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53. Chronic Illness & Fake Orgasms: A Tale of the Modern Woman
12 Plays2 days ago
This week we tackled the second half of chapter 3 and all of chapter 4 of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, by Soraya Chemaly.
Please note this content and trigger warning: this episode covers dense and emotionally taxing subject matter for those who fall within subjugated demographics. ***In particular, please note there are mentions and discussions about SA and related traumas, as well as accidental but traumatic injuries to infants.***
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Hosts: Christina Bell & Molly Wilde
Music: The Confrontation, by Jonathan Boyle, licensed from Premium Beats by Shutterstock
Editing: Molly Wilde
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Reactions
00:00:21
Speaker
You ready
00:00:27
Speaker
to get mad?
00:00:35
Speaker
I love this book.
00:00:38
Speaker
Refresh my memory. Dear god, it is infuriating. It is. Rage Becomes Her. The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Shamali.
00:00:50
Speaker
uh and
00:00:55
Speaker
your blood pressure's already rising i was reading it and i was just like my fucking god like i'm i am not an ignorant person you know Like, I am generally pretty informed about, if not specific statistics, general statistics, or at least the proportions of, you know, inequity, in inequality.
00:01:30
Speaker
her um When confronted with specifics, I am still baffled, bamboozled.
00:01:42
Speaker
Befuddled.
00:01:44
Speaker
Banana. from
00:01:49
Speaker
Okay. I don't know what to say in response to that.
00:01:55
Speaker
I'm an idiot. Don't mind me. You're not an idiot. Shut up!
00:02:02
Speaker
I think I'm just going to hit you with a one-two punch ah right here.
Impacts of Anger on Women's Health
00:02:08
Speaker
We're starting in the middle of chapter three. ah Angry Bodies is the name of the chapter. We're starting on page 53. That sounds like a loaded chapter title.
00:02:21
Speaker
Angry Bodies? Yeah. Oh my fuck it is. i bet. Oh my fuck. I bet. Yeah. And I'm like, whew, God, okay. um I need to get this book.
00:02:37
Speaker
You will. you You should. All right. We are starting, like i said, page 53, chapter three, Angry Bodies. We're going to finish out chapter three and get ah hopefully all the way through chapter four.
00:02:53
Speaker
all right. host So Angry Bodies, we did leave off, you know, talking about the ways that anger, expressing your anger,
00:03:05
Speaker
can actually relieve symptoms of pain. And we also touched on how women who express their anger verbally or outwardly at all, particularly in things such as cussing, tend to be less cared for by the people around them. They tend to be regarded as crude, rude, ah vulgar.
00:03:35
Speaker
um no matter what it is, like why it is that they are expressing the way that they are. a And I was going to say, I remember posing the question, is the cussing a result of being less cared for or is the being less cared for a result of the cussing?
00:03:52
Speaker
Did you, do you remember the answer I gave? No. Okay. Cause the, what the meaning was of what I had read was the cussing causes the poor care.
00:04:06
Speaker
It drives people away. Yes. it It repels people. I know. Exactly. I'm going to say right now, that's probably like older generations.
00:04:19
Speaker
Because right our generations, like mine and you know younger, i believe, are like... We have friends who are like just like us, and we are like, you know what i mean? we yeah we' we more relaxed regard only coach Yeah, we're Yeah, we haven't become pariahs because we cuss.
00:04:38
Speaker
Right. We have friends who also cuss, and so it's like acceptable and shit. Right, right. But like, you know, if I were to let out a string of swears in front of my Mormon mother...
00:04:53
Speaker
I would get, you know, she probably would still give me the care that I needed, but she'd also, you know, serve it with a side of scolding. you mean beating the shit out of your ass?
00:05:06
Speaker
No. She wouldn't have beat you? oh as a child, maybe. Okay. But not now. I didn't realize as you meant now, now. Okay. No, now. Yeah, okay. Um...
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I never swore when I was a kid. Not in front of her.
00:05:22
Speaker
Anywho, so that's where we left off. where We're literally like starting in the middle of like a page, not even like a section of the chapter. Okay. um
00:05:32
Speaker
The very first paragraph that I want to read here goes like this. Here we go. Repressed anger is now considered a risk factor for a panoply of other ailments.
00:05:48
Speaker
Women are three times more likely to develop disabling and painful autoimmune illnesses. Those in which the body in essence attacks itself by producing self damaging antibodies than men are.
00:06:02
Speaker
Wow. For example, women suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome at four times the rate that men do. And they are twice as likely to develop the neurodegenerative disease multiple scle sclerosis, MS.
00:06:18
Speaker
to They also make up more than 90% of people suffering from fibromyalgia, which causes sleep and mood disruptions and widespread musculo musqui o musculoskeletal pain.
00:06:34
Speaker
huh oh That hits home for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I've long, you know, understood my own autoimmune issues to have stemmed from chronic repressed anger, repressed emotions at all.
00:06:58
Speaker
it's also, you know, chronic stress. um So this was unsurprising, but the the purport, like the... disproportion yeah was still startling to read hu the next paragraph literally talks about how um certain cancers and especially particularly breast cancer um has been linked to what is described as extreme suppression of anger um and that's actually disproportionately affecting black women um
00:07:37
Speaker
um there was this, I'm going to read this one sentence here. A 12-year longitudinal study which assesses change over time found a 70% increase in cancer-related deaths in people with the highest scores for suppressing their negative emotions. seventy percent 70% increase.
00:07:59
Speaker
Fucking bananas. then you know It does go on to explain like not Not a caveat, but it like it makes there's a clarifier here.
00:08:11
Speaker
It is important to be clear that anger does not cause these illnesses, but studies repeatedly suggest and in some cases confirm but it is that its mismanaged yeah but it's mismanagement, ah anger's mismanagement, is implicated in their incidence and prevalence among women.
00:08:31
Speaker
um Improved survival seen in studies about women who expressed anger does not prove that saying i am angry affects a cure, but rather that the ability to think and talk about emotions, and in the case of anger in particular, feel control over factors in one's life might lead to deeper understanding, more aggressive approaches to treatment, and overall healthier decisions.
00:08:58
Speaker
That's a lot. And and think about
Systemic Discrimination and Health
00:09:00
Speaker
this. I mean, i don't, I'm going to be speaking in, you know, generalities and stereotypes, but men who, you know, are more prone to express only anger and not much else, um, are just either angry or perfectly fine all the time. And like, right.
00:09:21
Speaker
Like anger is the only emotion that's like socially acceptable for a man to express. Right. And so, yeah. Like when they're not angry, they act like nothing's wrong ever. And right it's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And then you end up with these men who are like, you know, generally speaking, less stressed out and less unhealthy. Yeah. and In a lot of ways, like women, you know, we are way more prone to like heart disease and shit. Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Other things. Right. References heart disease directly in this book. Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
Or heart related diseases. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
yeah um so us who cannot express anger like men can are the ones that are suffering exactly it's just crazy exactly is god oh and then you know sort of moving on i really i want this to try to be fluid so i'm trying to yeah i mean like just in terms of like moving from one section that I read to the next section that I read, like it does all sort of flow into itself, but hopefully at least that's my perception of it. So let me know if there seems to be like a weird jump that you like didn't expect are not understanding.
00:10:40
Speaker
um So this next paragraph that I ah blocked off here, says people with incomes below the poverty line are two times more likely to be living with chronic pain and three to five times more likely to experience regular extreme pain and mental distress.
00:11:04
Speaker
People with so-called anger issues are also at higher risk for substance abuse. Suicide like substance abuse is closely tied to shame. Suicide is according to Dr. Michael Lewis,
00:11:17
Speaker
an expert in emotional and intellectual development, likely to be the result of shame associated with rage directed inwards. This news was treated as explosive when the research was released, but for years, researchers and members of the medical profession have argued for a greater understanding of how identity, class, gender, and ethnicity profoundly impacts health.
00:11:45
Speaker
impacts health Harvard public health sociologist David R. Williams has created a scale that measures how systemic discrimination generates health inequities.
00:11:58
Speaker
When it comes to the intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity, women of color are living with significant significantly degraded health and care. Fucking and insane.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I just, the first question that pops into my head is how do we change this? You know? Right? God. And it does talk about like later on, but also like it's not, i think it's more in chapter four. It talks about how like people think like progress must be happening. Progress must be, you know, underway to improve these kinds of circumstances. But like it's really fucking slow. And in some cases like stalled out completely.
00:12:44
Speaker
And then it it flows into talking about how the the next little section actually is literally titled how we think about anger matters.
00:12:57
Speaker
It says ruminating on negative feelings, which accounts for women's longer lasting and intense experiences of anger, increases the chances that women catastrophize imagining and anticipating negative outcomes.
00:13:12
Speaker
Ruminating and catastrophizing, as previously discussed, ah more cultivated and common in women, intensifies feelings of pain. One response is substance abuse.
00:13:24
Speaker
ah At least one study has linked the tendency to ruminate and catastrophize to an increased likelihood of taking prescribed opiate or opioid analgesics.
00:13:35
Speaker
oh That likelihood, in turn, brings an increased risk risk of addiction. Patients who are legitimately prescribed drugs such as Oxycontin can quickly develop dangerous tolerances and a greater chance of overdose.
00:13:52
Speaker
Similarly, in terms of pain, rumination and catastrophizing, being sexually assaulted also puts a person at higher risk of substance abuse so much so that it is a known risk factor unaddressed anger in the wake of assault which tends to be processed in silence and often with shame contributes to that likelihood i forgot to but don't trigger warning at the top of this episode so there will be one in the description um where we try to be good about that um well you can always say say say something now and then cut it and paste it to the beginning if you wanted I'll put it I'll put it in the description um like front and center okay um but I do like we we do try to be careful with that for sure um because there's more of it later too um yeah so
00:14:50
Speaker
That is just, there's so much about this that is just like, I'm like fucking speechless. Yeah. You know, that it's like a known risk factor.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. I'm sitting here nodding my head. Sorry. Yeah. I'm like, yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. you know Anyway, moving on. There's another book in here referenced that, uh,
00:15:18
Speaker
I think I'm going to have to look into as well. It's another book about anger. called the Anger Advantage, the Surprising Benefits of Anger and How It Can Change a Woman's Life.
00:15:29
Speaker
ah The authors are Cox, Karen Bruckner, and Sally Stab. That's a great last name. I love Alrighty then. Such a fucking metal name. Sally Stab. yeah, dude.
00:15:44
Speaker
Oh my god. Wow. um It's referenced to talk about the ways that anger changes form in a woman in a woman's life experience.
00:16:00
Speaker
So this is basically what it's saying. They describe women's anger as moving, quote unquote, sideways. Right.
00:16:12
Speaker
diverted into relational and passive aggression, physical symptoms, and for some people, what amounts to constant low-grade and hard-to-describe irritability.
00:16:24
Speaker
In their book, the three researcher clinicians propose that many of the diseases and physical discomforts common women physical discomforts common to women are transformations of anger into, quote, socially acceptable forms of distress.
00:16:43
Speaker
End quote. Socially acceptable forms of distress. Fucking socially acceptable. Yeah. What does that translate into?
00:16:55
Speaker
Crying? Or having just, like... emotional outbursts that are unexplainable. like you know well like those The are what are being repressed though. and like that's the thing is like so like um Physical discomfort is one of them.
00:17:13
Speaker
And diseases. And then the the constant low grade and hard to describe irritability. yeah like That's not just like you know difficult on the people around the woman.
00:17:29
Speaker
it's not fun to be irritated all the time. No. It's not fucking fun.
00:17:37
Speaker
and my God. And of course, now we move into the part of the book where we talk about how doctors don't take women's pain seriously.
Healthcare Inequities and Women's Anger
00:17:49
Speaker
oh my God. I'm going to die. Okay. oh okay okay Here we go. Social understandings of gender turn complicated pain gaps into preventable suffering gaps.
00:18:07
Speaker
Studies in implicit bias consistently show that most people, including importantly medical professionals of all genders and ethnicities, have a difficult time taking women's pain seriously.
00:18:22
Speaker
Men are, for example, treated more quickly in emergency rooms. In one study that looked at people with abdominal pain, men waited roughly 49 minutes compared with women's 65 minutes before being treated by doctors.
00:18:37
Speaker
Men are also sent to intensive care units more quickly and frequently. Medical professionals spend more time with male patients than with female patients who have the same, the exact same symptoms.
00:18:50
Speaker
One analysis revealed that women even have a longer wait times before they get doctor's appointments.
00:19:00
Speaker
And then of course, we bring the intersectionality into this factor as well. Distressed patients in high income areas are treated more quickly than those in low income areas. Wait times for blacks and Hispanics are 13% and 14% longer whites.
00:19:16
Speaker
respectively than those for whites Heart disease is now the primary killer of women in the United States, yet women are twice as likely to die from heart-related ailments as a result of dismissal and misunderstanding a misunderstanding of their pain and symptoms.
00:19:36
Speaker
physician Physicians who... Jeez. Physicians is physician such a fucking hard word to say. yeah Physicians are 22 times more likely to suggest that men suffering knee pain due to arthritis have surgery, the most trusted protocol for treating arthritis pain when other approaches have failed.
00:19:56
Speaker
Differences like these are seen globally. Globally? Globally.
00:20:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:20:08
Speaker
And it's like, it's crazy to me, like, especially this, like the most trusted protocol for treating arthritis pain when other approaches have failed. Like, this is like, like a, like a known treatment to suggest surgery.
00:20:24
Speaker
And yet 22 times more often is recommended to men than women. Crazy. And how many women have fucking arthritis because they're stressed the fuck out and angry all the time.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah. it's like ah It's like a fucking vicious cycle. The other pains that I've been having, like I've been having chronic heel pain but from a heel spur in my left heel for at least a couple of months now.
00:20:54
Speaker
And my Achilles tendon still aches, the one that I injured. And then the arthritis that I have in my right in my left thumb. Mm-hmm.
00:21:08
Speaker
I had gotten a shot in there to like I don't know, it killed it killed all the pain and it was fine for a few months. And then it finally, like the shot wore off and now it hurts every single day, almost all the time. And I can't even use it that much right now. Like I can't grip things and it hurts to, you know, try to grip things. And then this wrist, this wrist started on me about two weeks ago where it cracked, it started cracking really bad, just doing normal stuff.
00:21:34
Speaker
And when it cracked, it hurts so bad. Like it hurts so freaking bad. And then it's like the more that happened, like every day, it was like, it was like once a day it would do that. But like, as the days went on, it didn't hurt as bad.
00:21:49
Speaker
But it's still like, I just want to try to take off my bra and unhook it in the back. And this hand where my thumb is and this wrist where I'm trying to like do that behind me.
00:22:00
Speaker
It hurts so freaking bad to just unhook my bra a few minutes ago. Jesus. And I'm like, I am not even 50 yet, dude. How bad is arthritis going to get for me like in the next 30 years? You know what I'm saying?
00:22:13
Speaker
Well, I don't fucking want to know. But all I'm saying is the pain that I've had, that's like general things that are like daily for me at this point it's like none of that shit was none of that shit is taken seriously. No, you know, you know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah.
00:22:34
Speaker
Anywho. Yes. And this external, you know, doctors and others in general, not taking women's pain seriously.
00:22:45
Speaker
gets turned inward gets internalized uh this next part here says sexist and racist stereotypes about melodramatic women and pain immunity not only affects perceptions but also behavior including that of women many women internalize the same stereotypes and not wanting to be seen as angry hysterical and demanding opt for unhealthy and risky stoicism they second guess themselves delaying care and discounting symptoms they don't seek the treatment that they need because of the stereotypes that they want to avoid about being melodramatic
00:23:29
Speaker
yeah
00:23:32
Speaker
yeah I feel that as Leo Moon where I was told all the time that I was such a dramatic little fucking baby Yes. who And just flipping forward a little bit relatingly relatedly.
00:23:50
Speaker
What scares me about my thumb though right now is that, you know, I've always heard people say in the past, like, don't get shots for that stuff because it just makes it worse in the long run.
00:24:04
Speaker
and it hurts like now it hurts worse now right it hurts worse now because it hurts all the time whereas it used to just be like it would catch and kind of like i would have to like force it to move and then it would hurt really bad for like a few seconds after that and then it would stop now it just aches it just aches it's like i can feel it almost constantly yeah yeah and so it's like, do I go back and get another shot for the pain and like hope that it doesn't come back twice as bad next time around?
00:24:36
Speaker
I don't know. i I would be afraid to. Yeah. I wouldn't. If like, if it were me, I would choose not to, but that's not me saying that yeah that's what you should choose.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, driving the bus had, you know, has a lot to do with how it is now because I have jammed my thumb into the steering wheel so many times. yeah Like accidentally, you know, like moving my hand the wrong way or like turning, like going to turn the steering wheel a certain way. And then I just ended up like jabbing my thumb right into it while I'm trying to turn it.
00:25:09
Speaker
Oh, that has no doubt created, you know, it's it's exacerbated the problem. I'm sure. Yeah. Fuck.
00:25:20
Speaker
Okay. Sorry. I'm just trying to like, take your time, get my brain back on. um Like this is so like this, this paragraph could have been written next, like right after the paragraph I just read.
00:25:35
Speaker
Um, but it's literally like three pages later. There's so much for all, i feel like I'm reading a ton, like especially proportionate to the last time that we did this. Um, but I'm skipping over so much.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Um, internalizing and diverting anger which women are prone to do transforms our minds and bodies into material objects of our own rage by the time a woman reaches midlife the most significant predictors of her general health are her levels of stress and where she ranks in terms of keeping her anger in quote unquote anger in
00:26:17
Speaker
yeah Like that's the that's the thing that decides like what your health is going to look like for the rest of your life. yeah
00:26:29
Speaker
God. God! Okay. That is and that's kind of that brings us kind to the end of the bodies, angry bodies chapter. um Yeah.
00:26:42
Speaker
I really thought when you first said angry bodies that part of that topic or category or whatever you want to call it would be relating to weight because oh yeah but it's not pertaining to like women being angry gaining weight no no i mean like women who who have anger, unexpressed anger, gain more weight or they gain more weight as a consequence of trying to like protect themselves emotionally.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's more in ah like ah like an unconscious response to trauma. Yeah. And like PTSD. Right. um So it doesn't really necessarily relate to anger.
The Caring Mandate and Gender Roles
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, not directly to anger, but like you know i know that weight gain can also be correlated to poor health and like you know chronic pain, chronic illness, chronic fatigue, where you can't you don't like have the energy to like take care of yourself and like exercise as much as you would if you didn't have all of those kinds of issues.
00:27:57
Speaker
Right. you know like That's definitely the case for me. Where I would love to feel like I can exercise at least a few times a week. But sometimes I feel like I can't fucking move.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. Same. Yeah. Yeah. um But yeah, it's not like directly related to anger, but like PTSD, the effects of trauma, which you know also sort of cause anger and the shame that's directed in words like it was described probably feed into it indirectly
00:28:37
Speaker
yeah okay chapter four the caring mandate and this is going into the expectation that is put on women disproportionately to be caregivers yeah so this one i think is going to hit you really hard Oh yeah, I'm sure. All right. So we're going to start off with like two nice chunky paragraphs during which we get a new word that I didn't know.
00:29:09
Speaker
Okay. So I had to look it up and I wrote the death the definition in the fucking margin. cool All right.
00:29:19
Speaker
Despite the fact that traditional heterosexual marriage is no longer dominant in U S society. The values my mother embodied as a heterosexual married woman in a traditional relationship and marriage still are.
00:29:34
Speaker
Even though most women work and work for pay, regardless of marital status or sexual orientation, they continue to carry the burden of responsibilities for chores, childcare, elder care, and emotional labor, both in and out of the workplace.
00:29:49
Speaker
This tacit and sometimes explicit mandate that women, that women has been, has Remained remarkably inflexible in the face of other societal changes related to gender gender roles.
00:30:03
Speaker
The caring mandate is stressing us out and making us angry, sick, and tired. We all have stress, but the word is an anodyne, which is the new word that I didn't know.
00:30:14
Speaker
Anodyne means deliberately inoffensive. um Huh? Huh? What do you mean? I don't... Explain that. Deliberate... So, anodyne, the definition is effectively...
00:30:26
Speaker
quote deliberately inoffensive okay like intentionally inoffensive um like intentionally meaning yeah i know what that means but what does the inoffensive mean what does that part mean like intentionally not being offensive okay that's just like such a devil negative thing like the way sounds it's so weird like I'm just like what I don't know it makes sense to me intentionally being not not offensive and yeah and intentionally
00:30:59
Speaker
um like trying not to offend okay and not in like a way of like yeah it's like because it's a word it's like a it's not like a person trying not to offend it's like someone using that is like avoiding something mm if that makes sense.
00:31:16
Speaker
And in this case, I think it makes sense to use that word because to say we all have stress deliberately ignores the disproportion, which is what this paragraph gets into.
00:31:29
Speaker
So you we all have stress, but the word stress is an anodyne gender neutral one that masks what is going on in day to day life.
00:31:41
Speaker
A 2016 study found that women in the United States and Western Europe have twice the levels of daily stress that men do. Women describe being under constant intense stress as the result of workplace hostility and disproportionate responsibility for caring.
00:31:58
Speaker
Inadequate social support means that women, often thinking about a wider range of people and possible harms, experience higher levels of vicarious stress, reporting that they feel the impact of life events intensely.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah. Because it's like there are, you know, those men out there. Who are like, you think you're so stressed?
00:32:25
Speaker
I'm also stressed. What about me? move yeah but Yeah, but then there's like my situation where it's like, what are you stressed about? There's nothing wrong. like There's nothing wrong. you know you have a you know You have everything you need. and you have You know what i mean? I shouldn't feel stressed out about anything.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, which is like honestly at this point deliberately like ignorant. Yeah. yeah um Yeah, this is what I mean. We're only we're only in the first page.
00:33:02
Speaker
um Nonetheless, housework and care continue to be done mainly by women. On a typical day in the United States, 85% of women do housework, cooking, home maintenance, or care work related to health or finances, compared with 67% men.
00:33:21
Speaker
Married mothers do almost three and a half times as much, quote, core housework, on end quote, cooking, cleaning and childcare as married fathers do. Annual surveys show that the that statistics like these are similar across developed nations where women on average spend two hours more on unpaid work per week, whereas men on average have two more hours of full time paid work and leisure.
00:33:52
Speaker
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that while the gender chore gap is slowly shrinking over time, it remains large and debilitating to gender equality more broadly. And then leisure is really the issue.
00:34:06
Speaker
Because men fucking get leisure at all. I was about to dive into your particular inequality. yeah But not to. just going to say the same thing. like you know You don't get any leisure hours. I don't have any... hours and Because I wouldn't consider even even like laying down at home. Yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
Just having in the house with you means you don't get to have leisure. I don't get to just not worry about anything. Exactly. Like there's always going to be the back of my mind, like, crap, I really need to get up and feed my kid. And that, you know, even just thinking that thought every few minutes prevents me from being able to completely relax. Right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:51
Speaker
Right. You don't get any leisure. Yeah. So, yes. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's been my biggest gripe. Yeah, where John is always on my ass about not doing dishes or or whatever, like not doing enough housework.
00:35:09
Speaker
It's like all of the big things that need to get done. i always take care of. like Like repairs. Like home repairs. Like look yeah I just fucking learned how to change my own cabin air filter in my car and I did it myself in the parking lot of whatever.
00:35:27
Speaker
car place whatever it's called. It's either you're learning how to do it and you do it yourself or you're paying someone to do it. You're paying. I'm making the phone calls to set up the service and I'm taking care of it and you know planning the whole thing paying for it and everything. Yes.
00:35:44
Speaker
Exactly. And that, and there's always new shit to be learning to do. Like, I'm just, yeah you know, and like, yeah, I don't know.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the interesting thing that I didn't really expect that I should have really is that this disparity is like worse in the U S than anywhere like other, you know, any other, um,
00:36:16
Speaker
developed countries specifically which disparity so like the disparity of um the amount of time spent on unpaid labor ah versus time spent on paid labor and leisure Like that disparity.
00:36:34
Speaker
So here it specifies in Australia, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, men have increased the amount of time they spend doing unpaid household work.
00:36:44
Speaker
But in the United States, this shift stalled in the 1990s. Men are often still thought of as helping, quote unquote, at home.
00:36:56
Speaker
The majority of Americans still believe that chores, domestic work, Child and elder care are women's work, quote unquote, regardless of whether or not a woman is the primary or even the sole aid wage earner. 82% of more than a thousand Americans surveyed in 2015 said that women should take responsibility for children's emotional and physical needs.
00:37:20
Speaker
Respondents assigned men to one primary child-related task, discipline. As a result, on any given day in 2016, 83% of American women reported doing domestic work compared with 65% of men.
00:37:35
Speaker
And that's the thing that I've seen talked about and I continue to get incensed about is the fact that men, like, colloquially, like, in, like, regular social culture, it is viewed as men are helping rather than men are doing the work that is needed to be done yeah um like the the thing that like specifically that i've seen is when man a father is you know taking care of his kids and he's out in public somewhere people tend to view that as he's babysitting the kids yeah rather than being the parent that he's that he is that he should be yeah
00:38:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Or men in public with their children. Yeah. Get um
00:38:33
Speaker
more compliments from strangers like, oh, you're you're doing such a good job taking care of those kids. They're getting cookies.
00:38:44
Speaker
For doing what they should be doing anyway. Right, right, right. Yeah. But women who are out in public with their kids don't get any kind They get ignored. They get ignored or look down on like your kids are, you know, assholes. You need to take better control of that. right You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah.
00:39:00
Speaker
They're criticized. They're like more often looked at as like doing a bad job. yeah Yeah. Which is fucking crazy. hmm. Or if like a man's out in public with his kids and then his kids are misbehaving, people are often going to take pity on him and not just in like a, not even in a way of like, they go up to him and they like try to help him or they tell him like, I'm so sorry. It looks like you're having a rough day.
00:39:27
Speaker
Like they'll just like the general attitude by people of people that are observing this, whether they speak to him or not is that they are taking pity on him.
00:39:38
Speaker
Right. rather than taking pity on the woman who probably is dealing with the craziness, no matter whether she's out at the grocery store or at the bank or at home, no matter what else she's trying to get done, like God.
00:39:54
Speaker
you
00:39:58
Speaker
Oh my God. Let me get into specifics of childcare, like on an intense, like, okay. highly focused scale. So oh we have here, ah much of the additional time that women spend on care work specifically involves childcare that is unrelated to the biology of birthing and breastfeeding infants, bathing, feeding, and dressing. For example, the work that men do tends to be more sporadic on an as needed basis, optional and more enjoyable.
00:40:37
Speaker
A father, for example, might bathe baby or play with kids as opposed to managing the logistics of childcare or pulling together a meal for four people, three of whom have dietary restrictions in 30 minutes.
00:40:50
Speaker
Two thirds of cooking for families is done by women. Childcare is not only time consuming and oftentimes sensitive, but it has a higher stress quotient than maintenance work and isolated chores.
00:41:03
Speaker
Forgetting to give a child critical medication or accidentally feeding a child with allergies life-threatening food is an order of magnitude more consequential than not remembering to replace light bulbs or changing tires.
00:41:16
Speaker
By one estimate, minor distressing events involving young children occur at the rate of one per three minutes, while major incidents of potentially greater risk happen three times every hour.
00:41:32
Speaker
And then this author goes on, Soraya Shemali, she goes on to explain an absolutely fucking insane situation that happened because she was home alone trying to take care of three children under three years old and one dog.
00:41:44
Speaker
Oof. Okay. Like, I'm going to try to explain this because it was like, oh my god, it was insane. So she had a child that was like two-ish and then two infants that were breastfeeding.
00:41:58
Speaker
age. Wait, how do you know the story? she wrote she She wrote it and I'm going to just tell it. I'm not going to like read it. oh okay um So two infants that were breastfeeding age that I assume were twins.
00:42:11
Speaker
Okay. And so she told this story about how she had tried to figure out and juggle how to manage all three at the same time.
00:42:25
Speaker
And she had figured out a system of sitting down in the living room on the floor to read to the kid, the two year old and like breastfeeding each twin one at a time.
00:42:37
Speaker
um And the one that's not being breastfed at the moment was in between her legs, like on the floor. Yeah. um And so she explained how this one evening she was doing this like very precarious juggle while trying to read and breastfeed.
00:42:57
Speaker
and keep children generally engaged and calm and a dog that apparently was a terrier, which I guess are like really hyper, hyperactive types of dogs. Um, when suddenly two year old exclaims, I need to go to the potty.
00:43:14
Speaker
And she knows she can't jump up and bring the children, the babies with her and she can't leave them with the hyperactive dog. Mm hmm. And so she tries to tell her little child, okay, I'm going to close my eyes and you tap my head when you go to the bathroom and tap my head when you come back.
00:43:34
Speaker
Like to try to make it into a game to try to get the kid to like go and not need to like be attended to the whole time. Okay. um And unfortunately, and this, this, I think the decision was made ah in a moment of like panic because she knew like if she doesn't help her immediately,
00:43:51
Speaker
the child's going pee pants you know yeah because yeah at that age kids don't recognize their body ah signs like right and she was like like equal parts panicked and also glad that her kid was like oh recognizing she needs to pee yeah the unfortunate thing is that the child jumped up tripped over the dog stepped directly on the infant's chest that was between the mom's legs and And when the mom, when this author went to scoop the toddler off the baby on the floor, dropped the baby that was breastfeeding on her head.
00:44:30
Speaker
Oh, oh, my God.
00:44:34
Speaker
And the insane thing about it to me god is like suddenly it was all peaceful. And then there was pandemonium. And then 20 minutes later, when her husband walks in the door, Everything is calm. And he doesn't even suspect that they had like an insane moment where two children, two infants are injured.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah. And probably this toddler is going to need therapy. Oh my God. And the thing that blew my fucking mind was that later on she used this like anecdote of her life that actually happened As inspiration for a scene that she was writing in a movie.
00:45:16
Speaker
Oh my. And then the producers or directors or whatever deliberately excluded it because they said it wasn't realistic. ah oh Of course.
00:45:28
Speaker
Of course. Of course. Oh my god. It just, it's like, reading that just made me want to like fucking cry and like grow up. Yeah. It upset me so much because I was just like, God, this is what happens.
00:45:41
Speaker
Because one person, all of the work is being put on one person. Yep. And women want to believe that we can do it all. You know? No.
00:45:54
Speaker
And so we should not only, i mean, like, I'm not going to say, like, we should believe we can't do it. But it's like, we we at the very least should not feel bad when we realize that we can't.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah. Because it's fucking unrealistic. Right. it's It's absurd. It's completely like fantasy land to imagine that you can handle it all on your own.
00:46:17
Speaker
ah hu oh And then she she gave this little quote at the end, or the this paragraph that I'm going to read that I thought summed it up really nicely.
00:46:30
Speaker
No amount of work stress or anger that I felt related to work... Yeah, to the stress i felt at home in twenty fourteen a trio of researchers at penn state measured people's cortisol levels and found that they went up significantly when people return home from work with women's stress hormone cycle yeah with women's stress-ormon level skyrocketing yeah dude I thought of you immediately.
00:46:57
Speaker
You know how many times I got home and the minute I got out of my car or even just pulled into the driveway, I start buzzing with anxiety. Yeah. Like my body feels like it's like yeah vibrating inside.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah, I had that so many times. And then like, or the minute I walk through the door, it starts because, yeah, usually i have a child who's super demanding of wanting this or that.
00:47:24
Speaker
Or I've got, you know, my arms are full of stuff and I have to figure out where to put everything down, like without dropping something. andm like Right, right. You know, just stupid crap like that. And then, you know.
00:47:37
Speaker
I usually have to go to the bathroom and it's like, what do I prioritize? Like, do I just throw everything down on the ground so I can run to the bathroom really fast? do I satisfy the child who's crying because he's so hungry or, you know, whatever it is. It's like, it's just, yeah, I, I anticipated that stuff happening.
00:47:57
Speaker
Before it started happening and my body physically reacted to it. Like, oh my God, it's so much better now. It's just, things are better now. But like, I was also going to say, i think I've been better at expressing my anger around here. Yeah.
00:48:14
Speaker
Like I like when John gets on my case, like I shut it down pretty fast now. Like I'm better at handling him because I've I've been terrible at confrontation most of my life.
00:48:28
Speaker
Right. And now I'm better at like turning shit back around on him. Yeah. and Yeah. You know. yelling back or whatever and like he used to yell over me but like most of the time these days he just kind of stops and like listens to me when I'm yelling at him because yeah I'm like better at it or whatever I don't know and the really the really frustrating thing is that like you shouldn't have to be pushed to that point to be able to be listened to and heard and understood right but I don't want to I'm i'm worried that we're veering into territory that you're going want to get cut out yeah I know so
00:49:02
Speaker
But yeah, I am getting better at expressing yeah when I'm angry about something and like... yeah Yeah, not letting people push my buttons as much either. Right, right.
00:49:12
Speaker
And like, I was also going to say, and this is like, you know, the demanding child or then the child that has very valid needs that shouldn't be considered demanding, um you know, like aside from his, like the factor of him,
00:49:31
Speaker
um I have had similar feelings of like, Oh God, how do I juggle all the stuff that I got to bring in at the end of the day? yeah And the whole like, Oh God, I suddenly got to pee really bad.
00:49:42
Speaker
And like, I have attributed that struggle to like unmedicated ADHD. And like, cause like, that's actually like a quintessential, like a textbook. I like definition of um not being able to just sort of problem solve and flow because you get caught on one step at a time like one tiny thing at a time yeah yeah and like for me it also as i get it it it factors into yeah and it factors into like this um unwillingness to even do it because it feels like too many steps right like i leave stuff in my car all the time and i will say yeah like i'm not saying that his needs were
00:50:29
Speaker
Not valid, but like the way he no i know demanded was like... I know. Like crazy making. It was just like you would think that he was dying, you know? Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Like i i have to like catch myself on the way that i think of and refer to children as being overly demanding because... And this is like also factoring into me healing my own inner child because things that children...
00:50:57
Speaker
are perceived as being too or overly demanding of are like basic care things that they shouldn't be shamed about needing and I'm saying that like I said for my own inner child because of the ways that I was shamed for demanding and needing yeah all the time yeah when it was like literally not my job to provide for myself right anything 100% yes Yeah.
00:51:27
Speaker
And so like, that's why I made that clarifier. Yeah. And not because i hope you didn't feel like that. i no No, no, I didn't. I didn't really dramatic, but like, seriously, not at all.
00:51:38
Speaker
Not at all. Not at all. Because like only child syndrome over here. Right. Right. For for him. And it's like, you know, his needs are more important than everybody else's no matter what all the time, because right he's a child. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:53
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And also because he is a child at all. Like, yeah you know, children before they have a, like a developed sense of, um, other people yeah being important.
00:52:06
Speaker
yeah Like it's just, it's just what happens, you know? I know. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So, Yeah, but that doesn't but doesn't negate the the way that it's so frustrating to deal with at all. um Two things can be true at once. Yes. Oh my god, didn't you say that should be like our actual podcast? The actual name of the show. Two things can be true at once.
00:52:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Oh my god. Oh my lord. Okay. Woo. Um. Okay, I'm actually not sure why I i love why bracketed off that paragraph. I'm going to skip it.
00:52:51
Speaker
Because I'm like, this is like out of context and doesn't actually make a lot of sense. Okay. So, we have delved deep into child care and the stresses therein.
00:53:05
Speaker
Now we move on to elder care. Oh, God. Can we just make this a different episode? Yeah. I wish it was that easy. Oh, man.
00:53:18
Speaker
Two thirds of the people taking care of rapidly aging populations are women, specifically daughters. Women in the United States spend more than twice the average number of hours per month taking care of parents than their brothers do.
00:53:35
Speaker
Quote, whereas the amount of elderly parent care and the Jesus, sorry. Sentences are hard. um even Quote, whereas the amount of elderly parent care daughters provide is associated with constraints they face, such as employment or child care, explained to the lead researcher of a study of gender and care labor, Princeton University sociologist Angelina.
00:54:06
Speaker
go Jesus. Grigoryeva? Grigoryeva? Oh my God. This sentence is all sorts of inside out. Hold on. Okay. I'm going to restructure this.
00:54:18
Speaker
Okay. Princeton University sociologist, Angelina Grigoyeva, who was a lead researcher of a study of gender and care labor, says the following thing. Okay.
00:54:32
Speaker
okay Whereas the amount of elderly parent care daughters provide is associated with constraints they face, such as employment or childcare.
00:54:45
Speaker
Sons caregiving is associated only with the presence or absence of other helpers, such as sisters or a parent spouse.
00:54:55
Speaker
They only do it when there's no one else who can. Yeah, and also or will that it's viewed as, like, the constraints that a person is viewed as having or, like, the things that are restraining them from being able to provide the care. For women, it's their fucking life.
00:55:17
Speaker
And for men, it's how much help they don't have.
00:55:23
Speaker
Not for women, how much help they don't have. Mm-hmm. Because the expectation is the women is the woman is doing it. who Oh my god.
00:55:34
Speaker
I love this author, but Jesus, she really ties sentences in a knot sometimes. the Oh my god.
00:55:45
Speaker
As children, we learn that the realm of feelings is feminine, so it is easy for men and boys to fall into a habit of outsourcing
Emotional Labor and Sexual Dynamics
00:55:55
Speaker
relationships. Okay, wait. I needed to process this.
00:55:58
Speaker
I'm sorry. that was our That was our touching on elder care. Now we're moving into some some dodgy territory when it comes to ah the expectations that are put on women.
00:56:11
Speaker
Okay. Because we're moving into... Women being expected to care for men and their feelings, particularly when it comes to sex. oh Oh. So ah here we go.
00:56:27
Speaker
As children, we learn that the realm of feelings is feminine. So it is easy for men and boys to fall into a habit of outsourcing relationships, social networking, and the emotional work that comes with them.
00:56:41
Speaker
Women will spend time and effort sending holiday cards to and gifts to family members arranging teachers' presents and coaches' retirement parties. We are often busy not only managing our own feelings, but also for regulating the feelings of others.
00:56:57
Speaker
Feminine care subsumes us and our bodies. Even sex becomes infused with the expectation. For many men, the expectation that women be be eternally engaging in their emotional management turns into the expectation that they provide sex to do it.
00:57:16
Speaker
The two become entangled routinely in the prioritization of men's sexual pleasure.
00:57:23
Speaker
Before I move to the next paragraph, I'm going to hit you with a question. Okay. Have you ever faked an orgasm? I don't remember. i mean That's that's a good sign.
00:57:38
Speaker
Unless it's just that it was so long ago that You don't remember, but I don't know. and i really don't know. You what? Sorry. i really don't know. Huh.
00:57:50
Speaker
Okay. I would get into things. I would feel, you know, things feel good. So you get into it. And like most men wouldn't know. But you know what an orgasm feels like. Right, right, right. But what I'm saying is when you're into it and making noise, most men are going to know whether or not you actually orgasm. Well, right, right. But then it's like, do you have you ever passed that off as, yeah, I came.
00:58:15
Speaker
ah
00:58:18
Speaker
Probably not. Really? Honestly, don't I don't remember. Because I mean, I'm old. And I've had a lot of sex.
00:58:28
Speaker
So I can't even answer that definitively. Right? Yeah. Maybe I did like once in my 20s to try and make sure like the man felt like he did his job. But honestly, can't but pinpoint yeah I can't pinpoint like an actual occurrence of And there you hit the point on the head.
00:58:50
Speaker
Gotta make sure the man's ego is taken care of. Exactly. Exactly. i have faked tons of orgasms. Yeah. When I left my relationship, I made a promise to myself that I would stop.
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah. I know that I have purposely said, purposely been honest and said, Like that you didn't, it was, I mean, everything is good, but I just, you know. Right.
00:59:15
Speaker
And that's, that's what I have deliberately made sure to state. Yeah. Everything felt awesome, but I just didn't get there, you know, but like, right. Most the time I will say that that is my problem because it it was for the longest time. Like I couldn't relax enough because you know, it is like a form of performance anxiety. Yeah. You can't totally lose yourself and relax enough to like, right.
00:59:44
Speaker
Like you, it's like, I have an easier time having a ah real orgasm with somebody that I do feel very comfortable with. Right. Already. And so that usually means I'd have to have been having sex with them for a while.
00:59:57
Speaker
Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know, my 23 year old ass didn't think about that, night yeah you know, but I changed a lot. And, um you know, it's so interesting though, because I think about now how, like, even though I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't fake any orgasms ever again,
01:00:19
Speaker
I found that I'm also still still pushing the truth or or bending the truth a little bit in order to protect men's feelings because I have at least like in my little slut phase that I had, I found myself giving the caveat that it's very hard to get me to finish when sometimes it's really fucking not.
01:00:44
Speaker
Right. But like I was saying that because I didn't want anyone to feel bad. that I probably wasn't going to finish. And i I called it setting expectations, but really should I have just been setting expectations by being like, I expect you to stay down there until I'm done.
01:01:10
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Anywho, let's read the next paragraph. Okay. Faking orgasms, which up to 80% of women say they do, is a good example of how the belief that men are owed nurturing, emotional protection, and niceness from women plays out in intimate ways.
01:01:31
Speaker
A massive 2018 study found that heterosexual women have fewer orgasms than any other sexual demographic. Wow. And substantially less.
01:01:43
Speaker
Oh, didn't give a percent. um Not yet, at least. Let me finish. okay um Any other sexual demographic and substantially substantially less than heterosexual men.
01:01:55
Speaker
Women say that they fake orgasms primarily to protect the feelings and egos of their male partners. Of those women who fake orgasms, 92% say they believe it contributes to higher self-esteem for their so sex partner, the primary reason that 87% of them did it in the first place.
01:02:14
Speaker
Being careful with the other person's feelings is generally good, but not when it comes becomes one-way sexual entitlement. Yeah. Yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
So 87% of women fake orgasms. I don't know. Wait, I'm confused because it said it big at the top of the paragraph it said 80% of women say they fake orgasms. And then... Oh, the primary... Okay, 87% the... 80% of women say fake orgasms. Yes.
01:02:40
Speaker
87% those... That group... Yes....said the primary reason... say they fake orgasm yes eighty seven percent of those that agree yeah said the primary reasons was to contribute to the higher self-esteem of their partner. Right.
01:03:00
Speaker
But then it also says 92% say they begin they believe it contributes. So I don't know what's happening here. Too many ah percentages with no percentages. It's all so fucking confusing.
01:03:15
Speaker
Just give me a fucking graph, please. Oh my God. Okay. All right. And then we turn we turn in this around. We get a little dark over here. Oh, boy.
01:03:32
Speaker
A casual survey of forums where people discuss bad sex suggests that men tend to use the term to describe a passive partner or a boring experience.
01:03:43
Speaker
But when most women talk about bad sex, they tend to mean coercion or emotional discomfort or even more commonly physical pain.
01:03:54
Speaker
What does this look like in day-to-day life? Five times as many clinical trials have been conducted on the topic of male sexual pleasure, such as for erect erectile dysfunction, as on female sexual pain.
01:04:09
Speaker
What does this look like in terms of resources? lufborough who I guess is the person that did this study, putting a fine point on the topic, looked at PubMed, which publishes medical research studies, yeah which publishes medical research studies, and found 446 studies of dysparanoia, perunia, dysparunia, I had definitely mispronounced that, vaginismus, and vulvodynia,
01:04:40
Speaker
All highly painful conditions affecting women's ability to have sex. Studies of erectile dysfunction. As one doctor, she quotes explains, women will silently provide sex with their teeth tightly clenched.
01:05:03
Speaker
This intersection of pain and emotional labor also has an impact on how women think about and respond to rape. This need to protect men from the truth of my reality if it will hurt them, explained writer Emma Lindsay in 2017, has extended so deeply that I have laughed off sexual assault so that I would not hurt the feelings of the man who assaulted me.
01:05:29
Speaker
Gritting teeth is something people do when they are in pain, but it also happens to be something they do when they're filled with rage. Oh, wow. Yeah, all that oh that sounds 100,000% correct.
01:05:45
Speaker
Which, frankly, is disturbing. To have to confirm. Yeah. Yep. As a reminder, the name of this chapter is called The Caring Mandate.
01:06:00
Speaker
And this is all... All of these minutiae, all this little this these details. sub categori Subcategories. Subcategories of caring for people.
01:06:13
Speaker
For everyone else besides yourself. And at such extreme costs. Fuck.
01:06:22
Speaker
So we're going to move into less intense territory, but no less angering. The caring mandate is implicit in the pressure on girls and women, tacit or overt, to define themselves relationally.
01:06:36
Speaker
We've even convinced young women that keeping their own names when they get married is selfish, damaging to their families, and a social affront. Today, only an estimated 8% to 10% of women in the United States keep their names after marriage, down from a mid-90s peak of 23%.
01:06:54
Speaker
Wow.
01:06:57
Speaker
wow Three in five Americans think that women should take their husband's names and more than half believe it should be enforced legally. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a woman deciding to change her last name.
01:07:13
Speaker
The problem is that men most men are not comfortable reciprocating and often consider it an insult when a woman chooses to keep her name. a survey conducted in 2013 by Men's Health Magazine said,
01:07:26
Speaker
found that 63.3% of respondents would be very upset if they're women they're they're women but if their wives didn't give up their birth names.
01:07:38
Speaker
There is no title for a man that identifies his marital status as the first and most important aspect of his identity, the way that Mrs. and Miss do. Ms. is a word meant to, as the 1901 coiner of the term put it,
01:07:52
Speaker
be a more comprehensive term, which does not which does homage to the sex without repressing any views to their a domestic situation, wait, without expressing any views to their domestic situation, Ms is still not in common use, nor, it seems at times, is a social acceptance of common honorifics traditionally reserved for men.
01:08:15
Speaker
In England in 2015, example, A woman doctor was denied access to the women's changing room at the Cambridge gym that she joined. The fitness company's automation system system was programmed to code any customers using the prefix doctor as male.
01:08:32
Speaker
Oh my God. In 2015. That's fucking insane. 10 years ago. That is fucking insane, dude. My God.
01:08:44
Speaker
Ew. Ew. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, it makes me so nauseous. Yeah. Because forget about that. Forget like going by a first name that may be a feminine name or putting in, you know, gender f Yeah. Yeah. With the person's like, you know, putting that, but like to put in the kt like the very accurate title of doctor rather than miss or miz.
01:09:17
Speaker
doctor so-and-so immediately assumes it's male. Yeah, that's not cool. i mean, what should it shouldn't be programmed to do that at all. It should not. It should be going off of, like, whether mark or whether you checkmarked F or for gender, you know, or, you know, N. Unless like um that wasn't a part of it, but, like, and I would be very surprised that it wasn't a part of the, like, yeah you know registration or whatever.
01:09:48
Speaker
That's what I'm saying. It should If there's two different you know locker rooms or whatever. If a person is a non-binary or or if if somebody in that situation genderation yeah is nonbinary non-binary or chooses not to share or whatever the option well then which locker room do they become assigned to?
01:10:18
Speaker
you know what saying is what republicans love to scream about i know but oh it makes me so mad because i'm like i don't know how i personally feel about like if all bathrooms were suddenly gender neutral or if all uh locker rooms were gender neutral like i don't know how i would personally feel I've not been confronted with that situation necessarily.
01:10:44
Speaker
But I do know that like there should be a gender neutral option at least. hu
01:10:51
Speaker
So but that's a whole separate. So like three different locker rooms rather than just right or or like three different bathrooms. Or like more just like single use, if you will, for lack of a better do oh yeah, like individual rather than like stall bathrooms. Yeah.
01:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, like the family bathrooms that exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I what you mean. Yeah. Or also like maybe more privacy within the stall bathrooms.
01:11:23
Speaker
There's no reason for the insane gaps in bathroom stalls. absolutely no fucking reason. Oh, you mean the gaps between the doors? Yeah. Or even under the door. yeah like There's no reason for this.
01:11:35
Speaker
Right. yeah since i had it it's only It's just that it's cheap. I had a TA, a female TA. who was like six foot six. Oh my God. She could stand up in her stall and look over the thing at me. my God. um my god Yeah.
01:11:54
Speaker
Wow. And I was just like, what the fuck? i Remember when I told you I had that camera and I, said Oh yeah. Door and was like, yeah. You fucking criminal. that's I think she got me back for, you know, doing that.
01:12:06
Speaker
so was your car but That was Yeah. Oh my god. Joellen just stood up and looked right over the top of the goddamn wall. Oh my god.
01:12:18
Speaker
But I think about like, you ever been in like one of those fucking like bougie restaurants where you go into the bathroom and like the stalls are actually like individual little rooms and there's like whole ass doors?
01:12:30
Speaker
Kind of, yes. Not just like, yeah you know, the doors that have a foot and a half gap from the floor. Louvered doors, which you know what a louvered door is, right? No. They're the slats that are all on an angle.
01:12:44
Speaker
oh yeah. That's called louvered. Okay. They don't move. They just are that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen those. So, like, a lot of times you'll have them on a closet door in a house or some stupid thing like that. Right. Yeah. I was in a bougie bathroom that had louvered bathroom.
01:13:00
Speaker
Like you from the inside you could look down, who you know, and see how, but the people standing up walking by couldn't see in because of the angle. Right. Yeah.
01:13:11
Speaker
So like, and it was like all the way to the, to the floor. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm like, why can't like generally, why can't public bathrooms be like that?
01:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like then, then sure. Absolutely. Make every bathroom gender neutral. I don't care. Yeah. As long as you can really lock the door good and like as long as no fear of somebody busting down.
01:13:36
Speaker
or well I'm never really even afraid of that. It's more just a matter of like privacy for myself. yeah Like I don't care about the gender of the people the bathroom more so than I care about like, oh, I'm making all sorts of weird fucking noises. yeah But if you have men and women in the same bathroom and like you get a man who decides he's like being an asshole for the night.
01:14:00
Speaker
you know, wants to bust the door down or whatever. You know what I'm saying? You just, I don't like it. And like, that' that's the, that's the thing that, that's the thing that makes me freak out a little bit because like, that's the argument that Republicans use about like, oh, a man's going to go so far as to like cross dress in order to get to go into a woman's bathroom. Yeah. I don't know about that.
01:14:25
Speaker
like like I know what you're saying it just makes me so fucking mad but to have like like normal men just regular old stupid yeah men being able to use a bathroom with women you know I think it goes I think it it that the problem goes deeper than we can even try to get to yeah where like men are the problem no matter what And trans women are women.
01:14:57
Speaker
Yeah. Who are simply using the bathroom with the sign on the door that best fits their own identity. And men are the problem.
01:15:10
Speaker
Yep. I'm so mad. Oh my God. I'm so angry. Okay. Yes.
01:15:19
Speaker
I was like, God, where were we? Names though. Like, I know you changed your name when you got married. How much of that was an active decision that you made? Or did you just sort of do it? um i at the time, really, honestly, was jazzed about that last name because it was more suited to like my French heritage.
01:15:46
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yeah. at the time it was more or less like I was excited about it because it was like kind of cool in my opinion. Yeah. You know, the name itself.
01:15:58
Speaker
I mean, I was already using a last name that wasn't my name at birth begin with. Right. Yeah. Which, you know, is it's neither here nor there about whether or not like I've felt like i even belonged with that yeah or whatever so it's not it's not it's not at all that you felt like social pressure too but you actually wanted to because you liked it yeah yeah that makes sense um yeah i've never had to make that decision before right um but i have given it thought uh especially around the whole uh
01:16:42
Speaker
ah issue that has come up about like trying to call trying to put into law ah voting restriction that means that if your name oh yeah current legal name does not match the name on your birth certificate that you can't vote right excludes all married women who have changed their names except for people who have gotten a passport with their married name which i have done well Which is not common, I'm sure. yeah Well, right. tons of women It's not common. And also, i I've heard it's not passports that's accepted. It's birth certificates.
01:17:20
Speaker
No, it's passports. it's like, so I've heard birth certificates. You don't change your birth certificates here. No, I know. That's what I mean. Right. That's what I mean. what they are they theyve theyve They wrote this verbiage specifically.
01:17:36
Speaker
So that it would exclude this group of people, especially, and also, you know, transgender people who have legally changed their names, for example. Like, it was written that way deliberately.
01:17:49
Speaker
I know that I heard... It was not passports, it was specifically birth certificates. No, no. I heard that if you were married and changed your name, you would not have a problem voting if you had a passport with your married name on it.
01:18:05
Speaker
I did not hear that. It wouldn't matter. But also it's not, it's not, it's not been put into law yet. It was just like, this is what was proposed. Right. I did not hear that. I heard that there was a no, exception no exceptions.
01:18:19
Speaker
So I never heard that. I don't know, but yeah, this is what I mean. Like I, it's got, it got me thinking. Yeah. You know? So yeah.
01:18:30
Speaker
Any, hey, any, hey, anyhow, anyway. fucking hell i'm like my brain is turning to mush i'm like with how like frustrating this shit is yeah this is why we need a matriarchal system our whole country yeah our whole world truly did we ever do the topic for our podcast why women should rule the world because i'm trying to remember if we actually did that one because this where that should come in right i was gonna say like we haven't done that specifically but it definitely factored into some of what we talked about last time we talked about this book and and obviously it's factoring in now okay
01:19:19
Speaker
ready to get mad again jesus i'm fucking choking um When asked what makes them angry or depressed in intimate relationships, women's most common responses, including betrayal, condescension, and unwarranted criticism, cluster around men's negative behaviors.
01:19:40
Speaker
Men, on the other hand, report getting angry at women's negative responses to those behaviors, describing them as women's, quote, self-focused behavior, end quote.
01:19:54
Speaker
Fucking what?! Oh my god. Like, you're mad because I got upset that you she you treated me shittily.
01:20:07
Speaker
Oh my god. The way that I would break that man's nose so fast.
01:20:15
Speaker
Bitch, meet the countertop. Fuck you.
01:20:21
Speaker
Also getting divorced. No, absolutely the fuck not. Jesus, I'm so mad. Okay.
01:20:34
Speaker
The next part here dives into the way that marriage has like this embedded like disparity in privileges based upon gender.
01:20:46
Speaker
Literally the first sentence here. Most sent most husbands don't enter marriage thinking about embedded gender privileges They also don't consciously think that they have higher status and deserve in their marriages, the deference that comes with it.
01:21:01
Speaker
But for many men, marriage means just this. Unreformed marriage is a moment of subordination for women more so than men, because women subordinate themselves and their careers to their relationship, their children and the careers of their husbands.
01:21:19
Speaker
Mm hmm. Single childless women are the only women who report that they have the time and freedom to pursue interests, ambitions, and hobbies at the same rate as married heterosexual men do.
01:21:31
Speaker
Oh my God. Wow. After divorces, men are twice as likely to remarry, whereas women are less likely to want to remarry.
01:21:41
Speaker
That's not surprising. yeah I know. Oh man. but i saw that. I was like single childless women. You get so, like, you point at me all the time. Like, you get to have a life all the time. and I'm just like, but I, like, don't do anything.
01:22:01
Speaker
But you're like, but you get to not do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. But like it's hilarious to me that like the men are like twice as likely to get remarried or whatever the statistic That's because they get used to being taken care of and they can't do without it anymore. They have to have a mommy.
01:22:25
Speaker
They have to have a mommy forever. assholes. Oh my God. Oh my God.
01:22:38
Speaker
Oh my God. I often say, if i only knew then what I know now.
01:22:46
Speaker
I do. I don't know if i say it out loud, but I sure think it. Yeah. yeah Because we don't, like, it's just not talked about. It's just not talked about.
01:22:59
Speaker
oh my god. oh Okay. And then I i also bracketed this this paragraph, this little one here. because it just like really cuts to the quick.
01:23:13
Speaker
Feminism is often blamed for quote, destroying marriage and for reducing women's overall subjective sense of wellbeing. But those claims invalidate women's anger over being expected to fill out, to fulfill outdated and unfair gender roles.
01:23:31
Speaker
Feminism isn't ruining marriage. Sexism and the persistent expectation of masculine entitlements are. Mm-hmm.
01:23:41
Speaker
Patriarchy is ruining marriage. Ruining ruining the world. It is. It's true. Yeah.
01:23:50
Speaker
o Yeah. This is why I say Molly, don't get married.
01:24:00
Speaker
Fortunately, I have no money and no prospects. Shut up.
01:24:07
Speaker
Listen to me. I'm fine with having a relationship like that, but don't physically, like, law lawfully go through the motions of paperwork and ah ceremony of sorts yeah like that.
01:24:21
Speaker
Because you become property. You become property. Men literally just change the way they think about women as soon as the paperwork is signed, you know?
01:24:36
Speaker
i literally can't even get into it because it's just like, I know that I would need to know that I'm not with a person that would do that. Yeah. You know? Like, yeah.
01:24:47
Speaker
The problem is- root that person out before we even got to that stage, I feel. totally hear you. With everything that I know now, like, God, I would grill the guy. Right. Grill him.
01:24:58
Speaker
I hear you completely. No, I know. Sometimes people change in ways that you don't expect and they don't expect even. Like they just. Yeah. And then I'll be like, you know what? Change them.
01:25:10
Speaker
You know what? You're going to therapy and I'm not fucking doing this. Right. Yeah. Like, ah like it's very much like I'm going to have that. If I ever get to that place, I will have that hard ass boundary.
01:25:25
Speaker
You know, it's like, no, we're not. fucking playing here. Face me, Countertop. I will take you down. but but Anyway.
01:25:38
Speaker
yes Speaking of, I have no money and no prospects. I'm trying to remember what that's from. I'm a burden on my parents. I can't remember what that is. It's like from like some Jane Austen style novel slash okay movie adaptation. Okay. Anyway, we're, we're moving into money territory now.
Financial Stress and Labor Valuation
01:26:02
Speaker
oh Women have stress related to wage earning and health concerns, but what they also have so easily and casually dismissed is the economic a burden of care.
01:26:14
Speaker
Regardless of age, most people report that worrying about money is their biggest cause of stress. Care is expensive. So care often comes down to money. No one wants to think of caring in monetized terms because attaching actual money to care sullies our gender ideals.
01:26:31
Speaker
But all caring is monetized, and for women negatively so, particularly in consideration of long-term financial security. Not only is caring expensive and financially risky, but this gendered care mandate continues to be the major roadblock to virtually every established path to final financial stability and leadership that women might pursue.
01:26:55
Speaker
Women continue to cluster in lower wage sectors where they have minimal or non-existent institutional support, scant benefits, and reduced opportunities to accrue wealth.
01:27:07
Speaker
A 2015 analysis of women's labor between 2006 and 2010 found that despite women's academic successes and legal victories, the top job for women in the United States was what it was in 1950, secretary slash administrative assistant.
01:27:25
Speaker
It was followed closely by two other, quote, maternal jobs, teacher and nurse. Women compose the majority of low-wage service workers, workers in the food service industries, and sex workers.
01:27:39
Speaker
Women make up more than 90% of paid domestic and health care workers in the United States.
01:27:48
Speaker
And then continuing a little bit further down. The jobs that women tend to do are intensely emotionally demanding and require suppressing negative emotions such as anger.
01:28:00
Speaker
Teachers, nurses, administrative assistants, and service workers all record high rates of burnout, and emotional exhaustion is one of the primary reasons for this. An in-depth 2014 study of secondary school teachers in Germany, for example, revealed how closely burnout and anger suppression are related.
01:28:20
Speaker
Similar studies in countries across the globe reveal what experts describe as an epidemic of exhaustion, stress, anger, anxiety, and excessive work demands.
01:28:33
Speaker
God, it's like, it again, it the problem feeds into the problem. The problem causes bigger problems that make the problem worse.
01:28:48
Speaker
What the fuck? Right? Oh my god. Yep. And then there's also the um the emotional labor side of things.
01:29:00
Speaker
And in this book, in this section, it describes emotional labor as being work done by people who have to express emotions they don't truly feel.
01:29:11
Speaker
Think customer service voice. Yeah. Any customer service position, like... you have to pretend you're happy to be serving people.
01:29:24
Speaker
Yeah. No matter what it is that you're going through in life, no matter what it is that you're feeling at ah any given time, no matter what it is that you are, no no matter how you're being treated actively in the moment, like the number of times that I have been like berated in my retail and food service yeah positions,
01:29:48
Speaker
To the point that I had to like go to the back and cry. Like, but then I had to like wipe my tears and plaster on a fake smile and then keep serving people.
01:30:04
Speaker
Like there is the expectation, like it's in like job descriptions being like must have sunny disposition. Yeah. And it's just like, oh, must not be a human.
01:30:16
Speaker
You know? No shit. Oh my god. Dude, I'm adding this book to my ah wish list right now. This book? Okay, good. Good. woof Okay, I'm going to read this paragraph and then the sentence following it um because it all goes together really well.
01:30:35
Speaker
When women at work don't provide this labor, the emotional labor, when they aren't maternal, nurturing, and centered on others, people's expectations are dashed.
01:30:45
Speaker
a no-nonsense woman is cold, bitchy, and disliked. If she expresses frustration or anger at being treated unfairly or even asks for help, she is considered less competent and less deserving of pay or reward.
01:31:01
Speaker
In men, people understand anger as a response to provocation, but in women, it's seen as an unpleasant characteristic, as in she is an angry woman. The belief that women will happily...
01:31:15
Speaker
Willingly and freely provide care means that women's time and work are chronically undervalued and underpaid.
01:31:25
Speaker
yeah Chronically. And then we get into like literal like pay pay gap situations. In category after category, when women migrate into a field, median salaries drop.
01:31:40
Speaker
When men go into a field, salaries go up.
01:31:45
Speaker
I know. God. so god to overcome these wage gaps many women seek out higher education meaning that they incur more student loan debt women hold sixty five percent of student loans These loans in turn are harder to repay because of wage gaps and because women have to be more responsive to unplanned pregnancies, child care, elder care, and medical emergencies, all of which make saving money virtually impossible.
01:32:17
Speaker
This is the point at which I just wanted to throw the book out the window. I love the book, but holy fuck. And you're not even a third of the way through that book.
01:32:28
Speaker
i'm not i'm not at all oh my god i just noticed like the this is why we have to like take this in bite-sized meaning two hour episodes yeah like pieces oh my god i just noticed like the one inch in your left hand and the three inches in your right hand but oh my god not literally but yeah yeah like we're pretty close way this is like a quarter inch whatever this is like one inch but you know no i know what you mean yeah oh and then and then i'm gonna read you a really really upsetting sentence that's alone by itself just gonna fucking like slam you in the head are you ready okay should i leave ah sorry let me get the yawn out of the way first should i lean back so that when i scream i'm not gonna blow out the speakers sure 2013
01:33:18
Speaker
in twenty thirteen ah now A 2013 study conducted in the United States revealed that employers distrust women when they ask for workplace flexibility.
01:33:31
Speaker
Okay. Wow. That made me so mad. Oh my god. Why would they be just like they're lying? Because the assumption is that the woman is asking for workplace flexibility to focus on like personal life or home stuff.
01:33:54
Speaker
Okay. Which, in my opinion, is a valid reason to ask for workplace yeah flexibility. What would cause like them to not be trusted anymore after that? That's so fucking weird.
01:34:07
Speaker
because Because that's the value that's put on that kind of stuff. Women's work, women's labor. It's undervalued compared to like what a man's spending his time doing outside of work. Right.
01:34:21
Speaker
You know? so Oh my god. hey um Okay. And to add to the stack of shit, even as women continue to struggle financially, emotionally, and physically to personally rectify, quote, second shift, working for pay and then getting home and doing the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work impacts, second shift impacts, they are now also engaging in a powerful, quote, third shift To make ends meet, women are side hustling.
01:34:55
Speaker
A recent survey revealed that more than 44 million Americans have at least two jobs, and the majority of them are young women caring for parents and children.
01:35:10
Speaker
Yep. None of that is surprising to me. All
01:35:16
Speaker
right. And a nice like summation here. Women's unpaid and undervalued care work stands as the single greatest wealth transfer in today's global economy.
01:35:28
Speaker
Without this provision of care, markets would crash, economies would grind to a halt, and men could not continue to dominate entire job sectors and institutional hierarchies.
01:35:41
Speaker
Without it, quote, the masculine masculinization of wealth, unquote, as writer and activist Gloria Steinem called it long ago, would be impossible.
The Hypothetical Women's Strike
01:35:55
Speaker
And this makes me think of the couple of times that I've seen it suggested that, like, women should do a strike.
01:36:05
Speaker
Where they just cease to do all the work that is expected of them. Yeah. For a week. Or even just a day. Yeah. And dear God, I want to watch that happen.
01:36:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. the world would fall apart. Pretty much. And like the thing that boggles my mind is that really when you do a strike, you're supposed to strike until you get the demands that get, get the benefits or the provisions or whatever it is that you are demanding until your demands are met.
01:36:44
Speaker
Right. Not just do it for a week and then it's over and oh, dear God, then we can move back to real life. Yeah. Like, a real strike goes on until the demands are met. Exactly.
01:36:59
Speaker
Weeks, months, whatever. Women, we gotta do it. Here's what I'm gonna say about this and the reason why it probably will never happen is Oh, I know. i know it will probably never happen. I just really want it to. The reason why is because if we walk away and don't take care of our children, then who who will? And what's going to happen to them while we're striking?
01:37:30
Speaker
Well, that's the thing is the men will have to. but no but that's what I mean. This is what I mean. Yeah. This is why. Like the reason it's not going to happen is the reason why it needs to.
01:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Women aren't going to abandon their responsibilities because the children will suffer for it. The children will suffer because of it.
01:37:55
Speaker
Unless we can figure out a way to, like, say, you know, one mom out of ten... takes like all the kids for a few hours but then the other moms just like don't do nothing you know what i'm saying the really frustrating thing is that like that that completely negates the whole point of the strike you know right and like the whole point of the strike is to get the men to do the work right but and to start appreciating the scale can stop cooking and cleaning
01:38:27
Speaker
They can't, I mean, they can just take care of themselves and the kid, make sure they eat themselves and the kid eat, but don't like cook for like the males of the family or, you know what i mean? Any male 16 and older, you know what i mean?
01:38:43
Speaker
Like if it's a young boy, of course you're going to cook for your kid, you know, but yeah but like, they're old enough to cook themselves. The man of the house. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Then, you know, that's the thing is like strategic stop doing the male, the male 16 and older laundry or cooking the meals for the male 16 and older. Right. You know, that kind of stuff.
01:39:04
Speaker
Like that's the thing is that like. It it would be a logistical nightmare and that is the entire point. Yeah. So the men would have to start taking care of themselves better.
01:39:15
Speaker
And then they might they would have more of an appreciation for what they're doing. No, they would have to start taking care of themselves and the children and the whole household. Entirely. Do all of the work that the woman has been doing.
01:39:29
Speaker
Imagine, just imagine one day that you died and suddenly your husband is the one who's in charge of everything. Yeah. he would have to step up to the plate And I'm not going to make any quips about whether he would or would, you know, do it successfully.
01:39:50
Speaker
But the point is, like, sometimes that shit is a reality. Yes. And men are not prepared. And most of those men are going to go get a new girlfriend and get married right away.
01:40:05
Speaker
Yeah. And be like, you take care of the kid now, your mom. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I say, fucking stop it. Don't. right Don't do it. Don't fall for it. Don't do it. That's why. That's why I'm not dating men that have children.
01:40:24
Speaker
That's why I won't. I won't do it. No, you shouldn't. Yeah. And it's not, it's, it's really not just because I myself never want to have children.
01:40:37
Speaker
But it's that I refuse to be made responsible for like things that should be an equitable, like statistically, as we're talking about are not equitable ever. Yeah.
01:40:50
Speaker
But that need to be. i won't do it. Right. Absolutely. The fuck not. Anyway. Anyway. We're almost there. Two hours. We are our last read. Okay.
01:41:03
Speaker
we are at our last read okay of the episode. Here we go. And that brings us almost to the end of the chapter, but like, I'm going call it the end of the chapter, whether at home or work, caretakers often feel resentful, powerless, and insignificant, despite their undertaking such crucial tasks.
01:41:28
Speaker
Powerlessness contributes to stress and depression. The sense of lacking control and being vulnerable also provoke anxiety. Sometimes caretakers respond to this stress with explosive anger.
01:41:42
Speaker
This may dispel negative feelings, but usually only fleetingly. In taxing circumstances, it is important to distinguish between anger and resentment. Anger is a forward-looking emotion rooted in the idea that there should be change.
01:41:58
Speaker
Resentment, on the other hand, is locked in the past and usually generates no meaningful difference in the situation. The coup de grace? Women don't age out of these gaps until they are in their mid-80s.
01:42:13
Speaker
An annual health study of more than 8,000 people in the United Kingdom, like similar studies in the United States and other countries, we found that women are consistently less satisfied and happy than men are over multiple life stages.
01:42:29
Speaker
Women surpassed men in terms of life satisfaction and happiness only in their eighth decade. In other words, until they are no longer responsible for caring for other people.
01:42:44
Speaker
Crazy. God, that hits so fucking hard.
Constructive Anger vs. Resentment
01:42:51
Speaker
And I also really appreciated the, like, clear defining of, like, anger versus resentment.
01:43:01
Speaker
And, like, the way that anger... has a purpose but resentment really doesn't and I think that's a really good distinction to make especially when you're like learning how to identify your own anger like like newly trying to figure out how to do this you know after years of repressing it yeah like you are probably also experiencing tons of resentment and it's important to learn how to distinguish the two because resentment ain't gonna get you nowhere where anger gonna push for change
01:43:35
Speaker
Right. So, yeah. Yeah, no, I have distinguished between the two very well. Good. um And i i used to have resentment and i I can still get there if I dwell on certain things that used to bug me a lot. Yeah.
01:43:57
Speaker
But i I know that there's zero point in that. So I usually stop myself as soon as I start thinking about that. yeah And then it's like, yeah, that doesn't none of that matters anymore. But here's what I'm angry about right now.
01:44:11
Speaker
Right, yeah. And usually resentment is um when you're still... Yeah, it's you're it's festering because you're still in a place... of unfair treatment or inequality, right um injustice.
01:44:29
Speaker
like you know it's It's happening over long periods of time and the resentment builds. um But when you alleviate the pressure of the situation or you remove yourself or you change something that changes the active current situation that tends to like alleviate the feeling of
Systemic Barriers to Women's Success
01:44:52
Speaker
resentment. However, anger can't really be alleviated or made better without like active change. Actually, honestly, that's kind of the same thing.
01:45:07
Speaker
expressing it like expressing expressing expressing it yeah but in a constructive way i think too because if you're being angry just to vent it's not really right gonna help right expressing it constructively and also expressing it like you know with a particular end result in mind yeah um but also you know it just occurred to me like resentment is often not usually verbally expressed right resentment's usually quiet silent yeah like yeah resentment you don't talk about usually but oftentimes the other person can feel it um if they're not a complete idiot yeah you know yeah um yeah yeah god damn well i am sufficiently incensed
01:46:00
Speaker
yeah how are you feeling I'm, yeah, I'm, you know,
01:46:10
Speaker
like this book just puts into words how I think most women feel or are like, you know, saying what most women already knew, but didn't know how to like, like didn't realize that it was an actual statistic, statistic, or like an actual common issue or as common as it as really is or right i yeah like it's not an isolated thing yeah it's not like just you it's not like just you know women in your family that tend to go through this it's like basically it's like almost every global goddamn country if yeah if the united states has worse statistics than right yeah do like that's that seems to be a ah theme is like the u.s. has it worse than every other country
01:47:03
Speaker
A lot of the time. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's it is it's like not really surprising, but it's just like, right you know, you feel kind of validated right for feeling like shit about things.
01:47:19
Speaker
ah Yeah. that is I guess that is like the bright side of you know looking at all of this and really dissecting it and diving into a lot of it is that it really does validate my life experience yeah um yeah and like it it makes me feel less alone but it also continues to upset me because it's like god it it is not just an isolated incident it is systemic and that's just a bigger problem yeah overall
01:47:55
Speaker
yeah So, yeah, this is like, I just, these things are so important to talk about, which is part of the reason why i wanted to, you know, got dive into this book at all in on the on the show.
01:48:12
Speaker
um These, these things need to be talked about more. Yes, we need to understand we're not alone. But we also need to understand we have a lot to overcome.
01:48:26
Speaker
Yeah. We have a lot that needs changing. Yeah. And nothing's goingnna change if we continue to turn a blind eye. Yeah. And I think the laws in this country, you know, are one of the places that needs it needs to start from.
01:48:42
Speaker
yeah it Yeah. Like, God, if only it was that easy. um I almost feel like sometimes like societal change would be easier than changing the laws, you know, true but i based on the administration we're currently stuck with. Well, absolutely. A hundred percent.
01:48:58
Speaker
Yeah. But what I'm saying is, you know, with this, you know, if you just try to ignore that factor for a second, it yeah. Um,
01:49:11
Speaker
You know, getting, getting like maternity leave extended. Like how much. Getting maternity leave at all. Because the U.S. does not mandate maternity leave. That was not even. i did i skipped over that part, frankly. paid a maternity leave. Paid maternity leave. I was not paid for six weeks when I was maternity leave.
01:49:35
Speaker
Yeah. Jobs are not required to even give it to you. And especially not required to pay you for it. Right. So it's like you can either take it unpaid or lose your fucking job because you got to push a child out of your.
01:49:48
Speaker
Right. Because sometimes jobs will fire a woman as soon as they find out she's pregnant. Right. It's insane. Yeah. Which factors into the whole like, oh, women like statistically cannot build wealth because they have to contend with things like unplanned pregnancies.
01:50:06
Speaker
Mm hmm. oh which they're not allowed to get rid of if they don't want it. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. We could go on for forever and ever and ever.
Community Engagement and Podcast Promotion
01:50:19
Speaker
let's not have strokes. Let's just take a deep breath. Ready? Ready? already started. yeah
01:50:30
Speaker
Ready? one two, three, in
01:50:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Ready? Let's do it one more time. Ready? Okay. One more.
01:50:58
Speaker
Remember our Anahata's episode last year? when we just collectively kept doing that and we were like we had to remember so wound up oh my god but it was like we had learned to do it repeatedly throughout the weekend right but we were actually employing it and it was so beautiful yeah that's what i'm saying it was like it became a habit for a little while and then it kind of went away yeah which is why i'm so excited to go back which by the way i don't know if i've announced it officially
01:51:31
Speaker
Not on Patreon.
01:51:35
Speaker
But I'll announce it now. I'll announce it now. Homies, I'm teaching it on a hottest purpose this year. Yeehaw, beachies!
01:51:46
Speaker
I'm so excited! Shockingly, I am so excited. Hell yeah. I am so excited.
01:51:56
Speaker
Oh my god. so I yeah I can't wait. It's going to be great. And also I can't wait to go to Anahata's. I fucking love that place. I'm so excited.
01:52:08
Speaker
yeah here Yeah. It's going to be fucking amazing. But yeah. We got to meet a bunch of friends in June for the Solstice weekend. Yes. We did talk about that extensively. There's still There's still more friends that we haven't met. Right.
01:52:25
Speaker
that Yeah. Be able to. And I cannot wait. Oh my God. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing.
01:52:36
Speaker
Oh my God. Yes. I guess I, you know what? I will say I did announce it on our Instagram. Yeah.
01:52:45
Speaker
on the day that we all were announcing you know the lineup and everything I went on all my socials and I made sure to post about it so if you follow us on Instagram you will have seen that already if you don't follow us on Instagram Christina where can they find us on Instagram
01:53:08
Speaker
at soul pod the podcast fuck yeah And if you want to write us an email to tell us about all of the ways that you have experienced anger as a ah female or femme you know, AFAB person in life, you can write us an email at soulpodthepodcast at gmail.com Yay, bitch.
01:53:41
Speaker
And If you want even more of our nonsense, you can pay for it on Patreon, which supports us financially.
01:53:54
Speaker
And that would be that link is in our description, but it is. patreon.com slash soul pod the podcast yeah god i will never ever get tired of how happy i am that i clinched all of those perfect usernames in yourl yeah and if you're listening to us on spotify or apple podcasts please make sure you follow smash that button
01:54:27
Speaker
And give us five stars. Wee! Give us five stars. Leave us a review. Oh my god. Yes. I'm so glad you remembered that lot ah remember that last week because I can't remember the last time we did that. I know, right? So...
01:54:45
Speaker
We're going to make sure and we remind y'all to give us a five-star rating and write us a review. You can also leave comments on Spotify. You can't do that on Apple Podcasts, but you can on Spotify. So if you're listening on Spotify and you have a comment about a particular episode, you can comment there. Heck yes. And we we know how to see them, so we will see them eventually.
01:55:08
Speaker
Or if you really want to get a hold of us, write us on our Gmail. right Write to our email address. Join Patreon and join the community chat. like We actually have one going.
01:55:19
Speaker
Write to us on Instagram. It's very That's a thing too. Yes, we do have a tiny, tiny little community chat, but it is it it it it is cute. I like it. It's the Soul Squad.
01:55:32
Speaker
Yee, Soul Squad. All right. I got to go catch an Uber. Have fun with your Uber. Bye guys. Thank you for joining us.
01:55:44
Speaker
We love you. We're grateful for you. Please have a beautiful day or night. Goodbye.
01:56:25
Speaker
What are you doing? Looking at the underside of my breast. Oh, okay. Okay.