1
00:00:10,092 --> 00:00:13,064
I'm Gina, and I've lost 23 debit cards.

2
00:00:13,914 --> 00:00:16,872
I don't mean to, I'm just
an easily distracted person.

3
00:00:16,872 --> 00:00:19,442
I've been known to show up
to events on the wrong date,

4
00:00:19,442 --> 00:00:21,622
I always miss my Tube stop,

5
00:00:21,622 --> 00:00:24,191
and I cannot for the life of me
wake up in the morning

6
00:00:24,191 --> 00:00:26,251
without feeling personally attacked.

7
00:00:26,769 --> 00:00:31,656
I'm also young, I'm female,
I'm working class,

8
00:00:31,656 --> 00:00:35,885
and I'm not particularly academic -
I kind of was average in school.

9
00:00:35,885 --> 00:00:38,216
And I think these are all
some of the reasons why

10
00:00:38,216 --> 00:00:41,817
I probably never felt like I could really
'make a difference' growing up.

11
00:00:42,207 --> 00:00:43,232
But it turns out,

12
00:00:43,232 --> 00:00:45,525
with long-term things,
I'm actually pretty good,

13
00:00:45,525 --> 00:00:47,199
with big ideas.

14
00:00:47,199 --> 00:00:49,339
I might be the person
who lost 23 debit cards,

15
00:00:49,339 --> 00:00:51,283
but I'm also a law changer.

16
00:00:51,283 --> 00:00:54,999
When I was 25, I founded and ran
the national media and political campaign

17
00:00:54,999 --> 00:00:57,645
to make upskirting illegal.

18
00:00:58,183 --> 00:00:59,156
Thank you.

19
00:00:59,156 --> 00:01:02,002
(Applause) (Cheers)

20
00:01:04,437 --> 00:01:06,195
You may have heard that story by now,

21
00:01:06,195 --> 00:01:08,815
but if you have, it will have been
in clickbaity titles

22
00:01:08,815 --> 00:01:11,238
like 'I fought the law and won',
that kind of thing.

23
00:01:11,238 --> 00:01:12,246
The reality of it is,

24
00:01:12,246 --> 00:01:15,731
it is actually the most difficult
and uncomfortable period of my life.

25
00:01:15,731 --> 00:01:19,255
And I would like to take this opportunity
to share that story with you now,

26
00:01:19,255 --> 00:01:21,214
as it actually happened,

27
00:01:21,214 --> 00:01:23,738
without the fierce-feminist
shiny wrapping of it,

28
00:01:23,738 --> 00:01:26,698
but with some of the biggest lessons
we can learn along the way

29
00:01:26,698 --> 00:01:27,864
and for the last time.

30
00:01:28,743 --> 00:01:33,016
In July 2017, I was at a festival called
British Summer Time in Hyde Park.

31
00:01:33,304 --> 00:01:35,593
Me and my sister were
in a crowd of 60,000 people

32
00:01:35,593 --> 00:01:37,928
waiting for The Killers to take the stage,

33
00:01:37,928 --> 00:01:40,291
when a group of guys
started hitting on us.

34
00:01:40,858 --> 00:01:43,045
One of the guys was making
loads of gross jokes

35
00:01:43,045 --> 00:01:45,678
and generally being really weird
and harassing us,

36
00:01:45,678 --> 00:01:49,088
and we asked him to leave us alone
multiple times, but he wouldn't.

37
00:01:49,619 --> 00:01:52,979
Five minutes later,
I felt them all laughing at me.

38
00:01:53,329 --> 00:01:55,381
One of the guys
was standing in front of me,

39
00:01:55,381 --> 00:01:57,433
so I peered around
to see what he was doing.

40
00:01:57,433 --> 00:01:58,448
He was on his phone,

41
00:01:58,448 --> 00:02:01,763
and he'd been sent a really well-taken
photograph of someone's crotch

42
00:02:01,763 --> 00:02:03,194
that was taken up their skirt.

43
00:02:03,194 --> 00:02:05,244
I knew it was me straight away.

44
00:02:05,775 --> 00:02:07,788
I grabbed the phone, and I started crying,

45
00:02:07,788 --> 00:02:11,508
and I held it up and was kind
of yelling about what he'd done.

46
00:02:11,508 --> 00:02:14,314
And then a couple of people
in the crowd helped me get away,

47
00:02:14,314 --> 00:02:16,515
and I ran through that crowd
holding his phone,

48
00:02:16,515 --> 00:02:18,938
with him chasing me,
which was literally terrifying.

49
00:02:18,938 --> 00:02:22,979
I managed to get a security guard,
who protected me and called the police.

50
00:02:23,709 --> 00:02:27,062
When the police came,
they separated me and the guy,

51
00:02:27,539 --> 00:02:29,698
and they said this to me,

52
00:02:29,698 --> 00:02:32,498
'You should be able
to go to a festival at 30 degrees,

53
00:02:32,498 --> 00:02:35,095
wear a skirt, and this not happen to you.'

54
00:02:35,465 --> 00:02:38,043
But they also said,
'We've had a look at the photo.

55
00:02:38,043 --> 00:02:41,369
It shows more than you'd want it to show,
but it's not a graphic image.

56
00:02:42,119 --> 00:02:45,455
If you'd chosen not to wear knickers,
we could do something about this.

57
00:02:45,455 --> 00:02:47,765
But you did, so you
won't hear much from us.'

58
00:02:48,826 --> 00:02:51,775
They told the guy to delete the photo,
so my evidence was gone,

59
00:02:51,775 --> 00:02:54,247
and then they told us
to enjoy the rest of our night.

60
00:02:54,247 --> 00:02:56,402
And I tried to,
but I felt humiliated and sad,

61
00:02:56,402 --> 00:02:59,592
and I knew the guys were probably
just carrying on with their night,

62
00:02:59,592 --> 00:03:00,787
having a great time.

63
00:03:02,933 --> 00:03:05,889
I went home, and a few days later
I got a call from the police,

64
00:03:05,889 --> 00:03:08,165
and they told me my case was dropped.

65
00:03:08,165 --> 00:03:10,782
And I swear to God,
when I put that phone down,

66
00:03:10,782 --> 00:03:13,172
something inside me sort of snapped.

67
00:03:13,562 --> 00:03:16,936
I've been dealing with sexual harassment
for as long as I can remember,

68
00:03:16,936 --> 00:03:19,719
and I'd been brushing it off,
and I was so over it.

69
00:03:19,719 --> 00:03:22,973
I couldn't believe that there wasn't a law
covering this in some way.

70
00:03:22,973 --> 00:03:24,927
So I started to try to look into it.

71
00:03:24,927 --> 00:03:28,077
Everything I read was written
by politicians and law-makers,

72
00:03:28,077 --> 00:03:30,044
academic people who spoke with jargon,

73
00:03:30,044 --> 00:03:31,472
they don't speak like me.

74
00:03:31,472 --> 00:03:34,163
I didn't really understand
what they were fully saying.

75
00:03:34,163 --> 00:03:35,172
So I looked into law,

76
00:03:35,172 --> 00:03:38,444
and I thought I'd found
that upskirting was not a sexual offence,

77
00:03:38,444 --> 00:03:41,443
but I thought I must have got it wrong
because I'm not academic.

78
00:03:41,443 --> 00:03:44,974
So I asked a friend of mine who was
a law student to look into it for me.

79
00:03:44,974 --> 00:03:46,386
And she said, 'You're right.'

80
00:03:46,386 --> 00:03:47,935
I had found that upskirting,

81
00:03:47,935 --> 00:03:51,584
the act of taking non-consensual photos
or video up someone's clothing,

82
00:03:51,584 --> 00:03:53,737
was not a sexual offence
in England and Wales,

83
00:03:53,737 --> 00:03:56,090
but it had been in Scotland for 10 years.

84
00:03:57,300 --> 00:04:00,333
We ask a lot from
victims of sexual violence.

85
00:04:00,333 --> 00:04:01,354
We question them,

86
00:04:01,354 --> 00:04:04,494
we hold them to a higher standard
sometimes than we do perpetrators

87
00:04:04,494 --> 00:04:06,073
in the moments after an incident.

88
00:04:06,073 --> 00:04:08,145
But I had done everything asked of me.

89
00:04:08,145 --> 00:04:12,069
I'd got witnesses, I'd kicked up a fuss,
I had a photo, the phone.

90
00:04:12,069 --> 00:04:15,862
I even handed the guy into the law,
and apparently it couldn't help me.

91
00:04:16,386 --> 00:04:18,796
And this is where we learn
our first lesson:

92
00:04:18,796 --> 00:04:22,312
Women and marginalized genders
who often deal with sexual violence

93
00:04:22,312 --> 00:04:23,317
shut their mouths

94
00:04:23,317 --> 00:04:26,115
because we make it harder
for them when they're open.

95
00:04:26,634 --> 00:04:27,687
We have to stop acting

96
00:04:27,687 --> 00:04:30,900
like they're navigating
some simple and perfect system.

97
00:04:30,900 --> 00:04:31,921
They're not.

98
00:04:31,921 --> 00:04:35,220
They're navigating one that's working
against them a lot of the time.

99
00:04:36,330 --> 00:04:39,634
You see, when sexual harassment happens,
there are one of two options.

100
00:04:39,634 --> 00:04:42,051
Number one, you brush it off,
you shut your mouth.

101
00:04:42,051 --> 00:04:43,444
It happens, it is what it is.

102
00:04:43,444 --> 00:04:47,035
Number two, you do something about it,
literally anything.

103
00:04:47,035 --> 00:04:49,871
Because it's not funny,
it's not a joke, it's humiliating,

104
00:04:49,871 --> 00:04:52,007
and someone should do something about it.

105
00:04:52,509 --> 00:04:56,684
I can tell you right now
that I'm good at number one.

106
00:04:56,684 --> 00:04:59,220
Women and marginalized genders
are good at number one.

107
00:04:59,220 --> 00:05:01,992
We've been doing number one
for as long as we can remember,

108
00:05:01,992 --> 00:05:04,568
and we are really, really
bored of number one.

109
00:05:05,384 --> 00:05:07,907
Number one, I think,
has affected me more than I know.

110
00:05:07,907 --> 00:05:08,961
Because of number one,

111
00:05:08,961 --> 00:05:10,965
when I watch news stories
about this stuff,

112
00:05:10,965 --> 00:05:13,155
I start crying out of nowhere.

113
00:05:13,155 --> 00:05:15,691
When someone tells me a story
about sexual harassment,

114
00:05:15,691 --> 00:05:18,972
it somehow partly feels like it's mine
because of number one.

115
00:05:18,972 --> 00:05:20,215
And because of number one,

116
00:05:20,215 --> 00:05:24,144
I have struggled to articulate
this problem for such a long time.

117
00:05:24,144 --> 00:05:27,762
Because I'd shut my mouth about it,
and I didn't have the language.

118
00:05:28,401 --> 00:05:33,760
I'm frustrated that year after year,
number one seems like our best option.

119
00:05:37,980 --> 00:05:39,705
But what about number two?

120
00:05:40,045 --> 00:05:43,471
OK, well, number two isn't something
that people like me do really.

121
00:05:43,471 --> 00:05:47,576
Number two is for brave people,
literally amazing people,

122
00:05:47,576 --> 00:05:50,548
people who are in power,
people who didn't scrape by in school,

123
00:05:50,548 --> 00:05:52,548
people who have one debit card, I'd say.

124
00:05:53,395 --> 00:05:56,492
People who wrote those documents
I struggled to read.

125
00:05:56,492 --> 00:05:59,112
But you see, I couldn't forget it,
the upskirting thing,

126
00:05:59,112 --> 00:06:02,115
because for me it felt somehow
possible to forget, for instance,

127
00:06:02,115 --> 00:06:04,929
the hand that had been on my bum
on the Tube a year earlier,

128
00:06:04,929 --> 00:06:06,791
because that hand was no longer there -

129
00:06:06,791 --> 00:06:08,645
not easy, but possible.

130
00:06:08,932 --> 00:06:12,546
But I couldn't forget the upskirting thing
because they still had the photos.

131
00:06:12,546 --> 00:06:14,405
They probably still do now.

132
00:06:15,084 --> 00:06:19,535
It felt impossible for me to forget,
I think, because they did straight away.

133
00:06:19,535 --> 00:06:22,339
I don't think they even thought
they'd done that much wrong.

134
00:06:22,339 --> 00:06:23,879
And therein lies our problem.

135
00:06:24,739 --> 00:06:26,545
A few days later, while I was at work,

136
00:06:26,545 --> 00:06:29,119
I put up this photo of me
and my sister at the festival

137
00:06:29,119 --> 00:06:31,402
that happened to have
the guys in the background.

138
00:06:31,402 --> 00:06:34,215
I thought, 'The law can't help me,
the police can't help me,

139
00:06:34,215 --> 00:06:35,555
but maybe social media can.'

140
00:06:35,555 --> 00:06:38,045
And I asked people to share it
and identify the guys.

141
00:06:38,045 --> 00:06:39,951
And then Facebook got in contact with me

142
00:06:39,951 --> 00:06:42,501
and told me I'd violated
their community guidelines.

143
00:06:42,501 --> 00:06:47,295
Apparently, me putting this photo up
constituted harassment against the guys,

144
00:06:47,555 --> 00:06:50,552
but them taking photos up the skirt
and sharing them, no.

145
00:06:51,235 --> 00:06:54,581
I was incandescent with rage
at this point.

146
00:06:54,581 --> 00:06:57,719
Every single safety net that was meant
to have caught me hadn't,

147
00:06:57,719 --> 00:07:00,289
and the one thing I worked in
and had done for years

148
00:07:00,289 --> 00:07:03,436
that was about democracy,
community and human connection -

149
00:07:03,436 --> 00:07:04,448
social media -

150
00:07:04,448 --> 00:07:06,233
had also rejected me.

151
00:07:06,233 --> 00:07:09,385
You remember what I said about a system
that's working against you?

152
00:07:09,385 --> 00:07:12,093
Everything at this point
is forcing me back to number one,

153
00:07:12,093 --> 00:07:14,750
to brush it off, to forget
about it, 'it is what it is'.

154
00:07:15,893 --> 00:07:17,631
I think when Facebook censored me,

155
00:07:17,631 --> 00:07:21,270
I actually just got angry enough
that number one stopped being an option.

156
00:07:21,270 --> 00:07:23,804
And I'm not really embarrassed
about the anger either

157
00:07:23,804 --> 00:07:25,376
because here's our second lesson:

158
00:07:25,376 --> 00:07:28,753
Anger is a very normal response
to having your human rights compromised.

159
00:07:28,753 --> 00:07:30,270
That's important to say.

160
00:07:30,270 --> 00:07:32,768
We have to stop using it
to delegitimise people,

161
00:07:32,768 --> 00:07:35,119
with 'angry feminist'
or 'angry Black woman',

162
00:07:35,119 --> 00:07:36,663
all of these stereotypes.

163
00:07:36,663 --> 00:07:38,905
People are allowed to be angry
about this stuff.

164
00:07:38,905 --> 00:07:40,980
And we have to hold space for them there.

165
00:07:40,980 --> 00:07:43,149
We have to realise it's not about us.

166
00:07:44,019 --> 00:07:47,266
I'd been put up with, I don't know,
being shouted at from cars.

167
00:07:47,266 --> 00:07:48,762
I'd had my bum grabbed in bars.

168
00:07:48,762 --> 00:07:51,920
I had a stalking case for two years
against a guy from school

169
00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:53,380
that ended in nothing.

170
00:07:53,380 --> 00:07:55,847
When I was 19 and I worked
at a rowdy student bar,

171
00:07:55,847 --> 00:07:58,260
a security guard,
who was employed to protect me,

172
00:07:58,260 --> 00:08:01,664
felt my boobs 'to see
if I was wearing a stab-proof vest'.

173
00:08:01,664 --> 00:08:04,906
I was angry that every woman I know
has dealt with sexual harassment,

174
00:08:04,906 --> 00:08:08,756
and I was angry enough for the first time
that number two became the only option -

175
00:08:08,756 --> 00:08:10,850
to do something about it,
literally anything.

176
00:08:11,082 --> 00:08:12,997
So I started a social media campaign.

177
00:08:12,997 --> 00:08:14,391
I thought, 'OK, in work,

178
00:08:14,391 --> 00:08:17,833
if I can start a campaign to make people
care about whisky, for instance,

179
00:08:17,833 --> 00:08:20,637
I can do it with something like this
that actually matters.'

180
00:08:20,637 --> 00:08:22,791
I'd launched a petition,
I wrote Facebook ads,

181
00:08:22,791 --> 00:08:24,162
I did editorials,

182
00:08:24,162 --> 00:08:26,068
and that's when I realised this:

183
00:08:26,864 --> 00:08:29,731
Social media is the single
most important democratising tool

184
00:08:29,731 --> 00:08:32,133
we've ever had in social change.

185
00:08:32,133 --> 00:08:35,784
It can be used by anyone,
at any time, for good.

186
00:08:35,784 --> 00:08:38,411
And traditional institutions
really don't understand it,

187
00:08:38,411 --> 00:08:39,881
so you can use that.

188
00:08:40,652 --> 00:08:43,003
Almost as soon as I started
asking the question,

189
00:08:43,003 --> 00:08:44,954
'Why is upskirting not a sexual offence?'

190
00:08:44,954 --> 00:08:46,932
people started answering.

191
00:08:47,331 --> 00:08:49,543
My DMs became full of stories.

192
00:08:49,543 --> 00:08:53,210
Young girls telling me about pictures
being taken up their skirts on the Tube.

193
00:08:53,210 --> 00:08:56,303
Trans women telling me that people's
obsession with their genitals

194
00:08:56,303 --> 00:08:58,961
had lead to them being
victimised with upskirting.

195
00:08:58,961 --> 00:09:00,295
I had messages from teachers

196
00:09:00,295 --> 00:09:04,422
telling me young boys
were coming up with plans

197
00:09:04,422 --> 00:09:06,380
to get pictures of the teachers together.

198
00:09:06,380 --> 00:09:07,810
And I got messages from Japan,

199
00:09:07,810 --> 00:09:10,574
where it is such a problem
that they have redesigned phones

200
00:09:10,574 --> 00:09:12,767
so you can't turn off
the camera shutter sound.

201
00:09:12,767 --> 00:09:15,105
So women are 'alerted'
it's happening to them.

202
00:09:15,911 --> 00:09:18,378
Then I started getting messages from kids.

203
00:09:18,378 --> 00:09:21,201
And they were all coming
from the same place, I recognised -

204
00:09:21,201 --> 00:09:22,621
a school in South London

205
00:09:22,621 --> 00:09:26,118
where the teacher had been upskirting
the kids for months.

206
00:09:26,118 --> 00:09:28,973
They found thousands of photos,
but they couldn't convict him

207
00:09:28,973 --> 00:09:33,231
because what he did didn't constitute
a criminal offence under that current law.

208
00:09:34,039 --> 00:09:37,367
These kids who are messaging with me,
pleading with me to do something,

209
00:09:37,367 --> 00:09:38,950
couldn't even vote.

210
00:09:38,950 --> 00:09:40,852
They have no democratic
voice whatsoever.

211
00:09:40,852 --> 00:09:43,260
But social media gave them
a direct line to me.

212
00:09:43,260 --> 00:09:44,944
And thank God it did

213
00:09:44,944 --> 00:09:48,321
because that was when I realised
this is way bigger than me and my case.

214
00:09:48,321 --> 00:09:50,430
And instead of me
standing up and being like,

215
00:09:50,430 --> 00:09:52,961
'Someone should do something'
and pointing fingers,

216
00:09:53,417 --> 00:09:55,881
I thought, 'Alright,
I'll try and do something.

217
00:09:56,206 --> 00:09:58,972
I don't know how to do it,
but I'll try and change the law.

218
00:09:58,972 --> 00:10:02,608
I'll give it a go because maybe
I'll make it easier for someone who can.'

219
00:10:03,368 --> 00:10:06,999
Honestly, I genuinely think I just needed
somewhere to put my frustration.

220
00:10:06,999 --> 00:10:08,737
And that makes sense to me now.

221
00:10:08,737 --> 00:10:10,583
Because here's our next lesson:

222
00:10:10,909 --> 00:10:13,572
Action really is the cure for fear.

223
00:10:14,034 --> 00:10:17,115
With these things, fear and frustration
really fester in you,

224
00:10:17,115 --> 00:10:21,115
but taking an action, even if it's small,
can metabolise that back into power again.

225
00:10:21,115 --> 00:10:22,592
That's what it did for me.

226
00:10:23,741 --> 00:10:26,768
The first thing I did
when I thought about changing the law

227
00:10:26,768 --> 00:10:31,624
was I googled, I literally wrote,
'How does one change the law?'

228
00:10:31,624 --> 00:10:33,552
and nothing came up.

229
00:10:33,552 --> 00:10:36,552
And I realised I was going to have
to figure this out on my own.

230
00:10:36,552 --> 00:10:39,552
I also realised that social media
and shouting about it on there

231
00:10:39,552 --> 00:10:42,498
was great for awareness,
but it wasn't going to change the law.

232
00:10:42,498 --> 00:10:44,458
I had to get really clever and strategic.

233
00:10:44,458 --> 00:10:47,248
And to do that, I had to be
really honest with myself.

234
00:10:47,248 --> 00:10:49,613
I'm good at campaigning,
I can motivate people,

235
00:10:49,613 --> 00:10:52,439
and I understand this issue
more than anyone, really,

236
00:10:52,439 --> 00:10:57,035
but I don't really understand politics,
and I don't really understand the law.

237
00:10:57,035 --> 00:10:59,338
And those are two pretty big
pieces of the puzzle

238
00:10:59,338 --> 00:11:01,918
if you're going to go into politics
and change the law.

239
00:11:01,918 --> 00:11:03,652
So I needed to find someone who did,

240
00:11:03,652 --> 00:11:06,022
and I had to show them
that I was really serious.

241
00:11:06,597 --> 00:11:08,459
So I went mainstream with the campaign.

242
00:11:08,459 --> 00:11:10,514
I packaged up the numbers
from social media,

243
00:11:10,514 --> 00:11:13,078
and I started talking
to TV producers and editors

244
00:11:13,078 --> 00:11:15,959
showing them there was conversation
happening online.

245
00:11:15,959 --> 00:11:18,770
The first piece of media I did
was Good Morning Britain.

246
00:11:18,770 --> 00:11:21,098
Piers Morgan was sadly not in that week,

247
00:11:21,098 --> 00:11:24,164
but I did get to sit opposite
a female police officer,

248
00:11:24,164 --> 00:11:27,353
who told me that the police had
'more important things to deal with'

249
00:11:27,353 --> 00:11:28,926
and that I should wear trousers.

250
00:11:29,146 --> 00:11:31,112
At the height of those media appearances,

251
00:11:31,112 --> 00:11:34,012
I used all that publicity,
and I started contacting law firms,

252
00:11:34,012 --> 00:11:38,315
showing them my proven theory on the law
and all the public support I had.

253
00:11:38,850 --> 00:11:42,110
And then three days after I started
that, I found Ryan Whelan,

254
00:11:42,456 --> 00:11:44,584
who was a 29-year-old lawyer.

255
00:11:44,584 --> 00:11:46,872
He was a human rights fanatic,

256
00:11:46,872 --> 00:11:51,314
he was unjaded by the industry,
and he was a complete political nut.

257
00:11:51,314 --> 00:11:52,656
And we got to work together.

258
00:11:52,656 --> 00:11:55,514
We started creating a political strategy
and a media strategy

259
00:11:55,514 --> 00:11:56,956
that complemented each other.

260
00:11:56,956 --> 00:11:58,388
We looked at the Scottish Law,

261
00:11:58,388 --> 00:12:01,013
and he created the new
legislation we needed here.

262
00:12:01,013 --> 00:12:03,885
And then we went and got
the best legal authorities in the UK

263
00:12:03,885 --> 00:12:06,149
to corroborate that and stand behind it.

264
00:12:06,149 --> 00:12:09,124
We did that because it meant
when we went into Parliament,

265
00:12:09,124 --> 00:12:11,278
we were making it
as easy as possible for MPs.

266
00:12:11,278 --> 00:12:13,830
We were just giving them
a solution, not a problem.

267
00:12:14,743 --> 00:12:16,770
We met with MPs from all parties.

268
00:12:16,770 --> 00:12:18,435
That was really important to us.

269
00:12:18,435 --> 00:12:22,426
And that's because this wasn't
a Labour issue or a Conservative issue.

270
00:12:22,426 --> 00:12:24,057
It was a human issue.

271
00:12:24,607 --> 00:12:26,561
And that 's when I learnt this:

272
00:12:27,356 --> 00:12:29,915
Human rights aren't about party politics.

273
00:12:29,915 --> 00:12:32,484
Party politics is a game, I've seen it.

274
00:12:32,484 --> 00:12:34,482
Human rights are about values and morals.

275
00:12:34,482 --> 00:12:36,588
So instead of everything
being left or right,

276
00:12:36,588 --> 00:12:38,712
upskirting being a 'lefty issue',

277
00:12:38,712 --> 00:12:41,304
let's start looking up and down more.

278
00:12:41,304 --> 00:12:44,394
Who is society harder on?
Who is society easier for?

279
00:12:44,394 --> 00:12:46,990
If we start doing that,
we'll start getting work done.

280
00:12:47,954 --> 00:12:49,726
After months of meetings,

281
00:12:49,726 --> 00:12:53,854
we'd kind of built an army of MPs
in those four walls,

282
00:12:53,854 --> 00:12:57,277
and we tabled a private member's
bill to change the law.

283
00:12:57,277 --> 00:12:59,808
A year of politics ensued.

284
00:13:00,179 --> 00:13:04,836
That bill was killed and objected to
by an MP called Christopher Chope,

285
00:13:04,836 --> 00:13:08,928
who, when I asked him why,
told me, and I quote, 'He hadn't read it.'

286
00:13:10,434 --> 00:13:13,332
He said he objected on principle,
but that was disproved.

287
00:13:13,332 --> 00:13:16,164
If you ask me, he saw this as trivial -

288
00:13:16,164 --> 00:13:17,666
a lot of people do.

289
00:13:17,666 --> 00:13:21,243
And he also didn't like the young girl
coming in and getting a bill through,

290
00:13:21,243 --> 00:13:22,716
when he's tabled 47 of his own.

291
00:13:22,716 --> 00:13:24,196
That's politics.

292
00:13:24,766 --> 00:13:26,632
There are good people in there, though.

293
00:13:26,632 --> 00:13:29,892
The next day, me and Ryan met
with the Justice Minister, Lucy Frazer,

294
00:13:29,892 --> 00:13:33,642
and we tabled a government bill
that couldn't be objected to by MPs.

295
00:13:33,909 --> 00:13:36,205
We saw that bill through for a year -

296
00:13:36,205 --> 00:13:38,640
a year that I was fraught with nerves

297
00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:41,611
that this thing we'd almost done
might fall at the last hurdle.

298
00:13:41,611 --> 00:13:44,244
But thankfully, January 2019 came,

299
00:13:44,244 --> 00:13:46,230
and me, and my family, and Ryan

300
00:13:46,230 --> 00:13:48,544
squeezed in to the gallery
at the House of Lords,

301
00:13:48,544 --> 00:13:51,518
and we watched them
pass our law unamended,

302
00:13:51,518 --> 00:13:53,275
practically as we created it.

303
00:13:53,275 --> 00:13:54,902
And that's the kind of law you get

304
00:13:54,902 --> 00:13:57,829
when it's driven by someone
who has lived the problem.

305
00:13:57,829 --> 00:13:59,116
(Cheers)

306
00:13:59,116 --> 00:14:00,139
Thanks.

307
00:14:00,139 --> 00:14:02,679
(Applause)

308
00:14:09,114 --> 00:14:12,779
Then I went to the pub,
and I drank my weight in red wine,

309
00:14:12,779 --> 00:14:13,866
and I cried a lot.

310
00:14:13,866 --> 00:14:16,607
And then I danced to '90s pop,
and I ate pizza with my mum

311
00:14:16,607 --> 00:14:18,572
because that's survivors deserve.

312
00:14:19,312 --> 00:14:21,710
(Applause)

313
00:14:23,183 --> 00:14:25,483
In the eight months
after we outlawed upskirting,

314
00:14:25,483 --> 00:14:28,882
there had been one report to police
almost every single day.

315
00:14:29,356 --> 00:14:32,056
We prosecuted 10 men by Christmas.

316
00:14:32,056 --> 00:14:37,094
One was a convicted paedophile
who got two years in prison.

317
00:14:37,094 --> 00:14:40,428
Another was a man who was seen filming
under a 16-year-old girl's skirt

318
00:14:40,428 --> 00:14:41,441
at a supermarket,

319
00:14:41,441 --> 00:14:46,183
and when police arrested him, they found
250,000 indecent images of children.

320
00:14:46,183 --> 00:14:47,869
This law isn't catching upskirters.

321
00:14:47,869 --> 00:14:52,429
It's catching sexual offenders,
predators, paedophiles.

322
00:14:52,429 --> 00:14:54,639
And that's because of this next lesson:

323
00:14:56,109 --> 00:14:58,724
All misogyny and sexual
violence is connected.

324
00:14:58,724 --> 00:15:01,902
Therefore, all of it is the problem,
none of it is trivial.

325
00:15:01,902 --> 00:15:03,615
We have to remember that.

326
00:15:04,924 --> 00:15:07,417
The coverage that followed
the law change was lovely.

327
00:15:07,417 --> 00:15:09,139
It was really powerful and positive.

328
00:15:09,139 --> 00:15:11,138
And I needed that,
we needed that, I think.

329
00:15:11,138 --> 00:15:13,908
It felt good to have someone
who took on the establishment,

330
00:15:13,908 --> 00:15:15,263
who was normal and won.

331
00:15:15,263 --> 00:15:17,082
But I started to feel weird

332
00:15:17,762 --> 00:15:20,572
because the two years campaigning
wasn't actually like that.

333
00:15:20,572 --> 00:15:22,751
This was what campaigning was like.

334
00:15:23,800 --> 00:15:25,114
And I will cry, but it's OK

335
00:15:25,114 --> 00:15:27,514
because not crying
isn't about power anymore.

336
00:15:27,514 --> 00:15:29,367
You can still be powerful and cry.

337
00:15:31,186 --> 00:15:34,247
And I got online abuse, rape threats,
slut-shaming for two years.

338
00:15:34,247 --> 00:15:35,658
I still get them now.

339
00:15:36,497 --> 00:15:37,833
And I want you to read these

340
00:15:37,833 --> 00:15:40,133
as if you're reading them
about someone you love.

341
00:15:40,133 --> 00:15:41,263
Because -

342
00:15:42,567 --> 00:15:43,861
(Sniffs)

343
00:15:47,125 --> 00:15:49,744
We have to stop calling them trolls
because they're not.

344
00:15:49,744 --> 00:15:52,833
They're the people who work
in coffee shops that serve you coffee.

345
00:15:52,833 --> 00:15:54,985
They work in your offices,
they're everywhere.

346
00:15:54,985 --> 00:15:58,533
They're people who are so angry
about a woman standing up for herself

347
00:15:58,533 --> 00:16:00,344
that they will threaten her with rape.

348
00:16:00,344 --> 00:16:01,764
And there's a lot of them.

349
00:16:01,764 --> 00:16:04,538
And I know you don't want to hear this
because we never do,

350
00:16:04,538 --> 00:16:05,590
but they're all guys.

351
00:16:05,590 --> 00:16:07,473
(Cries)

352
00:16:09,115 --> 00:16:12,302
No doubt when this video goes up
on YouTube, I'll get more of them.

353
00:16:13,244 --> 00:16:17,642
And among the nice comments,
the supportive ones - because there are -

354
00:16:17,642 --> 00:16:19,311
and the hard ones,

355
00:16:19,311 --> 00:16:21,896
there will be one phrase
that comes up again and again.

356
00:16:21,896 --> 00:16:23,714
It's not the scariest I've dealt with,

357
00:16:23,714 --> 00:16:27,010
but it is the most effective
at derailing this important conversation.

358
00:16:27,010 --> 00:16:29,280
It will say, 'Not all men.'

359
00:16:30,058 --> 00:16:31,975
And to that I'll say this,

360
00:16:32,385 --> 00:16:35,718
'No, not all men, but too many.'

361
00:16:36,801 --> 00:16:38,485
Too many men, for some reason,

362
00:16:38,485 --> 00:16:41,115
feel entitled to women
and marginalized genders' bodies.

363
00:16:41,115 --> 00:16:44,482
Too many men, whether
through action or inaction,

364
00:16:44,482 --> 00:16:46,900
are perpetuating a culture of sexism

365
00:16:46,900 --> 00:16:49,791
that breeds inequality
and that leads to violence.

366
00:16:49,791 --> 00:16:52,091
And if you want to use
the phrase 'Not all men',

367
00:16:52,091 --> 00:16:53,617
how about we use it like this?

368
00:16:54,033 --> 00:16:56,038
'Not all men are calling out their friends

369
00:16:56,038 --> 00:16:59,072
when he says something to a woman
he would never say to a guy.

370
00:16:59,571 --> 00:17:01,551
Not all men are looking up these phrases,

371
00:17:01,551 --> 00:17:04,958
learning what rape culture really is,
how misogyny really operates.

372
00:17:04,958 --> 00:17:07,956
And no, not all men are perpetrators,
of course they're not.

373
00:17:07,956 --> 00:17:11,143
But all the ones who aren't
should be solving this with us.

374
00:17:12,286 --> 00:17:14,870
Because maybe if they were,
we'd be living in a society

375
00:17:14,870 --> 00:17:18,368
where when I talk to guys
or male politicians about sexual violence,

376
00:17:18,368 --> 00:17:19,751
they want to solve it with me

377
00:17:19,751 --> 00:17:22,809
more than they want to prove
that they're not the problem.

378
00:17:22,809 --> 00:17:25,639
Maybe if we were living in that world,

379
00:17:25,639 --> 00:17:28,498
when someone upskirts me
and takes photos without my consent,

380
00:17:28,498 --> 00:17:30,018
I don't have to almost lose it,

381
00:17:30,018 --> 00:17:33,449
creating a law that should
have already been there for me.'

382
00:17:35,721 --> 00:17:37,430
Because here's the thing.

383
00:17:37,888 --> 00:17:40,566
When good men do engage with this work,

384
00:17:40,566 --> 00:17:44,993
when they really want to solve this,
and they meaningfully engage, it works.

385
00:17:45,495 --> 00:17:47,706
Without Ryan as my ally,

386
00:17:47,706 --> 00:17:51,339
demanding a seat for me in Parliament,
amplifying my voice, listening to me -

387
00:17:51,339 --> 00:17:52,846
the law wouldn't have changed.

388
00:17:53,252 --> 00:17:55,444
And there are good men
that I know and love

389
00:17:55,444 --> 00:17:58,439
reading the books on gender,
feminism, racism.

390
00:17:58,439 --> 00:18:01,546
They're doing the work,
they're going to the events and listening.

391
00:18:01,546 --> 00:18:04,449
They're not waiting for a woman
to explain this stuff to them.

392
00:18:04,449 --> 00:18:06,423
But from where I stand, there's too few.

393
00:18:06,954 --> 00:18:08,904
And we need more of you.

394
00:18:10,015 --> 00:18:14,913
And that brings us onto our final
and most important lesson:

395
00:18:16,789 --> 00:18:19,715
Communities that are oppressed
should not be left to dismantle

396
00:18:19,715 --> 00:18:21,936
the thing that's been built against them.

397
00:18:22,449 --> 00:18:25,462
You have to listen to your privilege,
learn about it and use it

398
00:18:25,462 --> 00:18:27,876
and assist them in that fight.

399
00:18:31,099 --> 00:18:34,253
Look, I know listening to this is heavy,
I get it, I'm tired too.

400
00:18:34,253 --> 00:18:38,687
But I'm also positive,
and I'm strong like you are.

401
00:18:38,687 --> 00:18:41,035
And I genuinely believe we can solve this.

402
00:18:41,035 --> 00:18:43,377
Every day in this work
I get to see amazing people

403
00:18:43,377 --> 00:18:45,671
who are pushing to make
the world a better place.

404
00:18:45,671 --> 00:18:46,731
I see it all the time.

405
00:18:46,731 --> 00:18:48,979
Hate and intolerance
are very loud, they scream.

406
00:18:48,979 --> 00:18:51,806
But good people, compassionate people,
are quiet and humble.

407
00:18:51,806 --> 00:18:53,375
They're getting on with the work.

408
00:18:53,375 --> 00:18:55,395
You might not hear them,
but they're there.

409
00:18:55,395 --> 00:18:57,774
And yes, there may always be
a level of inequality,

410
00:18:57,774 --> 00:19:00,463
but we can shorten those
peaks and troughs if we want to.

411
00:19:00,463 --> 00:19:02,848
That's on me, that's on all of you.

412
00:19:03,476 --> 00:19:05,310
So when you leave this room tonight,

413
00:19:05,310 --> 00:19:07,419
have a think about
where you hold privilege -

414
00:19:07,419 --> 00:19:08,561
it might be in your job,

415
00:19:08,561 --> 00:19:11,981
as a parent, as a teacher,
or just in the colour of your skin -

416
00:19:11,981 --> 00:19:14,290
and start this work now.

417
00:19:14,290 --> 00:19:17,304
Stop laughing at the jokes,
buy the book, go to the event,

418
00:19:17,304 --> 00:19:21,027
diversify your social feeds,
ask the questions.

419
00:19:21,027 --> 00:19:23,420
Sympathy is soothing,
but it doesn't go far enough.

420
00:19:23,420 --> 00:19:24,891
Action does.

421
00:19:25,422 --> 00:19:27,150
And listen, you'll get things wrong.

422
00:19:27,150 --> 00:19:29,788
We all do, I've had some clangers.

423
00:19:29,788 --> 00:19:32,171
But it's not about perfection,
it's about progress,

424
00:19:32,171 --> 00:19:34,905
it's about doing it
because it's the right thing to do.

425
00:19:35,660 --> 00:19:38,936
We are so done with waiting for society
to 'change things' for us.

426
00:19:38,936 --> 00:19:40,821
We literally are society.

427
00:19:41,734 --> 00:19:42,760
And let's be honest,

428
00:19:42,760 --> 00:19:45,381
if someone who's lost
23 debit cards can change a law,

429
00:19:45,381 --> 00:19:47,391
then I feel like you can do something too.

430
00:19:47,391 --> 00:19:48,408
(Laughter)

431
00:19:48,408 --> 00:19:50,420
Thank you very much,
I've been Gina Martin.

432
00:19:50,420 --> 00:19:53,250
(Applause) (Cheers)