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  • he's a review from BBC Learning English Hello and welcome to News Review The program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English I'm Catherine and joining me Today is done.

  • Have done I Hi, everybody.

  • What's the story today?

  • Our story is about the Exposure Oven online bullying group, which targeted women.

  • Not very nice.

  • A tall Andi.

  • There's more about this story from this BBC Will Service News report.

  • Several French media executives and journalists have been suspended or fired because of their alleged involvement with the Facebook group used to bully female colleagues.

  • Online reports say the closed group, called League of L.

  • O L, ridiculed women for years, cracking jokes about rape, culture and targeting women with pornographic means.

  • Its founder, the journalist Vincent Glad, apologized on Twitter.

  • So it seems that a number of largely male French media workers have been harassing their female colleagues online for a number of years.

  • They formed a closed Facebook group, which was called the League of L O L, and used it to send offensive images, including pornography, that purposely targeted those women.

  • They were exposed by the French newspaper Liberation and the founder of the group.

  • Vincent.

  • Glad has apologized on Twitter.

  • Thank you down on You've been looking at what the world's media is saying about this story, and you picked out three words and expressions that we're going to look at today.

  • What are they?

  • We've got Boys Club ridiculed and turns sour.

  • Boys Club ridiculed on turns sour.

  • Can we look at your first headline, please certainly can.

  • So the first headline comes from The Guardian and says French Boys Club of Journalists accused of bullying women online Boys club situation or group controlled by men and often excluding others.

  • Now, Dan, if I'm not mistaken, you were a boy Scout, weren't you?

  • Were a young man.

  • Lots of camping, lots of fires, fishing, that kind of stuff.

  • Good stuff, actually.

  • Yeah, and the boys asses the sculptures of Bodies Club, right.

  • The scouts is a boys club in that it is a club, which is, I mean, used to be certainly all boys and now actually can in contain female members.

  • But yes, it's a boys club in the literal sense, right?

  • This isn't the same.

  • Fortunately, So this boy's club has a highly negative association.

  • It's basically an institution or a profession or a situation which is dominated by a group of people, usually men, but can actually have women in it.

  • So there's no Children.

  • We're not talking about kids here.

  • No, no, nothing to do with young boys or anything like that.

  • It's usually an all male group, and they often control power, and they exclude other people that they don't necessarily want to join their group.

  • So in this case, it would be an exclusion of women.

  • But you can also exclude ethnic minorities or people of a low social standing, or, I mean, anybody for anybody.

  • A reason.

  • So you conjoined.

  • You can apply to join this boy's club that have a rule book that have a list of membership.

  • Yeah, no, I'm afraid.

  • No again, because it's it's not that transparent.

  • It's kind of Ah, it's Ah, negative associations, kind of shady, so you don't really apply for membership of a boys club doesn't work.

  • I never unspoken is an unspoken thing.

  • It's often hidden and you know people appear to be friends, but if they kind of doing each other favours and things like that, that's a bit of a boys club and that they don't tell you about it.

  • It's just got to work it out.

  • You're either in it or you're not in eggs.

  • I think have experienced something like that.

  • Years ago I had a job and I wasn't really getting on in this job, and I saw people going for coffees together.

  • It was always the same.

  • People and people got promoted.

  • And I'm thinking, Hang on a minute, what's happening here?

  • And I kind of worked out.

  • There were some people had power and I wasn't on the team, so I never really knew I bit of a boys club situation.

  • I think it was, although there were some women as well.

  • It was this idea that everybody had it all kind of taken care of, and I wasin on the right side of that group.

  • I'm sorry you had to go through that.

  • Well, I'm not there now.

  • That's good.

  • Just to mention quickly that a boy's club is a noun on, it's spelled B o.

  • Y s with the apostrophe on the outside.

  • This is because it's plural Boys Club, more than one by more than one apostrophe after this.

  • Okay, let us move on to our second headline, please.

  • Our second headline comes from the mail online, and it's actually the sub headline.

  • It says they ridiculed female journalists for years.

  • Sometimes using explicit pictures, ridiculed made fun off someone in an unkind way.

  • That's right.

  • So ridicule, perhaps appropriately, is a French word that we borrowed a French loan.

  • Word came from Latin.

  • It's both of urban, and now let's deal with the verb first.

  • So to ridicule someone or the past tense is ridiculed or have ridiculed someone.

  • And yes, basically your you're showing contempt for something.

  • You're saying that something is stupid and not in a nice way.

  • The point is that you're being very unkind, and it's often done in a kind of public arena.

  • Resonate.

  • Absolutely.

  • Humiliation is a big part, and you're encouraging other people to join in, often to laugh at them, isn't it?

  • There's a lot of kind of unpleasant laughter involved in ridicule.

  • Yes, it could be very, very cruel.

  • Take reality Television Star's Mobile.

  • You may remember that there was a show called Big Brother, and they had people in a house on the people had to do tests and things.

  • And when somebody made a mistake on that show the newspapers the next day, the media would often really kill them very heavily.

  • So there would be a big picture of that person making the mistake, and everybody would be laughing it on.

  • And actually they became an object off ridicule.

  • Nice phrase, yes, about an unpleasant situation, absolutely something that everyone laughs.

  • Her basis is an object of ridicule.

  • So Neil, in our BBC Living English studio, has an idea about English for car.

  • Ah, yes, right.

  • He's a bit of an object of ridicule, isn't me?

  • Well, I'm in one way you could say that, but we because we all work together because we're all colleagues.

  • We know that when we take the Mickey out of each other, and that's another way of saying something very similar.

  • It is actually quite positive because we're colleagues.

  • We know that we're not being cruel.

  • And when other boys got we like near, So it's not really ridicule.

  • Its affectionate left as right, we're pulling his leg with joshing with him.

  • Are we taking the Mickey and nice phrases?

  • Eso pleasant ridicule, laughing at someone when you like their mess writes nothing but banter.

  • Really.

  • We love him, Really.

  • The idea is a bit ridiculous.

  • Things Rick Cuts.

  • Come on way.

  • Have your next headline, please.

  • So our last headline comes from the R f I and says I on Frantz laughing out loud as harassment joke turns sour.

  • Turns sour becomes unpleasant.

  • That's right.

  • Now many of you out there will know that sour is a taste.

  • The taste of lemons example is quite south.

  • Yeah, Yeah.

  • Do you like the sour flavor?

  • I like it.

  • So boats that I end up latent.

  • I don't like it.

  • I have so much love.

  • Lemon and I have had too much Everybody does that face that do the lemon face.

  • That's it?

  • Yeah, like that.

  • So if I would give you right a slight of fresh lemon, but dipped in chocolate Oh, how would you feel it?

  • What would happen?

  • Well, it would taste lovely to start with chocolatey and delicious, And I'd be going over.

  • That's lovely.

  • And after a while, I be going lemon, lemon, lemon, and then I'll be going.

  • Oh, go.

  • Overdone the lemon.

  • That's it.

  • So basically, when something turned sour, you have a good situation like the chocolate goes bad hand when you taste the lemon, so something which becomes unpleasant or develops badly.

  • A good example would be the neighbors with my parents, my parents, neighbors and they're my parents.

  • They don't get along anymore anymore anymore.

  • So when we moved in originally they were great friends, and they used to have dinner and things like that.

  • But over time, when you live close nexus someone.

  • Sometimes you know you can upset each other over small things like where the bins are or the fence or, you know, that kind of thing.

  • And so the relationship turned sour, and now they don't really talk that much anymore.

  • That's a pity.

  • I hope that it is.

  • I hope they mend fences literally, Very nice.

  • Very nice bunch.

  • So back to the original example.

  • The headline ridiculing women if it turns hours about something pleasant that goes horrible, goes wrong, goes barred, ridiculing women's never pleasant, is it?

  • Well, I think in this case in originally they might have felt that they were joshing like we were with Neil, that they were kind of making jokes and that it was all a joke together But actually the people that they were ridiculing took offense, and that was hurtful.

  • And so the entire experience, suddenly they realised.

  • Oh, no, we've made a terrible mistake.

  • It's gone very, very wrong.

  • So it doesn't really matter whether it was right or perceived to be right.

  • It's ended up with a very bad result exactly.

  • And this can actually apply to lots of other situations as well, not just relationships and interactions.

  • But you could talk about a financial investment turning sour.

  • So you put some money on the stock market and you think that the price is gonna go up, you're gonna make a big load of money.

  • And actually it goes very, very badly and crashes and you lose all your money.

  • You could say all that turned sour.

  • Very so, yeah, thank you very much on our woods again.

  • So first we had Boys club situation or group controlled by men and often excluding others.

  • Then we had ridiculed, made fun of someone in an unkind way.

  • And finally we had turns sour, becomes unpleasant.

  • Thank you.

  • Damn!

  • And if you'd like to test yourself under days vocabulary or do any other language learning exercise of which we have thousands you can visit as on BBC learning english dot com.

  • You can also find ism, Facebook, Twitter, instagram, YouTube and, of course, right back here next week.

  • See you next time.

  • Bye bye.

  • He's review from BBC Learning English.

he's a review from BBC Learning English Hello and welcome to News Review The program where we show you how to use the language from the latest news stories in your everyday English I'm Catherine and joining me Today is done.

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