Podcast Advent Day 1: The Guilty Feminist

Welcome to the 1st installment of my podcast advent calendar. A chance for me to document and share in a whimsical way, the best podcasts I know, and why I love them. Podcasts for me are mostly about learning, but don't worry, I find it hard to hold my attention so the host(s) of any favoured series are usually funny, good storytellers and good researchers. And sometimes the topic is just obscure enough or relatable enough for me to keep listening.

For Day 1, we're starting with my Day 1 - The Guilty Feminist. 

This podcast has been my initial stages of education in so many intersectional feminist topics, it's been a very long time since I started listening and I've lost count of how many things it's sparked my understanding on.

The host, Deborah Frances-White, is the original self-confessed guilty feminist who starts every episode inviting herself and her guests to make statements starting "I'm a feminist but..." and follow it up with something that seems entirely driven by the patriarchy. For example, I would say, I'm a feminist but I once ducked out of a protest halfway through because it was very cold. But, I digress - the earliest years of episodes were quite good for me in my stage of learning as she was learning too, particularly around disability justice and intersectional feminism. I always appreciate examples of humility and curiousity - heads up, this will become a theme!

In my early days in Toronto, something switched for me in making me want to lean into and learn as much as I possibly could about what my new city was like. And pretty early on that transformed from "why do people want to line up so long for obscure things" to "what is it really like for people to live here, for all of the people?" I had landed in the core of downtown and couldn't believe how young and fit everyone was and it set many questions going for me about where was everyone else and how were they experiencing life.

And I answered that with intersectional non-fiction, full-time volunteering and and, to begin with, this podcast. Pretty soon, it became clear that there is a wide disparity between people who live in Toronto and I wanted to know why, so I could start to consider and understand how do we change it!

The Guilty Feminist taught me about the conditions in which our world is setup to work against women of all genders, identities, races, classes and abilities. It also taught me about the contradictions that exist in a space where people want to "make a difference" which now, of course, I understand is heavily connected to our place within societal structures and how close we are to power. It is often organised in something called a power flower as a helpful tool for understanding where you as an individual sit within the power structures of society. 

But it particularly taught me the power of individual experience and storytelling as a way to understand societal barriers for women from all backgrounds. And a great example of this is the episode 'Mad as Hell' with Farzana Doctor and Zainab Johnson. Zainab spoke to her experience as a Black Muslim comedian, and Farzana shares her expertise around female genital mutilation (FGM). 

This episode was also particularly special to me as a live episode from their first visit to Toronto, in January 2020. A month before I left my ex, and two months before COVID-19 lockdowns started. I invited all my favourite women and introduced them to DFW in a space where Canada was gently mocked for it's simple naming of things like The Comedy Bar and Breakfast Television.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you like this episode, there's plenty more!