Episode 1

Welcome to the first ever F Word podcast!

A couple of weekends ago, bloggers Holly Combe and Lynne Miles got together at my house, along with Polly Cassidy, to record the podcast. Now you can download it. This is our first foray into podcast making – and my first attempt to edit audio of any kind, so bear with us if it’s not completely polished. Rather than a scripted show, we wanted to record our conversations as they happened. And if you hear a sort of rustling in the background, those are the M&Ms we were scoffing.

Still, listening back to the recording, I think we came up with some pretty interesting stuff. It’s split into two parts for easy listening. In part one, we tackled:

• The Cabinet reshuffle, in particular media reactions to the promotion of the UK’s first ever female Home Secretary and the election of Harriet Harman as deputy leader of the Labour party


• Wimbledon: the first year of equal prize money for female and male competitors and why women only play three sets while men play five

In part two, we had a bit more of a general discussion about the issue of femininity, touching on:

• How traditionally ‘feminine’ things are still looked down on, while ‘masculine’ things are embraced by men and women alike


• Why rugby players love drag – when they’re pissed


• The difficulties of buying gender-neutral toys


• The myth of the finger-wagging feminist who will tell you off for wearing make-up


• The politics of hair removal


• And, of course, the question of why we have all these gender-binaries anyway, and if it’s possible to tell whether there is a difference between men and women really

I can’t promise that we’ll be doing these podcasts every month, but hopefully we’ll get another one out by the end of the summer. Please do get in touch to tell us what you think: this audio-stuff is very new to us here at The F Word, so your feedback is really valuable. As usual, you just need to fill in our comments form to let us know what you think of this podcast, or anything else on The F Word.

Happy listening

Click to download part one

Click to download part two

Photo by fensterbme, shared under a Creative Commons license