In this episode, I’m talking to Rae Pears about her incredible work with Girlhood Reclaimed, a community interest company challenging the misogynistic narratives that impact young women, girls and anyone who has been socialised into girlhood.

We dig into the reality of growing up in a world shaped by sexism and everyday misogyny shape girls’ lives in ways many adults don’t even realise. Rae shares why creating safe spaces for honest conversations is so important and how listening (really listening) to young people can make all the difference.

We also talk about body image, societal pressures, and why it’s time to stop telling girls to ‘just be more confident’ and start tackling the systems that make them doubt themselves in the first place.

If you care about making the world safer and more empowering for the next generation, this conversation is one you don’t want to miss.

Let’s get into it.

Trigger warnings:

Discussion about sexual violence, eating disorders, misogyny

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Girlhood Reclaimed

09:34 Understanding Misogyny and Its Impact on Young Women

12:44 The Role of Social Media in Shaping Experiences

15:40 Safety Work and Its Implications for Girls

18:43 Creating Spaces for Joy and Resistance

21:39 Body Image and Its Long-Lasting Effects

27:02 Body Positivity and Liberation

29:25 The Control of Dieting and Body Image

31:15 Navigating Body Image as Parents

32:50 Supporting Children Through Body Image Issues

34:17 Creating Open Conversations with Kids

36:47 Active Listening and Emotional Space

39:00 Challenging Internalised Misogyny

41:37 Normalising Conversations About Behaviour

44:34 Engaging with Community and Support

About Rae Pears and Girlhood Reclaimed:

My career started at 18 in youth and community work, where I very quickly began to realise my passion for working alongside women and girls, especially in the field of sexual and domestic violence. After having my three children, I began to move more into this field through voluntary work and eventually becoming a volunteer service coordinator for a women’s mental health helpline. Two years ago I began my MA in Women and Child Abuse, which led me to leave my role in on the Helpline and set up my own community interest company, Girlhood Reclaimed. At Girlhood Reclaimed we aim to disrupt the growing dominance of misogynistic narratives through feminist research, awareness training, and safe spaces for young women, girls and non-binary folk, supporting them to make sense of their experiences and reclaim joy in their girlhood.

Links:

Instagram: girlhood.reclaimed

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/girlhoodreclaimed.bsky.social

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/girlhood-reclaimed

Website: www.girlhoodreclaimed.com

Connect with Tamsin Broster

Hey, I'm your host and I hope you love this podcast as much as I do. I help women grow their business and career without keeping themselves small. Working on your confidence and self belief changes how you show up in the world but it's often something we just think we have or don't have. I show you how to tap into it and disrupt your inner critic so you can stop relying on other people to hype you up and make you feel good.

Sign up for my free workshop: Confident On Camera Masterclass

Lets stay connected

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Very welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming. Do want to introduce yourself to everybody?

Yeah, great. It's really nice to be here. So I'm Ray Pez. I'm based in Bristol and I am

to a community interest company called Girlhood Reclaimed.

Brilliant. What is Girlhood Reclaimed all about? I think the title is really good because it gives us an indication of what we're talking about. But how did this come to be?

Yeah, so as a community interest company, our aim is to kind of find ways to disrupt the kind of dominant narrative, dominant misogynistic narrative that we see ever increasing in the lives, especially around young people and thinking particularly about young women and girls and how we can come alongside them through research, through project-based work and through training with adults who are kind of teachers, educators or...

youth workers and really look at how it impacts their lives and the harms that it causes and think about ways that together collaboratively with them we can look at how we reclaim back. We look at this idea of reclaiming back joy in our girlhood so kind of from thinking about kind of feminist activism but quite like joyful activism so really it's that's the idea of girlhood reclaim that it's this space where we can

kind of explore that idea together and come alongside especially young women, girls and non-binary kids who kind of identify with girlhood in some way and just sort of like support them and validate their experiences and support them in making sense of those experiences as well. So where it sort of came from, I have a background in youth work and then I moved into kind of the field of male violence against women and girls and I've worked in women's mental health.

And then the last two years I've been doing my MA in women and child abuse at London Metropolitan University. And part of and the research I did really for my dissertation was kind of really inspired to this. I really wanted to think about, you know, we hear so much about the rise of misogyny and sexism and sexual harassment in schools and peer on peer abuse. And I just kind of kept thinking about the girls I used to work with and

young women and girls now and what impact is this having on them? How is it showing up in their lives? How is it impacting their relationship with their safety in particular? So that's what I really want to look at in my research. So I ran some focus groups with young, with girls and young women. And it was really just came out of that. All these themes came out and we were able to identify together about how it was quite an all encompassing feeling.

for them, feeling quite surrounded by this, kind of really experiencing that rise in misogyny as well as racism and homophobia and how that really impacted them, how they felt less safe, felt like the safety work they did. So we talked about a concept of safety work and how we, as women, keys between our knuckles and phoning our friends when we get home at night, all of that sort of stuff. We created a lot of space to kind of think about that and make sense about that. Yeah, make sense of it.

Yeah, I think it really kind of really identified this kind of feeling of it being quite like inevitable. And that just it's just so sad. And I just thought actually, I'm not I want to do more around this. I want to come alongside kind of young women and girls and, and think with them and help them make sense of this. But also there is like quite a spark of resistance in them as well. I think there's this real like engagement with feminist activism, whether it's what they've seen for the Me Too movement or other stuff on their social media. And how

you know, we can make space for quite a joyful interaction with that as well. So, yeah, that's sort of where I was at when I finished my MA and I just thought, oh, I'm just not finished with this yet. And so that's how kind of Girlhood Reclaimed was, like, came to be really.

And it's such a shame that it's needed, right? But it is needed. It's so needed. think we are, know, International Women's Day is coming up. We're on the cusp of that. And this is where we start to see the conversations about, know, do we even need this? you know, someone was talking about the other day about, you know, they were going to be doing a talk and then, you know, the bloke who was going to hire her sort of said, actually, I'm going to do it. You know, and it's like...

yeah.

Yeah.

Thank

you know, do you even talk about now that all of these things have been solved? And I think there's this idea that we don't have any of these issues at all anymore. And then on the other flip side of it, we're seeing the stats that the violence against women and girls is on the rise. There's all sorts of stuff happening, you know, in other countries where, you know, our rights are being stripped away in countries where we wouldn't expect it. And we think that's not far like close to home, but it is very close to home.

cool

I think it's just as an observer, it's very frustrating. I've got a 10 year old daughter, not that that should make a difference in, you know, wanting women and girls to be safe all the time. But I think it does make you think about it more. You think about like, what kind of world are we bringing her into? And has to have things changed for me? And how have they changed for me as I get older? We're constantly thinking about this stuff. So think it's really fascinating. What are you, you seeing like different things coming up for them now with like,

you

Yeah, that's

when I was growing up and you're probably sort of young enough to maybe to have had a phone when you were younger, but it didn't exist for me. I probably got my first phone when I was maybe 18, maybe even older. But, and I'm aging myself, but that's fine. I don't, you my daughter at 10 is having to think about like social media accounts and, you know, I'm having to explain to her why she can't have that yet, why that's not open to her and what the,

Yeah.

you

and talking

to about safety measures and things that I don't actually have to understand. I have to Google stuff. How is that changing the landscape for girls these now? How is that, you know, all those that have been socialized as a girl?

No, yeah.

Yeah,

I think absolutely massively. I mean, it's something that I really want to understand more and like starting to delve more into understanding from like feminist academics who are really looking quite a lot at this and the impacts of like AI and all of this stuff and kind of, yeah, kind of all of that stuff. I think there's a whole range on stuff there that's really, really difficult.

particularly found in the research in terms of social media and phones that I found really interesting was it's sort of like, you know, two sides of the same coin, like in one way, their engagement with online was like, could be very empowering. And they mentioned the Me Too movement. They talked about the bear versus the man in the woods, kind of social, that thing that came on social media a while ago, know, with a man or a bear and seeing all these women.

mmm

say bear and they're just like it's like very educating and it gives them language it gives them like an understanding of kind of sexual violence and domestic violence and all of those sort of things I think has been really empowering and is breaking some of those silences. The flip side is that they would see say the man versus the bear and they're like all of these comments then from men like just not understanding it and they're just like

or just how sad it was. There was all these women saying, I choose a bear over a man. And like, what does that say? What is that saying to us? it's kind of what they're then carrying and then what they're witnessing in comments that was quite very violent from kind of male users. yeah, so I think all of that sort of interaction is happening. So there's this really great stuff that they're engaging with and kind of communities online and it can feel quite empowering.

Yeah.

But I think the other side is that it really added to this feeling of inevitability. And it wasn't just online, it is offline in that offline world. just kind of, they can see it coming through. And obviously people like Andrew Tate were mentioned and those sort of things and seeing misogyny come on through into lives of kind of their male peers. Whilst also, again, recognising that it's a systemic issue and seeing, you know, seeing the much broader, bigger picture as well. So.

I think that's what I'm, yeah, that's kind of what I've been thinking about quite a lot is that thing of actually social media could be this incredible place to engage collectively with other people, but the flip side of it is just kind of adds to that feeling of it's everywhere. to find a way to navigate, like using your safety work online to navigate these awful comments and.

you

you know, when they'd see things come in and you know, for some of them, it's like, don't, do I report this? Do I like make sure it doesn't come up on other people's algorithms? And actually, like, not having much faith that much would happen if they reported it, or some of them actually like repeatedly reporting stuff and nothing happening. So yeah, it's, I think it's, it's incredibly difficult thing for them to navigate. And they do it so well in so many ways, but I think it's just then what it leaves.

Yeah.

kind of just really adds and piles onto this feeling that's quite heavy and quite difficult to, yeah, they're just so.

Yeah,

it's lot, isn't it, for the brains to cope with and to, like you say, navigating that at such a young age. Like, I didn't have those pressures. But then I look at the sort of younger generation and I think they're so much more switched on to what is right, what is wrong, you know, a lot more maybe aware, whereas I wasn't. And I think, you know, in comparison, it can be

Yeah.

I no.

Yeah.

Mmm.

I think they, like you say, they have more kind of access to sort of that right information through social media. So it can do good, but then you've got, you know, the likes of Zuckerberg coming up and saying, we need more masculine energy on these platforms. No, we don't. You know, we need more safety for everybody. This isn't actually just the conversation. This is what frustrates me is the conversation isn't about just women and girls. This is actually safety for everyone when we really think about it.

you

Exactly. Yeah.

It's a human thing, it's a human rights thing.

But we have to focus on the fact that, you know, women and girls are more likely to be harmed by people they know even, you know, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, there's so many layers to it, isn't it? And it sounds like they're really receptive to, you know, having these conversations and, you know, getting into that stuff.

Cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's what I mean, I absolutely loved doing it. The girls that it was kind of ages from 13 to 17, and they were just totally brilliant. And I think part of what I'm drawing into the work that we're doing now at Girlhood Reclaimed is this idea that actually feels really important to create spaces that are really like, conducive context to undoing harm is what I talk about. So kind of like, how do we create these spaces where

there is some sense making can happen collectively. So when I did the focus groups, I talked about this concept, safety work, is there's feminist academics who have, Liz Kelly was the first one who talked about this idea of safety work. So all the things that we do as women that are work that mean our freedoms are limited, that we're having to navigate a world to limit harassment, to limit those sort of male intrusions in our lives. And then,

Fiona Vera Gray has also kind of looked at that further and did a great book called The Right Amount of Panic based on her research, which is fantastic and really looks at how we have to have the right amount of panic as women in the world and how our kind of freedoms are limited and how we do all these things to prevent violence from happening to us. So I sort of brought this concept into the room with the girls and I said, you know, this is what safety work is how I understand it to be.

this concept and then it was just like an hour, an hour and a half of just such amazing conversation of them sharing and you know, they were, had different backgrounds, different experiences, but there was such a collective sense of like, yeah, this is an incredibly gendered experience. And I think boys, I'm sure I know who do safety work, but it's very different and maybe kind of goes up when there's been reports of knife crime or...

you know, there's, I think, a very different kind of relationship to it than we have as girls or those who kind of, yeah, or other kind of marginalised genders. I, and it was just this great space. And I just thought how much this space could, you know, how needed this space is really to provide these spaces where we kind of engage in that sense making and we share those experiences with each other, because it's really validating. gives space, you know, I've

worked in mental health and done loads of training around kind of active listening. So I think being someone who can hold that space as well and kind of reflect back those feelings and hold space for anger and whatever those feelings come up. And I think that that, I do believe that that can start undoing some of the harms that are being caused. And then, know, kind of further on what I want to carry on further on exploring is then how we

create space for them to kind of engage with joy as well, because that is what we need to sustain us through this. we can't, being angry all the time is not sustainable. And it's so important we can be angry about these things and we can feel sad about these things and all of that. But I think especially when there's this feeling of inevitability that kind of creating some resistance to that going, actually, no, like, I want, when I think about my girls, you know, I don't.

Yeah.

you

Yeah.

I don't want them to be as exhausted as I am with all of this. That's what I'd like for their future just to be a little bit more like, yes, we've got some like collective joyful experiences together as well. yeah, so I think, I can't remember what your question was then, but anyway, yeah.

No, that's fine. You've answered it brilliantly. And I actually

just really want to pick up on something you said there, but like, you know, that feeling, and I really felt that when you said that, that feeling of exhaustion. And I think this is something that I see a lot with my clients who are dealing with body image stuff, which starts at this young age. And it's that exhaustion of policing our behavior, policing our bodies and being constantly on, you know,

Bye.

Yeah.

constantly told as women, take the stress out of your life, you know, make sure you you know, be raising your cortisol levels. I'm like, I have no choice but to be switched on because I am literally waiting for the man or the bear all the time. Because we're taught that, aren't we? We're taught to police our what we were, how we behave, you know, how we show up in certain situations, to call people on our way home. I even, you know, I'm 44 and I went to an event the other night and I don't go out in the evening very often because I'm boring and old.

Yeah.

Love you all.

Yeah.

Hmm.

but

I walked back to my car with my keys between my fingers and I thought, God, I haven't done this for a long time because I don't go out in the evening. And my sense of safety is actually because I'm just really sociable in the evening. I'm sociable all day, all day long. You want to do anything in the day? I'm right there with you, but anything in the evening, forget it. And it just made me think like, gosh, you know, I'm still here at 44 when I don't particularly, you know, get any male attention at all.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

you get to this certain point of your life and you sort of age out of it, which is also a disgusting thing, but that is just kind of how things are right now and how I perceive myself. But it's just very interesting to me. And I think, you know, this is one thing that I wanted to talk about was body image stuff. you know, that does that stuff come up in your conversation? Because every single woman that I work with from like roughly around the age of 35 to 60 odd will have.

Yeah.

their core memory of when they first realized their body was in quotes wrong is like six or seven. They don't remember a time when they were allowed to be free around food. Like they were allowed to just nourish themselves in a way that felt good because they were constantly told you need to be careful what you eat. You need to make sure that you stay slim. You need to make sure that you look a certain way and maybe compared to a thinner sibling and all of that stuff. And this really impacts them later on in life. They diet their whole life and then they

Bye.

get to me and realise that actually maybe I've been harming myself by going through this disordered eating behaviour and police, constant policing of my body, over-exercising, trying to be as small as possible and as little as possible, which is a very misogynistic way of being, a way we view women's bodies. I wondered if that's something that comes up in your conversations with these young girls.

you

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

it hasn't yet. I absolutely imagine that it will. think, sadly, think, I think really the only thing that came up in the research was one girl just going, it doesn't really, you know, like, I

not really believing that it matters how you like if you're like quote unquote pretty like that actually it's going to happen to all of you regardless of what you're wearing regardless of any of that sort of stuff which yeah was just very sad but i i imagine i always felt like it had i when i was kind of reflecting on it

because like you said, I didn't have what these girls have now in terms of social media and phones and all of that sort of stuff. But what I did have was the 90s and what I did have was that relationship with body image and all of the very stick thin women on top in front of magazines and all of that sort of stuff. sort of could feel like...

and how then that impacts me now exactly what you're saying and I feel like that sort of...

a little bit of how I come into understanding what's, yeah, how I see what's happening now with kind of girls being really kind of with the rise in misogyny and the way that I didn't again, didn't experience it when I was little. I'm sure it was there and I wasn't aware of it as they were, but thinking, okay, where are they going to be when they're my age? If we're not trying to undo some of this harm now, if we're not trying to kind of respond to this now alongside them and with them, what is it going to feel like when they're 30, 35, whatever?

Yeah.

and what impact it's gonna have. So I think it's that sort of like, when we were young, it wasn't seen as harmful. No one talked about it. It was silenced. was, you know, no one was.

there were no adults in the room. actually the adults in the room were the ones going exactly like you said, you know, watch what you're eating or they were the ones who were dieting. They were, know, all of that sort of stuff and the relationships we had with other women in our lives, mostly women. So kind of really wanting to be an adult that's in the room going, this stuff is not okay. Like let's...

Yeah.

Yeah.

really validate what you're experiencing and kind of support you so that harm is being undone now rather than just leaving you to your in their 30s to deal with it all then. So yeah, I think that I thought about it in that sort of way before and I do imagine that it will come up more and more as we speak to more young women and girls that the image, the pressure to look a certain way in terms of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I don't think

that's gone. Well, in fact, I'm sorry. I think it's a delay. I think there was a delay. Sorry. I jumped in and told Toby, I'm so sorry. Finish what you said. Did I cut you off? Okay, make sure I didn't cut you off. Sorry about that. Yeah, no, I was just thinking about that because I don't think it's gone away. I think there's just it's just like a new thing, isn't it? Because we've now we are now I've you know, somebody who's been in the health of every side of space and, you know, trying to

No care.

I know you're fine.

talk about body positivity and understanding body liberation, probably more so than body positivity, because that's been overtaken by thin white women. But thinking about how we are in our bodies, how we exist in our bodies. I feel like that's been all the progress that maybe the very little bit of needle moving that we were doing has now been wiped out with a Zempik. And we're now living in another, we've got another battle on our hands. I thought it was bad enough when we had special K.

you

Yeah.

being pushed on us and a magazine.

I know and all the magazines everywhere. And I remember, you know, my mom wasn't even a particular diet, but I remember her doing all this stuff. And like you said, it was the women around us, but it was often, and this is what I hear from clients all the time. It will be the dad who has mentioned the weight gain or mentioned the thunder thighs or the uncle or the brother or the whatever it might be. And we carry that shame in our bodies. And also I've, there's also

Yeah.

There's a really good book called The Religion of Thinness, which I have talked about twice on this podcast, although not the podcast episodes themselves haven't aired yet, but I've talked about it twice, which is interesting. It's called The Religion of Thinness. And that is a very interesting book. And I'm always really fascinated about how much control women use dieting and the way our bodies sort of look and how we eat as a way of control, because we don't have control over other things. And I'm not suggesting that it only affects women.

But that is what I see coming up in practice. And I saw that in myself when I was healing, when I was going through my stuff. It was a way of controlling what people thought of me. It was a way of controlling how the world saw me. It was a way of controlling whether I was visible or invisible. And that includes gaining weight too. you know, wanting to be invisible to the male gaze too, because of the things you're talking about, sexual violence and all of that stuff. I find the whole topic utterly fascinating.

you

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, same. it's just such massive crossover. You know, I think it really kind of, yeah, it, it, the kind of young people, girls and young women, you know, really having to deal with this as well on top of like trying to, you know, being told to be a certain way, but also trying to navigate and limit those intrusions in their lives. And then just being like, wow, it just happens all the time. And, you know, yeah.

Yeah. And again,

know, dieting is very, you know, controlling what we eat and actually not giving ourselves a sustenance is very normalized. Disordered eating, there's such a fine line between that and eating disorders that there is so, it's almost celebrated to be doing that stuff and harming yourself in that way. And that is another, you know, layer of it, isn't it? There's another layer of that. It's like,

Yeah.

Yes.

you know, I remember being on a very strict diet and, you know, losing lots of weight and I was celebrated. No one ever asked me if I was sleeping, whether I was eating enough, what I was existing on, how, you know, my love life was or anything else like that. Nobody was asking me how I was mentally. It was just, wow, aren't you thin and aren't you smaller and more palatable? And that is really interesting to me to look back on that because I don't

Yeah.

Yeah.

see that that's really changing and I've seen it in my 10 year old and actually my son as well who I'm bringing them up in a household where we don't talk about that stuff, we don't talk about dieting, we don't talk about food in a good or bad way but my daughter has at times you know there's one vivid memory I have of her like maybe last year or maybe the year before coming downstairs with a black bin liner of clothes going I don't want these anymore and I'm like hang on some of these we've just bought and she's like yeah but I don't have the right body to wear them my body's not the right shape.

Yeah.

Why is that?

And I was like, my gosh, like I failed, like I'm a body image coach, like I do this stuff and I can't, you know, but for some reason, and of course we talked about it and we got through it, but it's so hard. And my son who seven has been obsessed with having a six pack for a very long time. And those kinds of conversations are coming up at school in the playground. What it means to have a good body is being discussed at that age.

You're so good. Yeah.

you

Yeah, which is just, it's so hard isn't it? It's so hard as a parent and I think that to you know like trying to a more like feminist mum and then my kids are coming home you know with these things as well and it's so interesting how automatic we're like okay well that's our failure we failed it's the woman obviously who failed you know and that's just not the truth at all and there's just so it's so

Yeah.

It's just seeping in so much and so much and so much. And even if we've got kids who don't have phones, their friends have phones. And it's just coming in and coming in. And I think definitely a huge thing for boys is, you know, Jim bros and all of that sort of stuff and wanting to, that, you know, that expression of masculinity. And it's really, it's so sad and so difficult. They're having to kind of...

Hmm...

you know, how do we as adults help them navigate that in a way that kind of gives them agency and recognises all the amazing things that they are capable of doing, all the ways, you know, and really centering them in this conversation.

Mmm.

like in a way that's like really protective or reactive to these things. And I think that's a really like difficult challenge for us to take on, I think, is to really think about how we are supporting kids and young people through these experiences in a way where we're not just like, because it is very natural in us to be like, let me just protect you and I'm just gonna hide you from everything. I can't do that. I can't do that with my girls. can't do that with our kids. And so how are we kind of gaining our confidence

Yeah.

And it's partly why we want to do training as well at Girlhood Reclaim with adults to be able to like really explore this ourselves as well. How is it impacting us? How has misogyny impacted us? How is all of these, you know, how are they part of our lives and how do they make us feel? And really think about the ways that we can again be the adult in the room that is really curious, that is supportive, that isn't just shutting it down because we don't want to hear it.

but really confidently able to engage in those conversations with these kids because it's happening, it's there. can't avoid it.

Yeah. Well, that was going to be my question to you really

is like, how can we as adults as listeners to this podcast, you know, this is sort of like a podcast that sort of flits between business advice and menopause, but basically I designed this podcast to be something that supports women with whatever they are going through in life and knowing that I'm in those, you know, sandwich years where I've, you know, lost parents, parents who've been ill.

Yeah.

Yeah.

but also have young children. I also have step kids that are, you know, not quite 30 yet, but you know, in their late twenties and expanding all those different age groups. And again, like they're my older step boys aren't, aren't immune to all this stuff either. But how do we talk to our kids? Like, how do we have those conversations about what they're seeing online? I think that this is the question that I ask myself often. My clients ask me often because they want to know, how do I not pass my

Love you.

diet culture stuff on, know, if we're talking about that particular topic, but with all of it, how do we open up the conversations with our young kids, with our tweens, with our teenagers in an age appropriate way? Like, what's, what, do you have advice on that? Like, is that something you...

I think, yeah, I mean, again, I'm absolutely no expert, but I think from what I, from my own experience doing youth work and then in mental health, and I do think like just the more we can listen really well and really be a safe space that is not judgmental, that is not reactive, that is not like just going straight for a protective mode. I think...

the more hope we have that our kids can feel able to come and talk about that thing. Because that's the main thing is that we can be a space or that they can have trusted adults in their lives who they know I can go and talk about this. And it's not going to be like, right, taking Snapchat off your phone or what don't you know, like the actually kind of really, I think for me, that's always the starting point. And the point I try with my own, you know, have three teen daughters and try and just be like, actually, you know, just let them talk, give them

to talk and because I think also when they do I'm like yeah you know a lot about this you know they often know more than we give them credit for and have a lot to say about these things that I think are really important for us to hear and that's always my starting point and I think

again, like probably more so with like diet culture for me, like really thinking about like doing the work myself, how do I like deconstruct that within myself? How do I like look at my own internalised fatphobia or my own internalised misogyny? Maybe that will pop up and show up sometimes out of nowhere. think, no, I don't like that. But how do I keep kind of really and I think for me having conversations with my friends about it and like being having some really supportive spaces myself, like it's really hard when your kid comes

home and shares an experience of sexual harassment and you're like my god like I need to I need space to talk about that as well with people who are really safe where it's confidential where I you know there's they're also going to give me space to just just talk so I think it's really kind of yeah recognising what the kind of journey that we're on in ourselves wherever that is and keep doing that sort of work ourselves and being open to that.

as well as yeah just really creating those really open spaces so our kids know okay if something you know because there can be really big awful things that happen online and we you know being a safe space and and also we went I don't know that you know I've done this master's and I still I'm like god online stuff is still a little bit I don't know everything we couldn't know everything and there are like amazing services out there there's amazing resources online as well don't try and be the person to hold that all and answer

Yeah.

for all the questions. I think look for those kind of places online. I can't think off the top of my head what they are, but I saw some recently that were really great. And I think there are just really good resources out there from specialist services who can really support us, who can support your kids in kind of understanding what has happened if something does really harmful happens online. But I think for those kind of normal kind of conversations about how misogyny is normalized, how diet culture is normalized, just yeah, just providing that space.

to listen I think feels really important. And there was one, my last training session I did when I, my previous job running the helpline and I trained volunteers, it's all women. And we do a lot of training that looked at themes of sexual violence and domestic abuse and all of that. But we trained in active listening skills. then one of the women is a mom and she kind of came back one week and she was like, I just had this amazing moment with my like seven or eight year old. And he just had this awful experience at school with a

kid

and he just sat down and I just listened and she said I have never had a conversation like that with my kid before and I use my listening skills and I just thought that was such a like wonderful example it feels like a very simple thing to say but actually it's really powerful I think yeah

Yeah, rather than jumping in with that solution, which we always want to do as parents, you know, I think my

coaching has helped me with that is actually going, well, how did that make you feel rather than going, my gosh, I can't believe this happened or don't worry about it, which we tend to do, don't we, in the moment when we're in the middle of something, because they always come and tell you something when you're literally in the middle of something. it's, yeah, being able to hold space for them and being able to just pause without judgment, without reflection, without kind of...

Yeah.

Yeah.

you know, maybe even just reflecting it back to them to say, is this what you're saying? Like, and how did that make you feel? And having those conversations also allows space for emotions as well. I'm very keen with that with the boys, you know, having three boys between me and my husband, making sure that they have got space just to let it fall out into the air and let it be said, rather than thinking that it's going to come with a loaded judgment. And you'd my husband joke about this because I'm always talking to him about.

again.

the end of the day.

They don't care what it was like in your day. They're not interested in what you did. They don't care that you've had to do this. That's not of importance to them right now because they can't rationalize what's happening to them. They can't put themselves in your shoes in, you know, the seventies. You need to just meet them where they're at and just be there for them.

you

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think what you said as well, really good point of just being like, it's okay, don't worry like that. Dismit like not to dismiss it either. Like if you know, if they've had an experience of sexism or misogyny or some sort of like, just kind of, just ignore them, silly comment. But actually, you know, that's part of how it's so normalized. That's part of how these things don't get interrupted and don't get to. And yeah, so I think that's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I

actually had a moment of that years ago and I think the school may have wished it wasn't me that it had happened with, but my daughter was being permanently chased around the playground, not in that kind of way, but just in a very, like, a not wanted way. She did not want to be chased by these boys and, you know, it was a game in quotes, but it wasn't a game to her and it was making her feel really stressed out.

Thank

No.

and anxious and she was getting, it was just going on on and on. I went to speak to the school and they were like, it would really, help if she just didn't scream and run away. And I was like, no, that's just lit the torch paper for me. I'm really sorry, but we're not policing my daughter's behavior because you don't know how to talk to these boys about their behavior. This is not okay. And I think it's, especially with girls, I think we need to be mindful of how we're talking to them about their behavior. And

No.

you

Even with silly, not silly little things, again, it's that internalised misogyny that comes out of my own mouth. Like you said, we've got to think about our own experiences. But when their behaviour is, seems silly to us, we have to remember that that's their whole world. They aren't thinking about what the mortgage payments are. They're not thinking about bigger things that happening in the world because they don't actually know about them. Their whole entire world is whatever is happening to them right now. And if that's their friendship, if that's their latest WhatsApp group, if that's their...

you

you

TikTok account or whatever it might be, that is the biggest thing that's in their life. And when they come home and say, this has happened and that's happened and there's been an argument about this, when we say, don't be silly, just why do girls have to be like this? Or why do, why can't you just all get on? And I think that's a conversation that happens a lot for girls. Why can't, why do you have to be so emotional about things? Why can't you just be more like the boys? And with those conversations we have over the top of their heads were.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

you know, isn't it just so much simpler with the boys because they don't get into this drama and it's very interesting about our own language and I'm guilty of it. I literally just did it right then in the moment because I'm like trying to explain something and it's so deeply ingrained in us. think it's, I don't want us as adults to be constantly thinking we're getting it wrong, but to be very mindful of the fact that why did I just say that? Why am I telling my daughter to be careful but my son's running off down the road and he's jumping off a

That one, yeah.

you

Yeah.

you

big high wall and I'm like, gosh, boys will be boys. Why are we having those conversations?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. that's what, you know, in the focus groups, the girls talked about that when we talked about, you know, how did you learn about safety work? You know, where did it come from? And it was, you know, just the way that we treat girls and boys differently. So seeing that their brothers or male cousins or whoever are not told the same things that they are told when they leave the house. instance, you know, they're like, my brother can just leave. I get told, you know, text me when you get there. Give me all of this stuff. And yeah, I think there is, you know, that kind of for us to kind of just be aware of that is

huge thing and we're not, like you said, we're not always gonna get it right. But I think that's something I've also just been thinking a lot and making sure that even the work we're doing at Girlhood Reclaim doesn't in any way add to that.

talk about like, ization, how women are responsible ized. you know, like we are responsible ized for our own mental well being, you know, we're responsible ized for keeping ourselves safe, all of that. So not wanting to add that tool into the conversation, not to, you know, that's what we want to disrupt. Again, it's something else we want to disrupt that you have to be so responsible and you have to be, yeah, either like the boys or just, yeah, taking on all of these things where we're forced to grow up quicker and all of those sort of things. yeah, yeah, I think it's just, just as

as adults if we're working or you know have kids in our lives that we spend time with and there's nieces or nephews or whatever just to be able to really be aware of how because it's just it's everywhere it's so normalized and when you start paying attention like no okay

Yeah, even when you're deep in the work, you quite often see

things that you haven't seen before. You're just like, gosh, yeah, like, you know, we're always learning and always, you know, finding new things. How can people connect with you? How can they support this? How can we get involved? How can we, you know, see this flourish? Because I think it's amazing and it's obviously so needed.

Thank you. So we are like.

to us. I'm trying to pilot some projects this year of doing kind of project work so I'm really happy to talk about how what that would look like in a school and how we can work with some of the kind of the young women and girls and non-binary kids around this whole kind of sense making but also kind of engagement with Joy Talk activism and training as well if you've got staff who you think yeah it'd be really great for us to just kind of spend some time thinking about this together and do some training together.

Yeah, just always and kind of an artist as well. I'm always looking to kind of collaborate with artists as well on the project work. So yeah, just reach out if you want to know more. I'm always like really happy to chat and just to engage with us online would be really brilliant too.

Yeah, fantastic.

Thanks, Ray. I'm going to put all of your links and all of that information in the show notes. So if you're listening to this and you want to go and find out more, it's all going to be in the show notes. Just click the button and then you can find it. Ray, thank you so much. I have loved this conversation. Obviously wish we didn't have to have this conversation, but I have loved this conversation. It's great chatting with you.

you

Thank you, it's been great.