All About Eve

Back in May, Julia and Anna spoke to Elle Stanger a.k.a StripperWriter. Elle is a writer and sex educator (for Huffington Post, Men's Health and more), a stripper, podcaster, porn creator and lobbyist for workers' rights in her home state of Oregon, USA. Elle is an expert on all things sex and sex work, and regaled Anna and Julia with some fascinating stories including the ridiculous things strippers get asked, the argument for decriminalising sex work instead of legalising it, how to parent in a sex-positive way, and many more.
Elle also tells us about Carol Leigh, a foremother of the Sex Workers' Rights movement in America who has lived some pretty crazy stories of her own, and has been advocating for Sex Workers for over 40 years. If you don't know much about Sex Workers, the law and their rights then this is the episode for you.
Please bear in mind we recorded this in May, so any Covid-19 related talk is not reflective of the current situation. And go and follow Elle at all these places:
Instagram: @stripperwriter
@unzippedpdx (Elle's podcast)
Twitter: @ElleStanger
Podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/unzipped-pdx-two-strippers-and-a-sex-therapist

A mash up of our favourite stories, we start by talking about everyone's favourite vaccine superhero, Dolly Parton. From the smoky mountains of Tennessee, Dolly set her sights on improving her lot in life from a young age. She knew she had talent, looks that she could use to her advantage, and a bedrock of confidence and ingenuity that has defined her career. Listen in to hear some classic Dolly pearls of wisdom that we can all get behind. Anna celebrates the shy women among us with the tale of Caroline Herschel, a.k.a the Comet Huntress. In the 1780s, she was appointed the first female professional scientist and astronomer - despite having raging imposter syndrome her whole life.

In this interview episode we were lucky enough to speak to Liza Bilal and Tiffany Lyare - two of the founding members of the All Black Lives Matter Bristol group - who organised the momentous protest seen in the city of Bristol on 7th June 2020. The march made history when the statue of a 17th century slavetrader was pulled down by protestors and dumped into the harbour. Tiffany and Liza spoke to us about what it took to organise the march, the impact it had and where we go from here. They spoke to us about their experiences as young, Black women in Bristol and also told us the stories of their favourite femmes: Olive Morris and Crissle West.
Find Tiffany and Liza on Instagram @allblacklivesbris and be sure to sign up for their 'How to be an ally' online event on 18th August. There are many places to donate to show your support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which is one of the most helpful things allies can do. Below are some places that Julia and Anna have been donating to, please contribute if you can:
Black Minds Matter UK - an organisation aiming to provide Black individuals and families with free professional mental health services across the UK: https://oxfordshire.enthuse.com/cf/black-minds-matter-uk
Black Lives Matter UK: https://bit.ly/3jOKpl6
RIP Belly Mujinga: https://bit.ly/2P57cu
Runnymede Trust: The UK's leading race equality think tank.
https://www.justgiving.com/runnymede-trust
Petitions:

• Justice for Breonna Taylor: https://bit.ly/2P3yNwh
• Stop the School to Prison Pipeline: Free Grace from Incarceration: http://chng.it/gzs2z9Cpnf
• STOP THE SALE & GIFT US BACK our Rastafari Culture Centre http://chng.it/FLzbggqrTY
• Justice for Elijah McClain: http://chng.it/nMYjFJdTst
• Reopen LaVena Johnson's case! http://chng.it/tR72jnsdP8
• Teach British children about the realities of British Imperialism and Colonialism: http://chng.it/t2GZrzPpwL

Other ways to engage:

• The Runnymede report, "Bristol: a city divided?": https://bit.ly/330BYNo

In our first remotely recorded episode, Julia introduces us to Isadora Duncan, a woman who changed modern dance and was not short on self-belief. Born in San Francisco in 1877, Isadora was adored by European audiences for her unique style, despite ending each performance by ranting about how shit ballet was for half an hour. Anna tells us about Ivy Benson, the most popular British musician of World War 2 you've never heard of. Ivy mostly recruited working-class Northern teenagers for her brass band, which caused quite the scandal when they toured Europe making their own money and doing as they pleased. Audiences loved them and they were even appointed as the BBC house band, which - spoiler alert - enraged the male musicians who usually secured that gig...

We start season 3 off with a bang by talking about everyone's favourite vaccine superhero, Dolly Parton. From the smoky mountains of Tennessee, Dolly set her sights on improving her lot in life from a young age. She knew she had talent, looks that she could use to her advantage, and a bedrock of confidence and ingenuity that has defined her career. Listen in to hear some classic Dolly pearls of wisdom that we can all get behind.
In timely and meticulously-planned fashion, we have an Olympics special told through the story of Wilma Rudolph. Described as the greatest athlete of all time, Wilma was the first American woman to win 3 medals in the same Olympics (100m sprint, 200m sprint and 400m relay team). After retiring as the fastest woman in the world, Wilma was one of the first celebrities to use her fame for good as an outspoken civil rights activist, and was the catalyst for desegregating her hometown in Tennessee. Listen in to also hear the story of why the Olympics was invented - spoiler alert: it was to show off how manly all the men were.
*NB - Anna gets pretty excited about the Olympics in this episode, but despite the obvious thrill of seeing awesome humans do awesome thing, there has been a major amount of fuckery in the games in general, but especially these Olympic Games 2020 (e.g. swimming caps for Black athletes being rejected; women being fined for not wearing underwear in handball; trans and cis women getting banned from competing due to having features deemed to be advantages despite Michael Phelps producing only half the amount of lactic acid as his competitors but this never being flagged as a problem even though it's the same thing.....the list goes on). So, all this to say - the Olympic Committee is not cool, but sometimes the Olympics is really cool. Find more info below:
-https://www.npr.org/sections/tokyo-olympics-live-updates/2021/07/28/1021503989/women-runners-testosterone-olympics?t=1628366896763
-https://www.sportingnews.com/us/athletics/news/olympic-swim-cap-ban-2021-swimmers/3526wghlsb8v1ajeilz08cx41
-https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/handball/57890430
-https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/we-celebrated-michael-phelpss-genetic-differences-why-punish-caster-semenya-for-hers/2019/05/02/93d08c8c-6c2b-11e9-be3a-33217240a539_story.html