Hadley Freeman on Woman's Hour this morning

[IamSarah]

Just a heads up for any Hadley Freeman fans. She is being interviewed about her new book.

Thank you - I’ll try to listen in.

Just starting now.

I listened. I have no personal experience of eating disorders, nor do I have any close connection with anyone who does, so I can't speak with any authority on this, but everything she says makes such good sense to me. She says that girls are socialised to be nice and kind and so when they enter puberty and find things scary some girls turn their rage and fear on themselves instead of doing what some boys do, i.e. behave badly at school and turn violent. The violence is on their own bodies. She feels that girls with anorexia don't want to look thin, they want to look ill, so it's obvious they have a problem, even though they don't want to talk about it.

She advises strongly that any parent worried about their child should seek professional advice as early as possible and avoid ending up as the child's caregiver, as it makes everything much more complicated emotionally. She also advises trying to talk to the anorexic about anything other than food and weight, so as to maintain a lifeline to the outside world.

What did strike me very much about this interview was that Hadley and the WH presenter both agreed that adolescent girls have a long history of various forms of self-harm manifesting in various ways and yet neither of them mentioned the elephant in the room, which I imagine was a WH stipulation. How can we see young girls and barely adult women binding their breasts, disrupting their normal hormone production to change their appearance, agitating for double mastectomy, hysterectomy and other irreversible and life-shortening procedures as anything other than medically facilitated self-harm?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I totally agree.

I haven't suffered with anorexia but I had mental health problems as a teenager and it makes so much sense to me.

We don't affirm anorexic girls as needing to diet so I don't know why we affirm gender dysphoric girls as needing to transition.

I didn't hear the programme but Hadley has talked / written about how her experiences of anorexia have helped shape her stance on gender identity. She's pointed out that, even when she was seriously ill, no-one would have dreamed of suggesting to her parents that they should 'affirm' her belief that she was fat.

I listened to the interview, was excellent, she makes so much sense. And yes there was most definitely an elephant in the room.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · Today 10:49
I heard a lot of it.

What did strike me very much about this interview was that Hadley and the WH presenter both agreed that adolescent girls have a long history of various forms of self-harm manifesting in various ways and yet neither of them mentioned the elephant in the room, which I imagine was a WH stipulation

I was struck by this too. It seemed to be so possible that a lot of what she was saying could be applied to girls suffering from gender dysphoria too. The link to autism was mentioned as well and we know this can be a shared co-factor.

More could have been made of desexualising your own body in order to protect it I thought, unless I missed that part. That could apply to both symptoms of distress too.

I suppose they didn’t want anorexia as a subject in its own dreadful right hijacked, which I can understand.

Shall we all write to WH and say Hadley talking about this was great-now would they have her on for a second time to go on to talk about the rise in teen girls saying they want to be men?

It’s the first time I’ve heard someone explicitly mention historical evidence of eating disorders. We know from factual accounts and fiction of girls “going into a decline”, which is usually blamed on consumption.
My schooldays in a convent made me aware that many of the rituals around fasting and self-chastisement were linked to unhappiness and psychological disturbance. I wonder how many postulants and novices in religious orders joined in order to find some way of normalising and controlling eating disorders and associated mental health issues?

Hadley has written frequently about how her anorexia has shaped her views on teen girls'gender dysphoria, so I agree with a pp she was probably told not to go there by WH. She also tried to speak to the Tavistock when she was researching her book and they refused to talk to her. I was also anorexic as a teen and got a 'like' from Hadley on twitter for a tweet about the connections I saw (fans self).

Interesting, isn't it. I am not a Catholic but the little I know about Catholicism has made me very uneasy about the way celibate priests, nuns, saints, hermits, martyrs etc are elevated and revered for mortifying the flesh, having visions and so on, when in an ordinary person the same behaviour would be taken as clear evidence of mental disturbance. The disgust and revulsion from perfectly normal functions of women's bodies by a male-dominated clergy is of course not confined to Catholicism.

I'm quite sure that going into convents was in part the anorexia / trans of its day. Get your hair cut off, wear shapeless clothes that completely conceal your body, adopt a new (often male) name. The punitive 'foundation' process, aimed at breaking the individual down so that they could be rebuilt to the service of God was probably welcomed by many troubled young girls, but it was ultimately disastrous for many of them.

The army did the same thing to boys, of course, breaking them so that they could be rebuilt to serve the class-ridden hierarchical thing.

There is some discussion of body image/dysmorphia more generally or specifically about trans issues in the book but it is not the main focus so I think the interview didn’t deliberately avoid anything but rather didn’t get sidetracked. It is a really good and sobering read - really worth it and hard to put down

Thanks for that recommendation. I will order it now, to see how my own experience matches hers. I have so many thoughts about that whole episode in my life, about what triggered it, about what finally cured me etc. and it will be interesting to compare that with her experience.

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · Today 18:41
I'm quite sure that going into convents was in part the anorexia / trans of its day. Get your hair cut off, wear shapeless clothes that completely conceal your body, adopt a new (often male) name. The punitive 'foundation' process, aimed at breaking the individual down so that they could be rebuilt to the service of God was probably welcomed by many troubled young girls, but it was ultimately disastrous for many of them.

I think it was also a form of freedom and liberation that gave some women the chance to work and study in peace in ways they never could have if they had married or stayed at home.

There is an on-line group called the History of Women Religious for academics which came across by chance once and have kept signed up to. It is extraordinary to see the breadth and depth of knowledge, the musical achievements, imagination and courage of communities of nuns through the ages.

The Albanian women who live like men had to swear to be celibate, so in a way were a bit like nuns too I thought.

Part of my way of recovering from anorexia was reading about how it manifested throughout history. It's so frustrating when people assume it's rooted in vanity and appearance

Mine was triggered by a series of horrible traumas I didn't know how to process , and I remember this feeling of relief when people could finally "see" how distressed I was as it showed in my body.

(And it was peak 90s, super skinny models, so some idiots would congratulate me on how much I looked like Kate Moss)

Fascinating and very perceptive the parallels with gender issues and the huge risks in not understanding the deeper struggles they are likely rooted in

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · Today 17:04
Interesting, isn't it. I am not a Catholic but the little I know about Catholicism has made me very uneasy about the way celibate priests, nuns, saints, hermits, martyrs etc are elevated and revered for mortifying the flesh, having visions and so on, when in an ordinary person the same behaviour would be taken as clear evidence of mental disturbance. The disgust and revulsion from perfectly normal functions of women's bodies by a male-dominated clergy is of course not confined to Catholicism

I think the mortifying of the flesh and visions are not so much part of the church now; and there is a dirth of vocations for either priests or nuns at least in the West, so the rules on celibacy will surely have to change or everything will go.

This was interesting about Pope Francis. ( There was a lot about how important LGBT inclusion is in the paragraphs before, incidentally.)
Francis, speaking in Spanish, said that the Church’s teaching on sex still needs to develop, saying that the “catechism regarding sex is still at a very early stage [‘in nappies’]. I think we Christians haven’t always had a mature catechism regarding sex.” He emphasised: “Sex is one of the beautiful things God gave human beings. To express oneself sexually is something rich. Anything that diminishes a true sexual expression diminishes you as well, it renders you partial, and it diminishes that richness.” ~ THE TABLET, 6 April 2023

Looking forward to listening to this.

I think its likely that HF wanted to keep to the subject herself. She's canny, intelligent and has a book to sell - she wouldn't want to be typecast as 'the one who always talks about gender'.

She was also on newsnight tonight BBC 2

UnHerd are hosting a conversation with Hadley Freeman and Sarah Ditum in London this evening, the title is "Are teenage girls in trouble?" It can be attended virtually through Zoom, and appears to be free.

https://unherd.com/freeman-ditum-april/

Lionel Shriver has a fantastic article about Hadley's book on Unherd:

https://unherd.com/2023/04/is-trans-the-new-anorexia/

On the historical precedents of anorexia: A book I read a long time ago mentioned the medieval young girls who strove for sainthood, partly by not eating much at all.

The motivation there might be partly the same as in the onset time of anorexia (I think, based on my own experience, that at some point in the malnutrition process the disease changes into a more physical one, driven by the body which thinks it's living in an era of widespread starvation and changes its coping mechanisms), in that these are ways to get positive attention from the wider society which is not likely to give positive attention to young girls as full beings.

But in the past the motivations were not about how the girls looked, whereas now it's very much about trying to achieve some level of what the society views as perfection.

On the other hand, they are both about young girls taking some control over their own lives and bodies when they believe they have very little actual control over what determines their own contentment.

Hilary Mantel's review essay on that is brilliant

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n05/hilary-mantel/some-girls-want-out

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · Today 19:52
Hilary Mantel's review essay on that is brilliant

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n05/hilary-mantel/some-girls-want-out

Thank you very much. I have just read it and it is brilliant just as you say.

Mantel's essay (titled 'Holy Disorders')
is included in her book 'A Memoir of My Former Self, A Life In Writing'. Her range of subject matter is astonishing and dazzling. We are going to miss her.