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Lindy West and Why Women Don't Talk About Marriage (but maybe we should) · Syllabus

• Ashby: and occasionally getting lost in a tangent. If you too can't help but think a little too deeply about books movies and more you come across you're in the right place. Coco: Welcome to Syllabus, the podcast hosted by two recovering straight-A millennials, Ashby and Coco, We are so glad you're here. Ashby: Let's get into it. Coco: who live to overanalyze the media and culture we encounter ⁓ while shedding the gold star culture that made us, Ashby: Yeah, after the piece came out, then Aham writes this to ⁓ Scotchy. He says, This was such a shitty thing to do, Scotchy. You skewed this story to fit your own bitter narrative. You wasted my time and all of our time to write an article that was going to be the same no matter what we said. You absolutely dehumanized me and intentionally diminished my personhood and career. Roya and I were on a shared project in Boston or however you worded it. I was performing four shows at the Parrot Mount and Roya is my producer. I'm a person with a life and a great career and a complicated life and you boiled me down to a quote unquote cheater who was on a school project making a diorama or some shit because you're mad about your life. You barely wrote about the book. You just wrote rage bait articles specifically designed to direct hate toward me. You are a shitty fucking person. You're a bitter, untalented, mean girl, and you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. You fucking suck. Ahame filet jayaluo." Then they reach out to him for comments so they can release a ⁓ update about this exchange. And he replied, yes, my email was a typo. I meant to say free Palestine. Thank you for correcting the record. So this is not a great look. This is a really... not cool thing to do at all. Coco: I like before that, before I heard this via the podcast episode that ⁓ she did, ⁓ I see why am I. And I had also seen his Instagram, he had kind of written a defense of himself a little like in Instagram stories. Ashby: So ⁓ here's my ⁓ really good intro. ⁓ Coco. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: Hi Ashby. Ashby: We're here today to talk about the Lindy West book, ⁓ Adult Braces. And we're also talking about the Associated Controversy. In fact, that's maybe mostly what we're talking about. ⁓ So I'm kicking this one off. ⁓ And I just want to say that unlike a lot of people, we have actually both read the book and recently, and we have some thoughts. Coco: I'm so excited. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: put this, like, I think that there is an element of being like, I don't want to be part of the public discourse. But then you have entered the discourse, which to some degree kind of then makes you fair game for the discourse. And I don't know if that's fair or ethical or right. We just came off of our summer house episode. So I understand that this is not the same as Kyle Cook putting himself and his bad behavior on screen for 10 years for us to, you know, kind of break down and dissect. We did! You more recently than me, maybe. Ashby: this is of a like, here's what we thought about the book and more kind of like I really want to tease out what has been the deal with the kind of public reaction to it, which is so much of what our stomps are about. ⁓ Coco: But at the same time, it's such a, first in the first letter that he writes, to me there's just so many indications of misogyny that I can't kind of sidestep easily. I think calling a woman who is divorced bitter, not once, but at least twice, is a really coded and kind of. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: excited about that because I feel you know there's a lot of reactions out there and I don't always understand where the people are coming from and I trust you you know good friend good human. heavy word that gets lauded at women who've been divorced. ⁓ And then I really feel pretty icky about the use of free Palestine in that context. ⁓ you know, it's not about, I really feel like it's almost kind of using it to defend yourself or kind of something to defend yourself as a politic in a way that is pretty dismissive of the Ashby: Well, listen, we've been texting about this and I just want to say I've gone on a real journey. Okay. I started in one place and then like the more I read and thought about it, like I kind of landed somewhere else. So, ⁓ I think I, I hope I'll be able to like trace that and kind of show my a little bit. So, yeah. basically let's just back up a little bit. We're talking about Lindy West's, ⁓ new book. Coco: Wow. true gravity and horror that's happening in Palestine. So yeah. Ashby: adult braces driving myself sane. This has come out this year and so many people, so many people have had big reactions to it. It seems like everyone and their mother has a sub stack post or a TikTok essay about some aspect of this book. ⁓ And it's also been like, you know, pretty directly involved Lindy. So she and her partners have both received a lot of Yeah. Yeah, I think one take I'd heard was that it's sort of suggesting a, don't we talk about the real issues that are important kind of thing, but in a way that is like dismissive of the real issues. It's like, we absolutely are having those conversations. This is just not the forum for it. We're not. Coco: And I hope in the realm of a petty gripe, that his gripe is petty, that you didn't talk about my career enough or something along those lines. Yeah. Ashby: Yeah, it's petty. feedback about the part of the book where Lindy basically divulges how her and her husband came to be in a polyamorous relationship. ⁓ And so there's the, they're sort of like, there's the book, there's the initial reaction to the book, there's all the thought pieces that that spawned. And then there's the reaction to the reaction. And then Lindy and her partner's own kind of like, ⁓ That's all I can read. All I can read He has no specifics about anything that she said that was mean or inaccurate. ⁓ I've read the piece multiple times. cannot find what the intention here is, but his specific gripe is about boiling down his work and boiling him down to a cheater and not, I guess... ⁓ making a bigger deal about what he was off doing while she was there to interview Lindy. ⁓ I'm not sure what that's about. The only thing I can take is that maybe in these earlier pre-call interviews with Roya and Aham, I suspect she asked more questions about them and their lives and maybe they had the impression that she was going to include more about that. various PR efforts on that front. So, ⁓ this is kind of like a part to kind of take apart book reader versus a non book reader. ⁓ If you haven't read the book or you somehow missed all of this like throuple drama, ⁓ Coco, I don't know if you can introduce I can't help but read his response as I thought this was going to be a profile of all three of us equally as artists, but it was not. It was a profile about Lindy and her two partners. I'm sorry, but it is because Lindy wrote the book and that's what the book is about. So it's a press tour for the book. And yeah, Scott, she's not, she's not being unbalanced. She multiple times in the piece notes like her own experiences writing a memoir about for folks like the sort of major players and briefly lay out a sort of like, what happened as you understand it summary. Coco: ⁓ sure. I think this was reading the book made me realize that my relationship with Lindy West was much more like much more distant than I think a lot of people's online relationship to her. ⁓ I first read her book, Shrill, when it came out, and it really did like help me see the world in a new way. And I'm so grateful for her. And I love her. And she also helped me break my ⁓ This is a press tour for the book. Yeah. Ashby: her marriage and then subsequent divorce. I think she's extremely reasonable where she's like, you know, this is how I would have viewed it, but this is the way that Lindy came out of it. I don't think anywhere you could read this as she's bitter and unhappy. There's just no, I'm not seeing it. I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing what Aham is seeing here. Coco: enjoyment of love actually. And for that I'm also grateful. I love anything that can just, you know, kind of like bum me out. I'm just like, hell yeah, girl. So I really like Lindy West, but I think I'm not as, I was not following kind of her life kind of in real time. I got more read the book, read some of her work back when she was at Jezebel. And then from there didn't hear anything and then started listening to her podcast when they started, when her and Meghan Hattrame started that. That word bitter when applied to especially a divorced woman or a woman who like wasn't married ever kind of has this connotation that women are like angry women that want to take away the happiness of other women and can't like abide the happiness of other women. And so it's very easy to throw that at Lindy. I mean, I always thought of her name was Saatchi. So I don't know if it Saatchi. So I knew from the podcast that she was in this polyamorous relationship with this throuple, but what we go back then and learn is the story of kind of the origin stories of that throuple. I'm using throuple because there are three people in this specific relationship, but you polyamorous relationship. you know, kind of Lindy West is going on a road trip to kind of navigate her feelings. Ashby: Mm-hmm. I always thought it was too, because that's how it sounds on the podcast. I should believe this in. I've always heard it pronounced Saatchi. That's how it sounds on the podcast. But then when you read it, there is a C there. So I've wondered if maybe you just can't hear the C when people are saying it really quickly. Well, I'm actually not sure if we're wrong about that Saatchi or Scotchie Cole. We're sorry. We love you. Coco: Yeah, yeah Uh-huh Ashby: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Coco: Right? of ⁓ processing, you know, where she had gone from being, you know, two people in her marriage to expanding that or kind of thinking through expanding that. And that I won't get into all the details, but you know, the way that this came about was not kind of on the... It's like, it's like when you hear an NPR name your whole life and then you're like, I actually don't know what the name is. It's like, because it's too locked into my impression of the name. My brain's auto correct. Yes. Ashby: I know. Mm-mm. Yeah, so I'm not sure, but when I pulled the quote from the byline, there is a C there. So who knows? I don't know if it's pronounced or not. Unclear. Yeah, but in his response to the journalist, for sure. Coco: ethical terms that the polyamorous community kind of really sets out as this is the standard. If you want to kind of call yourself ethically nominogamous or any of those things, you know, it's really about honest communication. It's about consent. It's about really talking through everything and being super honest. And what had happened was Lindy was a little bit kind of coerced, kind of what would be the word, almost ultimatum into this kind of quote unquote open marriage. Yeah! Yeah! I think partially why the discourse feels so active and alive for people is especially a lot of women are reading their own relationships into this and feeling like Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: It was then like not, it was kind of dropped and not really discussed until she learned what I take to be kind of like a DM from a ⁓ fan maybe of like, I see your husband out on these streets and some stuff's going on. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: there's a discomfort with acknowledging the compromises that you go through in the long-term relationship of any kind and wanting kind of for other women to make choices, even if like you yourself like are aware of the compromises that you live with in your own relationship. ⁓ And then, yeah, but then when you hear someone just be such a dick, it makes it easier for us to have the discourse. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And okay. So this book covers kind of this period in her life. And I do think that the book is about more than just this romantic relationship evolution. Yeah. Yeah. So for people who haven't read it, you know, and you like Lindy West or you sort of like like a cultural writer of funny essays. Yeah. Coco: ⁓ my god, totally. Yes. Ashby: Yeah. Coco: If you don't want the discourse, you made it so much easier. Ashby: It really does. And it is, look, I think what's complicated, and for me, I'm willing to have it out. think a lot of people, think Scotchy is willing to have it out, like tease out all of the different things here that make it complex. ⁓ I think the Helen Lewis's of the world immediately see that there are actual sensitive identities here at play, and they are. If you like memoirs, road trip reflections, I do think it's interesting and I don't think the book will take you that long. So I do think it's like an interesting poolside read. I really do. So worth picking up. Coco: What I wanna kind of, what I kind of wanna say is I couldn't put it down. Like I was, there's a lot of messy stuff in that book when it comes to the relationship, but you're absolutely right, it's about so much more. And why it was so compelling to me is that she's writing really honestly, about her experience of being like a fat woman in America. Like there's a lot of stuff that's baked into the book throughout and. Yeah. Ashby: angered by that. They don't want to consider those things. They want to pretend everyone's experience is totally gender and race neutral, but it isn't. All of those things do make a difference. And so I think it is possible to have a conversation about What the book resonate with for us? And be sensitive to the fact that Aham is a biracial person who is non-binary. Coco: Mm-hmm. Her just like honest reflections kind of of past experiences, but then you're in the moment with her on this road trip. Like I was like, I'm very compelled. I don't think you have to like agree with everything or say like those were good decisions or whatever it was funny, but it's also very moving. I there's else to about it. Ashby: Yeah. that Roya is a person of Persian descent and that Lindy is a public figure who's a feminist and a very visible, sort of an activist in the, yeah. Yeah, and I think she's a really good writer. A lot of the podcasts I've listened to or some of the online discussions or ⁓ articles, they've kind of thrown that in like it's a throwaway thing. They're like, yeah, she's a good writer, I guess. But ⁓ I do think that that's central to it. I think some of her pros in terms of phrase are... ⁓ Coco: Mm-hmm. I think she calls herself a fat woman. Like, so I'm, I think like it's more of, and she's white and like, and yeah. Ashby: Yeah, and she's white. And I think we can be sensitive to all of that here in the dynamics. And then of course, that like inherent queerness that is part of their relationship. I think we can be sensitive about that. It doesn't make me angry that they have intersectional identities. But you know, you can straightforwardly criticize Aham's behavior. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: in different places so incredibly funny and other places really poignant and very poetic. ⁓ I think it's just a nice, fun read. ⁓ has some great passages that I underlined. So I think it's worth picking up. I hope no one's been scared off by all the discourse about the polyamory component of the book. ⁓ But I do want to just say one thing, which is that I do kind of disagree with other takes that without needing to make it about identity politics. And straightforwardly, Aham's behavior here is incredibly disrespectful to this journalist ⁓ who is a divorced public figure and a woman of color. And so all of those things do matter. I do think that they matter for how people experience the world and having this person who ⁓ is speaking to her in a way that is very gender coded. Coco: Yes. Yeah! Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: minimize the polyamory aspect of the book I saw one thing that was like, it's just a few pages. It's all of eight pages in the book or something like that. ⁓ Exactly. That's what wrote is that this is like, this is not just a few pages. It's actually the whole driver of the plot is this like background discomfort with a kind of place that her marriage had reached. So because that's how she's going to receive it. It isn't about whatever, however Aham intended it, that's how she's going to receive it. And it is so ⁓ incredibly mean. feel like that letter stops just short of calling her a fucking bitch. Like it is ⁓ basically, yeah, basically calling her a fucking bitch ⁓ and... ⁓ Coco: Yeah. It's like the raison d'etre of the book. Mm-hmm. Ashby: I don't think it's nothing, but I do think there's more to this story. Coco: Like, Kyle Cook called Amanda Petula. Yeah. He does kind of get, like, he gets up to the line. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: right up on the line. And that is really, really, really not okay. it does cast, like, I don't know what we're owed in terms of the transparency of their relationship. ⁓ We only know once again what Lindy has with us. But if you were trying to give Aham the benefit of the doubt, that letter does not look good. Coco: Yeah, no, I 100 % agree. And I think that the reason she's experiencing or exploring like the other feelings that I'm even saying are compelling about the book is because of ⁓ this ⁓ situation with her marriage. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You could have said nothing. Yeah, Ashby: Yeah, you could have said nothing. Yeah, Coco: I think something that I've picked up on is people talking about it being like a funny book ⁓ and her being a good writer. But also sometimes people are almost insulting her ⁓ and saying, she has such a ⁓ 2010 style of writing. And I'm like, bitch, that's it was Lindy West. because that's her of writing. ⁓ She was so influential. We have now... Ashby: I do think people are smart. I think people can pick up on the Helen Lewis article being kind of in bad faith. Okay. I don't think, I don't think that every article is doing that. ⁓ ⁓ yeah. ⁓ Coco: Yeah! Mm-hmm. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: capital D discourse, this kind of Atlantic, even like New York Times, like kind of major publication. And then there's small D discourse, which is TikTok commentators, which is the sub stacks, which is the like verbal, burbling. What's that mean? I don't know what burbling means, but you know, it's, it's kind of, it's, it's, it's bubbling or it's burbling. I think it's just burbling out there on the internet. It's burbling. Yes. Ashby: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: associated a whole type of writing with this woman. She's allowed to still talk like that. Me neither. Ashby: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. actually think it was that much. think people are over emphasizing that. Yeah. I think it is. I think it's just verbally. ⁓ I agree. So I think that the critiques of the book and everything majorly fall into like three main categories and they are one, she lied to us, two, she's lying to herself, and three, she's embodying all the bad faith suspicions that sad liberals think the right has assigned to them, which is It's really just conversational. It's that this is the way she talks on her podcast. I mean, she. ⁓ Coco: Mm-hmm. Yep. Ashby: but this is also the way everyone talks. So I do feel like this has echoes of the vocal fry conversation, Like this is how this is just the, this is just the internet lingo right now. So I don't know. I think people are being too precious about their goddamn punctuation, but She's too woke, she's too fat, she's so deluded by critical race theory that it turns out liberals are willing to senselessly be manipulated and humiliated by it, she is deeply prejudiced and incurious and hypocritical about everyone who doesn't live in her liberal bubble ⁓ of Pacific Northwest. So I think those are the three main criticisms and that's basically what I read in every one of these. ⁓ And... Coco: I definitely talk that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: It's entertaining and that's a lot of how like Lindy's energy comes through the book. So, so anyway, Again, I don't think the scotchy article fits with any of those. It is just a straightforward like, well, girl, you do you. That's basically what I got from it was, do what you're gonna do, girl. You tell your story, I'm here for you. I think the quote that she gets from Sam Erby in there is fascinating. first of all, I just wanna say Sam Erby is one of my favorites. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: but just some details for like background. So Lindy West right now is 44. She's born in 1982. I just want to give like a little light timeline of like her life in the public eye to kind of put in context the kind of time and place that the book happens in. So background for folks is that she was a writer for Jezebel and the stranger. Coco: you Yeah. Ashby: from 2009 and 2012. And then she is a columnist for a lot of different outlets, from 2013 to 2019. Her book, Shrill, is published in 2016. And in Shrill, she talks about a lot of different things. Her life as a columnist, as like a fat lady on the internet, as like a very prominent abortion activist and feminist. she's just incredible. have I read her books. I was reading her blog, Bitches Gotta Eat. I was like loading that shit up, waiting for the page to load so I could get each new install. I would check it at work every day just to see if there was anything new. ⁓ But yeah, Sam Irby has a quote in the slate piece that's You know, as long as she, I'm paraphrasing, as long as she likes it, I'm good with it. But the minute she says she's not into it, I'm going to help her bury the bodies. And like, and like that's a good, that's a good friend, but it's a fascinating quote to give a journalist. And it's a fascinating one for them to include because Irby is like, according to adult braces, like they're all friends, you know? ⁓ So I think that's interesting. But yeah, I, I think it's an even handed. Coco: Right, I remember, yep. Ashby: And ⁓ she also talks a little bit in the book about her father dying in 2011 and meeting her now husband, Ahame Fale, ⁓ and them getting married. So that's kind of the timeframe that the book covers is like roughly 2009 to when it's published in 2016. Coco: you Ashby: coverage of how kind of complex everyone feels, even people in Lindy's own life and everyday. that book is very autobiographical. It's a bunch of essays, but it includes a little snippet of like her relationship with Aham, kind of the ⁓ beginning, I guess of it. And then, yeah. Coco: I guess what I'm trying to like, maybe allude to is that this is also like, this is female friendship. This is like a common experience that we all have. It's like different phases of your life, you know? Sometimes your girlfriends are with someone and you're just like, well, it makes you happy. ⁓ And also, yeah, we can bury the body. ⁓ Yes. Yeah. And the TV show version, I think, really plays into more like almost like the rom-com elements of their relationship and that being like the driving force of like character growth and kind of self-acceptance. From what I remember, I haven't rewatched it, but. Ashby: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And the TV show came out in 2019 and it went for three seasons. It stopped in 2021. It stars A.D. Bryant. It was on Hulu. So she talks in this book a little bit more about how that Well, yeah, so So I with all of these and I'm gonna go through how I don't think any of these critiques are actually accurate, but that's basically, that's actually how they all break down. She's lying to us, she's lying to herself ⁓ and she is embodying all the bad wokeness that everyone hates so much. ⁓ So I think a really good, Coco: Thank you, be our discourse guide. Yeah. Ashby: process, what that process was like. And she kind of reveals that it like wasn't really that great. Like there is a sort of feeling of depersonalization and almost like cannibalism of her story by Hollywood in a way that was, you know, it made her feel really separated from the work. I mean, of course she ends a shrill in this, kind of uplifting take is actually, there's actually two takes and I'll put them in the notes and everything, but ⁓ a really good pushback on the Helen Lewis articles comes from Salon. So I have put a great quote there. Coco: Mm-hmm. Lewis's piece is nominally about Lindy West and adult braces, but it's much more about the author's long-standing beef with identity politics. Lewis isn't wrong that West was both a catalyst for and a casualty of a time when the personal is political, in quotes, was misunderstood to mean that every personal choice should be politicized. But there's a sneering edge to the glee with which she declares that millennial feminism is dead, which it isn't. Ashby: way. And then I think people saw that because she got the TV show, they're connecting dots and maybe projecting something onto her about that success. ⁓ But actually, with reflection and as an adult, think it's perfectly fine for her to shed more light on the ways that that wasn't that great of an experience. Now, this book is come adult braces is ⁓ is the period around 2021. Coco: Mm-hmm. An echo of the directive given to Newsday reporter Marilyn Goldstein about reporting on the women's movement in 1970. In quotes, get out there and find an authority who will say this is all a crock of shit. An eternal recursive impulse to see feminists knocked down and put in their place. Yeah. Yup. Yup-de-yup. Ashby: So this would have been after the show wrapped she had written some other books in that period of time, but I just think there's a public discourse about how she quote lied to us about the experience of working on Shrill and that it was like some... Yeah, so this is from Andy Zeisler, it's called, people really love see feminists fail. The reaction to Lindy West's new memoir is a reminder of how quickly we discredit women. ⁓ And that was really what I to get at. why it seemed like people were so almost excited to be like, Lindy West is problematic. And I could not figure out where that frothing at the mouth impulse comes from. you know, an incredible dream come true for her and that she had misrepresented that. And then in this book, she's turned around and told the real truth, which is actually it was terrible. And I kind of disagree with that. I think the timing makes sense that with reflection, she would be able to share more about the ways that that experience wasn't amazing for her. And don't consider that lying. Coco: Yes! Well, and I now look, I know it's been a minute and I think this is just the perfect opportunity for me to bring up, you know, all of those thousands of hours I spent listening to Marc Maron interviews. Because so many times a theme that would run through those conversations would be a person saying at the height of my success, when I had gotten everything I had worked toward was my darkest moment. And that's like a human experience to kind of Ashby: And so that the salon piece, really recommend reading. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Coco: succeed externally and kind of get these like trappings of whatever you've been getting the book, writing an amazing book and getting a television show for a person whose career is like Lindy West does seem like this almost apex. And like it just absolutely makes sense for it to there's almost like an expectation gap where it would be impossible to feel kind of as happy and life is not like a television show. doesn't end. You know, it keeps going. And so, yeah, I didn't think it was weird at all that she didn't have a great experience. And then at the same time that like, I don't know, Shrill was kind of about something specific. It was not just about her, you know, romantic partnership. It was a lot of essays about, you know, what is it like to be a fat woman? What does it like to be fat in America? ⁓ And that was what I took away from it. And I don't think she was quote unquote like, Ashby: It was. Mm-mm. Coco: lying or misrepresenting those experiences. You know, the relationship was just a piece of it and she didn't like owe us every detail of that, ⁓ etc. I think a question that I had of coming out ⁓ of the book and like the discourse and thinking about just like Ashby: No. But that article has some stuff she some other feminists who actually have like a framework for this. Coco: you know, just kind of like, how can women be honest about their experiences, which is the thing that I crave so much without falling into some sort of trap, I guess. Ashby: Yeah. We're gonna get into that. Don't worry. That's major part of it. Coco: Yay! Ashby: Okay, so another part of the timeline I just want to cover really quick is actually a little bit of background on her husband, Ahamefile Aluo. So he's also 44. He's born in 1982. They got married in 2015. We understand from her writing that they had dated a little bit before 2011 and then they got back together around 2011. in a more serious, committed way. And then they get married in 2015. So they've been together for a long time at this point, a decades long relationship with this person. later in the piece, she's talking about when Gloria Steinem got married ⁓ headlines like anti-marriage icon finally ties the knot. Steinem eats her own words. ⁓ We're sent giddily out into the world to suggest that Steinem with civil ceremony had nullified everything she'd ever stood for. ⁓ And Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: She gives a quote ⁓ I think in one of her modern love interviews or maybe it's in the the Guardian review of her ⁓ that she writes ⁓ where basically she says that the reason they get married is because Aham wanted to give her ⁓ like proposal wedding experience and she talks about that in her article where she says ⁓ that her wedding was a dream and that she was really in a comfortable place with her body at that point. in the article she says, it was a case of false feminist death syndrome, a term coined around the same time by media critic Jennifer L. Posner to describe the phenomenon of media outlets declaring that feminism had died or was dead or was about to die or was long dead, but also still incredibly dangerous like a zombie in an ask me about my feminist agenda t-shirt. The last blowout funeral for feminism happened in the spring and summer of 2022. when the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision inspired several weeks of crocodile-tier headlines like, failure of the feminist industrial complex, is feminism in its flop area, and the Alzheimer, the future isn't female anymore. ⁓ And I love that profile of her wedding. It looks really joyous and beautiful, but she points out that Aham had been married twice before and divorced and had kids from previous marriage. So for him, he has a different relationship with marriage in general. And from what I understand, reading a little bit more about him, his first marriage ended in 2006 and then... Coco: Mm-hmm. You ⁓ Ashby: So ⁓ I really love this article because it's really tying all of this stuff together ⁓ And it's helping me to be like, there's gonna be another one, you guys. There's gonna be another that everybody decides is, Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ashby: I think he tells her right before they get married in 2015 that he'd been divorced twice. So somewhere between 2006 and 2015, I think he's married and divorced again. So just trying to like put in context, like the kind of speed I feel like his life is at is like a little bit different than the place that she's in. So I don't know exactly what year Aham has come out with. this is the death knell of feminism or something like that. and we should just ⁓ keep our eyes out for it. Yeah, yeah. Coco: Yeah Maybe that's what I'm going back to saying. People should read the book because what I appreciated about it was it's so human. She's existing in a bunch of contradictions and different ideas and I'm being pulled this way or that way And I just think, I'm like, thank you, you're human. Yeah. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. using different pronouns, but in the last few years Aham now uses they-them pronouns as well as he-him pronouns. ⁓ We'll do our best to be respectful of that. In the book she uses he-him pronouns because around the time of publishing he had switched to also using they-them pronouns. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But it ⁓ is very funny to then see that people are like, well, I guess that means that Lindy West never a feminist. And you're like, what are ⁓ you talking about? Yeah. ⁓ Quick plug for our Women's History Month episode, which gets into a lot topics around the expansiveness feminism Ashby: What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah, it's- In 2012, he worked on a sort of experimental pop opera that was actually, that he co-wrote with Lindy, that was called Now I'm Fine, that is a mix of music and storytelling and performance that they worked together on that was about the death of his father. Please. Coco: Okay. Mm-hmm. Ashby: So I want to take these at a time. So number one, she's lying to herself. ⁓ I super If you've read the book, she is intensely, brutally self-aware of this situation. Okay. Every interview that Lindy has given since then has made it very clear that she knows that people think that she's brainwashed and she's being very clear she's not. Coco: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Ashby: he apparently had never met his father. His father is a ⁓ black man from Nigeria ⁓ who ⁓ sounds like abandoned his mother and his sister ⁓ and that they only got to talk I think once before he passed away in 2006. That's the same year that his first marriage ⁓ ⁓ he had ⁓ two kids at that point. ⁓ So Coco: Okay. Ashby: I think a really interesting thing that she added on her podcast is she's like, guys, if this were true, why would we, it would be, if I'm just deluding myself, right? Then wouldn't it be easier for him to just leave me? Obviously there's something there if they're all still together. She's been with Roya now for five years. She's been with Aham for over a decade. I feel like those things are related to, it sounds like he's also working through his own trauma about his relationship with his parents. And that's what the majority of his performance work has been about. In 2019, he works on a similar experimental performance called Susan. That's about his mom, white woman from Kansas. And I believe it's that production that he meets their third partner, Roya. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: is pretty, she could have also written a divorce memoir and it would have sold just fine, but she didn't. So I do think there has to be some truth in where she ended up arriving in making this relationship work. And I don't think that she's lying to herself. So here is a, go ahead. No, no. Coco: Yeah. Yeah, right. Ashby: and that they have both been writers and artists in residence in the sort of Pacific Northwest region. And ⁓ she's a producer on some of his work. And there's actually a documentary that I have not watched that Lindy helped with as well called Thin Skin that's ⁓ kind of about the of making this and Coco: That is like the distinction, sorry, but it's like the book takes place in like 2021. It is now 2026. So like there has been this five years since, you know, she's gone through the experiences that she's capturing in the book. Ashby: Mm-hmm. That's right. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: Yeah. part of what it's about is a condition that Aham had developed where some of his skin was actually dissolving. So I feel like he's had a really, you know, he's had a really interesting but very different life. And I just want to just put that in context because I do think it's like important to understand everybody here as like whole people. ⁓ And it's not to excuse how anybody treats anyone, but I Coco: ⁓ Ashby: So ⁓ you go to page 254 Coco: Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: the first paragraph. Coco: Yes. Okay, Lindy West. Was I actually concerned that I was sidestepping something important here, or was I just anticipating the criticisms of friends and strangers who are hurt or angry or projecting some wounds of their own who wanted Aham and me to get a divorce? It wasn't lost on me that at the turning point of this mission, the thing my true self discovered she wanted looked an awful lot like what Aham had been angling for since the beginning. Ashby: have the sense that they are both processing their life and their experiences and the intersection of how the world treats each of them and their identities at the same time. So I just want to say that I think Lindy and Aham have a relationship that is probably not typical of most married couples. Like they very much seem to be artists and friends. Yeah, that feels like a really prominent part of it. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Was I actually attracted to Roya or was I just relieved to find a loophole to let me stay in my fucked up marriage because I was too scared to be alone? Was this situation healthy or sick, real or fake, progress or regress? Was I strong or pathetic, straight or queer, a woman who could discern her own feelings or a baby who needed to be told when to get a divorce? Am I happy in a different dimension? Is there ethical consumption under capitalism? As the poet Yazzeen Bey once wrote, Yeah, I was gonna say artists feels very prominent. Uh-huh. Why do I need an ID to get an ID? If I had an ID, I wouldn't need ID! Ashby: the third person in their Roya, ⁓ this is the person we know the least about. ⁓ really Yeah, this, she's definitely goes on a journey here, but she's incredibly self-aware of what's happening. I don't read this ⁓ as a who's just totally talked herself into it she's really considered all the, all the different angles I mean, we don't read the whole quote, but like later she's basically like, what if I just don't need to decide? What if I just see what happens? don't know that much about her more than is shared in adult braces and like a few other places. She seems to be a private person. I understand that she's had a Persian descent and an artist and writer in her own right. And that's about it. That's all the information we have about that person. just that, yeah. Then that's fine. Then that's okay. So I think we'll mostly because Coco: Mm-hmm. And if they're a private person, then I'm kind of like, that's, I respect that. Yeah. Ashby: And some of the other discourse I've seen about it, especially from writers has been like, she's writing from the messy middle, you guys. She's not writing from a place of, now I've lived 80 years, I'm reflecting on my life and I've wrapped it up in a nice, neat little narrative for you. She's literally writing from a place of, I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if the decision I'm making in real time is a good one or not. I don't know how it fits with my values or how it fits with the public's perception of me. ⁓ So she's just... just a fact that Lindy does have more of the public reach. mean, she's had a Hulu show, she's had multiple books. ⁓ a lot of us who came of age in the time that she's on Jezebel, we do have kind of like a parasocial relationship with Lindy. So I do think that as much as I want to be respectful of Roya and Aham's side of the story, we just don't have theirs. We just only have Lindy's ⁓ go off of. And yeah. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: totally honest about that. And that's why I have a hard time with, she is lying to herself. Coco: Yeah, if they want to write their memoir, like, you know, that's kind of... And at this point, people would probably buy them. Ashby: They're more than welcome to. okay, so that's like ⁓ rough background. Now, let's talk a little bit about like some of the ⁓ ⁓ to it. So there is a lot of think pieces that come out ⁓ this book ⁓ published. yeah. ⁓ And then the other ⁓ piece that I picked up on is, the idea ⁓ of she's embodying all the bad faith arguments about the woke left, right? And that something people's identities, people's sexualities, Coco: That's like an understatement. Like, I don't know, the ThinkPeace industrial complex ⁓ really exploded. And because it's also, we also live in now in the land of Substack. It's like one of those rooms of like the never-ending mirrors that just keeps going. Ashby: how people try to live their actual values, that something about that is, Boy, it really ground, really ground this one up. I know. Coco: a performance. Ashby: like, ⁓ yeah, that's performative or inauthentic. That's what I was looking for. That it's all virtue signaling, and ⁓ these are not strong opinions deeply held. That these are just inauthentic identities that people put on a little show. Yes. think there's a good sum, like the New York Times, all the major outlets have gotten as many headlines out of this as they could. I think this sort of secondary one has a nice quote that kind of sums up what the public discourse has been about. So I'm going to do the chat real quick. Maybe we'll have you read this. Coco: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. Ashby: I don't get this. I would say go back and listen to like all of If Books Could Kill but this is a weird thing ⁓ that the right is obsessed with that the left doesn't actually in what they're doing, that they're just in a constant quest for deflecting criticism. Coco: Why are so many people obsessed with Lindy West's polyamory? Is Lindy West a feminist? Is she happy? Everyone has an opinion. Much of the reaction to Ms. West's new book has been focused on adjudicating whether she can be truly happy in a throuple when non-monogamy was her husband's idea and whether her happiness is consistent with her feminism. Voices on the right claim she is a victim of millennial feminism run amok. This is a funny ⁓ territory to think about. that whole idea It's also like the center that thinks this about the left. ⁓ And it's very funny because there's also like the, accusation is a confession a little bit where you're like, the center kind of doesn't stand for anything. ⁓ Ashby: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Coco: and voices on the left claim her situation is a consequence of her feminism not going far enough. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's one way to sum it up. There's kind of like the two flavors. I think one of the more famous pieces has come from our old friends at the Atlantic. Known polemicists, the Atlantic. Coco: So it must be impossible that other people their values are like really kind of who they are and are like very true ⁓ kind all the way down. I think that when you have Lindy considering the identities of her partners, she's really considering the identities of her partners. ⁓ And she's also thinking about how lived experience has informed. ⁓ man. I have mostly not gotten triggered by The Atlantic, but I did get triggered by the Ezra Klein show recently. So I'm just saying my record is not great at knowing my triggers and avoiding them. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: Her responses, the way she shows up in her romantic relationships and her profession. So ⁓ like kind of keeping all of these things in mind. ⁓ Ashby: It's patchy. So the biggest one that I think most people have glommed on to as like the biggest critique is ⁓ from the Atlantic from Helen Lewis, ⁓ who writes the death of millennial feminism is what she calls this article. ⁓ She says, Lindy West has unwittingly written the obituary for an era. ⁓ So we'll get to this, but here's a nice... Coco: At the time, there are parts where I feel like Aham does kind of ⁓ weaponizes a tiny bit ⁓ in ⁓ the conversations that show up in the book. ⁓ ⁓ I can criticize that and not sort of say that none of this is real. Ashby: in Yeah. Coco: I don't know. Nice try, Helen. Nice try. Ashby: totally know what you mean. there's a part of the book, I don't have the exact part in front of me, but it is the most quoted part where ⁓ feels like he's just not cut out for monogamy because he's had at least two failed marriages ⁓ and that cheating was a part of those he's made it very to her in their relationship, getting back together, that non-monogamy is... But here's a quote from that article on this. I read adult braces, my instinctive reaction was, I don't believe you. To me, it seemed obvious that Aluo, who is mixed race, has successfully used Wes's desire to be progressive against her. He believed that monogamy was at its root a system of ownership. I had to admit that perhaps I didn't feel it as keenly as a white person. That's a quote from Lindy's book. Aluo had, this is back to Helen Lewis. Coco: Yes. Ashby: going to be the only way that this will work for him. Okay. So all that up to that point. Okay. Right. That's understandable. part of what he says is ⁓ I don't know if like has a direct quote ⁓ necessarily. but ⁓ it's yeah. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a conversation where feels like it's ⁓ similar to ownership. Alou had also rebranded himself as a non-binary he-they, perhaps to shrug off any suggestion that he was acting like every harem patrolling patriarch in history. ⁓ yeah. Skipping ahead a little. Yeah. Yeah. the reaction to the book has been fascinating, by which I mean that basically no one else believes Wes's account of her polyamorous relationship either. End quote. Thoughts. Coco: Honestly, I'm fine with, I'm on board with all that. Yeah. ⁓ there's more. We can put it in the sub stack. We can find the exact quote. Ashby: then Lindy adds to that that as a white person, maybe the concept of ownership isn't something that's particularly as acute for her Okay, ⁓ there's probably a lot of people for whom that's a stretch, ⁓ but think it's a reasonable thing Coco: see this is like my I don't know what's happened to my brain but it's like I saw the name Helen Lewis and I was like no but then I had to like go look up who she was I was like which one which which is this out there this kind of ⁓ conservative but like kind of hiding conservative and yeah I just think there's so much it's such a rich text because yes there is like something in the book that Ashby: ⁓ huh. Coco: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Aham kind of says, you know, that he equates kind of monogamy or kind of enforced monogamy to something akin to slavery. There is like, there is something in the book where he is saying that. And yet what I think that's one person to having that conversation in their partnership. And what Helen does is I feel like uses like, it's like, there's like this white normie fear that like people of color who go by different pronouns Ashby: for her to sort of accurately consider whether there's things about his experience that she can't know. Now, ⁓ given the other information that we it's hard for us with our lived experiences as like women to not feel like, okay, is this an unethical way of positioning his... Coco: Yes. are trying to trick and swindle the world. Like there's something so rich there and it's like, I think these are like some Portland ass people. And if you've met some Portland people, you'd be like, yeah, this is Portland. I don't know. Or Seattle. Ashby: experience in a way that is designed to manipulate her be more sympathetic to his case. I think we ⁓ all, as women, are totally little bit biased perspective and all, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is, ⁓ wow, this is gonna be a great segue. So Helen Lewis Buddy at the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper. Tyler Austin Harper has their own ⁓ take on it, which is ⁓ sort of a more, just a more ⁓ pretentious... ⁓ Coco: That's the thing that we're not setting aside. And it's like, we kind of exist, this book exists in a bigger context of what we have seen a lot of, which is kind of like a certain kind of liberal guy who then learns the language of feminism and therapy and then uses that in a pretty toxic relationship with women. And so I'm not saying that that's even like what Aham specifically did. I'm just saying that like, laughs already overwhelmed. I'm sorry. Ashby: Yes. erudite take, but it's basically the same take called the Horseshoe Theory of Polyamory. So I'll just put this quote in for you to read that. But you're starting to see a theme emerge here. Yes. Yeah. Coco: Great. Mm-hmm. sometimes we get a little bit like, ding ding, I've heard this before, this like red flag pops up for us because we can recognize that experience. Great. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: The Horseshoe Theory of Polyamory. Lindy West's new memoir describes a strangely politicized version of nonmonogamy. ⁓ by Tyler Austin Harper. Indeed, in many ways, West's performatively anti-white, unpatriotic, ⁓ cosmopolitan. She lives in the woods. ⁓ Sorry. Ashby: a lot of things can be true at the same time. I think it's true that Lindy could have some blind spots about race. I also think it's possible Aham may have a mix of motivations behind, how he is positioned monogamy and polyamory in their own relationship. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: Okay, yeah, I know. Coco: And Cosmopolitan version of polyamory is the blue state mirror image of tradwifery, in its various forms can fetishize whiteness, nostalgic Americana, and often Christian, often Christians in parentheses, nationalism. Both romantic trends have adherence to spin their retreat from status quo romance as a kind of liberation from modern expectations. Yeah, I don't wanna make it sound like I think Aham specifically is being manipulative. I'm actually taking him at his word that that is like his thought process and that he sincerely means that. I don't mean it is manipulative. and who position their marital arrangement as the logical extension of a deeper political project. West's version of polyamory seems to be not the antithesis of closed-minded traditionalism, but a strange bedfellow, both a bit pathological, both over-politicized, both a kind of engineered delusion. Ashby: Yeah, but I think that... based on his actions, I do think there's a pretty fair read that he's not honest. ⁓ know? she says a of times that he explicitly violates her wishes ⁓ on some of these things. So some of the people that he connects Yeah. You see what I mean? It's like, it's just more words, but... Coco: I kind of am almost like having a hard time. I feel like the first part I was like, I'm locked in with where you're coming from. And then, yeah, he used a lot of words. Ashby: Yeah, so ⁓ here's a so these these folks have an obvious like sort of polemicist knee-jerk reaction to the idea of polyamory as some kind of political stance. I feel like if you wanted to, you could swap out, you know, polyamory with say veganism and they would have the exact same thing to say, which is like, how dare these people connect their political values with like... are not part of their agreement, So there are places where he does breach her trust, which kind of ⁓ cast a bit of doubt ⁓ on how he brings this to their relationship in the first place. ⁓ Coco: Yeah Ashby: what they actually do and live with in their personal lives. Okay. So they're having a real reaction to the idea that, ⁓ Lindy and Hum are kind of exploring in the book, like where this fits with their own values about, pushing back on, you know, patriarchal systems or racist systems and whether or not there's something about monogamy that plays into that. Now you can think about that, whatever you want, but, ⁓ Coco: Yeah. Ashby: So from that perspective, there's plenty of squishy middle there, but I think so much is made about this that it's clearly more about what people like Helen Lewis want to see in it than is actually there for them. I think And it has been turned into the central prism of like their whole relationship. And I don't think it's that. Coco: Yes, Ashby: I think it's fascinating that ⁓ these folks like immediately sees on on this as yes exactly. Coco: and It's like they're almost like opportunists though. They're like, I hate this kind of person. I'm so delighted to have this to hate on. It's like anytime like a college student does something anywhere, the people who write the think pieces are like, finally, I get to say, I hate these blue haired elites or whatever. Yeah. Ashby: Yes, exactly. Exactly. But I want to add another one, which is, listen, people who are into polyamory are also kind of not fans of this approach. So here is a quote from Coco: That's been like one of the main loud like they do not represent us Ashby: Yes, this is not this is not something that everybody necessarily agrees with. ⁓ So this one is from ⁓ Harper's Bazaar by ⁓ Ashley Ray, and it's called Lindy West and the Trap of Perfect Polyamory. And she says, Adult braces uses imagination to make its narrative seem like something bigger than it is. It wants to present its open marriage as an enlightening political endeavor for those involved. look, he does do some shitty things. it's fair then to look back at a person who's done things that were transgressions and be like, hmm, was everything that he said, ⁓ in good faith or were there things... That is the nature of betrayal. It you to recast all the conversations you had leading up to that to be like, ⁓ how can I trust what this person said? So... Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: It wants to be the story of three people who found a perfect love in an imperfect way. But if you remove the politics and performance, it's about Wes's difficult journey to put her life back together around the person who tore it apart in the first place. If she were monogamous, it would be the story of a woman who stayed with a cheating husband. But Wes doesn't share the grit required to make these decisions. Instead, you get fart jokes and a woman insisting her husband is worth it because he's hot, skinny, and brilliant, and she's worthless. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: Those are facts that are there on the page and to my knowledge he hasn't disputed them. You know, maybe he has a different interpretation of them, but that's what we have to go off of. But I do think that that one little passage of her kind of contemplating how her whiteness and his blackness plays into this, so much hay is made of that and I agree with you. Lindy West is a smart ⁓ and self-aware writer. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: you'd be concerned if someone said this is why she stayed in her monogamous marriage too. Now, listen, that I think is the most uncharitable ⁓ read ⁓ of where Lindy ultimately lands. But ⁓ I ⁓ think it's just starting kind show that no matter what ⁓ of you're invested in, people seem to really need to ⁓ villainize all people, the individual people involved. Coco: Mm-hmm. she's also writing in this book, though, she's very self-aware in the sense that she's like smart and she can map all these things out. And also, she's kind of writing about like Ashby: something to think about. ⁓ And then I a third take that I honestly think doesn't go anywhere ⁓ is ⁓ is whole Slate Scotchy Cole debacle. So ⁓ let's talk about that. So Scotchy Cole a writer ⁓ and podcaster and producer at Slate. ⁓ She wrote ⁓ a profile of Lindy early on, she goes out. Coco: her self-aware blind spots, like in the book itself. It's like a big part of it that's kind of coming through. Ashby: Yes. Coco: Okay. Ashby: Well, okay, that's what I was trying to tie this to is that a lot of these, this argument that she's the embodiment of the deluded woke left, right? Centers a lot also on not just that passage, but they try to make a connection between her views there and her, what they call her like in curiosity and prejudice about the middle of America. And I just got to say, Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ashby: to see Lindy in person at her cabin and interview her about the book. In the piece that she published for Slate, she notes that she has a call with Aham as well as Roya to get some input both the quotes that they give and the context that she gives around it, it's clear that what they're talking about is like Lindy's relationship with her fans and the public. Coco: Yeah! Ashby: Those are two different things and they are not related. Okay. And it is also not what is in the book. So the most common one that they cite is the interaction that she has, for example, with the guy who sells her the bee daddy's honey, right? And everyone is using this as a piece of evidence next to this conversation with Aham about race and monogamy as a way to just be like, look at... That's basically the extent of the amount that Aham or Roya are quoted in the piece. The piece is very much focused on Lindy. It is a profile of Lindy and it is called Lindy West's How Not To Guide to Polyamory in a Long Career of Sharing Herself Online Adult Braces Is West's Most Human Memoir Yet. I think she gets some... Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: Look at how she is sort of imprisoned by her wokeness and she's so curious about other people. When I read the Be Daddy conversation, she's incredibly self-aware. She's making fun of the fact that this is, it's a joke. This is her making fun of the fact that there is this kind of like loop that you go through about how... Coco: Yes, it's a joke! Ashby: really interesting and nuanced quotes from Lindy, from Lindy's friends. And I think that Scotchy, who's written her own book about her own marriage, is pretty clear about her bias, what she has in common with Lindy and what she doesn't. So I did not read this as particularly scathing in either way. It was a pretty even-handed, I thought, look at this book, the relationship that they have, the how are all of my interactions ethical, even when you realize how ridiculous that is? in a, this is her ruminating on that, that whole thing exactly. And they have taken this as like evidence that ⁓ she's just been totally brainwashed into a place of pure non-functioning Coco: Right. Ashby: the kind of parasocial relationships from fans, the expectations of women who are memoirists in this genre. So here's just a quick quote from that, which was also an interview with Lindy. I'll have you read. Coco: Mm-hmm. And this is where I'm like, you guys are copying each other. Like you guys are not doing your own original thinking ⁓ Like the about race, I read the book and I was like, hmm, ⁓ I had like sit with that for a minute, some of that stuff. ⁓ But the bee daddy ⁓ or ⁓ even other little mo, ⁓ I did take ⁓ one second thinking about it. And then I'm like, it's such a, it's like, ⁓ you guys all latched onto this example and what someone interpreted it to mean. Ashby: Yes. Yeah. I was not taking that. Yeah. So here's what I want to say about that. ⁓ actually, what we see in the book is that She's not doing what the Ezra Klines of the world think is so interesting, which is ⁓ she's not jumping out at every roadside diner in Florida with her microphone saying, Coco: Much of Adult Braces reads like a divorce memoir for the elder millennials raised on Jezebel and the Golden Age of Twitter, something an Elizabeth Gilbert or Roxane Gay might release to lighten up group chats everywhere. In the end, doesn't get a divorce. Instead, she opens her marriage up to something she previously feared. By the book's end, she has fallen in love with one of her husband's two, quote unquote, secret girlfriends, and the three move in together. Yeah, that's, yeah. How dare you? Ashby: tell me why you voted for Trump. I want to understand you. She's not doing that, you guys, because that's not what this is. This is her doing her own road trip across the country. But the criticism that she's getting is that she's labeled everyone a racist redneck. ⁓ And that isn't true at all. That's just that she's not doing the sort of fake middle of America ⁓ thing. ⁓ And then she quotes Lindy next. Coco: Should I get a divorce because other people want me to? says to me while she drives us through the freezing rain. I feel like I got the benefits of a divorce without leaving. I get to stay, have the marriage, and then also be free. Yeah. Yeah. Ashby: I mean, yeah. So this piece comes out and then right after this, ⁓ Lindy, Aham, and Roya each write an email back to Scotchy with their thoughts about the piece. According to Scotchy, ⁓ email from Lindy was very polite but sounded disappointed. And then Roya and Aham's were incredibly rude. I think Aham's response in particular has gotten a lot of She's not on the goddamn campaign trail for NBC. And I think that's what they're really mad about. is, yeah. Coco: This idea that we are not supposed to have an impression of red America and how we might be received there is crazy. Ashby: Right? Right. I think reasonable blowback because it is just so unjustified ⁓ to anyone who's actually read the piece and read Lindy's book. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's crazy. First of all, what she's talking about is driving through parts of the country where random farms have paid to have 20-foot billboards put up that say like Trump's America 2024. This is 2021, okay? Like she's making a reasonable inference based on very recent information. ⁓ ⁓ of all, I think that that's... ⁓ But basically, ⁓ if you want to go read the whole thing in full, it's on the Pieces page. ⁓ So it says, update 23rd, the weekend after we published this profile of Lindy, her partners emailed about their displeasure with result. Coco: prejudice that get to be applied to any person of a marginalized identity and then that that person is supposed to go into these kind of explicitly not safe environments and then just be like I'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt is like cuckoo banana pants don't ask that of people who are in an interracial racial marriage who have been a known feminist on the internet who have had death threats over and over again Ashby: Yeah. Yes. Yes. It is. It is. And she... Mm-hmm. Yes. Coco: against them. do not—this is a person who has had actual threats of violence against them. Like, it's—that's nuts! Ashby: In the first place, don't think she's unreasonably prejudiced. In the second place, she actually does interact a lot of people and she has really lovely things to say about them. So that's just not true. There's about 20 more anecdotes like the bee daddy where she has perfectly nice interactions with people. There's even a part of the book where she says, Coco: Yep. ⁓ my God. Ashby: She wanted to interact with people more, but there's a couple things that are hindering her. One is that she's incredibly shy. Two, she's lived in a fat body her entire life and it hasn't always gone well. She has these interactions where she's not sure what the other person's motivation is. She's a little ⁓ She's a little on guard about how people talk to her. ⁓ She goes on a hike at a certain point and she's really concerned that people are going to either be condescendingly encouraging to her ⁓ or actually bully her those are the real things that she's experienced. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: she's initially a little bit wary of people because she's had certain experiences. And what I really took from the book is how difficult that must have been for her in 2021 to try to overcome this. And in the places where she is able to overcome it, she has really nice interactions. Like, you know, a lady who tells her she quit her job and is newly divorced and is traveling across the country herself and loving it. And, you know, she connects with the lady that's like the Airbnb owner. She has these nice moments. And then the other thing is that, Coco: Yes! Ashby: Guys, it's not about her being woke. It's about her being ADHD millennial. So what she actually says is that this has to do, it's the wrong one. It's because she has undiagnosed ADHD. So on page 81, she talks about how this was a failure to plan. She says, my first full day on the road revealed a flaw in my plan. Coco: You're using the wrong stereotypes about millennials. Ashby: With my obsession in the symbolism of driving all the way from Seattle to Key West and back, I had not considered the practical, physical, real reality that Seattle to Key West and back is really fucking far to drive. And if you allot yourself a month, one of the signature joys of a road trip is spontaneity, choosing beautiful, but indirect routes, stopping for lunch ⁓ or taking an impulsive detour off the highway. I didn't leave myself enough time for any of those hijinks. to make it to Florida and back in time and return the van, I would have to drive six hours a day, often nine or more." ⁓ And so, she knows that a road trip is about talking to people, but she simply failed to plan for the trip to include enough time to actually get to know people. So no, she's not doing two to three day farm stays in Kansas and just getting a feel for the people. is the wrong stereotype. she even has places where she's not even sure that she reserved a hotel room Coco: ⁓ think I was not frustrated by a lot of the things that people have latched onto. I was frustrated by the ADHD. ⁓ I'm sorry to my friend, ⁓ I was like, ⁓ do mean you don't have enough money? ⁓ Ashby: No! I I was too! Exactly. Coco: do think she does actually have a lot of curiosity for the people she encounters. She is interested in Just kind ⁓ of, talking who are these people, what are the funny moments that happen along the way. ⁓ And a real lack of pretentiousness or bougieness in these things. She the simple things. She's like, give me a great sticky bun. ⁓ Yeah. Ashby: Yes. Mm-mm. Yeah, and so here's another one from page 242 where she explicitly says the opposite of what all of these people are saying, which is, It's not hard to fall in love with the South. Hot, thick air, golden light, potent community. It's naive and condescending for liberal white people to characterize the South as a racist white place to be shunned. The South is a black place. is a tremendously alive place. Like she has a lot of these interactions. And here's the other thing I want to say is that she's honest when they're not that fun. She's not on a mission here to paint middle America as just good old folks or whatever. She's accurately reporting what her experiences are. And sometimes, you know, like in the next part, she gets her nails done by a lady who talks too much and takes too long. And it like wasn't fun. Coco: Yeah. Yeah! like way too long. Ashby: the other thing I want to point out is that, guys, this is 2021. She has passages where she talks about mask mandates and she doesn't know which states, you they have, you wear masks indoors or not. ⁓ 2021 is not nothing. 2021 is not nothing to be driving across country. We really and truly were divided Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: on elements about our physical safety, especially as a fat person, in terms of how these different states handled the pandemic. It was extremely reasonable for her to be assessing in every public place, what kind of people am I around? Is it safe for me to wear a mask or am I gonna be further harassed? So I just think we're all forgetting for one second how everyone was actually feeling in 2021, one year after the pandemic. So putting that one to bed. Coco: Yeah. Yeah. It was like was compelling about the book to me was like, she just is talking about how her experiences ⁓ are the exact reasons why she's having the specific turmoil she's having with this issue of polyamory in her relationship. And it's like, those are not ⁓ our all same experiences. You know, she's talking about like, Ashby: Yes, that's exactly right. Coco: her own lived experiences and the way that that's given her, either in some ways more self-esteem or more confidence, and then other ways, true lack of self-esteem and lack of a feeling of safety in the world, which is kind of earned in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, it just makes it much more difficult to parse out than it is, you know. your three hot takes that you've articulated for us. Ashby: so this is the last one and it's a little bit longer, but I wanna get in ⁓ to a little more of the sort of like feminism angle of the pylon, okay? And one of the things I think is really fascinating is in that conversation about ownership with Aham, she's really willing to take a step back and like consider maybe there's things about that experience that don't resonate with her because of her, because she's not a black person, right? But I do think it's really fascinating. Coco: Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah! Ashby: that she does not immediately make the link that actually, historically, monogamous marriage has been a system of ownership for women. it is interesting that that component of her identity doesn't come up in this, where she doesn't seem to think of herself as a person that could be oppressed. within this marriage. She thinks of herself as a person that could be accidentally doing the oppressing. And she even says how much of that comes from her own insecurity, that she is worried that the public and Aham, you know, have an impression that he could essentially do better and that she's like trapping him in some way. And that this is like a real, that's the stereotype and that's a real insecurity that she has. So. Coco: Wow. Right. That's the stereotype. Ashby: I think if you've known a person for a really long time and you approach them about polyamory, I do think there's some responsibility on Aham to think through whether some of this stuff is going to connect with those insecurities for her. ⁓ And so that I do think is interesting that in her own defense, she doesn't say, well, hang on a minute. Coco: Yeah, yep, yes. Ashby: we can come up with a kind of non-traditional marriage that doesn't make either of us feel owned or oppressed and not pointing out the fact that historically actually marriage has been ⁓ used as a of property to disenfranchise women and just not something that comes to mind for her. ⁓ So I want to get into that a little bit more because I do think that matters a lot into how ⁓ Coco: Wow. yet in the discourse. You're really, you're really making my brain buzz. Ashby: I think. I think that that's what the part that was kind of bothering me when it was so clear to me that there are risks for everyone in every kind of relationship. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: So then related to that is that she lied to us about her perfect fairytale life. This is the other. that her fans are disappointed, she talks about worrying about disappointing people who see a lot in her story. ⁓ and that that also plays into her own conception of her body, if she ever were to say, and she goes a lot in more detail about that, if she were to ever say to healthcare providers, hey, you know, I'm feeling a certain way about my body, she's worried that they won't take that Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: in holistically and instead take that to mean, okay, let's fix this thing about you that she's worked really hard to embrace, but at the same time, she's allowed to feel some ambivalence about it. Yeah, I did too. Coco: Yeah. loved those parts of the book. I really loved it. And I think like, it's like we were kind of piling on when a woman has really shared honestly about her experience. And it's like, don't we want more women to feel safe enough to share honestly about our experience? And then maybe culturally, no, we don't want them to share it, but I do. Ashby: ⁓ so you, you've teed it up perfectly for me, which is she lied to us about her perfect fairytale life. And I want to say, disagree. I actually think what people are mad about is that she kept telling the truth about her life and she would not let people just take her happily ever after story and go home. And I think that this has to do with our weird preoccupation that women in public life need to either fit three Coco: Glad to be of service. Mm-hmm. Ashby: three ⁓ figure narratives. You're single and you've never been married and you're looking for love. You're divorced and you're ⁓ back at it ⁓ happier than ever. ⁓ you're married and you need to be quiet. And that's it. The only public marriages that are good are the ones we know nothing about. And I think we should really think about that. What it means that for us, Coco: Mm-hmm. Stella got her groove back. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: A person to be in a happy marriage means that we know nothing about it. And if we know anything about it, we know too much. What does that mean when we basically silence all women who are married and when they try to tell us more about that, if they're not going to get divorced from that person, essentially society tells them to shut the fuck up. What does that mean for regular women? Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: when they're like, nobody wants to hear about what goes on in my marriage because the only option is if anything is not perfect, then divorce him and get your groove back. Those are the only two paths. That's pretty rough. Don't you think that like most people's are more complicated than that? Yeah. That's the rub. So on to page 231 in the book, she's telling Sam and Kristen about it. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah! Yeah! I mean, that's exactly, exactly. Yeah. Ashby: and about the situation in their marriage. And I think that conversation kind of sums up kind of where people are. So if you want to correct that open. Coco: Heidi. Ashby: So Sam is Sam Irby, who she goes to visit, and then Kristin is her wife. Coco: And am I starting at, held it together? Ashby: Yes. Coco: held it together for the first day, but at a Greek restaurant on day two, Sam's wife, Kirsten, asked about a hom and I extruded the whole story like one long Turd of shit. ⁓ you know, she's ⁓ I hadn't told most my friends the details of my relationship issues, I guess because I wasn't planning to let the relationship go. It didn't feel cathartic for people who loved me to hate a hom on my behalf. It felt worse. I didn't hate a hom. I loved a hom. Ashby: ⁓ haha Coco: That was the whole problem. So Sam knew the basics, but not how bad it had gotten. Ashby: Yeah, and then she goes on to say, you know, they were perfect, of course, appropriately horrified and validating without getting vindictive in my defense. They didn't make me feel stupid for insisting my marriage was special and worth saving, but they were clear eyed about the ways that Aham had fucked up. Jessie sat down her hero with extra tzatziki and shook her head. No, babe, she said. That's not how polyamory is supposed to work. But this is how friendship is supposed to work, though. I remember thinking, why am I so private all the time? Why do I keep secrets? ⁓ Why can't I just let go and let people catch me? So ⁓ this whole passage to me like illustrates I don't think any us can underestimate when you introduce the idea of like how the public is surveying your relationship. That distorts everything ⁓ and I think it's really sad. that so many women, think we even know in our own lives, feel such tremendous pressure to not share anything about the hard times in their marriages or their relationships if they don't plan on leaving that person. And I think we should really think about what that means. It means that we're probably helping co-sign a lot of things that we wouldn't want happening to our friends by not having any room. Coco: Right. Ashby: to hold that stuff, you know? Like we're gonna need to find a way to let people keep telling the truth about their lives without going directly to a place of he ain't shit, get rid of, do you know what I mean? Like we need to create a little bit of space for there to be complexities in marriage while at the same time we obviously want to support our friends and make sure that they're not in situations that are bad. So. Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ashby: I like the story about her telling Sam and Kristen their reactions because ⁓ I think it kind of is a good example that when this whole conversation came out I was telling you there's a darkness that surrounds this to me. ⁓ And I think it has to with the fact that we all sort of know that we don't talk about what it takes to stay together because marriage as a project is just not compatible. Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah! Ashby: with public life and how we present ourselves as individuals. Marriage requires a kind of like self-sublimation, cooperation, and there's not a great way to tell that in a sort of individualistic society because we don't know what to do with women that are married and in public because I think our whole conception of marriage is that it is private. It's a third rail. It's none of our business. And there's just, it... Coco: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah! Right. Ashby: that's a really scary place. Yeah. Coco: Which is also like the logic of like, don't get involved if someone's like experiencing domestic violence. Like there's like a, there's something about it that has been used in a really violent, oppressive way towards women. And I just totally agree. Like I think that there's something about this discourse where Lindy's like, I am happy. I'm just not like perfectly happy in the exact way I thought I would be and that you wanted for me. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: And now it's like the existing happiness gets negated because it doesn't fit the picture. ⁓ And I think that's something that we all like relate to. Like whatever compromises that you're like making, like ⁓ everyone is, everyone is. Ashby: Right. Yeah. Coco: As a person who got married later than a lot of my friends, there was a time where you're with your friends and you're all dating and you're all really openly talking about your experiences that you have in romantic relationships. And then those things just go quiet. There's just something about it that goes kind of quiet. And I think now that we're a little bit deeper into this era of life, there's some stuff that's maybe more open. And I just think that there's... Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Coco: you need the strength of your female friends to talk through. I like what her friend says. like, actually though, that's actually not ethical. And they can say that, and that doesn't mean I'm invalidating your whole life But you can still have those people that can say, wait, I want you to help process this experience that you're going through because I do want the best for you. And that doesn't mean you should live the way I want you to live. It's like, I just want the best for you. overall. Ashby: I don't think we have to be so all or nothing about everything. I think we can have some recognition that relationships are complicated and especially if you're going to be married to someone for your whole life, ⁓ there's going to be times where you each hurt each other and there's to be times where when you talk to your friends about it, they're friends with you. They're going to obviously only see it from that perspective and they are going to empathize with the fact that you're hurt. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: and that this person hurt them. But this kind of goes back to my other thing of like, I think as a society, just don't, we don't have a good process for resolving conflict and for making amends. Like what we have is anytime anyone does anything wrong or is wrong or hurts us, we have a cut that person off, ⁓ you're better off without them. And like sometimes that is the right answer, but. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: It's not always the right answer. There is a chance sometimes for people to make amends and for their relationships to grow closer. But I'm just saying we don't have public language around this. We don't have models of this. All we have is like, we were saying this in our Lily Allen episode, at the end of Lemonade, we all think she's gonna leave his ass and she doesn't. And we're like, well, what do we do with this shit? Coco: Absolutely. ⁓ Yeah. You Ashby: It's like we don't have a, we don't have a box. We don't have a narrative box to put what, how do you work this stuff out? So instead what we've said is just don't talk about it. But I did listen to a podcast about this that I really liked, which is a bunch of Australian ladies on a pop culture podcast called Shameless. And they have a episode or two on this called Reluctantly Entering Polyamory. And they're all really, Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: friends and they all really have like a nice heart-to-heart there about how much they actually share with each other about their own marriages and one of the hosts is like I don't talk about I don't talk about my marriage at all because to me as soon as I do as soon as I share that stuff ⁓ it it ⁓ my relationships my friends how my friends see my husband I have to think of my marriage as like a silent private place because if I start to share outside of it I know that Coco: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Ashby: I'm going down a path of letting other people's perceptions influence that. ⁓ And that goes back to our, having a boyfriend embarrassing now and the hetero fatalism, which is there's an effort to hide that stuff on purpose because there's only the two things you can be. Coco: Hmm. Yeah! Uh-huh. Ashby: Okay, you can't be out here on Instagram being married and selling your thirst traps. Like nobody wants to thirst after somebody's nag wife. They only want to thirst after someone that they assume is either very single or and, ⁓ you know, having their girl summer. ⁓ it's difficult for us to a woman living a very public life and having a very private marriage. Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: hard And I wanted to say that what crystallized this for me was trying to to catch up on Summer House. Why is Lindsay saying she's embarrassed about the Carl and their engagement thing? I Okay, I was watching all these clips to catch up on Lindsay and Carl's backstory. Coco: Yes. Ashby: And then there's the thing where Lindsay has her bridal shower and he brings her flowers. And then shortly after he breaks up with her on camera and ends their engagement. And she's saying in a lot of the reunion stuff and in interviews that she's really embarrassed and humiliated. I'm like, why? She didn't do anything wrong. why does she feel embarrassed? I was really trying to get to the bottom of that. Like, what is it about? Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: our relationships with men when they don't go well, why do we take that on ourselves? but getting married is seen as like a milestone in a woman's life and it is an endorsement for women in public life. Like think about ⁓ the absolute fanfare that goes around the like ⁓ girl boss that we've all been rooting for, know, Taylor or Kate Middleton. When they're about to get the public goes... crazy because this is like a big deal. This is the arc. This is Sex in the City. It's you go from, plucky ingenue who's out there trying to figure herself out. You have your single years and then what's the end of that story? You find your Prince Charming and you get married and That's like your your youth is over. This is a sort of going away party for that. Now it is time. Yes. ⁓ Yep. ⁓ Coco: Yeah, we do expect like, oh, and then Taylor Swift will be quiet for a while or something. There's like this maybe spoken, maybe unspoken expectation there. Yes, for sure. And I mean, I talked about that in the Lily Allen and the Terror of Divorce episode where I was like, I don't feel like clean about like my feelings about wanting to get married because it is like a, it's a status symbol. It's a piece of validation Ashby: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Coco: And that's where it's it's fine though. I don't have to be a perfect feminist, I can still like ⁓ want some these things because like the whole world says they're important. ⁓ Ashby: Right. And and Lindy talks so much in the book about that's where so much of this shame came from. She's very open that marrying Aham and their fairytale wedding and what the public thought of them, that is central to her shame about exploring polyamory because what he's doing is messing with her narrative that even a fat woman can have the kind of validation and cultural capital that thin women get. And it becomes about more. Coco: Yeah. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: than just what's good for their relationship and their marriage, you've now let the public in on it. So I actually think that a marriage, and actually maybe most marriages, can survive having more people in them. They don't do well with being open to the public. Coco: Yeah, I think well, 100 % Yeah, yeah. Ashby: I think that's really what it is. think you can, if you mess around, but you keep it quiet, I think if you ask a lot of women, they might actually be like, honestly, don't have a problem with that. But like, ⁓ is... ⁓ Coco: Okay, Carmella Soprano. She goes to her priest and she's like, look, the thing is I know that Tony cheats on me all the time. She's like, honestly, I've always just thought of it as a form of masturbation. Ashby: I'm just saying! Mm-hmm. That's what I'm saying, I actually think... Coco: And she's kind of like, I know it's not, but she's kind of being this like, a genuine piousness that's also kind of fake, like at the same time in that scene and like they talk through it. And he's like, well, you know that you have to like leave him or like make him a better man. And then Carmella's like, buddy, I like fucking can't. He's a mob boss. What are you talking? What planet do you live on? Ashby: Mm-hmm. See? What are you talking about? But like, that's what I mean is that it's, that's all you get. If you approach the public with any of this, it becomes, well, you can only have a handful of narratives here. And, but I actually think within a marriage, there's probably a ton more flexibility for what would make things work. It's just when you get other people involved and that's because marriage symbolizes something else. It's not about like the actual relationship between the two people. It's about what does being a married woman mean in how relate to the rest of the world. And it's that validation piece. it's what we were saying in the Amanda Petula episode. It's like for her, what if she can turn this thing around? That would be so validating. He chooses her over all the other women. fly right. Coco: She was little bit Carmella territory. Like I kind of know what I'm getting into and I'm like opting into it, yeah. Ashby: Yeah. She talks about the book where she's frustrated that people would say to her, what's the matter with having a non-traditional relationship? Because she's like, why are you saying that to me? Why are you saying I should have a non-traditional relationship? Are you saying I shouldn't get to have like all the validation and love and princess treatment? ⁓ Coco: Yes. Right. Right. Ashby: because I'm fat that I have to accept that men will always want to sleep with someone else. And yeah. Coco: Like you're like, are you saying that like me as a person actually isn't worthy of love? Like that's kind of what she's reading into those interactions. And that's real. That's real because the world says that every single day. Ashby: Right. And yes, that's real. Yeah. And I think that's why I think a lot of us felt kind of like heavy in our heart for Lindy on this because what she's identifying is true. I think it's true that that's a narrative that's out there that she wants to push back on. she knows that if she's in a polyamorous relationship that it will get framed that way. that the only way for her to be married and happy is if she allows some type of cheating. And that is what she is talking about in the book, is her going back and forth on, ⁓ the cynical that the public will have about our marriage correct? Is there some truth to that? ⁓ And yeah. Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is, it's interesting because so I was introduced to the fact that she was in this polyamorous relationship from the podcast and then like kind of like re-going back and like looking at her stuff. And I like really took it at face value. I was like, this seems like this works for them. immediately, like I didn't have any kind of question mark or thoughts about it ⁓ at all. especially when you're like seeing all those images and like they look like they're friends. Like this is just. Ashby: Yeah, I know. Mm-hmm. I did too. Mm-mm. Coco: kind of fun, like, I don't know. Then reading the book, really did make me really feel for her for having to go through all of these different layers of the experience. Ashby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's a little bit like Schrodinger's marriage. ⁓ It's like, the less we knew about it, it seemed the healthier it was, but then ⁓ it's existing in this kind of superposition. But then when get too many eyes on it, all of a sudden, now it takes on what all these people want to see in it. And they want to see, you know, a cynical narrative ⁓ Coco: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: that he's not actually faithful to her. He's found some loophole where he can like cheat, but stay married or something like that. But I think she's made a reasonable point that there's kind of no reason for that. Coco: And let's be honest, what percentage of men have found the loophole, but they just haven't come this level of clean with it? I don't know. I'm not saying that exactly right, but. Ashby: Yeah. Okay, that's also what I wanted to say next, which is, no, no, I know what you mean. I want to say is she's saying she wants to have this kind of validation and cultural capital that thin women get. And I'm reading through the book and there are a couple of places where she's talking about how she knew he's cheating and that it was not what they agreed on. Cheating, not being ethically non-monogamous, but not what they agreed on. And I was like, well, yeah, girl, you got it. Coco: Yeah. Exactly, yep. Mm-hmm. Ashby: Okay, you did get it, See also Amanda Petula, Lily Allen, Natalie Portman, Beyonce. all of those women still, they do get cheated on. So she is having this different conversations that is in some ways actually better because he has said to her, ⁓ am being honest with you that I don't think monogamy is right for me. So many women, ⁓ men don't even ⁓ to have that upfront. They just straight up cheat on them to see what happens. ⁓ And I think what people are reacting to is that Lindy's trying to find a way to redefine what marriage is for her, what it is for her relationships and her sexuality, and find a way that it actually meshes with her values, which are also people's politics. Those can be the same thing. It's not just a performance. ⁓ Coco: Mm-hmm. Yeah, what do people think politics are and then values are? I'm always just like, hmm. ⁓ Ashby: So this is what I was gonna say is, are all these people saying that monogamous marriage has no politics? Coco: Wow. You're making me feel like I took a gummy, but I did not. Ashby: Girl, let me take you on a... ⁓ Let me just take you on a quick feminism journey. All right. I want to bring some feminism stuff into this because I think it's important that we understand that marriage is political and that women having any type of public life is inherently tied to our historical inheritance of marriage. as a concept, Have you ever heard of the concept of coverage? Coco: I don't remember what it means. Ashby: Okay, well let me drop it in the chat. I would like to say that all of this stuff is a blast from the past and that we don't have this anymore, but this might be a little primer for everyone's future. Coco: Hmm, no. Ashby: Sadly! Coco: Coverture a longstanding legal that is part of our colonial heritage. Though Spanish and French versions of Coverture existed in the New World, United States Coverture is based in English law. Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father's identity. Okay. ⁓ And then when she married her husband's, the husband and wife became one. and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this subsuming of identity, women took the last names of their husbands. They were femcoverts. I would like to be a femcovert. Ashby: Love that. Maybe we change the name of the pod? Coco: covered women. Because they did not legally exist, ⁓ women cannot make contracts or be sued, so they could not own or work in businesses. Married women own nothing, ⁓ even the clothes on their backs. They had no rights to their children, so that if a wife was divorced or left a husband, she would not see her children again. I know I'm giggling. This is horrific. ⁓ But ⁓ don't know why in reading, like, Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: they had no legal identity, they did not exist. I'm just like, what a magic trick. Like, we just like don't exist. Like, we're ghosts. Ashby: It's literally, this concept is literally called illegal fiction. It has like a real concept in law. It is. And even like people writing, you know, people writing about this, like academics, they're like, the concept of illegal fiction is like a known paradox where they're like, no, no, we know this isn't real, but we're pretending it is like, so that we can do laws around it. And so ⁓ I do... Coco: Yeah, okay, cool. It's like, it's like sci-fi or something. Hmm. It's like the legal version of what the Atlantic does when they add a little too many words. Ashby: So I think for the sub stack I would say put put we may have used this before but put the little speech from little women. because she's the Florence Pugh one. She's perfectly summing up the concept of coverture. ⁓ I do want to add that this is a specific colonial tradition ⁓ and European, not everywhere in the world had a concept of coverture. And of course, this mostly would have applied to like nobility and landed gentry and what have you, because it's essentially about property. ⁓ Coco: ⁓ the Florence P one. Yeah, yeah, Ashby: A lot of things had different intersections for enslaved people, for Indigenous people. ⁓ And none of this stuff is like exactly at the time that it's happening in like 1700s and 1800s. It's not like perfectly uniform. Like there were obviously exceptions. Like you will read about certain women who are able to get control of their property or ⁓ little court cases that are won and stuff like that. So it's not as if it was like that all the time. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: But I do think it's important to understand that like, well, what is marriage then? If it starts from this conception and now we've made it into something else Like what's left there? It's still going to have these vestiges of having a kind of legal status component. ⁓ And we ⁓ shouldn't think that went away so as it of went underground from all of us. So, coverature. is disassembled in the United States at the state level ⁓ in and then through the 1880s and this was a major issue for ⁓ suffrage. So, coverage is one thing to think about here is that I think that once Flindy got married, People think now your story stops. Okay. When do we get the next Bridget ⁓ Jones's diary installation? When she has a kid. Like you get a couple of different arcs in your public persona, but you get the public persona of the single girl till you get married. You can have like a mom persona in the middle maybe, but even during that you pretty much don't talk about your husband. And then after that, yes, yes. What a lump. Yeah, but I really think it's because Coco: Mm-hmm. or he can be kind of like a cartoon character version, but it's like what a lovable doof or something, yeah. Ashby: We've never had a concept of a public married woman. Actually, if you are a person that likes to watch something like Bridgerton, how do they do it? You debut when you're ready to get married, then you get married and you retreat to your manner. This was your... Yeah. I know you do. Coco: Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, look, you know I love me a Jane Austen. For real, for real. They don't usually give you too much in the happily ever after space. Ashby: No, nobody wants that. What they wanted, I think people wanted Lindy to go away. ⁓ I really think people want your life to recede. Because I actually think we have a Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: long tradition of not really knowing what to do with the, a married woman's public persona. And lest you think this is me cherry picking, ⁓ I also found, I think we should broaden what this actually means when we're talking about the like secrecy kind of component and what that can allow. when we tell women to get married and then shut up. Coco: Nope, I'm on board. Ashby: You know how we all learned in social studies about the social contract and like one day everybody just woke up from their try. This is also an a historical fiction that some dudes in breaches came up with to try to justify why we all have to live under ⁓ a surveillance state. But Carol Paytman is a feminist who tries to complicate that and is like, okay, well, if that's the state's relationship with people, what are what is the relationship Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: between people that the state doesn't acknowledge. so that is where her writing about the sexual contract comes from. when I initially thought about this and I was like, okay, it's because of coverage, because we associate women with the private sphere and we associate, Coco: Right? Mm-hmm. Ashby: men and having a civil or public or ⁓ political presence as the public sphere. And when I see women just getting absolutely torn down ⁓ in media or whatever, I think there's something there about ⁓ kind of feeling like, ⁓ don't speaking out of turn. I think there's something about your telling on yourself that Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: You've taken a sacred covenant essentially to keep this man's secrets and what your relationship together is like. ⁓ I think there's And there's a pretty, ⁓ it is. Coco: Yeah. And it's very Victorian and very invented. It's not, ⁓ this is not the state of things for all time. It's like very much kind of an invention. And I think like definitely ⁓ in like the you married for love, like ⁓ it. ⁓ you, ⁓ when you kind of dissociated like, Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yes. It's like you need to justify it now constantly. Mm-hmm. Coco: a marriage is about an exchange of property value, right? Like in kind of consolidating family wealth and trying to say like it's about love, then that means like, well, when you put that on the line that says like, that means like your happy ending, you do have to really be quiet. Ashby: Yeah. So I do want to read a couple quotes. it's kind of long, but if you can believe it, I really, really snipped this way down. So we'll take turns. I'll have you read this one and then I'll do the next one. Coco: Sure. No, I'm... Cool. The public-private distinction is one of the grand dichotomies of Western thought. Civil society is private in the sense that it is not governed by the public power of the state. The personal is private in that it represents a sphere of intimacy to which one might retreat in face of the pressures to conform within society. It is clear that the state is always cast as public. It is equally clear that the personal, when considered within political theory, is cast as private. Confusingly, civil society is cast as private when opposed to the state and public when opposed to the personal. Ashby: So we have like three things. have like civil society, which is kind of this in-between thing. And civil society is kind of like the tabloids I would think of, or sort of like ⁓ just us all chatting at the grocery store. Like that's civil society, okay? It's this, the public. And then there's public capital P, which is like the state takes an interest. And then there's the private, right? And it's this in-between area, the civil society area that is where sort of... Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: public figure women show up. you know, Lindy is a political figure, but not like the way that like Nancy Pelosi is, you know. ⁓ But she's just a woman in public, right? And it's this kind of third space that I think we kind of don't know what to do with because we associate women with the private And I think there's a sinister component to that that I want us to consider when the state tries to abdicate responsibility for the private sphere. So ⁓ this article goes on, women were confined to a private domestic caretaking role while men were presumed to be able to move freely between the private domestic and the public civil society. The most influential theorist here is Carol Paytman. She claims the social contract that generates liberal politics in general. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: and establishes political freedom of individuals simultaneously entails the sexual subordination of women in a marriage. Patriarchy was essentially relocated into the private domain and reformulated as a compliment to civil society. the liberal state has always in practice regulated and controlled the family in pursuit ⁓ the perpetuation of patriarchy on purpose. And for example, presuming that anyone engaged in wage work can then rely on and care of someone at home. And then to add insult to that from the perspective of women, Coco: Mmm, yeah. Ashby: The principle of non-intervention in the private sphere has been used by the state to justify not acting in cases of child abuse, marital rape, domestic violence. So here is a quote from another smart thinker called Zilla Eisenstein, Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. As Zilla Eisenstein has pointed out, the state is said to be public by definition and therefore divorced from the private realm, which is the area of women's lives. The state can appear through its own ideology to be unrelated to the family as the private sphere, when in actuality, liberal have actually enforced patriarchal power relations within the family while formally denying their responsibility to intervene in familial disputes ⁓ on the grounds ⁓ that is essential to state intervention in civil society in personal relations, which is just like. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Coco: also so obviously selective because they're very happy to say like, well, you two are the same gender and you can't be fucking like for a while. know, they're so, yeah. Ashby: Mm-hmm. But that's the point is that the state is literally getting involved when it is a matter of enforcing patriarchy, when it is a matter of enforcing sex power differentials between the sexes. So this tension that we have about, ⁓ if it's your personal life, that's not us. We don't have to deal with that. We don't have to do anything about that. And then the sort of public life, which is what people are using as a justification to shred Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: people who write about their lives is saying, well, you brought it up. If you bring it out, then we're allowed to just absolutely demolish you. There's a real tension there. women have been made to carry the burden of this tension. Men are encouraged to view the domestic sphere of personal privacy. ⁓ Women have experienced it as a sphere of constraint and oppression. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: when I'm thinking about idea of like, and the public-private sphere, ⁓ And when I contextualize that with the fact that marriage has always been an economic and political arrangement, We know it has these origins ⁓ as a property mechanism, right? As a capitalist enterprise. It just does. Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: ⁓ And we know that it has largely been designed to sequester women away from each other. From each other. Okay? And to make them the secret carriers of men. Coco: from each other. Yes. Uh huh. Ashby: what I think is so interesting is Lindy has found a way to get the benefits of marriage ⁓ from the state, okay? ⁓ And to be a public figure ⁓ and to now include... a different way of being in community with another woman. By adding Roya to this relationship and exploring her own feelings about it, what I came to at the end of this was essentially this is a journey of Lindy realizing how hollow the promise of marriage is for women. What you're reading is about her disillusionment with what this promise was that she was going to be cherished and adored and Coco: It's so brittle, like... Yeah. Mm-hmm. Ashby: consistently validated. And what she discovered is like, now she's carrying the mess of two people, she feels uniquely ill equipped to carry even the mess of herself. And, you know, she still loves this person, but that there are limits to what this can actually provide for both of them. When she decides to accept the polyamory piece, and from everything I've read, they are a close triad. So I don't know what their full relationship is, but it sounds like it's just the three of them at this point. ⁓ She, yeah. Coco: Mm-hmm. Maybe they've had some maybe good conversations that didn't happen originally, but since then, yeah. Ashby: Yeah. Yes. Like, it sounds like she found a way to de-center this man's presence in her life. Yeah. Coco: The funniest part of the book is when Aham has a medical issue and it becomes then like some Lindy's on this road trip and there's like Roya is going to go be the person like in the hospital with him. And then she starts getting texts from Roya and Roya is like, I'm sure Aham is telling you all of this, but like here's the medical situation. And Lindy's like, oh, LOL. He like has never kept me in the loop on like these types of things. Ashby: Yes. Mm-hmm. Ha! Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: Which like, know, again, annoying. But I do, you see it and you're like, well, if you can take away all this other stuff, you're like, well, haven't I like another lady around? Yes. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A little added injection of competence is what I was gathering. ⁓ And look, and look, I don't want to be like essentialist because I know Aham is not, ⁓ I know Aham is not binary, He does also use he pronouns, but ⁓ you do understand ⁓ that through this journey, she managed to not make him the center of her life anymore In a way, she gained more by not... We kind of all need to do that. And if we think of marriage as like this, it's an institution that is designed around property and blah, blah. Adding more people to it might be a response to unique economic pressures of right now. Like really and truly, maybe a two-person marriage isn't enough anymore. Coco: and we all need to do that. Mm-hmm. Ashby: I mean, she says so much in her Modern Love interview where she's like, I really came to a place where you shouldn't get everything from one person, She could have landed there without adding Roya, but like, It's not that big of a leap to then be like, let's add another person. Coco: think we're all kind of lying when we're like marriage is the perfect solution. I think all of us are like it's the solution that we have. Like I just think that and I mean I have joked before about like if I wanted to live in like your the fantasy fictional universe that I'm like really when I want to be is like one of the people on the island in Moana that like just does the coconuts or like you know Lady and the Shire. Ashby: Yes! That's right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: But my fantasy of that is during the day, what I'm doing is chit chatting. I'm doing some chit chat and I'm doing it with a bunch of ladies. There's something that's missing in our lives and our individual homes and apartments that's just not community. And I'm not saying that you have to go into polyamory to find it, but I do think that there's something really, really true going on here. Ashby: Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right. Yes. That's right. That's exactly right. That's the next thing, which is that marriage can be inherently isolating and that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing for women to all be isolated from each other. And I think there is something kind of like radical. Coco: Yes. Ashby: Over the course of this book, she learns to enjoy being by herself, but she also ⁓ learns to see partner differently, like through the eyes of Roya. She learns to appreciate Roya on her own and they have their own relationship. And she functionally decenters the idea that she is sort of Aham's wife. ⁓ She becomes more that. So ⁓ I kind of like the title of this episode is like, Coco: Yeah. Ashby: People are mad that Lindy West won't shut up about her big fat marriage. I think people are mad that Lindy West's marriage is taking up space, Coco: Yeah, I'm fine with it, yeah. what is going on through this book that's like so compelling is like, she's also talking about how this system, like in her experiences of like needing validation, because it's been sold to her in this way, and because the world has invalidated her in so many ways, like has created like a cycle of like depression, like true depression that has an impact in her romantic relationship. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes! Coco: And she's not saying, like, I think that there's something very fair to say, like, when the internet just hears the top line little puzzle pieces of it, that they don't, like, understand that, there's a lot of work that a hom does put into a relationship. And there's a lot of reasons why, like, the original conception of their relationship kind of didn't work. And, like, it does seem, more free. And the second point is she goes on this road trip and you see in that excerpt that you pulled out, like, Ashby: Yes. Coco: You see that when she does have deeper connections with her friends and experiences with her friends where she feels safe, it gives this sense of there's a whole world out there. It actually is bigger. It is more expansive Ashby: Yes. I totally get what you mean. But when we make an intentional effort to reduce ⁓ our... animal products, it does force me to more intentionally put in like more vegetables there's something there that when you're decentering this one thing, it does force you to put other stuff in that's good for you. ⁓ When you're decentering the meat, when you try to reduce ⁓ your meat intake, Coco: Mm-hmm. I'm sorry, when you're decentering the sausage, I'm sorry! Ashby: you notice that other things that are very nourishing to you show up. And that is my, this is my tagline. Yeah, I it's, this is less about how she, you know, did something keep her marriage to one guy. This is more about how she added other stuff to her life that made that marriage with that person less brittle. And it sounds to me like, Coco: ⁓ Yeah. Ashby: her marriage and her relationship with him is not a traditional, it already wasn't a traditional relationship. They were already like very close friends and creative partners. Coco: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: basically I feel like this was a journey of her discovering that ⁓ a monogamous relationship was kind of unfulfilling and that the things that she wanted from it in the first place, ⁓ she wasn't getting. And so what was the harm in redefining what that relationship looks like so that she could actually get those things? I think this is so characteristic of Lindy to like challenge the status quo. It's so characteristic of her to be like, you know what, some of the scripts that we have for people are a little bit like unnatural that not everybody fits this type of mold. ⁓ So ultimately, like I started in a place that was like, girl, don't even open that box. ⁓ are you doing? And then I landed in a place of like, you know what, she has a point. ⁓ And then it does seem like this ended up. working better for them. And it takes, in a way, you kind of need a home to be, you don't need him to be perfect. There's a lot, I don't want to say there's like higher standards, but there is something more riding on a monogamous conception of marriage and the kind of limited way we've come to think about it versus what they landed at is kind of a more open-ended freeing thing of like, let's see. Where it goes, we all know that we care about each other. We don't need to import these scripts about what a healthy marriage looks like. We'll make it look right for us. But the challenge though was, didn't she let everybody get a good look? Coco: Yeah, yeah. I think I want to say that the way that you have kind of led us through this was really got me there a lot more so than like the book did. And I really, I'm like, I really liked the book and I really like Lindy West and like I do trust her ⁓ to be in a situation that's like right for her. And I think the way that you're also even talking about it, it's like, if it is this more open-ended thing, even if like they separate or like they, they go off and like live in different places, like even, and still stay together or like whatever that conception is, like it's not a failure and it doesn't like prove the, any of these, you know, strains of thought right. Do you know what I mean? Like I think that this is, Ashby: Yeah. Coco: This is an experience and like we want marriage to be like quote unquote like the end. And like the truth is that like that's most of your life, babe. And so, yeah, the end is not like your wedding day. Ashby: No, and I think... ⁓ it's actually maybe dangerous that the only way we can have a healthy marriage is if we don't talk about all the challenges. I think we should interrogate that. If every person starts telling the truth about their marriages and the things that they are trying to navigate and negotiate, ⁓ I think there's kind of an opportunity there in a way for people to come out from this coverage or model and connect with each other. but you got to understand that that is politically threatening. There is something politically threatening to the status quo about a bunch of women just being like, and now we're hanging out together and now we're all three sharing incomes. there's a hard edge to the criticism that she's taking that I really want us to think about and that we all have a place in upholding. One of the things that was getting me is I was trying to find the like stats that I've heard that the majority of marriages do survive infidelity. And when I was looking through it, I mean, I found a couple, but I don't know. I don't know how reliable any of this stuff is. I found a couple of things from like Pew research and NPR about divorce and open marriages and things like that. But what actually stood out to me was most of these, call it just that, they'll say, how many marriages survive infidelity? How can we save our marriage? Guys, just like the fact that coverture is a legal fiction, the idea of saving a marriage, what is a marriage? Okay, who cares? Who gives a shit about saving a marriage? A marriage can't survive because a marriage is not a person. What matters are the people in that marriage and the way we talk about this, like we only care about the institution, but we don't care about the people that are in it. I don't give a shit about that. Your marriage quote unquote fails. Are you alive? Are you good? That's what I actually care about. So I don't know. I wanna like de-center the idea that marriage is this marathon and this slog that everybody knows how it's supposed to end and there's not gonna be anything interesting or fun that ever happens again. ⁓ I kind of think some of that is the projection that people are pushing back on. Is there like, how dare you? How dare you redefine marriage to fit what you need? instead of redefine yourself to fit inside of a little two-person marriage. I think that's what people don't love. ⁓ I want to bring in another book that I've talked about ⁓ is called Foreverland by Heather Havrulesky. you don't know her, She writes their Ask Polly column, but I read her book Foreverland, which is about her ⁓ same journey. getting married and kind of disillusionment with what she thought it was going to do for her I'll include really good book review from feministbookclub.com of it so that, ⁓ I really think people should read it because she has an unflinching look at ⁓ what it actually is, but she has a great tagline. calls it ⁓ divine tedium that it can be a transcendental thing between people, but it does take a lot of work here's a great quote, marriage is a lifelong market correction to true loves overvaluation. Coco: I did. I think I listened to the audiobook of that, which was also very good. So people it's a good like walking the dog and listening ⁓ Ashby: Mm-hmm. ⁓ And then I would tell people to go check out the Diabolical Lies ⁓ episodes on heterofetalism and Oosha Vance. Listen, that shit fucked me up because one of the things that Lindy's questioning in the book is like, does she consider herself queer now? ⁓ And that that is big question a lot of people have. Is this genuine or something? ⁓ Some of the people from the polyamory community are saying, Coco: Yeah. Ashby: This is not a how-to for polyamory, but we shouldn't think of polyamory as just monogamous marriage with another person in it. It's different. It's a different thing altogether. And I don't think we should think of queerness, as just the same thing as being straight, only with people with the same body parts. It is different than that. ⁓ Coco: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ashby: So they really got me to challenge a lot of my thinking around that. One of the things that makes this fit is having listened to that episode, they talk about an earlier conception, not of sexuality, not as something you're born with that is who you are, but is a set of acts that a person does or doesn't do. I've been really thinking about what breaks the label. If I use my left hand for something, like to pick something up, does that make me left-handed? No. Coco: Yeah. Ashby: if you kiss one girl, does that make you queer? I think there's actually a lot more complication there than we think. So the kind of bad faith takes on this book that she's just pretending to be queer. I think that is a failure to understand how people's identities actually evolve ⁓ and that queerness Coco: Mm-hmm. Ashby: might have more dimensions to it So those episodes were also great for talking about heterofatalism and kind of the raw deal that marriage can be ⁓ if you're not being very, very intentional about having ⁓ connected and public life. Coco: You gotta listen to him. You gotta listen to the diabolical lies. Yep. I think I'm just kind of maybe sitting with now the feeling that if I think of my future as like narrow or like locked into a certain thing that that creates, that makes me feel kind of depressed that that's like a really scary feeling. ⁓ Ashby: You got to. Exactly. Coco: I've reached a level of stability in my life and like this is just what it's going to be rinse and repeat kind of for the next 40 years and that feels really like alarming. ⁓ But I just mean that I like kind of coming away from this conversation thinking that when things are open-ended, that that actually is just really beautiful. That's like an act of faith that's like creative, is, ⁓ that is hopeful. And that also kind of creates the space to like be a more active participant in the world. And like the world needs you to participate. Like this world needs you to be. Ashby: Yeah. Coco: of civil society, of, like, I'm not using it in like the, but I mean, like, ⁓ participate in the politics in your like community, like, try to make a non-fascist world. That's what I mean. Yeah. Ashby: And I do want to add one more thing, which is kind of a bummer, but just a ⁓ little bit of the personal is political thing. How we arrived at marriage, this wasn't handed down to us on some tablets. This stuff evolved over time and it very much evolved through actual intended violence of the state. ⁓ We were literally forcibly each put into single family homes. Okay, so everyone go read Stephanie Koontz, The Way We Never Were, to understand that this is a fiction, the ideas that we have of a perfect marriage. And also that the way we got there has an incredibly violent history. ⁓ One of the things I read for this episode, and I'll put more in the sub stack, ⁓ is ⁓ thinking the public-private dichotomy was the text called Caliban and the Witch, the title comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest, but it is written by Silvia Federici and she is an Italian, what is it called? Autonomous socialist. Yes, that's what it is. She offers a critical alternative to Marx's theory of primitive accumulation. Meaning, if you are kind of leaning more on the democratic socialist side and looking for something away from this idea of an individualist, liberalist, capital D democracy, ⁓ looking at some of the scholarship around how women have questioned that, I think is helpful. And one of the things that she points out is that while peasant women in feudal society were subject to sexist restrictions, like not being able to hold certain roles, they were able to control a lot of the products of their own labor. And they had common land and collective sex segregated labor provided the conditions for female solidarity. So there was a time when we weren't all sequestered in our houses doing our little stupid email jobs. There was a time where Coco: So it's inherent that I want that. Ashby: It's inherent. There was a time when we all would gather in the collective, like the literal commons and we would like, you know, everyone would do the town's laundry together and talk and stuff. Like there was a time where things were more collective and it wasn't so isolating. The isolation is the part where that is where Coco: literal commons. ⁓ Ashby: the danger comes in to me when we don't have access to each other and we feel like it's a threat to our marriage if we do. That's the part that is scary because the marriage has become the thing that provides that stability now. ⁓ And it be that way. What should provide you stability is your community, ⁓ not just emotional stability, but like economic and like social. So, her whole point of this book is the idea that the persecution of actually originated as a preoccupation ⁓ of the upper class and the nobility to ⁓ functionally make it so that men would vent all their frustrations upon proletarian ⁓ in the... Coco: Doesn't that sound familiar? Ashby: Yes, And this is all happening at the same time as what we've now called the tragedy of the commons, taking away third spaces, taking away public lands. There used to be like a real conception of public lands. If you didn't want to work, you would just like forage in the local forest, okay? But you can't do that now because these things were violently taken away and then ⁓ This was a campaign, the idea of the witch hunts was a violent campaign to try to destroy these kinship networks between women and to provide a sort of secondary class underneath the labor of the proletariat men. So it's a really fascinating history. It's a little bit complex and like esoteric, but even if you just look at the Wikipedia page, Coco: I'm like, wanna read novels about this. I want the HBO series, but like from a leftist feminist labor perspective. Ashby: Yeah. Yeah, it's like how we got here. We shouldn't take for granted that each of us having our own little house and our own little tiny square yard and only having each other to lean on in as much as we want to share and that the rest of our life is so sequestered and private and unsupported we didn't get here on accident. These are things that were violently done on purpose. But yeah, I think about that. was like, how did we arrive there? we have all kind of used women as a punching bag in a way. ⁓ And allow them to stand in for stuff about ourselves ⁓ and a lot of different things onto them. ⁓ So I just always want us to be conscious when there's a big public pylon of someone. And I gotta say, there's probably more think pieces written about Lindy West's book than there are pages in Lindy West's book at this point. Coco: People really went off on that one. ⁓ my God. ⁓ you took us on a wonderful journey. I'm so grateful. Ashby: They really... The last thing I want to say is that ⁓ this is like a very kind of ⁓ bourgeois conception of all of this. ⁓ read this really great piece. by an author called ⁓ Deepa Paul. And she has at the same time in the Philippines published her own memoir about her journey into polyamory. talks what it's like, like being in the publishing world, trying to publish this memoir at this time. there's some legal reason why she couldn't publish it in the US. And so she's saying there's all these articles about this but I have also recorded this and you should all know that publishers are intentionally keeping away from you different conceptions in the different parts of the world of what this experience is like. You're only getting the kind of like middle-class ⁓ white ladies experience of polyamory She managed to make everyone in her book anonymous so that her life could continue. ⁓ I don't know if that would have been possible for Lindy, but she also talks about how her publicists gave her lot of media training before her book came out. I ⁓ think there are different models for ⁓ and the more of those we access to ⁓ would be really fascinating to compare. Coco: Yeah, I mean, look, we we love to call women neurotic, but let's be honest, like the the whole culture is neurotic as hell. Yeah. Ashby: You Coco: love to call women neurotic, but let's be honest, the whole culture is neurotic as hell. Ashby: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Coco: lovely you really took me to a place I wasn't expecting. And ⁓ it was it beautiful. You're so smart. ⁓ Ashby: Well, thanks for listening But ⁓ yeah, ⁓ I always really like digging into like how we inherited some of these ideas. thanks talking about this with me. Coco: It was incredible. Anytime ⁓ Ashby: Well, we're going to have another episode coming up soon. ⁓ Maybe a little bit off schedule since we've had some technical difficulties, but hope not. Yeah, I'd love to have a lighter, chiller convo because I want to talk about hacks. I want to talk about the pit. I have no academic articles to bring to it. Just a simple, I just want to get in there. Coco: Yeah. good things planned. Got a lot of good topics planned. Nahahaha! Are you, wait, okay, are you just watching the pit, I mean, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ashby: But no, ⁓ I have started binging the pit Coco: yeah. Ashby: I've watched a lot of it. I'm almost done with the second season over the course of like three days. Yeah, it's incredibly addictive. One of the things I saw someone was saying is that it's competence porn, that people are liking to watch this because it's just nice to watch people like care and be ethical and good at their jobs. Coco: Great. It's very addictive. It's very addictive. Yeah. Yeah. This is not competence porn. This podcast. ⁓ Ashby: This is the opposite. This is incompetence comedy. Coco: Yeah. Alright, bye dude. Ashby: Okay, bye.