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Woman's Hour

Musician & singer, Abi Sampa; Celibacy; Chinaza Onyechi; Femicide

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Over the last few years, the figures around celibacy have generally been on the rise - particular amongst young women. What’s to be gained from making this life choice? And what should one know before deciding to become celibate? Anita speaks to sex therapist Danielle Bennett, and two women who have experience with celibacy. Laura Kennedy is in her 30’s and was celibate for six years. Shirley Yanez is in her 60s and became celibate as part of a conscious change in lifestyle.

Chinaza Onyechi has always dreamed of becoming a film maker but she says like other children from a Nigerian background she was encouraged to take up a more traditional career like law, medicine or engineering. But she is now one step closer to that film-making dream, after being awarded the MetFilm School's first Black Student of Talent scholarship. The scholarship covers full tuition fees for a year and could be worth around £50,000 depending on the course.

Susan Ogilvy rediscovered learning in her seventies. As a botanical artist from Somerset, she started a journey into painting nests she serendipitously found. This was the start of an ornithological education, specifically into birds nests. Ogilvy has since painted more than fifty bird nests from life, each time marvelling at its ingenious construction. They have been collated in her new book, Nests. The first in a genre that has been dominated by male authors with very little focus on birds nests.

Do gender-neutral terms, such as "homicide" and "murder," systematically ignore targeted violence against women? Should femicide be seen as a separate category? If women are being killed specifically because they're women, does that matter? Do motives matter? Anita is joined by Karen Ingala Smith, co-founder of Femicide Census and Chief Exec of Nia, a charity that runs services for women and girls who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence and abuse.

Abi Sampa describes herself as a "weird warbling electric Veena player". She trained as a dentist and then appeared on The Voice in 2013, where she wowed the judges with her unique style of as a fusion of western pop and Indian classical music. She joins Anita to explain how she plays the electric Veena and to describe her performances with the orchestral Qawwalli Project, reviving old Sufi poems and putting their own spin on them musically with a western orchestral style.

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Kirsty Starkey

Interviewed Guest: Danielle Bennett Interviewed Guest: Laura Kennedy Interviewed Guest: Shirley Yanez Interviewed Guest: Chinaza Onyechi Interviewed Guest: Susan Ogilvy Interviewed Guest: Karen Ingala Smith Interviewed Guest: Abi Sampa

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.6

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.4

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable

0:14.3

experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC

0:20.4

makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

0:24.6

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

0:29.7

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

0:36.0

BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.

0:41.0

Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from podcasts. of both UK and US Vogue. She looks sensational as you might imagine, but it's what

0:55.2

she's spoken about in the interview that caught my eye this morning. She talks about

0:59.5

her new album 30 being a way of explaining to her son that she left his father in

1:05.6

pursuit of her own happiness. Wow such a small sentence isn't it to pursue your own

1:12.1

happiness but how easy or difficult is it to do?

1:16.3

Have you done it? What decision have you made that was solely for you that some may say is selfish but you did it because you wanted to

1:24.3

prioritize yourself whether it was divorce leaving a job going traveling treating

1:30.0

yourself leaving a relationship tell me about that difficult choice you had to make.

1:35.9

You can text me this morning on 84844.

1:39.1

And then, no sex please, we're celibate.

1:42.3

That's what we're talking about today,

1:43.3

Cellibacy. Choosing not to have sex, in a world that's seemingly obsessed with sex,

1:48.7

can you imagine life without it? Imagine what it would do to your life. How would you live differently, maybe make decisions differently, maybe have more time to think

1:58.0

about yourself, maybe you couldn't think of anything worse while Generation Z are having less sex than previous

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