The New Silencing: Women Versus the Manosphere (Part One)

Mia Sorrenti (0:00)

Hello, Intelligence Squared members, senior producer Mia Sorrenti here. Today's members' episode is the full recording of our recent live panel with Jess Phillips, Juliet Nicolson and Joanna Scanlan.

They joined us to discuss the new threats facing women in modern culture and what has changed since the rise of the MeToo movement. Nearly a decade after MeToo promised a profound shift in attitudes towards women, the panel examines a more complicated picture. From the rise of the Manosphere and violence against women and girls, to the role of social media in shaping how women speak and are heard. Together, they ask what progress has been made, where it has stalled and what it will take for women's voices to carry real power in 2026

A brief content warning for this discussion, which contains some explicit language and discussions of sexual and domestic violence. Let's join our host, BBC News editor Katie Razzall, now with more.

Katie Razzall (0:55)

Hello, everybody. We're so delighted to be here to talk about this very important and timely topic. Three fabulous women here with me, and there will be no silencing tonight, that's for sure.

To my far left, Joanna Scanlan. Everyone will recognize her, an actor and writer on TV. She's known for roles in, of course, The Thick of It, Big School, Puppy Love, No Offense, Requiem, The Larkins, and most recently, the BBC drama, Riot Women. She won a BAFTA.

SPEAKER_3 (1:28)

How good was that?

Katie Razzall (1:31)

We're going to definitely discuss that later. It has my favorite line on television in the last probably 50 years, which I hope we're going to talk about. She's also won a BAFTA for leading actress in After Love, which is an amazing film if you haven't seen that, and an RTS and a Comedy Award for writing. So very esteemed and got everything covered in the cultural side of this conversation.

Apart from of course, Juliet Nicolson, who is author of several best selling books, the latest of which is the Book of Revelations, Women and Their Secrets from the 1950s to the present day. And there are some amazing secrets in there, which I hope we'll hear a bit more about. She regularly writes in publications such as The Times and Harper's Bazaar, and then Jess Phillips, newly liberated MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015 And in fact, I think we met on the very day... Was it the day you were elected?

SPEAKER_4 (2:21)

I think maybe, yeah, that day.

Katie Razzall (2:22)

I interviewed her for Newsnight on the very day she was elected, and she was just as fabulous then as she is now. A member of the Labour Party, she served as parliamentary undersecretary of state for safeguarding and violence against women and girls from July 2024 until, well, a couple of months... No, last month, May.

And before becoming an MP, I'm sure lots of you will know, she worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking. And she continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard. I thought we would divide this conversation into three parts. So we were going to do a kind of how did we get here, and then the new battlegrounds and then what progress might look like. So if we start with, I mean, I guess the fact that this is this discussion is talking about the new silencing, that word new suggests that something has changed. So I wondered for each of you, perhaps starting with you, Jess, what does the new silencing mean to you, and where do you see it most obviously? Do you think there is a new silencing going on?

Jess Phillips (3:25)

Yes, so I mean, look, silencing has always existed. It used to just be quite a lot more covert than overt. So women's representation in whichever field it is, and certainly older women or black women, if we're talking about sort of cultural sort of expression, but also in, well, in any walk of life became quite easy to not think that they actually existed other than the ones you saw where you lived. And that has always existed, and representation has always been important. There's been huge efforts to make that representation better. Certainly in politics, I think also in culture, in writing, although a long way to go. However, there is a new and, so that just happened, and that was because we live in a patriarchy, and like people like would say, oh, you know, we've already got a drama about women, or, or, oh, you know, we've, one of my constituents once said to me, you've got the vote, what more do you want?