[SPEAKER_03]: Believe it or not, it's been eight months since I first sat down with today's guest, Journalist and Author, Rhea Bravo.
[SPEAKER_03]: In our last conversation back in September, we discussed her book complicit, how our culture enables misbehaving men, which is now available both in hardcover and a brand new paperback edition with the new preface.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can find a link to grab a copy in the show notes of this episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: Since that first recording, it's hard not to feel incredibly frustrated, watching abusive men continuing to rise in positions of power.
[SPEAKER_03]: Our very president Donald Trump has been found civilly liable for rape, has been accused numerous times for sexual assault, and yet he still holds the highest office in the land.
[SPEAKER_03]: Andrew Cuomo despite the allegations that ended his career's governor is currently running from mayor of New York City.
[SPEAKER_03]: Connor McGregor was also principally liable for rape and accused multiple times of assault, and he just launched a new business and announced a run for presidency in Ireland.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hell, Bill Marry can give a platform to infamous Woody Allen on his podcast recently for Christ's sake.
[SPEAKER_03]: It certainly feels as though the breaks have been pumped on the Me Too Conversations happening culturally.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems to be less than less resistance when these men wear their very ugly heads.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so much to talk about, and I knew I wanted to talk to Rhea to get her unique perspective on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's exactly what we're doing on today's episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're picking up right where our last conversation left off.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, stay tuned right here on the Prejudice podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye!
[SPEAKER_01]: Ain't nobody safe In the Bible, oh In the Bible, oh
[SPEAKER_03]: Rey, I thank you so much for joining me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great to be back.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been eight or nine months, I think, since we recorded our first episode together, which might, my time with all these is so off, where I go, was it three years ago?
[SPEAKER_03]: Was it like three months ago?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason I,
[SPEAKER_03]: had you back and I'm starting to have a lot of people recur as I have these great conversations and then I never speak to these people again and I feel like why don't we keep this discussion going and especially with your book complicit how our culture enables misbehaving men.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think we put the period on that conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like misbehaving men are being enabled left and right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean what do you make of the culture right now?
[SPEAKER_02]: right, I see, you know, I know we've been in touch with regard to the ascension of certain men or their comebacks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we could sigh and disbelief and leave it at that where they're not a political context in which all of this is happening in which
[SPEAKER_02]: The current anti-feminist backlash that we are in is just happening with such fierceness, you know, the rise of authoritarianism of fascism in the U.S.
[SPEAKER_02]: that is part and parcel with patriarchy right and parent to fascism is a belief in the inherent superiority of a social group or a inherent social structure right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't find any comfort in in what we're witnessing in
[SPEAKER_02]: an administration that is attacking women on all fronts, whether it's cutting research funding, that is designed to benefit women's health, whether it's research that's designed to advance gender equality,
[SPEAKER_02]: whether it's a tap in companies for trying to promote and hire women or people of color.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's within that context, you know, the return of people like Andrew Cuomo that he even has a chance after so many of the accusations have been levied against them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And after his tenure as governor
[SPEAKER_02]: he had a lot of failures when he was governor of New York.
[SPEAKER_02]: All of which is to say it just it's it's very overwhelming and it's often you know as they say hard to see the forest of the trees and to understand that this is
[SPEAKER_02]: this is happening all around us on all fronts and it's not just a matter of a few perpetrators it's like a system wide attack that I think we should all be alarmed by.
[SPEAKER_03]: I look at someone like a Cuomo where like you said was not a great governor by any stretch you know obviously has a big legacy in his family that's made him a very powerful name in politics
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, and who knows where that will go, right now luckily, what most trailing by double digits.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it seemed like he had it in the bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: I get seemed like this was just going to be an immediate return.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what was jarring to me, you know, I mentioned the interview with Lindsay Boylan, like when I was prepping for that, I was like, most times when these guys come crawling back to power, they're going 30 years ago, I had a moment of indiscretion.
[SPEAKER_03]: with him it's 2021 like this is within the last five years I had to step down for sexually harassing 13 plus people that worked for me and now got a really good shot at becoming mayor like when you see that stuff obviously you wrote an entire book on this you've been deep in research on this does any of that shock you anymore or does it just feel like yeah that that's
[SPEAKER_02]: it sometimes the democratic party can continue to shock me in what they, in who they fail to endorse and in the second chances that they're willing to extend to people like Cuomo.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that said, I, yes, I did, I spent multiple years immersed in the research, you know, how entrenched patriarchal thought.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what exactly is internalized patriarchy and how do we manifest it in our lives?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, our notions of what constitutes male leadership, it runs really
[SPEAKER_02]: deep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we have a really hard time just outright rejecting kind of our prototypes of the unbelievable leadership for something significantly better even when the facts speak for themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just I unfortunately I think people see a strong man like Cuomo and that's just they just kind of think that's that's what's necessary for the times.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now what certainly
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we also have to account for is, I don't know if you want to call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: trickle down the subject.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's just like the overton wind, let's say, what is considered an acceptable, you know, male political candidate is, it's, it's, it's sadly changed a lot, because whereas I am horrified that Cuomo, I mean, I know Pulitzer looking good and paper him on down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm horrified that he even had a chance at a certain point.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, I think when we have a
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who signed a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein with a message that
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard to argue, isn't a reference to anything other than pedophilia.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, guys like Cuomo are more likely to get a pass.
[SPEAKER_02]: They just inevitably, you know, everything is judge relative to the behavior of others.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so sadly, whereas I wish more people were a gasped by Cuomo.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think quite a few people are.
[SPEAKER_02]: But suddenly, you know, the alarm bells aren't sounding quite as loud as they should be.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that comparison game of like not as bad as, you know, like, well, you know, it's of Trump is horrible, but he's no Hillary Clinton, you know, was like the thing everyone was was saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: And vice versa, you know, I'm going to support this person because there are no Trump.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, then you look at a Cuomo and an Eric Adams, and it's like, well, the the pool initially doesn't look great for New Yorkers looking
[SPEAKER_03]: in the wake of, I would say, a period of education in the me to movement where,
[SPEAKER_03]: We learned so much about men in power.
[SPEAKER_03]: We learned so much about how culture doesn't able these types of men.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems strange to me that the immediate aftermath of the me-to movement seems to be this really regressive resurgence toward like toxic masculinity, just to use a blanket phrase.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think if the growth of the online man is fear, I think of the huge uptick of Jensie men turning more
[SPEAKER_03]: attending religious services more than women.
[SPEAKER_03]: The women, of course, have fled religious religion largely for obvious reasons with all the abuse scandals that came out during a me too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why do you think we're in this period that feels like a real drive to conservative values in the wake of a period that should have woken everybody up to go like, how do we prevent the next Harvey Weinstein or the next XYZ fill on the blank?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're here.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're here because no historically speaking, there have never been advancements in women's rights without a significant backlash, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So for my own poil being in this really terrifying moment, I like to remind myself that,
[SPEAKER_02]: things are as dark as they are because there had been so much change.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, our perception of the gender binary, our perceptions, you know, upgender are dramatically changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why the backlash is as fierce as it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's commensurate, you know, we've talked,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there is more mindfulness.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is more awareness.
[SPEAKER_02]: People are using language in ways that they haven't before to describe their workplaces or tower dynamics between them and an under mail.
[SPEAKER_02]: So despite that, though, there's there is the ongoing backlash and I
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to think for my own benefit that things that are happening not despite the me tube movement and all of the change that came before this, but things are happening because of it and that we ultimately will find ourselves in some place better.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that pendulum has to get to the middle at some point, and hopefully it's a better middle than where the middle was accepted just a couple of decades ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that there is a huge blowback to, and this is a spoken, you know, sometimes you look at things you have to analyze like, well, why is someone behaving this way?
[SPEAKER_03]: But we have the benefit of a lot of male podcasters and conservative influencers that are outright saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: that one of the big pieces that they disliked about the Me2 era was this, you know, cancel culture idea, you know, and, you know, I'm sure we could talk a long time about that, but I think one of the questions coming out of Me2 that I'm hearing a lot is,
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there a path forward for these people who were canceled?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think if Senator Kristen Gillibrand, you know, who initially called for Cuomo to resign, then she later downplayed those feelings saying this is a country that believes in second chances.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you look at other public figures in non-political positions like Louis C. K. was canceled in 2017 for masturbating in front of female peers.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now he's released four comedy specials.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of those out of packed out Madison Square Garden Arena.
[SPEAKER_03]: So first thing I mean, first you can just argue where they ever really canceled.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that next piece of that is, you know, for people that are feeling a resistance to that, that are saying like, well, you can't just erase this person from the zeitgeist, you know, what's your response to those kinds of comments or pushback from this movement?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a lot to say on that, because that's a question that's emerged since the beginning of the tumour, right, kind of like, what do we do with the perpetrators and almost in tandem with it starting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, and it's a question that sometimes I really resent the framework of it because frequently it's it's it's framed in.
[SPEAKER_02]: in terms of like women's forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like can, you know, puts the onus on women, like we're in this situation because if, you know, if only we could understand that occasionally things happen or if only if only people could learn to forgive.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the fact of the matter is forgiveness takes two parties, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just about victim learning to forgive her abuser but it's, you know, usually the abuser doing something,
[SPEAKER_02]: and working, that warrants forgiveness and working towards it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was recently only asked about forgiveness, which is part of this conversation about cancel culture and can there be a return?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was asked about it at a book event because somebody wanted to know what would that look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, can it happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: How frequently does it happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, you know, honestly, I have talked to so many people.
[SPEAKER_02]: went on the record during the 2002 movement or people who just wanted to talk to me about abusive bosses and I know of one, I know of one case in which the perpetrator reached out to the woman and addressed the topic of forgiveness and if there was something he could do, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I sometimes feel like this conversation is putting the cart before the whole horse, like
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, especially for so many of the high-profile men who have so many like finances on the line and, you know, I just I don't, anyways, I don't, I don't see a situation in which true forgiveness is being sought.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also feel like in the current context of
[SPEAKER_02]: so much cruelty in the world and so much cruelty under the current administration.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a really hard time caring.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a really hard time caring about men who have a lot of money, who just want another chance, you know, another crack at whatever they're good at.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if they make it
[SPEAKER_02]: They are okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: They will be okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like their livelihood is not on the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I would say that, you know, despite the fact that there is no like one size fits all rubric for how to judge each case.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the end, the people making the decisions about whether these men can return, it's not the public, it's the CEOs, it's the heads of for profit or companies that were keeping the men in power when many of them were aware of their behavior.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they are making the decisions to keep them out if they don't want them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in a world of limitless talent.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: These menus, men, they don't, they don't necessarily warrant a second chance.
[SPEAKER_03]: think that's true when we think of like the institutional guys that are running larger companies, you know, I think of the Fox News, you know, situation or things like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But in terms of say comedians or, you know, influencers, the people making the decision of whether they come back is the consumer, you know, it's do I want to watch this YouTube video, do I want to listen to this
[SPEAKER_03]: Companies making decisions that are kind of gross doesn't surprise me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's concerning to me when I see hundreds of thousands of young men continue to listen to a podcast or with, you know, this kind of these kind of allegations rolling around them or to pay for comedy shows, you know, or to pay for film the blank.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's the part that's really concerning to me and it seems like that's the hardest demo to reach because I think they're so solidified in this like it's more important that we like us platforming this person is sticking the finger to this cancel culture title that we've been programmed to push back against you know yeah
[SPEAKER_02]: or sticking the finger to wokeness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that was kind of Bill Mar having Woody Allen on, you know, I think his, his shield for every conversation he's had in the last year is why I talked to anybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: And everyone else is scared of a conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll talk to anybody, I'll chat with anybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that kind of culture war that's clouding the way these situations are handled is just so prolific on the left and right.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, where it's like, it's like, I'm going to talk to this person just because I know it'll make the other side mad, which is no shortage of Cuomo support, you know, it's like we're going to stick the finger to Trump because they've got this weird rivalry in public, potentially not a rivalry in private, but you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, do you think we're too far gone in terms of like trying to extract like the political side of this, like that back and forth fight of like, because even the whole cancel culturally button, like saying it, because I think it affirms something that's not really there, but that is the politicized language that's kind of going back and forth.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like if we're talking about politics in the US, I feel like we're too far gone on a lot of
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're right.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some of it, I think also speaks to kind of streaming options and all of the avenues that
[SPEAKER_02]: misogynistic voices have today to maintain an audience, which is a bit terrifying, which is to say nothing of AI, and the whole new frontier that that's creating.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see an easy way.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see an easy way out of it for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that that's become really important to me and I think it's because it's so concerned to me is I'm seeing this again this new generation of young men, Gen. C and even Gen Alpha at this point, which it seems while there were already moved on to another generation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm seeing them consume this content from whether it's fresh and fit, whether it's an injury tate or Tristan or go down the line of these names.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's concerning to me because, you know, when I was growing up, it was like,
[SPEAKER_03]: you're going down the rabbit hole of feminist own compilations and you know, but it was much the algorithms were a lot less finely tuned were like you would stumble across that stuff your friend would show you something that's really funny, you know, and you'd watch it and now.
[SPEAKER_03]: But that pipeline is so quick to where, you know, my wife mentioned the Saturday because she was looking up some Andrew tape videos to see what, you know, some people were engaging with.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's like, my feed is packed with his content now and I get it all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you think we reach that generation with these messages?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because like, they're not, I'm looking, they're not going to sit down and read a book
[SPEAKER_03]: And based on my analytics, they're not going to listen to my show, you know, and I've tried to breach through with that with some of my content and try to make some things directly aimed for them, but there's just like a, they're kind of just bred with this resistance to these conversations.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any any insight on that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think of the work of Laura Bates, the British feminist journalist who has she wrote everyday sexism and she's had one of her more recent books that I just started and now that you've asked me this question, I wish I had completed, but she does into AI and just the fierce mess with which
[SPEAKER_02]: young boys are fed, misogyny.
[SPEAKER_02]: They just don't even have to go looking for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like their algorithms can identify their age, their sex, their vulnerabilities, and feed them content that is going to be sexist.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really some of her work is really, it's like, I keep seeing the word terrifying in this interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: But to say it is it's it's it's really terrifying.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't see how, you know, and I know it's always a debate like doing need.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do we need like a Joe Rogan of the of the left or do we need?
[SPEAKER_02]: a way to control or to limit the content that reaches young men, because my understanding is, it's not just as simple as just even content that speaks to traditional norms and masculinity, it is content that is expressed explicitly misogynistic in nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and that's part of what makes the current moment,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a struggle to see the path forward because we're facing so many situations and so many technologies, right, that you might say in my book, like never have we been at a moment where we don't know what the world is gonna look like in 10 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I quote the Israeli historian, you've all heard already.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I feel like so much of that is like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a struggle to kind of imagine how do we overcome the current context in which tech giants are not, are not serving our interests and certainly not serving interests of gender equality.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, especially when the people who are, I mean, these oversight committees are so politically charged where, you know, there's going to be a hearing, talking about social media and how it can have an effect and radicalizing and in light of the, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you look at the list of people going to it, you have the CEO of Twitch, you have the CEO of Reddit, you have the CEO of Stream with the gaming side of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you would expect, we're talking about social media platforms that are radicalizing the CEO of TikTok, meta, Twitter,
[SPEAKER_03]: But notably, all of those that are being supportive of the current administration are not going to be present at this.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and if any platform is radicalizing people, I mean, scroll through X for all of 10 minutes and the rhetoric there.
[SPEAKER_03]: It just seems like even the checks and balances seem to be very, you know, politicized.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would go further than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just the checks and balances that are failing us.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
[SPEAKER_02]: the norms and the messages are coming from the top, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we saw that had the U.S. military p-tags up retweeted a white Christian nationalist.
[SPEAKER_02]: Minister saying that women should not have the right to vote.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, it's not even the guardrails that are the problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I do wish we had more of them, it's also the fact that currently our country is in the hands of some especially misogynistic people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I mentioned Hegsef who attends a church connected to Douglas Wilson's ministry and Pastor Douglas Wilson from Idaho.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he recently went viral with a CNN interview where he he'd simpler for the women as the type of people that people come out of and
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, one, there's the religious side of that, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Which we could talk about, I mean, churches platforming a Cuomo just a couple of weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: But also, you just see the way that women are labeled, I think it's something you were kind of, you know, alluding to earlier, it's like you see, not just...
[SPEAKER_03]: toxic masculinity reinforced through lifestyle, but it's also, I think, a fresh and fit referring to women as, you know, 304's, you know, and which is, I literally googled and was like, oh, this is the stupid upside down calculator thing that means you're calling them a how, and that's an acceptable way for you to say it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, that's not being funny and like, fourth grade.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you've got people like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Douglas Wilson that are using this very utilitarian language that assigns a label to women.
[SPEAKER_03]: In this case, for something that they provide a service that they provide, do you think that hearing those labels, even if we don't accept them, even if we kind of like jerk away at them, do you think that kind of numbs all of us as a culture to violence committed against women?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we know that we judge our own morality and behavior relative to what we believe is the morality and behavior of other people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we see men making comments like that, when we see them given a national platform to make comments like that, inevitably,
[SPEAKER_02]: things that should have made us ask before no longer make us gasped, like I am sure if my husband did not make it home in time a single night last week, you know, to help make dinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's probably going to feel a little less lousy about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: about his contribution.
[SPEAKER_02]: If he knows, you know, if he's reminded of the fact that there are a lot of men out there who actually just you me as like the woman in his life made to give him, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a person game comes back in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and everything is relative.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it just shifts, it just shifts the culture in a direction that we don't want to go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm, that's one thing that's, that's interesting as I, and I'm kind of curious, it's, it's recent enough even when this comes out, but the Charlie Kirk Memorial, you know, for me, I could talk about for hours, but I, I guess one, looking at that situation,
[SPEAKER_03]: which is that concern you for the direction things will go in the way that's going to radicalize young men who were consuming this content.
[SPEAKER_03]: But also beyond that, I'm really curious like,
[SPEAKER_03]: the hypocrisy of the organization itself to be a platform built on saying things like women begin losing their market value after 30 that was a quote directly from Charlie Kirk which I'm sure people will be upset about because direct quotes seem to not get a lot of positive attention.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, you know, but then he got married to his wife when she was, you know, past 30 was older than him.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, he tells him not to pursue a career and that they should stay home and work there.
[SPEAKER_03]: That should be their priority.
[SPEAKER_03]: But now his wife is being established as CEO of this massive multi-million dollar organization.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I guess the two full question, like I said is,
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you concerned about where this goes in this moment that seems to be captioning the attention of so many young people and just everybody in general crossage brackets?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then also do you think this has legs when there is such a disparity between what they're preaching and what they're actually practicing right now within their organization?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I will say.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Charlie Kirk Memorial was the first time in a long time that I had to just turn off the news.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was it just it hit me in the stomach.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so it just made me sick because it to me was so
[SPEAKER_02]: we're capitalizing off of his violent unfortunate murder to instigate violence to take his death as an opportunity to clamp down their iron fist even you know harder than they already have and to incite violence against people who might be an opposition to their policies or simply
[SPEAKER_02]: do not look like them or conform in the ways they would like them to.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, where we go from there, I guess we're all kind of holding our breaths to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's scary.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's scary in a country that has as many guns as the United States does.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you have a leader who, again, I talked about, and I mentioned earlier, you know, we're in a
[SPEAKER_02]: Ever since Trump first came to office the time of a norm breaking right we we have this tragic act of political violence and rather than try to unite the country
[SPEAKER_02]: or a swage the country, we have a president who goes on the attack and who wants to use that to inside violence against his own rivals.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think, yeah, does it have legs despite the hypocrisy, you know, the hypocrisy of their lives hasn't held any of them back before from achieving some of their objectives.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess we'll see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you perceive any, because I've been arguing with a couple people lately, I mean, I grew up very religious and I know the power that a martyr story has and, you know, I mean, the amount of mileage they got out of the reporting on the Columbine story, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: The way they turn that into this story of the Christian faith and martyrdom and standing up for what you believe in and Not about gun violence.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was never part of that part of the conversation, but I see this moment and I believe that I mean, there's there's a huge swath of young men who are going People hate me.
[SPEAKER_03]: They hate the 30 and under White Christian man and this culture wants us dead
[SPEAKER_03]: And they believe that hook line and sinker and, you know, my, I believe that we're going to see all of these numbers shoot up like the Genzi slowly returning to church.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think is going to go up immensely leaning conservative is going to rock it even higher than it already was trending.
[SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of people I'm talking to even people that are in this space and cover these things the same way are going.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just don't see it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't see it having legs, like they don't have women, you know, they don't have children to carry on the mission, like, but I'm like a lot of bad things can happen in the next 30 years without having, we're not talking multi-generational to no call.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm talking right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, how much, how much do you think there's validity to that concern or how much, or do you see it as like, this is a flush in the pan moment that will be
[SPEAKER_02]: As we know, a lot of the, a lot of people who identify as Christian right in the US actually don't go to church.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are just culturally identify as as Christian right, then, you know, they agree with, you know, all whatever policy platform that they believe is Christian right, you know, they are anti choice, they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, profanely having the wife at home, what have you?
[SPEAKER_02]: What concerns me and I think if there is going to be a growth in, you know, church attendance has been going down in the United States, right, which you know, better than anyone, some of the problems that arise with organized
[SPEAKER_02]: churches for so many Americans that they're only community.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's only sense of community that they can find in their town.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there is something also dangerous about church attendance going down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I will say, though, we have a specific problem in the United States when it comes to the
[SPEAKER_02]: Christian right in terms of both its power, its organization and kind of its the coherence of its teachings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to reference a book and what I mean by the coherence of its teachings.
[SPEAKER_02]: A book that I know I had recommended to you in an email by Talia Lavin.
[SPEAKER_02]: She wrote Wild Faith, which for people in my demographic, it's easy for us to kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: I had always grown up regarding the Christian right as somewhat.
[SPEAKER_02]: more organic than it really is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just kind of like, yes, we have like very fervent questions in the United States.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I have extended family that, you know, my fall into that category, but the extent to which her book documents kind of the rise and power and the successful organizing and the popularity of, you know, specific,
[SPEAKER_02]: books and teachings that have been promulgated throughout Christian Wright communities that I was unaware of.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I say that also, I mean, what I should have said from the outside is that I'm I grew up in a church.
[SPEAKER_02]: I grew up in the Presbyterian church.
[SPEAKER_02]: My father is a minister.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is also a fan of my book.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the last book event I had at home in New Mexico, and I think half the audience was from my church community, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that Christians in the United States are not a monolith, but I also think that we are remiss not to recognize the threat and the danger that the Christian right currently poses to democracy in the U.S. And so, you know, circling back to your original question of what happens in this moment
[SPEAKER_02]: If there is an increase in fundamentalism and in people moving to the Christian right, I assume we're going to be able to credit it to the
[SPEAKER_03]: tenacity and organization and finances of the Christian right well it's it's the people that become they become evangelical or become Christian because of political alignment they're not pursuing like I think the
[SPEAKER_03]: the way that you see in a healthy way is like your religious beliefs, your world view, influences your politics, you know, like there are people who, you know, if you look at say someone who's a progressive Christian, they would say, well, this expresses itself and me voting for social programs that do feed the hungry and like that's something that flows out of my religious beliefs.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the trend I'm seeing now in one of the reasons on a deeper level like the Kirk Memorial
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw such a variety of faiths represented in that, like, is sub-sex of the Christian faith to be very specific, where I saw
[SPEAKER_03]: concerning Catholic figures that I follow, concerning Protestant figures that I follow, you know, more charismatic figures that I follow, all dropping the barriers between their religious groups, like people who quite literally would call out the others for false doctrine a few weeks before, are now all linking arms and saying, we are a monolith, we all stand for the same Jesus that this person represents.
[SPEAKER_03]: we're all lined in our politics and that's enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think we've seen that happen at that largest scale in one moment, like the kind of go, we're all together because we agree trans people are really gross and women should stay in the home and you know down this line of whatever main talking points are at that time.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a good place.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take this moment, Eric, to give yourself a pat on the back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, your podcast, your podcast cannot be more relevant, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, maybe you thought it was somewhat niche at a certain point in time, but I certainly think it's, yeah, it's, it couldn't be more poignant.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, that makes me feel really good, but it also makes me feel really bad because, you know, I look at moments like this and I go, these things are so thinly-vailed, and to the point you feel like you're grabbing people by the shoulders and shaking them and going, hey, you know, like, look at this.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not even hiding this.
[SPEAKER_03]: and it doesn't seem to make it done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm curious, I mean, you wrote a book about workplace sexual harassment, you know, and even the larger culture of sexual harassment and abuse.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been podcasting for five years.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you ever feel like
[SPEAKER_03]: that I make a dent like because I I feel that like like when you say that I can't really appreciate it and it means a lot coming from someone who's talking similarly but I also like and look at the last couple weeks and the comments of people on my show even people who've followed for a long time that are going oh now you're taking a bridge too far you're seeing someone that's not there and I'm like have you been listening for five like have I been speaking at different language for last five years like how do you cope with that as a that's a creator?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh gosh, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I will say that as a creator, I take enormous meaning from the moments in which you hear something from someone that is positive, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the, I'll never forget, you know, we're looking for, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: my book took like four times longer to write than it was supposed to take.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew it was going to be hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so much harder.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just, and it was at a difficult time in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I write there was a pandemic.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had small children.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just like, with sacrifice that went into it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll never forget.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were, we were looking for
[SPEAKER_02]: the the arc, the advanced reader copy had gone out to some people and I heard from a woman who read it who sent me a thank you because it had helped her process, you know, her own abuse and she just had some very lovely words and it was like suddenly just one woman and like those four, those four years had been worth it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it was just to let those moments show for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is one thing I try to do and
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, I know it can be really disheartening, especially when you see us, you feel us back sliding into territory.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is as misogynistic and as dark as it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, I think I just try to tell myself that.
[SPEAKER_02]: makes what we do even more important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And because I'm sure you hear from people as you just heard from me, these have been really dark, dark months, but I can't tell you how often I hear from people who were like, oh my gosh, I was just thinking about your book, like, what's not applicable to your book these days, kind of like, I know, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a part of me is walking around with my head exploding constantly because it's just like everything I see is in the context of of patriarchy and just the absurdity of the difference that's given to these like, you know, as you described, and thinly veiled, you know, men and and there.
[SPEAKER_02]: their self-serving objectives.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like a firms, it almost affirms like the thesis of your book or a firms that thesis of the set for being out there, but you don't want it to.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's kind of like, hey, you know, I talk about these systems and then you see the system still working go.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish I wasn't right about that system.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish I didn't know where this was going.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say that what I think about more and more is at the end of my book, I emphasize the importance of imagination, like in fighting our own internalized patriarchy and systems that we need to be able to imagine a world that's different from the one that we live in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to assume, I mean, I think about that a lot in how important it is and and caught and you know I still call myself out, you know, I, I have to, I have to assume to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of, you know, the world is the world is changing and I'm not going to make excuses for bigotry or for people who support racists and misogynists and convicted rapists and office, but I will say that I imagine the absence of an alternative vision of the world, the absence
[SPEAKER_02]: that is good and beneficial, you know, it only leaves them more entrenched in what they know and clinging on to the cruelty that they know rather than
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, open themselves up to something different.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think moving forward?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a way to not, I mean, I, and I wrestle with this, too, is like, I can be snarky, and I can point out the obvious things, and I can, you know, dunk on, you know, the, you, the wrong side of some of these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I also read so much about cult literature and how to communicate with cult members and like saying you're in a cult, or immediately addressing this overarching thing, only drives people further back into it, or if we're talking on a religious side, perceive persecution of firms that were headed the right direction.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the world hates us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We must be doing something right.
[SPEAKER_03]: how much do you feel responsibility to like, couch her language in a way that's like educational and formative and, you know, prescriptive in some ways versus like, okay, I just need to say, this is a cult.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is
[SPEAKER_03]: super wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like regardless of your intentions, you voted for a rapist who did X, Y, and Z.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like because I go back and forth and I think like the majority of people who voted for Trump, who I won't, I won't say majority, but the majority of people I talked to, who voted for him.
[SPEAKER_03]: literally are like, I truly believe that he's going to do what he says about the financial state of the country.
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe there's people that don't like that and have falsely accused him.
[SPEAKER_03]: I believe that the left is trying to take him down and like from their perspective, he hasn't done the things that he clearly has done and it's like that's a weird conversation to have.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you think we can engage in those?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, so that's a, that's the Kahuna.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get near the end.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me drop the big bomb question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, now it's kind of a sensation of, you know, are we living in this like post-truth world?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I had a friend down the street who told me a fellow American, I live as you know, I live in Belgium.
[SPEAKER_03]: And good timing to be outside the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know, I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm well aware of my, my privilege.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this, this front of mine when Trump was reelected, it was like, you know, let's, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: just just wait, give a time.
[SPEAKER_02]: When people begin to truly feel it, when they're hit by his policies, when they begin to suffer economically, when, you know, this happens and this happens, they will change their tune.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was actually kind of hopeful this idea that like there will be a pendulum swing and my immediate concern had always been in this particular media environment.
[SPEAKER_02]: how do we know that a Trump supporter understands why they are suffering or why they're grocery prices gone up or you know it's it's really concerning it's really scary to me and it's scary to me that now we have you know the so many media companies that are
[SPEAKER_02]: owned by Trump oilists and also, so it's, yeah, it's, it's a difficult one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say that
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe this is relevant to your question of language and how do you speak to them?
[SPEAKER_02]: Think the first, the most important thing is that you do speak to them, because fascism thrives.
[SPEAKER_02]: The authoritarianism thrives on isolation and lack of community.
[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever language you're using, I think it's good that we speak.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do talk to these people.
[SPEAKER_02]: But specifically, as far as the language is concerned, I think about this because I realized sometimes that book events, or when I'm being interviewed about my book, sometimes just dropping the word patriarchy or gender binary.
[SPEAKER_02]: I see that people have this reaction, kind of that I'm already way out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're not, they don't expect to connect with anything that I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, I mean, I do sometimes, I will do things like I will follow my language up with a description, you know, what I mean by that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it's, you know, when I talk about how I think the gender binary is the lynch pin.
[SPEAKER_02]: And well, I don't just think that I take this from feminist philosophers and feminist psychologists to argue this who no more than I do, but is like the lynch pen and the injustice that we're facing and that if we could address that, we could more broadly address injustice and its mirrored forms.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I I expand on it because I find that otherwise they take it to assume that Basically I'm talking about trans athletes like I don't know or that I'm talking about which yes, maybe I am, but I'm talking about something so much bigger than that and especially in this time of
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know if culture war does it service to call it a culture war, but in this time of just these issues that are just, you know, made and to such unbearable sticking points, yeah, it's it's really a challenge.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I really appreciate this conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I know we could talk a lot more.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm sure we will.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's so many things like every single thing that we had on Mike, well, that could be an entire episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's so many layers to this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess if you could,
[SPEAKER_03]: saying now, I mean, you obviously wrote any profits to your book complicit and I'm sure even that as you're writing it, you're like, I could add this, and I could also add this thing, you know, sitting right here right now, recording September 25th, 2025, if you were to add something to your overall messaging that you included in your book and say like, I want to communicate this thing to people listening right now, what would that be?
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's a question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, well, fortunately, what I would want to communicate to them is actually in the new professor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I might expand on it a bit more, but it's the notion which I take from the feminist psychologists
[SPEAKER_02]: is to separate democracy from the patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as she explains and has explained,
[SPEAKER_02]: When we seek to understand the current moment and Trump and his authoritarianism in terms of democracy, it's disorienting because he and all of his principles actively subvert democracy and that Trump is operating on the paradigm of patriarchy and so that patriarchy is crux to understanding the current moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: by which I mean, you know, the shame that we've been taught to endure and the cruelty that we're taught to and condone.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that culture is what gives rise to someone like Trump.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where his staying power lies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I want you to pat yourself on the back because that message is more timely than ever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, I really do
[SPEAKER_02]: Not either.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Eric.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've been listening to The Prejudice Podcast hosted by Eric Swizinski.
[SPEAKER_03]: The intro music, Bible Belt, was performed by Lou Ridley.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, come on, come on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are gathered here today to praise the Holy Father, Feel the glory of His name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone can worship here so long as you extract Pay your ties and follow rules even the ones
[UNKNOWN]: You're the bad one, pal.