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I started a blog,

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nothing super public or interesting,

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just for myself and some friends because I like to write.

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The hate mail started right away.

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So did the feedback.

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People correcting my grammatical errors,

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telling me my arguments were weak,

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chipping away at my work.

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This was a small blog.

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I'm not a celebrity.

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And when I talked about politics, it wasn't even my main focus.

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This was just me talking.

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Talking was enough to bring out more hate than I was prepared to manage.

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Finally, there was a rape threat or two.

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I ultimately shut it down.

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And then I read Kate Mann's work about misogyny policing women who push back.

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And that's when I knew.

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I knew what had happened to me.

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Hi, I'm Zahn Valines, and this is the Liberating Motherhood podcast.

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I'm here today with my guest, the philosopher Kate Mann.

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Hi, Kate.

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Hi, Zahn.

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It's great to be back.

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I'm so glad to have you here.

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So Kate is a friend of the show and has been on before.

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So I'm not going to spend a ton of time introducing her,

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but suffice it to say she's amazing,

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brilliant,

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and kind,

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and I love her.

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I'll put all of her information in the show notes, all of her books, and all of that.

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But the reason that I brought Kate on today is that I have been thinking a lot

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about what it means to be a public feminist,

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what it means to be a public woman,

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what it means to be a woman who succeeds at all in your chosen field,

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and how

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misogyny just chips away at it and chips away at it.

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And I started writing something about it and I kept referencing Kate and I thought,

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well,

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Kate and I should just talk about this on the podcast.

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So that's what we're doing.

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I'm so glad to have this conversation because it's something that's rarely not on

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my mind in some form too.

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Yeah, it is hot out there.

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It's so dark.

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So I think

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I think that most people who follow your work or my work or any feminist or who

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really know anything about being a woman in the world,

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I think they know that you get threats and that people are mean and awful.

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But they may not know the extent of it and they may not know that it's not just

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threats that are awful.

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So I thought maybe we could start by talking about...

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What do our inboxes look like?

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Like, what are you hearing from people?

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And what am I hearing from people?

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And like, how does that affect you?

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Yeah, so I will say that my inbox looked very different in the age of Twitter, where

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I would just get a pretty steady stream of sometimes threatening,

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sometimes merely insulting,

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sometimes very patronizing and sometimes very mansplaining kinds of emails,

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um,

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saying why I was wrong to be a feminist,

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why I was everything wrong with America today.

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uh, why I was wrong in some particular view.

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Um, so I've attracted a lot of heat for always having been a family trans inclusive feminist.

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Um,

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and whenever I've written about race and racism in this country,

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I've also gotten a lot of,

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um,

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pushback to the effect of being some kind of race traitor,

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which is often mixed in with various,

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um,

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strands of anti-Semitism because I'm Jewish and people seem to know that even

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though at the time often that information wasn't particularly easy to find,

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not because I hide it,

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but because it's not been particularly relevant in my own work.

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Yeah, how about you?

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Yeah, so it's sort of similar.

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You know, I

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probably like everybody have like paid to have my information removed from the

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internet because it's,

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it's really scary.

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And like every time I'm in my garden and someone drives by and slows down to like,

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look at my garden,

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I'm like,

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Oh,

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is,

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is this it?

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Like, are they here to shoot me now?

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Because that's what it's come to mean to be a woman in the public eye.

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And like,

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when I say like a woman in the public eye,

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like I want to clarify that,

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like,

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I don't mean celebrities or like well-known writers or influencers.

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Like,

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I mean,

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any woman who has established any positive reputation,

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like if you're a successful lawyer,

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if you're a successful doctor,

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you know,

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if you pretty much anywhere,

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if you attain some success,

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you're going to end up with this kind of hate.

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So there's the incel bit.

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And I use incel as like a catch all term for violent men.

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But then I've begun to see something new creep in that has

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really only started once I started my sub stack.

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And you and I were talking about this a little bit before we started recording.

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The people with whom we have these parasocial relationships who feel like they know

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us and as a result,

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feel a sense of ownership.

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And they will give you feedback

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that on its surface seems well-meaning,

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and maybe sometimes it is,

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but the net effect of getting so much of that feedback all day,

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every day,

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is that first,

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you can't respond to or acknowledge at all.

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And secondly,

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it's just this like avalanche of negativity and often very personal negativity of,

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you know,

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I really think you need to work on this thing about your personality is like the

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tone.

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Yeah.

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It is really interesting and it's a really distinctive double standard along the

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lines of gender.

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So women get this.

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I think some other gender marginalized people get this and men by and large don't.

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That if we're a public figure of any kind, there is a sense that people know us personally.

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And that goes beyond having a parasocial relationship with us.

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It's even if there is no parasocial relationship and no contact and really nothing

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there,

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people feel like there is this personal connection in virtue of which we owe them.

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certain kinds of time, certain kinds of explanation, certain kinds of personal attentiveness.

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I mean,

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I often get emails that I really doubt my male colleagues get where people will say

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things like,

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hi,

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Kate,

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you know,

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not Dr.

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Mann or Professor Mann.

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And

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That's fine,

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but I'm fine with people calling me Kate,

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but it's already sort of that distinctive sense that there's no need for formality,

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which I would kind of prefer to be the one to say that.

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And then the email will be this very personal request for advice or help

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understanding my theories when they'll say something like,

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well,

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I haven't read your books,

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but I...

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heard you once give an interview

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could you break down the distinction between sexism and misogyny for me?

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Because that sounded interesting and I'd like to hear more.

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It's like,

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well,

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you know,

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I in a way would love to help,

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but I also get so many demands of my time.

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I am a committed teacher.

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I'm a full-time professor.

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I mentor a lot of people informally and I'm happy to do so.

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If it's someone who I don't actually have any relationship with,

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I do try to respond and I try to respond kindly because I do value that,

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but it's also exhausting.

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And it's this sense that I personally owe them time,

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explanation and information that is very much out there.

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Like you can just go look up my stuff and read it.

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Yeah.

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I mean, exact same.

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And I had this, so I had this revelation recently and I can't believe it's taken me

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so many years to reach it,

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but I think I'm right about this and you can tell me if you agree that,

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you know,

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I do the work that I do because like I genuinely care about people.

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I care about these issues as social issues,

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but I care about the individual human beings that they affect.

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And,

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you know,

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often get very like personally invested in,

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you know,

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women who reach out to me for help and often try to help.

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And I think that

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you know, me caring about people comes through in my work, as is the case for you.

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Like when I go through your comments,

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I often see that like you have responded to like every single comment and often

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with substantive,

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like really warm,

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caring comments.

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And I think that's laudable and good.

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But I also think that the more we do that and the more it becomes apparent how much

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we care,

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the more that gets weaponized and the more people expect that.

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more care and they expect you to respond to like what I can only characterize as

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kind of like passive aggressive tantrums when you don't give them what they want.

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Yeah, that's so real.

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I mean, and sometimes there simply isn't enough time in the day.

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And I do,

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like I said,

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I'm someone who my general thought often morally is that the male standard is

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wrong.

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the standard that women have been adhering to is more demanding morally,

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but is the correct one.

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So I feel that about kindness and interpersonal warmth.

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And I'm not someone who feels all that comfortable saying a flat no, or just ignoring an email.

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Like I really do try to respond.

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I don't always succeed,

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but it gets harder when there is this sense of personal obligation,

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which,

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is both it doesn't scale very well,

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so people don't always stop to consider that,

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yes,

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this might be a relatively small request that only takes me half an hour to look up

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this set of references for them or get them these files for these various syllabi

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that they want or whatever it is.

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But if I'm doing that 10 times a day, it becomes not viable.

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And then it's not that I think that people shouldn't do that,

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but the standards they hold me to and you to,

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and I think that they tend to hold women to in general.

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is if we don't reach out in that kind of personal way and give people a sense of

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real connection and real attention and real like put emotional labor into it then

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we're kind of a bitch and that's just misogyny like again I wish I had more hours

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in a day and I wish that I in a way didn't have two full-time jobs in running a

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substack and being a professor but

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unfortunately like that means I have to sometimes prioritize and I also have a

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young child and a family and I occasionally like to have a moment to myself which

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doesn't happen very much but yeah there is this fear all the time of the I would

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say specifically moralism that attends any woman who asks for too much or is

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perceived as not giving enough

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And I think generally the thing is we are giving enough and we take the obligation

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to give back very seriously.

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Like you, I only do this because I care about people.

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And if someone is in crisis and they can only reach out to me, I am going to respond to that.

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And on the other hand,

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like if someone needs me to essentially photocopy a bunch of materials for them and

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act as a research assistant,

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that can be too much to expect from someone who is as strapped for time as I

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currently am.

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And I just want to be not punished or hated for effectively having to say no

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sometimes or yeah,

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or for

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not giving as much as is required ironically because i'm relatively well known as

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someone who has coined distinctions like the idea of women as human givers um yeah

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it's it's wild how someone can read all of that work and then approach you in that

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way but i see kind of these parallels with

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this approach to our work and really like any woman's work and how we handle

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household labor,

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where we have this idea that what a woman needs is a want.

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It's her being entitled.

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So like your need to sleep,

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to eat,

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to not respond to every email,

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that's just you being entitled and kind of selfish and kind of bitchy.

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But everyone else's desire to get a detailed personal response from you,

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you know,

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that's a moral obligation.

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And that's like that moralism that you're talking about where it's just completely

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flipped on its head.

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And it's exactly what we see with household labor of,

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you know,

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well,

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you know,

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we're just being bitchy when we complain about men not doing an equitable share.

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You know, we're being entitled and it's, you know, this is a privileged woman's problem.

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Um,

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when it's,

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it's the reverse,

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it's the person who is demanding the labor,

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who's being entitled and awful.

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I mean,

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seriously,

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I also just think,

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and this is kind of,

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um,

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maybe some people will perceive this connection readily and for others,

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it will sound like a stretch,

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but I'm just going to go out on a limb and say,

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this is one reason why it's so hard in this country to,

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to get a female president elected.

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Because once you have a public figure who is a public figure to absolutely

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everyone,

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so unlike someone like me,

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who is only known to

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you know, a tiny niche of people in comparison.

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Once you have a figure like Elizabeth Warren,

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for example,

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she is expected to kind of sustain a personal connection with every potential voter

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in a way that she ended up kind of evincing in the behavior of taking 100,000

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selfies with supporters,

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which...

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was celebrated and was seen as this wonderful thing.

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And I agree, it showed her virtues as a person, as a politician, but it also doesn't scale.

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Like, at what point do you say, this is actually not possible or sustainable anymore?

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And for those people who are disappointed not to have a selfie with Elizabeth

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Warren,

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I just hope they know that she hasn't let them down or neglected them or been,

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like...

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you know,

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too highfalutin in what she thought she should prioritize,

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it is actually just,

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this is not the right relationship to expect of women this highly personal

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attention when they're really having to do this at a very,

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very grand scale.

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And yet, you see this kind of personalization in the way that

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for a female politician,

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they're the ones who will inevitably be called by a first name because there's this

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sense that she's not Clinton,

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she's Hillary,

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and she should go on yet another listening tour because she hasn't paid enough

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attention to individual people in her public,

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which is,

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by the time you're running for president,

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is every American voter.

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And again,

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It's not to say that those desires don't come from a natural place.

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I think they're understandable,

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but I really think that this kind of moralism and this high expectation of women

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will make it much,

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much harder for women to be successful public figures with a sense that they cannot

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attend to everyone in the way that they would attend to a child or a friend or

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their own family member.

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And it is just the collective desire to be mothered.

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It's women as, you know, free labor and emoting machines.

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And I knew exactly what you're talking about with Elizabeth Warren, too.

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I remember when, like, all of the selfies started appearing in my Facebook feed.

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And I had a friend who said something like, well, Elizabeth Warren is our collective mom.

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And I just cringed a little bit.

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Like, no, no.

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Like, please, no.

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Yeah.

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It's the wrong relationship.

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It's the wrong model.

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It is fine to be invested in someone's competence and warmth and goodness as a

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human,

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but she cannot mother an entire population as we saw,

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because the thing about this is research shows this very definitively.

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I'm thinking here of some really brilliant research by Madeline Heilman and her team at NYU.

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where if you compare a man and a woman head to head,

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basically the man is seen as either more competent or if their competence as a man

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and a woman is clearly on a par because you include extra information that they're

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both,

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you know,

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top performers or what have you,

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then he will be seen as more likable.

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Except if you add two pieces of information that kind of

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break this bias spell.

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One piece of information that can break the spell is that she's exceptionally

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communal,

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warm,

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giving,

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super interpersonally kind to everyone on her team and so on.

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The other way of breaking that spell of bias is showing that she's not only

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extremely competent,

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she's also a mother.

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And then people suddenly see her as

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warm and communal in the required way.

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And so you might say, well, in a way, this is good news.

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The preference for male over female leaders is not an unbudgeable one.

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You can get it to shift.

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But the trouble is the way you get it to shift is with information that is often

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simply not there.

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So Kamala Harris is not a mother.

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She's a stepmother.

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If you

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are invested in that distinction which i'm not invested in the distinction but many

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people on the wrong side of this are unfortunately and also like why should she

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have to be any kind of mother in order to be a potentially great president now that

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also means that someone like elizabeth warren who was seen as very kind very

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communal and happens to be a mother you might say well she's surely a slam dunk and

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again the answer is no because

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the idea that women are warm and kind is very fragile.

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That perception is incredibly fragile as we see when the second Elizabeth Warren

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and Bernie Sanders have a kind of pretty public beef on stage about some healthcare

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policy differences.

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People perceive Elizabeth Warren as actually a bitch in who was kind of pretending

(00:19:39):
all along to be a nice person.

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that she undermined Bernie Sanders.

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It's not at all perceived the other way where he was hostile and aggressive to her

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and she kind of spoke back to him,

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but it's not symmetrical in that way at all.

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So if women need to be incredibly competent and really warm and communal in order

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to be electable,

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then they're also subject to this really fragile

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sense of their communality,

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which can disappear in an instant the second they have a conflict with anyone,

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which in a primary is completely inevitable.

(00:20:16):
You are going to have conflicts with your opponents.

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So that's why I think it's so hard when you look at this research and you reflect

(00:20:24):
on the kind of very personal expectations people have of women,

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it becomes very hard to have a woman in the public eye survive.

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Well, and conflict is inevitable.

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And particularly when we're talking about the things that actually matter,

(00:20:40):
I think this points a lot to why conflict within feminism is so challenging.

(00:20:46):
Great point.

(00:20:48):
Feminists who we think are just wonderful and we love and they've given so much.

(00:20:53):
And then they say something we disagree with and it feels like a betrayal.

(00:20:57):
And there's just this immediate sort of panic response.

(00:21:01):
And I feel like

(00:21:03):
That's what I see a lot with some readers who the common triggers are sex work,

(00:21:10):
pornography and beauty culture.

(00:21:13):
Those same things that readers get and sometimes weight stuff that readers will get

(00:21:18):
really upset about where they're likely to disagree with me.

(00:21:22):
And then all of a sudden, like, I'm I'm a monster.

(00:21:25):
You're talking about this way that we break the bias.

(00:21:29):
I agree with you.

(00:21:30):
Like,

(00:21:30):
yeah,

(00:21:31):
it sounds really nice,

(00:21:32):
but I actually feel like we're just immediately set up for failure because what is

(00:21:37):
being nice and what is being communal,

(00:21:39):
it's having a personal relationship with people.

(00:21:42):
And so what that means is that there is a limited scale to which any woman can grow.

(00:21:48):
And after that point,

(00:21:50):
she's just a bitch because she can't have a personal relationship with everybody.

(00:21:53):
I think that's exactly right.

(00:21:55):
Unfortunately,

(00:21:56):
there's just a certain scale that you can't grow beyond and be truly loved unless

(00:22:02):
the content of what you do builds in the communality.

(00:22:06):
So you do see like some female public figures,

(00:22:09):
like I think Samin Nasrat is a really great example of this.

(00:22:12):
She's both so interpersonally warm in just her own manner and her kind of

(00:22:18):
interpersonal style is jokey.

(00:22:20):
And more than anything, she's making yummy food and talking about how to have, like,

(00:22:26):
a big table and lots of people around it, which I love.

(00:22:29):
I love Samin Nasratt.

(00:22:30):
This is no shade,

(00:22:32):
but it's the only kind of thing a woman can do and survive at the relevant scale.

(00:22:39):
Whereas an Alison Roman who has like a little bit more of an edge to her,

(00:22:44):
who has said a few things that I agree are not perfect.

(00:22:48):
It's never just like, well, she said a few things that are problematic.

(00:22:51):
It's that she's a bitch and needs to be cancelled.

(00:22:54):
And this is where it bumps up against an issue I think about a lot with cancel culture.

(00:23:00):
Like a lot of people on the left,

(00:23:01):
I think there is a moral panic about cancel culture that is largely misleading.

(00:23:08):
I think that

(00:23:09):
First of all, people are typically not canceled.

(00:23:12):
They have come back to us, you know, thinking of Louis CK and Ziz Ansari and so on.

(00:23:17):
But also sometimes you do cancel a person and you see that socially,

(00:23:23):
like Neil Gaiman,

(00:23:24):
I think has been pretty successfully canceled.

(00:23:26):
And I'm all about that.

(00:23:27):
I wrote saying, yeah, cancel the hell out of this rapist scumbag who,

(00:23:33):
I would never buy his book.

(00:23:36):
I would never read his comic or whatever.

(00:23:38):
I know that's painful for some folks who liked him.

(00:23:41):
I never read him myself,

(00:23:42):
but he is this really sufficient evidence that he did horrible things to young

(00:23:49):
women that there is no defense of and he is offered no apology for of a convincing

(00:23:58):
kind.

(00:23:58):
So the other aspect of it, though, is

(00:24:03):
This is all applicable to men,

(00:24:05):
but when it comes to women,

(00:24:06):
I guess I do think that sometimes you see women who,

(00:24:11):
yes,

(00:24:12):
make mistakes,

(00:24:13):
but our public figures who are talented or interesting or have something to offer

(00:24:20):
effectively cancelled,

(00:24:21):
at least in certain sectors,

(00:24:24):
in ways that don't reflect...

(00:24:27):
what we should have done.

(00:24:28):
Like,

(00:24:28):
I think this about Lena Dunham,

(00:24:30):
and I'm sure this will be controversial,

(00:24:32):
but I think she's really talented.

(00:24:34):
And I think that when she makes mistakes,

(00:24:37):
it's precisely because of this quality of shamelessness she has,

(00:24:42):
that makes her extremely good at exploring heterosexual dynamics in ways that make

(00:24:48):
most women feel deeply ashamed of like,

(00:24:51):
having been rejected or body shamed or just having had male partners who are not

(00:24:57):
sufficient,

(00:24:58):
who are too little to invert the name of her recent series.

(00:25:02):
But I think that there are many people who have taken certain of her fairly

(00:25:10):
ill-considered remarks completely out of context in ways,

(00:25:15):
again,

(00:25:15):
we don't need to get into all of this,

(00:25:17):
but people interpret

(00:25:20):
things that she wrote about her sister and her so they're very uncomfortable parts

(00:25:28):
of her memoir that talk about her kind of childhood sexual exploration in a way

(00:25:35):
with her sister.

(00:25:37):
But people are calling her a pedophile,

(00:25:39):
which is really inappropriate as a label for a seven-year-old child who is doing,

(00:25:45):
yeah,

(00:25:46):
things that do not strike me as developmentally normal and do strike me as really

(00:25:51):
concerning and harmful.

(00:25:53):
However, I think the idea that we can't consume art from this person who has made her peace with

(00:26:03):
her sibling, Grace, I just, I don't know.

(00:26:08):
I think there's something overblown about that reaction.

(00:26:11):
Sorry, I should have said, has made her peace with her sibling, Cyrus Grace.

(00:26:17):
Okay.

(00:26:19):
I don't know a lot about Lena Dunham,

(00:26:21):
so I wouldn't have caught that that was the wrong sibling name,

(00:26:24):
but I loved your piece about her.

(00:26:26):
It was so great.

(00:26:28):
And the thing that just strikes me with you talking about this is

(00:26:32):
is that men are canceled for things like raping people.

(00:26:36):
And even then, they usually get to come back.

(00:26:38):
It's usually their victims who are canceled.

(00:26:41):
Women are canceled for things like not being super nice,

(00:26:45):
saying the wrong thing and then apologizing,

(00:26:49):
once having a bad opinion that they've changed,

(00:26:52):
this sort of stuff.

(00:26:53):
And so the standards are just completely perverted.

(00:26:57):
And the thing that I think about a lot is that

(00:27:01):
So many of these women that we've decided are just monstrous.

(00:27:04):
Like I'm not even really sure why I'm supposed to hate Lena Dunham,

(00:27:07):
but I know that I'm supposed to hate her are,

(00:27:10):
you know,

(00:27:11):
I bet Lena Dunham aligns with me on like 95% of things.

(00:27:16):
And I bet she thinks similarly to me and is probably a nice person and that we

(00:27:21):
would agree on a lot that matters.

(00:27:23):
But then there are all these men who,

(00:27:26):
you know,

(00:27:27):
people like me love who I bet would not align with me on much of anything and are

(00:27:32):
probably complete assholes.

(00:27:34):
So we end up canceling people who are...

(00:27:37):
much closer to the perfect standard that we demand of women and allowing men who

(00:27:43):
are just shit bags.

(00:27:48):
This is an accurate diagnosis.

(00:27:51):
I think it's, it's what happens when you,

(00:27:55):
Yes,

(00:27:55):
like it is important to hold people to high standards,

(00:27:58):
but it's also important to let people make mistakes and correct them.

(00:28:02):
And we just have to not have gender double standards.

(00:28:05):
That's actually a really low bar,

(00:28:07):
socially speaking,

(00:28:08):
and I don't think that we always rise to it.

(00:28:11):
And part of the reason that we don't is I've had so many conversations with other

(00:28:16):
women,

(00:28:16):
other feminists who will be like,

(00:28:18):
well,

(00:28:18):
I actually have a lot of time for this or that discredited figure,

(00:28:22):
but I would never say it because I could be canceled as a result of that.

(00:28:28):
And the way that it goes is once a woman has become subject to visceral disgust

(00:28:34):
reactions in a very public way,

(00:28:37):
she is kind of tarnished with the disgust reactions that as a matter of moral

(00:28:43):
psychology tend to spread to anything she touches or is adjacent to.

(00:28:48):
So as soon as I defend Lena Dunham and say,

(00:28:51):
look,

(00:28:52):
you know,

(00:28:52):
I actually think it's pretty complicated and I'm not saying everything she's ever

(00:28:56):
done is fine,

(00:28:56):
but I just don't think it rises to the level of I will not consume her art anymore.

(00:29:01):
She's a garbage human.

(00:29:03):
If I say even that level of defense that I think she's a good, um,

(00:29:09):
like social cultural commentator via what she does artistically,

(00:29:14):
that what I am risking is that people become as disgusted with me as they were at

(00:29:21):
Dunham for actually kind of predictable psychological reasons that if you are

(00:29:27):
tangled,

(00:29:28):
if you are caught up with something disgusting,

(00:29:32):
you're seen as tarred with that same brush.

(00:29:35):
And so there is a high risk for anyone who comes to the defense of a problematic

(00:29:41):
woman,

(00:29:41):
especially if she's a woman herself,

(00:29:44):
of then being subject to the same moral disgust reactions as felt the original

(00:29:48):
target.

(00:29:49):
So that's one thing that happens.

(00:29:51):
And the other mechanism that I see happening play out in feminist discourse that is

(00:29:57):
doing a lot of damage here is that we have this unique idea within feminist circles

(00:30:02):
of waves of feminism,

(00:30:05):
which you don't find this metaphor used for any other kind of civil rights movement

(00:30:11):
or liberationist movement.

(00:30:13):
And what the waves metaphor does is build in this idea of obsolescence to thinkers

(00:30:18):
who have come before us.

(00:30:20):
So Catherine McKinnon is irrelevant.

(00:30:22):
She's a second wave feminist.

(00:30:24):
Like, I'm sorry, what?

(00:30:25):
How did we get there?

(00:30:27):
I beg to differ.

(00:30:28):
And the waves metaphor strikes me as incredibly misleading.

(00:30:33):
You know,

(00:30:33):
I saw some of that this week on my feed about something I posted where someone was

(00:30:37):
like,

(00:30:37):
well,

(00:30:38):
you know,

(00:30:38):
the second wavers really fucked this up.

(00:30:41):
And it was on the same day that I interviewed Marlene Gerber Freed,

(00:30:46):
who is,

(00:30:48):
you know,

(00:30:49):
she's still a feminist activist.

(00:30:50):
So I'm not sure we can fairly call her second wave, but she started in the second wave.

(00:30:55):
And I learned so much in a one hour conversation from this woman who has...

(00:31:01):
You know, 70 years of accumulated activist wisdom.

(00:31:05):
And so then I got off that call and I went to this comment on my Facebook where

(00:31:09):
someone's talking shit about older women.

(00:31:12):
And it felt so personal.

(00:31:13):
Like I was so upset about that.

(00:31:15):
Yeah.

(00:31:16):
But it's the same dynamic of just dehumanizing women for deviating from whatever

(00:31:23):
standard we want to apply.

(00:31:24):
I want to ask you something about Lena Dunham because I remember when you wrote

(00:31:28):
that piece and I really liked it.

(00:31:32):
And then I made a mental note that I wanted to come back to it later and see what

(00:31:35):
the comments were like.

(00:31:37):
And then I never did.

(00:31:39):
What was the feedback?

(00:31:40):
Did you get people unsubscribing?

(00:31:42):
Were people mad at you?

(00:31:43):
How did that play out for you?

(00:31:45):
Actually, it was mostly fine.

(00:31:47):
I think my subscribers are a pretty cool and I want to say sophisticated bunch who

(00:31:54):
have sort of familiarized themselves with some of these dynamics and I think are

(00:31:59):
often familiar with the idea that moralism is kind of the enemy of feminist social

(00:32:06):
progress.

(00:32:08):
So I didn't get as much pushback as I was expecting.

(00:32:11):
On the other hand,

(00:32:13):
I'm pretty sure if I remember rightly that that is a post that I paywalled for that

(00:32:20):
very reason,

(00:32:21):
because I didn't want it to live on the open internet.

(00:32:23):
I have a feeling if I had written that piece for,

(00:32:26):
I don't know,

(00:32:27):
like a mainstream media outlet,

(00:32:30):
or just posted it as a free post,

(00:32:34):
I...

(00:32:35):
my sense is that would probably be subject to more backlash.

(00:32:39):
Yeah, I have a similar sense.

(00:32:41):
And I do the same thing when I think a post is likely to be controversial and when

(00:32:46):
it's nuanced and people are not going to be comfortable with nuance.

(00:32:49):
So one thing I was thinking of while you were talking about Lena Dunham is,

(00:32:54):
you know,

(00:32:56):
we see women as,

(00:32:58):
you know,

(00:32:58):
we kind of want them to be more human and more humane than men.

(00:33:02):
And then in the process of doing that,

(00:33:04):
we end up dehumanizing them and treating them as these like public products,

(00:33:07):
these like caring machines from whom we get to just,

(00:33:10):
you know,

(00:33:11):
you put the coin in and you get the caring.

(00:33:14):
And so,

(00:33:15):
but then if we think,

(00:33:17):
okay,

(00:33:17):
if we decide to frame,

(00:33:19):
okay,

(00:33:19):
so women are products,

(00:33:20):
like I'm a product and people can buy me,

(00:33:22):
like when they subscribe to my newsletter or whatever,

(00:33:25):
we're still not being fair because

(00:33:27):
The kind of shit that people tolerate from Target,

(00:33:31):
from Amazon,

(00:33:32):
from Walmart is way higher than Amazon.

(00:33:36):
the sort of stuff that they'll unsubscribe from me for.

(00:33:39):
And it's so interesting that,

(00:33:42):
you know,

(00:33:43):
we'll demand everything from like a small business creator,

(00:33:47):
but would never think of demanding the same from a faceless corporation.

(00:33:51):
So it's just kind of like another example of the more we humanize women,

(00:33:57):
kind of the worse we treat them.

(00:33:59):
that's why i as you know i tend to think of it not so much as dehumanization and

(00:34:05):
more as vilification where the woman is turned not exactly into a product but yeah

(00:34:14):
a perfect like a person who should be in a way and i don't mean this literally um

(00:34:22):
but morally she should be superhuman she should be so good

(00:34:26):
And she's a villain the second she errs from that standard of perfection.

(00:34:31):
And so in her very humanness,

(00:34:33):
she's subject to incredibly harsh moral standards and also very instant dismissal

(00:34:39):
in the way you're exactly right about where,

(00:34:42):
you know,

(00:34:42):
if I buy middens from Amazon that don't float my boat,

(00:34:48):
I'll give them three stars mentally and shrug.

(00:34:52):
Whereas,

(00:34:54):
if someone really thinks that I have made a mistake that they think is morally

(00:35:02):
criticisable,

(00:35:03):
I feel like it's kind of,

(00:35:05):
yeah,

(00:35:07):
it is a sense that their whole

(00:35:10):
idea of me as a person has to change rather than being a little bit forgiving or

(00:35:16):
having maybe a little toleration that sometimes reasonable minds disagree even

(00:35:22):
within feminist and progressive circles and sometimes I might just be wrong and

(00:35:27):
that's okay too like I don't I think

(00:35:30):
There is a sort of risk aversion that it's very difficult not to have as a feminist

(00:35:34):
writer because you feel like you have to be correct.

(00:35:38):
Otherwise,

(00:35:39):
if you do make a wrong judgment call on something,

(00:35:43):
and if you do say something that disappoints people,

(00:35:47):
it will be dismissal rather than,

(00:35:48):
okay,

(00:35:49):
we differed.

(00:35:51):
Yeah, I've been, this is something I've been sort of practicing because

(00:35:56):
I have found that, you know, as they should, my perspectives have changed over the years.

(00:36:02):
But there's still pieces out there that I wrote that like I don't fully agree with anymore.

(00:36:07):
Sure.

(00:36:09):
You know,

(00:36:09):
and we're not talking about like radical perspective shifts,

(00:36:11):
like endorsing racism or whatever.

(00:36:13):
But, you know, particularly on marriage, my attitudes have changed.

(00:36:18):
And people like ask me and kind of like come at me.

(00:36:22):
And I'll just say, like, I was wrong before.

(00:36:25):
And people are not prepared to hear that because we treat being wrong as such like

(00:36:30):
a high stakes thing,

(00:36:31):
because I think for women it is.

(00:36:33):
Yeah, but growth is good, actually.

(00:36:36):
And having the capacity to change your mind and revise and update, all of this is good.

(00:36:41):
And it's what is required for being a morally responsible practitioner in public discourse.

(00:36:47):
So it is a funny thing, isn't it?

(00:36:50):
It just makes it very difficult to say, yeah, I fucked this up.

(00:36:56):
I...

(00:36:57):
thought of it this way.

(00:36:58):
And now I'm more persuaded of this other thing.

(00:37:01):
And that's a really good way to stop people from being able to grow publicly in the

(00:37:06):
ways that I think can be really beneficial to witness and model actually.

(00:37:11):
So speaking of being wrong,

(00:37:14):
I have long had like a central disagreement with you that I now no longer disagree

(00:37:20):
with you about.

(00:37:20):
And it's not even that consequential,

(00:37:23):
but you often talk about like women being vilified as uniquely human,

(00:37:27):
whereas I have long written about like

(00:37:30):
the like appliance theory of women.

(00:37:32):
And I don't necessarily think those two things are mutually exclusive,

(00:37:37):
but I do find myself shifting away from that theory and more towards yours.

(00:37:43):
But what I have found when I'm like sitting down to write

(00:37:47):
And thinking about it is I'm like,

(00:37:50):
oh my God,

(00:37:50):
now I have to think about so many other things if like that's not the correct

(00:37:54):
thing.

(00:37:55):
And I'm just like, oh, she's just wrong about that.

(00:37:58):
She just doesn't understand.

(00:38:01):
Because it's like, because I don't want to do the work.

(00:38:04):
Like I just want to be intellectually lazy sometimes.

(00:38:07):
And I do think that that's what some of this is about is rather than saying to

(00:38:12):
yourself,

(00:38:13):
like this person who I respect and like I agree with about so much is

(00:38:17):
says this thing that I disagree with, like, could it be that they're right?

(00:38:22):
We're just like, oh, well, you know, she is a woman, so fuck her.

(00:38:25):
Yeah,

(00:38:26):
I think,

(00:38:27):
you know,

(00:38:27):
the specific disagreement is this one too,

(00:38:30):
where I think we often don't distinguish between disagreements where we think

(00:38:36):
someone on the other side is like flat out wrong in this way where what they're

(00:38:40):
saying is actively pernicious and we kind of wish the debate would go away versus

(00:38:44):
so many of the philosophical disagreements that I have.

(00:38:47):
And this is an example of that.

(00:38:49):
They're disagreements where I want to maintain my side of the argument,

(00:38:52):
but I don't necessarily want to win.

(00:38:55):
Like I actually think it is valuable to have people in the dehumanization paradigm

(00:39:01):
doing work to illuminate how that plays out and how to understand that with respect

(00:39:07):
to different forms of bigotry and their intersections.

(00:39:11):
And then it's useful to have someone like me who is in a way trying to run a pretty

(00:39:16):
extreme form of the line.

(00:39:18):
Like, do we even need to have this dehumanization paradigm

(00:39:23):
psychological state that we attribute to people when actually a lot of the work can

(00:39:30):
be done by thinking about social norms and hierarchies together with very ordinary

(00:39:35):
moral emotions like resentment blame punishment and the kinds of things that we

(00:39:41):
actually only do for human beings so some of the

(00:39:45):
most misogynistic reactions are like highly retributive in a way that barely makes

(00:39:51):
sense for non-human animals.

(00:39:53):
And it certainly doesn't make much sense when it comes to supernatural or subhuman entities.

(00:39:59):
It is just very human to human stuff.

(00:40:02):
And so that's kind of where I go.

(00:40:04):
If I am successful,

(00:40:06):
and this is a big if in my arguments that misogyny doesn't require us to posit

(00:40:11):
dehumanization,

(00:40:12):
that it's much more about moralism,

(00:40:15):
actually,

(00:40:16):
then the question is,

(00:40:19):
if we centered women in our historical explanations,

(00:40:22):
would we need to invoke it elsewhere?

(00:40:24):
Would we need to invoke it when it comes to things like racism and transphobia and

(00:40:28):
fat phobia and so on?

(00:40:30):
Because women are a part of pretty much every oppressed class of person.

(00:40:35):
So examining this intersectionally also

(00:40:39):
has a rather radical implication which is that if misogyny doesn't involve

(00:40:43):
dehumanizing women then it would be weird if racism did involve dehumanizing people

(00:40:49):
because women of color are of course subject to both racism and misogyny and their

(00:40:55):
unique intersections as in misogynoir so that's kind of

(00:41:00):
the side of the argument that I've wanted to explore,

(00:41:03):
but it doesn't mean there shouldn't be people arguing back that,

(00:41:07):
no,

(00:41:08):
this is best understood as thinking of women as more product-like,

(00:41:12):
more animal-like or something like that.

(00:41:14):
I guess,

(00:41:15):
yeah,

(00:41:15):
I just want to see how far you can get with the idea that being seen as human is

(00:41:20):
not always a good thing for us.

(00:41:22):
Yeah.

(00:41:23):
Well, and just thinking more broadly about that point of like the importance of having people

(00:41:29):
argue back with our philosophical points.

(00:41:32):
Something that I think a lot about is sex work,

(00:41:36):
pornography,

(00:41:38):
pro-sex,

(00:41:39):
anti-sex,

(00:41:39):
like this whole debate in feminism.

(00:41:42):
And

(00:41:43):
Like I'll just tell you that like I am not really sure where I fall in this because

(00:41:49):
I think that there are compelling arguments on all sides of this discussion.

(00:41:54):
And I think that there are often really intense philosophical claims made that

(00:42:00):
don't reflect the real world.

(00:42:02):
So like for example,

(00:42:05):
when I was in my 20s,

(00:42:07):
I worked as a paralegal for the corporate office of a strip club.

(00:42:11):
And like at the time was very anti-strip clubs and sort of like went there to like,

(00:42:16):
I guess,

(00:42:16):
spy.

(00:42:17):
Like I just wanted to see what was going on.

(00:42:18):
And my experience there like convinced me that, yeah, like there's rampant exploitation.

(00:42:24):
It's awful.

(00:42:25):
And the men running these clubs are awful.

(00:42:27):
But that also any legislation that was designed to control these clubs,

(00:42:34):
the men,

(00:42:35):
it only affected the women.

(00:42:37):
Yeah.

(00:42:37):
And so it shifted me from this like,

(00:42:40):
I know exactly how I feel and I know exactly what needs to happen to this.

(00:42:44):
This is too complicated for me.

(00:42:46):
And I wish that we could like bring those discussions out in a productive way and

(00:42:53):
really grapple with those challenges rather than just as soon as someone says

(00:42:57):
anything about a strip club,

(00:42:59):
like people are hitting the unsubscribe button.

(00:43:02):
yeah that's so real and I feel similarly about the debate like how do we honor

(00:43:07):
people who are sex workers and who are predominantly female and at the same time in

(00:43:13):
a non-patronizing way raise concerns about exploitation and male dominance within

(00:43:21):
those industries like it's a topic I've literally never touched because I think

(00:43:27):
it's very hard to do moral justice to people um

(00:43:32):
who are exploring their best economic option or who are living in ways that I fully

(00:43:43):
want to respect and I do respect,

(00:43:45):
but I also worry about.

(00:43:47):
So I don't know how to do that.

(00:43:49):
I don't know how to write in a way that doesn't end up being insensitive to some of

(00:43:54):
the people who deserve to have their lived experience honored.

(00:43:59):
So I started,

(00:44:00):
I have this like little hateful notebook that I carry around where I write all my

(00:44:04):
ideas in and most of them never see the light of day.

(00:44:07):
But I started kind of jotting down ideas for a piece on this topic like a year or so ago.

(00:44:14):
And the title that I gave it,

(00:44:17):
and the title is like the only substance I have at this point was,

(00:44:21):
is it feminism or is it purity culture?

(00:44:24):
And, you know, because like, I really feel like

(00:44:27):
this is about moral purity.

(00:44:29):
And on the pro-sex work,

(00:44:32):
pro-sex side,

(00:44:33):
it's about standing up for sex workers and standing up against puritanism and all

(00:44:40):
of that.

(00:44:40):
And then on the anti-sex work side,

(00:44:42):
it's standing up for women and against violence and all of that.

(00:44:45):
And both sides think they have the moral high ground and are willing to concede nothing.

(00:44:50):
And it's just this moral purity debate.

(00:44:53):
Yeah, that...

(00:44:55):
That seems exactly right to me.

(00:44:57):
And I do think that probably no one wins as a result of someone like me being

(00:45:05):
silent in this way about it.

(00:45:07):
And no one really wins if I had a kind of contribution to what ends up being a

(00:45:14):
debate that feels very monolithic.

(00:45:16):
I wonder, one of the things that this conversation is making me realize is that

(00:45:21):
the moralism to which women in public life are subject to is really the enemy of

(00:45:26):
nuance,

(00:45:27):
because a lot of these difficult questions call for a lot of sensitivity,

(00:45:32):
a lot of nuance and a lot of attentiveness.

(00:45:36):
And it's also unlikely that you'll be able to come up with a line that just

(00:45:41):
satisfies everyone that you've done your moral duty as a commentator.

(00:45:47):
Um,

(00:45:49):
as a result of that kind of,

(00:45:51):
yeah,

(00:45:52):
that,

(00:45:52):
that nuance that we're both reflecting here,

(00:45:55):
a felt need for.

(00:45:56):
Well,

(00:45:57):
and I think that silence is the goal and that sort of loops back around to the

(00:46:02):
initial insight that made me want to talk about this with you,

(00:46:05):
which is that when you can't have nuance and when you can't just kind of put

(00:46:11):
questions out into the ether of,

(00:46:12):
Hey,

(00:46:12):
I'm thinking about this,

(00:46:13):
but I don't have a firm opinion.

(00:46:16):
it silences meaningful discussion.

(00:46:19):
And it most importantly,

(00:46:21):
silences meaningful discussion from women who might have something to contribute.

(00:46:26):
And this is just like misogyny policing us.

(00:46:29):
Yeah.

(00:46:30):
Yeah.

(00:46:31):
That is exactly how I feel sometimes where if I have an idea in progress,

(00:46:36):
I've been noodling on this idea for a very long time on how shame is not the enemy

(00:46:42):
and that

(00:46:43):
Just because a lot of shame is corrosive doesn't mean that every instance of

(00:46:48):
moderate shame needs to be jettisoned.

(00:46:52):
But it's taken me months,

(00:46:54):
arguably years,

(00:46:55):
to begin to write about this because I just felt so much pressure to get it right

(00:47:00):
the first time.

(00:47:02):
Yeah, I really liked it.

(00:47:04):
you had a piece like two days ago on shame and I was just so glad you wrote about it.

(00:47:10):
And like what I was thinking when I read it and like,

(00:47:15):
I hope you don't take this the wrong way is I was thinking like,

(00:47:18):
this is like a first attempt and I can't wait to see like what comes next.

(00:47:21):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:47:23):
It was like so good, but I just like knew that there was like more underneath it.

(00:47:28):
Yeah, it's funny because the day before that, I had written like 5,000 words in order to write

(00:47:34):
1500 words,

(00:47:36):
trying to just work through why philosophically the idea of a shame free approach

(00:47:43):
to parenting or politics,

(00:47:46):
it doesn't really work.

(00:47:47):
Like it doesn't work to just feel guilt and never reflect that.

(00:47:51):
Yes,

(00:47:52):
you end up because of some of your deeds and behaviors,

(00:47:56):
being such and such a person in relation to other people.

(00:48:01):
And the idea that you can never catch a glimpse of yourself,

(00:48:04):
not really like what you see,

(00:48:06):
feel a moment of shame,

(00:48:07):
and then move on from there to be like,

(00:48:09):
okay,

(00:48:09):
how do I

(00:48:11):
get back into relation with the people I want to be in relationship with.

(00:48:14):
I think that's something that I want to write a more general piece about,

(00:48:21):
but it is really hard because so many people have found shame to be so immobilizing

(00:48:27):
and so much a part of everything from purity culture to certain religious cultures,

(00:48:32):
to certain kinds of morality cultures that I get why people are sometimes really,

(00:48:37):
really allergic to shame.

(00:48:39):
And I certainly don't think we should be shaming our children.

(00:48:43):
I think that is not defensible and not productive.

(00:48:48):
But I also,

(00:48:48):
yeah,

(00:48:50):
there is a lot more in there,

(00:48:52):
you're right,

(00:48:53):
that I hope to get to about the pang of shame that can be morally productive

(00:49:00):
without being corrosive or eviscerating of someone as a person.

(00:49:04):
I feel like we need a term for this shame allergy.

(00:49:07):
So I'm going to call it weaponized anti-shame,

(00:49:09):
which is just like the worst term ever,

(00:49:11):
but it's the one that popped into my head.

(00:49:12):
Oh, it seems accurate.

(00:49:15):
Like one area where I see this constantly,

(00:49:17):
constantly is in heterosexual relationships and probably like employment

(00:49:22):
relationships with men too,

(00:49:23):
but mostly women's relationships with their male romantic partners where she comes

(00:49:28):
to him and she's like,

(00:49:29):
yo,

(00:49:30):
I'm doing 10 hours a day of childcare and you're doing an hour a day and that's shitty.

(00:49:33):
So like, please stop.

(00:49:35):
And what does he say?

(00:49:36):
Well, I guess I'm just a terrible person and I should just kill myself then.

(00:49:40):
And like, then she has to comfort him.

(00:49:43):
And that's like, exactly like, dude, maybe you should feel ashamed of that.

(00:49:47):
And maybe that's telling you that you should change.

(00:49:52):
Yeah, exactly.

(00:49:53):
And if we had a culture where people could say,

(00:49:57):
okay, there is something that's being revealed about myself that isn't great.

(00:50:02):
And that doesn't mean I'm a terrible person to my core or that I have no worth or

(00:50:07):
that I don't deserve connection.

(00:50:09):
It means I have to change something about not just my behavior,

(00:50:12):
but maybe myself more broadly,

(00:50:15):
more deeply.

(00:50:16):
I have to have somewhat different thoughts and dispositions and ways of

(00:50:19):
deliberating and reasoning.

(00:50:22):
Like I have to think actively about how much...

(00:50:26):
unpaid household and childbearing labor I'm doing every day,

(00:50:30):
I think that that would be really good.

(00:50:33):
And I think something similar culturally when it comes to the people who look at

(00:50:37):
our broad culture and say,

(00:50:39):
well,

(00:50:40):
shaming Trump voters hasn't worked.

(00:50:42):
So what do we do?

(00:50:43):
We have to move on without shame.

(00:50:45):
It's like, well, no, not really.

(00:50:47):
An alternative is that we all have to be more resilient in the face of

(00:50:52):
mild shame that can be the morally appropriate reaction to it being revealed that

(00:50:58):
you have done huge amounts of harm that,

(00:51:02):
yes,

(00:51:02):
you should feel bad about and guilty about the deed,

(00:51:05):
but you also have been revealed to be someone in relation to others that is an

(00:51:10):
occasion for shame.

(00:51:12):
And that is not something that should be fled from or shied away from or avoided.

(00:51:18):
And it's also not without redemptive possibilities.

(00:51:22):
So I feel like there is a moderate way of thinking about shame that

(00:51:27):
we have just sort of abandoned as a culture,

(00:51:29):
like between Ezra Klein and Dr.

(00:51:32):
Becky and Brene Brown,

(00:51:34):
the easy line on this is,

(00:51:35):
well,

(00:51:36):
feel no shame and just like think about what you did and do it differently.

(00:51:42):
But that can't be right because what we did often reveals something about who we are.

(00:51:47):
And also if you do the same things repeatedly,

(00:51:49):
then yes,

(00:51:50):
that does mean that certain things about you as a character are true.

(00:51:55):
If you keep lying, then eventually at some point, it's true that you're a liar.

(00:51:59):
That also doesn't make you beyond the pale and irredeemable.

(00:52:03):
It means you have to like do some serious work.

(00:52:09):
Like a culture of actual,

(00:52:11):
true,

(00:52:12):
meaningful redemption,

(00:52:14):
like a restorative justice culture should be the goal where people can say like,

(00:52:18):
yeah,

(00:52:19):
I thought and did some really shitty things and now I'm going to fix it.

(00:52:25):
Rather than like,

(00:52:25):
you know,

(00:52:26):
what I see in every like white anti-racist space of like,

(00:52:29):
how very dare you?

(00:52:30):
I am an ally to my core and no one is sadder about racism than I am.

(00:52:34):
Like, wouldn't it just be a much better response to be like, hey, I'm going to sit with that.

(00:52:39):
Like, maybe you're right.

(00:52:40):
That is exactly it.

(00:52:43):
Yeah.

(00:52:45):
Well, okay.

(00:52:46):
So you and I,

(00:52:47):
I could talk to you about this forever,

(00:52:48):
but I,

(00:52:49):
I want you to please write more about shame.

(00:52:51):
Like, can I, can I put in a request?

(00:52:54):
It's, there's so much.

(00:52:56):
I would love to do that.

(00:52:57):
I need to be emboldened.

(00:52:58):
Thank you, Zon, because I, I think I shall.

(00:53:01):
And yeah, it's a tricky topic.

(00:53:05):
Yeah, it is.

(00:53:05):
But I, I think you're, I think you're prepared to cover it.

(00:53:08):
So, all right, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave it here.

(00:53:11):
Thank you so much, Kate, for coming on.

(00:53:13):
I hope

(00:53:14):
this has given people some things to think about,

(00:53:16):
about how we deal with public figures and with each other and maybe how we could

(00:53:21):
potentially get to a world where we could like talk about sex work at some point.

(00:53:26):
Yeah.

(00:53:27):
I love that.

(00:53:28):
Like that would be, that would be great.

(00:53:30):
I would love that.

(00:53:30):
So I'm,

(00:53:31):
I'm just so grateful to have you on the show and grateful for your presence in the

(00:53:34):
world.

(00:53:34):
Kate, you're just the best.

(00:53:36):
Likewise.

(00:53:37):
I'm so grateful to be in conversation with you and for your amazing work.

(00:53:41):
All right.

(00:53:41):
Well, thank you.