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Florence Given on Girlcrushes, Power Dynamics, and the Digital Self
3.7k Plays2 years ago
This week we chatted with author, illustrator, and activist Florence Given, aka “Floss”, about her new (very bisexual!) novel, GIRLCRUSH. Floss gained an online following leading up to her first book, “Women Don’t Owe You Pretty”, a non-fiction feminist primer, before transitioning to fiction and highlighting sexual fluidity in “Girlcrush”.
We talked about Floss’s bisexual journey, the biphobia and bi-erasure she’s experienced since coming out, the differences she’s encountered dating men v. women, how not wanting to play into toxic and gendered power dynamics in relationships can lead to being overly cautious, why she wanted to create a “messy” bisexual character who gets confused and makes mistakes, and the unexpected joys that have come with a queer identity. We also discussed what it’s like to be a social media influencer today, the difference between our digital self and our reality, parasocial relationships between creators and their fans, how to deal with online trolls and negativity, and the pleasant surprises that come with a public persona. Finally, we touched on consent, how to recognize and get out of an abusive relationship, and how to reclaim your own power and authenticity.
Follow Floss on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/florencegiven/
Visit Floss's website: https://www.florencegiven.com/
Buy GIRLCRUSH: https://bookshop.org/books/girlcrush/9781914240522
Two Bi Guys is produced and edited by Rob Cohen
Created by Rob Cohen and Alex Boyd
Logo art by Kaitlin Weinman
Music by Ross Mintzer
We are supported by The Gotham
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Rob is hosting a Bi+ trip to coastal Maine in June 2023! First 10 to book get $200 off: https://trips.trovatrip.com/trips/united-states-with-rob-cohen-jun-2023
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Transcript
Introduction to Florence Givin
00:00:00
Speaker
🎵
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Two Bye, guys. I'm so excited for my next guest today, another interview across the pond. My guest today is a bestselling author, award-winning podcaster as well, an illustrator, and a social media influencer based in London.
Books & Feminist Themes
00:00:29
Speaker
Her first book, Women Don't Owe You Pretty, was published in 2020. It's a feminist manifesto which challenges outdated patriarchal narratives, which we love to do.
00:00:40
Speaker
And her second book and debut novel, Girl Crush, was just published in 2020 and has already reached number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list. Congratulations. In all her work, she uses her platform to bring women together and give them a permission slip to define feminism on their own terms. More things we love. Please welcome to Two Bye Guys, Florence Givin. Hello. Hi, thank you so much for having me, Robert, and thank you for the wonderful intro.
Bisexual Identity & Challenges
00:01:10
Speaker
Well, it's very nice to meet you after following some of your work and reading this book, which is very cool and centers bisexuality. So I'm excited to get into that. But before we get into the book, we always start on this podcast with you. So to start us off, can you tell us what pronouns do you use and how do you identify on any sexuality spectrum or any other spectrums you would like to identify on?
00:01:40
Speaker
Okay, so my name's Florence Gibbon. I use the pronouns she, her, and I currently identify as bisexual. I feel like probably one of the most bisexual things ever, at least for every bi person I've spoken to, is that it's a constant mental flip-flop of, is this really real? Because I don't really know because everyone around me doesn't think it's real. And I kind of like the confusion of being bi. I definitely know that I like women. It's my attraction to men.
00:02:08
Speaker
but kind of flip-flops every now and then. So I'd say I'm definitely bisexual, but there are some days where I really do question it. I think that that constant questioning and a little bit of confusion about where we are is actually like almost what defines bisexuality in a way. Yes, exactly, exactly. I end up going on some kind of like mental tangent and then realising, oh no, you definitely are bisexual, like it just lands there every single time.
00:02:37
Speaker
It's funny because for me it's a stable identity. I expect to identify as bisexual for the rest of my life, but also I often don't know what that means or what I want to do with that or who exactly I'm attracted to at this moment, but that sort of fits under the umbrella, I think.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's an amazing author. You've probably heard of her, Jen Winston. She wrote the book Greedy. And I think she said something in it about how confusion is probably the queerest thing of all. And I think it's just so true. Yep. She was on this podcast, actually. Oh, amazing. I love her.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Cool. Okay, so you identify as bisexual, but tell us about how you came to that identity. Did you always know that? When did you actually realize that? And when did you start coming out using that word?
00:03:33
Speaker
I didn't start using the word bisexual until I moved to London. So originally I'm from Plymouth, which is a smallish town in the southwest of England. And there wasn't really a big queer or gay scene.
00:03:48
Speaker
There was for gay men that there were plenty of, well there was two, and in a small town that is a lot, two gay bars for gay men, and apart from that there was, I didn't even think that queer women existed, particularly queer women that were feminine.
00:04:04
Speaker
I had this very stereotypical idea of what a gay woman looked like. I didn't know that someone could possibly like all kinds of genders. I didn't know that that was something that existed and so my feelings didn't fit into this neat little box. And so I basically suppressed and suppressed and suppressed them.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I would have these immense feelings towards my female friends growing up. But I just thought that I just loved women. And I was just such this impassioned female friend. And I just wanted to braid their hair and make them extravagant gifts and write them letters. And I didn't think that that had anything to do with the fact that I was also deeply in love with them. I just thought that that was a sign of being a good friend and all of this stuff. And then I realized that women didn't look at other women the same way I did.
00:04:51
Speaker
But I also couldn't relate to the way that straight men looked at women. Because the way that straight men looked at women, I didn't relate to that. I didn't relate to their core, look at her, and that wolf whistling on the pavement. And always sexy, like it was this grotesque grabbing of women's beauty that I didn't relate to. Because the way that I had felt towards women was
00:05:12
Speaker
yeah I want to have sex with them but I also want to look after them and I want to do nice things for them and I want to adore them and I want to care for them and that wasn't something and of course there are men that do adore their girlfriends obviously but that wasn't the I hadn't been exposed to a version of loving women that I could relate to because I wasn't looking at them through this male gaze I was looking at them through my gaze and so there's a really long way of answering your question but
00:05:39
Speaker
I came out privately to, I say privately
Family & Acceptance
00:05:43
Speaker
as in because I'm a public person, so I came out privately to a few friends when I was about 17 years old. My mum didn't believe me at first.
00:05:55
Speaker
she kind of thought it was this idea or something that would go away. And then it wasn't until I was not no longer in a relationship with a man that she was like, oh, okay, you actually are bisexual, you are dating women. And she totally supported me after that. But I think it was it was hard for people to grapple with in my family, maybe because
00:06:18
Speaker
I had been with men and now I was with women and that was confusing and they thought I was lesbian. And then it wasn't until I saw my dad a couple of years later, we were at some dinner and then I said some guy was attractive and he was like, oh my God, are you straight again? And I was like, what? I'm bisexual.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I think I've been very lucky with my experience that I've not experienced any at least implicit homophobia from my family. It's more like, you know, the micro aggressive stuff.
Queer Community Gatekeeping
00:06:46
Speaker
Like, am I still gonna get grandchildren? You know, that kind of thing. And it's like, ahh.
00:06:52
Speaker
Oh, that was the first question my parents asked me was, do you still want grandchildren? I'm like, yeah, this doesn't have anything to do with that. I know. And it's funny how bisexuality I think is unique where when we come out, people don't just believe it often. It's like they want it to be proven with experience or with who you're dating or something. But most of all, Robert, I found that that comes from within the community. Straight people don't really care about who you're sleeping with.
00:07:19
Speaker
In my experience, it's been from the queer community because there's more of a sense of gatekeeping. People don't want to gatekeep straightness or queerness because they don't. But in my experience, there's been other queer people that demand the list of sexual encounters for you to even use the word queer.
00:07:40
Speaker
Interesting. That's been my experience anyway yeah and of course like not not not um I've had amazing I have amazing queer friends obviously and I love my friendship group but in terms of like stuff online stuff at gay bars that kind of stuff I and all my queer friends agree when we talk about it we're like oh we're not actually afraid of
00:08:01
Speaker
what straight people are going to say about our identity, it's other queer people. And I guess that it comes from this sense of wanting to protect something that you have been marginalised for. Like, I can understand where this comes from, but I don't think it's okay still.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. Like I especially have noticed that for me from the gay community. I mean, I have many gay friends who are very supportive and great, but there is some gatekeeping or biphobia from the gay community. Is that something you've experienced from the lesbian community if you've interacted there too?
00:08:36
Speaker
Not really in my actual, this is the thing, Robert, also, is I feel like we exist on two different planes of existence. You have the online world and the real world where people don't have the guts and the courage to say the horrible things that they say to you online. I've had people try to accuse me of being fake for bisexuality, all of this kind of stuff, but no one's ever said that to me in person. No one would have the audacity.
00:09:06
Speaker
No, that's not been my experience in person from people, but it has been online for sure.
00:09:13
Speaker
Interesting. It's the online comments. Okay, I want to get to that stuff later in these parasocial relationships. And I want to ask about your coming out, but just one other thing I really connected with that you said, even though you were different genders, and I unfortunately am regretfully have to admit that I did identify as a straight cis man for a while in my life.
00:09:36
Speaker
And when I did that and was only dating women, I identified with what you just said of like, I didn't like the way that other straight men were relating to women and talking about their relationships. And it was like this contest almost. It wasn't really
00:09:55
Speaker
very intimate or real or sweet. It always felt to me like there was this culture of conquest, of all the men around me trying to win a contest or something, and ownership. And I don't know if that impulse to look at those relationships differently or seeing those examples that helped you is actually kind of a queer thing of dismantling that
00:10:21
Speaker
patriarchy and building a relationship in a new way. Yeah, well, I think I don't know if this has been your experience, but the way that men look at women
00:10:33
Speaker
makes it hard for queer women to not feel predatory, even just approaching other queer women. And this is something that me and all my queer girlfriends talk about is that there's this fear of being seen. I'm bisexual, but that doesn't matter to a woman that I'm approaching. It's like this
00:10:54
Speaker
stereotype which is an awful stereotype of like the predatory lesbian and being afraid to make moves and feeling afraid of making girls uncomfortable and that comes from like even growing up when I was growing up in school and stuff I would look differently at women than perhaps straight women would look at other women and then you kind of get the sense when like
00:11:14
Speaker
straight girls also there's nothing more homoerotic than like what straight girls do on a drunk night out they kiss each other they tell each other they're so fucking sexy in the girls bathroom and it's this overwhelming display of love and affection but if i do it that's a bit um i i also
00:11:32
Speaker
Am I then being the, will you be uncomfortable if I do that? Because I actually like girls. I think that the way men have looked at women has made it harder for women to approach other women because we're constantly afraid of being like men. And there is a very awful stereotype of the predatory lesbian. And I know I'm bisexual, but if I'm approaching a woman, that is a, that's a sapphic connection. And there's still this, this fear
00:11:57
Speaker
amongst myself and other queer women that I've spoken to of like, oh, can I do this? Is this weird? I don't want to hurt her feelings. And it's almost just like it breeds this over cautiousness of not wanting to be like straight men. Right. So desperately trying not to be like the creepy men that approach us. And the truth is most women don't even have that in them. Most of the women that I've been approached by are, you know, doing it so coyly to the point
Inspiration Behind 'Girl Crush'
00:12:21
Speaker
you don't even know if they're flirting with you.
00:12:23
Speaker
And I think that, yeah, growing up and seeing the way that men handled women, the way that men spoke about women, it didn't allow me to even think it was okay to approach or flirt with a girl because that was, I was like, oh, no, that's bad. That's wrong. That's what I've seen men do. And I've seen, I know how that feels, so I don't want to
00:12:42
Speaker
And it's this fear of rejection. I don't have that anymore, but I did when I first came out. I was so desperately afraid of not wanting to be like men when I flirted with girls. I identify with that so much. And I think so many men who listen to our pagas will too, because of course, if even you don't want to seem like the predatory straight men, then
00:13:09
Speaker
by men really, really, you know, like I definitely felt that and I didn't want to sort of emulate that, but I felt like if I'm approaching women, how can they not see me that way until they get to know me? And I was so scared to approach women. And I think what happened was I was then overly cautious, like you said, to, you know, and went too far the other direction. I was just very, very shy and reserved for a long time, sort of until coming out.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was really empowering for me for the first time to allow myself to check out women. And I spoke about this. I wanted to talk about this theme through Girl Crush. I wanted to write about a protagonist that goes on this journey where she lets herself kind of check women out and explore that side of her because I think that
00:13:57
Speaker
First of all, for bisexual women, there's not that many narratives written about bisexuality. And so to read about the experience of coming out and all of the nuanced, strange thoughts we have, where it's like, am I the only person thinking this? I wanted to write a story where all of the messiness is explored. And yeah, just kind of go through all of those little bumps in the road that happen when you guys come out.
00:14:28
Speaker
Hi, everyone. You may have seen this on social media, but just in case you didn't, I am hosting a trip to Maine for the bi community next June. You know, if you live in a big city like New York or LA or another big city, you may very well have a bi community group that you can meet up with and make real world connections. But not everyone has that. And I have heard from a lot of you who listen to this podcast that you live in places where you don't really know other bi people or it's difficult to connect with them.
00:14:55
Speaker
So that's why when Trova Trip approached me with the idea of hosting a trip for the bi community, I thought it was such a great idea. And it's going to be a great way for anyone from anywhere in the country or another country to come meet up in Maine, meet some bi people in real life, and make some queer friendships that will hopefully last well beyond the trip.
00:15:14
Speaker
So you all took a survey about where you wanted to go. The top domestic choice was coastal Maine. So that is where we are going. June 19th to 23rd, 2023. Sandwiched right in between Portland Pride and New York City Pride. So I highly recommend you come on the trip. You go a little early for Portland Pride, which is the weekend before. Then our trip is Monday through Friday, June 19th to 23rd. And then New York City Pride weekend is June 23rd to 25th.
00:15:44
Speaker
For anyone who's going or anyone else who's interested, I will help coordinate people who want to meet up at Portland Pride or New York City Pride. We've already had a handful of bookings for the trip. The first 10 people to book get $200 off the price. So if you're interested, I would encourage you to book this week.
00:16:01
Speaker
I have heard from the Trova Trip people that those first 10 spots usually go within the first week or two, so now's your chance. We can accommodate up to 20 people total. The trip includes some nice hotels in Portland and Rockland, Maine. It includes all transportation and includes a number of meals. Check the show notes or our social media for the link and you can look at the iTunes.
00:16:20
Speaker
In addition to some fun activities organized by the trip company, like a lobster boat experience, some oyster shucking, a tour of a state park, a wine tasting, some other awesome things, you can check it out. I will also be hosting some events like
Bi Community Connection
00:16:35
Speaker
a buy discussion group. We'll sit down one day and recreate by request. Totally optional. We'll have a buy game night.
00:16:41
Speaker
And also, I would like to try recording an episode of Two Bye Guys with whoever goes on the trip. We'll give each person a chance to tell their story and also maybe talk about the trip a little. The trip is open to anyone who identifies under the bye umbrella and partners are welcome as well. I'm really excited about this trip. I've always wanted to explore Coastal Main. I was glad that was one of the top choices. Some of your other international choices were great too. For example, Italy and Greece were high up there.
00:17:07
Speaker
So if this trip goes well, I really hope we can continue doing this and continue offering trips for the buy community. You only need to pay 25% of the price to book your spot. If for some reason the trip doesn't happen, you get a full refund of that deposit. That's all I can think of. Check out the link in the show notes, book soon, and I hope to see you in Maine in June 2023.
00:17:42
Speaker
So you wrote this novel about women don't know you're pretty. And then a couple years later now you've published this novel. How did you decide you wanted to write the first book? And then why did you decide to move to fiction? And what's it been like? What's the differences been? And I guess I'll throw this into it. Did you have the idea to center bisexuality and write a bi story? Or did that just kind of come naturally from writing about what you know?
Writing 'Women Don't Owe You Pretty'
00:18:12
Speaker
Okay, lots of questions. I'll answer your first one. My first book, Women Don't Know You Pretty, was pretty much already installed into my brain. I'd started posting my illustrations and my essays on Instagram when I was about 18 years old, and they started to just blow up on social media. And my book agent said to me that she thinks everything I was putting online would be so accessible
00:18:34
Speaker
in a printed and bound book. She was like, it would look beautiful. You could put your essays, your illustrations in there. And I was like, me write a book. She was like, yeah, your essays. She was like, they're brilliant. Go and do something with them. And so I made up this book proposal, this book idea that comprised of 21 chapters with everything I wish.
00:18:52
Speaker
I could tell young women, older women, women who are doubting themselves. I wanted it to be the book that women passed on to their friends when they've been ghosted, when they're heartbroken, when they're feeling like the actions of others are clouding their self-perception of how fucking amazing they are.
00:19:07
Speaker
I wanted to write that book and I basically wrote the book proposal, sent it out to publishers with my agent and then we got some offers back. Then I went to go and write the book and then it published in June 2020.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it was everything I wanted to tell young women, everything about boundaries, everything about consent, everything about beauty standards, everything about checking or privilege, everything about sexuality. And the book is laced with illustrations and also parts memoir, part memoir where I talk about my own experiences, how I came out, my experiences with setting boundaries. I think I just wanted to write this thing also that was
00:19:45
Speaker
almost a bit of a Trojan horse into feminism because the cover of the book is so pretty and beautiful you might just want to buy it so that it looks nice in your house and that's what happened a lot of the time is people bought the book because it looked pretty and then they thought oh that looks nice and then they put it on the coffee table picked it up one day and read it and then ended up leaving their husbands by the end of the fucking book
00:20:07
Speaker
And then this is what's happened. And then women have stopped shaving their body hair. Women have said no to their husbands when they don't want to have sex with them anymore. And it's gone totally fine. And they were like, they've messaged me. Like, can you believe it? It went fine. I said no to my husband. And he said, that's OK. Women have this thing that's instilled in them that you can't ask for things. There's so much in there that I could go on and very deeply about.
00:20:35
Speaker
about why women are afraid of asking for things. But I will go on for ages and there's so many questions I want to answer here that you've asked me. I just wanted to write this book that essentially was a 101
00:20:51
Speaker
on bite-sized information on how to stand up for yourself, how to set boundaries and like an introduction to feminism essentially so that people can go off and read other books about it and people can learn for themselves and that's why I wanted to write Women Don't Know You're Pretty and of course you've pointed out that was a non-fiction book and then I went on to do fiction and for me
00:21:13
Speaker
it didn't really feel like much of a jump because I've been doing storytelling for so long even with my illustrations which is what I started out doing. I was always creating these characters with my drawings and I've always been storytelling privately to my friends. I've always been writing stories on my laptop and I wanted to do something that was a form of instead of it being a straight
00:21:35
Speaker
piece of non-fiction activism. I wanted to tell stories with these themes through messy characters because I had so many messages from women after they'd read Women Don't Know You Pretty saying, Floss, I feel so bad because I'm crying over a boy and I've read your book. So like, what's going on? Why am I still crying over boys? And I was like, wow, how has it happened now that
00:22:01
Speaker
feminism has almost become like the toxic masculinity for women where you're not allowed to cry. You're not allowed to be heartbroken. You're supposed to be tough and strong. And I was like, I didn't I don't want this at all. I don't want anyone thinking that being a feminist means being perfect and not being human and always being able to make the right decision. So I wanted to write something that humanized feminism, that humanized making mistakes, that humanized fucking the wrong person,
Humanizing Feminism in 'Girl Crush'
00:22:24
Speaker
making the wrong decisions, oversharing on social media, all of this messy stuff that people go through.
00:22:30
Speaker
That's why I wanted to write Girl Crush. And I wrote another book proposal, which was really embarrassing for me because I sent it to my book agent. And I was like, so I have this idea for a book. It's fiction. It's not like anything I've done before. And she loved it. And then we sent it out. And then I wrote it and it published last month.
00:22:54
Speaker
And the response has been amazing. It's just hearing back from other bisexual people or people who are in the closet or straight people who are like, Oh my God, I feel like I've been I've stepped into a bisexual person's shoes. And it's been like alarming for them to read about this experience. And the book basically starts off being quite joyful. And then it gets quite dark towards the end. And it's not what a lot of people were expecting. There's just so much that happens in the book. And it's been really,
00:23:18
Speaker
It's been an interesting process and so different to nonfiction because people essentially take their own ideas to a fiction novel because it's like a movie in your own mind, instead of facts and opinions and memoir.
00:23:31
Speaker
Right, and it's a different kind of representation and you really see things play out step by step. Was it your goal to write about bisexuality or was it your goal to tell a personal story and write something empowering and the fluid sexuality just happened because it's your experience?
00:23:51
Speaker
I wanted, I'd read this book a couple years ago during the pandemic called Bad Dyke and it's about this thick, it's very tiny, I think it's about 100 pages long, the author's called Alison Moon and it made, it was the first book I'd read that was funny, queer and dark.
00:24:08
Speaker
And as soon as I read it, I put it down and I was like, I want to do this. I want to do something like this. I'd never read a book with a bisexual protagonist before and I had felt seen. Her experience was nothing like mine and yet
00:24:23
Speaker
all of her observational humour, all the things that she noticed about people and the inner monologue, I was like this is making me feel so seen, it's so funny, I would love to do something like that and so I definitely wanted to write a bisexual protagonist. I want to write more novels in the future and I want it to be this thing where it's like if you want to read a book with a bisexual character you read a Florence Giver novel
00:24:48
Speaker
because I think that there's a massive lack of it. I basically just wanted to write the book that I wanted to fucking read.
00:24:58
Speaker
Cool. That's what I've heard so much from bi people is because there's such a lack of bi media out there, fiction and nonfiction, that so many people who do this, including this podcast, it's like, well, I made the thing that I wanted to consume and it didn't exist yet, which makes a lot of sense. Okay, so your main character, a messy bisexual protagonist, which we love,
00:25:21
Speaker
Her name is Eartha. So in the book, I want to talk about your coming out and contrast it with her. She comes out almost by accident, by kind of drunk posting something online that ends up going viral. So you told us about your coming out to your friends and family, but since you're a public person,
00:25:41
Speaker
When and how did you come out as bisexual more publicly? And when did you gain your following? Did you have the following already when you came out privately? And how was your coming out different than Eartha's? And why'd you write hers the way you did?
00:26:00
Speaker
So I wrote Earth as coming out the way I did because I think that we constantly put people, I'm seeing it happen on TikTok especially where, and with my friends where they, my friends who aren't social media influencers will put a video on TikTok. It will go viral and suddenly they have an entire audience in their metaphorical bedroom. They've seen their bedroom, they've woken up with thousands of people the next day. And it's so, they're like, Floss, what do I do? How do you deal with this every day? Hundreds of people are telling me what they think about me.
00:26:27
Speaker
What the fuck do I do? And I was like, oh my God, this is happening to someone every single second right now. Someone's going viral and their life is changing by fucking now. And then what do we do? We put them on a pedestal as a truth speaker because of maybe this one thing they said on a spur of inspiration in the morning.
00:26:46
Speaker
and now we're holding them up to this idea and what do we do? We fill in the gaps of who we think this person is. We don't know anything about their lifestyle. Let's say they made a video about morning meditations that went viral but maybe let's say they also like to do coke on the weekends and they're pictured out doing cocaine and then they're cancelled because their message contrasts what they were saying in this TikTok that they made for 10 seconds in their morning routine and it's like we're
00:27:10
Speaker
bolstering people up and knocking them down every single second of every day and I've watched this happen online to other people so many times and I was like I want to write something about this because this is my coming out journey and my rise to my public figure was so gradual and it was so steady and I've had I've been surrounded by an amazing team of people to support me on my journey
00:27:34
Speaker
And I think that there are going to be a lot of people who don't have that because it's happening so quickly now. And to answer your question about how my coming out journey online contrasts with Earth is, I made some kind of wishy-washy
00:27:51
Speaker
pride post when I was like 19 years old in uni and it was in my font and it was all in rainbow colours and it was like everyone's somewhere on the spectrum and of course I meant sexuality spectrum but some people thought that meant the disability spectrum and I was saying I was autistic and I was like oh god!
00:28:10
Speaker
And then there was, anyway, so that was a whole thing. But I also didn't know, it was very clear that it was about pride, but there were some people who were like, what's going on here? Are you saying you have autism? Anyway, I was like, no, I'm also not saying I'm gay. I'm just saying, you know, everyone's a little bit gay. That was that was my gateway. That was my gateway drug to bisexuality is gay.
00:28:32
Speaker
everyone's a little bit gay and that's what I was saying to everyone and that's basically what I'd said online but a year previously to that I was making illustrations of peaches lyrics saying I don't have to make the choice I like girls I like boys that's a peaches lyric and I was making illustrations from this and posting it all over Instagram like yes bisexuality but not knowing that it was about me
00:28:57
Speaker
And yeah, it was just so plainly obvious, like just hiding in plain sight, the closet was made of fucking glass.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, I it's funny. I did the same exact thing. Like I was a writer for Law and Order and I was pitching bisexual storylines and kind of sticking up for the bi potential bi characters before I even realized why I was doing that. I was just like thought it was a cool thing. And but I didn't I wasn't ready to connect it to myself. And I've just heard so many other bi people say like my first coming out was to say, well, I'm not
00:29:33
Speaker
queer, but isn't everyone a little bit, you know, or like every, you know, it's all spectrum and everyone's a little queer. That's kind of like the first taste. And I wonder it's almost, it's almost like so many bi people's coming out is a little gradual, like yours, that your, what you wrote in your book is the exact opposite. And it, it's huge in a moment while she's sleeping. It's almost like a, I wonder if it's like a fantasy that many bi people have. Rather than
Character Eartha's Accidental Coming Out
00:30:03
Speaker
the reality.
00:30:03
Speaker
I know but I also think though that it's like you see Earth go through this thing of you know she makes this drunk coming out video and then suddenly she's heralded as this bi icon so she's not even been out for very long and then suddenly everyone's like you're a bisexual icon and she sat there like
00:30:22
Speaker
I've not even kissed a woman. I've not even had gay sex yet. What does it even mean? Am I valid as a bi person? And then she's got people asking her for advice with all of this and all of that. And she doesn't know what she's doing. And then Eartha has her best friend Rose, who's a non-binary lesbian who shows Eartha
00:30:40
Speaker
Rose is basically the person I wish I had when I came out, which is someone to like show me the ropes, show me how it's done, talk to me about the language, what to say, what not to say, who to talk to, who to avoid. Yeah, so I really enjoyed writing in Rose, Arthur's best friend. But yeah, I think every, you know, every bisexual person's coming out journey is different, but also, they're all so fucking textbook and there's so many, there's so many things, so many similarities in it.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yep, totally. Yes, and like many people in the comments on your Instagram, I have a crush on both Rose and Phaedra. Yes. Yeah, I also dyed my hair pink recently and I was like, hmm. Oh.
00:31:20
Speaker
There's a line in there that actually I'm remembering, like stuck out for me about, it's something like, I always used to think girls that color their hair are like asking for attention. But now when I see Rose's hair, I have a crush on hers. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but something like that.
00:31:40
Speaker
I wondered if that came from you, if it was a sort of an evolution in your real life too. I have no idea. I just wrote that from Earth is in a monologue when she's watching Phaedra across from the other side of the street about people colouring the hair looking like a walking human highlighter.
00:31:59
Speaker
I've always wanted to, I love the color pink. It makes me so fucking happy. So maybe that's why I made Phaedra's hair pink in the novel. I have no idea, but here I am with pink hair.
00:32:20
Speaker
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00:32:45
Speaker
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00:33:09
Speaker
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00:33:36
Speaker
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00:34:09
Speaker
Let's keep talking about what you were talking about, about this kind of idea of the digital self in this world we live in of curating our identity for public consumption, which you have some experience with. But what's the impact on your sense of self in this world where we're incentivized to look a certain way and gain popularity or social acceptance online? I mean, not just for influencers, but everyone basically has a social media account there
00:34:39
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, exactly.
Social Media & Identity
00:34:43
Speaker
This is why I wanted to write that as Earth's story and why I said the thing about anyone can go viral and you make a video about X, then you'll be discarded next week when you do something that's contradictory. And I think we're not allowing room for human beings to be as nuanced and gray in the gray area as they are.
00:35:01
Speaker
And I think that it can affect people in different ways. Like you said, whether you have 200 followers or 2 million followers, everyone has a public image now. And we're all posting our best bits every single day or week or whatever it is, but no one's posting their bad days. And if they are, it's almost now this like thing that's being leveraged to relate to the audience. And then that line becomes really blurred about
00:35:27
Speaker
What even is intimacy anymore if we're sharing all of our secrets online? And it's now become this constant overshare. I don't even know how to define intimacy in the digital age when so much of ourselves is shared online.
00:35:43
Speaker
It can be really confusing. I personally have really good boundaries for social media now. I don't keep my phone in my bedroom. It almost feels like an intruder sometimes because it's like my work, it's my personal, it's all of this, all of that. So I don't keep my phone in my bedroom before I go to bed. I make sure that I actually interviewed this amazing woman called Aisha Akambi and she said something like, I asked her, how do you stay sane on social media? Because she has spoke widely about
00:36:12
Speaker
her opinions on social media and what she thinks it's doing to us in how we interact with people in real life. And she said she doesn't post something if she feels like she's trying to prove something. She asks herself the question before she's sharing, am I sharing or am I proving? And when you post from this place of
00:36:32
Speaker
proving and wanting wanting to prove something or wanting to prove you've heard about this or heard about that or being very reactionary that's when she stops and she takes a beat she takes a minute and then usually she won't post because it's not something that needs to be said and I think there's this urgency we all have now to
00:36:50
Speaker
constantly share everything. And no one's really immune to it because it's almost this like, if your friends are talking about this, then you should be talking about it as well. And if you're not talking about it, what does that mean about you? Do you not care? Or it's like we're constantly assuming what people's action or inaction means about where they stand on something. And I think we like...
00:37:09
Speaker
to know where people stand on things and what that has also done is given us this illusion of access to everyone at all times and that we deserve that access to everyone at all times and we deserve to know what strangers who don't know who we are
00:37:29
Speaker
think about certain things. So yeah, there's so much to say about it. But I think it's so interesting because it's such a big part of our lives now. And I always want to be having these conversations, whether it's on my podcast, or talking about it in my writing or writing a story about it. Yeah.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, it is hard. I mean, that's a good guideline of if you're proving something, it may not be the right thing to post. I like to share a lot and be very open, but then where's the intimacy in my real life? There have to be some things that are still for me and my not to share online just to have them be intimate to me and special.
00:38:08
Speaker
But you also mentioned these like parasocial relationships, which the book focuses on, like basically one sided relationships with people you don't haven't actually met, but who, you know, can feel very familiar if they follow you and you're posting all this personal content.
Parasocial Relationships & Connections
00:38:27
Speaker
So I'm curious, how have those kind of parasocial relationships manifested in your in your real life? How do you approach them? How do you deal with like
00:38:36
Speaker
intense or unwanted contact or have there also been pleasant surprises that have come out of that? Oh, my God, there have been so many pleasant surprises. So many pleasant surprises. I love my social media accounts now because I've made them work for me in a way that they're not working me. And I think before I had them working me, it was like being directed by thousands of people, which you do if you have a
00:39:05
Speaker
a personal brand or you're someone that engages with an audience, you're constantly listening to feedback and I think you can almost get lost in this cycle of constant self-improvement when really the people in your life should be the people, you should have about five people whose opinions you rely and trust upon to guide you, people who are tough love, people that know and trust you and then people that perhaps have a different lived experience to you
00:39:35
Speaker
or blah, blah, blah, blah. But my point is, is that you can often get lost in the projections of other people online and projections that people give you online can be entirely spiteful and actually have nothing to do with you at all. You can post a picture of yourself. I've had people reply to, I've got a friend who's an influencer. And she's had people reply to her story, her selfies just going,
00:39:56
Speaker
Fuck off, you're so annoying. I don't want to see your face today. And this girl's done nothing wrong. She's just posted a picture of herself, but now she's left with this dump of negative energy. And I think it's realising that half of the stuff that people say to you online, whatever, that it's not really about you. And just to like also steer away from talking about social media so negatively, social media has changed my fucking life.
00:40:21
Speaker
I've met people I've dated on social media and had incredible experiences. It's led to almost every single one of my job opportunities because that's how people have found me on social media. I've been able to connect other people on social media. I do these Instagram posts where I just say flirt and make friends in the comments and they get thousands, like tens of thousands of comments from women and queer people all over the world meeting and making groups and starting clubs and going on dates.
00:40:47
Speaker
Going on group holidays and the power of social media is incredible if you use it in a way that is Pro connection because I think we need to be pro connection and What we're actually doing with social media is it's almost like this full sense of connection because we see lots of faces We see what people are up to but there's no actual
00:41:09
Speaker
depth of connection going on there. It's very black and white. And I think that any action you can do, whether that is connecting other people or reaching out to meet someone in real life or giving some positivity online, that's the other thing is that positivity is often seen on social media as something that's really cringy. How dare you be joyful? That's embarrassing. Let's laugh at that person.
00:41:31
Speaker
And half the time, a lot of the people who say that kind of stuff would never have the courage to put themselves out in that way. And it takes a lot of resilience, I think, Robert, to put yourself online and like keep fucking going with it. And I really praise those people who put themselves out so if I'm going to be on social media, you know, I was saying a minute ago, like, what does intimacy mean anymore? Blah, blah, blah.
00:41:54
Speaker
I don't think that that means we shouldn't be sharing on social media. People talking about anxiety, black people talking about their daily experiences with racism, all of this stuff has changed the fucking world and it's been amazing. I do think though that
00:42:09
Speaker
there is now you've got these people who don't have those good intentions, who then kind of latch on to this this vulnerability thing. And you see all the time where it's like people just sharing to share for sharing sake. And then I think you do need a critical eye when it comes to the content you consume on social media, because some people will be sharing because they genuinely want to
00:42:31
Speaker
for it to have a positive impact. And then some people are doing it for completely other reasons that they want to replicate what someone who genuinely was sharing creative for themselves.
00:42:41
Speaker
Right. I agree. I think for all the negative talk about social media, it's mostly a very positive thing and has really connected people in a... I mean, this whole sort of bi-queer, fluid explosion of the last few years, I definitely think is sparked by social media and people actually seeing themselves represented in new and bigger ways. And that allows them to
00:43:07
Speaker
see themselves in that and be themselves and embrace these parts of themselves. So I think it's so good as long as you have some boundaries because there are some trolls out there and people not acting in good faith. But with boundaries, we get so many messages about this podcast. And for every one kind of weird message, there's 50... Yes.
00:43:31
Speaker
thank you and this helped me and I... Do you find though Robert that I'm asking this like creator to creator, do you find though that despite the hundreds of messages your mind will stick to that negative one? Of course, of course. It's impossible not to. Yeah and you can always repeat them back word for word what they said, right?
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's difficult, you know, it's not easy, but it is, I think, you know, the impact is real and the impact is mostly good. I want to thank you also for just having this podcast. I think it's so fucking cool because I was saying to my friends earlier, I would have died. I'm obsessed with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach as gay women representation.
00:44:22
Speaker
And I was just, that's the kind of representation that I would have killed for when I was younger to hear about
00:44:29
Speaker
gay women building a family together.
Diverse Queer Representation in Media
00:44:31
Speaker
And it just being so fucking normal and also being a part of pop culture, like people just consuming it as they would consume a straight couple. And it's that that kind of stuff that enters the mainstream and those people that start those kind of things just makes me so happy. And I think that what you're doing is really amazing. It's just a podcast about bisexuality. And it's fucking sick.
00:44:53
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I basically wanted to listen to this podcast and couldn't find it, so we just started it. But actually, on that topic, tell us about the female relationships in the book. There's a lot of intimate female relationships, both friendships, romantic, platonic, and sort of the fluidity in between that, and how do you figure that out? So how did you go about writing those? Are they based on real life experiences? And why was it important for you to accurately depict
00:45:23
Speaker
these intimate female relationships. Yeah, so everything in Girl Crush is fictional, which was why it was so much fun for me to escape into writing fiction. But I can definitely relate to the feeling. So the feeling of having gay sex for the first time, you know, my first time was absolutely nothing as gorgeous as what happened in the book.
00:45:44
Speaker
But there was, again, which was nice, it was nice to escape into all of these different scenes. But the feelings were there, you know, so like anxiety, betrayal, jealousy, anger, feeling confused about your friends, all of this kind of insecurities, all of that stuff is the feelings are absolutely
00:46:03
Speaker
the things I felt before, but the story is completely fictional. And that was what was really fun. So yeah, it was it was really exciting for me to write these. I never planned out a single conversation. So the way I wrote the book was I had the skeleton, let's say of
00:46:20
Speaker
the book structure and then when I started to give each chapter its flesh I'd be like right okay uh chapter number 13 this is a sex scene and let's go and then I would just start writing it and start writing the dialogue as though I was in the scene and then it would unfold as it did and it would be like oh this is happening here this is happening oh okay she's gonna sit on her face this is happening and it would just kind of happen as it as it unfolded the way that sex normally does and yeah it was really important for me to write about
00:46:49
Speaker
love and platonic intimacy between women and all the stuff in between where it becomes really confusing because I love reading about it. I love reading about it. I love hearing about it. I love giving language to those experiences because often those experiences between women are unspoken. And I just think there's something so powerful and beautiful about two women who love each other because women love each other differently.
00:47:14
Speaker
to, and as a bisexual person, I know this, to when you're with a man or to when a man's loving you and all this kind of stuff. I just, I wanted to write about that. And then also about heartbreak as well. I wanted to write about all of that kind of stuff.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I really identified with it. And I also liked reading about these female relationships because I don't always have a window into that in my own life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I really especially liked the intimate friendship stuff because there's often not enough stories about things like that. And also about girl crush, realizing you have a crush when you're exploring sexual fluidity. I had that thing too of
00:47:57
Speaker
you know there was this guy in high school who was really good at soccer and I wanted to I like didn't realize I had a crush on him but I wanted to be good at soccer so I could play soccer with him and I like always thought he was weird to me and I was nervous around him because he was being weird to me but in reality I just had a crush on him and I was
Intimacy & Friendship in Queer Relationships
00:48:17
Speaker
weird to him. Oh don't you just don't you just I like I definitely look back at younger floss who had all these crushes on women
00:48:23
Speaker
And I go, oh, can I feel sorry for her for not knowing? But also, there's no such thing.
00:48:29
Speaker
as powerful and as beautiful as gay yearning. I feel like it's just, it's the yearning. And that's what I just want to write about gay yearning for the rest of my life. I think that's it. I think that's the beauty in it, isn't it? It's such a powerful, sometimes subconscious if you're not out yet. Like the whole thing is so beautiful in ways that we find, we find these subtle ways to tell the person of the same gender that we like them and sat there wondering, did they get the message? Did they get the hint?
00:48:58
Speaker
Even when you're fucking out, even when you're out, you still don't know. And I think there's so much beauty in that. And it's funny as well. I just love writing about it.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yup, you're right. Even after I was out, I was on a date with a guy that I didn't realize was a date until an hour into the date. Oh yeah. And he knew it was a date and I had no idea. I literally made an illustration in my first book, Women Don't Know You're Pretty. It's just two girls sat with a drink and then it's like a comic. And then the next one is they're both sharing the same thought bubble and it's
00:49:35
Speaker
Are we on a date, or are we just two pretty girls hanging out? Because you never really know. And you're like, is this, like, hey, let's go for drinks. OK, in a gay way? Or do you want to network? What's going on? Did you follow me on Instagram? Why do you want to go for a drink? And then you end up having to be so direct and asking, which most people aren't taught to do. It's quite embarrassing to go as a date. Do you mean as a date? But it's something I've had to do a lot of the time.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. No, I loved that stuff in the book about figuring out that ambiguity and adding up the pieces to, is this a crush or is this a friendship or like, how do you even distinguish those? I haven't read stuff like that before, so I really enjoyed that. Thank you.
00:50:28
Speaker
Okay, I want to ask you one basically one last topic about like abuse and mental health. Is that cool? Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to end on a nice note.
00:50:44
Speaker
Well, but I think it's so important and I really think it's great that you wrote about this stuff. So one thing we know is that the bi community has worse mental health outcomes than straight lesbian and gay people. Bi people, and especially bi women, suffer higher levels of intimate partner violence and sexual violence.
00:51:04
Speaker
And so, spoiler alert, but your main character is in a bad relationship in the beginning with a guy, an abusive relationship. So I'm just curious, why did you choose to write about this?
Biphobia in Relationships
00:51:18
Speaker
How can people reclaim their power in their own life and in their relationships? And does your sexuality intersect with any of these topics, this abuse and reclamation of power?
00:51:30
Speaker
When you say does bisexuality intersect with abuse and power, what do you mean? Well, I guess like in the book, I kind of see like some biphobic abuse that the guy sort of puts toward the main character. Yes. And so her sexuality gets kind of tied up in the negative aspects of that relationship. Yeah. You know, he uses biphobic stereotypes against her to kind of try to control her.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah I think there's this feeling, also Earth is in such a vulnerable position in the book and I think it would be very easy if you are a bisexual person who's just come out and you don't really feel like you belong in either communities to feel defeated by someone saying something like that to you
00:52:16
Speaker
and for that manipulation tactic to work and to make you feel like you are greedy or don't really know what you want or are confused about your sexuality or are just trying it out with men or women to see which one to kind of land and experiment on what you really want and the whole other thing with that also is that experiments aren't bad, experiments lead to results but we have definitely stigmatized experimenting with sexuality
00:52:41
Speaker
I think experimenting with your sexuality is literally one of the only things that will get you any answers, but just tell the people that you're with. If someone's looking for something more serious, whatever, I just think I hate the stigmatization. I never want someone who's in the closet confused thinking, fuck, how do I know if I'm bi? I really want to kiss girls. And then someone going, oh, you don't know what you want? I don't want to kiss you. Whatever. OK, sorry. Let me get back to what you said.
00:53:07
Speaker
So yeah, I think that bisexuality can intersect with abuse, particularly when, like you said, what happens to Earther in the book where biphobic statements are used against her. But it was never my intention with the book to talk about the awful statistic about how bi women receive more
00:53:26
Speaker
relationship abuse than anyone else. It was just, I wanted to write something about struggle, something about settling for lesson you deserve. It's all I talk about in my first book, Women Don't Know You Pretty, is about settling for crumbs when you deserve the whole fucking cake. And I think that women have been collectively kind of convinced into
00:53:49
Speaker
metaphorically going around the table picking up the crumbs when everyone else is eating the fucking banquet on top of it. I feel that most women I know have been in situations where people have tried to convince them that they are worth less than they are.
00:54:04
Speaker
And that was something that I really wanted to explore. I wanted to also explore the dynamics between someone on the cusp of realizing that they deserve better. Because with my first book, I was talking all about setting boundaries and being able to command better for yourself and your life. And I wanted to show someone going on that journey to show how messy it was.
00:54:25
Speaker
and also we're all having these amazing conversations now about generational trauma and being passed down what your parents habits and in Girl Crush, Arthur essentially takes on her mother's relationship with her dad where her mother was in an abusive relationship and she kind of repeats this pattern and ends up breaking the cycle of this relationship when she leaves her boyfriend Matt in the book.
00:54:48
Speaker
But it's not as clean cut as that because what then happens with Eartha is she just leaves her abusive relationship with her boyfriend and then gets into an abusive relationship with her phone and then gets into an abusive relationship with thousands of people but it's for her benefit but it's also ruining her and then there's the stuff with her manager and I think that
00:55:10
Speaker
We can't just think that when you leave the relationship it's not going to come up in some different form again. It will keep coming up and then you will spot it and you just get better at spotting it. When it comes to relationship abuse, leaving
00:55:27
Speaker
is obviously the best thing you can do, it's not the easiest. On average it takes women seven times to leave an abusive relationship and that kind of statistic just goes to show that manipulation is involved every single time a woman tries to leave because what happens is she tries to go and then she's convinced into staying because I'm going to use heterosexual gender terms here because it's predominantly men and women
00:55:55
Speaker
uh where the man will convince her by showing her all of a sudden all of the things that she's been complaining about in the relationship so let's say the whole time you're asking your boyfriend to go please go to therapy please go to therapy he's not going to therapy he does the thing that he's been doing to you again whether that's physical abuse verbal abuse he's cheated on you
00:56:14
Speaker
you say I'm going fuck this I'm done he comes back I'll promise I'll go to therapy I promise I'm gonna fix this I'm gonna fix this I'm gonna do this for us the woman's now being over overloaded with all of the stuff that she's been asking for in the relationship so she gets back with him I'll give him another chance I've already invested two years in this man I don't want to throw down the drain and then he has her again when he has her again he'll do the thing again and then it's a constant loop of this kind of abuse and then the girl doesn't want to tell her friends because her friends
00:56:43
Speaker
or if you don't like the boyfriend. It's this whole cycle. And I wanted to write about that because leaving abusive relationships isn't so fucking easy. It's not easy. It takes so long to do. And it was something really important for me to explore because I want women to see that there are other options for them out there than constantly choosing people that prove to them that they're not worth anything. And it's nothing makes me more uncomfortable
00:57:13
Speaker
and shakes my fucking spirit than thinking about women in relationships with people who abuse them. It's the one thing, even when I started out my work when I was 18, I started off talking about sexual assault and sexual harassment.
Empowerment & Change for Women
00:57:28
Speaker
That was the thing that kind of got me sparked up was
00:57:30
Speaker
I was going on nights out in my hometown and men were groping me and my friends. And no one was saying anything about it. And I was the only one who was uncomfortable. Everyone was like, oh, floss, that's just the way boys are. And I couldn't believe it. I just I couldn't accept it. And that's what I wanted to do with Goldcrash. It's what I did with Women Don't Know You Pretty. I wanted it to be the book that launched a shit ton of breakups.
00:57:51
Speaker
for people who were already unhappy. And the thing is, is anyone who does work like I do, or anyone who does work where you talk about the signs of emotional abuse doesn't actually cause the breakup. You just call someone to see what they already know. Most women already know that there is something wrong. They just need to see an example, like this permission slip of someone going, this is bad, by the way.
00:58:15
Speaker
Because a fish doesn't know of any alternative to water, the same way a woman in a relationship might not be able to tell abuse from something that's just everyday behaviour.
00:58:26
Speaker
Right, right. I think it's great you wrote about that. And I mean, in the same way that we need more bisexual representation out there for people to recognize themselves, I think we need more of this, things about abuse and bad relationships because it's happening so much in secret, in the dark, and people don't
00:58:45
Speaker
connect and know what's going on.
Mental Health & Realistic Characters
00:58:48
Speaker
And so to see this kind of example of what it really looks like in your book and then also how this character breaks out of it, I think is really valuable for people. And the book also has sort of a great focus on mental health.
00:59:03
Speaker
And that's something I'm one generation older than you, I guess. And I never really read about those kind of things growing up. I never thought mental health was important to take seriously or therapy was. I thought therapy is for people who have something wrong with them. And so it was great to see your characters kind of dealing with serious mental health stuff.
00:59:26
Speaker
in a messy way, not in a perfect way. And that's exactly the thing. Arthur originally, because there were so many versions of this book, did go to see a therapist. But then it wasn't true to character. She was a mess. It was too neat for her to go and see a therapist. I was like, that wouldn't happen. Because you don't want to get out of bed in that situation. And your first thought isn't, let me go get help. That's just not what happens. And so I wanted to write something that was real and messy.
00:59:55
Speaker
Awesome. Cool. On that lovely note, let me ask you what's next for you. Are you going to learn more about this stuff or what are you working
Future Plans in Writing & Design
01:00:03
Speaker
on?
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, so I want to write books for the rest of my life. I also want to go into design because I actually went to London College of Fashion when I first moved to London. I feel like there's so many threads of my life that I want to pick back up again. So there's design, there's illustration that I want to pick back up again. And in the future, the far future, I want to open a cafe for women and queer people. It's just one of my biggest life goals. So that's like a very long trajectory, but in the meantime, I'm just going to continue to write books.
01:00:33
Speaker
Awesome. That's great. And yes, we need more like queer spaces that are not cis gay male bars. Yes. And stuff like this podcast also. Stuff like this podcast. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for coming to this podcast. Thanks for having me, Robert. It's really nice to meet you. Yeah. And everyone check the show notes. We'll link to everything in the show notes. The book is called Girl Crush. It's available now. And thanks, Florence Givin, for being here. Thank you so much for having me, Robert.
01:01:05
Speaker
2 by Guys is produced and edited by me, Rob Cohen, and it was created by me and Alex Boyd. Our logo art is by Caitlin Weinman, our music is by Ross Vincer, we are supported by the Gotham, and we are part of the Zencaster Creator Network. Use promo code 2 by Guys to get 30% off your first three months of Zencaster. Thanks for listening to 2 by Guys.