Feminism Is Taking Back The Narrative – But There's Still Plenty Of Room For Change

In The Guilty Feminist, host Deborah Frances-White analyzes feminism and all of those traps and omissions into which we very often fall by failing to live up to it. Hence the "guilt". 

In this episode, which was the very first that got me hooked on the podcast's style, Frances-White goes in depth on the ways narratives are constructed in the public sphere. She starts with comparing how narratives are created in the midst of an ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, but quickly moves on to the topic at hand:

"I don't think the #MeToo-Movement has gone too far", she argues in response to men arguing in the media and any given conversation that it has. "I think the previous 'women had to put up with any shit' movement had a good run. It was wide, deep, long, it went in all the directions for millennia".

The case in point aims to expose the narrative that the movement to denounce sexual harassment and sexual assault is now an excessive response. As if the problem it addresses was a small one. 

"Some men are saying 'I'm scared to talk to women now' and I think that what we are witnessing is some men developing empathy in public. Because what they are saying is 'I don't know and had never thought to ask, or even look for small social cues, on how what I thought or said lands on women". 

The powerful monologue, however, is just the setup for a conversation with actress and writer Susan Wokoma, playwright Ella Hickson, and actor Samuel West, on how women are represented on screen, stage, and in the arts in general. And how they can take back the narrative in favor, not only of women in general, but of minorities and opressed groups more broadly.