(00:00:04):
My ex-husband related everything back to sex.

(00:00:07):
If we were fighting or he was unhappy, it was because we didn't have enough sex.

(00:00:12):
No other explanation was acceptable.

(00:00:15):
The couples therapist had told me I couldn't expect a man to stay in a sexless

(00:00:18):
marriage,

(00:00:19):
and I needed to put it on the calendar.

(00:00:22):
What she was calling a sexless marriage was once a week.

(00:00:25):
So I did as I was told and gave up my body to a man who hated me, but told me he loved me.

(00:00:31):
One time we were having sex and my husband became enraged that I looked bored and

(00:00:35):
that was apparently a turnoff for him.

(00:00:38):
Not enough of a turnoff for him to stop though.

(00:00:41):
He was angry that I looked like I was being raped while I was literally being raped.

(00:00:45):
That was upsetting to his ego.

(00:00:48):
Not for a moment did he think about stopping sexually coercing me being a solution.

(00:00:53):
Heterosexual marriage is the most abusive institution on the planet.

(00:00:57):
The relief of knowing I'll never need to have sex with a man to keep the peace,

(00:01:01):
again,

(00:01:01):
has made all of the difficulties of leaving him worth it.

(00:01:05):
Hi, I'm Zanva Lines and this is the Liberating Motherhood Podcast.

(00:01:10):
Today we are going to be talking about heterosexual relationships as a tool for

(00:01:14):
patriarchal oppression.

(00:01:16):
Before we get started, I have a couple of super quick administrative reminders.

(00:01:20):
First of all,

(00:01:21):
you can find tons of information about my work,

(00:01:23):
about the podcast,

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and more,

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as well as details on how to submit a story for the podcast by merch,

(00:01:29):
contact me,

(00:01:30):
and all of that good stuff on the Liberating Motherhood website.

(00:01:33):
That's liberatingmotherhood.org.

(00:01:36):
Podcast episodes like the one you're hearing are free,

(00:01:39):
but paid subscribers on Substack and Patreon get an additional podcast episode

(00:01:43):
every month.

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as well as a bunch of bonus essays,

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access to the Liberating Motherhood support group,

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a bunch of stickers,

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all kinds of stuff.

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Paid subscribers are also the sole reason I can do this work.

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I am not beholden to advertisers.

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I am not beholden to an editor.

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I am beholden to my readers and listeners,

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and I like it that way,

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but I need you guys to keep supporting me.

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You also,

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if you become a paid subscriber,

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help fund scholarships for people who cannot afford to join

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So if you like this podcast or my work or you want to see more,

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I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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You can sign up at zahn.substack.com.

(00:02:22):
So we're going to get started with today's amazing guest, who is Jane Ward.

(00:02:27):
Hi, Jane.

(00:02:28):
Hi, Zahn.

(00:02:30):
I am so excited to have you on the podcast.

(00:02:33):
I'm going to read your bio and then we'll jump straight into some questions.

(00:02:37):
Sounds great.

(00:02:39):
Jane Ward is a professor and chair of feminist studies at University of California,

(00:02:43):
Santa Barbara.

(00:02:45):
She teaches and writes about gender and sexual cultures and has published on topics

(00:02:49):
including the anti-gender movement,

(00:02:51):
online misogyny,

(00:02:52):
the marriage self-help industry,

(00:02:55):
the ebb and flow of interest in lesbian feminism,

(00:02:57):
the meaning of sex between straight identified men,

(00:03:01):
queer childhood and parenting,

(00:03:02):
the corporatization of gay pride festivals,

(00:03:04):
and the labor of producing gender.

(00:03:07):
Ward is the author of multiple books,

(00:03:10):
including The Tragedy of Heterosexuality,

(00:03:12):
described by the New York Times Book Review as,

(00:03:15):
at heart,

(00:03:15):
a somber,

(00:03:16):
urgent academic examination of the many ways in which opposite sex coupling can

(00:03:21):
hurt the very individuals who cling to it most.

(00:03:24):
Her book, Not Gay, Sex Between Straight White Men, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

(00:03:30):
She is the co-editor of the first global feminist collection of academic and

(00:03:34):
popular essays about witches and witchcraft,

(00:03:37):
the witch studies reader.

(00:03:39):
Jane is also co-founder of Showing Up for Racial Justice Dina,

(00:03:43):
the Altadena chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice,

(00:03:46):
and a member of the board of the racial justice and mutual aid organization,

(00:03:49):
My Tribe Rise.

(00:03:52):
She is currently working on a book about parenting that blends queer theory with

(00:03:55):
personal narrative titled Raised to be Free.

(00:03:59):
Jane, I'm so happy to have you here.

(00:04:01):
And I was kind of laughing to myself a little bit when reading your bio because you

(00:04:05):
have written about so many interesting topics that are very relevant to this

(00:04:10):
podcast.

(00:04:12):
Maybe we're the same person.

(00:04:15):
When I was reading your website, I also had that same thought.

(00:04:20):
Yeah,

(00:04:20):
I feel like we could do an episode about each of those topics and then probably

(00:04:25):
another one on each of the subtopics.

(00:04:29):
So maybe someday.

(00:04:30):
For today,

(00:04:31):
I mostly want to stick to the tragedy of heterosexuality,

(00:04:34):
but we may wander into the weeds on lots of other things.

(00:04:39):
So for readers who are not familiar with your work generally or this book

(00:04:44):
specifically,

(00:04:46):
tell me about the tragedy of heterosexuality.

(00:04:51):
Sure.

(00:04:51):
So,

(00:04:52):
I mean,

(00:04:54):
in a nutshell,

(00:04:55):
this is a book that intervenes in a really common narrative about how it's so

(00:05:04):
different.

(00:05:04):
It's so difficult to be gay, basically.

(00:05:08):
And I started writing it really at the height of that,

(00:05:12):
of the popularity and the ubiquity of that narrative,

(00:05:16):
because I don't know if you remember the whole It Gets Better campaign and all of

(00:05:21):
that really relied on this idea that,

(00:05:24):
you know,

(00:05:25):
let's say you have a gay kid,

(00:05:27):
you love them and maybe you accept their queerness,

(00:05:33):
but maybe you feel worried for their life of discrimination.

(00:05:38):
And that really,

(00:05:41):
really popular narrative never really resonated for me or most of the queer people

(00:05:49):
that I knew because

(00:05:52):
when we were actually spending time with each other in like a queer space,

(00:05:57):
a safe space,

(00:05:59):
we often just talked about how wildly grateful we were to be queer and how much

(00:06:06):
empathy we felt for the straight people in our lives,

(00:06:10):
concern we felt for them and sometimes I mean I don't mean to be judgmental but

(00:06:17):
just like alienation and sometimes pity for the straight people in our lives

(00:06:22):
especially straight women because they seemed pretty miserable and so I just

(00:06:28):
started thinking about like what's up with this rhetorical habit that we have of

(00:06:33):
telling a story that

(00:06:35):
life is so much harder when you're queer and that being straight makes for a happy

(00:06:42):
and easeful life when there was so much evidence that that's precisely not the

(00:06:48):
case.

(00:06:49):
So that's kind of the question that brought me to the book.

(00:06:55):
And then the book takes off from there.

(00:06:58):
Well, I love the book.

(00:07:01):
And one of the things that I came away from the book thinking is that maybe our

(00:07:06):
slogan for heterosexuality needs to be it doesn't get better.

(00:07:09):
Yeah.

(00:07:12):
It just seems to get worse and worse the longer you're in it.

(00:07:18):
And I feel like one of the things that I see a lot,

(00:07:21):
particularly in liberal spaces among straight or at least straight presenting

(00:07:27):
people,

(00:07:28):
Is this idea of like we have to feel for our queer brothers and sisters and we have

(00:07:33):
to support them and it's so hard for them and they're so oppressed and all of that.

(00:07:37):
And I wonder how that actually kind of reinforces heteronormativity by creating

(00:07:43):
this dynamic where we're convinced that heterosexuality is the easy way.

(00:07:49):
Oh, yeah.

(00:07:50):
I mean, 100%.

(00:07:51):
I think they're really interconnected narratives.

(00:07:54):
And that's something that I do argue in the book that,

(00:07:58):
you know,

(00:07:59):
there are many ways that the tragedy of heterosexuality,

(00:08:03):
especially for straight women,

(00:08:06):
tries to cover itself up,

(00:08:08):
you know,

(00:08:08):
it does that by

(00:08:10):
romanticizing inequality,

(00:08:14):
by romanticizing this notion that,

(00:08:17):
you know,

(00:08:17):
men and women are so opposite.

(00:08:20):
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, all of that.

(00:08:24):
And that they don't actually want to spend much time talking to each other.

(00:08:31):
They don't really like each other.

(00:08:33):
They want totally different things out of life.

(00:08:35):
And that that's totally normal.

(00:08:37):
And, you know, what the

(00:08:38):
Self-help industry often tells women is that,

(00:08:41):
in fact,

(00:08:42):
that's a recipe for a good marriage because opposites attract,

(00:08:45):
you know,

(00:08:46):
and that somehow that lack of mutual regard,

(00:08:50):
that lack of interest in each other is going to,

(00:08:53):
like,

(00:08:55):
magically like drive the passion of the relationship.

(00:08:58):
So there's all of that happening.

(00:09:00):
But at the same time,

(00:09:02):
there's also this idea that,

(00:09:05):
well,

(00:09:06):
even if you might have some doubts or questions about your heterosexual marriage,

(00:09:12):
you can always look at queer people and think,

(00:09:16):
well,

(00:09:17):
you know, at least what I have is better than that.

(00:09:20):
Because you're going to be celebrated by the broader culture,

(00:09:24):
you're going to,

(00:09:25):
you know,

(00:09:26):
be engaging in something that is perceived to be so utterly natural,

(00:09:31):
so beautiful,

(00:09:33):
something that your whole family is going to,

(00:09:35):
you know,

(00:09:36):
rejoice about that you've done,

(00:09:38):
which is to get married or whatever.

(00:09:39):
And

(00:09:41):
And when you're a queer person,

(00:09:43):
there's a good chance that you won't get all of that affirmation.

(00:09:47):
And so I absolutely think it's one of the ways,

(00:09:51):
it's one of the crumbs basically that we give to straight women in particular to

(00:09:58):
keep them in heterosexual relationships is all of that celebration of what's

(00:10:05):
ostensibly normal and natural and beautiful about heterosexuality.

(00:10:10):
Yeah.

(00:10:10):
I'm also seeing more and more.

(00:10:13):
I mean, I don't necessarily think it's becoming more visible.

(00:10:17):
I'm just noticing it more how we have this idea that romantic love is, is like the safest love.

(00:10:23):
It's the most reliable love.

(00:10:24):
If you really want to have someone to take care of you when you're old,

(00:10:28):
then you need to get involved in a romantic relationship.

(00:10:30):
If you really want someone to be with you forever,

(00:10:32):
then you need a romantic relationship and you need a heterosexual romantic

(00:10:36):
relationship.

(00:10:37):
Ideally.

(00:10:38):
And it's interesting to me how that contrasts to the reality of these relationships

(00:10:44):
are really like prisons for a lot of women and pretty much guarantee a lifetime not

(00:10:48):
only of loneliness,

(00:10:50):
but separation from any other kind of meaningful relationship.

(00:10:57):
Yes.

(00:10:57):
And thankfully, I really am seeing a lot of pushback right now against that.

(00:11:04):
I mean, I think it's happening at

(00:11:09):
two different generational levels that i can see i mean maybe it's it's even more

(00:11:13):
multifaceted than this but at you know for women who are like millennials gen z or

(00:11:22):
sorry gen x which is my age you know um a lot of a lot of women get divorced at

(00:11:29):
that age and as we know women uh initiate the vast majority of divorces and

(00:11:37):
I work with in a like a coaching capacity,

(00:11:40):
some of these women who get out of the marriage that they thought was going to

(00:11:46):
provide them with all of that safety and realize that they actually are in a worse

(00:11:52):
position than they would have been had they not married at all.

(00:11:57):
Because now they're trying to negotiate a what's often a really

(00:12:05):
economically frightening situation of having to like maybe buy their husband out

(00:12:10):
of,

(00:12:10):
you know,

(00:12:11):
half the house of negotiating joint custody,

(00:12:14):
all of this stuff.

(00:12:15):
And it causes women a lot of stress.

(00:12:19):
and a lot of soul searching.

(00:12:21):
And so I seen that happening for women in their forties and fifties in particular,

(00:12:27):
but then for women in their twenties,

(00:12:31):
the trends on social media of like hetero pessimism and is it embarrassing to have

(00:12:38):
a boyfriend,

(00:12:40):
you know,

(00:12:40):
like a,

(00:12:41):
a back,

(00:12:43):
really a rebellion again,

(00:12:45):
or the four B movement against the,

(00:12:47):
heteronormativity.

(00:12:49):
And I think we've yet to see, like, what is that actually going to look like?

(00:12:54):
Are these women who are not going to marry because they realize precisely what you

(00:12:58):
just said,

(00:12:58):
that this is an unfulfilled promise that women have been given?

(00:13:04):
Yeah.

(00:13:07):
So I have a question about the 20-somethings because they don't read my work.

(00:13:14):
for the most part.

(00:13:15):
I wish they did because I feel like that's the group who most needs to hear what awaits.

(00:13:23):
And I guess I worry about this kind of burning out for them because I feel like it

(00:13:28):
did for my generation.

(00:13:30):
So I'm 40.

(00:13:31):
And,

(00:13:32):
you know,

(00:13:32):
I remember when I was in my twenties,

(00:13:34):
all of the older people talking about how,

(00:13:36):
you know,

(00:13:36):
we were all loose women who were never going to marry and we weren't committed to

(00:13:39):
anything.

(00:13:41):
And most of us did.

(00:13:42):
And, you know, most of my friends ended up in really horrible situations.

(00:13:47):
And I feel like a big part of the reason that happened is this like separation

(00:13:53):
between generations,

(00:13:55):
this like stigmatizing of mothers as irrelevant and uncool and people not to listen

(00:14:01):
to.

(00:14:02):
So

(00:14:04):
you know,

(00:14:04):
you get to like 28 or 29 and you think,

(00:14:06):
well,

(00:14:07):
I'm different from the women who came before me.

(00:14:09):
So it'll just somehow be different for me.

(00:14:12):
And I, I'm not even really sure if I have a question rolled up in there.

(00:14:15):
I would just like your thoughts on that.

(00:14:17):
Is that, do you think that's happening or likely to happen?

(00:14:20):
Yeah.

(00:14:22):
I mean, I think two contradictory things.

(00:14:27):
On the one hand, hope springs eternals on.

(00:14:33):
It's hard to live life as a human with no hope that things are going to be

(00:14:38):
different for your generation.

(00:14:40):
It's kind of what I think drives us forward.

(00:14:44):
But at the same time, I mean, I spend all my time in classrooms teaching 18 to 21 year olds.

(00:14:54):
And then I also work with graduate students.

(00:14:57):
So they're, you know, in their later 20s.

(00:15:01):
And what I'm seeing is that they know exactly what's up.

(00:15:06):
And,

(00:15:09):
you know,

(00:15:09):
they know,

(00:15:11):
if only from following all of the feminist content on TikTok,

(00:15:16):
for instance,

(00:15:19):
that relationships with men are

(00:15:26):
often require you to, you know, require women to contort themselves to please men.

(00:15:33):
They know that young men in particular have doubled down on patriarchy that we've

(00:15:40):
seen a retrenchment or like a return of

(00:15:43):
to certain kinds of just like totally naked expressions of misogyny and this got

(00:15:51):
played out in the way that young men voted for trump in the last election i think

(00:15:57):
they're tracking the news about how um their generation is the first generation in

(00:16:07):
a long time and in um

(00:16:09):
you know,

(00:16:10):
decades and decades to see such a big gender gap between young men and young women

(00:16:17):
in the way that they respond to polling about like basic social issues.

(00:16:24):
Young men are much less likely to,

(00:16:28):
Gen Z men are much less likely to support feminism than millennial, Gen X, and even boomer men.

(00:16:38):
So they're really...

(00:16:41):
they're they're confronted with it and so i think we see you know we see two

(00:16:47):
strategy or i mean probably you know endless kinds of strategies for navigating all

(00:16:54):
of that but maybe two ends of the continuum are the you know the women who have

(00:17:00):
picked up on um this kind of women's strike mentality which you know

(00:17:07):
four bees which starts in south korea but then kind of spreads around around the

(00:17:11):
globe and a lot of american women have um young women on tic tac are claiming

(00:17:15):
themselves as part of part of 4b which you know if there are listeners who don't

(00:17:20):
know what that is this is like a kind of pop like a stance of refusal to to date

(00:17:27):
men to um have sex with men to marry men or to have children with men um

(00:17:35):
So this might be like one end of that,

(00:17:39):
of how to navigate the rise in patriarchal values among young men.

(00:17:46):
And with the other end being like trad wives,

(00:17:49):
basically,

(00:17:50):
you know,

(00:17:50):
that's certainly another strategy,

(00:17:52):
which is like,

(00:17:53):
okay,

(00:17:53):
I'm looking at the writing on the wall here.

(00:17:56):
How am I going to fit myself into this?

(00:17:58):
Well, one thing I could do is just like reinvest in that same kind of formula.

(00:18:02):
Yeah.

(00:18:05):
Yeah.

(00:18:05):
Yeah.

(00:18:06):
It's all just, it's so scary.

(00:18:07):
I,

(00:18:08):
I think like five or 10 years ago,

(00:18:12):
probably more like 10 before the rise of Trump,

(00:18:15):
I would tell people that millennial men were the worst men ever.

(00:18:19):
because they could like weaponize this faux sensitivity,

(00:18:22):
faux feminism thing and not carry any of the traditional burdens of masculinity and

(00:18:29):
not take on any new burden.

(00:18:30):
So they just like weren't doing anything at all in their relationships.

(00:18:34):
And I am not heartened to hear that the next generation of men may be even worse.

(00:18:41):
I know these kinds of things.

(00:18:44):
Oh, sorry to interrupt.

(00:18:45):
Oh no, go ahead.

(00:18:46):
Go ahead.

(00:18:46):
I'm just thinking about how,

(00:18:49):
Things have become so bleak in so many ways that it makes us kind of nostalgic for

(00:18:59):
things that we used to be very critical of.

(00:19:01):
And so like the new age guy,

(00:19:04):
the performative male,

(00:19:05):
at some point I had even thought I was going to write a book.

(00:19:10):
a few years ago called woke bros and it was going to be you know a critique of the

(00:19:17):
current iteration of the of the sensitive man and and precisely what you said how

(00:19:25):
you know structurally he wasn't actually doing anything much different it was more

(00:19:32):
kind of performative or symbolic but now I'm a little like well

(00:19:38):
at least those guys are not,

(00:19:41):
you know,

(00:19:41):
at least it's easier to listen to them than to listen to these younger men.

(00:19:47):
You know, at least these are men who are not actively engaged in the manosphere.

(00:19:51):
You know, they're not incels.

(00:19:53):
They're not like the most wretched of versions of masculinity.

(00:19:57):
And so,

(00:19:58):
yeah,

(00:19:59):
it really shifts for me anyway,

(00:20:01):
my sense of what,

(00:20:03):
you know,

(00:20:05):
what's possible for men at this time.

(00:20:07):
Yeah.

(00:20:08):
Yeah, it's, it's really, you know, I don't have a lot of empathy for men generally.

(00:20:15):
But I do like to sometimes pause and reflect on kind of how bad they've become,

(00:20:24):
and how sad that also is for them,

(00:20:26):
that they're living lives that are,

(00:20:28):
you know,

(00:20:30):
just horror shows and kind of devoid of meaning and leaving behind legacies that

(00:20:34):
are nothing but suffering and just

(00:20:37):
you know,

(00:20:37):
it's,

(00:20:38):
it's easy to just fall into this weird existential discussion of like,

(00:20:41):
what even is life?

(00:20:42):
And what even is a life?

(00:20:43):
And what are, what are these men?

(00:20:44):
It's just all very dark.

(00:20:47):
Yeah.

(00:20:48):
Well, I, I mean, I 100% agree with you.

(00:20:52):
And I think it's,

(00:20:53):
I think it's actually important,

(00:20:54):
I would say even necessary for us to really get into,

(00:20:59):
you know,

(00:21:00):
what is the

(00:21:03):
what is the emotional damage,

(00:21:05):
the trauma over,

(00:21:07):
and I'm not just talking about in an individual man's life,

(00:21:10):
but over centuries of patriarchy,

(00:21:14):
what damage has that caused to men themselves?

(00:21:18):
And I'm a firm believer that in any system of supremacy and violence,

(00:21:26):
whether that be white supremacy or

(00:21:30):
you know,

(00:21:30):
patriarchy,

(00:21:34):
that system certainly dehumanizes the people who are its targets,

(00:21:39):
but it also dehumanizes in a particularly entrenched way,

(00:21:50):
and often an invisible,

(00:21:52):
a less visible way.

(00:21:53):
it dehumanizes the people who stand to benefit from that system.

(00:21:58):
And so that's,

(00:22:01):
you know,

(00:22:01):
that was something that was in many ways kind of at the heart of the book I wrote

(00:22:07):
before tragedy of heterosexuality,

(00:22:09):
not gay.

(00:22:09):
Cause that was grappling with, you know, straight white men.

(00:22:14):
So I, yeah, I agree completely.

(00:22:17):
So this, this not gay thing, I feel like this is something I,

(00:22:21):
I think about a lot and I ask people about a lot and no one ever gives me a

(00:22:25):
satisfactory answer,

(00:22:27):
but maybe I've reached the end of the video game of seeking answers and have found

(00:22:33):
the final boss who is you,

(00:22:34):
because I think you might be the one to answer this question for me,

(00:22:38):
but no pressure.

(00:22:40):
Okay.

(00:22:41):
So the, the gay, not gay stuff is,

(00:22:44):
heterosexual men and then also the fact that heterosexual men don't really seem to

(00:22:51):
actually like women like my social media feeds are just filled with men saying

(00:22:57):
horrible things not about specific women but about women generally um what is going

(00:23:05):
on here yeah yeah and

(00:23:09):
I mean,

(00:23:10):
in gender and sexuality studies,

(00:23:15):
we often draw a distinction between homosexuality and homosociality.

(00:23:24):
And homosociality is basically the way that we are socialized to look to people of

(00:23:35):
our same gender for

(00:23:39):
affirmation, for respect, for validation, for mirroring, this kind of thing.

(00:23:45):
And what's really interesting about the way the gender binary and patriarchy

(00:23:50):
intersect with homosociality is that under patriarchy,

(00:23:55):
all of us,

(00:23:57):
men and women,

(00:23:58):
girls and boys,

(00:24:00):
non-binary people and trans people,

(00:24:02):
are

(00:24:04):
are encouraged to think to see ourselves through the eyes of men straight men

(00:24:11):
particularly straight white men because they are who is presented to us as you know

(00:24:18):
the authoritative rational human beings of the world and so and so what that means

(00:24:27):
is that

(00:24:30):
women turn to men for validation,

(00:24:34):
women,

(00:24:34):
many women have internalized the idea that men are ultimately the experts,

(00:24:42):
they're ultimately the ones in charge,

(00:24:44):
they're ultimately the ones who are going to save us all.

(00:24:47):
You know,

(00:24:48):
they are the great thinkers,

(00:24:49):
they are the great scientists,

(00:24:50):
they are the great artists.

(00:24:53):
And also men believe that as well.

(00:24:56):
And what you can see is that when we talk about male homosociality,

(00:25:03):
is that even for heterosexual men who ostensibly like and love women,

(00:25:08):
and I believe a lot of them do,

(00:25:12):
ultimately,

(00:25:14):
who they turn to for...

(00:25:17):
to seek respect,

(00:25:19):
to receive validation out in the world,

(00:25:22):
who they want to listen to,

(00:25:24):
whose voices they want to hear,

(00:25:26):
whose leadership they want to follow,

(00:25:28):
that's men.

(00:25:31):
And so it's pretty, once you kind of tune into this, you can see that

(00:25:37):
Even for straight men,

(00:25:39):
again,

(00:25:39):
who,

(00:25:41):
you know,

(00:25:41):
might spend,

(00:25:42):
an individual straight man might spend most of his time,

(00:25:46):
you know,

(00:25:47):
with his wife or with his girlfriend.

(00:25:50):
And he,

(00:25:51):
you know,

(00:25:51):
gets a lot of things from her,

(00:25:53):
a lot of caretaking from her,

(00:25:55):
a lot of emotional support from her.

(00:25:58):
That even that man...

(00:26:01):
Mostly,

(00:26:02):
you know,

(00:26:02):
at the end of the day,

(00:26:04):
cares less about what she thinks about the world,

(00:26:09):
about,

(00:26:09):
you know,

(00:26:10):
what we should do as a society and cares more about what men think.

(00:26:16):
And that's kind of the crux of it.

(00:26:19):
It's like women get triangulated in.

(00:26:22):
You can see this around, you know, especially young straight men and their sexuality.

(00:26:26):
It's like they want to fuck a lot of women.

(00:26:30):
But in part, it's to impress other men.

(00:26:34):
And so a lot of us in queer studies have written about the way that straight men's

(00:26:40):
sexuality,

(00:26:41):
it's

(00:26:44):
And we're told that it's directed at women,

(00:26:46):
but in many ways,

(00:26:47):
the energy of it is actually directed at other men because it's for men.

(00:26:53):
It's about women, but it's for other men.

(00:26:57):
Yeah, I think that sums it up.

(00:26:59):
One of the weirdest areas where I see this,

(00:27:02):
and I see this constantly when men email me to correct me,

(00:27:06):
is in the world of men giving relationship and sex advice to

(00:27:12):
to other men and often like talking over women to do it.

(00:27:18):
You know,

(00:27:18):
we all know the kind of advice that men give other men and it's,

(00:27:22):
you know,

(00:27:23):
it's mostly not what women want.

(00:27:25):
And, you know, it's, but they, they talk about us like we haven't yet learned how to talk.

(00:27:32):
And I just, I just roll my eyes at these men listening to other men about

(00:27:37):
what women want but i think what men really want is like a performance for other

(00:27:44):
men rather than anything specific in their relationships with women yeah i mean for

(00:27:51):
sure and one of the things there's a chapter in tragedy of heterosexuality that is

(00:27:56):
about um

(00:27:58):
these like dating coaches for men.

(00:28:00):
And I,

(00:28:01):
I did field work,

(00:28:02):
I sat in on,

(00:28:04):
you know,

(00:28:04):
what started out as like the pickup artist industry and their boot camps and stuff,

(00:28:10):
and then turned into they kind of rebranded themselves as just like,

(00:28:14):
relationship coaches.

(00:28:15):
And, you know, one of the things that's really clear from

(00:28:20):
researching that whole industry is that men really want a kind of gamified

(00:28:28):
formulaic way to seduce women um

(00:28:34):
And that's what that industry provides them.

(00:28:37):
Like, okay, here's what you're going to do.

(00:28:39):
You're going to, you know, touch her two times in this way.

(00:28:45):
And that's going to lay the groundwork for her.

(00:28:47):
You know,

(00:28:48):
that's going to move you out of the friend zone and into the beginning of a sexual

(00:28:53):
relationship.

(00:28:54):
relationship and the reason that we know this is because we have this research on

(00:29:00):
kinesthesiology and sometimes they'd even bring in like um psyops stuff from the

(00:29:06):
military like if you look at a woman this way you know with your this kind of eye

(00:29:11):
contact is guaranteed to like get her to want to have sex with you i mean i cannot

(00:29:16):
tell you how many times i sat in these trainings where it's basically this like

(00:29:21):
five surefire steps to move a woman from the bar into your bed that night,

(00:29:26):
you know,

(00:29:27):
this kind of thing.

(00:29:28):
Um,

(00:29:29):
so absolutely like they,

(00:29:32):
this,

(00:29:33):
this is one of the features of the,

(00:29:38):
um,

(00:29:38):
like authoritative male led self-help industry.

(00:29:44):
And it's actually part of why, um,

(00:29:48):
I'm writing this parenting book that I'm writing right now,

(00:29:51):
because when I got pregnant in 2009,

(00:29:58):
I was part of,

(00:29:59):
you know,

(00:30:00):
what then we called attachment parenting.

(00:30:04):
Now people call like gentle parenting or progressive parenting or whatever.

(00:30:09):
And all of the books that these,

(00:30:12):
that the other mothers,

(00:30:13):
because of course the men,

(00:30:14):
the fathers were not,

(00:30:16):
really involved in this conversation at all but all of the um books that these

(00:30:20):
women were recommending were written by men um and i was like what why are we

(00:30:25):
reading these books written by men when we know um in fact i just was doing some

(00:30:32):
research on this the other day and the um population i mean i can you can guess on

(00:30:41):
which

(00:30:42):
gender and racial group do you think spends the least amount of time parenting of all groups?

(00:30:50):
Oh, gee, I have no idea.

(00:30:52):
I could never possibly guess that.

(00:30:55):
We're post-gender and post-rating.

(00:30:58):
Exactly.

(00:30:59):
So it's just amazing when we have the empirical evidence that it's white men who do

(00:31:06):
the least,

(00:31:08):
put in the least number of hours of parenting of all human beings.

(00:31:12):
And yet, they are often dominating the, you know, parenting shelf of the bookstore.

(00:31:20):
And it's just, you just kind of got to laugh.

(00:31:24):
And some of these books that I was reading, were written by

(00:31:29):
I mean,

(00:31:29):
the other thing that I noticed in just kind of analyzing the parenting book section

(00:31:37):
of the library is that the books written by men were often written from their

(00:31:45):
perspective as like expert psychologists.

(00:31:48):
And the books written by women were often written from the perspective of their

(00:31:52):
experience as mothers.

(00:31:55):
And the books in which those authoritative male psychologists would mention their

(00:32:02):
own parenting sometimes would make really clear that they didn't do much parenting

(00:32:09):
at all.

(00:32:09):
I remember...

(00:32:11):
One of them that I read,

(00:32:13):
the male writer,

(00:32:16):
I'm trying to remember which book this was,

(00:32:20):
and I can't recall,

(00:32:21):
but the author of the book said,

(00:32:25):
you know,

(00:32:26):
I'm off and down working in my study,

(00:32:31):
and my wife knows that

(00:32:34):
how important it is for me to connect with our child.

(00:32:37):
And so when something comes up, I always keep my study door open so that

(00:32:45):
my child could come in and, you know, and let me know what's going on.

(00:32:49):
And,

(00:32:50):
and basically painted the picture of just like,

(00:32:53):
upstairs,

(00:32:54):
the wife is doing all,

(00:32:56):
you know,

(00:32:56):
the parenting,

(00:32:58):
she's like making all the food,

(00:33:00):
cleaning.

(00:33:01):
And occasionally when the kid wants to come in and for a chat,

(00:33:05):
you know,

(00:33:05):
we'll go down and sit in the dad's like debt study and get a little 10 minutes of

(00:33:10):
dad time or something.

(00:33:12):
And this was presented like,

(00:33:14):
you know he was really proud that he was available to his kid in this way so

(00:33:18):
they're just the like drudgery of parenting we all know you know the routine

(00:33:25):
invisible daily work of parenting um still is disproportionately done by women and

(00:33:34):
um the covid pandemic made this all the clearer and

(00:33:38):
And so,

(00:33:39):
yeah,

(00:33:39):
so I'm really excited to be writing a parenting book that really comes out of my

(00:33:42):
experience in the trenches.

(00:33:44):
I am.

(00:33:46):
I'm so excited to read it.

(00:33:47):
So I have to tell you this story.

(00:33:49):
I think you'll really appreciate this.

(00:33:51):
I think you and I were probably in the same parenting circles.

(00:33:55):
Like I went hard on like attachment parenting and natural birth and breastfeeding

(00:34:01):
and like all of that.

(00:34:02):
And I have to add the caveat that there are lots of good ways to be a good parent.

(00:34:07):
That was just the one that was most consistent with my values.

(00:34:11):
So I'm not casting judgment on people who parented differently.

(00:34:15):
But so when I was pregnant with my first, my husband and I have a truly egalitarian marriage.

(00:34:24):
And we knew that we had to be very careful about how we handle parenting.

(00:34:30):
And

(00:34:31):
So,

(00:34:31):
you know,

(00:34:32):
we read all the books together and took all the classes together and we got really

(00:34:36):
interested in the Bradley method of childbirth,

(00:34:39):
which is husband coached childbirth.

(00:34:42):
which sounded great to me.

(00:34:44):
You know,

(00:34:44):
I had this vision of like,

(00:34:45):
you know,

(00:34:46):
he's going to be my support person and my advocate and catch the baby and all of

(00:34:50):
that.

(00:34:50):
And he did end up doing all of that.

(00:34:53):
But that's not really like what the what the guide was about.

(00:34:58):
Really,

(00:34:58):
you know,

(00:34:59):
Bradley birth was about like positioning the man as an authority over the woman's

(00:35:04):
birth and kind of like giving him credit for it.

(00:35:08):
So we signed up for this Bradley birth.

(00:35:11):
And it was taught by a husband and wife.

(00:35:15):
And I wanted to die within 10 minutes of being at the class.

(00:35:20):
But I'm like, I'm here to learn.

(00:35:22):
I'm going to behave myself and try to learn.

(00:35:24):
And then at some point, the couple was talking about their birth.

(00:35:30):
And the man said the words that will echo in my brain,

(00:35:33):
I think until my dying day,

(00:35:35):
which were,

(00:35:37):
we had a minor tear,

(00:35:40):
but it didn't hurt too much.

(00:35:43):
It's like the Portlandia episode.

(00:35:46):
Right?

(00:35:46):
And I mean,

(00:35:46):
my husband and I just looked at each other and we both just started packing up our

(00:35:49):
bags and leaving.

(00:35:50):
Thank God.

(00:35:52):
And what's amazing about that is I feel like that man probably thought that that

(00:35:57):
was like a feminist thing to say.

(00:36:00):
Like he was...

(00:36:02):
you know,

(00:36:03):
owning that,

(00:36:04):
that birthing and parenting are something that,

(00:36:08):
you know,

(00:36:08):
men should be involved with.

(00:36:10):
And,

(00:36:11):
you know,

(00:36:11):
sometimes it's like,

(00:36:13):
Jesus,

(00:36:15):
you know,

(00:36:16):
I feel like some men are just kind of,

(00:36:18):
they're so at a loss for how to genuinely authentically reflect on what does the

(00:36:23):
situation call for,

(00:36:24):
that they just kind of default to the script.

(00:36:28):
And that's where they, yeah, they get in trouble.

(00:36:32):
Well, and it's like fake equality.

(00:36:37):
I've started writing and then abandoned many times a piece about how kind of fake

(00:36:42):
gender neutrality and fake gender equality conceals the reality.

(00:36:46):
And it just makes me nuts that we talk about how parents are drowning and parents

(00:36:53):
are struggling and parenthood is so hard.

(00:36:56):
When like, we all know it's mothers.

(00:36:58):
We all know it's not fathers who are struggling and drowning.

(00:37:02):
And I see it even like at my own child's school where it's,

(00:37:08):
you know,

(00:37:08):
the sort of progressive school where everybody has to volunteer and participate.

(00:37:13):
What that actually means is that every family has to volunteer and participate.

(00:37:17):
And what does that mean?

(00:37:18):
It means the women.

(00:37:20):
So we have parent committees and room parents and parent volunteers

(00:37:26):
And that's what we call them rather than calling them what they actually are,

(00:37:30):
which are mother's committees and mother volunteers and room mothers.

(00:37:34):
And so it just totally glosses over the fact that there is at this school an extra

(00:37:40):
demand on mother's time that doesn't really exist for fathers because mothers are

(00:37:45):
going to do the volunteering that the family is required to do.

(00:37:49):
Right.

(00:37:50):
Oh, you got to write this.

(00:37:52):
That's that's in New York Times op ed.

(00:37:56):
I don't know.

(00:37:57):
Well,

(00:37:58):
you know,

(00:37:58):
people get their backs against the wall when you,

(00:38:01):
you want to use gendered language,

(00:38:03):
because we've like internalized this idea that the way we achieve equality is,

(00:38:08):
I guess,

(00:38:08):
by pretending we already have it.

(00:38:12):
Yeah.

(00:38:13):
I don't know.

(00:38:14):
I mean, the great thing in situations like that is that we just, you know,

(00:38:23):
we have so much empirical research showing that what you're saying is,

(00:38:26):
is just the facts and it's never useful to ignore reality.

(00:38:35):
Yeah, no, I agree.

(00:38:35):
All right.

(00:38:36):
So I want to talk to you about your parenting book a little bit.

(00:38:39):
I'm going to tell you what I'm seeing and you tell me what you think.

(00:38:44):
You know,

(00:38:45):
my impression of parenting for the overwhelming majority of heterosexual parents is

(00:38:50):
that it's basically the woman doing all of the hard work

(00:38:53):
the research,

(00:38:53):
the heavy lifting,

(00:38:54):
the emotional regulation,

(00:38:57):
and parenting is more demanding now than ever.

(00:39:00):
And then it's the job of the father to criticize her,

(00:39:04):
undermine her parenting,

(00:39:05):
parent by impulse,

(00:39:07):
and then weaponize the children against her if he can.

(00:39:12):
Um, is that, is that what's happening?

(00:39:15):
Wow.

(00:39:16):
Well, it's certainly happening in many marriages.

(00:39:21):
Um, yeah, I don't know, you know, what I've, what I've been thinking about, um,

(00:39:32):
Because some of the best and most current research on the gender division of labor,

(00:39:38):
like,

(00:39:39):
you know,

(00:39:39):
household labor and parenting labor comes from the COVID years.

(00:39:47):
And, you know, one of the things that we saw there was...

(00:39:52):
a perfect test of something that the sociologist Kathleen Gerson had argued in 2004.

(00:39:59):
She did this amazing study in which she interviewed men and women about their

(00:40:08):
values regarding,

(00:40:10):
you know,

(00:40:11):
equality in marriages with regard to like parenting and housework.

(00:40:19):
And what she found was that men and women had at that time in 2004,

(00:40:25):
converged in their values more than they ever had before that that men were the

(00:40:32):
majority of men,

(00:40:33):
like the majority of women reported that they thought those things should be done

(00:40:37):
equally.

(00:40:39):
And when it was only when she got to one very crucial question that men and women

(00:40:47):
diverged,

(00:40:48):
which is she asked them,

(00:40:50):
if something happened where in which,

(00:40:55):
you know,

(00:40:56):
you were not able for some kind of structural reason to divide things equally,

(00:41:03):
what would you do then?

(00:41:04):
And the women...

(00:41:09):
reported, well, then I'd rather be single.

(00:41:12):
Or,

(00:41:12):
you know,

(00:41:13):
like,

(00:41:13):
if that's,

(00:41:14):
if I can't actually achieve this vision of equity,

(00:41:18):
then I think I'd probably reevaluate whether I wanted to get married or whether I

(00:41:23):
wanted to have children.

(00:41:25):
And the men said, well, if it's difficult to do things equally, if that proves to be impossible,

(00:41:33):
then I would want to just default to a traditional scenario where I'm the breakfast

(00:41:38):
winner and my wife stays home.

(00:41:43):
And so what Gerson said is that the more structural supports we have in place,

(00:41:52):
the easier it is for us to both achieve equality,

(00:41:57):
but also achieve the appearance of equality.

(00:41:59):
But if something happens,

(00:42:01):
if there's some event that makes it difficult to support families to achieve

(00:42:08):
equity,

(00:42:09):
then men are perfectly happy to resort to a sexist arrangement.

(00:42:14):
And that's so let's fast forward then to 2019.

(00:42:18):
And the pandemic really was the perfect test of this because many,

(00:42:23):
you know,

(00:42:24):
liberal men who had been in marriages that they perceived as equal,

(00:42:32):
when the school shut down,

(00:42:35):
when childcare was no longer available,

(00:42:38):
when they spent one day at home trying to work while raising their children,

(00:42:44):
Many,

(00:42:45):
many of these men just declared they couldn't,

(00:42:48):
they couldn't do it,

(00:42:49):
you know,

(00:42:50):
and the New York Times ran so many excellent,

(00:42:55):
you know,

(00:42:56):
they just had great reporting on this of how

(00:42:59):
men basically left the house to go work somewhere else on Zoom.

(00:43:05):
They returned to work sooner.

(00:43:07):
And it was women who did the lion's share of working full time,

(00:43:13):
often in a closet so that they could get away from their kids who were screaming on

(00:43:18):
the other side of the door,

(00:43:19):
while also trying to homeschool the children.

(00:43:23):
And so for those of us who had remembered Kathleen Gerson's study,

(00:43:28):
It was just couldn't have been clear that,

(00:43:32):
you know,

(00:43:32):
this was the circumstance in which men felt entitled to bail,

(00:43:38):
you know,

(00:43:38):
or to prioritize their own needs.

(00:43:42):
So I guess what I'm saying in response to your question is,

(00:43:47):
I hope it's not as bleak as what you described that,

(00:43:52):
you know,

(00:43:52):
men feel their job is to,

(00:43:55):
you know,

(00:43:56):
criticize women and abandon women in the work of the household,

(00:44:01):
though I believe that is probably happening quite often.

(00:44:05):
But even the,

(00:44:09):
you know,

(00:44:10):
on the happier side of things,

(00:44:12):
what we saw is that men who really claimed to care about equity only care about it

(00:44:20):
to the extent that it's easeful.

(00:44:23):
And I think that's really,

(00:44:26):
you know,

(00:44:27):
something we haven't fully grappled with,

(00:44:29):
or at least we haven't held men accountable to that.

(00:44:32):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:44:33):
Well, and I think

(00:44:35):
I think one thing that we don't talk often enough about is that we want to make

(00:44:40):
equity appealing to men.

(00:44:41):
And so we tell them things like,

(00:44:43):
you know,

(00:44:43):
you don't have to give anything up and it'll make your life better and all of that.

(00:44:46):
And,

(00:44:47):
you know,

(00:44:47):
I do believe that equity makes everyone's lives better,

(00:44:50):
but it actually does require men to give up quite a lot,

(00:44:55):
sort of by definition,

(00:44:56):
because otherwise you're just foisting extra labor on women.

(00:45:01):
And I think what I see a lot with men is this idea that like,

(00:45:05):
well,

(00:45:05):
equality is great as long as I don't have to do anything or give anything up.

(00:45:09):
And that's,

(00:45:11):
you know,

(00:45:11):
that's not really what equality requires because sort of our foundational belief

(00:45:16):
here is that men have taken more than their fair share and created this system to

(00:45:21):
like reinforce that.

(00:45:22):
So, you know, for the majority of marriages, it is going to hit a point where

(00:45:27):
equity is hard or too hard.

(00:45:29):
And I think for most of them, it's when the kids appear.

(00:45:33):
Yes, 100%.

(00:45:34):
And I think we see that too,

(00:45:36):
kind of playing out at the political level with this backlash,

(00:45:43):
this kind of like anti-woke,

(00:45:45):
so-called anti-woke backlash,

(00:45:47):
where

(00:45:48):
You know, many men have said, look, wokeness went too far.

(00:45:54):
Like, now you're trying to get me to accept trans people.

(00:45:58):
And now you're trying to get me to,

(00:46:00):
you know,

(00:46:04):
be accountable for the fact that I sexually harassed someone.

(00:46:07):
How very dare we.

(00:46:09):
All the things they think went too far.

(00:46:12):
And it's like...

(00:46:14):
You know, well, saying things went too far is one way to describe it.

(00:46:18):
But another way to describe it is that, yeah, people who hoard power...

(00:46:26):
get upset when people who have been mistreated and harmed by their power hoarding

(00:46:33):
would like that power distributed equally.

(00:46:37):
And so we're constantly,

(00:46:39):
yeah,

(00:46:39):
in this position of trying to pretend that justice doesn't mean that men give

(00:46:47):
anything up.

(00:46:48):
And I think you're absolutely right.

(00:46:51):
It does require justice.

(00:46:54):
giving things up,

(00:46:55):
it does require,

(00:46:56):
um,

(00:46:58):
making,

(00:46:59):
you know,

(00:47:00):
being willing to share the power that you've been keeping,

(00:47:03):
keeping for yourself.

(00:47:05):
Yeah.

(00:47:06):
Um,

(00:47:07):
so you have this whole section in the tragedy of heterosexuality where you talk

(00:47:10):
about kind of the normalization of the idea of marital hatred.

(00:47:15):
And women email me all the time with basically questions about,

(00:47:21):
well,

(00:47:21):
is it normal for us to hate each other sometimes?

(00:47:24):
And often baked into that question is, am I crazy for wanting better?

(00:47:29):
And I'm starting to see now...

(00:47:34):
Lots of instructions to women and to young women,

(00:47:38):
especially,

(00:47:39):
that we need to lower our standards and that we need to accept that,

(00:47:44):
you know,

(00:47:45):
being married means some level of unhappiness and maybe a chronic level of

(00:47:49):
unhappiness.

(00:47:51):
I never say why we have to accept that,

(00:47:53):
but it seems obvious that the reason is so that like women can continue to serve

(00:47:57):
men as women appliances.

(00:48:00):
So talk to me about this like normalization of marital hatred and what that's about.

(00:48:07):
Right.

(00:48:08):
Yeah.

(00:48:09):
I mean, the first thing I want to say about that is that

(00:48:13):
It's one of the main things,

(00:48:15):
probably the first thing that queer people notice and worry about,

(00:48:22):
about straight marriages.

(00:48:25):
There's just, you know, like, this is where the whole, are the straights okay?

(00:48:31):
Do they like each other comes from?

(00:48:33):
Because it does appear that many married straight people

(00:48:41):
really loathe their partner.

(00:48:43):
And,

(00:48:43):
you know,

(00:48:44):
this is not to say I've gotten so much criticism from straight people saying,

(00:48:49):
you know,

(00:48:49):
in response to tragedy of heterosexuality saying,

(00:48:52):
are you trying to say queer people are perfect?

(00:48:55):
No, I'm not saying queer people are perfect.

(00:48:57):
Of course, you know,

(00:48:59):
we also divorce,

(00:49:01):
but frankly,

(00:49:01):
and there's dysfunction in queer relationships,

(00:49:04):
but frankly,

(00:49:05):
the fact that queer people divorce,

(00:49:07):
and I think the last,

(00:49:11):
the data that I saw recently suggested that queer people might be divorcing at a

(00:49:15):
higher rate than straight people.

(00:49:17):
And as far as I'm concerned, it just proves my point, which is that queer people are less

(00:49:24):
lie inclined to romanticize misery and so more likely to get out of a relationship

(00:49:32):
that feels toxic so um

(00:49:37):
I,

(00:49:39):
you know,

(00:49:39):
not to just to overdo this or to beat a dead horse,

(00:49:45):
but there's just so much,

(00:49:50):
not just romanticizing heterosexual misery that happens in popular culture,

(00:49:55):
but eroticizing it even,

(00:49:57):
you know,

(00:49:57):
the sort of the slap and the kiss,

(00:50:00):
like the big argument where,

(00:50:02):
you know,

(00:50:03):
the two,

(00:50:04):
the man and the woman,

(00:50:05):
you know,

(00:50:06):
There's been some major betrayal.

(00:50:07):
They clearly hate each other.

(00:50:09):
You know,

(00:50:10):
they're right in the middle of a major fallout where one has said something deeply

(00:50:19):
offensive to the other.

(00:50:20):
And then next thing you know, they're having sex, you know, this kind of thing.

(00:50:24):
Yeah.

(00:50:27):
And so it's like that kind of stuff,

(00:50:31):
but it's also what we tell little girls like,

(00:50:34):
oh,

(00:50:34):
you know,

(00:50:35):
he hit you or he teased you because he likes you.

(00:50:39):
It's just baked into straight culture,

(00:50:42):
which is that,

(00:50:44):
you know,

(00:50:44):
heterosexuality derives on conflict is,

(00:50:51):
you know,

(00:50:51):
or heterosexual romance is somehow animated by or intensified by conflict.

(00:50:57):
And it's really dysfunctional.

(00:51:00):
And it's just, you know, it's so plainly dysfunctional and neurotic to invest in that narrative.

(00:51:10):
It actually creates so much suffering for people.

(00:51:15):
And yet it's hard to counteract it because it's so baked into,

(00:51:21):
you know,

(00:51:21):
all of the movies we watch and everything.

(00:51:24):
So...

(00:51:26):
I think,

(00:51:27):
you know,

(00:51:27):
the question when women ask,

(00:51:29):
is it normal for us to hate each other,

(00:51:33):
is both yes and no,

(00:51:34):
you know,

(00:51:35):
normal as in common,

(00:51:37):
yes.

(00:51:39):
Normal as in the way it should be.

(00:51:42):
No.

(00:51:43):
And we know it doesn't have to be that way,

(00:51:44):
because it's not how queer people have relationships.

(00:51:48):
And I spent a good amount of time in Tragedy of Heterosexuality talking about

(00:51:51):
lesbian feminist relationships in particular,

(00:51:55):
where there's an understanding that,

(00:51:57):
you know,

(00:51:59):
when you desire other women,

(00:52:01):
like when you're sexually attracted to women,

(00:52:03):
it's inseparable from

(00:52:07):
feminism it's inseparable from wanting what's best for women it's inseparable from

(00:52:13):
respecting women as a group you know of people and wanting them to have freedom and

(00:52:22):
caring about what women think and wanting to follow women's leadership that's all

(00:52:26):
sort of part of what makes women hot for lesbians you

(00:52:30):
And that's why lesbians are,

(00:52:32):
you know,

(00:52:33):
we're notoriously attracted to strong women,

(00:52:37):
powerful women,

(00:52:39):
because who wouldn't want that?

(00:52:44):
And so to my mind,

(00:52:47):
it's a telltale sign right off the bat that straight men are often attracted to

(00:52:52):
women who've been disempowered in some way,

(00:52:55):
who are much younger than they are.

(00:52:58):
who appear to not have any agency,

(00:53:01):
you know,

(00:53:02):
for decades,

(00:53:03):
was like,

(00:53:03):
you know,

(00:53:06):
the bombshell woman,

(00:53:08):
the sexiest woman was portrayed as a stupid woman,

(00:53:12):
as a woman who could

(00:53:14):
hardly had anything to say, who spoke with a high pitched squeaky voice.

(00:53:20):
You know,

(00:53:20):
often,

(00:53:22):
all you have to do too,

(00:53:23):
is look at the way that supermodels are posed and print media,

(00:53:28):
often this kind of weird,

(00:53:31):
fallen down,

(00:53:33):
unnatural,

(00:53:34):
looking away from the camera,

(00:53:35):
you know,

(00:53:36):
just a lot,

(00:53:36):
a lot of what

(00:53:39):
men are told makes a woman attractive is precisely her passivity,

(00:53:44):
her weakness,

(00:53:45):
her ability to be controlled.

(00:53:47):
And that's just not true for lesbians.

(00:53:50):
And so there's something deeply distorted in straight culture that keeps this going.

(00:53:58):
Yeah.

(00:53:59):
I'm listening to you talk about this and it's actually helping me understand some

(00:54:03):
of my interactions with readers because

(00:54:08):
I have like,

(00:54:09):
well,

(00:54:09):
first of all,

(00:54:10):
like I'm queer in like a heterosexual presenting relationship,

(00:54:14):
which I do think like plays a role in like why I was able to have an egalitarian

(00:54:19):
relationship.

(00:54:21):
But also there's been this weird dynamic as I have become more public and as people

(00:54:29):
kind of learn like,

(00:54:29):
oh,

(00:54:30):
she's a woman married to a man who's like not terrible to her,

(00:54:34):
where a lot of readers become very interested in my relationships.

(00:54:39):
And when I talk to people,

(00:54:41):
often they will say things to me like,

(00:54:44):
oh,

(00:54:44):
but I bet you guys have some really intense fights,

(00:54:47):
don't you?

(00:54:48):
And there's like an air of excitement that they like want to hear me say yes.

(00:54:53):
And like the answer is no, no.

(00:54:56):
Like we're actually not screaming at each other.

(00:54:59):
Yeah.

(00:55:00):
And I did this survey a while ago because I was going to write about like what

(00:55:05):
women seek in their relationships with men.

(00:55:08):
And I ended up not doing it.

(00:55:10):
And one of the things I asked women was like,

(00:55:12):
what were the three characteristics that attracted you to your current partner?

(00:55:16):
And then when I was analyzing the data,

(00:55:18):
I did like a word cloud that showed the things that appeared most often.

(00:55:22):
And it was words like dominance, controlling, intense, alpha,

(00:55:30):
And, yeah, that's – it's really dark.

(00:55:35):
Yeah.

(00:55:36):
But I do think that that gets romanticized even,

(00:55:38):
like,

(00:55:40):
when we're in a feminist context talking about a feminist relationship.

(00:55:44):
I think people want to hear,

(00:55:45):
oh,

(00:55:45):
but he's really challenging you behind the scenes about all this.

(00:55:50):
And, like, that sounds, like, romantic to people.

(00:55:54):
Yeah.

(00:55:55):
Yeah.

(00:55:56):
I mean –

(00:55:59):
I don't know what to say about that really when women want dominance...

(00:56:09):
then, you know, I want them to have that.

(00:56:14):
But because I want, I want women to have what they want.

(00:56:18):
But also, you know, if that's what you want, then that's what you're going to get.

(00:56:22):
And, and you may find that actually, it's not what's making you happy.

(00:56:28):
I think queerness is,

(00:56:34):
helps provide some nuance to this because it's a space where kink and the kinds of

(00:56:45):
conversations that people have in queer spaces and kink spaces about power

(00:56:50):
allows you to separate out like,

(00:56:52):
well,

(00:56:52):
when you say dominance,

(00:56:54):
do you actually mean like,

(00:56:56):
that he controls whether you have access to money,

(00:57:01):
and that he can he,

(00:57:03):
you know,

(00:57:04):
it has the

(00:57:06):
entitlement to say that he doesn't want anything to do with washing his own dishes.

(00:57:10):
Like, is that, is that actually what you mean?

(00:57:12):
Or did you mean,

(00:57:13):
you know,

(00:57:14):
that he's dominant in bed or that he has a kind of masculinity that,

(00:57:19):
you know,

(00:57:20):
really works for you because those in straight culture just get sort of all

(00:57:26):
conflated,

(00:57:26):
like all smushed into one.

(00:57:29):
But they don't have to be at all.

(00:57:31):
And yeah,

(00:57:33):
you know, I'm attracted, I've only ever been attracted to masculine women.

(00:57:42):
And my partner is masculine and we've been together for 20 years now.

(00:57:48):
And,

(00:57:50):
but,

(00:57:52):
and I would say there's certain ways that I like her to be dominant,

(00:57:56):
but it's a very narrow.

(00:57:58):
I'm mostly like emotionally and psychologically and logistically, um,

(00:58:02):
I am the top in our marriage.

(00:58:05):
And so these are the kinds of things that you can just negotiate.

(00:58:10):
But again, you really have to queer your heterosexuality a little bit to do that.

(00:58:17):
We haven't normalized any of these negotiations in heterosexuality.

(00:58:22):
I find that people think that if you don't just fall naturally into it, that it's not romantic.

(00:58:28):
So, you know, you can't have discussions about what you want sexually.

(00:58:31):
You can't have discussions about like how you're going to resolve conflict.

(00:58:35):
It should all just happen like through the magic of romantic love, I guess.

(00:58:42):
Yeah.

(00:58:43):
Well,

(00:58:43):
one of the things I am writing about in the parenting book is contracts and how

(00:58:50):
much I love them and how hot.

(00:58:51):
Oh, I love that.

(00:58:53):
So we have like a parenting and relationship and sex and all of that.

(00:58:59):
contract.

(00:59:00):
And I tell people that and they're horrified.

(00:59:02):
And I just love their horror.

(00:59:04):
Yeah, I mean, nothing could be harder for me anyway, I think, than than to have that.

(00:59:11):
And of course, it can be renegotiated and everything.

(00:59:15):
But it's

(00:59:17):
I mean, I don't get why people are horrified by that or why they think that's not romantic.

(00:59:21):
Because if anything,

(00:59:23):
it's sort of sitting down and naming,

(00:59:26):
like,

(00:59:26):
use your big girl and your big boy voice and name what you want.

(00:59:33):
Like, that's pretty hot.

(00:59:35):
And so, and especially when women...

(00:59:40):
are able, when straight women are able to say what they actually want out of parenting.

(00:59:47):
And I have a friend who has a parenting contract that was one of the most feminist,

(00:59:54):
deliciously feminist documents I have ever read in my life.

(00:59:57):
She, you know, her husband wanted to have a kid.

(01:00:02):
And she was somewhere between not wanting to have a kid and

(01:00:08):
wanting to be maybe just sort of less involved in the parenting than he did.

(01:00:12):
And so before, it's really important to make the contract before you actually have the kid.

(01:00:20):
This got spelled out that basically she was like, I do not want to be the primary parent.

(01:00:25):
I'm the sort of secondary parent.

(01:00:29):
And I want a room of my own that the kid never goes into.

(01:00:35):
I want these X nights away from the house.

(01:00:38):
I'm not going to do any of the middle, not a middle of the night parenting.

(01:00:41):
I mean, it is so it's to, to read it written by a woman.

(01:00:45):
It's like so bold, so striking.

(01:00:50):
And yet it's just saying, I would like to have the thing that.

(01:00:55):
millions of men have had without having to even ask for it you know I basically

(01:01:01):
want to be the dad is what it's saying and and for a woman to own that you know it

(01:01:08):
it's not only that um it it it it it's like surprising that she would ask that um

(01:01:19):
of a male partner it's also that it it it challenges our very understanding of

(01:01:25):
womanhood because you know womanhood itself and certainly the intersection of

(01:01:33):
womanhood and parenting is supposed to be about like a natural maternal instinct

(01:01:38):
and a desire to nurture and so when women recognize like I actually don't want to

(01:01:45):
do all that

(01:01:47):
I think that's really threatening to a lot of people because it threatens the gender binary.

(01:01:52):
And so I'm really excited about women getting to say,

(01:01:56):
like,

(01:01:57):
actually,

(01:01:58):
I want to be a dad in ways that that has been understood culturally and

(01:02:03):
historically.

(01:02:04):
Yeah.

(01:02:05):
Well,

(01:02:05):
and even still like women saying it before the child is there gives their partner a

(01:02:11):
chance to consent or not.

(01:02:13):
And so it's still like not really being a dad.

(01:02:15):
Like it's still like a better deal for the man than women have historically gotten.

(01:02:22):
But I love that for her.

(01:02:23):
That's just, that's wonderful.

(01:02:25):
Okay.

(01:02:26):
So you're talking about contracts in your parenting book.

(01:02:29):
Tell me what else is in this book.

(01:02:30):
I'm so excited for it to come out.

(01:02:33):
I'm so upset that it's so far away.

(01:02:36):
Yeah, well, to me, it's due to my editor February 1st, so I'm frantically finishing it up.

(01:02:45):
Yeah, so this is a book about, it's called Race to Be Free, A Queer Approach to Parenting.

(01:02:53):
And I really wanted to write a book that was about how everyone can parent themselves.

(01:03:01):
because this is a book about how to take some of the insights that come out of

(01:03:07):
queer and trans thinking and activism and the way that queer and trans people have

(01:03:16):
understood children,

(01:03:17):
have understood the adult-child relationship,

(01:03:21):
have raised children ourselves,

(01:03:24):
And just to show that these are all really powerful and beautiful models for how to

(01:03:31):
be with children,

(01:03:32):
how to nurture children,

(01:03:33):
but there's nothing about them that requires you to actually be queer identified.

(01:03:40):
It's a methodology.

(01:03:42):
It's a queer method for raising children.

(01:03:46):
And so that's what the book is.

(01:03:48):
And I'm hoping that it will be, it's something that people can, all people can take up

(01:03:54):
even people who aren't parents,

(01:03:57):
who don't identify as parents,

(01:03:58):
but who work with children a lot or who are close to children,

(01:04:02):
you know,

(01:04:02):
they're nibblings in their lives.

(01:04:04):
And so it centers around,

(01:04:07):
a lot around like,

(01:04:09):
what does it mean to be in relationship with children in a way that truly provides

(01:04:14):
them

(01:04:15):
gender self-determination?

(01:04:18):
What does it mean to be in relationship with children in a way that does not

(01:04:23):
sexualize or heterosexualize them?

(01:04:26):
What does it mean to be,

(01:04:28):
you know,

(01:04:28):
what does it look like to be in relationship with children in a way that isn't

(01:04:33):
about hoping they will

(01:04:36):
reproduce you you and and and your choices um or that they'll somehow provide a

(01:04:43):
return on your investment with their future success whatever that looks like for

(01:04:49):
you but rather to be fully and 100 present in relationship with children as they

(01:04:55):
are right now um what does it look like to parent

(01:05:00):
deeply feministically to role model that for children?

(01:05:06):
What does it look like to parent children collectively and to bring children into

(01:05:12):
the movement for gender justice?

(01:05:18):
So it's really kind of taking, it's operating on two levels, sort of thinking broadly

(01:05:25):
about all of those things, especially in a moment of return to authoritarian parenting.

(01:05:34):
But it's also got just a lot of practical tips about parenting in the day to day

(01:05:40):
based on those values.

(01:05:43):
I love it all.

(01:05:44):
I love every word you've just said.

(01:05:45):
I just can't wait for it to be out.

(01:05:47):
I also love it that you mentioned the return to authoritarian parenting,

(01:05:51):
because this is not something I'm hearing people talk about so much,

(01:05:55):
but it's definitely something I'm seeing.

(01:05:57):
Yes.

(01:05:58):
Yes.

(01:05:59):
Yeah.

(01:05:59):
I mean, yeah.

(01:06:05):
It's like kids are too soft and,

(01:06:07):
you know,

(01:06:09):
all this,

(01:06:09):
like they're emotionally tending to children is stunting them and you're a

(01:06:14):
helicopter parent.

(01:06:15):
And there's also this other like thing where there's pushback against like physical safety.

(01:06:22):
Like you're a loser if you want to put the car seat in right sort of thing.

(01:06:27):
It's just really, it's a weird time to be a parent.

(01:06:30):
Yeah.

(01:06:32):
Well, I think that parenting...

(01:06:36):
always you know it's it's it's a relationship with a child with children it's a job

(01:06:43):
it's a kind of labor but it also is a cultural experience and it always is shaped

(01:06:51):
by the ethos of the time you know the the debates about how to live and what it

(01:06:59):
means to be a person and what it means to be a man and a woman and

(01:07:03):
And so the fact that we're seeing the rise of fascist authoritarianism in the

(01:07:11):
United States and around the world,

(01:07:14):
we could expect then that that's going to show up in the way that people are

(01:07:18):
thinking about parenting.

(01:07:20):
And there's a lot of evidence that it is with these

(01:07:24):
think the last count is over 70 parents rights bills that have been introduced

(01:07:30):
across the country that are about parents trying to claim full power over

(01:07:38):
children's,

(01:07:41):
what children are learning in school,

(01:07:43):
you know,

(01:07:46):
what the kinds of people and ideas that children have access to.

(01:07:49):
And there's just like a whole moral panic and

(01:07:54):
really a lot based on just these totally absurd urban legends about how,

(01:08:00):
you know,

(01:08:01):
you might drop your kid off at school and their principal's going to take them to

(01:08:04):
get a sex change operation and just stuff that,

(01:08:08):
you know,

(01:08:08):
or children using litter box.

(01:08:10):
I mean,

(01:08:10):
the panic right now around children and the way that the Republican party has

(01:08:17):
invested truly in

(01:08:20):
millions and millions and millions of dollars in these attack ads that are about

(01:08:25):
children and gender.

(01:08:26):
It kind of,

(01:08:29):
I think,

(01:08:30):
tells us everything we need to know about people's anxieties about the next

(01:08:36):
generation and specifically their anxieties about Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

(01:08:42):
Because at the same time, I mentioned that we've seen

(01:08:47):
this backlash among young men and that is true but when you look at the

(01:08:54):
characteristics the generational research on gen z it's like core characteristics

(01:09:00):
overall especially driven by um

(01:09:05):
young women and non-binary and trans members of that generation.

(01:09:13):
There's overwhelming support among Gen Z for queer rights, for trans rights.

(01:09:24):
A lot of, you know, Gen Z is the first generation where

(01:09:30):
there's just a lot of emphasis on gender fluidity,

(01:09:34):
gender freedom,

(01:09:35):
a lot of emphasis on being able to claim your needs,

(01:09:44):
whether around neurodivergence or disability or mental health.

(01:09:49):
Gen Z is very open in talking about mental health.

(01:09:54):
And these are things that are deeply threatening to...

(01:10:00):
you know, the powers that be.

(01:10:02):
So I think one of the ways that we,

(01:10:08):
that,

(01:10:08):
you know,

(01:10:09):
the,

(01:10:09):
the right tries to control social change is by cracking down on children.

(01:10:18):
And we saw that with,

(01:10:19):
you know,

(01:10:20):
historically that's borne itself out with the way the Nazi party like created

(01:10:24):
Hitler youth and all of this stuff.

(01:10:25):
And so

(01:10:26):
Of course,

(01:10:27):
we're going to see a lot of focus on like,

(01:10:31):
let's go back to toughening up children,

(01:10:35):
returning to hitting children,

(01:10:37):
you know,

(01:10:40):
enough already with kids talking about their mental health.

(01:10:43):
They just need good old fashioned discipline, you know, this kind of thing.

(01:10:48):
Yeah,

(01:10:48):
it's just,

(01:10:49):
it's a wild ride as a parent,

(01:10:51):
but I think your book will be a helpful antidote and the sort of thing that a lot

(01:10:57):
of us are really looking for.

(01:10:59):
So thank you for writing it and just thank you for being you in the world and just

(01:11:03):
making it better to the greatest possible extent.

(01:11:08):
Listeners,

(01:11:08):
I will put all of Jane's information in the show notes,

(01:11:12):
including book information and all of that.

(01:11:14):
And Jane, thank you so much for coming on the show.

(01:11:16):
This has been amazing.

(01:11:18):
Thank you, Zahn.

(01:11:19):
I love talking to you.

(01:11:20):
And thank you to everyone for listening.