Masslighting: Toxic Masculinity and Internalised Misogyny with Dr Jessica Taylor

Hellooooo! Welcome to Season 7, Episode 8 of Mads World! Masslighting: Toxic Masculinity and Internalised Misogyny with Dr Jessica Taylor!

This week I am joined by British author, feminist campaigner and psychologist Dr Jessica Taylor. Jess is the founder of VictimFocus, which she describes as "a company designed to challenge and change the victim blaming practices in social care, policing, mental health and support services all over the world”.

In 2019, Jess completed her PhD in forensic psychology from the University of Birmingham with a thesis titled ‘Logically, I know I’m not to blame but I still feel to blame’: exploring and measuring victim blaming and self-blame of women who have been subjected to sexual violence. She was later recognized for her "contribution to the psychology of victim blaming of women, her work in mental health and her contribution to feminism" by the Royal Society of Arts.

In 2020, Jess self-published her thesis as a book titled Why Women are Blamed for Everything. Based on three years of doctoral research and 10 years of practice with women and girls, the book focuses on the reasons why society and individual psychology blames women for male violence committed against them.

This year, Jess published her second book, Sexy But Psycho: Uncovering the Labelling of Women and Girls through Constable. She described it as ”mixture of academic research, history, psychology and real-life stories of women and girls who have been told that they are mentally ill, instead of being listened to”. The book focuses on how mental illness has historically been used to discredit women, focusing especially on the 2000s and Britney Spears.

In this episode, we talk about the effects of buzzwords like toxic and gaslighting, what terms like toxic masculinity and machismo actually mean and how this affects men and women independently, and unpacking internalized misogyny.

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Cover Art: Veredien

Music: The.Jones.Project_93

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