EXACTLY. With Florence Given. Episode 7: FEMINISM: Choices, Cults and Guilt with Deborah Frances White

Floss: [00:00:00] Hello. Thank you so much for joining me today for Exactly. With me Florence Given. In this podcast, I'm exploring five big subjects from multiple angles; sex, body image, social media and relationships, and stay is the third part of my mini series. All about feminism. I've drawn so much already from my incredible guest, Shon Faye and Jameela Jamil, and I'm so looking forward to welcoming today's guest comedian, feminist podcasting royalty and all round icon, Deborah Francis White. At the end of the episode, we'll be answering the questions that you've sent in via my Instagram stories. And there's so many brilliant ones to choose from. Coming up in the fourth episode on feminism remember, I want to hear from you. My guests and I will be answering your calls, texts, and your voicenotes, so any questions or dilemmas you have to do with feminism? Just drop me a line on my podcast whatsapp number? The number is plus 4 4 7 8 9 0 3 0 2 6 6 5.
Today's [00:01:00] guest is Deborah Francis white. Her podcast the guilty feminists was actually the first podcast I ever listened to. I remember coming into my feminist awakening when I was around. Well, I learned what feminism was when I was around 14 to 15, but it wasn't until I turned 18 that I became enraged with the way that men were just grabbing my body and nightclubs.
And no one around me seemed to really care about it. And I just typed in, I think it just typed in the word feminist on YouTube or Spotify and up came the guilty feminist and it became this little bubble for me. It became a place of escapism where on my, I think I was in college at the time on my summer holidays from college, I would just sit in the sun and listen to these groups of women laugh, confess stuff that they do that they don't believe is feminist. Deborah's classic line that she enters the podcast every episode with is I'm a feminist, but- and then she goes on to read these hilarious lines. It made me feel like I'd found my people. And I just think she has absolutely [00:02:00] harnessed the power of podcasting and she definitely gave me the ability to speak up and use my voice, when I was at that age. There's just so much, I want to talk to her about; modern feminism, the roots of feminism, the roots of the patriarchy, why women feel so guilty about the shit that we do, how we can differentiate between feminist and non feminist acts and decisions and why guilt dominates the female experience? I think she's fucking great. I can't wait to chat with her today. 
Deborah. Thank you so much for coming on to talk to me today. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. So I'm just going to go through some of my quick five questions first. So just say the first thing that comes to your mind.
Okay. Question one. What's one thing that sexual soul on fire? 
DFW: Um, other women doing extraordinary things. 
Floss: Oh, fantastic. Okay. Next question. If you could wear one outfit for the rest of your life, a look that would define you forever. What would that outfit be? 
The Vivienne Westwood Cocotte dress. Didn't have [00:03:00] to think about that, but Vivienne Westwood is another woman doing an extraordinary thing. The cut of it, I've got, I've got one and the cut of it, it hoists your breasts. 
You don't need a bra with it. It's got its own corset. It's like scaffolding and it's just the cut, the drape. And it's so comfortable. You think it's not going to be comfortable, but it is. It's like wearing a second skin. So incredible. A hundred percent that. 
Mine would be a Vivienne Westwood suit. Like one of the Totten ones with the shoulder 
DFW: pads.
I have got one of those as well.. 
Floss: Okay, next question. What's something that people frequently misunderstand or get wrong about you? 
DFW: I think they think, cause I've got a double barreled name. Sometimes they think I'm posher than I am. I'm from Australia and I went to a state school. 
Floss: So I thought you were from Australia. I thought so. 
DFW: I don't have much of an accent, but it comes and goes Floss.. You'll hear it every now and again. 
Floss: comes and goes- awful. 
DFW: Yeah. Um, no, no, that's not bad. If you want to sound Australia. It's just right up the back of the [00:04:00] mouth and then just keep your lips tight. So just don't open your mouth cause the flies might get it, but then you keep everything run to the back of the mouth and then just keep-
 It 
Floss: comes and goes- 
DFW: that's that's not bad.
Floss: No.
DFW: Although I don't think my Australian accent that's great anymore. People, Australian friends said, oh, you sound like a Palm doing an Aussie accent. And I probably do apologize to all the Australian listeners. 
Floss: Next question I'm finished the sentence. I'm still a work in progress when it comes to. 
DFW: Oh, um, cooking, um, and understanding myself.
Floss: Okay. Okay. 
DFW: Very different. 
Floss: Very, yes, very different. Okay. Next question. Last one. When was the last time you made? 
DFW: Oh God, probably 20 minutes ago pinching myself, but things I did 20 years ago, like, you know, two years ago, five years ago, two months ago. Um, 
Floss: do you have any examples? 
DFW: I can't stand listening to myself on my podcast and hearing myself interrupt people.
I have ADHD and I'm [00:05:00] working on what that means. Some great things in terms of your ability for divergent thinking. But some things like you can't wait to say what you need to say. So it's easy to interrupt it. It's also easy to keep talking because your thought is coming in a wave. So I'm working on that, but I hate hearing myself interrupt other people.
Floss: Yes. Yes.
DFW: I think shut up, shut up. 
Floss: Sometimes it just has to come out.
It's an absolute honor to talk to you today because the guilty feminist was something that helped me a lot. And one of the main things I love about the guilty feminist is that you'd name, the contradictions and the guilt that we feel with having the label of feminists and then also doing other things that contradict what we would assume being a feminist means. And I I've always found the show. So hilarious and so funny. And I want to know what was most surprising to you about people's reactions to the podcast? Do you feel like it gave women that sense of freedom? 
DFW: Yeah. I was really surprised I didn't get kicked out of the [00:06:00] feminist club Floss I thought when I started saying I'm a feminist, I, one of my earliest ones was I'm a feminist, but one time I was getting on a light aircraft from Cape Cod to Boston and the pilot asked me my weight in front of everyone. And I lied by 20 pounds endangering my life that of the pilot, the other passengers, and a border Collie that was along for the ride.
And this is true. Halfway across it got a light aircraft get there's like half a dozen people in there and get reallywobbly. And I whispered to my best gay friend, David, I was like, David, I lied about my weight. We're going to crash. And he went, oh, don't worry, darling. They, they always put on 10 pounds for women and gay men.
And I was like, we've got to hope someone else hasn't lied because I've lived by 20 pounds. It was like- 
Floss: oh my God-
DFW: They just, they Chuck on 10 pounds for women and gay men um, anyway, I, I thought when I said things like that, because remember this was the era of Bridget Christie's A Bic For Her, and Caitin Moran's How To Be A Woman and Chimamanda's We Should All Be Feminists, Malala, speaking [00:07:00] out, you know, post the worst thing that could have happened happening to her. Um, I was like, everyone's so strident. Everyone knows what they think and everyone's so sure of it. I, I was thinking I'm a feminist, but I don't think I was doing this right. And Bridget said to me, you'll never find your audience until you say what you're too scared to say.
And I was like, well, that's all right for you, Bridget. Cause what you're too scared to say sounds very impressive. And what I'm going to say sounds like confession after confession, where I'm not living my values, but actually it was such a relief to women, so many women, so many women were like, oh my God, thank God.
Thank God you've said it because I, I was thinking that I was inadequate. And so from a place of inadequacy, can we look at it and go these things don't really matter. And if they do matter, let's put them on the table and build muscle let's, let's get, let's get better. And if it either, it doesn't matter, it's rizz-able it's funny. And it's just, we just, women are just trained to feel guilty, or it does matter in which case we're not going to get better unless we, first of all, admit it and look at it. There's a Chinese proverb that says the beginning of wisdom is calling something by its proper name. [00:08:00] And if you can't say it you'll never fix it. So yeah, let's, let's begin. 
Floss: It's so true. I love that you start every episode with the I'm a feminist, but, and then you go on with these confessions and you get all your guests to do it as well. One part of the podcast that I do at the end is I ask all of my listeners and followers to send in questions that they have for my guests and I, and most of the questions that people send in are, is it okay if I do this?
Um, is it okay that I let my boyfriend stand up for me because I know he'll be heard more by the person I'm trying to get to respect me all of this kind of stuff. Um, why do you feel like so many people feel like they're failing at feminism? We often have this split brain that you have, like the feminist side of yourself, and then you have who you actually are and that you're trying to live your life almost by these morals and often they, they kind of there's friction between them. And it's, it's a very odd way to live because it's no longer like patriarchal shame. It's the feminist shame. Mm. 
DFW: I think it comes from the same [00:09:00] place, though. It comes from a place of control wanting control and that's that's patriarchal. I think honestly, women are just trained to feel guilty about everything.
We're trained to feel guilty we’re trained, to feel shame, and that keeps us in our place. And so it is no accident that feminism at times becomes one more thing to feel guilty about and ashamed of.. So we need to rewrite the script cause just because we're coming to something that is about equality and justice for women and people of minority genders does not mean that we won't play out the script we've already played out. If, if, if a woman is a senior partner in a law firm, she is trained to feel guilty that she should be at home with her children. If she's at home with her children, she's trained to feel guilty she should be doing better in her career and so on and so on and so on.
Not, but if you're, what, if you are balancing those things. Uh, then, oh, well I'm not being a good enough daughter. I'm not being a good enough friend. I don't, I never get time to go to the PTA committee at school or whatever. [00:10:00] We're trying to feel guilty about things in a way that men are trained just by the history of the world and societal structures if a man turns up for his child's school concert, if he. Kids piano recital isn't he wonderful. And he even made it to this where, whereas that's baseline expectation because a woman's got to be a carer. So for us, we don't get bonus points. So I, it's not uncommon to see a man holding his own baby and for, and for people's always being such a great father. Look, he's holding, oh my God. Now he's changing the. 
Floss: Yep it's like the thing where, um, women ask their husbands to babysit for the children. And even though, even though it's their child, I feel like that's very similar to what you're saying. 
DFW: Yes. Yeah. He's looking after the charge. You're so lucky, but there's all sorts of ways in which there's a sort of sign and expectation on women that we, none of us not acknowledge. And I would find it odd if you know, sometimes people send you a little, thank you note or a thank you email. If you've had them over or you've done something [00:11:00] for them.
If it was a married couple and the man sent me a thank you for something I'd done. And the woman didn't, that would be odd and it's not, it just would be. And I would like it, but I'd notice it. That. And that's because it just doesn't happen. 
Floss: My god, that's that's so niche that's so niche, but also so true.
That's something I've never thought about. The only, the closest thing I thought to that's in a similar kind of vein is women remembering all the birthdays and it's like, you always kind of rob men, also, you enable it because you rob them of their own ability to do that kind of stuff themselves. But they do over-perform it, they do over-perform that kind of stuff. 
DFW: I do it to my husband. 
DFW: It's expectation though. I think feminism does need to acknowledge that men still do most of the dangerous work. It's true. I don't want to be a feminist who ignores the, the ways in which women are privileged and men are men are given an assumed responsibility either.
Floss: Um, I always find it really hard to explain though, to people because a lot of men, when talking about feminism will bring something like that up to kind of shut you down on, on any kind of conversation. What would you do in that situation? Because I feel like what you just said, although it is, it is completely relevant, I often struggle to argue, like the actual case when someone brings up that kind of card. 
Oh, I don't argue it. I, I, I fully acknowledge it and I use it as a yes and bridge. So I get, get on their side of the table and I go, um, and I find if I will acknowledge that the history of the world in terms of warfare has greatly [00:13:00] put men into a situation where they have they've had shortened lives and terrifying post-traumatic stress disorder, and, uh, and I, I then put that out on the table and say, yes, this is really terrible. Can you see that in terms of representation of the people who have started the wars sent people to send men to war, uh, not being kind then to the people who have survived the war.  Can you see who those people are? Are those people, men or women, and they usually then have to go, yeah, they are men. And so then would it be useful to have more women in power and, would that be useful only if they were not the kind of women who can get into power because they're the ones men approve of, Priti Patel, um, Margaret Thatcher. Uh, do you see what I mean? Like you could, then you could then extend.
Floss: Yeah. Yes, yes. But that, that's such a good point. Um, every time I talk about the rates of sexual violence with women, someone always brings up about [00:14:00] men. What about male victims? And I always just say who, who who's assaulting the men? It's 90% men and it always goes back 
DFW: It's more. It's 96%.
Floss: Yeah. Yeah. It's just the zooming out thing.
It's like, I agree. Isn't that fucking awful.
So Deborah, I want to talk about what we can define as a feminist action and what is, or isn't a feminist action, because we hear a lot of these ideas about women. If a woman makes a choice and she says, she's doing it for herself, then it must be a feminist action. Um, it could be I'm sleeping with this person because that's what I want to do.
I'm getting Botox because this is what I want to do. I'm losing weight because this is what I want to do for me. How can we extrapolate like those two from each other? Can we, is there even any point. 
DFW: So you're talking about like choice feminism. If it's a woman's choice, then it must be feminist because that's the whole point of feminism that women can choose.
There's not no [00:15:00] value in choice feminism, but. If every choice every woman has ever made is feminism. It's not, it's just, it's just an observation that women make choices. How has that movement, how does that going to change the world? Women were already going to make choices that makes no difference. So every choice every woman ever makes can't be feminism.
No, that makes no sense. That's like saying every choice every man makes is in service of the patriarchy. It's not true. What I would say. If it's something like I waxed my legs because I love waxing my legs. Um, and no one could tell me I can't wax my legs. How is it patriarchal to actually legs? This is my suggestion.
Do men get hot wax poured on their body, on their tender bikini line area and have a professional pay a professional to rip it off. No, of course not. No, I quite like getting waxed, but the way that I found out that that's what I definitely wanted to do. And acknowledging that, of course I have been socially conditioned to want to do it, and it wouldn't have been my idea if no one else ever got waxed.
And I was raised in a world where hair on a woman was just [00:16:00] unobserved or admired. Of course I wouldn't do it and I wouldn't want to do it. Uh, but what I did is I stopped waxing everything for a few months. To see if I could get used to hair. And if I would like it more and after awhile, I was like, I kinda missed the smoothness of it uh, I, I have been raised in a femme gender presenting society and fashion is fashion and it makes me feel more confident about myself. So I went back to waxing, but there've been other things that I've given up. I've given up high heels at times and I'd be like, oh, I think flats flats with a, with a dress or a flats are really sexy and I'm very tall.
And I think for years I was teetering around as a default in heels thinking that was more femme and actually. It made me feel uncomfortable. I wasn't walking well in them because I was wearing them all day and all night at the Edinburgh festival. And I started to sort of lean forward and get tightness in my back.
And I went, this isn't pleasant for me, and it doesn't make me look somehow more sexually [00:17:00] attractive, fabulous-
Floss: Especially if you're bending over like that... 
DFW: It's not working. And so I just stopped and I started wearing flats and that was an example of something that I went, oh no, I feel better like this. So if you are, if it's in something superficial and frankly, it's not going to make or break feminism, if you put you individually wear heels or, or have a bikini wax, but that's what I would say with choice- you don't know if it's your choice, if you've never done anything else. So to have a go, you've got to do it for four months though. I think around four months to kind of figure out- and then you go, oh, then you try a pair of heels on it again. I did that time. I'm not saying you can never wear heels, but just default for four months to no heels and have a go at wearing no heels at a party where you'd normally wear heels and have a go at, you know, and then at the end of that four months, go back into heels.
For, you know, whatever it is that you were wearing it for and you might go, oh my God, these are super uncomfortable and I'm not enjoying it. And I don't think this is working at all. Or you might go, oh, thank [00:18:00] God. I just love this feeling of being elevated. I feel sexy in which case they're for you, but please do acknowledge.
The if your society didn't put you on stilts, and that was not a thing, you wouldn't have invented it yourself. It's not something you want to do. It's something society has conditioned you to want to do, but to find out if it's your choice, stop it. You know, that's what I would say. And then have then pick it up again and see, see where you're at.
Floss: That's so true. What you said about, um, you don't know it's your choice. If you've never done anything else.
DFW: My friend Pippa Evans stopped. Wearing makeup because she's very pale and her mother always said, if you don't wear mascara and lipstick, you look like a biscuit because they're very pale, pale eyelashes and, and her family.
And she's a brilliant performer you should look her up if you don't know her. And, um, she decided that she said she did a blog about it. It was called a hundred days as a biscuit. She decided, she said, unless she absolutely had to for showbiz, as you had for a role, even on stage. She wasn't gonna, for her comedy nights and things, she wasn't going to [00:19:00] wear makeup.
And now she said at the end of that, now I wear makeup to play for fun. If I feel like it, if I'm, if I want that lift, but as a default, she doesn't, she's like, it's not my, it's not my thing. I have to have it on before I leave the house. 
Floss: So you need to go cold Turkey with these rituals. Sometimes? 
DFW: She's comfortable with her own face now.
And she's like, I just wanted to be comfortable with my own face. And that really only happened for me in the pandemic, because couldn't be asked like, now I've got no makeup on at all and I'm on this zoom. And I think previously to the pandemic and to the zoom culture. 
Floss: Yes. 
DFW: I would not have come into a studio without a little bit of liquid eyeliner and a little bit of concealer, something on my face.
And now. Ah, this is my face. So people don't like my face. I mean, it's just hard for me to get worked up about whether or not people love my face. And I know, I know I can make my face look playful, or more than, or stand out if I want, but I don't want to have to do that every single day.
Floss: Of course it's an exhausting performance and one to keep up and I feel like you start to value the content of what you have to [00:20:00] say a lot more when you show up in that self.
Yeah, without the makeup and without the kind of performance, because you know that you're there to do a job rather than look pretty well doing the job. 
DFW: Exactly. And as far as the other choices and feminism, um, Elizabeth Garner a hundred, since my favorite example of this, she wanted to become a doctor in the 18 hundreds.
There were no doctors who were women. So she had to jump through these hoops and loopholes and find. Uh, find a medical school that had forgotten to say no women allowed because they thought it was just like saying no zebras allowed obviously, because it was ridiculous. So they had to let her in. She then still wasn't allowed to practice medicine.
She didn't have a full degree. So she went to Paris. She learned French well enough to go to the soul bond because they were teaching women to be doctors. Um, imagine what learning French well enough to do a medical degree. I mean, that's dedication. So then she comes back. No one will hire her. She opens her own clinic.
No one will go to it. Not even women, because it's [00:21:00] so weird to have a woman doctor they're like, Hmm, you might, you'll probably faint at the sight of blood. Then she benefits has a stroke of luck. There's an outbreak of cholera, lucky days. Uh, that means there are not enough doctors to go around. So people will even see a woman and they go, she's rather good, this woman and her clinic takes off.
Now there's two choices. That Elizabeth Garrett Anderson can make at this point. One- I'm the fabulous special one. I'm the only woman doctor. No, other women should be doctors because then I'm not so special. Not a feminist choice. Now that's not to say her representation does nothing for little girls who go to a female doctor, but it's not a feminist choice.
Floss: Yes. 
DFW: The. I is, uh, she, the choice that she in fact did make was she opened a, and this isn't her responsibility, but this is a choice she made, she set up a school for women to learn, to be doctors. And Florence Nightingale did not want women to be [00:22:00] doctors. She fell out with the first female American doctor over there that they were best friends.
She was like, women don't need to be doctors. They could be nurses. There's no need for women to be doctors. Wow. So what she was doing was saying, and it wasn't her obligation. She was had a full-time job being a doctor in a man's world, being the only female doctor in a man's world. A feminist is to encourage other women, to be doctors and not be like elbowing women out and shutting the door in their face.
Yes. The un-feminist thing is to say I'm special and keep women out the mid road is to go. I talked to any woman who wanted to do it and I'd encourage the women. And I'd say more women should be feminists should, should be doctors. The super feminist thing to do is set up a school and make sure that happened.
Now today over 50% of the medics in this country are female. That's down to Elizabeth Garrison Anderson. There are choices that women can make that are not feminist. Re men, men do a lot of jobs for the boys. Honestly. 
Floss: Yes, men, boys club.
DFW: Scratching each other's back. Cause if I, if I, they bank a favor and they expect to get that favor back, and there's lots of [00:23:00] studies that show, when women do a favor, they don't cash in their chips.
There are studies on it. They just go, oh, no, that's fine. You don't owe me anything. And men do jobs for the boys. Women have been trained we're in a scarcity culture. And what that means is there's only one spot at the top for a woman that we only have one woman on the board. So if I help you Floss, What if you get it and I don't? Yes, that scarcity culture, boys, boys club culture, because men have been running things for so long and there'd been so many opportunities for men, boys club culture is you scratch my back. I scratch yours. I'll get you a nice job job for the boys. And then later on, when you're in a position, you'll get me a job.
Okay. Or you'll get, give me a kickback, or now you're on the board and I got you on the board. I've got influence. Cause I don't want to be on the board. I've got this job. So now I've got friend on the board, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So men don't always elbow each other out of the way women need to get on that train and I think instead of an old boys club, we need a new girls club. 
Floss: Yeah. So, so men are, would you say more like [00:24:00] abundance and women are scarce in times of their mindset.
DFW: Yeah. Well it's what we've been trained to see, you know, like generations of only men allowed in the house of commons? So of course deals were done, but you look at how few female MPS there still are.
How many - when will we have an all female cabinet? 
Floss: Never.
DFW: Never, we'll never have that. So of course there's a scarcity culture. So if I help you become minister of education, but what I'm looking to do is become chancellor of the Exchequer. You know, I'm I, and there's only going to be so many women on the cabinet.
Am I now Floss helping you over my head at, are you going to steal my opportunity down the line? Men don't think that way because they've got an abundance culture and that's not because men are better than women that's because we're talking about the difference between people who are five people allowed into a room scrambling over one, apple and half a biscuit and people being led into a room with this great big feast on the table.
And going on a few first, or would you like, would [00:25:00] you like the smoked salmon? I've got two plates of it and I'm not going to get through it all myself. 
Floss: Would you say, would you say then that, uh, the solution to that, obviously this is super long term, but would you say that we need to just trust that other women are going to open the doors for us or do we, I don't really know.
DFW: We need to model it. I think we need to model it. I think we need to demonstrate to women who have a scarcity mindset. That we will be generous to them. Yes. And we will ostentatiously not, I don't mean like virtue signaling, but we will overtly, uh, recommend them. We will create female spaces or female driven spaces.
Uh, we will create spaces of generosity and surplus. 
Floss: I've had an example of this. Um, I didn't, I feel so privileged and having this person in my life and as kind of like a role model for this abundance mindset. We just bring over every person in , Munroe Bergdorf is a transactivist uh, soon to be author. She has her own podcast.
She's incredible. She's on to, uh, she was the first woman [00:26:00] to be signed to my management company. And I went to one of her talks as a fan to watch Munroe talk and I sat at the front and she came and sat next to me and she was like, I really like your illustrations. She was like, yeah, they're really cool. Um, And then within a week I had an email from her management.
Saying, we, we we've seen your stuff through Munroe and we would absolutely love to hang out with you and discuss potentially working with you. And every time I was with Munroe in meetings, in panel discussions or whatever, she's the person across the table going, let me put you in touch with someone, let me do this because she's just fucking phenomenal and watching her do that get, cause I didn't have anyone in the industry to really look up to. So to have her show me and model that kind of behavior, that it's the only way I've really known how to be. Um, and I think it also takes a lot of courage to keep doing it when you're still, when you all bond.
I think it takes a lot of courage because not everyone's on the same page. [00:27:00] 
DFW: Yes, I agree. Um, and when you find those people who will advocate for you and who speak up for you and, and create collegiate relationships and collaborative relationships, I mean, it's just gold. It's just wonderful, but also make someone's life better.
Yeah. I just, I'm just not interested in that life of a solo operator who great. So you've got a lot of trophies on the shelf. You got a lot of money in the bank, but it's not fun because you're not sharing with anyone. It's not joyful.
Floss: You say in your book that you grew up in a cult and you liken diet culture to being in a cult. And I completely agree with this. I've read the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf and she talks about slimming world and how calories are called sins. And have you, you have to go in as a ritual to weigh yourself. And if you don't weigh the correct weight, uh you're you're punished.
And that there's all these points and all these [00:28:00] weird kind of systems. And I am obsessed with this topic. Um, cause obviously it involves a lot of guilt. Could you talk about why you think diet culture is like a cult? 
DFW: It's a high control group. I just noticed a few years ago and it's, it's shifted with the body positivity and the Fat liberation movements.
But a few years ago, honestly, whenever I met women, The conversation would begin with water. You not eating at the moment, honestly, you say, oh, you look great. I love that dress. They go. Yeah. Yeah. Um, oh, I've just, you know, I've lost half stone. I'm not, yeah. I'm not eating carbs at the moment. And it's really shifted everything.
I'm on the paleo. There's someone else would say, I'm not eating sugar. I'm just, I've just cut out sugar and I've just, you know, it's totally changed me. And then someone else would say, well, I'm not eating Wednesdays and Friday. And that would be, you know-
Floss: That was me at secondary school! When I was 14! 
DFW: You're not eating Wednesdays and Friday and it's like, you are starving yourself.
Of course you're losing weight, but it's awful. It's unsustainable. Anyway, I found that was happening [00:29:00] or the other thing would be like, I've got a Peloton and I find this I'm going to. Bob's body works and you know, I've never felt better. I've doing british military fitness. I mean, all of this stuff, just like, why are we sharing this?
It's just so weird. It's not, nobody goes, I just went to the doctor and got full checkup. And he said, I'm low on vitamin D or, you know, like it's it's it's, but it was just this thing to share to show. And I think it was to show, you're making an effort, to show you're trying, to show I'm participating in this, this womanhood by denying myself or pushing myself in some way.
Um, and it was like a, a community venture. It's like, I'm not part of the gang, unless I'm in some way, denying myself or pushing myself beyond my limits. And I, I do think it's extremely pernicious and it became something that I just decided I wasn't going to participate in anymore. And that is not to say a friend of mine, uh, has very high blood pressure and, uh, she's had family members pass away because of very high blood pressure.
And so for her exercise, [00:30:00] To regulate her blood pressure is very important and she's really, it really is taking care of herself. 
Floss: It's not a blanket statement for anyone. 
DFW: No, and it's not cosmetic thing for her, but of course the more she moves, you know, she gets smaller and then sometimes you get backlash. The community, which says, or you've, if you've got a public profile and you lose weight 'Oh you've let us down.' And I'm like, I find that upsetting too. I'm like, can women just do what they want with their own bodies? And that is not a reflection on a community. So I know that adele got a lot of flack for losing weight, lena Dunham got a lot of flack, lena dunham had something, I think she had polycystic ovaries or something. She spoke about it publicly. She had to have hysterectomy, I think. And, but I know that she got a lot of flack. Like she's let us down. Then she put on a lot of weight because then she got another condition.
Like, has she now she now a better person? Like I'm yes. Women need to just be allowed to be the shape and the size they are. [00:31:00] And that will fluctuate over your lifetime. And there may be a very good reason why somebody that you know nothing about and it's nothing to do with anybody. And I do understand if you're somebody who identifies as being part of a fat community, and you have celebrities that represent you and that shifts, I can understand that feeling disappointing or that feeling like we've lost someone from our community.
And I absolutely understand that, but I don't like going to that woman and saying-
Floss: It's still control isn't it? 
I don't want 
DFW: to, I don't want women to owe any cosmetic standard, whether that be fat, then midsize fashion, our relationship with our bodies, is our relationship with our body. And if I see somebody starving themselves and being miserable to take up less space, I, yes, absolutely want to talk about why we've been socially conditioned to do that and how destructive that can be.
I also want every individual woman to end up in a place where they have their own relationship with their body and bodies do [00:32:00] get smaller and larger and smaller and larger throughout our lives. And that's okay. 
Floss: So, so you've, you've likened this to a cult in your book. What, how would, what elements of diet culture would you say then of all the stuff you've just described are similar to your experience of growing up in a cult? 
DFW: Outside- and it is a small bubble body positivity, fat liberation. It's a small, small bubble in this world. So if you're in most communities, it is still not acceptable to be plus size, which in itself is a problematic turn of phrase, and not be trying to change that. Yes, because it's sitting there, it's sitting there the whole time.
That's high control group. 
Floss: Could you explain? Sorry. What a high control group is? 
DFW: It means that the group is controlled by the individuals within it, so that the people from on high who run the group get, make the rules, but then the group controls each other. So it's not like, so a classroom of children tends to be not a high control group, because if the teacher leaves them and says [00:33:00] everyone be quiet, uh, it will only be one or two children will be going, the teacher said to be quiet, most of the children was like, yay. They've gone! Okay. Okay. But a religion, uh, a very high control, highly controlling religion or a cult, which means that the elders or the, the priests whoever's running, the group can leave, and the rest of the group, spies on each other and controls each other and says, you can't say that you can't do that and tell tells on the other people.
Floss: So it's a lot like the left sometimes as well. 
DFW: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so they tell on you to other people.
So they, so when the people who are in charge come back, they say, oh sister Deborah, which has happened to me when I was a Jehovah's witness system, was wearing a skirt that was above the knee or sister Deborah was, I saw her having a coffee with a worldly person. And so I would have to justify and prove even that was not true.
And then I would have a guilty conscience. I wouldn't be just be able to go: do you know what, uh, that's that? Yeah, that's Heather. I used to go to school with her. She's so nice. And she just popped by my work and I was on a break [00:34:00] and I said, sure, Heather, let's have a coffee together. That'd be really fun. And in fact- 
Floss: So just justifying-
DFW: oh, I wouldn't be able to say that I would be disciplined.
And if I didn't listen, I would be disfellowshipped. And that means everyone in my life was shunned me. And literally I would be dead to them. They would cross me. And that could be just from my attitude of being like, I'm okay with, I like Heather. I think she's great. I would not be allowed to say that.
And someone would tell on me. They absolutely would. And I told on people because I was so brainwashed by it. And so I would, I would say to an elder, I'm just really worried about so-and-so because she just seems to be drifting away from Jehovah. And now I look back on that with absolute horror and shame that I would ever do that, but I was very brainwashed and that's why I think it's like a high control group, the diet culture
Floss: okay, Deborah. I've got some questions for my listeners here, could you give me a hand answering them. 
DFW: Yes, I would absolutely love to. 
Floss: Amazing. Here we go. How to manage girl to girl toxicity and pressure regarding looks and still be a feminist about it? 
DFW: Always err on the [00:35:00] side of giving someone the benefit of the doubt, be generous to them.
Don't start with the most hostile you've done this. Start with um, do you mean this? I sometimes feel that, start by building a bridge, uh, and realize that being aggressive to someone is one tool in your kit being cross with someone is only one tool in your kit, and it should be the last tool that you use uh, most of the time. That's excellent advice. 
Floss: Okay onto the next one- is actually hating men helpful or harmful to the progression of feminism on the whole? 
DFW: Harmful! We need men, and also men are also the victims of patriarchal forces. And so the more that we can acknowledge what men are feeling. The more likely they are to be open to what we are feeling and we can work together.
Men are allies, men are human beings, many compassion, men need love. It's really easy to go well, you've got all the privilege. It's not always true. I've got a lot more privilege than most black men in this country. I've got a lot more privilege than [00:36:00] most disabled men in this country.
And there are some cis-gendered white non-disabled men who are straight, who are really, really, really struggling with mental health because they don't know how to deal with this system better. So for me, kindness first and again, being angry is one tool in your box. If it's the only tool in your box, not going to be effective.
Floss: Yep. I agree with you now. I think at the beginning of my feminist, Johnny, which many, many people who listened to my podcast might be, I went the complete other way on the scale. Um, and I wouldn't even like listen to anything that my dad said just on the basis that he was a man. Um, I kind of dismissed anything that men would say because I was so angry. And I had this big rage inside of me and then some really horrific things happen to me along the way. And I started to empathize with men a bit more on that. And then my, my feminism was just like swung right back into the middle where it should be now 
DFW: They're human beings. They get defensive sometimes they behave badly because within certain contexts they've had [00:37:00] power for a long time. And they've started to think that they're entitled to it. Some men, some men, some men however, the best way to build a bridge isn't to go you're an asshole. No, some days that's all you feel like doing. And some days someone is being an asshole and fair enough, but it can't, if it's the only tool in your box, you want to bring about change in the world, I'd question it. 
Floss: If you don't get on with another woman, how can you tell if it's because of your own internalized misogyny or if she's just not a nice person? 
DFW: Um, good question might be both. Um, I would suggest doing your best to find out what makes her scared and what makes her happy. And you'll find that you have things in common.
Floss: Wow. So would you say that's humanizing a woman instead of saying her as some kind of threat in the room competition, whatever?
DFW: The answer to everything and everyone- individualize humanize. 
Floss: Yep. No, but I love how simple you made that find out what makes them scared and what makes them happy.
DFW: Um, you'll find you've got stuff in common.
Floss: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Debra. I have one more question for you. Do you have any advice for any new [00:38:00] feminists embarking on their journey? 
DFW: Yes. Uh, start local. And start with one small thing that you can do. Is there something in your family that you can do? A woman who is struggling, who could use your help? Is there deep inequality at the school your children go to or at the university you go to that you can say, I'd like to start a society to give women a voice, or I think on Tuesday afternoons, we could do this. And it's one simple thing that you can see from through, from beginning to end it's local, when you feel the impact of that, that will grow.
And also it will give you confidence and it will change the kind of person you are and what you think you can accomplish in life. 
Floss: That's great. Start local. That's great. 
DFW: Small doable, local. One thing you can see through from start to finish. 
Floss: Okay, amazing. So Deborah, why can we find you on social media? 
DFW: Uh, I'm on Instagram. I'm @DFDUBZ or @TheGuiltyFeminist. And if you're in the UK, you can get tickets now for the [00:39:00] live tour. If you'd like to see where we're coming, uh, you go to guilty feminists.com. We're doing through March up until June, and then we have our London show on the 1st of October and that's at the Hammersmith Apollo.
So if you could buy some tickets. We are going to be having a great big feminist celebration. So I want you all to come out and you will leave feeling inspired. 
Floss: Oh my god.. I just know that young Floss right now, even Floss right now, to be honest, it was only a few years ago that I started listening to the guilty feminist is absolutely freaking out. Like if I could tell Floss at 17 years old that she would be interviewing Deborah Francis White, she was like the feminist beyonce to me, I don't even know what the equivalent would be, but at the time she was the person who I looked up to as a voice for the thoughts that I was trying to muddle out of myself.
And I think she's absolutely brilliant. She's so fucking smart. She's so funny. And she really has a big heart and she cares a lot. And you can tell in the way that even the way that she delivers information in the episode, she really cares. And she was really [00:40:00] switched on. And also if you'd like to read more about the diet culture, being a cult type thing, you can read Deborah Francis White's book and also Naomi Wolf's book, the beauty myth, which goes into it in a lot more depth where it talks about the weighing system, all of that kind of stuff.
I want everyone to be able to see the things that I have seen the way that I have looked at the world after realizing all of this shit about diet culture, I loved her part where she said about how to feel less threatened by women is to learn something that she's afraid ofand also something that she loves, I think that's so good. And is a massive takeaway for me from this episode. Thank you so much for this thing. 
And a massive thank you to the fucking incredible black honey who composed the original theme music for my podcast. You can find them on Instagram app, black honey, UK, and check out their latest album called written and directed. To keep yourself updated with all the latest episodes when they drop, you can follow exactly on apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music. Or [00:41:00] rather you listen to your podcast and please take the time to reach us wherever you listen to your podcasts and give us a review. It really does help people to find us and make sure that the people who need to hear this conversations do this is a podcast with something else.
My producer is Milly Chowles assistant producer is Ella McLeod, executive producers, Carly Maille, male production coordinator is Lily Hambly, and we have additional production from Chris Skinner. And I want to give a special thanks to our engineers. Jay Beale Josh Gibbs and Gulli Lawrence-Tickell