Have women ever had it so good? | with with Julie Bindel & Miriam Cates

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0:42I was joined by Zoe Strimple, author of a new book, Good Slut, Ella Whelan, assistant editor of Spiked, Julie Bindle, feminist writer, and Miriam Cates, broadcaster and former conservative politician. In this episode, we pick up the conversation as the panel turns to prostitution and pornography and asks whether porn and feminism are fundamentally in conflict or whether the two can coexist. I have a lot to go on here. There's lots of points of tension, which are very interesting. We've got sexual relation, motherhood, feminism. But I want to start with quite a specific point because it came up in Judy's speech and, Zoe, I read about it in your book.

1:18And that's specifically prostitution and porn. I have sort of two questions here. I thought I'd start with you, Zoe. You've written about Bonnie Blue before And she's become sort of the famous face, not just of prostitution and only fans, but she's also allied her own work with feminism. And she's argued that she's sort of a natural consequence of things you've told women. Do you agree with her? And do you think that there's a conflict or a synergy between feminism and prostitution or porn? So I was thinking before I started my spiel, maybe I should say that actually most of my arguments don't really involve feminism.

1:53I think you can make all the arguments I'm trying to make without running along the track of feminism. And I think Julie made the point well that you should define feminism and what is a feminist and what isn't and what feminists have done and what they should be doing. And I don't think it's always the right lens or the necessary lens through which to talk about ideas of agency and freedom, you know, whether it be financial, economic or otherwise. Bonnie Blue, yes, I got in a lot of trouble for this. So would I want my daughter to do anything like what Bonnie Blue is doing? Of course not. Is it on the absolute outer limits of human behavior?

2:28Yes. Is it healthy by any normal standards? No. My point was that I think Bonnie Blue was a barometer. Well, this is the point I made. I don't really care about the substance of what Bonnie Blue was doing, apart from that, obviously, it's shocking. but she has done this thing that has horrified everyone. She slept with a thousand men in the night for a stunt and she did it for reasons that people find utterly distasteful, including financial gain. People around the country and the world absolutely hate her and she's the scarlet letter incarnate and yet she is not stoned to death. There's no law that says she must be locked up through vice and immorality.

3:12There are very few countries on earth in which a Bonnie Blue, and I do maintain, this is central to my argument, she's not, people are very worried that Bonnie Blue is a contagion, that lots of people, girls will see her and suddenly think, oh, I'll do that too. I haven't seen no evidence to that effect. I think she's a freak. She's an extreme. But I think the fact that she did what she did within the law and nothing bad has happened to her apart from whatever happens to her internally, that's none of our business actually. I think is really, you know, I think it's a good sign. I think it shows we have a robust and dynamic and tolerant society where it comes to the outer limits of women's sexual freedom.

3:51And if you don't have the outer limits, you have nothing. And you just have to look around many, many bits of this world to see what happens to women who, or in countries where there's a modesty scale, where you get onto the, you start breaching modesty rules. pretty soon after that very very very awful things happen there's you know abuse is just part of it there's punishment from on high from the government and so we have to I wanted to just take a take a very controversial you know flashpoint and reflect turn it around and reflect on everything how many countries can a bonnie blue do her thing be happy about the money she's made from it um and not end up dead or killed or locked up or whatever else.

4:37And I think that to me was just a way into thinking about what liberalism, what free society for women, discussions about that. I'm not trying to now say everything's perfect. Bonnie Blue's a sign of how great women's lives are. But it does, as I say, it makes an argument for those outer limits. In terms of prostitution, I mean, I'm not going to defend. I actually in the book, I strayed into OnlyFans again because of the financial arguments, because I'm reluctant to assume that people who do post pictures, you know, nude pictures themselves or other things on OnlyFans for out of desperate financial straits that we should be saying to them they shouldn't be doing that.

5:20Julie obviously knows a hell of a lot more about the harms of prostitution. And I think that's probably a different subject. and she may disagree with that. However, I'm not defending prostitution. Julie, if we take feminism out of this and we just talk about a liberal society, is there a world in which Bonnie Blue can be a good sign or would you contest that argument? Well, if we take feminism out of this and we look at a liberal approach, then that assumes a level playing field and that's the problem with liberalism for feminists, in my view. I don't mean freedom, I mean liberalism. and I don't think it's helpful to use Bonnie Blue as an example of the upper limits of women's sexual freedom because she is an abhorrence and it's also not helpful to look at someone as exceptional as Bonnie Blue and to compare her with what might happen to for example a woman being stoned to death in a square in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

6:23I think what we have to do rather than that is look at the reaction that those of us that really understand the freedom that we're fighting for for women the freedom from male violence the threat of male violence which I would argue is the one thing that unites women all over the world because we don't I mean apart from the fact that we have a biological sex I mean that's that's pretty much it. But the freedom from sexual violence, from male violence, means that we have to look at our reaction to a woman standing in barely any clothes on a freezing cold evening on a street corner, desperately looking for punters who's going to pay for one-sided sexual consent sex and a woman in a full face veil a woman who hasn't got the freedom to show any part of her body or whatsoever and I think that gives me the same feeling which is a distinct lack of freedom for women to genuinely choose their own their liberation because no woman on this planet and there's always somebody who will say yes but I did and my kids go to the private schools in the Cotswolds and I really enjoyed being a sex worker and I've got a second home and all of this no woman on this planet would choose prostitution if there was genuinely any other option and then if we broaden this out I think prostitution only found its own separate debate But I think most people agree that it comes hot on the heels of the first moments of sexual liberation, things like the pill, things like sex out of marriage were necessary for us to get to the point we are now.

8:16Miriam, you spoke about the fact that feminism, medical advancements have allowed women to safely become mothers, but also the fact that many aren't choosing to. Do you blame sexual liberation for that or do you sort of view them as separate features of modernity? I mean, yes and no. Every action has consequences, doesn't it? And I think there are many, many benefits, of course, to be able to control your own reproduction. I'm glad that I don't have 15 children by now, for example. But the ability to delay having children inevitably means that people will put it off because it's something you don't have to do now.

8:56and therefore what we're now seeing is that people are putting it off until it is biologically too late. So obviously, of course, many of the advances we've seen, none of us in this room would ever want to overturn, but we also have to recognise that that has consequences in terms of, for example, employers now think that it's OK to tell women to freeze their eggs. Now, are they doing that because they feel altruistic and they want that woman to have the chance of motherhood? No, they are doing that because they want to exploit the most productive years of her employed life in the workplace to stop her taking maternity leave.

9:31And they know they can only do that if she has this insurance policy so that she will give up those best years. Now, it's no insurance policy at all. I mean, freezing eggs is very, very unsuccessful, especially if you wait till your mid 30s to do it, which is, of course, when most people think about it. So it's basically dodgy insurance. So, you know, there are swings and roundabouts to these things at the individual level. is it an instrument for control and freedom? Yes. At a societal level, is it actually harming one of the greatest ambitions that most women have, which is to become a mother?

9:59And I would say yes, because at every stage that these advances take, it gives women the responsibility of choosing when to have the child and become a mother. And then it makes her look like she's irresponsible or letting the employer down or letting the husband down or whatever it is in wanting to have children now rather than in five years time and you've saved up more money. Now, none of these things are black and white, but I think what we're getting to here is that a successful society, a free society, a safe society is one where there are good relationships between men and women. And that is what civilisation is built on at the end of the day, because if you're going to have a successful society and civilisation, you need to raise children who are going to take that civilisation forward.

10:42And how do you do that well? Well, in most circumstances, it's that child having a loving father and a loving mother who invest in them. And in the West, over centuries, we have developed a system for doing that. And it's monogamous marriage being the norm. Not always, of course, there are always going to be exceptions to that rule. But the idea that the best way to raise children is in a family with a mum and a dad has stood us in good stead for a long time. And the evidence still suggests that that's the best way to raise a child. And the minute you start to suggest that actually men and women may be against each other, that somehow you have to fight each other rather than find a way of cooperating, and that means both sexes making compromises, then I think we get into this position where it's man versus woman.

11:27And we're now seeing, I mean, this is an astonishing statistic, but in the 1990s, I think just 3 % of 25-year-old men were virgins. It's now 12%. Quadrupled 25-year-old men. Is that number similar for women? I don't know the number for women, but I think the Times reports today 30 % of young women under 30 have never had a relationship. This is not a good thing if you want a next generation and most people want to feel fulfilled in a relationship. So I absolutely believe in women's advocacy and women's rights but I also think there has to be an element of compromise. If we want strong and good men we need to understand how we women can also make that possible.

12:08Zoe's got some thoughts. I'm just suspicious and uneasy with the idea that we need to restrict the options for women to save them from these bad social outcomes. And I think, again, this comes up a lot in the hookup culture debate, whereas I think women and girls make a lot more decisions about that than society made me. And I think, you know, you might as well say by that argument, let's get rid of condoms because they're allowing people to have... No. Sorry, sorry. So I think the employer is offering... Well, everyone knows why they're offering them. I think women, in my experience, women and girls think very carefully about these things.

12:44They're not as out to lunch as people make out that they think they can have babies at 45 or whatever from their own eggs. But I think there's so many different pieces to the puzzle. And I think that this idea that, you know, you can just create what you want in terms of social bonds through top down interference in these choices. I think that's the wrong way to go. And I think we need to give way more credit to women's facility to think about these things independently and make decisions. I really don't think women just think, oh, great, Apple's offering me this egg freezing, everything will be fine.

13:20I don't have to look for a relationship. I think some do those, Zoe, not because women are stupid, but because they're offered something that is, it's answering, it's solving a problem, a potential problem for them. and feminists back in the 1970s and by the way Miriam I kind of agree with your argument because I was a lesbian at the end of the 1970s I went into the lesbian communes where they were raising kids together and it's not something I would advocate but we invented polyamory let me be telling you that but I do think when feminists decided that we were on a road to hell with the very early reproductive technologies that were being developed, they knew what was going to happen.

14:06These feminists wanted to develop women's choice, give women freedom and choice, not restrict choice about reproductive options. But they pinpointed the hell that was coming, which was surrogacy, egg freezing, all of those really physically harmful ways of, I hate to use the term unnatural, obviously being a lesbian, but you know what I mean. Anything that means that you have to have really serious medical intervention in order to have a baby, whether it's your own or when you're much older. It's extremely bad for women. So I'm not suggesting that we have a top-down dictatorship that says that women have to either get pregnant naturally in their 20s or not.

15:00But this whole notion of freedom about reproductive so-called rights has left women really in the soup when it comes to the removal of their rights and the renting of their wombs and growing babies in order to sell them. I suppose that most women who freeze their eggs are very grateful for it and say it's but it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Fewer than 100 eggs. 80 % to freeze embryos to know what you've got. I think Ella, we're circling this question of choice which you spoke really eloquently about and you all spoke about birth rates and obviously we're now at a point where being a mother is sort of an absolute choice for the closest it has ever been.

15:39You can choose to take contraception, you can choose to have an abortion, you can choose to freeze your eggs, you can choose to do IVF, you can choose to have a surrogate and yet we have fewer women become mothers ever. Do you think that, you know, choice is always good to hell with the consequences? Or do you have anxieties about this world? I think we should have anxieties about consequences, but that doesn't mean we give up on the idea of a choice. I mean, I think that medical intervention into the natural processes of women is a wonderful thing. I wouldn't have my two children without IVF, which was a very, yes, invasive, serious procedure that I will kiss the feet of every doctor that was ever involved in them because I have two beautiful kids as a consequence and I think that the fact that we look at the consequence of modern society that there are lots of women who quite enjoy their careers and are quite having a lot of fun in the office or wherever it is they are and are wanting to I mean like let's be real here that egg freezing you can paint it as this sort of very dystopian thing or you can also paint it as a solution to women who want to buy a bit of time and it can be a dodgy insurance policy but for some women it works and you know it's a consequence of modern society that women aren't wanting to have children at 22 they're more likely to want to have children at 32 and so can we meet that demand you know can count is it possible that modern technology can do that ivf is a wonderful wonderful invention as is cesareans by the way of which i've had two of them i mean like let's be real here what is the consequence of restricting or rowing back on some of these medical innovations for women.

17:09It's going back to the natural world in which women died or were saddled with, you know, 11, 15 children coming from an Irish background. I can tell you it's not much. But I do think lots of women. I'll just finish. I'll have a moment to speak now. But there's a I you know, I want to come back to the Bonnie Blue thing, because as much as I'm tired as the rest of you of hearing about, I think she's I think it's important. Talking about Bonnie Blue and sex is a bit like talking about Tommy Robinson and the far right and politics. It's like this thing that allows everybody to feel very safe because they don't have to actually deal with what's going on because you can just have your position there and the rest of it you don't really have to deal with.

17:48What's actually happening in the discussion about sex, sexual freedom, casual sex, hookup culture, apps, all the rest of it, and even OnlyFans and stuff like that and young people, is that there is a very dominant narrative now that doing things on the limb, one night stands being a bit free with yourself is negative I mean I cannot believe that how influential someone like Louise Perry is who advocates for no sex before marriage and I meet lots of young people who are lapping this up I mean I like I'm I'm I'm kind of married prude but I end up wanting to sort of like get naked in public and say it's really not that bad you know because it's I cannot believe that that in particular young women are feeling so nervous and frightened about the prospect of what a lot of the time is having fun.

18:35And I think what we really have to say is if you want to, you know, we're all chin scratching about why there's so many women who aren't having kids or the people aren't having relationships or there's so many virgins at this age. I know why that is. It's because for the last 20 years at least, we have been telling young people to be afraid of each other. And in particular, we've been framing men and women's relationships as inherently toxic. So even if you look at things like the way that PHSC is now taught, sex education is taught at schools, it's not just about the birds and the bees and wear a condom, this is your period, you know, all the rest of it, the mechanics of it.

19:14There's a lot of trans ideology crap that comes into it. But also, which very rarely gets criticised, there's the relationship aspect of it, which is that we are now sort of teaching kids how to have good relationships. And that's not just just sort of average, be nice to each other, don't ever kind of be mean talk. It's like coaching them and how to do a thing that's uncoachable. You cannot have you cannot have a formula manual laid out script on how to have sex with each other, of how to have your first sexual experience, of how to meet the love of your life. These things inherently involve an element of unknown.

19:53And sometimes that unknown is very harmful when people choose to abuse one another, when men choose to abuse women. And we can be hard as possible on that. But what I think we're ending up doing now is trying to micromanage young men and women, which means that they're scared of each other. I mean, the amount of women that I talk to who say, you know, particularly a few years ago, you know, every UK campus now is a site of rape culture. And you think, what? I mean, that's I don't want to be flippant here. That is absolutely incredible that there are young women going around the UK universities who are scared of being raped.

20:31And that is that bears no relationship to any evidence of their of how fearful they should be. it is a completely hyped up view which ends up impinging on their freedom because they won't go out and do the things that I did or women that their mothers did I mean actually I think there's a really generational sort of conversations can play a really interesting role here because I think a lot of the time I noticed that women in my mother's generations who for whom you might want to call it rape culture you might want to call it misogyny or sexism was the absolute norm I mean, the unquestionable norm for my mum.

21:06And now, and she looks at the way that I live and thinks this is just, you know, planets apart. And yet, the way my mum feels about what her life was like in terms of fear is completely different to how young women are now taught now. Young women now are full of fearful language about relationships. I met a woman the other day who was talking about hookup culture, genuinely saying, you know, what happens if I end up not, you know, having, you know, two or three relationships? You think, oh my God. double it triple it come on you know that there's it's I think that the fear is coming from somewhere that isn't based in reality and that's having the consequences of you know fewer families if that's what you're worried about but I think what I'm more interested in is women's sense of themselves and sense of reality because I you know I want people to have more babies I think families are wonderful but it's interesting that I think that so much of the discussion now around how we facilitate that is framed around reining women back in how do you get them back under control because the problem isn't that they're having you know that they're that they're not doing the right things the problem is they've got too much freedom and there's a very misanthropic element to all of this which is that in particular it's misanthropic and probably misogynistic which is that if you give women too much freedom they do disgusting things with it they become like Bonnie Blue or they you know they do sort of irresponsible things they they don't even think about having kids until it's 41 and they're too late I just think more of women I'm not so misanthropic I'm not so disinterested in our own agency and ability I think we need to just come back to reality here and say what is it that we're giving up in this view of saying that there is too much freedom in the world there's not enough there's not even nearly enough.

22:53Thank you so much for listening and to hear more about our events visit events.spectator.co.uk

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