was so educational and so well done and it was a an estate agent showing a potential family around a new home and it shows you all the ways in which women are actually unsafe in the home before I came here today I actually was with the chair of refuge Hetty and she's running the London marathon for refuge and on the back of her cape is 110 butterflies that represent the 110 women that have lost their life in the last year and she actually said to me that 75 of those were women that lost their life in home so that's the biggest part right it's also that we also tell people why don't you just leave but if they're controlling your finances your technology your ability to to work you've cut you off from your friends, you can't leave.

20:26And the most dangerous time for women is actually when they decide that they're ready to leave, which is why services like refuges are so important. And I think that when people start to actually understand that, that's when we can help more women and that we don't lose those 110 lives that we lost last year again next year. I actually think it isn't that different from the rest of gender-based violence. I think everything kind of leads up to it. Perpetrators' behaviour inside the home also replicates outside the home, but in just small microaggressive ways. So you don't necessarily see a perpetrator of domestic abuse going to the pub and having fistfights every weekend, but they will have very misogynistic opinions.

21:13And they'll be vocal about them. They'll make really crude root jokes. I don't know why, but we've come to a stage where rape jokes in some circles are still acceptable. If you don't educate young boys before they're old enough, they will have some level of domestic abuse in their home, even if they don't recognise those behaviours themselves. And how much is the culture of so-called banter a problem here? Because sometimes with groups of lads, or not just lads, grown men, they'll say they weren't being misogynistic or sexist, they were bantering. How do we tackle that? ah the topic of banter has been something that i've literally dealt with all my life i was even as a teenager deemed the angry woman um by male um peers and that's because i would tell them i didn't find something funny and i think if it happened in real life if it's not funny then it's not it's not banter and i think that we always think well boys should be boys or like you know they're just being young when actually these young men will go on to be politicians police officers teachers doctors and that we actually should take it seriously look at the bigger picture it goes back to what I was saying about perpetrators not waking up one day and committing the most heinous crimes it starts off with banter if it stopped at banter you could accept it as banter but it doesn't so I think it is about checking checking your friends and checking the level of of what's being said but I think it does parenting is hard right I'm about to become a mum to a boy and this is the thing that worries me the most parenting is already incredibly hard but I do think that parents need to have a bit more input in what their children are seeing online because even if you think well my boy won't be watching that or my daughter won't be looking at that they'll see it from their friends so sitting down and having conversations I already know I've said it with my um fiance when he's old enough I will sit him down and have it have conversations with him before it gets to the point of seeing something or hearing something from his peers that he shouldn't so that he knows this is wrong and it's not something that's funny and is allowed to just permeate a lot of this sounds like um important and vital parenting and it's amazing you're having this conversation with a little boy in your stomach it's lovely um and some of it is about people educating their friends or calling out or calling in their friends how much of it requires political intervention or actual legislation to change laws or to change the way things are done as opposed to cultural change i think it's it's a mixture of the two i think that firstly i think there's lots of male politicians that should be better right they should be setting an example and i actually think that when you see them get away with it it shows to other people if they can get away with it then why can't i but actually going back to when we were talking about online safety and me being concerned about what my son will potentially see in the future we've left the online space to be so unregulated and so open and free for so long that it's almost like the cat is out of the bag and it's like how can you put that back in now and I think that it needs to be to the point where we get ahead of it or we try and look at things later down the line and be more proactive rather than reactive and my issue is and I've said it a number of times is that this nobody disagrees with that people should be safe online I think you'd have to be some kind of crazy to think that children shouldn't be safe when they're online this government has such a big majority I don't understand why it takes so long for you to try and get these things through when nobody really disagrees with it particularly not in your own party so for me to have to constantly get stories and like examples and women saying I don't know what to do in my inbox as a girl from love island instead of a politician's email inbox as a case worker that's something that's really terrifying for me as well why are we not being more accessible to the people that need us and it becomes reliant on on people like me to try and hold it up i'm really well put yesterday i had a pretty awful interview with a right-wing journalist who i won't name because they're not they're not here to defend themselves but one bit of the interview that I thought was particularly uncomfortable was they were pushing the idea of violence against women and girls, but they were using it as a frame for anti-migration rhetoric.

25:31I know what my answer is, and I'm happy to give that answer again, but I'm just really interested in how you kind of deal with this, particularly when people are trying to stoke hatred towards migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, and they're doing it in the name of stopping gender-based violence. Firstly, it's actually disgusting, because as I was explaining to you at the time that a man tried to sexually assault me on a train, I had lots of support. And the moment I referenced his ethnicity, all of a sudden, I'm not believed because it didn't fit their narrative. So if your story doesn't fit their narrative, they don't care.

26:05So it's obviously not in the name of protecting women and girls. The other thing I have as well as an issue is that we know gender-based violence isn't an imported issue. I think it was only 50 years ago this year that marital rape was made illegal in Great Britain, in my mum and dad's lifetime, which is absolutely insane. So for you to sit there and say this is an imported issue is wrong. When we look at the Netflix show Adolescents, I actually don't think it's that far from the truth. When I look at my inbox and I look at the types of lads that are interacting with me saying the most violent things to me they're not immigrants they're not important and it allows that the people that are doing it to get away with doing it because we're not putting the focus that we need to on them I remember and I will never forget it the worst message I ever received through Instagram after Love Island was voice notes from a group of five lads in Scotland and they were white saying they would rape me, they would murder me if they saw me, all these things.

27:15And if we constantly focus on migration, those lads will be allowed to get away with sending those messages and they'll think it's okay because they're not seen as part of the problem because their skin colour is a certain way. And I think that's what really hurts survivors I speak to, that it's like, well, well, if my perpetrator doesn't fit that person's narrative, then my pain isn't acknowledged and real. And I think that those people actually need to sit down with actual survivors and understand what they've gone through and that it's men, not men from a certain background. I'm so sorry you've been through that experience.

27:53That's an understatement. I obviously experience lots of abuse and hatred online, but I also know that it's when I compare it to my female colleagues, it's a very different type of abuse. I'm often aware when I'm encouraging people to get into politics particularly young women that we're encouraging them to enter a space where this just does exist and of course it shouldn't but the fact is it actually does what would you say to young women in fact women of any age that maybe have been quiet or not getting involved because they don't feel like they can put up with this level of abuse I think it is really scary and sometimes it makes me sceptical about how far in politics I'm willing to go particularly now if I'm having a family Like I don't want to put a target on their backs.

28:35Right. And that's how it will feel. I think that's where male allyship is super important. If you feel supported by your male colleagues, it feels like water off a duck's back. It's not, but it feels more bearable and easy to deal with. Despite all of the things that have happened to me since leaving Love Island and being more vocal, they only happen because I get more vocal. So I know after doing this podcast, I'll probably get some something in my inbox. after doing some media rounds, I get something in my inbox. And it's because they want to keep you quiet. They don't want to see you in positions of power.

29:06They don't want to see you taking up their space. So they're trying to do it to keep you down. And my biggest thing is remembering why. So I remember why my reason is for being involved in politics. And it's not for me. It's for the survivors I speak on behalf of. And when you have your why, and you remember this is somebody that's just trying to keep you down and keep you out of space that you deserve to be in, that can give you the motivation and the power you need to think, no, I deserve to be here and I'm going to stay here. It's so beautifully articulated. There's also an organisation who I want to shout at this moment called Electa, who are a cross-party organisation, but they work with women who might want to get further involved with politics and they do training, also provide money or support resources for if women can't afford to go to a hustings or to go campaign.

29:52But also they have a lot of conversations like this. so just wanted to shout out Elector. In terms of where you think you might be going next in politics what do you have plans? Are the things you want to do? I don't know. I feel like politics is so fluid, right? For a long time I know a lot of young people feel the same as that I felt politically homeless. I didn't know where I sat until more recently until I became a member of the Green Party. Oh, welcome. I don't know where this is going but it's okay, we're not a party political podcast. No, I felt politically homeless for a long time So I think that that actually makes it a bit more difficult to kind of see where you should branch out and go.

30:29But yeah, I think, you know, you never say never and watch the space, I guess. So without putting you on pressure on the podcast with a party leader, would you consider running for parliament in the future? I think so. I think, you know, you'll never find a party where you agree with everything. But I think that for me, I need to know that if I was going to run in parliament, that I'm going to be behind a leader who is very intersectional with their feminism that won't ever make me question my intersectionality and the women I represent and support. And so, yeah, we'll see. And you mentioned intersectionality there.

31:05And very often we have this constant pitting of women's rights against trans people's rights. Just to see where you kind of sit with that. No, for me, trans women are women. I've always said that. I will always say that. And I don't understand where the obsession with what people have in their pants has come from. Like for me, it just is extremely bizarre. And I will never look at a trans woman and think that they're any less of a woman just because they don't, they're not born the same way I am. it's it's ridiculous and I think that the whole I get upset when I see the bathroom debate because lots of my trans friends felt like they could no longer walk out in society and and live their life that's all they want to live their life right they don't want to cause harm to anybody some of them stopped going to the gym because they didn't feel comfortable some of them stopped like going out and socializing and that breaks my heart because they're lovely people they've done nothing wrong and we forget that gender-based violence happens to trans women too these aren't women that are excluded from the conversation and that's why my intersectionality is so important i can't sit here and call myself a feminist if i'm gonna pick and choose which types of women i represent they are all women and that includes trans women and more widely outside of the issue of gender-based violence and women's rights are there other issues that you're planning to campaign on or have you very much chosen and it would be completely legitimate to say I've got quite enough doing this yeah I mean it is a handful I feel like with gender-based violence once you unpick one thing you kind of end up down a rabbit hole but for me I've always been really keen on educational reform when I went into civil service I always said my dream department was either justice or education because I think how we educate our young people has a massive impact on the future of the country and that also feeds into to gender-based violence um i've spoken lots about how sex education needs reforming because the children i speak to now the teenagers i speak to now tell me it's exactly the same now as it was when i was 14 which is 16 years ago um and there was nothing intersectional about my sex education whatsoever so you kind of left the dark to figure it out and when the growth of the internet like it just becomes crazy so yeah for me I would love to be part of educational reform somewhere down the line I love this conversation so much and I really hope to see you pursuing any political kind of ambition that you might have and most importantly getting the work done on the campaigns.

33:35If people have heard from this and they want to know more about you I know you have a podcast so could I ask you about your podcast what is it and what happens on it? We've had a little bit of a break but actually I think the episodes are still relevant even if they were recorded two, three years ago unfortunately. Yes unfortunately so it's called Girls Know Nothing it's a business and career based podcast um i actually talk to women about their lives and what led them to the careers that they they have now um because unfortunately regardless of what industry you're in whether you are an adult content creator an mp you share a similar experience in the fact that you've had to overcome misogyny and sexism and some people ableism and racism in order to get to where you are and also i think that because the internet is a highlight reel doesn't actually show you the nitty gritty of where somebody has got to or how they've got there.

34:22So if you were like, well, I want to be an MP, how do I do it? That conversation's already there, ready for you to press play. And something you were saying to me just before we came on there, so I hope you don't mind me repeating, is that you found out that lots of people who watch and listen to that podcast actually live in places with higher gender inequality. Yeah, so podcasting is an expensive hobby. So actually, when I was writing a pitch deck to pitch to sponsors, I was looking at the country breakdown. Obviously, majority of the audience is women. I fully expect to see that majority of the women around my age.

34:53What actually blew my mind was that it wasn't just something that was listened to in the UK or the US where Love Island is a big thing. So people might recognise my name. Actually, there are lots of countries in Africa, in the Middle East, where gender equality is a problem that actually have got quite high listenership as well. and that really tells us something that that's why feminism is so important why intersectionality is so important because it's not just a problem here it's a problem across the world and women from all walks of life have very similar lived experiences totally and finally if people want to know more about you how do they find you i am chronically online so if you want to know more about me i'm a big oversharer so definitely on um on my instagram it's very original username Sharon Gafka.

35:39But you'll find me there and I'm a chronic oversharer. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It was a lovely conversation. Thank you for having me.

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