Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett, joined here by Brickaley Guzzi and my wife, Carissa.
Speaker: So Brickaley is Tanner Guzzi's wife and mother to their five children.
Speaker: Carissa is my wife and mother to our five children.
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.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And we have a daughter and four sons.
Speaker: And so the right thing to do here seems pretty obvious.
Speaker: Tanner and I are just sort of hammering out the terms of the Alliance, the appropriate transfers of cattle and gold.
Speaker: And we can talk more about that after.
Speaker: So being a stay at home mom is maybe not as weird choices.
Speaker: People act like it is, but it's definitely a choice.
Speaker: So what inspired you to reject the lure of Microsoft PowerPoint and stay home and raise your kids?
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: There are kind of two aspects to it.
Speaker: My mom, I never heard her complain about motherhood once.
Speaker: She made it very appealing.
Speaker: She made it something that she loved and adored and we all saw that.
Speaker: And so I wanted that too.
Speaker: Secondly, have you met corporate America?
Speaker: Like I had a job.
Speaker: I had a job before we got pregnant.
Speaker: We got pregnant fast, but we met at work.
Speaker: and I could not get pregnant fast enough.
Speaker: I want it out of there.
Speaker: It sucked.
Speaker: Like working for somebody else, getting harassed about,
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.
Speaker: Like it just sucks.
Speaker: It sucks so much.
Speaker: And I want it out as fast as possible.
Speaker: I would take anything overworking for somebody else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like that, that's, that's so much about, uh,
Speaker: What we want to exit, we're looking for like a way to get out of that exact same environment.
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.
Speaker: Can you say more about how your mom made it appealing?
Speaker: Like, because, you know, you know, obviously that it's, that it's challenging and stressful.
Speaker: And I imagine she wasn't able to like conceal that piece of it from you.
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?
Speaker: I think the biggest thing that she did, it, it was how she spoke about it, how she still speaks about it.
Speaker: She just always said, I love babies.
Speaker: This is good chaos.
Speaker: You know, everything else can wait because I adore you people.
Speaker: She like, she just was so vocal and effusive and warm and her biggest priority were her kids.
Speaker: Like she chose us constantly every day over, over everything.
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.
Speaker: And just, I never heard a complaint about it.
Speaker: She complained about other things, but never about being a mom.
Speaker: And I've seen that even with my old, so my oldest is nine.
Speaker: She's a girl.
Speaker: And she was talking to her friend the other day, her friend just, they just found out how babies are made.
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.
Speaker: I don't think that's going to happen for me.
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.
Speaker: Cause the babies are totally worth it.
Speaker: Like you're going to love the babies.
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.
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.
Speaker: She's like, all of this is worth it.
Speaker: Even the having to have babies part is worth it.
Speaker: Oh, so they were learning about how babies are brought forth, not how they're conceived.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Oh, no, both.
Speaker: Both.
Speaker: And her friend was just not having it.
Speaker: No part of that arrangement.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: I think, I mean, at the age of nine, I would probably be
Speaker: pretty hesitant myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Troubled, disturbed.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So, so do you think, do you think that all women should be homemakers or try to be?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Absolutely.
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?
Speaker: You know, I think, I don't know that it could be done in one conversation.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I really think the best case we can make and that I can make is just living a good life.
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.
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.
Speaker: And it was very much like,
Speaker: I can't have kids, I'm a 34 year old boy.
Speaker: Like, you know, like, you know, how does that fit into my fun and my life?
Speaker: I did find that like, it's not an ideological conversation.
Speaker: It's a conversation about what life is like.
Speaker: And I tell them what it's like to have a little girl and what it's like to have boys.
Speaker: And yeah, I absolutely agree that sort of not being shy about the depth of that experience.
Speaker: can really make a huge difference.
Speaker: And one of the friends that I had that conversation with relatively shortly thereafter pulled the trigger, so to speak.
Speaker: And so it's always exciting when you see it happen.
Speaker: And I definitely, I met women who just didn't have a sense that like anything else was possible.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: one, one woman who was sending her, I think it was three kids at the time.
Speaker: I think it was two.
Speaker: And then it was, she had her third and spending like three quarters of her paycheck on daycare.
Speaker: And they were coming home with like bruises that she couldn't explain.
Speaker: And they were constantly sick.
Speaker: And like, you know, they would come home saying things that like they shouldn't be saying.
Speaker: And, and,
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.
Speaker: Like, this is not a fun job for me.
Speaker: I do this because I have to.
Speaker: And like her husband worked at the same company.
Speaker: Like they had tons of money.
Speaker: The money problem was solved.
Speaker: It was really like, she felt that she needed to be there.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: Cause she would, she would like come to work crying about, about like the situation with her kids.
Speaker: And, and I, and I would always kind of be like, what, what's, what's driving this?
Speaker: Like, why, why is this, why is this the play?
Speaker: And, you know, it was work.
Speaker: And so like, it wasn't really appropriate to be like deeply honest about that.
Speaker: But, but yeah, there's a ton of, there's a ton of women in that situation.
Speaker: And, and I don't get it.
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.
Speaker: And I cried all day at work and it's like, well, don't go.
Speaker: Yeah, just don't do that.
Speaker: Don't do that thing.
Speaker: Like it feels bad for a reason.
Speaker: Stop doing it.
Speaker: But they go, they just don't.
Speaker: There's always a million reasons why they think they can't change.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Like you're not going to be as poor as them ever.
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,
Speaker: yeah, maybe, maybe it's just like, there's not a sense of like, what's the payoff at the end of it.
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.
Speaker: Cause like, they know it sucks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's more like there is a huge payoff on the other side of this.
Speaker: If you're willing to take a leap of faith and do something that's
Speaker: that's contrary to what everybody else is doing, because what everybody else is doing is making them all miserable.
Speaker: And that side of it is very clear to them.
Speaker: So most people still believe that raising and educating children is important.
Speaker: Progressives in particular love school teachers.
Speaker: And a school teacher is basically a homemaker.
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.
Speaker: And that is valued so highly, at least rhetorically.
Speaker: So why do you think people look down on homemakers and feel free to be as paranoid and conspiratorial
Speaker: You know, that's a really interesting point.
Speaker: I think the same thing with nurses.
Speaker: Like, they're just doing what a good mom or wife would be doing.
Speaker: I feel like, I think they want us to outsource everything.
Speaker: Literally everything.
Speaker: We don't take responsibility for our kids, for our marriages, for
Speaker: We can rely on the state for income.
Speaker: We can rely on them for our own health, for our mental health.
Speaker: Like there's our intuition, everything.
Speaker: They want us to outsource everything to them and have no power or control ourselves.
Speaker: And I think they do that through a lot of different ways.
Speaker: I mean, we've talked about the
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and that's very intentional.
Speaker: Um, I just think they want us to need them for everything.
Speaker: They're like a narcissistic mother who refuses to cut the apron strings.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: It's, um, you know, it, for every
Speaker: For every meal that you're not cooking, you're going out and buying the TV dinner.
Speaker: And that is you're paying sales tax on that.
Speaker: It's going into some corporation's income statement.
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.
Speaker: And I don't think that it has to be a centralized system.
Speaker: I don't think people are meeting in like a smoke filled room.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I think they're all of these institutions have an incentive to say, no, don't do it yourself.
Speaker: Let us do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I would argue that it's not just for profit.
Speaker: It's for power too.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And then on the labor supply side, all of these corporations, all of this money, they want to say,
Speaker: don't work for free.
Speaker: Don't work for someone who loves you work for money.
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.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: In what sense are you more liberated?
Speaker: In what sense are you freer?
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.
Speaker: Yeah, you can hop around jobs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But wherever you go, it's going to be the same deal.
Speaker: You know, you've got to do what they say for X hours out of the day.
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.
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
Speaker: you don't need an actual family.
Speaker: The people that make money off of you really love you.
Speaker: You know, like they're trying to get you to fall in love with a stripper, basically.
Speaker: Most of the shows, the families are unhappy.
Speaker: There's almost always something going on that they- They're all dysfunctional.
Speaker: At home.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they find that it's not just money.
Speaker: It's, you will find validation and worth at your job.
Speaker: which is almost nobody's experience.
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.
Speaker: Nobody has that at Globocorp.
Speaker: You know, if it's a small business run by, there's sort of an executive guiding the culture, you know,
Speaker: you can be sheltered from some of the forces of HR and the fear and the alienation that that generates.
Speaker: But even then that's pretty hard to find.
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.
Speaker: Can you talk about that?
Speaker: It can be lonely.
Speaker: I don't have a lot of friends who are stay at home moms.
Speaker: And so I do a lot of the work myself.
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
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
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.
Speaker: I love every aspect of this, but people who, who can be in it with me and, and have joy.
Speaker: I've watched you work.
Speaker: Like when we're, when we're at someone's house, if you're working with someone,
Speaker: whether it's the dishes or preparing the meal or whatever it is.
Speaker: And the emotional valence of that experience is just night and day.
Speaker: It's totally different.
Speaker: I love it.
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.
Speaker: It's not drudgery.
Speaker: It's just what we're doing together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I love finding people who
Speaker: who love what we're creating and what we're, we're working really hard to build.
Speaker: And I want other people to have that.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And some of it is just, we, we've been,
Speaker: We've been really focused on this like nuclear family model.
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.
Speaker: And that labor saving technology is good,
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It wasn't because she was oppressed by her patriarchal husband.
Speaker: It was because she was all alone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And nobody wants to live that way.
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.
Speaker: And the wives...
Speaker: sometimes feel left out.
Speaker: And it feels like, you know, maybe you can comment on this.
Speaker: It feels like women seem to have a harder time getting along online.
Speaker: Like there seem to be lots of like, lots of like schisms and, and, and, uh, you know, clicks.
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.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I do think it's true.
Speaker: I think it's harder for women online to
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.
Speaker: And, and it just gives women a lot of attention.
Speaker: And I don't know if that's ever very good for, I've, I don't know that I've seen women.
Speaker: Could I count any women that have flourished under massive amounts of attention?
Speaker: I don't know that I could.
Speaker: I, it's just, it's harder.
Speaker: It's harder when we're not
Speaker: I think women do better when we're working together.
Speaker: I'm even thinking about like the women in my neighborhood who are wonderful, wonderful women, but we never get together to work.
Speaker: We're just getting together to play.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it keeps things pretty superficial.
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.
Speaker: I think, but women are mostly just focused on a break anytime they can get it.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: And so, you know, it does.
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.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Yeah, I wonder if that's possible to, well, so, so, but I wanted to jump back to something.
Speaker: I think in our little circle online, you're probably, I don't know how to put this.
Speaker: You seem really well adjusted relative to a lot of, well, in terms of, in terms of like, you know, you, you, you,
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.
Speaker: And I don't want to like put you on the spot.
Speaker: I know that's a weird question to try to answer, but like, do you have a different perspective on why that is?
Speaker: I think for me, I, that's a good question.
Speaker: I ignore a lot of things.
Speaker: I think a lot of it has to do with,
Speaker: I credit actually how rough the beginning of my intentors marriage was in terms of nobody wanted to get us to get married.
Speaker: Everybody was really, really mad at us.
Speaker: Like families didn't show up to our wedding.
Speaker: It was like us against the world.
Speaker: Plus everything he was going through online with his ex-wife dragging his name through the mud.
Speaker: Like we just kind of had to not care.
Speaker: Like we had to let go of our attachments to other people's opinions to a certain extent and especially online.
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.
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.
Speaker: Like they're just very anxious to justify what they're doing.
Speaker: And I don't feel that need.
Speaker: Like I find my justification in Tanner and in God and in a few key other people.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: But like, that's, I think that's what helps me kind of stay sane online.
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
Speaker: to defend the perception of who you are.
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.
Speaker: But no, that's a great insight.
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
Speaker: you know exactly whose opinion you care about.
Speaker: And yeah, I think when you don't have that, then the judgment of the crowd means a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: People and men do it to a certain extent, but not as much as women do.
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.
Speaker: It makes it very difficult to just be content.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: when you know people are seeing you incorrectly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
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.
Speaker: People were rarely alone.
Speaker: They were doing a lot of their chores communally.
Speaker: And the line between work and home was pretty blurry.
Speaker: Men were working usually close.
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.
Speaker: Like, you were supposed to be kind of working your own land.
Speaker: Like, it was...
Speaker: I don't think that our sort of modern conception captures how like that was not cool.
Speaker: Like you weren't supposed to be doing that.
Speaker: You weren't supposed to be leaving your family and your land and your home to work somebody else's.
Speaker: So I think we can get back there.
Speaker: I think men have an opportunity right now
Speaker: to get back there with the remote work situation where so many people are able to work from home.
Speaker: And I wonder when you picture like your dream community of how you think that would come together, what does that look like?
Speaker: And what do you think we can do?
Speaker: Like what's like the first step?
Speaker: What it looks like to me would be
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: It's coming two hours beforehand, three hours beforehand and helping cook.
Speaker: Like that's the best part.
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
Speaker: just an immense service to the sisterhood of the women around you.
Speaker: I think those are the two main things for me is like, ideally men would have brotherhood and the women would have sisterhood.
Speaker: And we would be, instead of trying to constantly escape
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.
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.
Speaker: Because you need to be able to support each other in those.
Speaker: And if you don't have the same values, then you're not going to work together efficiently to do
Speaker: allow everyone to work toward those goals that you have in mind.
Speaker: There's a type of diversity that is good, which I think, I think diversity of temperament is really good.
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.
Speaker: And I don't know, I don't know how,
Speaker: I don't know if or how that should be sort of guaranteed by the community.
Speaker: Like how restrictive should you be or can you afford to be?
Speaker: But yeah, I think you do have to have a fair amount of common ground and that can be hard to find.
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.
Speaker: If we all valued that, at least...
Speaker: to similar degrees, I don't think we would have the contention that we have or the controversy with that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think it's also why we purity spiral online because we can't decide on what are the essentials.
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?
Speaker: We just figure out how to mass brainwash everyone in our favor.
Speaker: It's really simple.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Just make sure everybody thinks exactly like me.
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.
Speaker: We have the same vision, the same dream ahead of us and the ways that we choose to get there.
Speaker: Like our, our tactics are very different and that's good.
Speaker: That's really good.
Speaker: Both sides of that are needed, but we're driving toward the same goal.
Speaker: And so I guess you just have to decide like, what is the vision?
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.
Speaker: I wouldn't know how to, community-wide, how to narrow down that vision.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in the church, we spend a lot of time hedging and softening the patriarchy stuff.
Speaker: it's always like, yes, men preside in the home, but everybody's equal and men and women are so much more righteous.
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.
Speaker: I mean, nobody really buys that on, on the, on the feminist side, like, and, and, and it doesn't,
Speaker: It's not appealing to anybody to talk like that.
Speaker: So I don't understand why we do it.
Speaker: But do you think that there's an affirmative, positive way to preach this idea of hierarchy?
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?
Speaker: And then how would you convey that to somebody else?
Speaker: Well, for us, Tanner presiding means basically that
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,
Speaker: talk about, you know, I can come if Tanner will let me have my driver's license today.
Speaker: If I can find where Tanner hid my shoes, I'll be out the door in a minute.
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.
Speaker: But I don't know that that's really helping the cause.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Oh, actually, can I say, I think it does.
Speaker: I think,
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.
Speaker: Like, I think, I'm serious.
Speaker: Like, I think that the only way that you're gonna get regular people to buy into this idea
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.
Speaker: They want to hide that away in like romance novels, but they love romance novels.
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.
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 of them.
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,
Speaker: but then also has control of your driver's license.
Speaker: Um, I, I don't know that I was going to go with that, but I might just make it too weird.
Speaker: No, go on, go on, make it weird.
Speaker: I can edit it out.
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.
Speaker: I, I, uh,
Speaker: I saw something the other day that said women need to make dinner and men need to make the decisions.
Speaker: And I know that would make so many people angry, but if it works for you, it works for you.
Speaker: It can be a really good thing.
Speaker: And I think women are afraid to admit that they like that.
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?
Speaker: I knew that you would like that.
Speaker: No, that stays in.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That stays in.
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.
Speaker: I never got the oil changed and it just died.
Speaker: And so we had to get another car and Tanner's like, okay, well, what car do you think we should get?
Speaker: Or is that, you know, do you like this one?
Speaker: And I just said, I do not care.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Buy a car.
Speaker: And I was so relieved to have somebody finally like to make that kind of decision for me.
Speaker: And he was like, oh crap.
Speaker: Now, if I make the wrong decision, it's all on me.
Speaker: Like, it was just a very good kind of like,
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,
Speaker: I just felt, it felt incredible.
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.
Speaker: And it's, it's an appealing dynamic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, I used to, I used to think a lot about preachers when I was, so I started a mission in Memphis.
Speaker: And there were these preachers that were like in the hood and like their, their, their people were poor, very, very poor.
Speaker: And they were driving the Cadillac.
Speaker: It was like, they were kind of like a pimp.
Speaker: Like they were, they dressed the same and they, they drove the same cars.
Speaker: And they had the, the, the, the prayer hands on the back of the back window of the car.
Speaker: And I thought,
Speaker: you know, we're out here trying to do that same job and like, it's just work.
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.
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.
Speaker: And I think, uh,
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.
Speaker: You get to watch as the thing that you are
Speaker: given stewardship over grows and expands.
Speaker: And, uh, there's a sense of conquest and, and victory that comes with that.
Speaker: Um, but like, if you're doing it right, it's not less work.
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
Speaker: complain when they've got like one or two kids about sort of the domestic workload.
Speaker: And we've got five and I work from home.
Speaker: And so what I always tell them is like, I promise I do more domestic chores than you do.
Speaker: Like just by virtue of being here when there's so many things that need to be done.
Speaker: You know, I'm doing this job in between diaper changes and making bowls of cereal.
Speaker: And like, there's a lot of that going on for everybody.
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.
Speaker: I don't believe that's ever how it was.
Speaker: And it's certainly not how it is in our house.
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.
Speaker: This is how things should be.
Speaker: It's just whose experience is the salient experience, whose experience is the important one.
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.
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.
Speaker: And they will use that sort of yearning for freedom to undermine the
Speaker: England or Spain or, you know, some smaller power structure.
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.
Speaker: And some of those women were being tyrannized.
Speaker: And so it was a very appealing narrative, particularly to them, but also to all the women who sort of
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.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a cheat, ultimately.
Speaker: It's a way to get your little fief, your little power that you have dissolved into the bigger...
Speaker: you know, just getting eaten by a bigger fish is all it is.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely it is.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: But here, one of the guys recently said that being a patriarch nowadays is kind of like being a cult leader.
Speaker: Like you have to, because you're making your own rules.
Speaker: Like there's not an established set of this is how it has to go.
Speaker: In fact, you're sort of consciously bucking that.
Speaker: those rules and saying, I'm going to do it differently.
Speaker: And I'm going to impose these rules on my family.
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?
Speaker: Um, well, I, we have four daughters so far.
Speaker: That's hoping it, we're hoping it's four daughters.
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,
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.
Speaker: And I know that there are enough people out there that are also trying to do the same thing.
Speaker: There are enough people starting to really reject our kids
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, I do think we're at an inflection point.
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,
Speaker: what we really needed was more liberation.
Speaker: We needed more feminism, more progressive sort of ideology in our families and in our lives, professionally, personally.
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.
Speaker: And I think almost everybody is seeing through that at this point.
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.
Speaker: And, and so, yeah, we have this opportunity to, to inculcate better values.
Speaker: And in some sense that they're, they're like traditional values, but, but
Speaker: we're not really trying to replicate like the 1950s or the 1850s or any particular time period.
Speaker: It's more about like sort of timeless principles that apply to our current condition.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, people are hungry for that.
Speaker: They're hungry for something new.
Speaker: Oh, you wanted to talk about the experience of helping someone who's being doxxed as well.
Speaker: So you and Tanner went through this
Speaker: a long time ago, Carissa and I went through this, you know, two months ago.
Speaker: What was it like for you to sort of stand by your man under those circumstances?
Speaker: It was kind of thrilling.
Speaker: I mean, there was that scary minute of, shoot, maybe he's doing everything wrong.
Speaker: Shoot.
Speaker: And then once that passed and I decided, you know what, even if he is,
Speaker: I just spoke with someone who, whose husband basically lost 30 grand of their savings to crypto.
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
Speaker: Okay, no, he, so he put it all into crypto and it was going well.
Speaker: And then there was one day when it tanked, like it does.
Speaker: And she freaked out, she freaked out and made him pull it all out.
Speaker: And he ended up losing like half of it because they got scared and pulled out.
Speaker: And if I just could have, just could have encouraged her to just let him fail.
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.
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.
Speaker: It's a moment to...
Speaker: to just put that trust in them and see where they take it.
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.
Speaker: And it set the tone for our whole marriage.
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
Speaker: And to just let it, let it be and just not be afraid of the failure because it's never permanent.
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.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: So you made me an account a while ago and I just, I just don't,
Speaker: really understand the internet and all of the frogs.
Speaker: And so it's taken me a long time to want to be a part of it.
Speaker: And then when this happened, I was like, who are these people who are dragging my children through the mud?
Speaker: And my husband, like who are these just crazy monsters?
Speaker: Like we're real people, we're real people.
Speaker: And they were talking about real children and wishing harm to these children.
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.
Speaker: Don't listen, don't listen to them because I, I don't understand that.
Speaker: And I, and I know you, but I, I,
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.
Speaker: You're being, you're being rude.
Speaker: And you knew who he was in real life.
Speaker: You wouldn't be saying these things like that.
Speaker: That doesn't work on the internet.
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?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't you understand that these are real people?
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?
Speaker: That's me.
Speaker: That's me.
Speaker: I'm always like, why would they lie?
Speaker: What is going on?
Speaker: She's, yeah, and you are, you are very, you're very earnest.
Speaker: So I hate Twitter.
Speaker: It's a terrible place.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't play well on Twitter.
Speaker: It doesn't.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Speaker: How bad is it going to get?
Speaker: And like,
Speaker: Do you think you can nose up?
Speaker: Do you think you can recover?
Speaker: Once you embrace, I think you almost have to get knocked on your butt at least once.
Speaker: But once you have that experience and are able to embrace that experience,
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?
Speaker: Am I in the right career?
Speaker: All of these decisions, if you have permission to just do it, just jump in, you can accomplish a lot more.
Speaker: We talked recently about the fact that, you know, when you were finding someone to marry in any other time or place,
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: This is what I'm going to go with.
Speaker: Did you ask me a question?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: It's been cutting out like crazy.
Speaker: I tried messaging you.
Speaker: Ah, shoot.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Let me, I got everything and then it cut out right as you started asking me a question.
Speaker: We'll say, yeah.
Speaker: Being added to your group when we were being doxxed helped tremendously.
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.
Speaker: It turns out they didn't understand.
Speaker: Yeah, it turns out they didn't understand.
Speaker: I was ready.
Speaker: I was ready to burn all the bridges that first night.
Speaker: I was like, screw them.
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.
Speaker: But then nobody heard about it for a long time.
Speaker: And it was, it was almost two months before anybody, any of our friends discovered that it had happened.
Speaker: And
Speaker: And so I had all those emotions that first night where I was done with it.
Speaker: And then I was like, no, I'll just be quiet about it since nobody knows.
Speaker: I'll just be quiet about this.
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.
Speaker: This is us.
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.
Speaker: I don't know.
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.
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?
Speaker: And I, yeah, I think, I think when they, because it's a predator prey type situation, when, when,
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
Speaker: I admit it was me being doxxed.
Speaker: Oh, no, your husband said these things.
Speaker: Married to a cashist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I had to say, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I'm in the middle of making dinner for him.
Speaker: Can I talk about this later?
Speaker: He doesn't know I have my phone right now.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: No, I mean, we had friends just in recent years in this neighborhood that
Speaker: Oh, shoot.
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.
Speaker: Like every day they lived down the street, they're still writing letters to each other, just best, best, best of friends.
Speaker: And then just one day they just cut us off as soon as they read that.
Speaker: And, and it sucks, but our kids are now getting to learn that not everybody's opinions matter.
Speaker: And it's a painful thing to learn, but it's good to learn.
Speaker: It's good to learn.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So what do you think is the role of women in
Speaker: proactively building a community and holding it together.
Speaker: Like we're talking about men in this leadership role and setting the vision.
Speaker: Do you think that there's a role for, for, for women to lead each other?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's the exact opposite of what most of the women are doing online right now.
Speaker: Like I think women's role, we are uniquely, um, outfitted with the capability of dissolving contention.
Speaker: Like, I think we are built to be emotional problem solvers and really we're here to build cohesiveness.
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.
Speaker: of how things are feeling and how people are feeling about each other.
Speaker: Like you teach your kids to treat each other well.
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.
Speaker: And that should be done on a bigger scale within a community.
Speaker: And it is, it does seem to be like, it does seem to be almost reversed in, in our culture where
Speaker: you hear a lot about like, well, the wives are fighting, but the guys are getting along.
Speaker: And I don't think it's supposed to be that way.
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.
Speaker: I think that's right.
Speaker: But women are involved in the work of sort of setting the norms.
Speaker: And because we have so much
Speaker: there's not a single set of norms to defend.
Speaker: Everybody's sort of dying on their own hill.
Speaker: And so whether it's swimsuits or caffeine or I'm talking about in our church community, you know, whatever the rule is,
Speaker: we have to like fight it out because everybody like wants to have that cohesion.
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.
Speaker: And also I'm right.
Speaker: And like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Because the norms are no longer, they're individual norms.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so you've got to be, again, it's that whole self-justification.
Speaker: If my way isn't right,
Speaker: then I'm the one dying on that hill.
Speaker: Nobody's dying with me and I'm all alone.
Speaker: So I have to be, I have to be right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that I'm not all alone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that I think is almost an alien perspective to men.
Speaker: I think men are just a lot more comfortable dying alone on a hill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe literally, maybe.
Speaker: That's very sad.
Speaker: Well, but it does, I mean, it does make this environment easier to navigate.
Speaker: So yeah, I think we do in the church have, you know,
Speaker: much more of that cohesion than I think other people do in other groups.
Speaker: And maybe that is easier to, easier to navigate since we have so much more sort of baseline figured out.
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.
Speaker: Like I'm a hyphenated Mormon.
Speaker: I'm a progressive Mormon or I'm a libertarian Mormon or whatever it is.
Speaker: And whatever comes before the hyphen, like that's who you really are.
Speaker: It's just sort of Mormon flavored.
Speaker: I don't know how you pick up the pieces after that.
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.
Speaker: But it's a really tough problem.
Speaker: Yeah, Tanner's really good at that.
Speaker: So in our neighborhood, we have...
Speaker: I think it's a very, very, very, very
Speaker: different beliefs within members that are coming to church on Sunday.
Speaker: And, and Tanner's very good at, at picking out people who, who kind of are similar.
Speaker: And then he brings them into our world.
Speaker: You know, it's, he, he's setting the tone.
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
Speaker: objectives.
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: And, and, and guys like Tanner are really good at that.
Speaker: They're really good at like starting the conversation and, and, and setting tone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I think a lot of people are kind of just waiting for someone to do that.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're seeing a lot.
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.
Speaker: and then they'll have a following.
Speaker: And it's sort of the, it's the same, it's the same, really the same thing.
Speaker: It's the common identity of being a Latter-day Saint is sort of not enough for people anymore.
Speaker: It doesn't answer all of the relevant questions.
Speaker: And so they're looking for more answers than that.
Speaker: And I don't know how to, like, I recognize that part of my project is to offer someone a community that's
Speaker: doing something that their elders quorum isn't, right?
Speaker: Without sort of making the argument that like, that's not good enough, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's hard to do.
Speaker: It's really hard to do.
Speaker: I think it's similar to that fear that people have with failing.
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.
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.
Speaker: Have fun getting married.
Speaker: It's just, you know, and it's just work.
Speaker: It's hard work.
Speaker: And after the honeymoon, you're going to be miserable.
Speaker: So find a hobby.
Speaker: And that's pretty much verbatim that someone actually said that to her.
Speaker: She told me I should start buying shoes to keep myself happy.
Speaker: But with what we're trying to do and with kids and stuff, we...
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
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very helpful.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I get, I think one of the most common questions or comments that I get is, oh, you can do that.
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,
Speaker: You can actually do that.
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.
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.
Speaker: Hi, it can be good.
Speaker: Hi, it can be different and, and not being embarrassed about it.
Speaker: You know, like I, I used to be embarrassed to say that I didn't.
Speaker: didn't even finish one semester of college and like, no college sucks.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: I didn't like it.
Speaker: I didn't want to do it and I didn't need it.
Speaker: And that's okay.
Speaker: That's more than okay.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: It hasn't negatively impacted my life at all.
Speaker: In fact, it's a way of positive.
Speaker: Yeah.
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
Speaker: higher social circle, civilized society.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: I've always said, like, if you want to go back, you can go back.
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.
Speaker: I like having babies way more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Way more.
Speaker: And even the learning school made that not fun for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I need to pass the test.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: need to get my assignments done.
Speaker: And yes, yeah, because yeah, that's, that's not how learning should happen for anybody.
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.
Speaker: And I think that's happening like across the board.
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
Speaker: for all kinds of jobs that don't require a college degree.
Speaker: And whether that's, you know, code jobs or trade jobs or entrepreneurship, like there's tons of opportunity.
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.
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.
Speaker: I was sort of like, well,
Speaker: I did the college thing.
Speaker: I did the MBA.
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.
Speaker: And nope.
Speaker: Like, you know, you can just, there's, there's abundant opportunity out there.
Speaker: I'm very excited.
Speaker: Very glad that I'm no longer stressing about that.
Speaker: It really just a weight off my shoulders.
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.
Speaker: And I did, I did.
Speaker: I think the last time I really struggled with that was you were in grad school and it was his
Speaker: It was the Christmas party.
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.
Speaker: And it would be like two movie tickets.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That really helps our family.
Speaker: No, we went to this Christmas party and I was...
Speaker: stressing out before and I was Googling like, how do you dress for an MBA Christmas party?
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.
Speaker: And I was going to come as this
Speaker: stay-at-home mom who had just had our fourth child.
Speaker: And we went and it was going really well.
Speaker: And then of course the topic came up with, oh, well, what do you do?
Speaker: And I was telling everyone, oh, you know, I'm just a stay-at-home mom.
Speaker: I'm a stay-at-home mom.
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.
Speaker: She laughed at me
Speaker: And I might even cry about it now because it still was just so like, ah, this is what I was afraid of.
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.
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?
Speaker: And I said, well, this...
Speaker: Oh, I wasn't going to even tell them.
Speaker: I think you started it.
Speaker: And you said, this woman said this to my wife and laughed at her.
Speaker: And these one in particular really came to bat for me and was like, how dare she?
Speaker: How dare this woman shame another woman for her choices?
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.
Speaker: And I love and respect my mother and I really admire what you're doing.
Speaker: And I'm glad that she said that.
Speaker: And Kevin was, you know, of course, grateful.
Speaker: And when he got home, he was like, isn't it great that she said that?
Speaker: And for me, it was, yes, I love that she said that.
Speaker: But at the same time, she is still not doing what I'm doing.
Speaker: She talked about how much she loved what her mom did and how she valued that.
Speaker: but she still loves her career more and is choosing not to do this.
Speaker: And I love, I will feel very bad if she listens to this and her feelings are hurt because I love that woman.
Speaker: She's cool.
Speaker: She's wonderful.
Speaker: She's wonderful.
Speaker: But she's doing like a spreadsheet job.
Speaker: She's doing like a job that the appeal of that, I don't get like at all, even for a man.
Speaker: And it's like the idea that, so for her, she's like, oh, I'm so grateful.
Speaker: I so value her.
Speaker: what my mom did for me, but I don't, but I don't value it as much as Microsoft Excel.
Speaker: Like, like what?
Speaker: Like it doesn't, that doesn't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because, because Microsoft Excel prevents her from ever having to feel what Carissa felt.
Speaker: Like she will take her spreadsheets over that kind of feeling of degradation.
Speaker: In isolation.
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.
Speaker: Those are not imaginary, those are realities.
Speaker: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just fear of that experience.
Speaker: Well, I say hop on in.
Speaker: The water's great.
Speaker: Christmas parties where people get drunk and are rude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was, you know, there's no reason for you to hang out with the B school crowd.
Speaker: They're kind of lame anyway, but.
Speaker: I'm not upset about it.
Speaker: As you can tell.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very obvious that you're no longer upset about it.
Speaker: I'm trying not to cry.
Speaker: I'm not upset about it.
Speaker: I'm sorry, man.
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.
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.
Speaker: I love my children and I'm going to have more babies.
Speaker: You can't stop me.
Speaker: And it's fantastic.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I, I love it.
Speaker: I really love it.
Speaker: Well, you talked about, you talked about the responsibility to sort of talk about how great it is.
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.
Speaker: And I agree totally.
Speaker: Um,
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.
Speaker: What are your thoughts on that situation and how you maybe avoid that or do it differently?
Speaker: What do you mean by go off the rails?
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: That's just a means to the end.
Speaker: Like it's about them.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: It's about the validation they get.
Speaker: It's about the status they get.
Speaker: It's about the money they're getting from affiliate sales.
Speaker: Like it's all of that.
Speaker: It's not actually about
Speaker: spreading the joy of motherhood or making it more appealing.
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.
Speaker: I think you have to be pretty vigilant about
Speaker: about your intentions.
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.
Speaker: And don't use breastfeeding as an excuse to post your boobs online, for goodness sakes.
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.
Speaker: And she's in this white nightgown and she's holding a baby and a baby's at her feet.
Speaker: And it's like a very return to tradition kind of thing.
Speaker: But you can see straight through her dress.
Speaker: You can see the outline of everything.
Speaker: And it's just getting lauded as this, you know, make motherhood great again.
Speaker: And that just messes with women.
Speaker: Like I'm all about sharing beauty.
Speaker: I'm all about that.
Speaker: But it's just too easy to make it about
Speaker: being whorish.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's a, there's a, there's a line there.
Speaker: It's not always obvious what that line is.
Speaker: How do you personally manage the, because you know, your, your husband's a style coach, you're very concerned with aesthetics.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, um, and I, I agree.
Speaker: I actually, um, uh, Tanner's book was kind of a, a, a mind blow for me.
Speaker: I really love that book.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And you should go buy it, The Appearance of Power by Tanner Guzzi.
Speaker: It's a good one.
Speaker: And so there is this, like, appearances matter.
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?
Speaker: For me, it's like, I don't know.
Speaker: They're very specific.
Speaker: Like nobody's ever going to see an inch of boob or cleavage.
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.
Speaker: Um, but again, even if there are women who will post pictures, happy birthday to my husband and,
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.
Speaker: And like, it's just, it's just the attention.
Speaker: aspect of it that I think really gets to women's heads because it's so easy to justify.
Speaker: And it's like, well, I just wanted to share my workout of the day.
Speaker: And you just happen to be able to see what I would look like naked through my leggings.
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.
Speaker: Like they know, they know what's going on.
Speaker: You take two seconds to think about it and you know what you're doing.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a reciprocal relationship that men have with pornography, I think.
Speaker: I think women have the same desire to be pornography that men have to consume pornography.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And yeah, it involves a lot of self-deception and it involves a lot of small steps to
Speaker: down the wrong path where you sort of know it's not right.
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.
Speaker: It's not, there's never a point where like there's a point of no return.
Speaker: It's always, you know, gradually sloping downward.
Speaker: And so if you just commit ahead of time to like, these are my hard lines, that makes it a lot easier.
Speaker: So this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker: I appreciate your patience with the technical difficulties.
Speaker: Brickhalie is at Brickhalie Guzzi on Twitter.
Speaker: You can follow her and give her lots and lots of attention.
Speaker: Validation.
Speaker: Let's test my limits here.
Speaker: And my wife is at Army with Banners.
Speaker: Do not follow me.
Speaker: Follow her on Twitter at Army with Banners.
Speaker: You will follow me hoping to get female Dr. Bennett and you will get me.
Speaker: Beauty and glory.
Speaker: And delight.
Speaker: Does not understand, Twitter.
Speaker: She doesn't understand Twitter and it's fantastic to follow her.
Speaker: So it makes it so good.
Speaker: That's exactly what makes it good.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: This has been so awesome.
Speaker: Thanks so much.
Speaker: Thank you.
