Woman's Hour and Joan Baez!

So I was on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour today talking about the Unilad scandal. Plus in the green room I met Joan Baez - another guest on the show. You can listen to it all again here for the next seven days I think.

I'm also quoted (rather fittingly) in another article today about sexism in comedy on John Fleming's blog.

Back on banter and the BBC

I'll be on BBC Radio Four Woman's Hour tomorrow (10am onwards) discussing the Unilad scandal and whether we can just dismiss overt sexism as "hilarious" comedy banter. Do tune in if you're about - it's available on the internet too. Not sure about overseas but you can try...!

Vajazzling WOW

If you'd like to see me arguing with Dawn Porter about vajazzling at the WOW festival on the South Bank, you'd better get a ticket here.

My Dawkins encounter in full!

So finally time for me to give the full account of the Rally for Free Expression at which Richard Dawkins spoke and then directly afterwards I spoke (eek!) and then I spoke to him and all that stuff. So firstly here's my speech. It's cut off a little at the beginning. What you miss is "Hello, great to be here. Those few of you who already know me probably know me from a viral internet video called Atheist Bitchslap. After that video went round I received hundreds of threats of violence, mostly rape, which goes to show that..."



And if you want to see what Dawkins himself said then that's here:



There were tons of other great speakers - you'll see the links to them at the end of either of those clips.

Afterwards I spoke briefly to Professor Dawkins. Proof! Proof!









To be honest I was just hoping to get a photo with him but he asked me about the story I told at the end of my speech and asked if he could quote it on his website. Of course I said yes. You'll see it here. Interestingly (but not surprisingly, Chinese whispers effect) as the story has been retold the woman in question has gotten younger and younger and both Dawkins and other commenters refer to her as a "girl". In fact she is considerably older than that and though she talked about my parents being angry if I didn't go to church I imagine that what keeps her trapped in the strictures of religious practice is a wider pressure from her whole family, her community, even her own children.

Several people have commented to the effect "no, free expression must apply in ALL cases, including for pornography". That's a rather silly point of view. No-one is shouting "what about free expression for child pornographers?". The thing is YES I fully support your right to engage in whatever weird and wonderful fully consensual sexual practices you and your adult friends so desire. And if you want to invite the neighbours round to watch too - fine by me. HOWEVER free expression does not include the freedom to make a profit from whatever activity you choose. As soon as you start making money from this - whether through direct subscription or ticket sales or through internet advertising and data collection - I think it starts to cloud the consent issue. Where big bucks are concerned it's also clear that it creates a need for manufacturers of pornography to seek out more extreme, more addictive images all the time. The impact on the consumers is nothing to do with freedom to hear a range of human views and opinions - it's all about manipulating a younger and younger consumer into parting with more and more money. This is not freedom of anything! These people are not talking about free expression but about free markets and unbridled capitalism. And there I take the view that we should regulate, that we need full and effective checks in place to ensure exploitation does not happen of participants and of consumers. And if you'd spent as much time as I have working with survivors of the multi-billion pound global sex industry, you'd understand why I feel so strongly that the current more or less non-existent regulation isn't doing the job and big change is needed.

Mostly though I am just bragging that I met Richard Dawkins and then he wrote about me and about what I said! Yippee!

Witch Magazine

This video of Charlie Brooker attacking The Sun newspaper for it's hypocrisy is great. Well worth a watch.

However I must add that Mr Brooker is in fact wrong. The Sun HAS gone after actual witches too. For example here in an article about pagan police officer.

Dawkins and me

Very excited to announce that on Saturday I shall be speaking at the Free Expression Day of Action outside parliament. So is Richard Dawkins! (Giggles excitedly!) And loads and loads of other cool people. You should come, info here!

Fun, grump, fun

So firstly I had such a wonderful time in Sweden it's not true. Thanks so much to all the lovely people who put me on and up and entertained me. Malmo Comedy Festival was ace. Of course I only understood the English-speaking acts but really blown away by Al Pitcher who really performed his socks off! He's touring Sweden soon so if you are based there do get a ticket. Then El Mundo which is really the most fun little gig in Stockholm (sorry to all the others including Maffia, which I did the next day and was also ace but lots of acts so the audience got a bit tired plus my stupid projector spontaneously stopped working which didn't help my set). Then last night I was taken out to perform at a show at a small town called Gavla (sorry, can't do Swedish characters on my English keyboard, the first "a" should have two little dots over it, as should the "o" at the end of Malmo!) about two hours drive north of Stockholm, into a proper blizzard, which was a real adventure and I really enjoyed!

So then the grump: BBC London Eddie Nestor's show. I was invited to go on air by phone and discuss whether the House of Commons should be serving "Top Tottie" beer and whether it's ok for bus drivers to call female passengers "love" and "darling". So far so good. Eddie asks me a question, I make a few points, he then asks the other guest. I let her make a couple of points, then she says something I disagree with strongly (that it's a small issue and I should instead be campaigning on more serious issues, except I AM campaigning on other issues and SHE'S NOT, in fact she's campaigning AGAINST making an improvement on this small issue and doing NO WORK AT ALL on big issues). So I speak up. She carries on talking. Not talking over me, just talking... Gradually I started to realise she couldn't hear me. I thought maybe my phone was playing up. So I'm shouting "HELLO, HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME?", nothing. Well I figure they'll spot the problem soon enough since I'm not audible to them. Goes on and on. Eventually I realise they've deliberately switched my mic off. I figure they'll have left it so the presenter can hear I want to come in and he'll come to me shortly. Nothing, nothing, nothing. By this stage I'm shouting "Eddie - can I come in on this point please? Eddie?Eddie?". Then finally he comes to me, but with a completely new question - he obviously hasn't heard a thing I've said. I get a few seconds then suddenly "Thanks very much to both of you, goodbye". Well (1) what's the point in having a debate unless you actually let the debate happen. Fair enough to turn one person down a bit or say "Hang on Kate, let my other guest finish her point" or whatever, but switching the mic right off and ignoring one of the guests for several minutes? And (2) from a listeners perspective (probably assuming we're all in the studio) it sounds as though I just agree with or have no answer to all the points made. Including the ones grossly misrepresenting what I've said or who I am! And (3) by not even telling me what they were going to do I had no idea how much of what I'd said had been audible to listeners so when they did come back to me I didn't know what points I'd already made!! Well I've complained, there's probably a link on their website but I'm not going looking for it to listen to myself being ignored. I'll see what they say before I make a decision about whether or not to go on the show again. There are lots of totally ace BBC London shows - like Kath Melandri and Nikki Bedi and I've loved working with Jazzy B when he's been guest presenting - so I'll maybe stick to them in future.

And back to fun. King's College Philosophy Society booked me to do an hour of political feminist atheist lefty comedy for them tonight and with awesome support acts and a really smart, enthusiastic crowd it was a lot of fun. And on top of that a whole ton of people have been on Twitter recommending I be invited to be a guest on QI (they've been asking for suggestions @qikipedia, my Twitter account is @Cruella1 if you want to follow me or talk at or about me!). I would love to be on that show, would really suit me I think. That and Question Time!

I bash the bishop!

Ha ha, dying to use that title!! And luckily it's very justified today. I got a last minute call to appear on BBC Radio Wales phone-in show with presenter Jason Mohammad. Up for discussion is the presence of 26 (ha ha - I say on air it's "about 25" and even the "top" historian on the show doesn't correct me!) male, Church of England bishops in the House of Lords. As well as a range of callers I also get to argue with historian Martin Farr, a vicar (can't figure out who) and an actual bishop (pictured) - Bishop Gregory Cameron. Anyway you've got 7 days to listen to is again. It's a good one, I think! The Listen Again link is here.

Dear Money Advice Service

You may all have seen the expensive television adverts urging members of the public worried about their finances to contact the government's free independent Money Advice Service. So I did...

"Hi, I'm wondering if you can help me. My friend runs a money-lending business that is badly managed and has been giving money to people who can't afford to pay it back and ripping people off with fees and so on. He's going bankrupt so I offered to give him £10,000 to help him out. To save the money I'm planning to stop giving £2 a week to my disabled friend who has two small children to raise on her own. Is this a good idea? Many thanks Kate"

I'll let you know if they get back to me.

That irrefutable evidence for God in full...

[for the benefit of those living overseas or who missed The Big Questions on January 15th or the iPlayer version while it was up]

Are you unconvinced about the existence of God? Sceptical about claims of supernatural beings, miracles, virgin births, spiritual dimensions and an afterlife? Well great news. BBC One went to the trouble to invite a wide range of people from a variety of faiths and denominations and giving them a whole hour to present this gripping evidence in front of a handful of atheists: me, evolutionary biologist Diana Fleischman, Prof Peter Atkins and journalist David Aaronovitch.

Key highlights include:

"There's no evolutionary basis for altruism" Yes there is, it helps the survival of those around you, all of whom will be carrying at least some of your genes.

"I just feel like there's a God-shaped gap in my life" Yes many people feel things like loneliness or insecurity. But the presence of a void doesn't prove the existence of something that fills that void. By that argument ever colander is a bowl. [Also if you believe every hole should be filled - that's a pro-rape argument, though I didn't say anything so shocking on the show!]

"I know God exists from the really strong feeling I get when I see a landscape or hear great music". Right what about when you have an orgasm? Is that a strong enough feeling? And if God gave you the joy of music, she must have also given you that feeling of nausea when you see maggots. [Actually Diana Fleischman had just come from a conference on disgust!]

"When personal tragedy struck, I wanted God to exist and so I decided to believe" Does this have anything to do with evidence? "No". Ok.

"God appeared to me personally when I was in prison for committing hundreds of crimes and spoke to me (in English)" Shame she didn't show up BEFORE you ruined all those victims' lives.

Here's what didn't happen:

"I prayed to Allah and my amputated leg grew back"

"Jesus spoke to me in a dream and here he is, I brought him on TV with me, so you can all see it wasn't a hallucination"

Also as previously discussed, this is the episode where I compare the Qu'ran to Harry Potter. Deep apologies to Harry Potter fans everywhere!

Enjoy!