215. Zoe Strimpel

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. It went viral for sure. And, you know, that's the positive note to say. I think like as my very close friend and sort of inspiring mentor friend David Deutsch, the physicist, always says, you know, this is the first pogrom in history, like to this size where we've had so many people who are on our side. and actually I did feel I feel that for every hideous escapade you know thing that happens we're not alone but don't blame society you do not have to get into this stuff you don't have to you can get into chess don't forget the Daily Mail would tell us for years and years and years if you weren't married with a baby by the age of 35 you were biologically dead and you were on the shelf I am difficult because I have a difficult mother and I saw how it works.

0:58You can ask the question that everybody else thinks is too bold. You can do it. It's crazy and it's like scary, but you can do it. And so that's why I have intellectual confidence.

1:19I've got so much to ask you Zoe Dr. Zoe Strumpel a doctor because you've done a PhD yeah I am technically a doctor I just always forget that fact but you know something technically I won't call you a doctor because we only do for medical doctors fine works for me I wouldn't have even thought of it if you hadn't brought it up. You're a journalist, author, academic historian. You've got a weekly opinion column in the Sunday Telegraph. And I think listeners will remember because you've written most recently and visibly about the rise in open antisemitism here in the UK, both before and after your ill-fated visit to that gallery in Margate that was displaying openly antisemitic artwork, in inverted commas, and re-sharing to the public what appeared to be ancient and modern blood libels on its innocent white walls.

2:15You've been called a Zionist whore during the club. You've got a new book out called The Good Slut. Just Good Slut, actually. Good Slut, which tells women to grab life by the ovaries, which is a kind of odd one. It imagines me burrowing into someone's innards. It was supposed to be comic, that. It wasn't supposed to be taken so straight. But yes, some people have laughter that grabbing life by the ovaries. And Goodsla also tells readers that they should ride the cock carousel. Well, it doesn't. So we'll get on to that. OK. One of those many misconceptions. I didn't actually write that, but this is a great thing that I'd like to discuss.

2:55But I think that there was a lot in the book I agreed with, some I didn't disagree with. We will get to it. I love this line about the kind of culture of victimhood, the hum, the low hum of the misery memoir that's inherent in a lot of women's conversations, a lot of women's writing. And you say, why do we insist on acting like the whole horizon for women is one nuclear cloud of radioactive misery? All that good stuff to come. Good slut, anti-Semitism, what happened in Margate. and of course we're going to get to the events of this week when it looked like the dam had broken on anti-Semitism with the attack on two Jews in Golders Green.

3:40Can we begin with your early life Zoe Strumpel which sounds pretty idyllic. It was idyllic in terms of my parents moved from Dollis Hill which is not a glamorous area of North London to a beautiful seaside enclave north of Boston in Massachusetts. So that part of it was idyllic. There was, you know, cultural clash. I mean, Jewish, you know, my parents are both refugee children, children of German Jewish refugees. Fled the Nazis. Who fled the Nazis very late, late 30s. Quite, you know, different. My dad grew up in India. Anyway, let's just say, long story short, we didn't belong. and in the 80s there wasn't any of this like fuzzy diversity inclusion stuff so so it was it was difficult as a childhood surroundings because being so obviously a misfit culturally and being like the weird one clearly and weird family just by dint of being so other it was very waspy waspy town like you know Episcopalian town so that was that was a little bit did you go to synagogue when they all went to the Episcopalian church oh absolutely and there were like you know my best friend's mother was did not like me she didn't like me hanging out with her daughter too much because she wanted the daughter to be with the church group and you know my mother still hasn't really forgotten this or gotten over it um but yes i went to there was a synagogue a few towns away they're not there were not many jews in the area um in the town called gloucester mass which if anyone has ever seen the perfect storm starring george clooney comes out of gloucester massachusetts where my synagogue was like a fishing village it is well it's a fishing town there's some mafia there.

5:14There's a lot of Sicilians. It's actually amazing. It was quite rough. Do you still have roots there? My parents still have the very house that we moved to when I was three. So they now split their time between there and here because I have a little daughter that is the light of their life. But yes, I do. I don't feel American. But I cannot tell you how gorgeous it is. But tourists don't know about it, which is the best. I'm not trying to give you ideas. I feel like booking my summer holiday there immediately. at least. No, I mean, if you haven't already, Rachel, you are missing a trip. I love the East Coast.

5:47I love Maine. Maine is lovely. But there's a sort of, you know, it's a bit like, you know, the Hamptons or the Cotswolds. There are these kind of go-to places for like the well-heeled and the in crowd. But we aren't in that at all. It sounds like it was really fishermen. It was very real. I mean, you went to Beedales. Yes. When I was 16, I went back to the UK to Beedales. Another culture shock. So wait, so you were flying across the Atlantic? Just on that plane. In economy. Air India was the cheapest then. Really? I was always American Airlines. I didn't know if only I'd been able to get some good curry on the plane.

6:21You'd get really good vegetarian curry on Air India. Oh, yeah, the food's great. You did then, but you had people literally smoking in the back. Oh, I remember that well. I used to, sometimes as a teenager, get on board with that smoking in the back. Yeah, B-Dales. And it was, my father had gone to B-Dales. His sister had gone to B-Dales. It used to be a bit more of an academic school. When I was there, it was just very much not an academic school. but it was nice. It was okay. Like I'm not a school person but let's just put it this way. No boys liked me so I had lots of time to study for my A-levels and do well and then go to Cambridge.

6:56If boys had liked me I would not have had the life I have. So you were unpopular but you were academic. You went to Jesus Cambridge. What did you read? I was romantically unpopular. It's sort of clear. I've always had friends but the boys never liked me. I read English. oh well that's that's tough to get in on english it was tough i gather now nobody wants to do it yes thank you i mean i just thought you know shoot for the go for the top you then went on to this is why you were your doctor strimple you went to wolfson uh also in cambridge where you did an mphill in gender studies what year are we in then well now we've jumped forward 10 years to 2012 um nobody had heard of intersectionality at that point tinder had was just about to launch and I did my, so I did my MPhil about sort of things to do with internet dating and gender.

7:42So that was sort of fun and on point. But then I realized maybe I had spent my 20s being a, you know, a lifestyle journalist and a dating columnist and it didn't quite feel right. And I thought I still have an intellect here. So I'm going to pursue academia. So that's what I did. It was like out of nowhere. No one could believe it. They just associated me with like gold, gold leaf spa treatments. And then suddenly I'm like, no, I'm all about the life of the mind. But I chose history for my PhD because I think it's the only rigorous subject in the humanities, apart from classics, maybe. Okay, so the PhD and the thesis are separate.

8:17So the thesis was on pre-Tinder. Yeah, it was the 70s and 80s, basically the way. I want to read the prehistory of Tinder. Yeah, well, I have a monograph. I did. Okay, and you're going to send it to me afterwards. You were such, this is also academic, I'm so impressed. You were a search fellow at Sussex. Yeah, and then I did do a couple of postdocs. One was a British Academy at Warwick. So that's my kind of, you know, my claim. I was never any good at getting into competitive things as a kid. I never won anything. But I did get, this was quite competitive. And I was good. I was a good, you know, early career historian.

8:50But then I gave it all up again because I didn't have it in me to keep, to like bash out another academic monograph. You know, you have to play the game. The game lost its charm after COVID and at the beginning of the real where we are now politically. You know Kathleen Stock, obviously. she was you know this was all the gender critical academic who was deep de-platformed basically bullied out of sussex yeah and she so it was all sort of starting around then my and so i just thought i don't think i'm going to belong in academia but also you'd focused on business practices of feminist publishers yeah so this this proved to be a very informative postdoc i did because i i was basically my thing was spare rib so i'm very acquainted with the precursor of where we are now in terms of like the leftist quasi you know quote unquote feminist anti-zionism because i've been i've i was immersed in that stuff for that postdoc spare rib presumably when it was launched by rosie boycott and i can't remember her partner in marcia rowe marcia in the 70s couldn't have been anti-zionist it was surely just feminist wasn't it so the 70s the first few years were great.

9:58Marsha and Rosie's publication was like a, you know, accessible and covered a range of things. And they were just feeling their way. It started to get really vicious after the Lebanon-Israel war in 1982. And at that point, those early people who ran Sparrow Rib were out. And over the 80s, they replaced them with a collective, which became Black run. And it was considered like Black women have been repressed. So now they should run the show and white women need to shut up which became a byword for jewish women and jews and white women cleared out eventually and and jews broke the whole movement and spare ribs and microcosm broke it buckled over g over the israel jewish stuff in in the 80s so we actually covered that a bit in in good slot i do i do talk about it in good slot and i i've written about it recently in tablet with nicole lampert who's a you know warrior of anti-semitism about how this is the second time feminism has been broken by anti-semitism because we're there again now obviously with rape denial of october 7th and everything um some some quite outrageous stuff so it all ties together like the gender stuff the anti-semitism the feminism the zionism and there's no coincidence that you know zionist whore rolls off trips off the tongue for people and i actually think there's something about zion if you really want to be a feminine feminism if you are interested in feminism is zionism i'm not quite sure why that's the case but I know it is what's the correlation I think it's that um the same people that you know there's the misogyny and anti-semitism share certain things and one of them is the belief that you know self-determination isn't for everyone um and so if you really are you know someone who believes that in human self-determination and autonomy and freedom then you and you force it to the you know including for Jews and also for like really annoying women if that's your perspective on women then you get that's a kind of similar concept and i think i've felt i haven't yet fleshed that but i've felt on the receiving end of a lot of you know anti-semitic and anti-zionist and misogynistic loathing and there's a way in which there's a sort of you need to put these uppity people down whether it's an uppity woman or an uppity jew and so i think there is something there and i i'm not saying this is a fully develop theory but i think there's a lot there and probably should be the subject of your next book because my zionism is founded on my rage against the treatment of women under islam and the the treatment of women under zionism leaving the ultra-orthodox the haradi and and communities out of it and the orthodox communities out of it you know israel being the only pluralist democracy in the middle east and yet the very people who wouldn't last two seconds in Gaza are the ones who are most triggered by the existence of Israel.

12:48Exactly. And my people, I think, assume that if you are pro-Zionist, you are in some way Islamophobic. But two things do have a relationship, I'm afraid, because if you understand and get what Zionism is, which is equality and democracy, you know, voting rights, gender equality, women fighting in the army, Arabs voting in the Knesset. This is a culture that is so completely alien to a culture that, you know, we've seen in the Muslim majority countries. And people don't like that. And when you find these, like, brave Muslim feminists who speak out against the, you know, incredible, horrible things that happen to women in these societies.

13:38They're often Zionists as well. And that's no coincidence. Well, look at Ayaan Hirson Ali. Exactly. And others like Yasmin Mohammed and, you know, all sorts. Sure. And they are brave. The very brave. They are the bravest of the brave.

13:54So Zoe, I mean, suddenly you were a course-celebe because you'd visited a gallery in Margate. and I'm not sure why you went. Did you go because this guy was showing? No, no, no idea. Okay, well then tell the story in your own words. So I had a weekend, a rare weekend to myself and I decided last minute to go to Margate because everyone talks about Margate and I still haven't been and I'm like, oh, is it? Tracy Emmett. Tracy Emmett, but I'm not, yeah. And also the food and, you know, the sea. I thought, I'll see the Turner Contemporary, you know, art, art. So I just, you know, decided 11 p.m. the previous night.

14:28I got on the train the next day. I booked a hilarious kind of Edwardian three-star hotel miles up the sea. I couldn't get into any of the hipster ones. And anyway, so I just went to the Tracy Emin Gallery, and then I was on my way back, and I noticed people going up a small road to another gallery, a small gallery. I thought, I'll just follow them in. I mean, I was going to see, but, you know, this sounds like it looks like a cute gallery. It's, you know, so that's what I always do. I just follow people into places. And so if I'm in a new place. So I followed them in, and then suddenly I was like, uh oh okay so that was a bit of a slow-mo first I saw everyone was wearing like really garish gigantic kefirs like everyone like it was a uniform um and then I saw there was like a table stacked with pamphlets full of like mad propaganda this Ramadan don't buy Israeli dates boy you know don't drink coke it's the taste of apartheid Palantir all this Palantir conspiracy stuff is really taking off drink Gaza Cola yeah so they were drinking Gaza Cola I've actually never seen people literally drink it before but anyway then i was like oh and then i saw this like screed and it was called drawings against genocide right so it had a fairly like you know this is this could be something the labor government hosted drawings against genocide i mean you know sorry why do you say that well i mean they obviously support they don't uh they create a permission structure for people to libel israel as having committed genocide but others might say that labor hasn't completely stopped its arms sales to israel so they're actually enabling genocide well they might say that but there's no genocide so you know well that's a separate conversation we know there isn't it's not even a conversation it's just like well we well the thing is the fact that that the assumption of genocide has now entered the language as a terribly damaging trope that has contributed to what happened quite on the streets of gold is green and throughout north london it just i mean and that's why when i looked at the art on the wall i knew it was incitement because when you start saying these people are baby killers who spew blood from their every orifice and they stamp on skulls, then they're not even they're beneath human.

16:30They're beneath rats. They don't deserve the protection of the law. And that's what came through when I saw that. And that's what happens every time we are accused of war crimes, which is what happens through this genocide libel. It dehumanizes and it legitimizes killing us. And that's why, you know, again, I use this term permission structure for violence. Sure, it's an art gallery. We're in a democracy. We don't like shutting down artists. But when you when you have things like that, that are layer upon layer upon layer that aren't challenged, right to the very top where we have politicians saying there's a genocide.

16:59Anything now that comes from Golders Green, this is why Jews are fed up. We the whole root cause we've known all along, which is anti Zionism. There's so many lies, and they're so lethal, that it's very hard to stay calm. I completely understand it. Funny kind of genocide when there's no, you know, with everyone, Well, the population of Gaza has gone up sevenfold. The population of the Jews has not yet reached the point it was before the Holocaust. Yeah, exactly. It's just the genocide stuff. It's just all it's all the same. You can whatever they want to say, apartheid, genocide, Israeli war. It's all just part of the same lethal.

17:37You know, it is these lethal lies. Do you accept at all that the fact that Israel joined forces with America, i.e. little Satan and great Satan to attack Iran has made life for all Jews around the world tougher. No, I mean, I don't accept that when you I don't accept that there's any merit in starting to make excuses for violence against Jews to do with completely righteous foreign policy or otherwise, because it just doesn't apply to anyone. It's never the reason. We don't chase after women in hijab. and we should I mean that's one where you think well we shouldn't but I could I could see why people might feel like this these countries have caused us nothing but misery Islamism since 9 11 has marred the whole face of the western experience we can't even go through airport security now because of Islamist terrorism without having to empty it you know but nobody does that okay good but um no so it's never this is just another one of those you know oh maybe if we're better then they won't hate us and try to kill us.

18:37That's what it boils down to. So no, I just, I don't think it matters. I think we could do that. We could do another thing. We could do nothing. And it would all be used against us in some way or another. That's how, that's how it works. I admire your posture. I admire your convictions. And I think you're right. Can I take you back to the gallery? So you're there looking at the baby killers as it were. Blood spewing from like. Yeah, from IDF and dead babies. Erect penis pointing to Netanyahu. Repeating blood libels. Nazi. It was Nazi imagery. It was explicit. So then what happened? So then I was just standing there.

19:09At first I was like sniggering in disbelief. Then I just stood there in a state of shock. I took pictures of everything, obviously. Then I decided to confront the artist, Matthew Collings. Matthew Collings. Because I just thought maybe he's never met a normal Jew before. Maybe he doesn't even, maybe he needs to hear that like this is not okay. Maybe it would be useful in the net, you know, in the overall scheme of things. You know, it may not be, but it's my duty. I don't like public, I don't like getting in fights with people. But, you know, I can't control myself on this one. so I did I said to him I just want to say I'm completely shocked I actually was relatively calm I'm completely shocked by what I've seen anyway before I could get any and I said it's Nazi imagery used against the Jews and before I could get any and these are my colleagues he had in his exhibition he'd he'd had portraits of figures from the new he had Dave Rich who runs the CST as a as a community security trust which keeps Jews safe that's his job so he was part of this exhibition of like the culprits.

20:04Sorry, he was portrayed in the show? He was portrayed, yeah. And so Dave Rich then said, you know, he's experienced all sorts of things, but the kinds of hate he then experienced after the show. Simon Sharma was in there. Jerry Seinfeld was in there. I wish Jerry Seinfeld was my colleague. So hold on. He had representations of these people who've been allies and who've stood up for the Jews. Who are Jews, but not Israelis, which makes the anti... Simon Sharma, Jerry Seinfeld. Dave Rich and others quite a few others. Okay so they were depicted I didn't get that. Yeah yeah yeah what did he say? There was a frenzy of sort of swastikas and Israeli flags and stars of Davids I mean it was like in Germany it would have definitely been illegal so then he said he just started cutting me off and barking at me and saying I was just repeating Hasbara talking points.

20:50Hasbara means it's a Hebrew word for explaining that's literally what it means it's like how Jews explain Israel so you know he was like in my face you don't believe any of what you're saying you're i don't think you mean anything for you i said yeah i think you're an anti-sema i can't believe what i'm saying and and i said i think i'm actually going to call the police and he just started jeering at me yeah go call the police like you know he'd obviously known that he the police wouldn't do anything jeering jeering jeering call the police call someone was taking pictures of my face because they were going to put me into the exit quite clearly i was going to be added uh so then i was uh they said he told me to leave and then everyone kind of closed in around me and i i did leave and we had a final thing at the door where i turned and I tried to film it, but I was in such a state, I didn't press the button twice, so I didn't film.

21:32But I was basically like, that's right. I hope you enjoy the optics of this, everyone. You're booting the Jew out after, you know, of your anti-Semitic exhibition. Hope you enjoy it. He was like, Husband, talking boys. You don't mean anything. And everyone was going, boo, boo. And then this woman in there, also who I reported to the police, was wearing the invert triangle of Hamas, which was to globalize the Intifada, over it. And the thing that broke my heart, as I said on Twitter, was that she had a small, gorgeous child with her. who's you know I think that should be social services should get involved because actually I think children should not be there should be you should not be allowed to expose children to terrorist propaganda I don't think you should I think that's a welfare issue personally or a safeguarding issue anyway I wouldn't want any child to be taken away from the mother unless the real issue here is that all those people in the gallery thought that they were morally right and they're doing and what he was doing was that he was on the side of the angels and that you were wrong.

22:25I don't know. I think that's charitable. I think there's an erotic thrill in violence. And I think they were all feeling it because his paintings were so pornographic, some of them, and violent. And I think we know from Hitler, and we know from the Nazis that the urge to murder and denigrate and dehumanize Jews is always tinged with erotic feeling. I don't think there was any sense of it angelic. I think it was I think it was about violence and thuggery. That's always what it is that the Nazis didn't think they were being angelic they thought they were they were being thought they were tapping into a disgusting violent thuggy murderousness savagery and I think that's what was that was what I felt um so then I I left and I just um I called the police and I called the CST and the police were like uh what okay we'll come down and have a look they then called me the next day and said no it's just criticism of Israel it's nothing like to see here and I and so then I made a complaint etc um and but I'd written this I just didn't so I put I don't even have a huge following on x but I did just sort of immediately do yeah so it went viral for sure and you know that's the positive note to say I think like as as my very close friend and sort of inspiring mentor friend David Deutsch the physicist always says you know this is the first pogrom in history like to this size where we've had so many people who are on our side and actually I did feel I feel that for every hideous escapade you know thing that happens we we're not alone I don't think we are alone and yet you know and I felt that I felt that I'm this is disgusting and threatening but they mess with me at their peril and they pick the wrong Jew and you know lawyers for Israel help there there's a huge support structure and people there are good people like you Rachel you know who who understand the way I feel very I mean if I feel alone and frightened for the Jewish people.

24:16Goodness knows what Jews feel. Jews need to feel angry and scary. People need to be a little more afraid of us. But also everyone's got to stand up and just call this stuff out. Yeah. You've used the word pogrom already. And we've talked about people who are in the point of, a lot of people who are talking about leaving the country. I mean, I've got to ask how close is the Jewish community if there is a kind of entity that you can call the Jewish community. I mean, I'm on WhatsApp groups, but how close do they feel they are to a second Holocaust? So I personally don't feel that we're anywhere near a second Holocaust, and I don't think that's what's on the cards here.

25:03What I think it is is, you know, Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine, And I think we are seeing perhaps a more metaphorical Holocaust of our culture. Once you allow the Jews to go. Yeah, like the Holocaust, the parasocial Holocaust is taking place through the, you know, Michelle Welbeck wrote about it, Submission. Of course. That's happening. That's what's happening. The quiet takeover of all of them. Yeah. Sainsbury's having everything about Eid. We should explain about Welbeck. He wrote a book in French, Soumission, probably 15 years ago about a socialist-Islamist alliance in France in order to take power in France.

25:43The socialists had to get in bed with these Islamists and basically France fell. And France becomes an Islamic republic. Yeah. But it happens quietly. It happens with a whimper, not a bang. and that's what you know friends of mine who've spent time in germany recently like their daughter came back thinking she should be dressed more modestly because her whole class was muslim it's things like that both the paris in paris they've had modesty fashion week yeah okay it's happening it's happening look at the supermarkets modesty fashion by the way they had a whole week and this is a country that actually bans face coverings they had a whole fashion show yeah of hijab and niqab and whatever.

26:22It's happening. And so that's the and it's, you know, plenty of people more articulate than me, including former Muslim women, have talked about the absolute, it's not just like another culture that we have to assimilate. It is dedicated to our destruction and also taking over. And there's this brilliant book by Richard Lance called Lethal Journalism. Oh, Can the Whole World Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Jihad and something, something. and he talks about caliphatists and that's what this is. This is an imperial movement to take over the world. It's so tiring. Why can't they just let everyone get on with their lives?

26:58Because we're getting on with our lives and into the breach because I wish that was always the way but people seem to be very power hungry. Why can't Putin just, you know, let us get on with our lives? We must leave time to talk about good sluts. Please, I want good, poor old good slut. Where is she? Yeah. She, you say. But it relates because I want women. Can I just say where I think it relates? And I've had an epiphany, which is I think that misogyny and anti-Semitism go hand in hand. They are the ancient hatreds, essentially, of one women and two Jews, the Jewish people. And if you can't openly hate women, because you're basically, you're not supposed to in the West, you can hate Jewish people more openly.

27:43Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, I in the book, I do have this bit about some of these the way, for instance, some Palestinian British professor talks about Kamala Harris in the same breath, calling her like a dirty Zionist. Again, the Zionist whore. But it was like the critique of her being an idiot woman was tied up with her allegedly being even though she wasn't, you know, pro-Israel. It's all it's all mashed together.

28:13So Good Slut is essentially a manifesto for female freedom, as I understand it, in a classical liberal way. And the reason I felt like I needed to write it now is because I can see very bad thinking and ideologies creeping around, making incursions into that freedom across the political spectrum from the left to the right in different ways. and you know part of it is is saying what we have going for us that we need to protect and in doing that and that what's good about women's horizons now and why I don't want them to be crunched down into oblivion and even just saying that which is sort of positive and and I and you know got me has garnered me a lot of like derision and I think you know if you're going to defend what the West is no you know you've got to boil down what what the liberal democracies of the West offer.

29:03And one of those things is a kind of mediated capitalism, i.e. the freedom to make money and money. And you have to think critically and carefully about money. And people are, we've lost, you know, the debate about money and wealth is that it's all bad. Rich people are bad. Billionaires are bad. Get rid of them. Everything's bad. People who have money are terrible, evil. And now I wish I'd made, I wish I could say I had lots of money. On the contrary, I really have not capitalized on my own rights to make money in our society. But I think if you're interested in women's freedom, you have to appreciate the pillars of that freedom.

29:33And one of them is the freedom to make money and to keep that money. And that can't be done in a socialist or a communist or a dictatorship society. It has to be done in a society like ours. So we have to think about that. Then we have to think, well, what are the dimensions of that? What enables women to make money and to keep it and to be ambitious? Well, it's to give vent to their appetites and to allow them to think outside the box, to get outside of constraints about what is feminine behavior. And I think my argument really, and this again goes back to anti-Semitism and Zionism, the idea that people are people, is that all people are interested in attaining what money, power, influence and job satisfaction can do for them.

30:15And sexual freedom is just part of the picture of that. So I'm making an argument for the human desire to be promiscuous mentally, intellectually in terms of like their work in terms of power in terms of all those things and that women are people too and the bit of women that is you know circumscribed by hormones or you know our physical realities to do with reproduction that is a very profound part but it's just a part and the whole is that we're humans and the same applies to jews and so you you just come up against that every time and i think you know when i see um the illiberality coming across from the left and the right.

30:50So, you know, I was interested, Louise Perry, who wrote that book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. She's incredibly thoughtful. She's very charming. She's no idiot. It's a valid book. But, you know, it was interesting to me because she basically is saying women should really, it's a cry for modesty, basically, in keeping with women's nature. If women want to not be raped, there needs to be a real push, pulling back. If they don't want to get diseases raped or be ghosted, they've got to be much more conservative. Don't get drunk with alone with men. And, you know, what was interesting was that the left was into that argument as well.

31:22And I'm saying. Why was it? Explain. Why was the left? Why did the left subscribe to it? Because it tapped perfectly into the left's idea of victimhood and exploitation of women. We've got to protect women. They're always being abused. Yeah. So the only way. All men are rapists. And it's a very anti-sex position. Like women. Sex is always just a question of predation for women on one hand. But then equally, we need to be really strident about our, you know, sexual pleasure and demands and all this boundaries and all this stuff. So it's a bit of a, it's a sort of like you can do no right. Okay, so there was an unholy alliance between the sort of, the conservatives who said women have to be much more conservative and homemakers and mothers and the left who said that women are all victims and men are all rapists.

32:01Well, so it's the same old split between left and right always, which is that the right wants us to heed a phantom of nature. Nature, so women's nature is to be, you know, reproductive and hearth and home. And the left is always into the... Mine wasn't. of course it's bullshit and the left wants us to be it's about society the analysis is about society so social forces are exploiting us so the right wants us to heed nature the left wants us to heed power and society and the result is that women are just like these sitting ducks but they should be very angry sitting ducks anyway it's all just such crap because women so this is why I wanted to write this is the best time this is a brilliant time why did the new statesman call it outrageous and boring do you think well boring maybe because um it's not boring but you know i again you can do no right i it's actually a well-researched book with a lot of citations not boring i mean i have a phd and m phil and two postdocs and a monograph in this area so i mean if that counts as boring yeah but then equally i was called slipshod and scattershot and sloppy so you know you really cannot do boring and sloppy but that's a strange combo i think the new statesman the woman, the girl who, sorry, woman who reviewed it, and that goes for Poppy Soarby in the Times as well, young, right?