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EXIT Podcast Episode 16: Homemaking
398 Plays3 years ago
Brikaeli Guzy is Tanner Guzy's wife, & mother to their five children; Karissa is my wife, & mother to our five children. We discuss:
- helping women to make an EXIT
- countering corporate-feminist messaging
- how to support a spouse who has been doxxed
- how to rebuild the institutions to support homemaking
Recommended
Transcript
Introductions and Family Dynamics
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett, joined here by Brickaley Guzzi and my wife, Carissa.
00:00:22
Speaker
So Brickaley is Tanner Guzzi's wife and mother to their five children.
00:00:27
Speaker
Carissa is my wife and mother to our five children.
00:00:30
Speaker
And I don't know, Carissa, if you know this, but Tanner and Brickaley, as I understand it, have one son and four daughters.
00:00:36
Speaker
Is that right?
00:00:37
Speaker
That's right.
00:00:38
Speaker
And we have a daughter and four sons.
00:00:41
Speaker
And so the right thing to do here seems pretty obvious.
00:00:45
Speaker
Tanner and I are just sort of hammering out the terms of the Alliance, the appropriate transfers of cattle and gold.
00:00:50
Speaker
And we can talk more about that after.
Choosing Motherhood Over Corporate Life
00:00:53
Speaker
So being a stay at home mom is maybe not as weird choices.
00:00:56
Speaker
People act like it is, but it's definitely a choice.
00:00:59
Speaker
So what inspired you to reject the lure of Microsoft PowerPoint and stay home and raise your kids?
00:01:07
Speaker
Well,
00:01:08
Speaker
There are kind of two aspects to it.
00:01:09
Speaker
My mom, I never heard her complain about motherhood once.
00:01:13
Speaker
She made it very appealing.
00:01:14
Speaker
She made it something that she loved and adored and we all saw that.
00:01:17
Speaker
And so I wanted that too.
00:01:21
Speaker
Secondly, have you met corporate America?
00:01:26
Speaker
Like I had a job.
00:01:28
Speaker
I had a job before we got pregnant.
00:01:30
Speaker
We got pregnant fast, but we met at work.
00:01:33
Speaker
and I could not get pregnant fast enough.
00:01:36
Speaker
I want it out of there.
00:01:37
Speaker
It sucked.
00:01:38
Speaker
Like working for somebody else, getting harassed about,
00:01:43
Speaker
you know, who you're talking to, what you're saying on social media, how you're spending your time, how you look like, like, and then having, you know, getting a, a bag of popcorn at the Christmas party and a camel brought in to entertain you once a year.
00:01:58
Speaker
Like it just sucks.
00:02:00
Speaker
It sucks so much.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I want it out as fast as possible.
00:02:03
Speaker
I would take anything overworking for somebody else.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:07
Speaker
So like that, that's, that's so much about, uh,
00:02:11
Speaker
What we want to exit, we're looking for like a way to get out of that exact same environment.
00:02:17
Speaker
And it's, it's the way out and where we should be going fundamentally is different for men and women, but the need to get out is exactly the same.
00:02:27
Speaker
Can you say more about how your mom made it appealing?
00:02:31
Speaker
Like, because, you know, you know, obviously that it's, that it's challenging and stressful.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I imagine she wasn't able to like conceal that piece of it from you.
00:02:41
Speaker
Cause you're right in the thick of it, but how did she make it seem like a, like a beautiful and worthwhile thing?
00:02:48
Speaker
I think the biggest thing that she did, it, it was how she spoke about it, how she still speaks about it.
00:02:54
Speaker
She just always said, I love babies.
00:02:56
Speaker
This is good chaos.
00:02:58
Speaker
You know, everything else can wait because I adore you people.
00:03:02
Speaker
She like, she just was so vocal and effusive and warm and her biggest priority were her kids.
00:03:11
Speaker
Like she chose us constantly every day over, over everything.
00:03:15
Speaker
And we saw it and she would talk to us about it and tell us why she was choosing us and how much she loved us.
Societal Perceptions of Stay-at-Home Mothers
00:03:21
Speaker
And just, I never heard a complaint about it.
00:03:23
Speaker
She complained about other things, but never about being a mom.
00:03:26
Speaker
And I've seen that even with my old, so my oldest is nine.
00:03:29
Speaker
She's a girl.
00:03:30
Speaker
And she was talking to her friend the other day, her friend just, they just found out how babies are made.
00:03:37
Speaker
Um, her friend had, and she came over to her house and I hear them talking and her friends like, I'm, I'm not going to have kids.
00:03:42
Speaker
I don't think that's going to happen for me.
00:03:46
Speaker
And my daughter, my sweet daughter, just, I hear her kind of like urgently whisper to her, like, just, just ignore that part for now.
00:03:53
Speaker
Cause the babies are totally worth it.
00:03:55
Speaker
Like you're going to love the babies.
00:03:57
Speaker
And I just love that she's seen me have four other kids and she's seen how chaotic and stressed out it gets, you know, like all the hard parts of it.
00:04:07
Speaker
And because I've tried to do the same thing that my mom has done, she's convinced like she's on board too.
00:04:13
Speaker
She's like, all of this is worth it.
00:04:15
Speaker
Even the having to have babies part is worth it.
00:04:19
Speaker
Oh, so they were learning about how babies are brought forth, not how they're conceived.
00:04:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:24
Speaker
Oh, no, both.
00:04:25
Speaker
Both.
00:04:27
Speaker
And her friend was just not having it.
00:04:30
Speaker
No part of that arrangement.
00:04:31
Speaker
Nope.
00:04:35
Speaker
I think, I mean, at the age of nine, I would probably be
00:04:38
Speaker
pretty hesitant myself.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:40
Speaker
Troubled, disturbed.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yep.
00:04:46
Speaker
So, so do you think, do you think that all women should be homemakers or try to be?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yep.
00:04:52
Speaker
I do.
00:04:53
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:04:54
Speaker
So if you had a close friend who was sort of sleepwalking through the standard academic and professional track, um, what case would you make to them?
00:05:09
Speaker
You know, I think, I don't know that it could be done in one conversation.
00:05:13
Speaker
I think that's kind of a pipe dream that we're fed that we can have, you know, say the right words and somebody's whole perspective will change and they'll just stop what they're doing and go in another direction.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:24
Speaker
But I really think the best case we can make and that I can make is just living a good life.
00:05:31
Speaker
like not being shy about sharing the things that are sending us over the moon, you know, like just really living a good life and sharing that with other people.
00:05:42
Speaker
I would often have conversations at work with people who were several years older than me and further down the road and maybe even had been married longer, but they just had this terror of having kids.
00:05:58
Speaker
And it was very much like,
00:06:01
Speaker
I can't have kids, I'm a 34 year old boy.
00:06:03
Speaker
Like, you know, like, you know, how does that fit into my fun and my life?
00:06:09
Speaker
I did find that like, it's not an ideological conversation.
00:06:13
Speaker
It's a conversation about what life is like.
00:06:17
Speaker
And I tell them what it's like to have a little girl and what it's like to have boys.
00:06:22
Speaker
And yeah, I absolutely agree that sort of not being shy about the depth of that experience.
00:06:30
Speaker
can really make a huge difference.
00:06:31
Speaker
And one of the friends that I had that conversation with relatively shortly thereafter pulled the trigger, so to speak.
00:06:43
Speaker
And so it's always exciting when you see it happen.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I definitely, I met women who just didn't have a sense that like anything else was possible.
00:06:55
Speaker
Like,
00:06:57
Speaker
one, one woman who was sending her, I think it was three kids at the time.
00:07:02
Speaker
I think it was two.
00:07:03
Speaker
And then it was, she had her third and spending like three quarters of her paycheck on daycare.
00:07:10
Speaker
And they were coming home with like bruises that she couldn't explain.
00:07:15
Speaker
And they were constantly sick.
00:07:16
Speaker
And like, you know, they would come home saying things that like they shouldn't be
Valuing Family Life Over Corporate Success
00:07:21
Speaker
saying.
00:07:21
Speaker
And, and,
00:07:24
Speaker
And my mentality, and I tried to say this as safely as I could, but I would be like, they have to pay me a lot of money to do this job.
00:07:35
Speaker
Like, this is not a fun job for me.
00:07:37
Speaker
I do this because I have to.
00:07:40
Speaker
And like her husband worked at the same company.
00:07:43
Speaker
Like they had tons of money.
00:07:44
Speaker
The money problem was solved.
00:07:46
Speaker
It was really like, she felt that she needed to be there.
00:07:51
Speaker
I don't know why.
00:07:52
Speaker
Cause she would, she would like come to work crying about, about like the situation with her kids.
00:07:57
Speaker
And, and I, and I would always kind of be like, what, what's, what's driving this?
00:08:02
Speaker
Like, why, why is this, why is this the play?
00:08:06
Speaker
And, you know, it was work.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so like, it wasn't really appropriate to be like deeply honest about that.
00:08:11
Speaker
But, but yeah, there's a ton of, there's a ton of women in that situation.
00:08:14
Speaker
And, and I don't get it.
00:08:17
Speaker
No, I mean, I see a lot of women posting, oh, six weeks came way too fast for my newborn and I'm off to work and here's hoping I can pump enough.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I cried all day at work and it's like, well, don't go.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, just don't do that.
00:08:32
Speaker
Don't do that thing.
00:08:34
Speaker
Like it feels bad for a reason.
00:08:36
Speaker
Stop doing it.
00:08:40
Speaker
But they go, they just don't.
00:08:43
Speaker
There's always a million reasons why they think they can't change.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
And, and I, what kills me is when it's, is when it's monetary, because like, there's no amount of poverty that you're going to find yourself in, in 2021 in America that would impress your great, great, great grandparents.
00:09:03
Speaker
Like you're not going to be as poor as them ever.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so like, whatever you have to cut back on, and it's hard because like, you know, maybe you live in a high cost of living area or whatever, but like,
00:09:17
Speaker
yeah, maybe, maybe it's just like, there's not a sense of like, what's the payoff at the end of it.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so, because yeah, I found that the most effective experiences or the most effective conversations that I had with people were less about like this situation sucks.
00:09:34
Speaker
Cause like, they know it sucks.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:37
Speaker
It's more like there is a huge payoff on the other side of this.
00:09:42
Speaker
If you're willing to take a leap of faith and do something that's
00:09:46
Speaker
that's contrary to what everybody else is doing, because what everybody else is doing is making them all miserable.
00:09:51
Speaker
And that side of it is very clear to them.
00:09:56
Speaker
So most people still believe that raising and educating children is important.
00:10:03
Speaker
Progressives in particular love school teachers.
00:10:06
Speaker
And a school teacher is basically a homemaker.
00:10:10
Speaker
Like there's maybe less sort of wiping noses and cleaning up, but there's plenty of that, like especially for an elementary school teacher.
00:10:21
Speaker
And that is valued so highly, at least rhetorically.
00:10:29
Speaker
So why do you think people look down on homemakers and feel free to be as paranoid and conspiratorial
00:10:38
Speaker
You know, that's a really interesting point.
00:10:40
Speaker
I think the same thing with nurses.
00:10:43
Speaker
Like, they're just doing what a good mom or wife would be doing.
00:10:52
Speaker
I feel like, I think they want us to outsource everything.
00:10:57
Speaker
Literally everything.
00:10:59
Speaker
We don't take responsibility for our kids, for our marriages, for
00:11:04
Speaker
We can rely on the state for income.
00:11:06
Speaker
We can rely on them for our own health, for our mental health.
00:11:11
Speaker
Like there's our intuition, everything.
00:11:14
Speaker
They want us to outsource everything to them and have no power or control ourselves.
00:11:21
Speaker
And I think they do that through a lot of different ways.
00:11:24
Speaker
I mean, we've talked about the
00:11:28
Speaker
like on, um, on beauty and the beast where we talk like the, the fat, miserable woman with her screaming children who can't afford six sags.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:37
Speaker
And, and that's very intentional.
00:11:41
Speaker
Um, I just think they want us to need them for everything.
00:11:45
Speaker
They're like a narcissistic mother who refuses to cut the apron strings.
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:53
Speaker
It's, um, you know, it, for every
00:11:56
Speaker
For every meal that you're not cooking, you're going out and buying the TV dinner.
00:12:01
Speaker
And that is you're paying sales tax on that.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's going into some corporation's income statement.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's fed into this system and it's made legible so that it can be exploited for profit by all kinds of entities.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I don't think that it has to be a centralized system.
00:12:20
Speaker
I don't think people are meeting in like a smoke filled room.
00:12:22
Speaker
Right.
00:12:24
Speaker
But I think they're all of these institutions have an incentive to say, no, don't do it yourself.
00:12:31
Speaker
Let us do it.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
And I would argue that it's not just for profit.
00:12:35
Speaker
It's for power too.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:39
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:12:39
Speaker
And then on the labor supply side, all of these corporations, all of this money, they want to say,
00:12:49
Speaker
don't work for free.
00:12:51
Speaker
Don't work for someone who loves you work for money.
00:12:55
Speaker
And, and, you know, it's funny, like, so, so many women will in a heartbeat, sign a commitment to basically unconditionally obey, like the, the, the regional manager at Applebee's or whatever the, you know, the, the guy who runs their store or whatever it is, but they won't make a vow to honor and obey their husband.
00:13:15
Speaker
And it's like,
00:13:17
Speaker
In what sense are you more liberated?
00:13:19
Speaker
In what sense are you freer?
00:13:21
Speaker
And is it just because, like, I guess you're free in the sense that it's easier to quit Applebee's than to quit your marriage.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, you can hop around jobs.
00:13:33
Speaker
Right.
00:13:34
Speaker
But wherever you go, it's going to be the same deal.
00:13:38
Speaker
You know, you've got to do what they say for X hours out of the day.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not even just like, I was thinking about this, that even within like the media and Hollywood, they've even driven us to believe that we can make work our family.
00:13:57
Speaker
Like how many shows are like, you didn't choose the family you were born into, but your boss really is gonna drive four hours to see you at the hospital and all your work friends are gonna show up, you know, when you have an emergency, like they really are pushing this
00:14:13
Speaker
you don't need an actual family.
00:14:15
Speaker
The people that make money off of you really love you.
00:14:18
Speaker
You know, like they're trying to get you to fall in love with a stripper, basically.
00:14:24
Speaker
Most of the shows, the families are unhappy.
00:14:27
Speaker
There's almost always something going on that they- They're all dysfunctional.
00:14:32
Speaker
At home.
00:14:32
Speaker
Right.
00:14:33
Speaker
And they find that it's not just money.
00:14:35
Speaker
It's, you will find validation and worth at your job.
00:14:45
Speaker
which is almost nobody's experience.
00:14:49
Speaker
I feel like, you know, people have friends at work, but I could count on one hand the number of people that like really have, and it's usually like a small business.
Community and Connection for Homemakers
00:15:02
Speaker
Nobody has that at Globocorp.
00:15:05
Speaker
You know, if it's a small business run by, there's sort of an executive guiding the culture, you know,
00:15:17
Speaker
you can be sheltered from some of the forces of HR and the fear and the alienation that that generates.
00:15:26
Speaker
But even then that's pretty hard to find.
00:15:31
Speaker
Speaking of alienation, Carissa, you've said on some occasions that one of the hardest things about being a homemaker is that it can be lonely.
00:15:40
Speaker
Can you talk about that?
00:15:43
Speaker
It can be lonely.
00:15:45
Speaker
I don't have a lot of friends who are stay at home moms.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so I do a lot of the work myself.
00:15:55
Speaker
And I'm, you know, you and I are in this together, but it's not the same as having other women, a community of my own, who
00:16:06
Speaker
wanted to have children and wanted to have you know a lot of children if they were able to to come to my house and experience the chaotic good and do the chores because there there is
00:16:21
Speaker
work involved and it can be tedious, but I have, I've chosen this, but I would, I would like, I would like the company and I would like people who understand it and who, you know, I don't have to sugarcoat it and say, oh, I love doing this laundry.
00:16:37
Speaker
I love every aspect of this, but people who, who can be in it with me and, and have joy.
00:16:43
Speaker
I've watched you work.
00:16:46
Speaker
Like when we're, when we're at someone's house, if you're working with someone,
00:16:51
Speaker
whether it's the dishes or preparing the meal or whatever it is.
00:16:55
Speaker
And the emotional valence of that experience is just night and day.
00:17:00
Speaker
It's totally different.
00:17:01
Speaker
I love it.
00:17:02
Speaker
Because your mind and your heart are with the people and you are like, your hands are doing the work, but you are engaged in something else.
00:17:12
Speaker
It's not drudgery.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's just what we're doing together.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
And I love finding people who
00:17:22
Speaker
who love what we're creating and what we're, we're working really hard to build.
00:17:26
Speaker
And I want other people to have that.
00:17:29
Speaker
And, and it has been a long, a lonely journey getting there, but I feel, I feel like we're finally, that community is coming together and I'm, I'm very excited.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:42
Speaker
And some of it is just, we, we've been,
00:17:47
Speaker
We've been really focused on this like nuclear family model.
00:17:50
Speaker
And so the 1950s, 1960s model of homemaking was like, dad's gonna go to work and make the money to buy the machines and the machines are gonna help mom do the work.
00:18:01
Speaker
And that labor saving technology is good,
00:18:05
Speaker
But I think, you know, to the extent that there's any truth to the moms on barbiturates to get through the day kind of myth about that time period, I think it was rooted in the fact that instead of having a community and having people to do the work with, mom had machines.
00:18:27
Speaker
Right.
00:18:28
Speaker
It wasn't because she was oppressed by her patriarchal husband.
00:18:31
Speaker
It was because she was all alone.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:35
Speaker
And nobody wants to live that way.
00:18:38
Speaker
And I'm finding that across the board with our group and anybody who's sort of aligned with us in terms of common enemies or common problems, the guys seem to have their like social world kind of figured out, at least to the extent that that's possible over the internet.
00:19:01
Speaker
And the wives...
00:19:03
Speaker
sometimes feel left out.
00:19:04
Speaker
And it feels like, you know, maybe you can comment on this.
00:19:08
Speaker
It feels like women seem to have a harder time getting along online.
00:19:15
Speaker
Like there seem to be lots of like, lots of like schisms and, and, and, uh, you know, clicks.
00:19:23
Speaker
And I don't know if you could comment on like maybe why you think that is, or if you even think that's true.
00:19:28
Speaker
Um, yeah, I do think it's true.
00:19:29
Speaker
I think it's harder for women online to
00:19:34
Speaker
because they have an audience becomes less about the people that they're interacting with and more about how everybody reacts to how they're interacting.
00:19:44
Speaker
And, and it just gives women a lot of attention.
00:19:47
Speaker
And I don't know if that's ever very good for, I've, I don't know that I've seen women.
00:19:54
Speaker
Could I count any women that have flourished under massive amounts of attention?
00:19:58
Speaker
I don't know that I could.
00:19:59
Speaker
I, it's just, it's harder.
00:20:03
Speaker
It's harder when we're not
00:20:05
Speaker
I think women do better when we're working together.
00:20:07
Speaker
I'm even thinking about like the women in my neighborhood who are wonderful, wonderful women, but we never get together to work.
00:20:12
Speaker
We're just getting together to play.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:15
Speaker
And it keeps things pretty superficial.
00:20:17
Speaker
And if I could get women and their kids over to my house and we throw all the kids in the basement and we go to work, you know, like that, that would be so much better for our relationships and the depth of our relationships.
00:20:29
Speaker
I think, but women are mostly just focused on a break anytime they can get it.
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:36
Speaker
Well, and I mean, almost, you know, in our experience, when there's kids over, that almost is kind of a break in a lot of cases because they, they go play with each other.
00:20:46
Speaker
And so, you know, it does.
00:20:48
Speaker
And then if you're, and then if you're sort of using that breathing room to accomplish something that you need to do anyway, then the rest of your day is easier to do.
00:20:58
Speaker
And, um,
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if that's possible to, well, so, so, but I wanted to jump back to something.
00:21:06
Speaker
I think in our little circle online, you're probably, I don't know how to put this.
00:21:14
Speaker
You seem really well adjusted relative to a lot of, well, in terms of, in terms of like, you know, you, you, you,
00:21:23
Speaker
you can hang and you can banter and you have some of that attention and it doesn't seem to derange you the way that it does some other people.
Online Personas vs. Real Relationships
00:21:32
Speaker
And I don't want to like put you on the spot.
00:21:35
Speaker
I know that's a weird question to try to answer, but like, do you have a different perspective on why that is?
00:21:41
Speaker
I think for me, I, that's a good question.
00:21:46
Speaker
I ignore a lot of things.
00:21:48
Speaker
I think a lot of it has to do with,
00:21:51
Speaker
I credit actually how rough the beginning of my intentors marriage was in terms of nobody wanted to get us to get married.
00:21:57
Speaker
Everybody was really, really mad at us.
00:21:59
Speaker
Like families didn't show up to our wedding.
00:22:01
Speaker
It was like us against the world.
00:22:03
Speaker
Plus everything he was going through online with his ex-wife dragging his name through the mud.
00:22:08
Speaker
Like we just kind of had to not care.
00:22:12
Speaker
Like we had to let go of our attachments to other people's opinions to a certain extent and especially online.
00:22:20
Speaker
And that's helped me a lot to just realize I don't need to change minds and I'm just here to contribute what I think I want to contribute and have a good time and kind of leave it at that.
00:22:32
Speaker
But I've noticed that a lot of people feel the need to, a lot of women especially, feel the need to argue with you if you're saying something that goes contrary to how they live already.
00:22:42
Speaker
Like they're just very anxious to justify what they're doing.
00:22:45
Speaker
And I don't feel that need.
00:22:47
Speaker
Like I find my justification in Tanner and in God and in a few key other people.
00:22:53
Speaker
And that's it.
00:22:54
Speaker
But like, that's, I think that's what helps me kind of stay sane online.
00:22:59
Speaker
That I, I, I think that's, I think that's absolutely right because it is the, the problem that you see is that there's a lot of like need to signal and a lot of need to, you
00:23:13
Speaker
to defend the perception of who you are.
00:23:17
Speaker
I don't know if that's because women are maybe more clued into like their social status and sort of needing to protect that maybe than men.
00:23:29
Speaker
But no, that's a great insight.
00:23:32
Speaker
And the fact that you are so grounded in the key people that matter to you, like you know your value, you know exactly what
00:23:42
Speaker
you know exactly whose opinion you care about.
00:23:45
Speaker
And yeah, I think when you don't have that, then the judgment of the crowd means a lot.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, it does.
00:23:55
Speaker
People and men do it to a certain extent, but not as much as women do.
00:23:59
Speaker
You really, they want, it's called persona crafting and it's, it's how you, you spend all this time making sure people see you a very certain way and you can't control that, but people try to, and it just makes it very tenuous.
00:24:17
Speaker
It makes it very difficult to just be content.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
when you know people are seeing you incorrectly.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:28
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:24:30
Speaker
So getting back to this idea of community and connection with other people, I think that is the way it used to be before sort of the Industrial Revolution.
00:24:46
Speaker
People were rarely alone.
00:24:47
Speaker
They were doing a lot of their chores communally.
00:24:50
Speaker
And the line between work and home was pretty blurry.
00:24:54
Speaker
Men were working usually close.
00:24:57
Speaker
Like, you know, in Joseph Smith's time, the idea that they had to go do, like, day labor on other people's farms was, like, that was for poor people.
00:25:09
Speaker
Like, you were supposed to be kind of working your own land.
00:25:11
Speaker
Like, it was...
00:25:13
Speaker
I don't think that our sort of modern conception captures how like that was not cool.
00:25:20
Speaker
Like you weren't supposed to be doing that.
00:25:21
Speaker
You weren't supposed to be leaving your family and your land and your home to work somebody else's.
00:25:30
Speaker
So I think we can get back there.
00:25:33
Speaker
I think men have an opportunity right now
00:25:38
Speaker
to get back there with the remote work situation where so many people are able to work from home.
00:25:45
Speaker
And I wonder when you picture like your dream community of how you think that would come together, what does that look like?
Building Supportive Communities
00:25:57
Speaker
And what do you think we can do?
00:25:59
Speaker
Like what's like the first step?
00:26:03
Speaker
What it looks like to me would be
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:07
Speaker
The men, the men working at home, the women working together, kind of liked I talked about, um, you know, like the best part of Thanksgiving isn't showing up for a ready-made meal.
00:26:16
Speaker
It's coming two hours beforehand, three hours beforehand and helping cook.
00:26:19
Speaker
Like that's the best part.
00:26:21
Speaker
So to have that kind of feeling between the women, even just bringing births back home when it's possible, like to have a town midwife would do
00:26:31
Speaker
just an immense service to the sisterhood of the women around you.
00:26:36
Speaker
I think those are the two main things for me is like, ideally men would have brotherhood and the women would have sisterhood.
00:26:43
Speaker
And we would be, instead of trying to constantly escape
00:26:47
Speaker
All of these, the hardships, we would all be embracing the necessary hardships and learning to love them and getting through it together and really just embracing the life that God wants for us as a whole.
00:27:03
Speaker
I think in order to have that, you need to have similar, I guess, values, similar, you know, I don't think they have to, you don't have to agree about everything politically or the things that are important to you and the things that you value have to be the same things that are important to them.
00:27:20
Speaker
Because you need to be able to support each other in those.
00:27:23
Speaker
And if you don't have the same values, then you're not going to work together efficiently to do
00:27:31
Speaker
allow everyone to work toward those goals that you have in mind.
00:27:36
Speaker
There's a type of diversity that is good, which I think, I think diversity of temperament is really good.
00:27:41
Speaker
I think, I think having people who, who think in different ways is good, but, but when people are directed at different fundamental like values and conclusions, there's not really a ton to be gained from that.
00:27:58
Speaker
And I don't know, I don't know how,
00:28:00
Speaker
I don't know if or how that should be sort of guaranteed by the community.
00:28:05
Speaker
Like how restrictive should you be or can you afford to be?
00:28:09
Speaker
But yeah, I think you do have to have a fair amount of common ground and that can be hard to find.
00:28:16
Speaker
I think that's one of the problems we're experiencing today, clearly with the way that people view women who choose to stay at home with their children.
00:28:27
Speaker
If we all valued that, at least...
00:28:30
Speaker
to similar degrees, I don't think we would have the contention that we have or the controversy with that.
00:28:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:28:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:28:38
Speaker
I think it's also why we purity spiral online because we can't decide on what are the essentials.
00:28:47
Speaker
And I don't, do you have any thoughts on that, on how do we, how do we, how do we settle on how much common ground we really need to build a community?
00:28:57
Speaker
We just figure out how to mass brainwash everyone in our favor.
00:29:02
Speaker
It's really simple.
00:29:04
Speaker
It's fine.
00:29:08
Speaker
Just make sure everybody thinks exactly like me.
00:29:12
Speaker
No, but I mean, it's kind of like when you're dating Tanner and I are very different, but we have the same end goal.
00:29:19
Speaker
We have the same vision, the same dream ahead of us and the ways that we choose to get there.
00:29:25
Speaker
Like our, our tactics are very different and that's good.
00:29:30
Speaker
That's really good.
00:29:31
Speaker
Both sides of that are needed, but we're driving toward the same goal.
00:29:34
Speaker
And so I guess you just have to decide like, what is the vision?
00:29:40
Speaker
And then you bring in people who are on board with that vision and all their many ways of getting to there will come to be of great use.
00:29:54
Speaker
I wouldn't know how to, community-wide, how to narrow down that vision.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
So in the church, we spend a lot of time hedging and softening the patriarchy stuff.
00:30:08
Speaker
it's always like, yes, men preside in the home, but everybody's equal and men and women are so much more righteous.
00:30:15
Speaker
And, and so like, you know, I need the priesthood because my, my wife is just so worthy and perfect that just to catch up on, they give me the priesthood, which is a joke.
00:30:26
Speaker
I mean, nobody really buys that on, on the, on the feminist side, like, and, and, and it doesn't,
00:30:35
Speaker
It's not appealing to anybody to talk like that.
00:30:38
Speaker
So I don't understand why we do it.
00:30:40
Speaker
But do you think that there's an affirmative, positive way to preach this idea of hierarchy?
00:30:50
Speaker
this idea that like you as a wife submit to your husband and he presides over the family and he leads, like how do you view that in your own mind?
00:31:03
Speaker
And then how would you convey that to somebody else?
00:31:07
Speaker
Well, for us, Tanner presiding means basically that
00:31:14
Speaker
I would just kind of overcompensate and, you know, I would just kind of overcompensate and, you know, I would just kind of overcompensate and, you know,
00:31:37
Speaker
talk about, you know, I can come if Tanner will let me have my driver's license today.
00:31:44
Speaker
If I can find where Tanner hid my shoes, I'll be out the door in a minute.
00:31:48
Speaker
Like, and then they kind of get, you know, caught off guard and then, and I just kind of joke around and kind of, you know, ease them into it.
00:31:57
Speaker
But I don't know that that's really helping the cause.
00:32:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:01
Speaker
Oh, actually, can I say, I think it does.
00:32:05
Speaker
I think,
00:32:06
Speaker
I think that part of how it has to be sold is A, it has to be funny and B, it has to be sexy.
00:32:19
Speaker
Like, I think, I'm serious.
00:32:22
Speaker
Like, I think that the only way that you're gonna get regular people to buy into this idea
00:32:28
Speaker
is, and I don't mean like make it weird, but I mean like the dynamic, the power dynamic, the give and take is really appealing to people.
00:32:39
Speaker
They want to hide that away in like romance novels, but they love romance novels.
00:32:45
Speaker
Like they just devour that kind of narrative and they may claim that they don't want that in their real life, but I'm not buying it.
00:32:56
Speaker
I think it's because they can't imagine a situation in real life where that would be a man they could really trust and a man that would really take care
Family Dynamics and Leadership
00:33:06
Speaker
of them.
00:33:06
Speaker
Because if you have, I mean, to use the driver's license, if it's somebody who loves you and loves your children and provides this life for you,
00:33:18
Speaker
but then also has control of your driver's license.
00:33:21
Speaker
Um, I, I don't know that I was going to go with that, but I might just make it too weird.
00:33:28
Speaker
No, go on, go on, make it weird.
00:33:30
Speaker
I can edit it out.
00:33:33
Speaker
There's, it's okay to be attracted to, I don't want to call it aggression, but, but masculinity strength, you know, I don't know.
00:33:45
Speaker
I, I, uh,
00:33:47
Speaker
I saw something the other day that said women need to make dinner and men need to make the decisions.
00:33:55
Speaker
And I know that would make so many people angry, but if it works for you, it works for you.
00:34:03
Speaker
It can be a really good thing.
00:34:06
Speaker
And I think women are afraid to admit that they like that.
00:34:10
Speaker
And again, it doesn't mean that women can't have their own thoughts or make their own decisions, but at the same time, can they?
00:34:18
Speaker
I knew that you would like that.
00:34:29
Speaker
No, that stays in.
00:34:30
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:31
Speaker
That stays in.
00:34:33
Speaker
Well, and the flip side to that, I mean, Tanner's used this example before, but when we were first married, we had one car and I totally just killed the engine on it.
00:34:46
Speaker
I never got the oil changed and it just died.
00:34:48
Speaker
And so we had to get another car and Tanner's like, okay, well, what car do you think we should get?
00:34:54
Speaker
Or is that, you know, do you like this one?
00:34:56
Speaker
And I just said, I do not care.
00:34:57
Speaker
I don't care.
00:34:58
Speaker
Buy a car.
00:35:00
Speaker
And I was so relieved to have somebody finally like to make that kind of decision for me.
00:35:06
Speaker
And he was like, oh crap.
00:35:09
Speaker
Now, if I make the wrong decision, it's all on me.
00:35:13
Speaker
Like, it was just a very good kind of like,
00:35:16
Speaker
I had to give up some control and that can be scary, but it, once I let it go, it's like, you know,
00:35:29
Speaker
I just felt, it felt incredible.
00:35:31
Speaker
And for him, you know, there's kind of this fantasy probably for unmarried guys of like, oh, if I'm, if I'm the head of the household, think of all the control I get when in reality, it's just a lot of responsibility, not just, but it comes with a lot of responsibility if you're doing it right.
00:35:48
Speaker
And it's, it's an appealing dynamic.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:53
Speaker
Um, I used to, I used to think a lot about preachers when I was, so I started a mission in Memphis.
00:35:58
Speaker
And there were these preachers that were like in the hood and like their, their, their people were poor, very, very poor.
00:36:08
Speaker
And they were driving the Cadillac.
00:36:11
Speaker
It was like, they were kind of like a pimp.
00:36:12
Speaker
Like they were, they dressed the same and they, they drove the same cars.
00:36:19
Speaker
And they had the, the, the, the prayer hands on the back of the back window of the car.
00:36:27
Speaker
And I thought,
00:36:28
Speaker
you know, we're out here trying to do that same job and like, it's just work.
00:36:35
Speaker
Like, it's not, it's not like, uh, it's, it's a job that is not that it's not that fun if you're doing it right.
00:36:43
Speaker
Like in terms of, and I say fun, it's not that glamorous or, um, or, um, remunerative if you're doing it right.
00:36:55
Speaker
And I think, uh,
00:36:56
Speaker
being a husband, being a dad, leadership has its rewards in terms of you get to watch as decisions that you made led in the right direction and made people happy.
00:37:15
Speaker
You get to watch as the thing that you are
00:37:21
Speaker
given stewardship over grows and expands.
00:37:25
Speaker
And, uh, there's a sense of conquest and, and victory that comes with that.
00:37:31
Speaker
Um, but like, if you're doing it right, it's not less work.
00:37:37
Speaker
It's like, it's, it's not like, so one of the things that I, that I, you know, I will, I will hear women
00:37:43
Speaker
complain when they've got like one or two kids about sort of the domestic workload.
00:37:48
Speaker
And we've got five and I work from home.
00:37:52
Speaker
And so what I always tell them is like, I promise I do more domestic chores than you do.
00:37:57
Speaker
Like just by virtue of being here when there's so many things that need to be done.
00:38:02
Speaker
You know, I'm doing this job in between diaper changes and making bowls of cereal.
00:38:09
Speaker
And like, there's a lot of that going on for everybody.
00:38:13
Speaker
the vision that they have in their minds of the husband's gonna like get his paper fetched for him and he's gonna sit back in his easy chair with his pipe, you know, while everybody else is working.
00:38:25
Speaker
I don't believe that's ever how it was.
00:38:27
Speaker
And it's certainly not how it is in our house.
00:38:30
Speaker
I mean, I don't think it was, I'm sure there have been terrible experiences like that, but that it wasn't, well, this is how things are.
00:38:38
Speaker
This is how things should be.
00:38:40
Speaker
It's just whose experience is the salient experience, whose experience is the important one.
00:38:46
Speaker
And because there's always this range, they can always point to some horrific situation, you know, and that's ultimately, so BAP had a podcast, Bronze Age Pervert, had a podcast about, he's talking about nationalism.
00:39:07
Speaker
and how the sort of global power structures will use little petty nationalisms like Scottish nationalism or Basque nationalism or some little separatist group.
00:39:24
Speaker
And they will use that sort of yearning for freedom to undermine the
00:39:32
Speaker
England or Spain or, you know, some smaller power structure.
00:39:36
Speaker
And I think that that's exactly what happened with fatherhood and being a husband, is that these big power structures, the corporations, the states, they told women, like, you're being tyrannized, your desire for liberation, your revolutionary struggle is totally justified, and we're with you all the way.
00:40:02
Speaker
And some of those women were being tyrannized.
00:40:05
Speaker
And so it was a very appealing narrative, particularly to them, but also to all the women who sort of
00:40:13
Speaker
Everyone is tempted, I think, to frame their challenges in that kind of a context, because it's very rewarding to think of yourself as sort of the Rebel Alliance.
Raising Value-Aligned Children
00:40:24
Speaker
But yeah, it's a cheat, ultimately.
00:40:28
Speaker
It's a way to get your little fief, your little power that you have dissolved into the bigger...
00:40:37
Speaker
you know, just getting eaten by a bigger fish is all it is.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely it is.
00:40:44
Speaker
So when I think about my relationship to my wife, it's easy for me to say that this system of patriarchy and stewardship works because I trust me to be an okay guy.
00:40:57
Speaker
But when I think about my daughter, it is a little scary to think of her being sort of totally dependent on some guy I haven't met yet who's like eight right now.
00:41:06
Speaker
In the past, there was like a narrower band of expectations for like normal behavior, acceptable behavior, and you had a community to kind of keep you in check.
00:41:15
Speaker
But here, one of the guys recently said that being a patriarch nowadays is kind of like being a cult leader.
00:41:23
Speaker
Like you have to, because you're making your own rules.
00:41:26
Speaker
Like there's not an established set of this is how it has to go.
00:41:30
Speaker
In fact, you're sort of consciously bucking that.
00:41:34
Speaker
those rules and saying, I'm going to do it differently.
00:41:36
Speaker
And I'm going to impose these rules on my family.
00:41:39
Speaker
Do you, do you have similar worries about your own kids about like sort of how they're going to grow up or how do you, how do you deal with that?
00:41:46
Speaker
Um, well, I, we have four daughters so far.
00:41:49
Speaker
That's hoping it, we're hoping it's four daughters.
00:41:53
Speaker
We need to get our son and brother, but, um, I've thought about this a lot and I feel really hopeful about it because I,
00:42:23
Speaker
As long as, I mean, I say as long as life happens, but I'm really hopeful that with the relationships that we have with our kids, they'll just be attracted to what is good.
00:42:36
Speaker
And I know that there are enough people out there that are also trying to do the same thing.
00:42:41
Speaker
There are enough people starting to really reject our kids
00:42:44
Speaker
all the garbage and bull crap we're getting fed as far as gender goes, that there will be, there will be other people and my daughters will know how to find them and to find those men because of the relationship that they have with their dad.
00:42:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:58
Speaker
It's, it's, I do think we're at an inflection point.
00:43:02
Speaker
We're, we're, we're at a place where up until, you know, relatively recently people could maybe convincingly make the case that like,
00:43:12
Speaker
what we really needed was more liberation.
00:43:14
Speaker
We needed more feminism, more progressive sort of ideology in our families and in our lives, professionally, personally.
00:43:28
Speaker
And we were having maybe some growing pains, but that like any day now, the new structures that were gonna give us sort of meaning and make our lives better were right around the corner.
00:43:41
Speaker
And I think almost everybody is seeing through that at this point.
00:43:47
Speaker
And they don't necessarily believe all of them that there's like a compelling alternative, but I think all of them are like this way isn't working.
00:43:57
Speaker
And, and so, yeah, we have this opportunity to, to inculcate better values.
00:44:03
Speaker
And in some sense that they're, they're like traditional values, but, but
00:44:09
Speaker
we're not really trying to replicate like the 1950s or the 1850s or any particular time period.
00:44:15
Speaker
It's more about like sort of timeless principles that apply to our current condition.
00:44:22
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, people are hungry for that.
00:44:26
Speaker
They're hungry for something new.
00:44:28
Speaker
Oh, you wanted to talk about the experience of helping someone who's being doxxed as well.
00:44:36
Speaker
So you and Tanner went through this
00:44:38
Speaker
a long time ago, Carissa and I went through this, you know, two months ago.
00:44:43
Speaker
What was it like for you to sort of stand by your man under those circumstances?
00:44:49
Speaker
It was kind of thrilling.
00:44:51
Speaker
I mean, there was that scary minute of, shoot, maybe he's doing everything wrong.
00:45:00
Speaker
Shoot.
00:45:02
Speaker
And then once that passed and I decided, you know what, even if he is,
00:45:08
Speaker
I just spoke with someone who, whose husband basically lost 30 grand of their savings to crypto.
00:45:10
Speaker
And I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I
00:45:31
Speaker
Okay, no, he, so he put it all into crypto and it was going well.
00:45:36
Speaker
And then there was one day when it tanked, like it does.
00:45:40
Speaker
And she freaked out, she freaked out and made him pull it all out.
00:45:46
Speaker
And he ended up losing like half of it because they got scared and pulled out.
00:45:53
Speaker
And if I just could have, just could have encouraged her to just let him fail.
00:45:58
Speaker
Like if you don't ever let him fail and see that he can fail and recover from it and learn from it and do better, you're never going to trust him.
00:46:07
Speaker
And so not that getting doxxed is failing, but when you come to these moments where it's scary and it's affecting you and your life and your wellbeing, it's a gift.
00:46:22
Speaker
It's a moment to...
00:46:25
Speaker
to just put that trust in them and see where they take it.
00:46:29
Speaker
And I would just encourage, because we did, we used it as an opportunity to kind of solidify our relationship with each other and our trust in each other.
00:46:38
Speaker
And it set the tone for our whole marriage.
00:46:44
Speaker
And so I would, I would encourage anybody with a partner going through this, or if you're going through this, just to, just to be there and not to be one of the many voices that are speaking against them
00:46:56
Speaker
And to just let it, let it be and just not be afraid of the failure because it's never permanent.
00:47:03
Speaker
So the night that it happened to me, Carissa, actually, I think you feel like you signed up on Twitter or you, or you sort of reopened your account so that you could go like yell at people who were being mean to me online.
00:47:17
Speaker
I did.
00:47:18
Speaker
So you made me an account a while ago and I just, I just don't,
00:47:24
Speaker
really understand the internet and all of the frogs.
00:47:27
Speaker
And so it's taken me a long time to want to be a part of it.
00:47:32
Speaker
And then when this happened, I was like, who are these people who are dragging my children through the mud?
00:47:38
Speaker
And my husband, like who are these just crazy monsters?
00:47:43
Speaker
Like we're real people, we're real people.
00:47:46
Speaker
And they were talking about real children and wishing harm to these children.
00:47:52
Speaker
And, and so I got on Twitter and I, and I, and it was very difficult and I cried a whole bunch, but every mean comment I found, I wrote like, this is a rude person and I love you.
00:48:02
Speaker
Don't listen, don't listen to them because I, I don't understand that.
00:48:09
Speaker
And I, and I know you, but I, I,
00:48:11
Speaker
you know, it's difficult to go onto the internet and say, you don't, you don't know this person and I do and stop it.
Learning from Failures and Decision-Making
00:48:19
Speaker
You're being, you're being rude.
00:48:20
Speaker
And you knew who he was in real life.
00:48:22
Speaker
You wouldn't be saying these things like that.
00:48:24
Speaker
That doesn't work on the internet.
00:48:26
Speaker
And so I still don't like the internet because that is very much who I am where I'm like, why would you, why would you say that?
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
Don't you understand that these are real people?
00:48:34
Speaker
And all the time I see the thing where people go, you know, I'm sure everybody on Twitter gets this, but they say, who would lie on the internet?
00:48:42
Speaker
That's me.
00:48:43
Speaker
That's me.
00:48:44
Speaker
I'm always like, why would they lie?
00:48:47
Speaker
What is going on?
00:48:49
Speaker
She's, yeah, and you are, you are very, you're very earnest.
00:48:54
Speaker
So I hate Twitter.
00:48:55
Speaker
It's a terrible place.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't play well on Twitter.
00:48:58
Speaker
It doesn't.
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah, but I think talking about letting people fail well, again, it goes back to like things are things are harder for our generation than they were for our parents.
00:49:10
Speaker
And that's the first time anybody's had to deal with that in like centuries, maybe like it's been a long time since things have been not getting better, at least in America.
00:49:25
Speaker
And so I think that's, that's a big root of like anxiety for, for our people, for everybody really is if I fail, if I get this wrong, that the bottom will just fall out.
00:49:41
Speaker
But I think it goes back to like, from a historical perspective, even from an anywhere else in the world perspective, how poor are you going to get?
00:49:49
Speaker
How bad is it going to get?
00:49:50
Speaker
And like,
00:49:51
Speaker
Do you think you can nose up?
00:49:53
Speaker
Do you think you can recover?
00:49:57
Speaker
Once you embrace, I think you almost have to get knocked on your butt at least once.
00:50:03
Speaker
But once you have that experience and are able to embrace that experience,
00:50:09
Speaker
all sorts of things become possible because so much of life, whether it's, you know, am I going to marry the right person?
00:50:16
Speaker
Am I in the right career?
00:50:18
Speaker
All of these decisions, if you have permission to just do it, just jump in, you can accomplish a lot more.
00:50:27
Speaker
We talked recently about the fact that, you know, when you were finding someone to marry in any other time or place,
00:50:36
Speaker
Basically, it was like just sort of the prettiest girl in the holler, like you were just going to find whatever was there to and that was who you were going to marry and you would just sort of or career wise, you know what your daddy did that was going to be your job and you just sort of live with that decision and I don't think that the abundance of choice is particularly good for men or women.
00:50:59
Speaker
When it comes to those particular decisions and like with with homemaking, if a woman's frame of mind is like, I could do any of a billion careers, one of which is homemaking, like the odds that that's going to be their perfect fit and exactly what they should be doing is is in that framework it's like nothing.
00:51:18
Speaker
And so do you think there are ways that we can like limit, limit our choices, limit that analysis paralysis and just say like, you know, these are the possibilities.
00:51:27
Speaker
This is what I'm going to go with.
00:51:28
Speaker
Did you ask me a question?
00:51:31
Speaker
I did.
00:51:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:32
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:51:32
Speaker
It's been cutting out like crazy.
00:51:34
Speaker
I tried messaging you.
00:51:35
Speaker
Ah, shoot.
00:51:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:37
Speaker
Let me, I got everything and then it cut out right as you started asking me a question.
00:51:42
Speaker
We'll say, yeah.
00:51:44
Speaker
Being added to your group when we were being doxxed helped tremendously.
00:51:52
Speaker
I didn't feel like I could go to my friends in real life and tell them what was happening because I knew that some of them would not understand and would be upset with the things that Kevin had put out on Twitter.
00:52:07
Speaker
It turns out they didn't understand.
00:52:09
Speaker
Yeah, it turns out they didn't understand.
00:52:11
Speaker
I was ready.
00:52:12
Speaker
I was ready to burn all the bridges that first night.
00:52:15
Speaker
I was like, screw them.
00:52:17
Speaker
If they can't accept these opinions or whatever, not agree with them, but just accept that you have said, yeah, that, that then whatever, forget them.
00:52:27
Speaker
But then nobody heard about it for a long time.
00:52:31
Speaker
And it was, it was almost two months before anybody, any of our friends discovered that it had happened.
00:52:38
Speaker
And
00:52:40
Speaker
And so I had all those emotions that first night where I was done with it.
00:52:43
Speaker
And then I was like, no, I'll just be quiet about it since nobody knows.
00:52:46
Speaker
I'll just be quiet about this.
00:52:48
Speaker
And, and I love that you, when you were first married to Tanner, that you, that you got that out in the beginning and that you were like, no, I don't care about their opinions.
00:52:57
Speaker
This is us.
00:52:58
Speaker
And I wish I had done it sooner because when it finally did, you know, I had those two months of like, I have to keep the secret so that my friends don't get mad at me.
00:53:06
Speaker
I don't know.
00:53:07
Speaker
I, I just, I, I, you know, they say, they say like, if you're, if you're going to say something in an email that you should like save it and sleep on it.
00:53:17
Speaker
And I think if you're trying to like survive in a corporate environment, that's smart, but I think that there's something to be said for acting when the spirit moves you, when you're in your power, you know what I mean?
00:53:29
Speaker
And I, yeah, I think, I think when they, because it's a predator prey type situation, when, when,
00:53:34
Speaker
when that happened and you were like on the hunt you were ready to like throw hands oh i was gonna fight everybody who wanted to come at you that would have been a good time to talk to them but instead it was like they came to you and you were under attack like you were ah sucked you were the prey it's like being docked all over again i guess it kind of was kind of yeah
00:53:58
Speaker
I admit it was me being doxxed.
00:54:00
Speaker
Oh, no, your husband said these things.
00:54:02
Speaker
Married to a cashist.
00:54:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:05
Speaker
I had to say, I'm sorry.
00:54:06
Speaker
I'm in the middle of making dinner for him.
00:54:07
Speaker
Can I talk about this later?
00:54:08
Speaker
He doesn't know I have my phone right now.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:54:14
Speaker
No, I mean, we had friends just in recent years in this neighborhood that
00:54:25
Speaker
Oh, shoot.
00:54:26
Speaker
I think the newspaper up at the University of Utah had put out kind of this piece and it names Tanner as a white supremacist and our kids' age and genders lined up perfectly and our two oldest, they were best friends.
00:54:41
Speaker
Like every day they lived down the street, they're still writing letters to each other, just best, best, best of friends.
00:54:47
Speaker
And then just one day they just cut us off as soon as they read that.
00:54:52
Speaker
And, and it sucks, but our kids are now getting to learn that not everybody's opinions matter.
00:55:02
Speaker
And it's a painful thing to learn, but it's good to learn.
00:55:05
Speaker
It's good to learn.
00:55:06
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:55:08
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:55:09
Speaker
So what do you think is the role of women in
00:55:15
Speaker
proactively building a community and holding it together.
00:55:17
Speaker
Like we're talking about men in this leadership role and setting the vision.
00:55:22
Speaker
Do you think that there's a role for, for, for women to lead each other?
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's the exact opposite of what most of the women are doing online right now.
00:55:32
Speaker
Like I think women's role, we are uniquely, um, outfitted with the capability of dissolving contention.
00:55:42
Speaker
Like, I think we are built to be emotional problem solvers and really we're here to build cohesiveness.
00:55:52
Speaker
And I think that that would definitely be our role is to even, even in your home, like we kind of set the background tone.
00:56:02
Speaker
of how things are feeling and how people are feeling about each other.
00:56:05
Speaker
Like you teach your kids to treat each other well.
00:56:08
Speaker
A lot of times that doesn't come naturally, but, but you are supposed to teach them how to be humans to each other.
00:56:14
Speaker
And that should be done on a bigger scale within a community.
00:56:19
Speaker
And it is, it does seem to be like, it does seem to be almost reversed in, in our culture where
00:56:29
Speaker
you hear a lot about like, well, the wives are fighting, but the guys are getting along.
00:56:35
Speaker
And I don't think it's supposed to be that way.
00:56:37
Speaker
And I don't know how it got that way, but it's very, and I think it does have to do with women as emotional problem solvers.
00:56:45
Speaker
I think that's right.
00:56:47
Speaker
But women are involved in the work of sort of setting the norms.
00:56:53
Speaker
And because we have so much
00:56:56
Speaker
there's not a single set of norms to defend.
00:57:00
Speaker
Everybody's sort of dying on their own hill.
00:57:04
Speaker
And so whether it's swimsuits or caffeine or I'm talking about in our church community, you know, whatever the rule is,
00:57:15
Speaker
we have to like fight it out because everybody like wants to have that cohesion.
00:57:21
Speaker
They want to have that unity, but they also like, because there's no central answer to those questions, everybody's like, we need to have unity and cohesion.
00:57:31
Speaker
And also I'm right.
00:57:32
Speaker
And like, yeah, yeah.
00:57:33
Speaker
Because the norms are no longer, they're individual norms.
00:57:38
Speaker
Right.
00:57:38
Speaker
And so you've got to be, again, it's that whole self-justification.
00:57:43
Speaker
If my way isn't right,
00:57:45
Speaker
then I'm the one dying on that hill.
00:57:47
Speaker
Nobody's dying with me and I'm all alone.
00:57:50
Speaker
So I have to be, I have to be right.
00:57:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:53
Speaker
So that I'm not all alone.
00:57:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:55
Speaker
And that I think is almost an alien perspective to men.
00:57:59
Speaker
I think men are just a lot more comfortable dying alone on a hill.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:06
Speaker
Maybe literally, maybe.
00:58:08
Speaker
That's very sad.
00:58:12
Speaker
Well, but it does, I mean, it does make this environment easier to navigate.
00:58:15
Speaker
So yeah, I think we do in the church have, you know,
00:58:23
Speaker
much more of that cohesion than I think other people do in other groups.
00:58:27
Speaker
And maybe that is easier to, easier to navigate since we have so much more sort of baseline figured out.
00:58:34
Speaker
But I think it's also, even that, even that unity is collapsing because it's much more acceptable to be kind of like, to have your, your, your, your foot forward be your ideology.
00:58:50
Speaker
Like I'm a hyphenated Mormon.
00:58:53
Speaker
I'm a progressive Mormon or I'm a libertarian Mormon or whatever it is.
00:58:58
Speaker
And whatever comes before the hyphen, like that's who you really are.
00:59:01
Speaker
It's just sort of Mormon flavored.
Strengthening Community Networks
00:59:03
Speaker
I don't know how you pick up the pieces after that.
00:59:06
Speaker
The only thing that occurs to me is to find people who are close enough to you and try to live together, try to build a culture together.
00:59:14
Speaker
But it's a really tough problem.
00:59:16
Speaker
Yeah, Tanner's really good at that.
00:59:17
Speaker
So in our neighborhood, we have...
00:59:20
Speaker
I think it's a very, very, very, very
00:59:37
Speaker
different beliefs within members that are coming to church on Sunday.
00:59:42
Speaker
And, and Tanner's very good at, at picking out people who, who kind of are similar.
00:59:47
Speaker
And then he brings them into our world.
00:59:50
Speaker
You know, it's, he, he's setting the tone.
00:59:53
Speaker
He is, he's having conversations with people and really taking the time to get a feel for where they're at and get a feel for where we can come together and, and start building toward the same
01:00:07
Speaker
objectives.
01:00:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:09
Speaker
That's a good, that's a good intermediate stage, you know, between, between total atomization and like building the Waco compound is like, how do we, how do we build a culture?
01:00:21
Speaker
And, and, and guys like Tanner are really good at that.
01:00:23
Speaker
They're really good at like starting the conversation and, and, and setting tone.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:30
Speaker
Cause I think a lot of people are kind of just waiting for someone to do that.
01:00:34
Speaker
We're not the only people that feel the way that we do, but most people aren't willing to just start something again because it might fail.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:44
Speaker
We're seeing a lot.
01:00:46
Speaker
I feel like in the culture, we're seeing a lot of cults is too strong a word, but like someone will write a book, they'll have a dream and then they'll write a book.
01:00:55
Speaker
and then they'll have a following.
01:00:57
Speaker
And it's sort of the, it's the same, it's the same, really the same thing.
01:01:02
Speaker
It's the common identity of being a Latter-day Saint is sort of not enough for people anymore.
01:01:08
Speaker
It doesn't answer all of the relevant questions.
01:01:11
Speaker
And so they're looking for more answers than that.
01:01:15
Speaker
And I don't know how to, like, I recognize that part of my project is to offer someone a community that's
01:01:26
Speaker
doing something that their elders quorum isn't, right?
01:01:29
Speaker
Without sort of making the argument that like, that's not good enough, if that makes sense.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:34
Speaker
That's hard to do.
01:01:36
Speaker
It's really hard to do.
01:01:38
Speaker
I think it's similar to that fear that people have with failing.
01:01:41
Speaker
It also comes down to not really having good examples of, I mean, if you don't know what you're really looking for, then you don't know what examples to look at.
01:01:53
Speaker
And it's like when we first got married, we had so many people telling us like, oh, you're going to be miserable.
01:01:59
Speaker
Have fun getting married.
01:02:00
Speaker
It's just, you know, and it's just work.
01:02:03
Speaker
It's hard work.
01:02:03
Speaker
And after the honeymoon, you're going to be miserable.
01:02:05
Speaker
So find a hobby.
01:02:07
Speaker
And that's pretty much verbatim that someone actually said that to her.
01:02:10
Speaker
She told me I should start buying shoes to keep myself happy.
01:02:17
Speaker
But with what we're trying to do and with kids and stuff, we...
01:02:21
Speaker
it was scary in the beginning because we didn't have good examples to look toward to for what we wanted and if you haven't been raised in the gospel or around any other religion that kind of has a similar vision it can be very scary to want that but not know where to look and so i think something that we can all continue to do is is
01:02:45
Speaker
being those examples and sharing this life on, on Twitter, like what you're doing and with this group and letting people know, like it's, it's out there, what you're looking for is out there and it's good.
01:02:56
Speaker
And there are people that can help you do it, even if you're scared, because, you know, we, I think a lot of people have created happy, healthy families when they didn't come from those situations themselves.
01:03:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:09
Speaker
And it's much harder to do that, but it is possible that man, if we had some good examples when we first started out, that would have been awesome.
01:03:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:18
Speaker
Very helpful.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
01:03:20
Speaker
I get, I think one of the most common questions or comments that I get is, oh, you can do that.
01:03:28
Speaker
Like regardless of what, regardless of what I'm talking about, whether it's marriage or birth or homeschool or nutrition, whatever it is, it's a, oh,
01:03:37
Speaker
You can actually do that.
01:03:39
Speaker
And, and I think as much as I, I don't really, I wish that the prophet would ask us to like all the women to nuke their accounts and just get the heck off the internet.
01:03:49
Speaker
Like I only stay on because he's asked us to do the exact opposite, but there, there really is value in just sharing.
01:03:57
Speaker
Hi, it can be good.
01:03:58
Speaker
Hi, it can be different and, and not being embarrassed about it.
01:04:02
Speaker
You know, like I, I used to be embarrassed to say that I didn't.
01:04:07
Speaker
didn't even finish one semester of college and like, no college sucks.
01:04:11
Speaker
It's fine.
01:04:11
Speaker
I didn't like it.
01:04:12
Speaker
I didn't want to do it and I didn't need it.
01:04:15
Speaker
And that's okay.
01:04:16
Speaker
That's more than okay.
01:04:17
Speaker
That's great.
01:04:18
Speaker
It hasn't negatively impacted my life at all.
01:04:21
Speaker
In fact, it's a way of positive.
01:04:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:24
Speaker
It's, it's a way of, and I think in, in Carissa's situation, you know, she grew up, she grew up poor and it was a way of like proving that she belonged in what
01:04:36
Speaker
higher social circle, civilized society.
01:04:38
Speaker
Right.
01:04:39
Speaker
Right.
01:04:39
Speaker
She didn't, she didn't deserve to be poor or like, it wasn't sort of inevitable for her or like a huge amount of her, like self-worth was wrapped up in like, I need that credential.
01:04:50
Speaker
I've always said, like, if you want to go back, you can go back.
01:04:53
Speaker
But like my hope in the back of my mind was always that we would get to a point where that didn't feel necessary anymore.
01:05:00
Speaker
I like having babies way more.
01:05:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:04
Speaker
Way more.
01:05:04
Speaker
And even the learning school made that not fun for me.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:09
Speaker
I would much rather watch some lessons from home or get certified in something that I enjoy here in town than pay way too much money to sit in a class all day long and then not enjoy learning, but stress about, I need to, I need to pass the test.
01:05:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:27
Speaker
I need to pass the test.
01:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:29
Speaker
need to get my assignments done.
01:05:31
Speaker
And yes, yeah, because yeah, that's, that's not how learning should happen for anybody.
01:05:37
Speaker
But, but like, definitely if it's, if it's, if it's about the, the sort of social validation of the credential that can be totally separated from the value of the education.
01:05:47
Speaker
And I think that's happening like across the board.
01:05:49
Speaker
I think people are, and that's, that's a big part of what I'm trying to do with this group is show people that like, there's a ton of money just laying on the ground
01:05:58
Speaker
for all kinds of jobs that don't require a college degree.
01:06:01
Speaker
And whether that's, you know, code jobs or trade jobs or entrepreneurship, like there's tons of opportunity.
01:06:11
Speaker
The same goes for women in the sense that like, I think you're right where you're like, oh, you can do that.
01:06:17
Speaker
Like there's so many people who have just sort of the default script that they've never really stepped outside of, including myself until recently.
01:06:24
Speaker
I was sort of like, well,
01:06:27
Speaker
I did the college thing.
01:06:28
Speaker
I did the MBA.
01:06:29
Speaker
Like I, you know, in order to pay all that off and to make it worth something, I have to kind of stay on this track.
01:06:38
Speaker
And
Embracing Roles Despite Judgments
01:06:40
Speaker
nope.
01:06:40
Speaker
Like, you know, you can just, there's, there's abundant opportunity out there.
01:06:47
Speaker
I'm very excited.
01:06:49
Speaker
Very glad that I'm no longer stressing about that.
01:06:51
Speaker
It really just a weight off my shoulders.
01:06:54
Speaker
I am enjoying, I get to focus more on what I really think is important and that's being with my family and raising my kids.
01:07:01
Speaker
And I did, I did.
01:07:03
Speaker
I think the last time I really struggled with that was you were in grad school and it was his
01:07:10
Speaker
It was the Christmas party.
01:07:12
Speaker
I really relate to the camel at the Christmas party and the popcorn because I hated when Kevin would have to work as much as he did and they would be like, oh, we want to show you how much we appreciate the effort.
01:07:24
Speaker
And it would be like two movie tickets.
01:07:26
Speaker
Thank you.
01:07:27
Speaker
That really helps our family.
01:07:30
Speaker
No, we went to this Christmas party and I was...
01:07:35
Speaker
stressing out before and I was Googling like, how do you dress for an MBA Christmas party?
01:07:41
Speaker
Because I really, I didn't want to seem out of place because I knew that half of the people there would be women and they would be the ones in grad school.
01:07:48
Speaker
And I was going to come as this
01:07:50
Speaker
stay-at-home mom who had just had our fourth child.
01:07:55
Speaker
And we went and it was going really well.
01:07:58
Speaker
And then of course the topic came up with, oh, well, what do you do?
01:08:01
Speaker
And I was telling everyone, oh, you know, I'm just a stay-at-home mom.
01:08:07
Speaker
I'm a stay-at-home mom.
01:08:08
Speaker
And everyone was pretty cool about it, which I was worried they wouldn't be, except for one girl who, when I told her I was a stay-at-home mom, she laughed.
01:08:19
Speaker
She laughed at me
01:08:21
Speaker
And I might even cry about it now because it still was just so like, ah, this is what I was afraid of.
01:08:28
Speaker
I thought that they would think this of me and everybody else was just polite, but this girl's drunk enough to be honest and she laughed at me.
01:08:36
Speaker
And so I was trying not to cry at this party and I went out and the other girls in our group that went with us could tell that I was upset and they're like, oh, what's wrong?
01:08:44
Speaker
And I said, well, this...
01:08:46
Speaker
Oh, I wasn't going to even tell them.
01:08:47
Speaker
I think you started it.
01:08:48
Speaker
And you said, this woman said this to my wife and laughed at her.
01:08:55
Speaker
And these one in particular really came to bat for me and was like, how dare she?
01:09:00
Speaker
How dare this woman shame another woman for her choices?
01:09:04
Speaker
And my mom was a stay-at-home mom and I would not be the person that I am today if it weren't for her.
01:09:10
Speaker
And I love and respect my mother and I really admire what you're doing.
01:09:15
Speaker
And I'm glad that she said that.
01:09:17
Speaker
And Kevin was, you know, of course, grateful.
01:09:20
Speaker
And when he got home, he was like, isn't it great that she said that?
01:09:24
Speaker
And for me, it was, yes, I love that she said that.
01:09:27
Speaker
But at the same time, she is still not doing what I'm doing.
01:09:32
Speaker
She talked about how much she loved what her mom did and how she valued that.
01:09:36
Speaker
but she still loves her career more and is choosing not to do this.
01:09:40
Speaker
And I love, I will feel very bad if she listens to this and her feelings are hurt because I love that woman.
01:09:46
Speaker
She's cool.
01:09:47
Speaker
She's wonderful.
01:09:47
Speaker
She's wonderful.
01:09:48
Speaker
But she's doing like a spreadsheet job.
01:09:50
Speaker
She's doing like a job that the appeal of that, I don't get like at all, even for a man.
01:09:56
Speaker
And it's like the idea that, so for her, she's like, oh, I'm so grateful.
01:10:01
Speaker
I so value her.
01:10:03
Speaker
what my mom did for me, but I don't, but I don't value it as much as Microsoft Excel.
01:10:08
Speaker
Like, like what?
01:10:11
Speaker
Like it doesn't, that doesn't.
01:10:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:12
Speaker
Because, because Microsoft Excel prevents her from ever having to feel what Carissa felt.
01:10:20
Speaker
Like she will take her spreadsheets over that kind of feeling of degradation.
01:10:27
Speaker
In isolation.
01:10:28
Speaker
I think it is about, because there's like, there's a certain extent to which you can tell somebody like, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks, but it does matter what other people think in terms of the social opportunities that are available to you and how people will treat you and how they'll talk about you.
Genuine Online Sharing and Its Challenges
01:10:47
Speaker
Those are not imaginary, those are realities.
01:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of it is just fear of that experience.
01:10:56
Speaker
Well, I say hop on in.
01:10:57
Speaker
The water's great.
01:11:00
Speaker
Christmas parties where people get drunk and are rude.
01:11:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:05
Speaker
And it was, you know, there's no reason for you to hang out with the B school crowd.
01:11:12
Speaker
They're kind of lame anyway, but.
01:11:16
Speaker
I'm not upset about it.
01:11:17
Speaker
As you can tell.
01:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's very obvious that you're no longer upset about it.
01:11:21
Speaker
I'm trying not to cry.
01:11:22
Speaker
I'm not upset about it.
01:11:24
Speaker
I'm sorry, man.
01:11:26
Speaker
No, but I am comfortable now with, I don't, you know, when people ask what I'm doing, I don't say, oh, I'm just a stay at home mom.
01:11:32
Speaker
And like that, that experience was really like, no, I'm, I'm a stay at home mom and I choose to be, and I raised my children.
01:11:39
Speaker
I love my children and I'm going to have more babies.
01:11:41
Speaker
You can't stop me.
01:11:45
Speaker
And it's fantastic.
01:11:46
Speaker
It really is.
01:11:47
Speaker
I, I love it.
01:11:49
Speaker
I really love it.
01:11:51
Speaker
Well, you talked about, you talked about the responsibility to sort of talk about how great it is.
01:11:57
Speaker
Let's discuss real quick, the, the Mormon mommy blogger phenomenon, because we've talked about, um, how women deal with attention and, and the importance of like sort of, uh, broadcasting what's good about this life.
01:12:14
Speaker
And I agree totally.
01:12:16
Speaker
Um,
01:12:17
Speaker
But you also see in this sort of subculture of women blogging about being a stay-at-home mom in the church and how that can kind of go off the rails.
01:12:29
Speaker
What are your thoughts on that situation and how you maybe avoid that or do it differently?
01:12:35
Speaker
What do you mean by go off the rails?
01:12:37
Speaker
Well, they can, they can become kind of crazy and, and sort of maybe compromise their principles in some ways or, or become sort of obsessed with their own celebrity, that kind of thing.
01:12:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:51
Speaker
I don't think the problem with mommy bloggers is that it's not about, it's not about actually sharing the joys of a lifestyle.
01:12:59
Speaker
That's just a means to the end.
01:13:01
Speaker
Like it's about them.
01:13:03
Speaker
It's,
01:13:05
Speaker
It's about the validation they get.
01:13:07
Speaker
It's about the status they get.
01:13:09
Speaker
It's about the money they're getting from affiliate sales.
01:13:13
Speaker
Like it's all of that.
01:13:14
Speaker
It's not actually about
01:13:16
Speaker
spreading the joy of motherhood or making it more appealing.
01:13:21
Speaker
And I think for women, they probably started out with that intention and could not tell you when it changed in their brains, but it changed.
01:13:32
Speaker
I think you have to be pretty vigilant about
01:13:36
Speaker
about your intentions.
01:13:37
Speaker
Like every time you post something, be considering what you're hoping to get from it or what you're hoping to give with it, if that makes sense.
01:13:49
Speaker
And don't use breastfeeding as an excuse to post your boobs online, for goodness sakes.
01:13:57
Speaker
Or even like, I don't know if you guys have seen, there's a picture, it was just today, of a woman by a herd of sheep.
01:14:06
Speaker
And she's in this white nightgown and she's holding a baby and a baby's at her feet.
01:14:10
Speaker
And it's like a very return to tradition kind of thing.
01:14:13
Speaker
But you can see straight through her dress.
01:14:16
Speaker
You can see the outline of everything.
01:14:20
Speaker
And it's just getting lauded as this, you know, make motherhood great again.
01:14:24
Speaker
And that just messes with women.
01:14:27
Speaker
Like I'm all about sharing beauty.
01:14:29
Speaker
I'm all about that.
01:14:31
Speaker
But it's just too easy to make it about
01:14:37
Speaker
being whorish.
01:14:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:40
Speaker
And there's a, there's a, there's a line there.
01:14:44
Speaker
It's not always obvious what that line is.
01:14:47
Speaker
How do you personally manage the, because you know, your, your husband's a style coach, you're very concerned with aesthetics.
01:14:55
Speaker
Right.
01:14:56
Speaker
And, um, and I, I agree.
01:14:58
Speaker
I actually, um, uh, Tanner's book was kind of a, a, a mind blow for me.
01:15:03
Speaker
I really love that book.
01:15:05
Speaker
And, um,
01:15:07
Speaker
And you should go buy it, The Appearance of Power by Tanner Guzzi.
01:15:13
Speaker
It's a good one.
01:15:14
Speaker
And so there is this, like, appearances matter.
01:15:20
Speaker
How do you manage the difference between I want to be beautiful, I want to be appealing, I want to make this life look beautiful and appealing, versus the potential to, like, sexualize it?
01:15:38
Speaker
For me, it's like, I don't know.
01:15:41
Speaker
They're very specific.
01:15:44
Speaker
Like nobody's ever going to see an inch of boob or cleavage.
01:15:47
Speaker
Like if, if, if you look at a picture and it like your eyes are drawn to the butt, like it's just, they're very, I mean, they're very pretty obvious, obvious standards.
01:15:57
Speaker
Um, but again, even if there are women who will post pictures, happy birthday to my husband and,
01:16:06
Speaker
And the woman's face is in the middle and the man's face is like half cut off, like all the time, you guys, or they'll be wishing happy birthday to their second cousin twice removed because it's on their wedding day and they look really good in their dress.
01:16:21
Speaker
And like, it's just, it's just the attention.
01:16:25
Speaker
aspect of it that I think really gets to women's heads because it's so easy to justify.
01:16:31
Speaker
And it's like, well, I just wanted to share my workout of the day.
01:16:35
Speaker
And you just happen to be able to see what I would look like naked through my leggings.
01:16:39
Speaker
Like I'm just sharing my workout and, or I'm just, I'm just sharing this and women just aren't honest enough with themselves.
01:16:48
Speaker
Like they know, they know what's going on.
01:16:50
Speaker
You take two seconds to think about it and you know what you're doing.
01:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's a reciprocal relationship that men have with pornography, I think.
Maintaining Online Authenticity
01:17:00
Speaker
I think women have the same desire to be pornography that men have to consume pornography.
01:17:07
Speaker
Okay.
01:17:08
Speaker
And yeah, it involves a lot of self-deception and it involves a lot of small steps to
01:17:16
Speaker
down the wrong path where you sort of know it's not right.
01:17:20
Speaker
And so I think you're right that having like hard lines that you won't cross interrupts that process because at every stage of the game, the next step is not that far.
01:17:30
Speaker
It's not, there's never a point where like there's a point of no return.
01:17:36
Speaker
It's always, you know, gradually sloping downward.
01:17:39
Speaker
And so if you just commit ahead of time to like, these are my hard lines, that makes it a lot easier.
01:17:47
Speaker
So this has been a lot of fun.
01:17:50
Speaker
I appreciate your patience with the technical difficulties.
01:17:53
Speaker
Brickhalie is at Brickhalie Guzzi on Twitter.
01:17:57
Speaker
You can follow her and give her lots and lots of attention.
01:18:01
Speaker
Validation.
01:18:01
Speaker
Let's test my limits here.
01:18:04
Speaker
And my wife is at Army with Banners.
01:18:07
Speaker
Do not follow me.
01:18:08
Speaker
Follow her on Twitter at Army with Banners.
01:18:11
Speaker
You will follow me hoping to get female Dr. Bennett and you will get me.
01:18:15
Speaker
Beauty and glory.
01:18:17
Speaker
And delight.
01:18:18
Speaker
Does not understand, Twitter.
01:18:20
Speaker
She doesn't understand Twitter and it's fantastic to follow her.
01:18:24
Speaker
So it makes it so good.
01:18:25
Speaker
That's exactly what makes it good.
01:18:26
Speaker
All right.
01:18:27
Speaker
This has been so awesome.
01:18:28
Speaker
Thanks so much.
01:18:30
Speaker
Thank you.