IWD 2022 x GLAMOUR: Allyship In The Face Of Misogyny

Sexism isn't gonna end

until men choose to end sexism.

Yeah.

I feel like distancing yourself from someone

who you know is a misogynist isn't enough.

It's about realizing where you have access,

and you have privilege and you have an opportunity

to just support someone.

Don't assume that you know already

what a woman needs, wants and deserves. Listen.

[upbeat music]

Introducing Ben Hurst, my friend.

You are the Head of Facilitation at Beyond Quality.

[Ben] I am.

You're an ally to me.

As my friend, give me the space to mess up.

Give me the space to talk about how hard this work is

and how I find it.

And I think that allows me to do the work better

and be honest about it.

Introducing Lancey Foux, AKA Lance to me,

who is a musician, artist

and someone who I feel has always been

an ally even without noticing it,

which is something that I always appreciated about you.

I'm here introducing my friend,

Henry James Garrett.

You get a full name.

Writer and illustrator.

You give me so much hope like you are on like

my Pinterest board of like, this is a good guy.

I just wish more guys were like you.

[Rochelle] Introducing Marvin.

[Marvin] Humes.

Humes, my husband.

You're my ally because you support me.

You empower me.

You really help me snap out of my imposter syndrome.

What was your first experience of misogyny?

When I was younger and I had my next door neighbor.

I used to just hear like rumbling, fighting,

screaming, arguments and then one day,

a woman just knocked on, knocked on the front door.

My mum answered, she let her in

and she was crying tears.

And she explained to my mom what's going on.

And it's not my personal experience

but my experience in this, through this woman's pain

and I quickly understood what was going on

and like where it was.

If we had to talk about misogyny,

what is it that we are talking about

when we are talking about that?

I think a lot about the difference

between sexism and misogyny

'cause I think we interchange those quite a lot.

[Ben] Yeah.

And I feel almost as if sexism is like the ideology

that like women are ABC but I feel like misogyny

is the thing that enforces that sexism.

Misogyny, as I understand it is hatred towards women

and femininity, that can be like the active misogyny

of like violence and abuse and harassment

or it can be the passive misogyny that men exhibit

and being fine with violence being perpetrated

towards women and girls and femme-presenting people.

I always think of, have you seen The Office?

Yes.

The UK one, not the American one, the real one.

Okay, I always think of like that scene where David Brent

is like, how can I hate women?

My mother's one.

And to me, that's what underpins misogyny,

where it's like that attitude of hatred towards women.

And I think most people don't walk around

thinking 'I hate women.'

And then therefore, most people think

well I'm not a misogynist cause I don't hate women.

Because I don't actively think it,

consciously every day, yeah.

But I think it's the nuance or like the little thing

that underpins all of the things that we do.

I feel like modeling taught me what misogyny was,

funnily enough, because people see the modeling industry

as a place where you can be free

and really expressive.

The way that sometimes they would talk to women,

talk to the young girls.

Just telling us that, you know, we are not worth anything

if we don't basically bend to their will

or for a male photographer will say like

you're nothing without me.

Like you know my name, my name's powerful in this industry.

Like I can end your career.

I was in the girl band and you were in the boy band

you know, four males were together

and five females were together.

But for the females it was very, very visual.

So everything, every article,

it would all be about appearance.

The Saturdays were at our peak when it was still legal

for a paparazzi photographer to be sitting on the floor

whilst you got out of a car and entered a restaurant

or a nightclub or wherever you were going.

I remember when the early days of us being together,

I would deliberately say you don't get out yet.

Let me come around to the side.

I'm gonna shield you as you step out of the car

which is disgraceful because there would be those paps

lurking to get that shot.

To the point that I hated going out without you.

You actually changed the law, right?

Yeah, I did, yeah.

I changed it because I was at a festival

and I was wearing a skirt.

I hadn't seen my sister in like a year

and these guys kept hitting on me and my sister

and I said like five, six times, like, oh no, I'm good mate.

I'm with my sister and I haven't seen her in ages,

so I'm good.

And then one of them was standing in front

and I looked around and he was like looking

at a photo of my crotch on his phone.

And I grabbed the phone

and like, I ran to the security and the police.

Yo, that is wild in and of itself.

And I got through all the people

and I handed the phone to the police

and they were like oh there's not much we can do.

If you chose not to wear knickers,

we would be able to do something

'cause it would be a graphic image

but you did so we can't.

Oh my fault, sorry. Next time I won't wear knickers.

Yeah, always my clothes, innit?

And then I went home and then I like researched into it

and found out that it wasn't a sexual offense,

upskirting wasn't a sexual offense

but it had been in Scotland for 10 years.

And I did this whole campaign.

The mindset, if it even, if it is passive

and it's not an action, it breeds a culture.

Yeah.

That enables those actions to happen, you know.

I'm a white, cishet woman so that threat

is multiplied depending on how many intersecting

systems of oppression you're sitting under.

Yeah.

So like friends of mine like, you know,

Munroe Bergdorf is a black woman.

She also happens to be trans.

And she experiences so much stuff that I never even.

Right. Right, right.

So it's like, you, you think it's bad

and then you see that it gets worse and worse

for other people.

But imagine like being an ethnic minority woman,

that we've got, everything's kind of against us.

If all the other women are like the flowers here,

the black women are like the the dirt

underneath the grass there.

That's where we're positioned in society,

as much as people try and make it out

like it's anything else, there's still a long way to go.

That's why I say like safety and respect

is the thing that I would want to be different for women.

It's like a slap of the misogyny.

And then it can be a back slap or backhand of misogynoir,

transmisogyny, you know, there's other levels of class.

And on Sunday I was coming home from a friend's house

and I was spat on for being trans.

And these guys threw like, a can of drink at us

and it hit me.

If you had said, like to these guys,

these young boys, like, no one's laughing, leave her alone.

Like they would have

because like, they're doing it to impress.

It's toxic masculinity.

They're doing it almost as a performance to other guys,

like it's not for themselves.

Like if they were on their own,

he wouldn't have said anything to me.

He wouldn't have had the guts to.

He's almost like performing masculinity.

The awareness is, is, is getting better.

And it's great that, you know,

you've spoken about it a lot recently

and I've seen many other women speaking about it,

seen men speak about it and it's important

that we keep highlighting that.

Yeah, the awareness is there.

I think the mindset just needs to change.

[Marvin] Totally.

Men are like this, women are like this.

And if you're not those things you failed at being a man

or failed at being a woman, which like doesn't account

for the whole range of people in between

those two things on that spectrum or beyond that.

Who are gonna exist anywhere

but are just gonna live under this difficulty.

You just pretend that they fit into it.

And then for all of us who maybe do feel like we fit

into those things, there's also this big performance

to like keep up with those ideas.

And I know for men, those are things like being strong,

being dominant, being in control, making decisions,

not asking for help.

All of those things that like I would argue

don't actually come naturally to people.

Do you know what I mean?

I feel like those things are learned behaviors.

What was your first experience of gender disparity?

So just like the differences between

how men and women are treated in society?

In African culture, the woman does everything for the man.

So my, my dad would come, come back from work,

get comfortable, sit down.

And my mom would go make some food.

She would fill up the, the, the bowl of water,

bring it right to where he's sitting

so he can wash his hands.

That's the first thing I saw that I was just like,

oh yeah, like, it wasn't wrong to me.

It wasn't bad.

It's just like, oh yeah, mommy does everything.

At that point, you're not seeing it as like anything wrong

or like you just, you just think that's the dynamic.

For me at the time there was loads of stuff going on.

And I thought I was going nuts.

Like I was like, oh, I'm losing it.

Like I'm crying in the toilet at work

and I can't control it.

Like whatever's going on.

I keep having these like emotional breakdowns

to then come to realize it was completely normal.

Like, we just don't talk about it as men.

Do you know what I mean?

We just kind of hide that stuff away from everyone.

So I guess that was my real like moment of transition

and interestingly for me, that wasn't

about me wanting to be a good man for women.

It was about me wanting to be the best version of myself.

Our idea of a man is like brave

and strong and like makes people feel safe

around him because he's a protector, right?

Sometimes feeling things

and not forcing yourself to only express yourself

through anger and violence is what allows you to be brave.

And maybe bravery is, you know, calling out your friends,

telling your friends that you don't think

that joke is funny.

Yeah.

Because like, that takes gumption.

I've got a slightly different approach

when raising two young women

than I perhaps would when raising a young man.

You know, we are gonna set those foundations

in the right way.

However, when he is out of our front door

and he might be hanging out with friends or, you know,

colleagues don't assume that you know already

what a woman needs, wants and deserves.

Listen.

How do you think we move away from gender stereotypes

when we, when we're raising our kids?

I think that's exactly it.

We haven't really got those stereotypes.

We never point any limitations on our, on our children.

And, and you know, you never should.

I guess for me,

allyship is about using your privilege

to dismantle other people's oppression.

You don't have to be like an activist

or like have done, you know, read every bell hooks book

under the sun to be an ally.

Like, it's about realizing where you have access

and you have privilege

and you have an opportunity to just support someone.

This may surprise you, but I was, I wasn't great.

And I think it's useful for guys to be reminded that

that is true of almost any guy who's,

who's trying that probably there's a time

in his past that he's not proud of, right?

Because we're mostly raised to be sexist.

So, so we're set up and, and then it

it is a process of, of unlearning at a, at a certain point.

I know for me as a man doing this work,

people in the outside world, look at me

and herald me as some kind of like feminist.

Yeah, we talk about this a lot.

Wow. You're so great.

And then I go home and I like hate cooking.

Like I refuse to cook.

Well, like I expect my partner to like wash my clothes

or just do dumb stuff.

That, again, are like really learnt behaviors

based on the ways that I was raised.

I think that's where the work really happens.

That's where it really starts.

Something is important about disrupting

those things on an individual level.

I'm motivated by the fact that like,

you can have that realization.

You can have a a moment that makes you go

oh wait, this is actually awful.

And it's only men who can do anything about it.

Ultimately it's gonna be uncomfortable initially.

And like, if the barrier to you wanting to get involved

in ending violence against women and girls and people

of marginalized genders is this barrier of like,

oh but it might be a bit awkward.

Do you see what I mean?

Your sister or your mum shouldn't have to be like,

assaulted for you to care, you know.

It should be enough that this is happening

and it, and it, it should be worth discomfort.

As a man, is ignoring or distancing yourself

from someone who you know is doing wrong,

is that, is that enough?

I feel like distancing yourself from someone

who you know is a misogynist isn't enough

when you could have really stood up to that guy

and said what you are doing is wrong.

How you move is wrong, how you treat women is wrong.

How would you say that men can be better allies to women?

Sexism isn't gonna end until men choose to end sexism

because like, we can do all the works,

all the campaigns

Yeah.

Do all, all these videos, but like,

it's not gonna stop until men choose to stop

so I think it's really important to be having that

conversation about like the nuance of like,

it's not just like black and white, you can change.

It's a conscious decision.

Because men aren't like,

like biologically ingrained to be awful.

If the cause of their violence is social,

then the solution must be social.

Exactly.

What is equality? What is true equality?

It's not a t-shirt, it's not a slogan or a catchphrase.

True equality is giving everybody the opportunity to,

to shine and giving everyone equal opportunity

to do well.

I know we've said it a lot

but I think listening is so key.

I think really be there to nurture

like you would do someone that you saw yourself in.

So you might do that with a young guy

that you think oh, he's great.

He's gonna be amazing at this role.

I'm gonna nurture him to perhaps make him like me one day

and he can head up this firm.

Do that to a woman, you know,

that's, that's the kind of allyship we need to see.