An Evening with Deborah Frances-White and David Tennant (Part Two)
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Hello and welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm Head of Programming, Conor Boyle. This is part two of our recent live event with Deborah Frances White and David Tennant on six conversations we're scared to have. If you haven't heard part one yet, just jump back an episode to get up to speed or become a member on intelligencesquared.com/membership to get the full episode and all our previous events right away.

Now, let's rejoin our conversation with David Tennant and Deborah Francis-White. You make the point that the statistics for trans people in society are vanishingly small and... Wait, hello? What happened? Sorry, Jehovah. Jehovah's furious. Jehovah doesn't mind trans people. Jehovah made trans people. He's fine with it. Do you know, if anything, I would say God must be non-binary because...

according to the Abrahamic tradition, he made both men and women in his own image. Yes. So how is God a he? Yeah. Gods definitely are they. Yeah. Cheers. That's a T-shirt.

Thank you. Thank you. Terribly kind. Yeah, one of the cardinals has just checked out from the conclave to come and... I really love the Intelligent Squared audience because I'm being fist-bumped and they already know a lot of this, clearly. I reckon if we locked the doors, we could probably solve a good 10% of Britain's problems right here. Just to have a lock-in, a couple of days. And choose you as the next Pope.

Listen, guys, stop asking. It's getting embarrassing. I've said no. Yeah, because one of the things you talk about is about personal experience. And the Modern Family reference in your book, I thought was fascinating. Modern Family, this huge network sitcom in the US, which centred around a gay couple, two men who were adopting a child.

they're just two cats. I mean, their sexuality is sort of secondary to the story. They're just there and they're great characters. It's called Modern Family for a reason. Yeah, exactly. Modern Family is a bit different. And the statistic that you quote in the book is that

When that show started transmitting, 40% of Americans thought same-sex marriage was acceptable. By the end of the run of Modern Family, 70% of Americans thought, no, there may have been other factors at play. I'm sure there was. And the book does say there's a lot of complicated factors at play. I don't want anyone thinking I think it was Modern Family alone that got us equal marriage. But I truly believed it changed a lot of... Because it just seeps in.

It's funny. It's on at nine o'clock. The kids like it. It was Sofia Vergara herself that, yeah, it was all we needed. But you might... We're not here to debate who was the best in Modern Family. You've got a point, and I've never thought of it before. If you put on a show with an extremely stereotypically attractive, very beautiful woman with very large breasts...

And you put it on network television. Who's going to tune in for that? Straight men. And straight men who like, you know, yeah, oh, no, I'll watch this one with you, love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't normally like your shows, but I do like this one. I do like this one. You know, this is quite a nice one. And then they're just slowly getting seduced by this couple. Oh, he's quite funny, that Cam. He's quite funny. I do like that Mitch. No, no, no. No, they're nice boys. And over a period of time, because in the 90s and 80s,

fuck loads of like outright, outright homophobia. But then it got into that era of kind of just gay panic, like in friends sort of like, it'd be like, Oh, someone would, you know, assume that Joey and Chandler were a couple and they're like, Ooh, you know, or they'd hug too much. And then they'd go, Oh, beer, you know, just a little bit gay panic. And it was, it's all a progression. Yeah. Um, I remember Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza used to go, not, not that there's anything wrong with that. Um,

But when we're getting up to that point of... At that point, men would be like, oh, I'd just be a bit worried that... I don't mind what you do in your own time. Just don't shove it in my face. Just don't come near me. I don't want gay men in the changing room at the gym. They might be checking me out. You'd be lucky. Not you, David. I'm sure... I'd be thrilled. I mean, I know, absolutely. But I'm talking about men who say that. Sure, sure, sure. Not you, but I'm sure you're highly desirable to your gay audience. LAUGHTER

I can only assume. But do you have a lot of gay fans? Yes. They're all here tonight. Absolutely. A lot of them seem to be women. It's like lesbian gay fans. I'll take what I can get. But it just kind of wears people down that if they've been taught to be fearful...

And then, and the assumption is because of what they've been seen in the media or in family folklore, community jokes, it's like, oh, gay men, they're likely to be predatorial. They're likely to be a feat. They're likely to be all these things. If you keep on seeing something that comes into your home every week and you realise that,

These gay men are just liars worried about how much they could lift in the gym and whether they're going bald or what they what time they've got to pick their kid up from school like we are yeah if they if they they suddenly go oh and that that fear that the amygdala goes down and I call it society's amygdala if society has been taught

Over and over through story and representation to be scared of something Society's amygdala starts to rest when it sees enough Representation that demonstrates otherwise and some people go where they shouldn't need to I know but whatever we need to do right now We need to do yeah, I it we can no longer be like but people shouldn't need well But yeah, I know but people are awful, but they shouldn't need they should be better than that They should just be empathetic, but they're not so

We just got to do what we got to do, guys. We've got to start thinking strategically. You write about how the challenges to the rights of women are absolutely in lockstep with the challenges to the trans community. Just unpick that a little bit for us. Well, is this a good time to talk about the Christian Nationalists? Go for it. I mean, it's always a good time for me to talk about the Christian Nationalists. So in 2013...

Christian nationalists in America, the kind of people who stand out at the front of abortion clinics screaming, just went, we're losing, we've got to do something. And they came over to London and they had an underground conference, which now is not underground anymore, known about, and said, we are losing globally, we have to do something.

We want a world of family values. We want a world in which a heteronormative couple, a heterosexual couple, raise as many children as possible. We do not want contraception. We do not want abortion. That was sort of the world that they were seeing. Obviously, the vision of that family is white. And do you know what made them think they were losing? Does anyone remember what happened around that time, 2013? What happened? Thank you. Yes. Equal marriage came in in the United Kingdom and in France.

And I think their attitude was basically, look, when it's Scandinavia, I mean, the Danes will marry a chair. I mean, they do all sorts there. I mean, it's just on for young and old. What won't they do? But that's different. When it's the United Kingdom with the Queen, when it's France, the bastion of Europe, we're losing. And they said, well, if we come in with no abortion rights and no gay rights, we'll be laughed at as crackpots.

So they asked the question, what do feminists already disagree on? And one of the things that they came up with was trans rights. And so I had a man called Neil Datta who came over for a show I did at Bloomsbury. Was anyone there at that?

Is that why you're here now? Yeah. So sorry if any of this is repetitive. We've actually talked about a lot of things we didn't talk about there because it was all about Christian nationalists there. This bit's going to be repetitive, but I think it bears hearing again because you can't hear this horror show enough times. You can't believe even what you're hearing. But they said trans rights because way back to the 60s, so Neil Datta, who's the head of the European Parliamentary Forum for Reproductive and Sexual Rights, is an expert in this because his job...

up until around this time, was just making sure people had contraception, cervical smears, access to terminations if they wanted them. That was his job. And all the European MPs getting them together to talk about this. And then countries in Europe, of course, where there's little to no access to abortion. So that was his job. And it turned at this point because... Do you remember in 2014, Orange is the New Black came out and Laverne Cox was playing a trans woman in a women's prison?

And this is what set me off to find out about this. I thought, I don't remember anyone saying anything. And I don't remember feeling anxious watching it, thinking, oh my God, everyone's going to be saying things. And I went back because she had a beauty parlor and she was unsupervised, touching women, doing their hair and all that. No one said a word. And I went back. Not only could I not find any social media reaction about it, the Daily Mail was positive about it.

Saying, oh, look at all these beautiful women. There's orange and black women doing some kind of glamour shoot. She was at the front because she was the star of this particular shoot. The comments on the Daily Mail were positive. And I went, what the fuck? And I saw Theresa May was saying we need gender recognition, no transphobia in this country. She was speaking up at the kind of pink awards or something. I was like, what the fuck happened? How did this happen?

And the Time magazine had the new frontier for trans rights with the Verne Cox in the front. What happened? What happened? What happened? And I found Neil and he said, and he's not a trans rights guy. He wants trans people to have rights, but that's not his thing. He doesn't say women and other people who can get pregnant like I do. He doesn't say people with vaginas. He's a reproductive rights guy.

And he said there's always been a mild disagreement back to the 60s about whether trans people, that was queer rights or feminist rights. But he said, you know, like we know in the book as well, that in the 60s, some people didn't want lesbians in the movement. And he said, but that had always been there, but it had been mild. You never heard about it because it was mild. And they knew that was a disagreement point and they went in for that. And he said that they started...

getting influential. They hired lawyers. They started working out how do you change a law? How do you get close to the right MPs? They moved to cities where decisions are made like Brussels. They started NGOs. They got super, super strategic and

This correlates, this is totally invented. It's a wedge issue, but now they're in, now they're changing laws. We saw it just happen. Now the people that they've gone into coalition with, many of them have no idea Christian nationalist is behind this. I'm not saying that every gender critical person knows that this is tied to Christian nationalists. Most of them don't. It's strategic, but now they're in and it's

Neil says they don't really care about trans people. There's so few trans people. He said to them, all LGBTQ people are against God and nature. Got away with that one. So he said they don't see a difference between trans people and gay people at all. But this is their starting place. And you see what's happening in America. Women's voting rights disrupted. A lot of people outright saying now there should be one vote per household.

And Paula White, Trump's faith czar, is now in the White House doing, you know, with all these people, you see it all the time now, they're in the White House, hands in the air, Jesus, Jesus, closing their eyes, in the White House, which is meant to be a separation of church and state. And she's saying, I heard her into a microphone the other day saying, women are in subjection to men. That was the Jehovah's Witness line. Men are the head of the house. It is God's natural order.

We are in the flashback to The Handmaid's Tale. That's what we are in. Trans rights to them are the tip of the iceberg. Our rights are so linked, and it's not going to be great for men either. They think men's natural state is at war at the deep heart of this.

I mean, obviously it'll be a lot better for men than it will be for women, and it will be better for femme women like me than it will be for butch women, and so on and so on, and it will be better for everyone than it will be for trans people. It will be terrible for disabled people. But I am compelled...

to do something. If I'm being totally honest with you, I haven't said this to any audience, but at the 10-year mark, which is this December, I was hoping to wrap up The Guilty Feminist and go and write novels for a bit. And just, I felt burnt out. And I thought, I'm just going to take a little time, come back to it, you know, maybe do a few events a year. And now I'm like, oh no.

We could watch our country go, I'm seeing all this religious stuff coming up into this country. I haven't got time to go into it now, but there's a lot of stuff going on. So I'm going to start doing events. We've done one event called the Road to Gilead events, community town halls where we can come together and talk about it, breakouts. So if you are interested in the Road to Gilead and the movement around that, and also how it can appeal under a totally different name to right-wing voters, to reform voters. If reform get in, we will be the 51st state.

We cannot let reform in. I know we don't have much of an alternative, but in the short term, in the long term, we should be thinking about alternatives. But in the short term, keep reform out at all costs. And the Tories look like they're going to go into coalition with reform. So in the short term, I know it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow. But a lot of people didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris for very good reasons. But there is either a terrible party that you can talk to, that you can fight with, or there is the end of the world.

That doesn't mean we should be happy with this. We should be building mid- and long-term options. Of course we should. We should be telling Labour this isn't good enough. But in the next election, we will be choosing our opponent. We will not be choosing our ally. None exists. But America, every day now, he's bringing in martial law. He's giving... Did you see today? He's giving the police army equipment and saying, just basically the rule of law is gone.

So what is our duty though? Because if the stakes are that high and if there is only a binary choice, then how do we react when the government that we have, the government that is the only option to Parmigian, are behaving... Because recently you were very critical of the Labour government for their stance on taking away some of the disability benefits.

Is that not letting in the right? Does that not give them, do we not have to maintain this kind of armor against that? Do we not have to be this front that is impregnable? I mean, look, I sit here as you do between a really rocky rock and an impossible place. Yeah.

We need to be telling the Labour Party all the time, this is not what we voted for, this is not good enough. We need to be fighting with our MPs. We need to be rising up and we need to be making sure reform stay out. And, you know... Can we do both? I suppose that's my question. Is there enough...

Is there enough space to be doing both at the same time? Or are the stakes so high that we just have to hunker down and go, this is our best option. We have to just agree with everything they say for now. Well, I will not be doing that. I will be saying I've been very disappointed with the Labour Party. And if I had a better alternative, I'd be voting them in. But I don't think it's as simple as saying, well, what's the difference between David Cameron and Keir Starmer? Not much, because...

They are not my options anymore. I believe that reform will make us the 51st state. I believe that...

I do not believe the Labour Party will take away a woman's right to choose or another pregnant person's right to choose. I do not believe the Labour Party will, you know, take... Like, Italy, if you are... Someone I was talking to the other day, her wife, and she have children, and she said, in Italy, right now, my name would be taken off the birth certificate.

That's the... They call them the... It's the anti-gender movement. And for gender, just read women. It's not transgender. It's just like anti-anything, like gender studies or, you know, anything with gender. So just shorthand, women. The anti-gender movement, this combination of Christian nationalists, ethno-nationalists, and just people who want... Who are hungry for power. That is what they will do. The Labour Party won't do that. So we need to tell the Labour Party constantly what we want...

And we need to campaign saying the Labour Party has disappointed us. And we need to be telling them mid and long term we want other. Otherwise, we need to build another party altogether that will serve our interests. And at the same time, we need to keep reform out. And we need to keep the Tories out because they will go along with Kemi Badenoch saying she will go along. Do we have the space?

to be undermining the only other option, even if that other option is failing us in many ways. I think we have to say, I can't go out and say, I can't knock on the door of a disabled person and say, the Labour Party is great. No. Forget about it. Quite. What I have to say is, the Labour Party have done something really terrible to you, and I'm so scared about what reform will do, because it will be so much worse.

And so what I want to do is keep Labour in, keep fighting for better. And I really hope out of the community we build through Road to Gilead and whatever else we're able to do, that something sparks up and someone does start a political party. I know how hard it is. I know how much money it takes, how much infrastructure. It's not something I can do. But what I feel I can do short term, I don't think I'm the right person, basically. I think the right person has to come. But I feel like the women in this country...

And the gender non-conforming people in this country, if we come together, we can stop the Gilead future of this country. I never thought I'd be saying this. It's mad, doesn't it? But you see what's happening in this country now with women being prosecuted for abortions, with...

that like 20 like on the yougov poll did i say this already i said this way backstage there's a yougov poll now saying 20 of young men are going to church and i've no problem with anyone going to church if that's what they want to do but i was watching this film about saying oh they've been influenced by people like jordan peterson and russell brand they're not going to church for because oh they think it's a you know meditative you know or they've got a faith or anything

But if you're listening at home, I keep looking up when I talk about God. I've seen now Instagram reels, young men standing in front of an England flag going, I'm Church of England. I just want England to be England. I don't want it to be Muslim. So the best way to control anyone is marshal them into a church because then you just say that same young guy who would have not had any thoughts about abortion except sure if that's what people want will then be educated there.

They'll be educated there. The first time I read, don't quote me on this, but have a look it up for yourself, but I read that this is the first time in this country for a very, very long time that there are more people going to Catholic churches than Church of England churches.

But I'm not talking about if you're an everyday person who has a faith and wants to go and commune and be, you know, that's how you're raised, absolutely fine. It's when it's a rise that seems to be coming from the manosphere, the womanosphere, which is apparently like a female Andrew Tate style thing that's going on now, trad wives, when it's coming from that place in a largely secular country, I have a lot of questions about

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But it's raising an alarm that takes fire, isn't it? Because actually, you look at what Trump is doing right now. It's all stuff he promised to do. None of it was a secret. None of this is a surprise to anyone who was listening to him. But lots of people, I don't think, really believed it would happen. Yes. And that, isn't that the... If you're focused on these events, if you're focused on these personalities, if you're focused on what...

the hard right in this country are aspiring to, you might well suspect that this is, the next general election might be the most consequential we've ever lived through. But they're also very good at making you think that it's not really anything to worry about. And it, you know, all this was said in America and it didn't work. I think now that this country has seen America, I think people are starting to believe it.

What we need is a space, a series of spaces and places. The thing that I want to start is Road to Gilead. I want to start events. But you might want to start your own thing. And I think we all need to be doing what we're doing and working in coalition. And we need desperately at this time. I mean, absolutely, you should criticize the party in power. But say, you know, I want the Labour Party to stand for Labour values. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. But I saw a couple of weekends ago,

You know, the big anti-Trump marches in America. And a woman put out on social media, she made a comment. She says, this is the first protest I've ever been on. And I took my child and he was rather bored. I don't think it would have been too difficult to organise a bouncy castle. Now...

The good people on Threads had the same reaction you did. Thought that was terribly funny. And then, you know, a few people said, that's not what protests are for, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, of course, there was a massive pile on. And then I realized that my whole timeline was people talking about Barbara the bouncy castle lady. If she's even a real person, she could absolutely be a right-wing hand grenade. I think she probably was a real person. But...

Now, what we've taken our eye off is what we were protesting. Who were we protesting? I don't think it was Barbara. I don't think she's got a lot of power. I don't think Barbara can cancel DEI. And I don't think Barbara wants to. I don't think that's her thing at all. I don't think she can bring in terror. I don't think she can do anything. I think Barbara was on our team and said something crass. And a couple of people told her that's crass. And she went, oh, sorry, that is a bit crass.

And then people kept going and going and going and going until the whole timeline was nothing to do with why we were protesting Trump. And it was all about Barbara and her bouncy castle. Now, I am not saying that Barbara is the solution. Clearly not. Or is she the main problem?

While the far-right Christian nationalists have spent 13 years starting NGOs, getting in, figuring out how to change laws, talking the talk, shaking the right hands, hiding their true agenda in Europe and in the United Kingdom, we have spent 13 years telling each other not to say spirit animal. That's what's happened. Debra, we need to take some questions from the audience.

There was so much more we could have talked about, but I'm glad we talked about all the things we did talk about. And I know you're still thinking and you're still creating ideas and having the conversations with yourself and with the rest of us. And I'm very grateful you exist. I'm very grateful you've written this book. If you haven't read this book...

It will make you think, it will inspire you. I can't commend it heartily enough. You can buy a copy tonight. Deborah will sign it for you. There's an audio book. Really, we all need to be thinking about what happens next. And I think tonight has been, you know, Deborah's insight is hugely appreciated. But we don't want to let you go until you've answered some questions from the audience. So I think we're going to manage to bring the lights up a bit

And there's some microphones going around. I see one hand sort of halfway up on the aisle there. Hi. Hello. Hello. Kind of to add to all of this and sort of ask a question about it all as well.

The biggest problem, again in personal view, for again sort of that liberal views, democratic, all of that, is as you pointed out, the opposition has worked very strategically, sort of in a union-esque way, like they all have sort of same goal and they all want to do same things to achieve it, whilst on the opposite side, in our sort of liberal democratic side,

you like the views that they represent, but so often when it comes to actual presentation, like Green Party, not UK Green Party specifically, but those kinds of parties, they're like, great ideas. How are we going to achieve them? What is the step? And that's where a lot of politicians are like, somehow. So how do you think we can kind of get to the point where we could actually come up with a plan that is sort of

a proper opponent to the plan that the right wing and extremists are presenting, if that makes sense. Thank you. Great question. I went and talked to a political strategist this week to start asking questions because something I thought the other day, and I sort of wish I'd put it in the book really, but I just thought of it, is I was thinking about how brilliant the right are at telling stories politically, which pisses me off.

Because we're the storytellers, David. We're the writers, the actors, the comedians, the songwriters who tell good stories. We've got all of the skills. But when it comes to politics, we just go, if you're not fully with us, you're against us, you're wrong. And I started thinking about this. And I started thinking about, make America great again. Four words. It's got a whole story in it.

Make America great again. The story of that is America was great. America is not now great. America can be great again. Who can make America great again? You can make America great again if you tick this box and then Donald Trump will do everything else. That's a long, lot of, that's a lot of story.

And then take back control. Three words. What does that imply? We did have control. We don't have control. We could have control again. Now, I think what the writer doing, have been really good at doing, is playing to a nostalgia of a bygone age where things were better. Things were somehow better. And as Margaret Atwood says in The Handmaid's Tale, better never means better for everyone. Thank you. It always means worse for some. I know my audience.

But some people imagine it was better. Now, to be honest, I think, I don't think it was better for anyone, really. People are harking back to like Britain in the 70s where there was a lot of, it was cold and there was spam to eat and

There was only two telechannels and there was nothing on. It wasn't a good time. Watch Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. Watch any of those kind of gritty British movies. It was definitely a time of great wealth inequality. I'm sure if you were posh and sitting around a stately home throwing your head back and laughing, there were some good times. But was America so great in the 50s for most people?

I don't think it was. But they're harking back to this nostalgia. Often what people are remembering is their childhoods when they had no responsibility and they just got to come home and eat toast and honey and watch Blue Peter. And they're thinking things were better then for you if you had a nice childhood.

I think that's what they're thinking of. They play on nostalgia all the time. So one thing I'm thinking about, and this is just... I'm throwing this out to the group, is if we want reform voters...

to rethink what they're doing because I think a lot of reform voters just want to press the big red button like Brexit. It's like, this has been shit for me. I'm in a community that's going to be completely defunded and devastated. Fuck it. This, you know, this guy's different. He says he's going to do something different. I would like to do a campaign that says, Nigel Farage said we didn't want to be ruled by Europe and now he's asking us to be ruled by America.

And I want video footage of those people at the White House going, praise the Lord. Because I think a lot of people in this country would not like that. I want to appeal to their values. I don't want to pull the wool over their eyes. I want to say to them, do you know what this is? Because I think if they knew, they would not want it and they would not vote for it.

And I think we have to ask the question. So what I was asking this political strategist is how do we communicate with people we don't understand? We need to build cognitive empathy. Where are you? Have you seen couples therapy? Yes. Isn't it good? So interesting. Yeah. Have you guys seen this? So it's a New York therapist and she's an analyst where they try and get down to what's going on inside.

And so it's something like a man and a woman come in and they're a couple and she goes, oh, he's just, I'm so angry with him. I'm so pissed off because I come home from work and he's not to stack the dishwasher and he's just hanging out next to the baby on his phone and he's not done anything.

And the therapist would go, well, what's the emotion underneath that anger? And she goes, I was pissed off. And he goes, but what's underneath? She goes, I just feel alone in this. I have to do everything. I'm alone in this. And she goes, oh, so is the emotion loneliness? And she goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when in your childhood or your formative years did you feel lonely? And she'll say something like, well, my mum worked and I would come home and I'd be alone after school and my dad wasn't there and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then she'd start crying. She'll start crying. I mean, this is a made up example. It's sort of cobbled together, but she'll start crying and go, yeah, I'm lonely. And then her husband will go, I didn't know not stuck in the dishwasher would make you feel lonely. And it's really interesting to watch analysis. Now, I think we need to be doing analysis of people we think, how could they have arrived there? And of ourselves. What's underneath that? You want to push this big red button? You think there are too many refugees in your neighborhood? What's underneath that? You feel there's not enough for you.

And what's underneath that? And what's underneath that? And we need to be asking questions and we need to be doing campaigns. We need to be doing campaigns definitely to women about what's coming, Gilead-style campaigns. We definitely need to be doing that. There's a lot of men in this country who can fuck about that, wouldn't even know what the handmade style was. They don't care about that. What do they care about?

And what will reform take from them? Because I'll tell you, it'll take something. Look at what's happening in America. Look at what they are taking from ordinary working people. Doesn't matter if you're the straightest, whitest bloke in America. Trump is not, doesn't give a fuck about you. Do you see Jeff Bezos wanted to put the tariff price and Trump rang him and threatened him. And now it's off. He's taking from everybody. Mind you, not that I think we should shop at Amazon, but you know what I mean.

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Conor Boyle, and edited by Mark Roberts.

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