Sex, Lies & DM Slides - S1E23: Gizzi & Sydney | Nimco Ali

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Nimco Ali OBE is an FGM survivor and campaigner who has perhaps done more than anyone in this country to stop the horrific practice. Despite her incredibly important work and everything she’s been through, Nimco still gets bucket-loads of online abuse. She talks candidly to Sydney and Gizzi about her long-time weakness for posh Tory Boys amongst other things. Sex, Lies and DM Slides is a Spotify Original. This series was produced by Heydon Prowse Productions, edited by Podmonkey with music by Free Seed Films. For Spotify, the executive producers are Rachel Simpson and Alexandra Adey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name's Gizzy Erskine. And I'm Sydney Lima, and this is Sex, Lies and DM Slides. Where we invite our celebrity friends to dive deep into their DM boxes to see what terrors lurk within. We'll be chatting about online trolls, online dating, perverted proposals and why everyone's so weird on social media. Sex and Lies and DM Slides. This podcast contains adult content,

graphic details about sex lives, and the filthy contents of our inboxes. You have been warned. The all new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications.

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Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Hi, Gizzy. Hello, Sydney.

Welcome back to another episode of Sex, Lies and DM Slides. Don't know why I'm welcoming you back. It's nice to see you. Welcome back. Thanks, Sid. it's nice to see you welcome back sid it's nice to be here i guess i should probably explain that i'm your host kizzy herskin and i'm cindy nema so this week sid i'd come across a very interesting article on vice it was a study by professor alicia m walker on infidelity she interviewed 46 men about their cheating experiences and i gotta ask you do you

think men cheat more than women and what the reasons are i don't know i mean i know what you're like implying that it's going to be more likely that i'd say the men but i feel like more recently i've noticed more women are more cheaty are they i don't know i mean i don't know this article is suggesting that you are right it is quite a weird-bending thing because we always assume that it would be the man that cheated and for the reasons you would expect it would be down to the libido. But actually, the men tend to do it because they feel rejected emotionally. And it's the women... I mean, that's a lot of bollocks, isn't it?

I get it. I can see a lot... OK, I'm going to be really controversial in what I'm going to say here, but I see a lot of my friends, a bit older than you, a lot of my friends are settling down, and i've got a lot of male friends who feel thoroughly unloved by their wives and they are in a relationship where they feel like they want to be loved and adored and still feel like somebody who is sexy to their partner and i think women feel that too of course they do but i do understand that we would almost naturally project that it would be the man who didn't require the emotional side of this but women have gone through years of not having their

needs met and they didn't cheat like some of men you know no because they're always allowed to go and work and like i'm thinking about the 1920s get out of bridgerton now i hear what you're saying look that women have been sort of oppressed because they've not been allowed to work and therefore their sexual needs have never really been considered. But we're in 2021. Women do work now and a lot of women are working with kids. Life's exhausting.

And if you're in a relationship for a long time, is it easy to keep the sexual sort of prowess up? I feel like if you choose and you commit to be in a long-term relationship, then I think you better do it. You can think you better do it you can't cheat on people you can't cheat on people unless it's like a mutually agreed situation but like one of the things my mum said to me growing up was doesn't matter if you don't want to you have to have sex at least three times a week oh my god isn't that fucked up to be fair i've been in a relationship where like i kind of had sex every day and i'm

really oh god i will have sex as often as i can because I really get a lot out of it. But I do think the pressure is that you've got to make your other half, no matter what sex actually, feel special and wanted. And you need to push sexual boundaries because to keep romantic and to keep sexy in a relationship, you've got to keep having sex. The second you start fizzling out and having sex, that's when people might feel rejected and like their knees aren't being there. Have you ever been in a relationship that's start fizzling out and having sex that's when people might feel rejected and like their knees have you ever been in a relationship that sexually fizzled out look i think naturally it always changes from three or four times a night to you know once a week over a period of time once a year yeah i've never been in a once a year i may be in a once a week i've not really been a once a month person like i have my own needs you've got to keep it up and so my mum's saying that you have to have sex three times a week is it that stupid is that advice shit and misogynistic and unrealistic or is it critical to

maintaining a sexual relationship i think the key words were like if you even if you don't want to i mean that's a bit like lay down and take I mean, that's a bit of an issue. I'm not saying it's rapey. It's just like, what it means is you just have to find it in you to actually want to have sex. I understand the intent, but I think if you really don't want to,

you shouldn't. Yeah, but I do think that you have an obligation to another person to keep a relationship alive sexually. This may be old-fashioned, but I really fucking do. I think it's critical. Who have we got on the show today, Gizzy?

Today we have got Nimco Ali. She is the OBE, Nimco Ali. Nimco was born in Somalia, moved to Manchester when she was aged four. I've known Nimco for a very long time. She is probably the biggest spokesperson I've seen who talks about femur genital mutilation. She nearly died from it and had to have reconstructive surgery from the age of 11. She is a lawyer. She gets a lot of online abuse because, check this, she's a black woman who is also a Tory. She's best friends with Boris Johnson's wife, Carrie Simmons. She's just written her first book, What We're Told Not To Talk About, but we're going to anyway, and it's a series of conversations with women about the subjects of sex, masturbation, periods, pregnancy, the menopause and more bloody lover it's great

isn't she anyway here she is nimco how are you um i'm okay i'm living through a global pandemic so every day is historic it really is isn't it it's just so fucking mad i've been following you for years you're a political activist yeah i'm a social activist i co-founded this organization called the five foundation which is the global partnership to end fgm and i'm a survivor of female genital mutilation and i never thought going to university and doing all the things I did would lead to me talking about my vagina on a professional basis but that's what I do so yeah I'm a campaigner against this like fucking horrific and weird form of violence

because for me when I had FGM when I was seven I just thought it was stupid so I've just like spent the last 10 years trying to tell a lot of white people who want to academicalise the abuse of brown women that actually, no, it's just fucking stupid. Don't try to understand that. Let's just work together in order to end it. So that's what I do. So where are we at with FGM globally at the moment? So before the global pandemic, we were getting some traction. There were some successes. So there are 200 million women in the world. So there's more women that have been victims of FGM than any other kind of form of violence. And then there's about 60 to 70 million girls at risk between now and 2030. And places like Kenya were doing some incredible work.

But because of the pandemic and because of the way that things have been structured, the way that we fund, where we go into massive aid industries and all these things, everybody pulled out. So in Kenya, in one village in Kenya, 4,000 girls were cut in one month. And that's like a brutal form of FGM. It's not just like a nick, it's really brutal. And then those girls were married off into sexual slavery. So it's a bit fucked up at the moment, but I'm hopeful.

I think if COVID has actually made us realise anything, it's like how close we are as a globe. And if one of us sneezes, we all get a cold, ironically. So let's actually really start looking at african women because if we let africa down i think there's no point to us talking about climate change or all these other kind of things because if africa's fucked then we're all fucked can you give us brief history of your experiences from being she's at seven or eight years old seven so yeah i was seven when i had fgm and i had a really invasive form which basically meant that my clitoris was unhooded

and then my anatomy was kind of cut and then stitched together. So I literally, as a seven-year-old girl, had my vagina stitched together to keep me pure. So actually closed up? Actually stitched up, actually stitched up. So there's always a massive fascination around sex and FGM and it's a valid point because the virginity of women is seen as a commodity within these communities.

So basically my virginity and my bloodline was going to be sold to the highest bidder whenever I got of age. And then at the age of 11, I was in primary school in Cardiff and I basically collapsed. I had no idea that the pain that I was feeling was leading to my kidneys failing

because if you've got your vagina stitched up, then it's not really easy for you to urinate. So basically I wasn't clearing my bladder as much as I should have naturally. So that kind of developed into a uninary infection and then that went into my kidneys and then I just basically failed with almost kidney failure and that's kind of where my activism and my whole kind of journey started because I was an 11 year old in this massive institution in the NHS and nobody actually said anything to me and I was thinking like I know I had no idea what happened to me before when I

was seven because I was trying to explain that but now you've actually seen it so can you at least just have a conversation with me and I really understood then at that moment how sensitive everybody is about the female anatomy yet they're so consumed by it but nobody wants to talk about it so my community didn't want to talk about it and the western world I was living didn't want to talk about it I just thought you know what just fuck this shit I don't even want to just deal with it so I just left it there because I thought I was free from the experience of FGM because I had these de-infibrillations. So the type of FGM I had is called infibrillation, which means being stitched up and the de-infibrillations when they open you back up. This happened after your kidneys

failed when you were 11 years old. You had that surgery immediately. Immediately. And it was like so the medical intervention. But I just thought the whole point is I'm lucky that my FGM happened out of context. I always say that in the sense that I had a family that believed in FGM but didn't believe in all the other kind of gender norms like the fact that I had to wear the headscarf I had to study certain subjects I couldn't mix so I was very free in a different way to many other girls that I was growing up with but still had this really weird thing so then and nobody wanted to say anything so I just went off and started to read books and try to find ultimately what this thing was.

And there was an Egyptian writer called Noelle Adesalawi who wrote this incredible book. And she basically was the first person that put it into context. It's the fact that it was a form of violence against women and girls. But it wasn't my position, I thought, as a kid to be able to educate and talk to people about it. So I just kind of like left it there. So I understand the theory of why keeping the purity

why you would be sealed uh sewn up but the splitting of the clitoral hood then your clitoris is fully exposed yeah and then they basically hide it behind so the whole thing yeah they stitch the whole thing up so it was only three years after my FGM that I had my de-infibration had that been done several years later there would be no way that the surgery could be fully opened because it would have been so sensitive it would be like exposing the roots of your tooth to the air so sharp it's so sharp yeah so sharp it's not sensitive so the whole point is that i don't have the little hood bit that's there but it's there in uh in the mix as it were have they rebuilt you a little clitoral no no no they haven't rebuilt anything i'm just like and also because i was so young from a community that is so

consumed by shame i'm not that embarrassed about my fgm i'm actually more embarrassed about the fact that people are so ignorant about the anatomy but that's not only just my community it's also the west as well so then i have to deal with so many misconceptions in the whole dating world because if you google me the first thing that's going to come out is FGM and then if you press images then you're going to see all these gory images of what FGM is so I always have men like sitting across from me having like these mental pictures of what my anatomy looks like does it look much different like well it depends so like you know there are different kinds so so what mine would probably would look like would be like something that you've probably seen a porn film I was gonna say nice and neat and tidy tidy yeah

it's like very kind of flat there was somebody that tried to give me a compliment about my anatomy and i thought you don't actually know the context of who a guy it was a somali guy yeah and i at the time i actually assumed that he didn't know i had fgm but then when i started doing the activism i said i was going to do this event and i'm going to talk about my own experience of fgm so i just want to tell you that i had fGM. And then he said, yeah, I know. And I thought to myself, you fucking dick. Like, if you knew that my anatomy looks the way it does because of a fucking horrific...

Why were you so complimentary about it? And that really kind of, like, scarred me for a bit. Yeah. What was your first sexual experience? It was a guy who I dated from the age of 19 to 23. Because we dated for so long and because that was my first experience, I ended up thinking I had to marry him.

Yeah. I was raised a Muslim, educated a Catholic, so I had some fucked up things about sex. I wrote a book about the female anatomy and in the chapter about orgasms, I said, I can't put a finger on my first orgasm, but I know I had a hand in it. Because I literally did.

It was like, I consumed so much of Channel 4 when I was growing up. That was where my sexual awakening... Jon Snow. Do you know what? I used to fancy Jon Snow. Weirdly enough, so 2014,

I ended up meeting that woman whose book I read when I was a child and he was interviewing her and he started going on about his circumcised penis and I was like, I don't want to imagine your circumcised penis, Jon. Also,, I don't want to imagine your circumcised penis, John.

Also, it's not the same. Yeah, exactly. He just started going, like, circumcised penis. I was like, it's not the same, and also, I don't want to think of your dick in this conversation right now. And that's what they always do. Now I can't stop thinking about John Snow's dick.

I'm just putting that out there. They always do. That is the problem, is like, I was on a podcast with your toxic male producer once, and I talked about the first time I met Jeremy Hunt and he was like oh can girls like you have an orgasm and I was like well it depends on how good you are in bed literally FGM has nothing to do with your ability to orgasm it's all about intimacy

and trust and a lot of the women who've had FGM are married off quite young so they're being raped on a day-to-day basis and you're definitely not going to be having an orgasm when you're dealing with somebody that doesn't respect you. Yeah. So what's your type? Like who do you date now? Do you know what? African-American men.

No, sorry, let me correct that. Black American men because the whole conversation about African is completely different. You get the best of both worlds. You get the intelligence of a well-educated English guy and the jokes and stuff, like the cultural kind of narratives. But then you also kind of get a well-educated like English kind of jokes and stuff like the cultural kind of narratives but then you also kind of get a little bit more fun I used to date only Somali guys and then I went a little bit more fucked up I was just used to date just exclusively Tory boys that went to boarding school because it was the shared childhood trauma honestly it was the fact

that they were sent away when they were seven I was mutilated when I was seven everybody always finds it like thinking oh it's not the same but it really is in order to be sent away by the people you love to a place where you'll probably be abused

and for them to say to you oh this is going to be good for you and all that kind of stuff it has scarred a lot of like really successful men and it makes them

better in bed actually so doesn't make the bed better in bed see I've got put my hands up and I've never had sex with a Tory, I don't think.

I've been totally a closet Tory. Yeah. But that's new labour, though. That's all of us. Jacob Rees-Mogg used to be my crush. Really? No. No.

I need this explaining to me. I don't know. I just, I literally do think it's just one of those people that he'd be very attentive. Imagine he's not getting it he's not saying it politically he's got six kids

he's got six kids but yeah so yeah that's true you know the most the voted the hottest MP was Rishi Sunak yes who are your top three

sexy MPs then this is the problem is that you never meet your crushes yeah so you get super disappointed because I know all of them

it's like never let your crushes. So you get super disappointed because I know all of them. Never let your crushes run the government. But there was a guy, I'm not going to name him, but he's in the House of Lords. So I like them old. But the whole point is like, it's a power. And also, actually, you know, I find intelligence more attractive than looks. I was with my ex once, the first white man I dated. And we were all like hanging out and i

said oh i've never really dated a hot guy and he looked at me like this and i said i said but you're really funny hun you're really smart and he's like just stop digging but yeah i've never actually really like actually all the hot guys i've ever met i've always just been like boring tall is always hot so my type is tall and funny do you ever do you ever use any apps for your dating well i downloaded hinge and there's a guy who was married last time i knew so he's on there i was like what the fuck and you know what he did is well he used a picture where he just cut out his wife i'm like that picture's on your fucking facebook i know like do you think people are using hinge then for just hookups no but it's not for hookups but

he's serious about looking for somebody but i just thought i'd choose maybe it's not for hookups, but he's serious about looking for somebody. But I just thought, like, choose other pictures. Maybe choose a new, a fresh picture. But he's not still with his wife. No, no, he's not still with his wife. He's basically, there's a picture of the two of them. He's chopped her out. Yeah. And I was just thinking, like, and also I know that picture's, like, five years old because it's on your Facebook and I know the date on it.

So I thought, fine, I'm going to go on Match.com. So I still had my stuff registered in Bristol, like, my credit cards and stuff, because that's where I'm from. I logged on with my credit card and stuff like that. And my mother, because she's an African African mother opens everything and scans through it so then she said to my sister oh like somebody's like you use their accounts so then I said to my sister well like I technically am on match.com and my sister's like well your mom's just gonna freak out and then my mom's like acquainted it to being a prostitute wow because you're actually putting yourself out

there because a boy can come along and choose you. So I remember putting on that and saying like what I wanted to date was Caucasian between six foot and six foot five.

So I basically narrowed it down and then this guy popped out who ended up dating for like years and years. And it was just really weird because the first thing

I always ask people is like what's your name? Where did you go to school? Because I don't really want to fanny about because the whole point is if I am going to marry a non-Somali person,

they have to be at least of a high calibre, because my mum's like... It's not for me, it's for mum. It's for my mum. I'm not going to date a white guy called Colin. Colin, Kevin, Lee, none of that stuff is happening. What was the posh name that you'd like? So, I don't know.

Michael is good. Michael. Theo is very good. Andrew is perfect I'm trying to think Henry Henry Harry

Jacob we love Jacob good solid names good solid names means that it comes from good solid stock so like Cosmo that's like

no he could come from good stock but have like hippie parents and then he like go off a bit but that's not good stock though that's the whole point the reality is that it's not just about

me and you having a baby it's like the grandchild like the whole point is that these are the people that my kids are going to be related to if i do have kids i've got some frozen eggs in the moment so i'm technically thinking about looking for sperm out there but yeah so it's just like you have to subconsciously think about these things because i know in choosing to date outside my race and for me it's not just my race because being from north somalia we're all like descending from three great grandfathers we're called the jews of the horn yeah so and if it's jewish even better actually so that's the whole point a good jewish boy might be good like good jewish boy named jacob secular hopefully but that's the kind of stuff that i can roll with so you say you're looking for some sperm what would your sperm criteria be no but i'm

looking for a man with sperm i can't do the test you know because the whole point is because i said that it's like my mom and my community still use the term bastard so i'm like if i'm gonna have a bastard child at least i still also need to have a physical creator of the bastard so i can't actually also have a bastard for the bastard yeah for the bastard just like a non-existent like a just for the ghost bastard i can't like you know but i'm actually really like a just for the ghost bastard. I can't like, no. But I'm not actually really that intent on having my own kids if I can't meet somebody. So I'll probably just adopt. Yeah, I sort of feel the same. Can I be bold and ask how old you are? Just turned 38.

38, yeah. I'm 41 now. I sort of find myself in that position of, do I, don't I want kids? I'm not sure. And then I'm really scared that I'm going to get to that point where I'm... It's the end of the world. Oh yeah, I sort of think I don't want to... Have you thought about freezing? Because the whole point is like I just thought it was going to happen and then during lockdown I ended up like doing the fertility treatment

to freeze my eggs. You have the peace of mind because I'm thinking if I wait till I'm 45 or whatever it is then at least I have 37 year old eggs. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, I don't know. I think it is the end of the world. I think I maybe have established that it's not going to happen and if it does then I'm going to be able to put it down to luck I think, I'm not sure.

But yeah, I think it's a really bold move though. I mean, a lot of my good friends who are around my age are doing it now. So one of the things is like, it's actually not regulated as much as we think.

So the UK is one of the only Western countries that actually doesn't have any regulations on how many drugs the women are given. So women are like hyper-stimulating all these things.

But it was really interesting because people are not really open about race and culture and stuff like that. And the idea is that I don't have the privilege of just like say I want to fall in love and that's it I'm going to marry there are certain like people that I would just never date because I know our cultures will never kind of align but when I was going through hormone treatment and you're overstimulated and you're thinking like it was black men that I was attracted to but it's one of those it's a genetic thing where you're thinking okay that's how the whole survival

thing is like animalistic it was yeah it was this might not be my actual type of my true ambition in life but this is

my body's telling me that this is what I want exactly so I don't watch porn but I have a peloton and Alex there's this guy called Alex

from Peloton he's so fucking funny and hot that's so funny after decades of shaky hands funny and hot. That's so funny. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide

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Oh God, yes. Actually, I'm very much open to getting DMs, but the ones that I've got are mostly from Somali or African men. I go through these different phases. Sometimes people are calling me a whore and telling me to cover up. And then other times, they really want to date me. So here's Ibrahim. So he'll just say this, hi, you nice. But I think that that's better.

Like most people just say hi. I'm a bit jealous of the you nice bit. We have a heart. I just saw a heart. Oh, this is the one that actually I quite like, which was quite interesting. Hi, can I learn more about your background?

And then he mentioned me three days later I remember your face and I know where I know you from you came into Leon on Carnaby Street was this recently

no this was like ages ago so I just looked into my do you remember is there ever is there ever fit I feel like everyone

who slides into my DMs is not hot and then I've got friends who get real fitties and end up going out of there no I don't think

he's not fit but it was just like it was just so fucking weird how the fuck he found me on Facebook that's that's like a pretty

but back in the day it used to be that you put the little ads in the newspaper in the middle of your way to work but now that's romantic

but it's just really I thought maybe there was like a media story or whatever because I'm always getting dragged in the media so maybe he must have seen it and then

like was like I've been thinking about you all this I think it's fucking but I don't know I would find it romantic if Somali men haven't haven't spent like five years trying to want to kill me yeah now i just kind of like have you ever received any nudes from people um no unsolicited i've received unsolicited from like people that i have on

whatsapp who during lockdown have just gone really crazy what like so you just suddenly out the blue just get a dick pic yeah but but from your contacts and what yeah yeah from contacts there was this guy the other day he's like he messaged me and he's like what are you doing on Monday I was like it's a global lockdown and he's like I can come over and I was like we're in quarantine and he's like I'm exempt because he's a doctor I'm like I don't need your services and if I did you'd have to wear PPE because I sometimes I sometimes think that these people are just joking with me just to tell a story. So I'm thinking, are they saying I'm breaking lockdown?

And then he just sent me a dick pic. Did you see the BBC lockdown rules? Did you see it? Oh my God, Sid showed it to me the other day. It's positions you can have sex in. But you still have to be within two metres of each other. So you're breaking the first rule. Sex.

Maybe if you just use a really long dildo. Basically, you can fuck. within two meters of each other. So you're breaking the first rule. Sex. Maybe if you just use a really long dildo. Basically you can fuck, all right, but you have to do it doggy style. You're not allowed to be face to face. I'm really pedantic about these things. And also, it's mucous membrane. That's what happens inside a pussy against a dick.

Mucous membrane, yeah. Actually, somebody had a conversation with me, ironically, about mucous membrane when we were talking about black women's vaginas, and said are they brown i was like it's the inside of your fucking mouth and black people's difference it's the same thing yeah it's like no it's pink yeah he literally could not think of the fact that a black woman's vagina is internally pink yeah his main kind of thing this wasn't a doctor was it i think it might be no he was a banker but um again i was just like,

I was sitting there going like, actually, no, it's pink like white women's vagina. Yeah. And he was just up there thinking, oh, wow. And I was like, well, you're not going to see mine, but good luck with any other black women out there.

Have you ever sent any nudes? No. No. Literally, I don't get the idea of it. Do you know what? Because I'm working on this violence against women and girls strategy. Revenge porn has gone up.

So there's a helpline and it's gone up by 300%, like the calls that they're getting. Because the whole point is people are stuck indoors and they are taking these pictures. And then they literally, they're matching with people that they would have never matched with before. And now those things are being shared on the internet. But the whole point is because everybody thinks it's okay,

there's actually like the laws catching up on that. Literally, it is a violation. The idea, the fact that you are like, you know, digitally assaulted. I also think that there has to be a bit of a responsibility on the women. If you're not prepared for that picture to go somewhere else, I mean, it's not okay.

You're doing something personal and private. But if I send a naked picture of myself, I know the risk that I'm doing. I think it's different when you're a teenager and you're not really sure. I think as a grown woman, I think you need to know where that's going.

I was told by a mutual friend of ours the other day that, because I didn't realise, because I've got loads of tattoos, like obviously you can't get away with being like, that's not me.

No, I just, I don't know, I've just never done it and it's a little bit like drugs as well. I've never done drugs either because I want to get to the position

that I can tell my niece, well, you can't do those things and she'll be like, well, you did it. And I'm like, excuse me, actually, I fucking did not. I think that's just, you just lie to the position that I can tell my niece well you can't do those things and she'll be like well you did it I'm like excuse me actually I fucking did not I think that's just you just lied to the children

that's my plan anyway it's just one of those things yeah but I just I don't know I just I've seen the end results of what happens and actually

how controlling men are and this is what I mean about the fact of being a heterosexual woman in the sector that I work in I meet like fucking disgusting men on a day to day basis

and some of them are actually quite powerful the idea the fact that I had to be nice is so fucking ridiculous it's just like the fact that I'm sitting there I'm just thinking you know I don't have the privilege in order to have my political opinions because there are women that depend on me but you are disgusting and then at the same time I have to find one out there to fuck because yeah I'm attracted to them. Of course. It's really weird. I think that's like heterosexuality sometimes as women.

It's just really weird. It's like they are oppressed. It's like no other animal on the planet actually fucks or lusts for the thing that's actually killing them. So if you would set up with I'll start with the politician.

Who do you think me and Sydney should go out with if we were going to go out with one of them? I think his name is Dean. Look at Dean. This guy, Labour Dean. Dean, Labour Dean.

But I've already been out with the Dean. But he is so nice. And do you know what the funny thing was? I always, like, Twitter searched him, and then he was following me, so I followed him back. And that's actually, you know what, I kind of agree with you, because he was like, he was actually quite, yeah, he was like... Okay, no, no Deans.

What was the other one you said earlier? Labour Dean. Yeah, I think his name is Dean, and he's from, I think he's, like, Liverpool or somewhere out there. Dan Carden. Liverpool, Walton, this guy. He looks quite Tory. I think he's new Labour, so that's who he is.

He sounds really posh, but he looks better on Twitter. He looks better on Twitter. Everyone looks better on Twitter. This is hell. He looks well, Tory. He's Labour, though. He's sweet. I guess he's got a sweet face.

Are you seeing anyone at the moment? No. I'm very single. And if anybody wants to slide into my DMs, please do. See, I'm up for the DM slide. A lot of people aren't. I'm really game for it. Because I think anybody that does a DM slide for me,

it's like they must know me from politically. So it's fine. I would rather get a DM slide of someone trying to ask me out than somebody telling me to go kill myself. Yeah. Which basically happens all the time. Really? Yeah.

It's really nasty actually in there. Is it majority men or women who send these kind of things? It's like, you know what? It's a bit of both. So it's really interesting. During the election, it was this whole kind of thing. I think this country does not actually understand race. I come from a family where not just everybody is black and Somali.

Everybody is from one city. So the idea of the fact that there's complexity in that is fine because we're all black people that are different, but that doesn't translate very well into the UK kind of context. So there's a sense of like you are either this or that rather than actually being able to kind of listen to people and have conversations. So during the election, it was so weird,

the hateful things that I would get. So the night of the election and then the conservative party won and i went to the rally and i was in this backstage bit we had a party that had five ethnic minorities that were secretary of state stuff like that and they were all sitting around i just know i keep getting called coon and their faces because i'd never grown up with that level of racism they'd grown up when the national front was like on the doorstep i saw like in their faces how hurt they were. And that was last year?

That was last year, but it was really interesting. I was being called that from black people saying that I'd kind of internalised my white master to the point where I became them. And I'm just thinking, have you actually been to Africa? Because the African community, there's diversity in that. And I think a lot of people don't actually know many Africans or know the fact that like you

know that they've grown up in the context of actually being a black person that has privilege and has platform and that's one of the reasons why when everybody gets like overexcited about like I love Kamala Harris it's great Obama was great but Obama doesn't have the lived experience and struggle of Michelle Obama although that girl that was the poet Amanda they've had 400 years of struggle Obama is like me. He was born to a man who grew up with nothing but in the country that he loved, so that's Africa, and a white mother, and he grew up in Hawaii.

The idea that Michelle was living in a white house where her descendants had built as slaves, that's a real struggle. So that's why I differentiate the idea of, say, African-Americans, I say black Americans, because they literally, like, you know, Michelle Obama had more history in America than any other president ever,

because the idea of the fact that she can trace her lineage to 400 years, like Trump's been there since, I think like his family moved there in the like the 1900s. So he's like, literally, he's just like a new fucking comer.

I think even Biden right now, I think his family left islands in like the 1920s or whatever. But the fact that you had Michelle Obama living there, that's the kind of conversations that people don't have. So when we talk about Black Lives Matter, I completely understand that. But my greatest oppressor, if I'm actually going to get harmed or if anything's going to happen to me, it's going to be at the hands of an African man. And that is something that people don't understand, which don't want to get too like political about it but the african continent and the things i'm dealing with on the continent of africa are not being done by tory boys that went to eat and so

they're not my enemy my enemy actually people that look like me and that's for me on a day-to-day basis something that i just can't get people to understand for example when it comes to like chastisations and stuff like that it is men from my own community and nobody wants to talk about that and i think we just leave a lot of i don't know i just think that this country bends over backwards to do things but they never necessarily askly ask enough from people like me how can we resolve that just actually just being honest and being a little bit more proud because like one of the things that i really hear about my lefty friends is when they talk about brexit and're like oh we're going to turn into

the racist country of Europe like have you actually been black in Europe? Like France is fucking shit. Italy like literally like last Christmas 2019 I was in Hungary and I'd been to Hungary

several times and Budapest is lovely and I went there and because it was just such a hard year it's like you know the microaggressions of racism just like get on top of you

on a day-to-day basis. And I was in a store and I asked for something and she just ignored me. So I just started crying because I just thought like, this is just like, this would never happen in the UK.

But then on a day-to-day basis, we're told that this is a racist country. I'm like, there's racism everywhere. Like in Africa, we have civil wars because we have issues with each other, let alone just race.

This country actually has done a lot to allow people to integrate assimilate and actually classify it as their home so I'm just thinking

sometimes we just have to have that conversation of saying okay listen there's always progress that needs to be done yeah there might be issues but what

so what role do you have to play in order to move things forward because like I say if you guys move to Africa my mum's not going to open a pub for you guys. They're not going to open churches.

They're not going to do stuff like pork and stuff like that. So, I can eat halal here. I can go to the mosque. I can practice my religion. I just think,

like, we just don't celebrate it enough. So, yeah, that's just kind of my, but then I get, I literally would get lynched for saying that.

Which is a shame because it's just pure honesty, isn't it? And I think, like you said, the honest conversation is almost as you know critical as the conversation yeah thank you for having me and also just what a brilliantly abstract conversation in so many ways yeah very very interesting i do hope you find uh your tory politician love one day well i don't

want him to be a politician because i'll be too... I don't want the Daily Mail chasing me. You know what? A good banker is what I want. Tall is my type and, like, you know, solvent. Thank you for listening to our Spotify original podcast, Sex Lies and DM Slides. Please follow us on Spotify and tell all your mates about it if you enjoyed it. And if you have any weird or wonderful sex lies and DM slides stories of your own, do slide into our DMs at Sydney Lima and at Gizzy

Erskine. No dick pics, please. Also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at sexliesdmslides. This Spotify original podcast is a Hayden Prowse production edited by Nick at Podmonkey with music by Free Seed Films. Our executive producers at Spotify are Rachel Simpson and Alexandra Aidey.