Frances-White - The guilty feminist: from our noble goals to our worst hypocrisies

Deborah Frances-White is the creator and host of the hit podcast The Guilty Feminist. She is a stand-up comedian best known for her BBC Radio 4 show Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice which won the Writers Guild Award of Great Britain for Best Radio Comedy. She is also a screenwriter and regularly speaks in businesses about diversity and inclusion.

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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Virago Press

Copyright Deborah Frances-White 2018

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ISBN 978-0-349-01011-3

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For Monica and Philippa, remarkable women whove shown me over and over how to turn fantasy hour into reality hour.

And for Gina, my rock, and Tom, my anchor. Without you two, Im just some ideas in bed. Xx

Im a feminist but when I was choosing a new headshot, I asked my husband, Does this photo of me look a bit Dove campaign for real beauty? And he said, No, darling, you look lovely, and I thought, Well, that campaigns failed.

W hat is a guilty feminist? In 2015 I described myself as guilty feminist for the first time, because I lived with the knowledge that my beliefs were firm but my feelings existed on a trampoline. My goals were noble but my concerns were trivial. I wanted desperately for women to be taken seriously in leadership roles all over the world, but I also wanted to look good sitting down naked. I knew that even thinking there was a good way to look in any posture didnt chime with body-positive, twenty-first-century feminism where we were all meant to love our bodies as if they were our dying grandmothers, and that any criticism of them could be seen as disloyalty to the sisterhood.

I felt like a fraud for saying defiantly in an internet debate that, as a woman, my chief role was not to be decorative; and then later that day crying actual tears on finding that my favourite dress was tighter than usual because Id put on weight. I could deliver a power seminar on charismatic leadership techniques for senior women in a law firm and the next day make an apologetic phone call to a comedy promoter in which I hoped I was not bothering him, speaking as fast as possible in my lady voice, as I was sure he was very busy, when it was obvious Id just woken him from an afternoon nap.

This troubled me especially because so many more of my conversations with women were moving away from Sex and the City territory and towards gender equality. Something was in the air. Hillary was running for the White House. New York Magazine pictured thirty-five of Bill Cosbys accusers on its front cover. Gloria Steinem dedicated her book to the doctor who illegally performed her abortion in 1957, naming him as a hero. A tidal wave of change was coming and I wanted to be on the crest of it, but I worried I wasnt good enough.

I confessed my feelings to fellow comedian and friend Sofie Hagen. She and I had a series of lunches that year which had started as jokes, shop talk and revelations about our love lives, but had drifted into feminism. I showed Sofie my hypocrisies on the grounds that shed show me hers. Because we were both comedians, council zoning required that these insights be shared with the world, through the medium of podcasting, and The Guilty Feminist podcast was born.

For the uninitiated, a podcast is radio that no one stops you making because you put it on the internet yourself. Please let me reassure you that whether you live in a delightfully secluded cave not cursed with Wi-Fi and have never heard a minute of this podcast, or you binged the whole thing in a week and cross the days off on your calendar until the next episode comes out, I wrote this book with you in mind.

When Sofie and I committed to admitting our double standards out loud, a part of me feared wed be shunned by the club, that the proper feminists we knew would roll their eyes at our embarrassing admissions. We werent just making these confessions to our BFFs four margaritas into a Friday night, we were recording them for distribution. We screwed up our courage and hoped that other women identified with our inadequacies and aspirations.

It turned out we werent the only ones living with contradictions. Women responded in droves. Many have written to tell us that theyd previously felt unable to call themselves feminists but now they knew they wanted to and could. Others said the show had acted as a valve for their guilt a place they could laugh off things that didnt matter or that they were working on. They realised they didnt have to be perfect or even consistent to be a force for meaningful change. The emails I receive, which tell stories of women activated by The Guilty Feminist to apply for PhDs, lodge sexual harassment cases, start talking to their high school students about gender equality or even report sexual assaults, can always be boiled down to two statements: Because I listened to the podcast, I have decided to say yes, or Because I listened to the podcast, I have started to say no. I do not take credit for the boldness of these listeners. I think a big part of their conviction comes from hearing our live audience laughing and agreeing and commenting. It makes individual women feel like they have an army behind them when they speak up in a meeting, fill out a funding application or tell a catcaller hes just not cool.

Weve had some luck with our timing. More people listen to podcasts now than go to the cinema on a weekly basis. Just when feminism was facing the onslaught of Trump, Weinstein and the worst excesses of Twitter, people were turning to podcasts for information, inspiration and entertainment.

Im overwhelmed at the response from our audience, who turn out in droves for the show and queue, tweet and email to tell us what the show means to them. Im also convinced that if Id attempted to pitch a broadcast comedy show with feminist in the title in December 2015, the industry would have responded with a polite refusal and an assurance that feminism isnt a ratings winner. I am amazed and thrilled to say that The Guilty Feminist podcast has had 30 million downloads in just over two years. While internet neutrality exists, artists can find their audience and audiences can find their jam.

For readers whove not heard the podcast, its a comedy show in which we explore themes that feminists need to tackle head-on from nudity to body capability and from power to democracy. Each episode features stand-up, discussions with guests and also weekly challenges. Thanks to this aspect of the podcast, I have thrown myself out of a plane, posed naked for a life-drawing class, led a feminist discussion group with a class of teenage boys at an inner-city school and directed a short film like a boss.

The guests and I always start each episode with one-liners that begin, Im a feminist but... These are true confessions about times when our actions and values have spent time apart. Theyre usually playful, silly things that dont really matter. Its the equivalent of using a loofah in the shower to slough off anything you dont need, but for your gender equality headspace. Heres one of mine: Im a feminist but when my four-year-old nephew insisted on me putting on my wedding dress and watching