(00:00:00):
It was in our 14th year that he started hitting me.

(00:00:03):
In the 13 years prior, I had told myself that he was a decent man because he didn't hit me.

(00:00:09):
The truth is that he did everything but hit me,

(00:00:12):
and the only thing that stopped him from hitting me is that he never needed to do

(00:00:15):
it to keep me in line.

(00:00:17):
I now understand that abusive men use their abuse to control women,

(00:00:21):
not because they lose control of their emotions.

(00:00:23):
So what happened in the 14th year?

(00:00:26):
I started demanding household equity.

(00:00:29):
I bought all this shit about how he's just a nice guy and just needs me to explain

(00:00:33):
it better to him.

(00:00:34):
So I did.

(00:00:35):
And he understood what I wanted, didn't want to give it to me, and started hitting me.

(00:00:40):
It's all deliberate.

(00:00:41):
Everything they are doing is deliberate.

(00:00:44):
All of it.

(00:00:45):
Hi,

(00:00:46):
I'm Zonva Lines,

(00:00:47):
a writer and feminist activist,

(00:00:49):
and this is the Liberating Motherhood podcast.

(00:00:52):
I am here today with the legendary feminist philosopher, writer, sub-stack author,

(00:00:58):
hero, inspiration, wonderful human, Kate Mann.

(00:01:02):
Hi, Kate.

(00:01:04):
Thanks so much for having me.

(00:01:05):
And thanks for that lovely introduction right back at you.

(00:01:10):
Yeah, Kate is awesome.

(00:01:12):
If you are not familiar with her work, I hope you will get familiar with it.

(00:01:15):
I think you are all going to love this interview.

(00:01:18):
So let me tell you a little bit about Kate before we get started.

(00:01:22):
Kate Mann is an associate professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University.

(00:01:28):
She specializes in moral,

(00:01:29):
social,

(00:01:29):
and feminist philosophy and has written three books,

(00:01:33):
Down Girl,

(00:01:34):
The Logic of Misogyny,

(00:01:35):
Entitled,

(00:01:36):
How Male Privilege Hurts Women,

(00:01:38):
and Unshrinking,

(00:01:39):
How to Face Fat Phobia,

(00:01:40):
a National Book Award finalist in nonfiction.

(00:01:44):
In addition to academic work,

(00:01:45):
she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience,

(00:01:49):
including in outlets such as The New York Times,

(00:01:51):
The Cut,

(00:01:52):
The Washington Post,

(00:01:53):
The Atlantic,

(00:01:54):
The Nation,

(00:01:54):
and Times.

(00:01:55):
She writes a Substack newsletter,

(00:01:57):
More to Hate,

(00:01:57):
exploring misogyny,

(00:01:59):
fatphobia,

(00:01:59):
and their intersection.

(00:02:01):
If you are not subscribed to Kate Substack, I highly, highly recommend subscribing.

(00:02:06):
She writes amazing work,

(00:02:08):
but there's also really interesting,

(00:02:10):
compelling discussions going on in the comments.

(00:02:12):
You can learn so much and gain so much inspiration from reading her.

(00:02:16):
So I really hope you will.

(00:02:17):
I will put all of her information in the show notes.

(00:02:21):
And

(00:02:22):
Hopefully she'll tell us a little bit more about the work she's doing and why it's

(00:02:25):
important and all of that.

(00:02:26):
So we're going to get started.

(00:02:29):
Kate,

(00:02:29):
your work,

(00:02:30):
more than any other philosopher who immediately comes to mind,

(00:02:34):
provides what is,

(00:02:36):
in my opinion,

(00:02:36):
the most helpful blueprint for understanding both why individual men do what they

(00:02:42):
do and also how patriarchy functions as a system through these men.

(00:02:47):
How did this happen?

(00:02:49):
How did you gain so much insight?

(00:02:52):
And can you tell me how you see your own work in the larger feminist movement?

(00:02:57):
Yeah, well, thank you so much.

(00:02:58):
That's so kind.

(00:03:01):
And I really began to think about misogyny as a social force in a serious way in

(00:03:10):
2014 after the Isla Vista killings.

(00:03:13):
So they happened over Memorial Day weekend, which is...

(00:03:18):
coming up.

(00:03:19):
Uh,

(00:03:19):
so it'll be an anniversary of those events where Elliot Roger was a young 22 year

(00:03:26):
old man who had posted these YouTube videos,

(00:03:29):
these screeds about the women who weren't sleeping with him,

(00:03:35):
who weren't giving him sex,

(00:03:37):
love,

(00:03:37):
affection,

(00:03:38):
and adoration.

(00:03:39):
Um,

(00:03:41):
And he eventually decided to slaughter a whole sorority house full of women.

(00:03:49):
So he drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house at the University of California,

(00:03:54):
Santa Barbara,

(00:03:55):
loaded weapons in hand.

(00:03:57):
He knocked on the door,

(00:03:59):
was denied entry,

(00:04:00):
and then ended up shooting three young women who were walking outside around the

(00:04:06):
corner,

(00:04:08):
killing two,

(00:04:09):
wounding one of them.

(00:04:11):
He also killed four young men that day in a kind of drive-by shooting spree.

(00:04:19):
And before that, he stabbed to death his three roommates.

(00:04:22):
So it was this horrific massacre.

(00:04:25):
And...

(00:04:26):
What was so striking about it to me as a feminist philosopher was the way that so

(00:04:33):
many people in the media denied that this was misogyny immediately and reflexively.

(00:04:39):
When it was so obvious to me and I think virtually every feminist that...

(00:04:46):
this was an act of profound entitlement and that it really exemplified something in

(00:04:52):
the culture where men feel entitled to certain goods from women and women are

(00:04:58):
deemed obligated to supply these goods.

(00:05:01):
And so that kind of framework really emerged from thinking about this case,

(00:05:06):
but it was something where thinking about this case got me into thinking about so

(00:05:12):
many other phenomena from domestic violence to sexual assault to family

(00:05:18):
annihilators to the kind of aggression directed toward political leaders who are

(00:05:24):
female.

(00:05:26):
I found that this

(00:05:28):
way of thinking about what women are held to owe and what men are deemed entitled

(00:05:34):
to,

(00:05:34):
it generalized to more phenomena than even I had expected.

(00:05:39):
Yeah.

(00:05:42):
I mean,

(00:05:43):
I think the thing that I remember most about that story is how it was constantly

(00:05:49):
depicted as a crazy person and as mental illness.

(00:05:53):
When to me,

(00:05:55):
It was just, well, this is not someone behaving crazily.

(00:05:58):
This is someone behaving consistently with the values that our culture taught him.

(00:06:04):
Yeah,

(00:06:05):
and I used as the subtitle of my first book,

(00:06:09):
The Logic of Misogyny,

(00:06:10):
because I do think that this is not a set of random,

(00:06:16):
unpredictable,

(00:06:18):
wild acts of people who are just completely out of touch with reality.

(00:06:24):
What they have is a set of corrupt moral values,

(00:06:27):
which say that they should have this role in policing and enforcing patriarchal

(00:06:32):
norms and expectations.

(00:06:34):
Chief among those is the idea that women should give certain things like sex and love.

(00:06:39):
And so it's not some kind of random lone wolf act.

(00:06:45):
This is a very deliberate act, to use a word that your letter writer used in opening.

(00:06:53):
This was a very deliberate act of saying,

(00:06:56):
when women don't give me certain things,

(00:06:58):
I will lash out violently and

(00:07:00):
And that makes sense because women need to be taught a lesson according to these

(00:07:05):
values that say women are bad women and bad people for not being more giving,

(00:07:13):
loving,

(00:07:14):
attentive,

(00:07:15):
and admiring.

(00:07:17):
And that is insult logic, but it's also the logic of misogyny more broadly.

(00:07:21):
Yeah.

(00:07:23):
I just got this letter for my advice column that I'm going to publish in about a

(00:07:27):
month of a woman who

(00:07:30):
you know, it's kind of the typical story.

(00:07:32):
She doesn't have household equity and she wants more fairness.

(00:07:36):
So she confronts her husband and,

(00:07:38):
you know,

(00:07:39):
it's not really socially acceptable to say,

(00:07:42):
well,

(00:07:42):
you're,

(00:07:42):
you're just less than me.

(00:07:43):
So you have to do it.

(00:07:44):
So he comes up with like the usual excuses and then she keeps pushing and he attacks her.

(00:07:50):
And then her question to me was, what can I do to get him to understand?

(00:07:57):
And

(00:07:59):
My response was basically, oh, he understands just fine.

(00:08:02):
That's why he attacked you,

(00:08:03):
is he's escalating to the next thing that he can do to keep you in line.

(00:08:08):
It's not a failure of understanding.

(00:08:10):
And I just wish that we could get past that finally.

(00:08:16):
I think that is exactly right.

(00:08:17):
I have been railing for a long time against the idea that misogyny is viewing women

(00:08:23):
as subhuman or less than human or somehow mindless objects.

(00:08:30):
You know, a lot of forms of misogyny are completely contingent on ascribing to women

(00:08:35):
agency and sexuality and the ability to do all sorts of distinctively human things

(00:08:43):
but then insisting upon controlling those sorts of capacities and mental attributes

(00:08:50):
and traits and so this idea that somehow it's all about ignorance or just not

(00:08:56):
having thought it through completely

(00:08:59):
Yeah, I think unfortunately that's wishful thinking.

(00:09:03):
They understand very well.

(00:09:05):
They just don't like what they're confronted with,

(00:09:08):
which is the full humanity of women and the fact that we have autonomy and our own

(00:09:13):
desires,

(00:09:14):
our own needs,

(00:09:15):
our own interests and equal rights.

(00:09:18):
Yeah.

(00:09:18):
Yeah.

(00:09:19):
Okay.

(00:09:19):
So I,

(00:09:20):
on that point,

(00:09:21):
I have sort of a philosophical question for you that you might not have an answer

(00:09:25):
for,

(00:09:26):
but you kind of have an answer for everything.

(00:09:28):
So I think that you are the sage advice giver that we need,

(00:09:33):
and maybe you'll,

(00:09:33):
you'll have insight into this.

(00:09:35):
This is a lot of pressure, but no pressure, you know,

(00:09:39):
You're perfect, but no pressure.

(00:09:42):
Okay,

(00:09:43):
so there's this thing that I write about a lot where basically if we viewed women

(00:09:51):
as equally valuable to men,

(00:09:53):
all of the things that we dismiss as small concerns,

(00:09:56):
like her doing more household labor than him,

(00:09:59):
her getting less sleep than him,

(00:10:01):
her not getting support after she gives birth,

(00:10:05):
her not getting care when she's ill,

(00:10:07):
all of these things that get dismissed as like,

(00:10:09):
oh,

(00:10:09):
those are just petty issues would quickly,

(00:10:14):
it would quickly become clear that these are not petty issues because this is

(00:10:17):
basically the theft and destruction of another person's life.

(00:10:20):
So if we thought that life mattered as much,

(00:10:23):
if we thought that time mattered as much,

(00:10:26):
we would not see these as small things.

(00:10:28):
We wouldn't see these things as, you know, well, you have to communicate better.

(00:10:31):
You have to make him understand.

(00:10:33):
So my question is regarding

(00:10:37):
women who have internalized this idea that you can't ask men to sacrifice anything for you.

(00:10:45):
And also,

(00:10:46):
you know,

(00:10:47):
the experts,

(00:10:47):
the therapists,

(00:10:48):
the coaches,

(00:10:49):
the,

(00:10:49):
you know,

(00:10:49):
whoever people consult about these problems who just don't seem to see these issues

(00:10:55):
as seriously.

(00:10:56):
What is that?

(00:10:57):
To me, it feels like it has to be seeing women as less than human, but yeah,

(00:11:02):
you know, you've made me think differently about that issue, so maybe I'm wrong.

(00:11:08):
Yeah, so that is a really important point, which I think is...

(00:11:14):
often somewhat underappreciated in kind of post-enlightenment thinking.

(00:11:21):
But some human beings who are recognized as human beings are allotted into service

(00:11:27):
roles in a social hierarchy.

(00:11:29):
So I think there is this kind of myth that really is of a piece with enlightenment

(00:11:34):
thinking and which I found very powerful for a long time,

(00:11:37):
too,

(00:11:38):
That as soon as we see that someone is kind of the same as us in a particular way,

(00:11:44):
say in being a human being,

(00:11:46):
we will really take them just as seriously and value them just as much as a white

(00:11:54):
adult,

(00:11:55):
non-disabled,

(00:11:56):
rich,

(00:11:57):
cis white man.

(00:11:59):
And I think that the history of how human beings treat each other really belies that point.

(00:12:06):
One way to see it is that a lot of the worst things people do to each other are not

(00:12:12):
just things which are incredibly brutal.

(00:12:18):
They are things which...

(00:12:20):
are distinctively human-to-human kinds of cruelty.

(00:12:24):
So they are premised on the idea that this is a human being who should know better,

(00:12:30):
who has the capacities to internalize rules and to follow norms,

(00:12:36):
for example,

(00:12:37):
patriarchal norms and expectations,

(00:12:39):
and who,

(00:12:40):
unlike a non-human animal who

(00:12:43):
usually can't be expected to know or do better,

(00:12:46):
it makes sense to punish a human being,

(00:12:49):
to resent a human being,

(00:12:51):
to lash out and try and correct a human being's behavior,

(00:12:56):
because they do have these capacities that allow them to

(00:12:59):
learn and grow and repent.

(00:13:02):
And that's what I think we see oftentimes when it comes to misogyny that women

(00:13:06):
face,

(00:13:07):
which is the idea that they're human all to human sinners,

(00:13:12):
rather than being seen as somehow incapable of learning or knowing better.

(00:13:18):
But again, it's a sense that they're

(00:13:21):
As I put it, sometimes they're not human beings who can just be in the world.

(00:13:27):
They're human givers who have this particular social task of giving and loving and serving men.

(00:13:35):
Yeah.

(00:13:35):
Okay.

(00:13:36):
That's really thoughtful and helpful.

(00:13:39):
It's almost sort of like women earn their humanity through service.

(00:13:43):
Yeah, that's right.

(00:13:44):
Yeah.

(00:13:45):
Yeah.

(00:13:46):
And that in a way,

(00:13:48):
our humanity is something that is not always embraced by people whose humanity has

(00:13:57):
long been unquestioned.

(00:13:59):
Like the other way to think about it is there's this idea that is very prevalent

(00:14:03):
that as soon as you recognize someone as a human being,

(00:14:06):
you're like,

(00:14:07):
oh,

(00:14:07):
good.

(00:14:08):
They're in the circle.

(00:14:09):
They're in the club.

(00:14:10):
But why would that be true?

(00:14:12):
Sometimes people's humanity is actually very inconvenient.

(00:14:16):
If you were allotting them into a service role,

(00:14:21):
thinking of them as someone who is entitled to do and feel the full range of human

(00:14:28):
activities and feelings,

(00:14:31):
there is something about that that can be very confronting to people who have

(00:14:37):
viewed certain people as perhaps not less than human,

(00:14:41):
but as particular kinds of humans with particular roles and abilities.

(00:14:46):
With, again, this kind of service value.

(00:14:49):
Yeah.

(00:14:49):
I mean,

(00:14:49):
I think that we can all generate like a dozen examples of that happening,

(00:14:53):
whether we're talking about war or slavery or even like the way we treat children

(00:14:59):
and the role we put them in.

(00:15:00):
Yeah.

(00:15:01):
Yeah.

(00:15:02):
I mean, this idea of like disciplining people into the role they belong to.

(00:15:07):
is kind of what your first book, Down Girl, is about.

(00:15:11):
You know,

(00:15:11):
you talk a lot about misogyny as this like disciplinary force,

(00:15:15):
a way that men get what they want from women and from the larger world.

(00:15:20):
I think we obviously see that in the opening vignette,

(00:15:24):
but I think we also see that like in daily life all the time.

(00:15:27):
I talk to women all the time who tell me about men who do things like weaponize bad

(00:15:32):
moods to prevent their partners from asking for equitable distribution of household

(00:15:36):
labor.

(00:15:37):
or whose partners selectively verbally abuse them in the postpartum period,

(00:15:42):
like so that they could get meals or house cleaning,

(00:15:47):
which just shows like how little they value these women,

(00:15:49):
that this is what they're willing to do.

(00:15:52):
So talk to me about this idea of like misogyny as a disciplinary force and how it

(00:15:57):
works and tell me more.

(00:16:00):
Yeah,

(00:16:01):
well,

(00:16:02):
the definition that I give of misogyny is pushing back against the idea that

(00:16:06):
misogyny is hatred for any and every woman.

(00:16:09):
And it comes down to this idea that misogyny is something that is a disciplinary

(00:16:15):
tool that often actually rewards quote unquote good female behavior while punishing

(00:16:23):
people for being bad with respect to patriarchal norms and expectations.

(00:16:28):
So when you put that idea together with the idea that misogyny is something women

(00:16:33):
face rather than something that men feel,

(00:16:37):
you get to the following definition,

(00:16:39):
which I offer of misogyny,

(00:16:40):
which is that misogyny is the hostility and hatred that girls and women face,

(00:16:47):
which has this particular social role of policing and enforcing patriarchal norms

(00:16:53):
and expectations.

(00:16:55):
So oftentimes women will be targeted quite selectively for being a particular type

(00:17:01):
of woman who's deemed bad by patriarchal lights,

(00:17:05):
or they will be targeted for doing things that are deemed bad in particular social

(00:17:13):
contexts.

(00:17:15):
So it will be rewarding her when she's being a self-sacrificing,

(00:17:19):
giving,

(00:17:20):
loving,

(00:17:21):
devoted wife and mother

(00:17:23):
but punishing her whenever she asks for more or better or more equitable treatment.

(00:17:29):
So I think that's kind of at the heart of misogyny that it involves punishing quote

(00:17:35):
unquote bad women and oftentimes actually valorizing and lionizing women who are

(00:17:44):
towing the line and who know their place within patriarchy.

(00:17:49):
Yeah.

(00:17:49):
Yeah.

(00:17:50):
So I've,

(00:17:51):
I feel like I've seen this recently in my own family, actually.

(00:17:57):
None of the people who I'm about to talk about listen to my podcast so I can talk

(00:18:00):
about them openly.

(00:18:02):
So I had this very feminist grandmother who was not at all the trad wife.

(00:18:11):
She bucked social norms.

(00:18:13):
She always worked.

(00:18:15):
She pushed back on everything.

(00:18:16):
She taught me to be an activist.

(00:18:19):
And she's been dead for like 20 years.

(00:18:21):
But,

(00:18:22):
you know,

(00:18:22):
everybody always talks about like how much she would love,

(00:18:26):
you know,

(00:18:26):
my anti-male hate group,

(00:18:28):
how thrilled she would be.

(00:18:31):
And,

(00:18:31):
but then Mother's Day came this year and multiple members of my family posted all

(00:18:38):
this stuff about her as like a military spouse and

(00:18:42):
As a wife,

(00:18:44):
like not even mentioning her as a mother,

(00:18:46):
because like she was a really good mother and motherhood is like skilled labor.

(00:18:49):
So it's kind of like that's almost too good for her.

(00:18:52):
But just like lionizing her as this perfect gender normative,

(00:18:58):
like wifely person,

(00:19:00):
you know,

(00:19:00):
no mention she got a job,

(00:19:02):
no mention that like she wrote poetry and was super educated and,

(00:19:06):
you know,

(00:19:06):
like raised all these feminist grandchildren who are out in the world terrorizing

(00:19:11):
men.

(00:19:12):
Um, it was, it was so weird.

(00:19:15):
And I, I started like getting really upset about it.

(00:19:18):
And I then like thought of you and I was like,

(00:19:21):
they're slotting her into the role of like a good woman.

(00:19:25):
Yeah.

(00:19:26):
Earnestly mean this as a compliment to her.

(00:19:29):
They're like rounding her up to in their mind, like better than what she was.

(00:19:34):
Yeah.

(00:19:35):
You know, that's so insidious and it really gets it this way that praise can be oppressive.

(00:19:40):
So this is a concept that's recently been defended at book length by Jules Holroyd,

(00:19:46):
who's a wonderful feminist philosopher.

(00:19:48):
And it's the idea that it's not just punishment that can be coercive and

(00:19:54):
controlling,

(00:19:55):
though,

(00:19:55):
of course it is.

(00:19:56):
It's also that when we pick particular versions of a person or particular behaviors

(00:20:02):
that are not their full suite of behaviors and hold those up for particular praise,

(00:20:09):
that can actually have a role in saying,

(00:20:11):
no,

(00:20:12):
this is the only part of you that we value.

(00:20:14):
The rest of it is a liability or worse.

(00:20:18):
And that falsifying of people's memories, especially when they're gone.

(00:20:24):
I'm sorry for your loss, by the way.

(00:20:25):
She sounds amazing.

(00:20:28):
But that way of falsifying the memory of someone can be a way of saying not just

(00:20:34):
about her,

(00:20:34):
but to future generations.

(00:20:36):
Well, this is how you get remembered fondly.

(00:20:40):
You do these things,

(00:20:41):
the wife part,

(00:20:42):
the mother part,

(00:20:43):
the self-sacrificing part,

(00:20:45):
the military spouse part.

(00:20:47):
The fact that you were highly educated and autonomous and educated and feminist,

(00:20:53):
all of that is unmentionable.

(00:20:55):
Yeah.

(00:20:57):
Well, and I think it's become even easier to do now that we have social media.

(00:21:00):
So we can really like reify and reinforce those messages.

(00:21:04):
It's just like really striking,

(00:21:06):
especially if you now,

(00:21:08):
I mean,

(00:21:09):
most men don't bother to celebrate their spouses as mothers at all.

(00:21:13):
But,

(00:21:13):
you know,

(00:21:13):
the ones who do,

(00:21:14):
like if you look on Facebook,

(00:21:16):
they're just kind of like sickening the messages.

(00:21:18):
Like it's really just like celebrating women as like uteruses.

(00:21:22):
Mm-hmm.

(00:21:22):
And a pile, a bundle of services that are feminine coded.

(00:21:26):
Like, she gives so much, she loves so much.

(00:21:29):
And look, all of these are good things.

(00:21:31):
I'm not anti-care or anti-love, of course.

(00:21:34):
But you don't see fathers getting held up in the same way for the same things on Father's Day.

(00:21:40):
You don't see the sense that they've somehow redeemed themselves for their careers and

(00:21:45):
by being capable of care work,

(00:21:48):
partly because oftentimes they're not doing nearly as much care work as they ought

(00:21:52):
to be,

(00:21:52):
but also because even when they are,

(00:21:55):
it's not necessarily what we hold up as the be all end all.

(00:22:00):
Yeah,

(00:22:00):
so I think I was just thinking,

(00:22:03):
Zon,

(00:22:03):
when you were talking,

(00:22:04):
I think a really good project for someone doing sort of discourse analysis would be

(00:22:10):
to take eulogies of men versus women and see what they get celebrated for.

(00:22:15):
Yeah.

(00:22:16):
Yeah.

(00:22:17):
It's interesting because I was thinking about that when I was reading these

(00:22:21):
tributes to my grandmother because...

(00:22:24):
she married someone who was like her,

(00:22:26):
who was,

(00:22:27):
you know,

(00:22:27):
very intelligent and had like an activist spirit and all of that.

(00:22:32):
And,

(00:22:32):
you know,

(00:22:33):
I remember the eulogy for my grandfather was all about like his military service

(00:22:37):
and his cool jobs and like all the things that he did.

(00:22:40):
And I remember like people saying about my grandmother,

(00:22:44):
oh,

(00:22:45):
she was a,

(00:22:45):
she was a perfect Christ-like model of love.

(00:22:49):
And it's like, well,

(00:22:50):
Not if you were a racist being threatened with her beat stick.

(00:22:57):
Good for her.

(00:22:58):
Yeah.

(00:22:59):
No, exactly.

(00:23:00):
Yeah.

(00:23:00):
So just, yeah, somebody, somebody should do that.

(00:23:03):
Somebody more patient than me.

(00:23:06):
Same.

(00:23:07):
But yeah, totally.

(00:23:08):
Okay.

(00:23:08):
So I want to switch gears a little bit because on your sub stack,

(00:23:12):
You've been talking a lot more about fascism.

(00:23:15):
And I love it that you're doing this because I feel like you're like my feminist

(00:23:19):
coach for survival.

(00:23:22):
My feminist fascism life coach.

(00:23:26):
Oh, no.

(00:23:27):
I'm barely surviving.

(00:23:30):
Well, you know, you're what we've got.

(00:23:32):
So we're going to run with it.

(00:23:34):
But the thing that I've started to notice is how fascism functions as this

(00:23:40):
disciplinary tool,

(00:23:41):
too.

(00:23:41):
And not everyone is equally victimized under fascism.

(00:23:45):
And the whole goal is to get people to fall in line.

(00:23:48):
And it seems to track kind of perfectly with your theory of misogyny.

(00:23:52):
Do you think so?

(00:23:54):
Yeah, I really do.

(00:23:55):
I don't think that we can really understand and see the full force of the ills of

(00:24:03):
fascism without understanding misogyny as a model,

(00:24:07):
because this idea of domination and having people

(00:24:12):
forced into line such that it really becomes in their own interest to fall into a

(00:24:17):
line,

(00:24:19):
that is something that people practice within the family,

(00:24:22):
within the nuclear family in particular.

(00:24:25):
And so heteropatriarchy provides this model that then gets applied at the level of

(00:24:30):
the nation state to our

(00:24:33):
government,

(00:24:34):
to our leadership,

(00:24:35):
and to the way that citizens are constructed under fascism,

(00:24:41):
I think is very much owing to this model of how we can control people within the

(00:24:45):
family via a patriarchal head of a household.

(00:24:49):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:24:50):
Okay, so this reminds me of something that is happening in my city, Atlanta.

(00:24:55):
And I don't know

(00:24:57):
Well, I'll ask you, are you familiar with any of the like cop city stuff?

(00:25:02):
Has that made its way to you?

(00:25:04):
No.

(00:25:05):
Okay.

(00:25:05):
So I'll give you a brief overview because I think if you haven't heard about it,

(00:25:09):
probably a lot of listeners have not.

(00:25:10):
So Atlanta is a very progressive city.

(00:25:15):
It's majority black.

(00:25:16):
We almost always have black leaders.

(00:25:19):
It's just this little like bastion of progressivism in the Deep South.

(00:25:23):
And it's kind of always been that way.

(00:25:24):
This was the birthplace of the civil rights movement, just tons and tons of activism.

(00:25:30):
So it is no coincidence to me that a few years ago,

(00:25:36):
the Atlanta Police Foundation decided that they were going to build a center to

(00:25:41):
practice urban warfare in the middle of Atlanta.

(00:25:46):
And so they annexed this historically Black neighborhood that was essentially a forest.

(00:25:52):
And they've built this thing that they're calling Cop City.

(00:25:56):
And they're,

(00:25:57):
you know,

(00:25:58):
they're practicing fighting citizens and killing civilians and shutting down

(00:26:03):
protests there.

(00:26:04):
So there's been a huge protest movement trying to stop it.

(00:26:09):
I mean, our entire city has been like taken over by this protest.

(00:26:13):
And it culminated...

(00:26:15):
in the first killing ever of an environmental activist two years ago on the site

(00:26:23):
where they were going to build Cop City.

(00:26:24):
So like, what does this have to do with anything?

(00:26:26):
Well,

(00:26:27):
to me,

(00:26:29):
what's been most interesting is that we have a progressive mayor,

(00:26:33):
we have a progressive city council,

(00:26:35):
you know,

(00:26:35):
even like our police chiefs are supposed to be like pretty progressive.

(00:26:40):
And they have all fallen in line with building this Cop City thing.

(00:26:45):
And what has happened is that opposing this,

(00:26:48):
this just obviously awful offensive thing,

(00:26:52):
has become increasingly stigmatized,

(00:26:54):
even in progressive movements.

(00:26:56):
And so organizations that were sponsoring the opposition,

(00:27:01):
that were providing legal aid to the opposition,

(00:27:05):
are now not getting donors.

(00:27:08):
They're being put on no donation lists.

(00:27:12):
And among people who consider themselves activists,

(00:27:17):
among people who have,

(00:27:19):
you know,

(00:27:19):
risked things for leftist causes.

(00:27:21):
And so I feel like we've really seen the falling in line.

(00:27:26):
And as a result of the falling in line,

(00:27:29):
this cop city center that seemingly no one in the city wants has has finally opened

(00:27:35):
just a couple of weeks ago.

(00:27:37):
Oh my gosh, that's so awful.

(00:27:39):
I mean, gosh, just the opposite of what we need.

(00:27:42):
And it really reminds me of this point that I keep coming back to at the moment,

(00:27:48):
which is that fascist actions are usually straight out of the domestic violence

(00:27:54):
playbook.

(00:27:55):
Yes.

(00:27:57):
Like there's just a way in which they draw from these particular tactics of like

(00:28:02):
coercive control.

(00:28:04):
So you have

(00:28:05):
The intimidation,

(00:28:06):
the threats,

(00:28:08):
the way that even the equipment and the uniforms set up this enormously threatening

(00:28:19):
facade that can be used to control people.

(00:28:23):
because it's scary to oppose that kind of force, fairly obviously.

(00:28:29):
There's also the element of it that's reversing victim and offender.

(00:28:35):
So almost inevitably,

(00:28:37):
at the moment,

(00:28:39):
the people who are the offenders in the kind of civil rights violations that we see

(00:28:48):
being perpetrated by cops who

(00:28:52):
are committing things like state executions.

(00:28:56):
They are,

(00:28:56):
in fact,

(00:28:56):
the offenders,

(00:28:57):
but they're presented in a way as victims who need to defend themselves and who are

(00:29:03):
so vulnerable that they need this heavy duty military equipment in order to

(00:29:07):
survive,

(00:29:08):
despite the fact that in the vast majority of circumstances,

(00:29:12):
they're the aggressors.

(00:29:13):
They're the ones who are escalating.

(00:29:17):
They're the ones who are out of control.

(00:29:20):
And yeah,

(00:29:21):
you also have this aspect of it too that I keep thinking about,

(00:29:24):
which is the financial abuse and corruption.

(00:29:27):
Like a really good way to keep people in line is to make sure you control the purse

(00:29:31):
strings and that you can prevent them from doing certain things unless they do toe

(00:29:37):
the line,

(00:29:37):
unless they do know their place.

(00:29:40):
Yeah, that's such a good point.

(00:29:41):
I've been thinking a lot lately about how

(00:29:44):
Money enables people to escape fascism, sometimes without leaving, but oftentimes by leaving.

(00:29:51):
And so these threats to people's jobs,

(00:29:53):
inflation,

(00:29:55):
all of this really,

(00:29:56):
really threatens people's lives in a way that I think is unfamiliar to a lot of

(00:30:01):
people,

(00:30:01):
maybe.

(00:30:02):
Yeah.

(00:30:03):
Yeah, and very familiar to a lot of women.

(00:30:06):
So I see maybe a lack of tapping into that resource of we have people who both

(00:30:12):
theorize this,

(00:30:13):
but also people who have experienced that kind of coercive control and financial

(00:30:18):
abuse,

(00:30:18):
who could illuminate in a way the conditions of living under fascism,

(00:30:22):
because they have lived under fascist rule at home.

(00:30:26):
Oh, yeah, this is such an amazing point.

(00:30:30):
I

(00:30:31):
I hope you're going to write more about this because that's, that's totally what's happening.

(00:30:34):
And even with like the victim blaming,

(00:30:36):
we see how women get derided in family court as crazy and unhinged.

(00:30:41):
It's always that they're crazy.

(00:30:42):
And we do the same thing with protesters,

(00:30:44):
you know,

(00:30:44):
they just,

(00:30:44):
they just lost control and they're a threat and they're a terrorist and all that

(00:30:48):
kind of nonsense.

(00:30:49):
Yeah.

(00:30:49):
Yeah.

(00:30:50):
That's a really good connection too.

(00:30:52):
That's really important.

(00:30:53):
All right.

(00:30:54):
So speaking of domestic violence,

(00:30:56):
I want to talk about Entitled a little bit.

(00:30:59):
This is your second book where you talk about how men's entitlement affects women,

(00:31:04):
which I love because you're centering women instead of,

(00:31:08):
you know,

(00:31:08):
centering men.

(00:31:11):
I see so often in my own work how this entitlement manifests,

(00:31:15):
but also how women internalize it as like a male right.

(00:31:19):
So for example,

(00:31:21):
most women will say that they want equity and that men and women should have equal

(00:31:25):
opportunities and equal treatment and all of that.

(00:31:28):
But they feel guilty about asking men to give anything up.

(00:31:32):
And there's this idea that women asking men to give anything up is unfair.

(00:31:36):
So it's like, sure, you can have household equity, but he can't be sleep deprived.

(00:31:41):
He can't miss out on his hobbies.

(00:31:43):
He can't.

(00:31:44):
experience discomfort.

(00:31:46):
If he's sick, he needs to rest, which are things we definitely don't believe about women.

(00:31:53):
And I think that this has become like so normalized that it's not even really visible to us.

(00:31:57):
It's just the way things are,

(00:31:59):
which makes it even harder to disrupt because if you push on it,

(00:32:03):
it's like you're pushing on the fabric of the cosmos.

(00:32:07):
So I guess my question is like, one, how do we make that phenomenon as entitlement more

(00:32:15):
visible?

(00:32:16):
And what did you learn about how entitlement functions when you were writing your book?

(00:32:20):
That's beautifully put, Zahn.

(00:32:23):
I think there is this way of thinking about it that I've found very liberating in

(00:32:28):
my own life,

(00:32:29):
where you really have to see it as like two competing moral systems.

(00:32:36):
So in the patriarchal system where one question that a lot of readers naturally had

(00:32:43):
after my first book was like,

(00:32:45):
what is patriarchy today?

(00:32:46):
I think in a way that question is less salient now because we've seen just such

(00:32:55):
revanchism that people are less skeptical.

(00:32:58):
But at the time,

(00:32:59):
when I published my first book in 2017,

(00:33:02):
like just the week the Me Too movement was popularized after having,

(00:33:07):
of course,

(00:33:08):
been led by Tarana Burke for over a decade,

(00:33:11):
people were wondering,

(00:33:12):
well,

(00:33:12):
what are these norms and expectations in this superficially more egalitarian,

(00:33:18):
some people would say post-feminist moment where,

(00:33:21):
I mean,

(00:33:22):
no surprises,

(00:33:23):
I don't think we're

(00:33:24):
anything like a post-feminist or egalitarian society, unfortunately, yet.

(00:33:31):
But the answer that I came up with and that really animated my second book was the

(00:33:35):
idea that these norms and expectations are taking this form of men feeling entitled

(00:33:42):
to certain goods from women,

(00:33:45):
especially women who they're in relationship with.

(00:33:48):
So he feels entitled to

(00:33:50):
both in the kind of dating world of an Elliot Rodger,

(00:33:54):
but also within patriarchal households after partnership or marriage,

(00:33:59):
and especially after children,

(00:34:01):
he feels entitled to sex,

(00:34:03):
yes,

(00:34:04):
but just as insidiously to love and service and labor and...

(00:34:10):
material labor,

(00:34:12):
emotional labor,

(00:34:13):
domestic labor,

(00:34:15):
reproductive labor,

(00:34:16):
he feels entitled to children from her,

(00:34:20):
namely his female partner,

(00:34:22):
in ways that are not reciprocal.

(00:34:25):
So instead of her being deemed entitled to

(00:34:29):
love and affection and admiration in kind,

(00:34:32):
she's deemed obligated to provide the goods that he's entitled to receive.

(00:34:38):
And this sets up a really powerful moral framework where it makes sense of the fact

(00:34:43):
that when a woman asks for what is actually morally required,

(00:34:49):
namely equity,

(00:34:51):
fairness within a household,

(00:34:53):
she's pushing against moral ideas that are very entrenched.

(00:34:57):
which say that not only is she not entitled to equal labor from her male partner,

(00:35:05):
typically a husband,

(00:35:06):
she is actually doing him wrong by insisting upon equity,

(00:35:11):
according to this old framework that kind of sticks around.

(00:35:15):
We have this moral hangover of

(00:35:18):
from patriarchy that is both something some people still explicitly believe in,

(00:35:24):
but it's also something that many people implicitly believe in,

(00:35:29):
even when they think of themselves as more progressive.

(00:35:33):
So yeah, the idea that women would feel really guilty and

(00:35:39):
in a way,

(00:35:40):
mean or unfair and subsequently ashamed for asking for what they are genuinely due

(00:35:46):
to to get in moral reality.

(00:35:48):
I think that makes sense in light of the fact that there is this old moral

(00:35:54):
framework that says she's not entitled to those things.

(00:35:57):
She's obligated to provide her husband with them.

(00:36:00):
Yeah, that's that's such a good point.

(00:36:02):
One of the things that I have seen that just

(00:36:05):
Makes me like banana pants in my interactions with people is my husband and I like

(00:36:11):
really have an equitable relationship,

(00:36:13):
not like equitable except for this thing,

(00:36:15):
which I think is what like a lot of people have.

(00:36:17):
And so like I write about it in my work because I want people to know that this is not innate.

(00:36:22):
This is a choice.

(00:36:23):
Totally.

(00:36:24):
And one of the pieces of feedback I get from readers and,

(00:36:29):
like,

(00:36:29):
acquaintances is,

(00:36:31):
well,

(00:36:32):
but then why is he with you?

(00:36:34):
Like, why does this feel like a good deal to him?

(00:36:37):
It's like, well, I'm great.

(00:36:39):
Like, I'm awesome.

(00:36:40):
Yes.

(00:36:41):
I mean, yes.

(00:36:43):
But I think,

(00:36:44):
like,

(00:36:44):
it goes – and these are,

(00:36:45):
like,

(00:36:45):
good people who don't see themselves as sexist and all of that and who like me and

(00:36:52):
think I'm great –

(00:36:54):
But it just goes to show that we really have great difficulty seeing women as

(00:36:59):
anything other than appliances,

(00:37:01):
basically.

(00:37:02):
Yeah, bundles of convenient services.

(00:37:06):
And yeah,

(00:37:06):
I think distinctively human services,

(00:37:08):
like a lot of the services are loving and giving,

(00:37:12):
nurturing in ways that only human beings can do.

(00:37:14):
You know, it's also interesting that comment because it really underestimates your husband.

(00:37:20):
So I am often accused of being overly pessimistic about all of this,

(00:37:25):
but I tell people in a way,

(00:37:28):
a lot of what I'm saying springs from a place of hope.

(00:37:32):
and trust that men can do better.

(00:37:35):
And I know it's possible because it's actual.

(00:37:37):
Like,

(00:37:38):
my own husband,

(00:37:38):
too,

(00:37:39):
is a genuinely co-equal parent,

(00:37:42):
sometimes more so when I'm in particularly busy work periods because I'm the mean

(00:37:46):
breadwinner.

(00:37:48):
And he is a just really...

(00:37:52):
deeply serious feminist.

(00:37:54):
And it sounds like your husband is too,

(00:37:56):
in the sense that there are lots of men who don't want to take advantage of social

(00:38:01):
permissions that say you could get away with an immoral system where you're

(00:38:06):
exploiting someone.

(00:38:08):
And some men...

(00:38:10):
you know,

(00:38:10):
and this is a real credit to them,

(00:38:12):
will opt out of that and say,

(00:38:13):
no,

(00:38:14):
I want to live fairly and justly.

(00:38:16):
And what's in it for me is partly that you're great and I'm great.

(00:38:21):
But it's also that I think there are

(00:38:26):
really people in the world who don't want to take advantage of oppressive and

(00:38:30):
exploitative systems and movements like feminist social progressive movements and

(00:38:37):
anti-racist movements rely on there being people who don't want to take advantage

(00:38:43):
of unjust privilege.

(00:38:44):
They want to help dismantle it.

(00:38:47):
Absolutely.

(00:38:47):
Well, and like, so I'm really skeptical of this whole like feminism is for men too.

(00:38:53):
Feminism benefits men too.

(00:38:56):
Because like, yes, it does.

(00:38:57):
But men should be feminists even if it doesn't benefit them.

(00:39:02):
But I do think like it's really important to help people understand that

(00:39:06):
participating in a system like this

(00:39:09):
is inherently degrading and it degrades the oppressors and the participants just as

(00:39:14):
much as it degrades the victims.

(00:39:16):
And also the thing that I see with men constantly is that misogyny erodes their

(00:39:23):
ability to think clearly and critically.

(00:39:26):
It like turns them into not...

(00:39:29):
fully human.

(00:39:30):
They're just like replicating patriarchy.

(00:39:33):
And like, who wants that?

(00:39:35):
Who really wants to live that way?

(00:39:37):
Like,

(00:39:37):
don't you want to live a full life and,

(00:39:40):
you know,

(00:39:41):
die without regrets,

(00:39:42):
like having known that you've had

(00:39:44):
meaningful relationships?

(00:39:45):
I mean, I don't know, call me crazy, but that seems like a better way to be.

(00:39:48):
Yeah,

(00:39:49):
well,

(00:39:50):
certainly the leadership of this country is not an advertisement for the clarity of

(00:39:54):
thinking engendered by imbibing patriarchal norms.

(00:39:58):
I think, yeah, we really need to separate out two things here.

(00:40:02):
There's this idea that feminism helps men because...

(00:40:07):
There are various self-interested reasons for men to do the right thing.

(00:40:11):
And that can be true, but it can also be false.

(00:40:14):
Like there are things that men will genuinely have to give up when it comes to a

(00:40:20):
more egalitarian household or state.

(00:40:26):
And yes,

(00:40:26):
there are also benefits that are real in their own interests,

(00:40:31):
like having real meaningful relationships with their children,

(00:40:36):
which was much less possible under patriarchal law.

(00:40:41):
But the really important thing is that

(00:40:45):
It's the moral reasons that trump all of those self-interested reasons.

(00:40:51):
Just as there are moral reasons for people who are white like us to divest from

(00:40:56):
racism,

(00:40:58):
there are moral reasons that are overriding for men to divest from patriarchy.

(00:41:03):
And so whether or not it's in their individual self-interest in any given case,

(00:41:08):
morally speaking,

(00:41:10):
they ought to be feminists.

(00:41:11):
And that's enough.

(00:41:13):
It's actually enough.

(00:41:15):
I love that.

(00:41:16):
That is enough.

(00:41:17):
So my husband and I recorded a podcast,

(00:41:19):
I think two nights ago where he was drinking a beer and just like really talking

(00:41:25):
about things.

(00:41:26):
And like one of the things that he mentioned was this very small interaction we had

(00:41:31):
where he was taking the toddler to her little pre-K class and he had like forgotten

(00:41:36):
her baby potty.

(00:41:37):
And so like we had to like negotiate how we were going to get the baby potty to her.

(00:41:41):
And what he pointed out is that like every step of the way,

(00:41:44):
there were like all of these excuses that he could use to make me do the work.

(00:41:49):
And any of them by themselves would seem like genuine excuses.

(00:41:55):
It wouldn't seem like misogyny.

(00:41:56):
Like, oh, I have a deposition and I can't be late.

(00:41:58):
Or I have this thing and I have to be ready.

(00:42:00):
Or I already did most of the driving.

(00:42:03):
And like all of those seem perfectly reasonable.

(00:42:06):
Yeah.

(00:42:07):
And then like,

(00:42:08):
if you just continue making all of those perfectly reasonable excuses,

(00:42:11):
it just adds up to like a lifetime of the woman doing everything.

(00:42:16):
So I think like,

(00:42:18):
I think men need to consider what reasonable sounding things they argue that are

(00:42:23):
not either reasonable or fair.

(00:42:26):
I think that is exactly right.

(00:42:27):
And I think that as women,

(00:42:30):
we often need to ask ourselves to like,

(00:42:33):
is this merely tolerable as a domestic arrangement or is this genuinely fair and

(00:42:39):
equitable?

(00:42:39):
And not to victim blame,

(00:42:41):
but just to say in a liberating spirit,

(00:42:44):
like if you're not getting as much sleep as your male partner,

(00:42:47):
you're entitled to that.

(00:42:49):
You're entitled to more sleep.

(00:42:51):
And if you're not getting as much leisure time, you are entitled to that.

(00:42:55):
And entitlement to me is not a dirty word.

(00:42:58):
Like I wanted to make that clear in my second book.

(00:43:00):
People are genuinely entitled to lots of things.

(00:43:03):
We're entitled to respect and to be treated non-exploitatively.

(00:43:08):
And,

(00:43:09):
you know,

(00:43:09):
we're entitled to good health care and to be cared for at home in a reciprocal and

(00:43:14):
mutually supportive way by loved ones.

(00:43:17):
It's just that women often get...

(00:43:20):
really overburdened with obligation, particularly when it comes to caregiving.

(00:43:25):
And we get really short shrift when it comes to what we're genuinely entitled to,

(00:43:30):
especially from male partners who,

(00:43:32):
yeah,

(00:43:33):
I loved the way that you put this before.

(00:43:36):
And it's also so important and something you've done to highlight so beautifully in your work.

(00:43:43):
The idea that women are just not getting cared for when they're ill or when they've

(00:43:49):
just had a child,

(00:43:51):
when they have just had major abdominal surgery in many cases or severe pelvic

(00:43:55):
trauma from birth,

(00:43:57):
we're still oftentimes not getting that basic care and love and support that should

(00:44:03):
be part of every healthy relationship in a reciprocal way over time.

(00:44:09):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:44:10):
All right.

(00:44:11):
So we're talking about all the reasons that men should be feminists,

(00:44:15):
that it would be better if they were feminists,

(00:44:17):
that it makes sense for them to be feminists.

(00:44:20):
And yet most of them are not.

(00:44:23):
And even the ones who are, are often extremely disappointing and don't behave as feminists.

(00:44:30):
So I want to talk a little bit about Bernard Williams, because I think that

(00:44:37):
an internalist position kind of helps explain a little bit of this.

(00:44:40):
So let me try to explain,

(00:44:43):
and then you can correct me,

(00:44:45):
chastise me,

(00:44:46):
and expand on what I've had to say.

(00:44:48):
So you advocate for this internalist position, which is basically that

(00:44:54):
A person does not have sufficient reason to endorse a moral claim if they cannot

(00:44:58):
internally justify that moral claim.

(00:45:00):
So like no specific piece of evidence or fact about the world necessarily motivates

(00:45:05):
action independent of what a person thinks or wants.

(00:45:11):
You wrote about this early in your career.

(00:45:12):
I think we see this a lot in patriarchy and I think we see this idea in your work.

(00:45:17):
So say something about that, Kate.

(00:45:20):
Well, I think you put it beautifully, Zahn.

(00:45:22):
I think there is this powerful idea that we do find in Bernard Williams,

(00:45:27):
which is called internalism about reasons.

(00:45:31):
And it's basically the idea that you don't have a reason to do something as an

(00:45:36):
agent unless in some sense that speaks to something you care about or desire or are

(00:45:42):
motivated by.

(00:45:44):
And one of his examples of this,

(00:45:46):
which I now suspect actually got me into thinking about internalism and being very

(00:45:52):
sympathetic to this position and ultimately defending it,

(00:45:55):
is the case of the callous husband.

(00:45:58):
So this is in his 1995 paper, Internalism, about reasons and the obscurity of blame.

(00:46:06):
So it's a follow up to his original piece, Internal and External Reasons.

(00:46:09):
Yeah.

(00:46:10):
And he has this husband who we're trying to motivate to be nicer to his wife,

(00:46:18):
even though he treats her quite brutally.

(00:46:21):
And Williams has us imagine ourselves into the position of someone trying to reason

(00:46:26):
with this husband and saying,

(00:46:29):
but don't you understand?

(00:46:31):
It's your wife.

(00:46:32):
You have reasons to be nicer to your wife.

(00:46:35):
And the callous husband responds, don't you understand?

(00:46:39):
I don't care.

(00:46:40):
I really don't care.

(00:46:42):
And what Williams says about this case is that we can say various things about this

(00:46:48):
husband,

(00:46:48):
that he's nasty,

(00:46:50):
brutal,

(00:46:51):
sexist,

(00:46:52):
other disadvantageous things.

(00:46:55):
But the one thing that we can't say anymore is that he has a reason to be nicer.

(00:47:01):
And the thought,

(00:47:02):
I think,

(00:47:02):
or so I've argued,

(00:47:03):
is that rational conversation has met with its limits there.

(00:47:08):
He doesn't have a reason because he's not open to rational persuasion on this

(00:47:14):
point,

(00:47:15):
because there's nothing in his heart,

(00:47:17):
as it were,

(00:47:18):
in his,

(00:47:19):
as Williams puts it,

(00:47:20):
motivational set,

(00:47:22):
that you can kind of appeal to,

(00:47:24):
to get him into this way of seeing things are right.

(00:47:29):
So it's not that he's somehow okay,

(00:47:31):
he's a bad guy,

(00:47:33):
but we have really hit up against something that matters,

(00:47:38):
which is he genuinely doesn't care about being nicer to his wife in ways that mean

(00:47:44):
rational persuasion and reasonable conversation is off the table.

(00:47:49):
And so we have to do something else.

(00:47:51):
We have to, for example, try to get

(00:47:55):
his wife to leave this guy rather than trying to persuade him to be nicer.

(00:48:01):
It's time for her to sever relations with him,

(00:48:05):
maybe for us to sever relations with him,

(00:48:08):
at least until he does care about what he ought to care about.

(00:48:13):
I love it that a man writing in 1995

(00:48:18):
seemed to appreciate what's happening with this particular dynamic more than a lot

(00:48:24):
of the,

(00:48:24):
like,

(00:48:25):
feminist therapists and influencers,

(00:48:28):
self-proclaimed experts,

(00:48:30):
seem to now,

(00:48:31):
30 years later,

(00:48:33):
like,

(00:48:33):
can we just be done with this argument?

(00:48:35):
Can we just accept that he doesn't care, that it's not that he doesn't understand, or that he...

(00:48:42):
Need something explained to him?

(00:48:45):
Can that one be done?

(00:48:46):
Can you speak on behalf of philosophy and declare that debate over, please?

(00:48:50):
I think that's so right.

(00:48:52):
I mean, I was really struck when I read Jancy Dunn's book.

(00:48:57):
how not to hate your husband after kids,

(00:49:00):
which I have a whole chapter in entitled about it because it made me so sad.

(00:49:06):
And yeah,

(00:49:07):
the basic premise of the book is her husband does less than 5% of the child rearing

(00:49:15):
and domestic labor,

(00:49:17):
despite the fact that they both have very similar full-time careers as freelance

(00:49:22):
writers.

(00:49:23):
So it's radically unfair

(00:49:25):
And she's trying not to hate him instead of like divorcing his ass and moving on.

(00:49:30):
And I mean, I don't blame her.

(00:49:33):
It's understandable.

(00:49:34):
But I also feel like so frustrated throughout this book because the project is how

(00:49:40):
not to hate him instead of how to free yourself from this completely unfeasible

(00:49:46):
situation.

(00:49:47):
And they eventually go to a marriage therapist who says, oh, here's the problem.

(00:49:52):
He's entitled.

(00:49:53):
No, I'm on your side, Jancy, the wife who wrote the book.

(00:49:59):
He says, like, this isn't a situation where there's, you know, wrong on both sides.

(00:50:06):
He is irredeemably entitled.

(00:50:09):
And yes, like, you could do this or that differently, but...

(00:50:14):
basically he needs to change or else um and I don't think he ever does and I don't

(00:50:22):
think that ever materializes into a situation that does seem feasible like the book

(00:50:31):
ends with um yeah she's still doing almost all the labor and she's still crying and

(00:50:37):
um

(00:50:39):
Yeah,

(00:50:39):
she still needs the box of tissues that the therapist handed her in the office

(00:50:43):
because it's unsustainable.

(00:50:47):
And she is rightly furious and sad about the fact that her husband simply does not

(00:50:54):
care about being nicer to his wife.

(00:50:57):
Yeah, it's so sad.

(00:50:59):
And there are so many books like this.

(00:51:01):
I remember years ago,

(00:51:05):
I would read a feminist book where she mentioned in passing her husband,

(00:51:10):
not

(00:51:11):
participating in household labor and parenting.

(00:51:14):
And I would get like so frustrated because it was like, but why?

(00:51:18):
Like you writing as a feminist don't even see women as like fully human,

(00:51:22):
that you're accepting this.

(00:51:24):
And it took me a long time to understand how incredibly victim blaming that is

(00:51:29):
because what's really happening is that there are so many structural barriers to

(00:51:33):
women leaving that I think women have to play a lot of tricks on themselves to just

(00:51:37):
accept these horrible circumstances and

(00:51:41):
But I just wish we could all collectively say, fuck all of those dudes.

(00:51:46):
Let's stop talking about why they're doing it and start talking about how we build

(00:51:50):
a system where women can safely leave.

(00:51:54):
That is so right.

(00:51:55):
I mean, I've been really radicalized on this by Liz Lenz's book.

(00:51:59):
My friend Liz wrote the book, This American Ex-Wife, which is fantastic.

(00:52:04):
And it's really just making the argument that historically and currently marriage

(00:52:11):
does not serve women when it is heterosexual marriage,

(00:52:15):
at least.

(00:52:16):
And that, yeah, rather than all of these band-aids and stopgap solutions,

(00:52:23):
If you're in a relationship that is deeply inequitable and where you're not able to

(00:52:27):
flourish and grow,

(00:52:28):
then it's not to say you can necessarily leave because of these deep sources of

(00:52:35):
structural barriers to doing so.

(00:52:38):
But ideally, that would be what would happen.

(00:52:41):
And we need to work towards making it the case that that's both de-stigmatized and

(00:52:45):
also that it's financially viable.

(00:52:49):
So Liz Linz's book has been particularly gratifying to me because I read,

(00:52:54):
I think it was her last book.

(00:52:55):
There might've been one in between the two, Belabored.

(00:52:59):
And I remember getting so upset about the marriage dynamics she talked about in

(00:53:06):
that book that I was actually having nightmares about her and her husband.

(00:53:11):
Oh, wow.

(00:53:12):
And I had to stop reading it.

(00:53:14):
And I was just like, please,

(00:53:17):
please, can we leave this man behind?

(00:53:19):
And so when this book came out and the man had been left behind, I was just triumphant.

(00:53:26):
I was so happy because it was like the last book set up the plot for this one,

(00:53:31):
even though it's,

(00:53:32):
you know,

(00:53:32):
another human being's life rather than a plot.

(00:53:35):
But it's so good.

(00:53:36):
I had a similar feeling when,

(00:53:38):
I mean,

(00:53:39):
even though I knew the ending,

(00:53:42):
which in a way is announced by the title,

(00:53:45):
This American Ex-Wife,

(00:53:47):
When she describes leaving for 24 hours for,

(00:53:52):
I think it's a work commitment and she leaves her two kids with her husband and

(00:53:58):
then she comes home and the trash is just on the floor.

(00:54:02):
Like he hasn't taken out the trash.

(00:54:03):
And so like garbage juice is leaking all over the floor and

(00:54:07):
where it leaves a stain.

(00:54:08):
I just like threw the book across the room because I'm like,

(00:54:12):
what grown adult doesn't take out the fucking trash?

(00:54:16):
I mean,

(00:54:17):
it's just like having these amazing,

(00:54:21):
brilliant,

(00:54:22):
incredible women in relationships where just the most basic reciprocity and

(00:54:29):
self-care and care for children and households is somehow meant to be beyond full

(00:54:35):
grown adults because

(00:54:37):
They're they happen to have a particular gender like that is wild to me.

(00:54:42):
That is absolutely wild.

(00:54:44):
Well,

(00:54:45):
and it becomes so clear how this is a deliberate act of like undermining her life's

(00:54:51):
work and her potential.

(00:54:52):
And this is what I see all the time is these brilliant women who.

(00:54:58):
are at the top of their career.

(00:55:00):
I've talked to two women recently,

(00:55:02):
two different women who are math professors who have been heavily recruited by

(00:55:09):
universities to move across the country or across the globe.

(00:55:13):
And these universities are just like throwing money at them because they're so good

(00:55:17):
at their work.

(00:55:19):
And then the men at home are just like digging at them constantly.

(00:55:24):
And I'm like, these women have done so much with so little support.

(00:55:28):
Like what more would they do if they were either single or with a partner who

(00:55:33):
actually supported them?

(00:55:34):
Like,

(00:55:36):
we're just like,

(00:55:37):
we're really not even getting to see everything that women are capable of because

(00:55:40):
we're just like,

(00:55:42):
collectively pulling on their feet constantly.

(00:55:45):
Yeah.

(00:55:46):
Yeah.

(00:55:46):
That's totally right.

(00:55:47):
And it's tragic.

(00:55:48):
I mean,

(00:55:49):
just think about the loss of talent and just all of the women who could be doing

(00:55:55):
those amazing things or doing more amazing things or simply having more fun.

(00:56:00):
But for this kind of patriarchal

(00:56:04):
situation, which again, you're totally right, is not inevitable.

(00:56:07):
I'm pretty optimistic that lots of people could do better.

(00:56:13):
And even if the husband,

(00:56:16):
the callous husband of William's imagination doesn't care,

(00:56:19):
I think a lot more boys could be raised to care and to really take this seriously

(00:56:24):
earlier on,

(00:56:24):
in which case I think they could be motivated to not want to exploit women they're

(00:56:31):
in relationship with.

(00:56:33):
Yeah.

(00:56:33):
Yeah, I'm seeing it already.

(00:56:35):
So my oldest is in second grade.

(00:56:37):
And I'm starting to see like a little bit of the entitlement with boys,

(00:56:42):
especially with like crushes.

(00:56:43):
And my daughter is just like amazing at setting firm boundaries.

(00:56:48):
It's just a remarkable thing to see.

(00:56:51):
and like i'm seeing these boys learn it's you know that's imagine that imagine like

(00:56:58):
having boundaries around your behavior teaching you and they're like oh well i

(00:57:02):
didn't i didn't realize that was hurting you like okay let's do it differently and

(00:57:07):
it's like they're seven and eight and they they can do it so we're just about done

(00:57:13):
we didn't even get to talk about your latest book on shrinking and

(00:57:16):
So I'm going to put it in the show notes.

(00:57:18):
But if you would like to say a little bit about that book, please do.

(00:57:22):
Oh, yeah, sure.

(00:57:24):
So the premise of it is basically that you can't understand misogyny without also

(00:57:29):
understanding fat phobia,

(00:57:30):
because,

(00:57:31):
look,

(00:57:32):
I think fat phobia affects...

(00:57:34):
really almost all of us in some ways,

(00:57:37):
but it affects people who are fat and female,

(00:57:40):
particularly insidiously.

(00:57:43):
And that's because think about it like this.

(00:57:45):
If patriarchy was deliberately designing a tool to control us and make us small,

(00:57:54):
meek,

(00:57:55):
quiet,

(00:57:56):
hungry,

(00:57:57):
spending enormous amounts of time,

(00:57:59):
energy,

(00:57:59):
money and bandwidth on

(00:58:02):
this,

(00:58:02):
in fact,

(00:58:03):
futile task of shrinking our bodies,

(00:58:05):
because for most people,

(00:58:07):
we can lose weight temporarily,

(00:58:09):
but the weight comes back nearly inexorably,

(00:58:11):
according to most studies.

(00:58:13):
Yeah, it would be a perfect tool for social control.

(00:58:16):
So in order to think seriously about

(00:58:20):
patriarchy and misogyny I think we also need to think about fatness and think about

(00:58:24):
ways in which women are told to be thin in a way that isn't just shaming or makes

(00:58:33):
us feel bad about ourselves it also means that we lose so much life and we get so

(00:58:40):
controlled by this goal that um

(00:58:44):
Yeah,

(00:58:44):
we're not able to be truly liberated,

(00:58:46):
I think,

(00:58:47):
until we see our bodies as valid,

(00:58:50):
regardless of size and shape.

(00:58:53):
Yeah, it's a great book.

(00:58:54):
It's very research intense.

(00:58:57):
If you find yourself bristling at the idea of fat phobia,

(00:59:00):
that's a sign that you really need to read the book.

(00:59:04):
I think those are the folks who really need this book the most are the people who

(00:59:09):
either think that they're bad because they haven't lost weight or think that other

(00:59:13):
people are bad because they haven't lost weight.

(00:59:16):
Totally.

(00:59:18):
Thank you so much.

(00:59:19):
This has been amazing.

(00:59:20):
You are amazing.

(00:59:22):
I'm so glad to talk to you.

(00:59:24):
Thank you so much.

(00:59:25):
This has just been such a fun and in all the best ways confronting conversation.

(00:59:32):
So I'm just glad to be confronting these truths with you and your audience.

(00:59:37):
Well, thank you.

(00:59:38):
To everyone else,

(00:59:40):
if you like the podcast,

(00:59:41):
I hope you will consider sharing,

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(00:59:47):
It really does help make it more visible so that more people can find it.

(00:59:51):
Also,

(00:59:51):
if you would consider leaving a positive review on your favorite podcast platform,

(00:59:56):
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(00:59:58):
which means that I can do more episodes.

(01:00:01):
Thank you so much, as always, for listening, and I will be back in two weeks.