Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / The Radical Extremist Ideology of Evie Magazine

Transcript

The Radical Extremist Ideology of Evie Magazine · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome stuff. I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: never told you your production by Heart Radio, and today
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: we are once again so happy to be joined by
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the wonderful, the outstanding Bridget Todd. Welcome Bridget.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me so excited to be back.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Before we started recording, we were reminiscing about our local malls.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: And now I have like mall or Mall Madness. It's
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: like nostalgia overload, looks.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: We actually Annie bought me that game because it was
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: one of my childhood games, Mall Madness, and we've.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Talked about we have to play this game.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: I realized I do not remember I'll play. When we
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: opened it, I was like, wait, what we have to
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: buy things? I know that, but how do you buy things?
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: And sometimes you can use cat and sometimes you get declined.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: I don't remember. Bridget.
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: You should come down. We'll have a game night.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, I'll bring dream Phone. That was my game, so
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: you have dream Home.
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: I have a blind date because any purchase that we
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: need to do that the mom. Okay, come down, sweep.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: I have a Sweet Balley High game and a Babysitters game.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Come on. I'm very much evening of my dreams.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Listen, I just have to brag, Bridget I won our
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: dated game twice.
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we played a blind date together and I was like,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: I don't know what's happening, but she ended up winning.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Is it a game of strategy or like skill or
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: sort of like luck?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Wait, Samantha, no strategy. I realized that this guy didn't
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: like football, so maybe he would be into this character.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I think they should update it so you can have
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: queer characters.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: That's my I bet they have an update. Have we?
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: How we locked by that, We talked about all of
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: the old games that were very gendered and the ones
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: that we remembered, but likes things like mal Madness really
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: popped up. My brother actually really enjoyed that game too,
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: but he wouldn't admit it. But every time he see
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: me pull it out and I would play by myself, Yes,
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: I was that kid. Uh, he would ask to join me.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there's something to be said about the games that
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: were coming out at that time that had like the
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: very specific technology that could be used for nothing else.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like dream phone, like the I'm going far
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: back into the recesses of my memory here, so might
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: not be totally right, but it came with like a
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: clunky plastic phone, yes, that you would put to your
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: ear and it would be like he's not wearing a
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: hat and you would figure out like whoo, who had
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: a crush on you based on like what this phone
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: would tell you.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: I think the brand girls talk who did that? The
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: date one as well as truth or dare like that
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: was their brand. They also had like magazines, I believe,
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: but yeah, they they made sure to catalyze on only
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: their games.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Oh man, memory a real like gendered media empire.
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: Was it was?
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: But you know that is that conversation we've had repeatedly,
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: like all the industries that if they specifically go after
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: women most of the times or young girls, they know
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: as a moneymaker. If we talked about that, I was
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: like with games, if we actually talked about that with
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: magazines too.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's actually a perfect segue into what I
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: want to talk about. And by the way, like I
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: didn't even connect this, but I was a voracious reader
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: of magazine, any kind of girl magazine in the nineties
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: I was getting I got all of them. I also
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: loved a good catalog. I still have Delia's catalogs, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: I thumbed through like it was a real like time
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: to be a girl who liked to consume media. And
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: something that I find really interesting is the way that
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: today those same like media spaces can really be used
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: to expose women to ideology that you might not even
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: like on the face, really recognize. We talked a little
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: bit about this in the episode that you and I
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: all did with about Candice on how she is so
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: good at using like a political conversations about celebrity to
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: really radicalize women. And in that same vein we have
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: to talk about this magazine called EV Magazine. I think
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: you have you all, what's what's your familiarity with EV?
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: Right? So when I saw this was coming to our conversations,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: at first I was like, wait, why does this look familiar?
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: And then I realized in our ten to twenty part
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: episode of Religious Trauma and Women that we actually used
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: some of their publication and it was one of those
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: as I was like, because I was not familiar when
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: I first pulled up into this article because we were
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: talking about you knowcurity, culture and sexuality and women and
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: all of these things within Christianity, especially Western Christianity, and
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: it was this whole like bed it was twisting the
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: narrative a little bit about like, you know, people being
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: too sexualized has really really gone away from us and
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: made it so over the top that is no longer
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: enjoyable or da da da. And at first you're like, yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: this could make sense, and then as I read more
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: and more like wait, who is this publication and it's
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: Evy and I went through it, I was like, oh, oh,
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: this is oh wow. They really have dug deep in
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: this whole like relevance culture within Christianity to bring out
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: something that doesn't feel like like it's preaching on you,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: but it has an agenda. And I was like, wow,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: So we were familiar because in that same like of course,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: we wanted to talk about that conversation. So I had
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: to give a caveat to our listeners and be like, hey,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: so this publication is specifically very Christian oriented and it's
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: published by very conservative peace people, and they don't you
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: don't know that until much later into reading things in here.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: So that's how I was like, Okay, so we used
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: them before. They're an interesting publication.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and what you just described is really part and
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: parcel of the experience of reading ev online. You know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: you might be like, oh, well, this is this is
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: a reasonable take, like oh, I agree with that, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: then you're.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Like, wait a minute, this is actually I'm not so sure.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Let's take a look at like who is behind this
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: publication and they're what they're about. So this whole conversation
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: comes off the heels of a really media profile with
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: the founder of ev magazine in the New York Times.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: So a lot of what I'm going to be talking
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: about comes from that piece by Katie j and Baker.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: If you've not seen ev, evie is a I guess
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: a women's media outlet. If you have seen their content
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: on the internet, you probably think of it as a
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: publication that focuses on pop culture wellness and relationships for
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: a female audience. But it has the distinct conservative perspective
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: that Samantha, as you rightly clocked, might not be so
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: obvious at first glance.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And this is a problem.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: I'll get sort of more into why, I'm sure in
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: this conversation.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, and this was something we were Smith and I
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: were just discussing about how there's all these like back
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: doors into getting radicalized, like content that you think, oh,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: cyoga content and then it's got this other thing. It's
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: like lures you in. So it's important to look into Okay,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: what what is the agenda? Who is behind it? So
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: can you tell us Bridget a little bit more about
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: those things.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: So Evie was founded by a husband wife duo, thirty
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: three year old Brittany Hugo Boom with her husband Gabriel.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: They describe it as a kind of anti Cosmo magazine.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: They said they want to be the one stop shop
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: for femininity. That's from Brittany Hugo Boom, who is the
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: public face of the business.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: How the story of how.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Ev came to be in the world as a kind
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: of a familiar one for anybody who has ever sharted
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: a magazine or wanted to, you know, publish something. Brittany
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: said that she was a model for brands like Adidas,
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: and during that time she loved fashion and she loved
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: pop culture magazines like l This was in the twenty tens,
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: and that was, you know, as somebody who was a
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: voracious reader of women's media, Like it was just a
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: particular time for women's media, especially online. You had sites
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: like Jess Bell and The Cut that were these explicitly
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: feminist spaces that also did a lot of coverage on
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: like pop culture, women's health, and politics. So like the
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: women's media ecosystem at that time really did a good
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: job of blending feminism with pop culture and politics. But
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: Britney really felt overlooked by this kind of coverage. She
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: said that she had a hard time finding positive coverage
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: in this in this media climate about things like traditional marriage.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: And I will pause there and say, like, I don't
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: want to discount Britney's experience. I feel like in the
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: twenty tens, I read a lot of content about motherhood
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: and marriage. Like I don't know if we were coming
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: up in the same media ecosystem. I will just say,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: like my personal experiences that I do think there's a
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: lot of coverage about marriage out there. I don't think
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: that that's like a third rail topic that is not
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: being discussed in the culture. But that's what Brittany says anyway.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: So thus the idea for EV magazine was born. A
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: stylish publication rooted in celebrating quote femininity. This is from
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: the New York Times.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: It will be as escapist and aspirational as any other
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: mainstream women's magazine except Evie covers girls who would not
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: be politicians in power suits, but the type of women
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: who might compete in beauty pageants. Two weeks after giving
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: birth to their eighth child, which their most recent cover girl,
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Utah influencer Hannah Nielman aka Ballerina Farm actually did. The
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: magazine's name is a riff. I'm a first woman in
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: the Bible quote Eve screwed the world, Hugo Boom said,
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: and this is a new Eve who will save the world.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So if you're talking some like pretty deep.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: Religious vibes on that one, that you would be right.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: I I am not, okay. So I figured out finally
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: where that where we used it, and it was actually
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: for our women in magazine. We were talking about that
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: earlier about how how how I'd mentioned like gender things
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: such as women's magazines really made a lot of money
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: and realizing after they started like the Housewife magazine, they
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: jumped into young girl magazines and teaching them how to
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: be wives and partners and such. But even magazine was
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: in that conversation because they do they talk about the
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: whole level of like, have we over sexualized girls so
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: much that we are causing young girls to have complexes
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: in not being sexual enough like all of these things,
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: which was like, you know, sometimes we do that conversation
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: about having balance in this And then again, like I said,
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: I was like, wait, this sounds like a great idea,
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: and then you start looking at the ads and then
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: you start reading more into it, and the ads were
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: like return to femininity, and I was like, oh, okay,
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: which sounds like the whole level of like we're going
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: to correct the evils of women by making you real feminine.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: But when we say feminine we mean submissive. But it
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: is something that we have to credit them that they're
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: making they understand what makes money.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: When I read that New York Times profile, I was
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: really struck by how savvy they were, how media savvy
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: they were, how smart they were, Like in terms of
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: business decisions, fair right on the money. I don't happen
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: to like or agree with the ideology they push, but
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: in terms of like do they have the potential to
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: make a.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Lot of money, I think the answer is yes.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: And Sam, you really cock something that it's even difficult
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: to really parse. But I think that one of the
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: reasons why they found some success is that they do
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: speak to issues that are like they like they kind
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: of have a point in some ways, right, Like it
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: is a totally valid conversation to say, like, oh, well,
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: you know, in a climate where women are told that
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: it's good to be sex positive and like it's good
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: to like, you know, embrace your sexuality, which is all great,
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: what does what does that do to like younger women
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and girls? Is it an impacting them in a negative way?
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: These are great questions to ask, and I'm happy that
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: people are asking them, And like the kind of work
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: that you all do here on sminty Is is a
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: great example of that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: But the way that ev takes this like reasonable.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Conversation and then like completely goes to the extreme with it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: And that's why you should really be getting involved in
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: like purity culture, and that's why your real value as
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: a woman is about like you know, who you give
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: yourself to. Like, like it almost kind of swings back
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: around this incredibly rigid under standing of women and girls
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: and so the way that they're able to really occupy
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: that space of like, well, this is a reasonable question,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: but then take it so far afield that you're like.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Well that is not a reasonable conclusion.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I think it's savvy that they did hone in on Hey,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I know, I know we can be like feminism is
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: bad and here's why. Like they also did that where
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, by being feminists, what you're saying is
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: you're anti woman, which then it's just like a whole
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: mind honestly.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, some of the positions that are advocated for in
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: ev are just like very extreme when it comes to
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: women and girls, right, Like, you know, things.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Like women shouldn't it's not it's not good for women
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: to be working.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Things like that, things that are like anybody would look
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: at that and be like, well, that is a very
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: extreme perspective. This is what dislikes Glossy Poppy magazine is
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: advocating for right and it's just like a very very
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: conservative and traditional perspective on gender to the point of being,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: in my opinion extreme. Hears a little bit from the piece,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: they say Evie sees themselves as an opposition to what
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: they've called modern feminism. Femininity does not mean feminism, which
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Hugo Boom doesn't define as equal rights, but as a
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: self hating movement that is anti family and anti male,
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: one that shames women who choose conventional roles despite running
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: two companies. She's particularly critical of what she calls girl
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: boss feminism. Her interpretation of that term, which went from
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: broadly celebrated to roundly dismissed in the twenty tens, is
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: that it encourages women to be just like men to
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: succeed in corporate fields. Such messaging, she says, has made
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: women anxious, lonely, and unfulfilled. Instead, she believes faith's family
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: and love, not casual sex, careerism or ideological activist the
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: supply the greatest satisfaction. So exactly what you just said, Annie, Like,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: it's these attitudes that say that they are meant to
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: celebrate women, but then what they're actually the actual conclusion
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: is incredibly anti women, right like, And notice how they
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: put that, you know, ideological activism. No, no, no, that's not
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: going to make women happy. Like okay, so I shouldn't
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: advocate for things I believe.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: And got it. I mean, you can just see how
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: quickly this turns into anti trans narrative. Not fear of
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: being erasing women, which is a whole kind of laughable thing.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: Is like feminism is in itself, is like embracing women,
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: like being acknowledged as women as a person as well
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: as trans women are women, so they're being women.
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: So how is that?
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Like there's so many like this level of like almost irony,
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: but that it works. And I don't know because the
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: few pieces, like I said, I read, they're very like
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: subtle about it. They don't want to come out full
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: force of showing that they are very very conservative because
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: they are trying to bring in all those leaders kind
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: of that same level of like when we talk about
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: yoga and crunching life turning into being conservative as well
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: as like the Chadwife, because the initial idea is this aesthetic,
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: which this magazine has that esthetic totally.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: And I mean this is a little bit of a
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: non sequitor, but I personally have to be real careful
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: because like I am someone who cares a lot about nutrition, right,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Like I am right now trying to you know, up
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: my physical health through nutrition and exercise. I when you
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: are like searching Instagram or TikTok for that kind of content,
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: the way algorithms are like, oh you like nutrition, huh, well,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: how would you like some? And then it's just extremist rhetoric,
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: extremist rhetoric, extremist rhetoric. So like I have to be
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: really careful because like I do care about nutrition, and
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: it definitely these algorithms clocked it if like that is
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: an interest of yours. We need to be surfacing you
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: up ever increasing extreme content and like next thing, you know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: it's like and then certainly you're anti vacts and then
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: certainly you're anti trans It's like, whoa, I'm just trying to,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: you know, get more protein in my diet and.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: Relax, right, I just want to like be healthy.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: I don't know what would just happened.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: I don't need you to tell me that all these chemicals,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: which are just nutrients are killing me. What's happening exactly.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I think they really landed on something with these pages, though,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: that they are able to use what we kind of
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: always have seen, Like the magazines in general have always
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: been about teaching girls to be better somehow, or that
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: you're not good enough if you're not if you want
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: to hit these goals, this is what you need to do.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: And EV's like that perfect layout for that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that especially, you know, it doesn't
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: surprise me that the founder of EV really sees herself
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: as in opposition to like the girl boss era of
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: the twenty tens, and I think was really serving women,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: women like myself, who.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Were looking for something and.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: They and I think this kind of girl boss feminism
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: filled that gap and tried to be like, well, is
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: what you're looking for a corner office and lots of money,
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: because like here's.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: You could have that.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: And I this is where I have to say, like
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I kind of agree with Hugo Woman a little bit.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: I think that like in the twenty tens, feminism and
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: the conversation around women and like our liberation really got
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: co opted by this kind of lean in girl boss vibe,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: where wealthy white women were really given the mic and
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: they used that mic could tell us that like liberation
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: was having a corner office, kicking butt at work, having
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: the money to pay someone else to watch your kids
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: while you slay in the boardroom, blah blah blah blah blah,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: and that was really empty. And I think ten years later,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: I would argue that we are still reeling and feeling
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: the fallout from how empty of a promise of liberation
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: that ended up being. But I think nothing has really
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: stepped in to fill that gap. And so then you
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: have media outlets like Evie responding to this actual need
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: in a marginalized community, a community of women saying like, okay, well,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: kicking butt at work did not really lead to liberation,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: so what will you know. There is a truism about
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: extremist content that like they are so good and identifying
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: existing actual gaps that people need filled and then filling
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: those gaps with their ideological content.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: It's so funny that when you read and see this
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: level of cyclical actions like the you've been told so hard,
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: it kind of is that layer of like us not
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: looking at what society has done to us in general,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: and telling us the only way you can succeed is
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: you have to give one hundred and fifty percent of
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: yourself to this. And if you don't fail, your failure
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: is on you because you didn't try hard enough. But
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: you can't be called successful until you get these markers.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: And these markers are the standard by society and capitalism.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: So this is what it is. And if you are successful,
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: either you're going to be penalized in one way or another,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: being told that you are greedy or over the top
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: or two ambitious, or you're going to be penalized because
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: we're you're going to fail in this moment and saying
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: that you doing these things has made you obnoxious and
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: impossible be around, Like it's such a context, but it's
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: the setup of society in that level. But at the
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: same time, as you were saying, like grifters and those alike,
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: social media have realized, hmm, we need to come back
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: around because people are starting to really get frustrated because
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: they can't hit that mark and they're exhausted.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I in that I completely agree with everything
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: that you've just said. And in that climate, I can
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: understand why a publication like EV telling women like, listen,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: aren't you exhausted? Just check out of this whole thing altogether,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Like just get married, leave your job, have kids, let
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: him work, let him figure it all out, and you
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: just rich reat from public life like that is Ultimately
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: what I think that EVE is telling an entire generation
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: of women is that you should only.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Exist in the domestic.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to discount the fact that there's
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: real power in the domestic for women like that, that
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: there is power in that, no shame in that at all.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: But I think that what they're saying is like women
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: don't belong in workplaces, women don't belong in boardrooms, women
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: don't belong in civic and public life, and that's.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Simply not true. And so I think that.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: Eve is setting up this alternative of like, instead of
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: all of those things that exhaust us as women, why
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: not embrace these have a soft life.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Like I'm sure you've seen.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: That kind of content all over your TikTok, right, And
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: I think google Boom says this pretty much explicitly in
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: this piece. She says, I think more women want a
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: soft life, a beautiful life, than feeling all this pressure
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: to do all these things. And I can't help but
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: really see that as in opposition to the reality that
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: you just laid out, Sam that like, yeah, it does.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: It is hard to deal with all of these pressures
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: to you know, be ambitious but not too ambitious, make
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: money but not too much money.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Work.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: But then it's a lot I like, I'm I really
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: deeply do understand why this kind of attitude and message
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: is very enticing, especially right now in a time of
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: like uncertainty and chaos and rising costs and things like that.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Oh, and you actually pulled out something that I was
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: trying to look into for a Monday many I don't
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: have enough information, but the whole like the soft life
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: transitioning into red pill and manisphere content and what that looks.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: I was like, Oh, there it is, but I like,
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: there's not. We're still on the cusp of understanding it.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Like people are recognizing that as a side, Like this
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: is that same like trail that happened again with the
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: crunchy lifestyle slash natural lifestyle slash yoga lifestyle into red
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: pill content. That soft life is that same level. If
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: you start watching who is to pulling it out and
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: who is talking about the most, You're like, oh, but
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: it's such an interesting level because it does offer you
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: something like is it the dream for me to not
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: have to work at all and worry about things and
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: sit and watch k dramas all day and maybe go
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: out to do some zumba and yoga? Yeah, have maybe
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: someone cooked for me instead of me cooking myself all
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: the nasty foods that I'm like, I'm just gonna snack today,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Like that level of like comfort of like this ideal
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: that used to be the way, but which is not
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: true at all. Because again, when we have a conversation
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: about like the good old days when the men women
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: got to stay at home and women being like, yeah,
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: I'd rather be at home too, if everything was equal.
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: But that's not the case. And as you said before,
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: like people who are in the domestic life, who are
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: stay at home moms, it's a hard job.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: It's hard. That's not a soft life. That's like, have
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: you ever been.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Around toddlers, people who are raising toddlers and not getting
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: a break from it because they don't do any wage
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: earning work outside of the house. They're not living a
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: soft life.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: No we God forbid they have any kind of medical
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: needs or if they have.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Like school needs.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: You have to be at all these activities constantly, and
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: you have to show up to do like act volunteering
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: there what dear God.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: So this is that is exactly That is exactly my
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: main beef with Evy, Right, they are selling women a lie,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: a fantasy where we're in retreating from public life and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: just like existing in the domestic is this soft, easy
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: moneyed fantasy the kind of life that women and should
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: be after.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: But as you said, one staying at home as a.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Companion, they sometimes and it's not soft and glamorous at all,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: even like the people who perform trad wife on Instagram
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: probably like like, you never see those women cleaning toilets
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: or cleaning baby puke off of their shirt, which is
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: sometimes the reality of staying at home. But in addition
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: to that, not working, not making or managing your own money,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: not participating in civic and public life, is not a
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: recipe for safety and security. It is incredibly risky to
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: the people that do this. The data is incredibly clear
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: that when women stop working, whether they have a kid
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: or they're a caretaker for somebody and they leave the workforce,
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: when they re enter the workforce, they are going to
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: make a lot less.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: So if and when they.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Do go back to work, the data is super clear
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: they're going to be making less right. And so if
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: you don't work or never work, and you just depend
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: on your partner for everything, what happens if your partner
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: passes away, what happens if you if your partner becomes
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: disabled or sickke and they can't work. There are so
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: many ways that this life is incredibly risky and insecure.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: And the content would have you believe like, oh, this
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: is going to be soft and.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Glamorous and lovely.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't even have a problem with this kind of
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: content so much if it told women the truth, if
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: it was like, hey, don't work, but also put away
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: a little money for yourself, or don't work, but make
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: sure that you keep an eye on your finances and
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: understand them in case something happens. Like if they were
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: more realistic and honest about the life that they are selling,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't even have a big problem with them. But
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: they are not doing that. They're selling a very enticing
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: but dangerous lie.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, And as we've been mentioning throughout, they're doing it
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: in a way that at first you don't realize where
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, I can relate to this. Yeah,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: But then you start to think about it, like, okay, wait,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: what what did I just read?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah? This is from that New York Times piece.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: At first glance, evis nonpartisan, publishing content about daily topics
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: such as award winning red carpets.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And styling skinny genes.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: But readers who click past hot girl health trends and
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Adam Brody appreciation posts will find articles that promote positions
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: that are friend even within conservative circles. Criticisms of no
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: salt divorce, and in vitro fertilization for example, package and
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: a fun and approachable format. A typical Evy headline Amy
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: from Love is Blind is right to be hesitant about
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: birth control. Also they're like super they're super sussa about
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: birth control.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: We'll talk more about that in a minute.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: But yeah, and so this is actually part of a
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: pretty concerning trend. Media spaces that at first glance seem
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: a political are actually very political. That is becoming much
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: more common online media matters. That an analysis that really
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: showed how right leaning spaces dominate the online ecosystem with
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: content that appears a political at first.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: The analysis was based on.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Three hundred and twenty online shows with a right leaning
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: or left leading ideological bent. They found that right leaning
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: shows dominate the online ecosystem with substantially larger audiences on
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: both politics and news shows and supposedly non political shows
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: that they determined often platformed ideological content or guests.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: And here's the kicker.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: The analysis, which looked entirely at shows with an ideological bent,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: found over a third self identify as non political, even
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: though seventy two percent of those shows were determined to
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: be right leaning. Instead, these shows describe themselves as comedy, entertainment, sports,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: or put themselves in supposedly other non political categories. So basically,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: these online spaces that are incredibly influential get to be like, oh,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: we're not political, we're not political, we're just talking about celebrity,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: gossip and entertainment. But actually they're incredibly political in specifically
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: seventy two percent of these cases right leaning ideological bents.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. And one of those things that really scares me
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: about that in this whole conversation is like evy going
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: back to the name being like women were wrong and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: are the source of all evil. Like when I was
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a kid, I heard that like Bible story and I
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: believed it, and so like I feel like it's it's
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: leaning into a lot of stuff many of us internalized
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: growing up of this is the natural way of things, right,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: this is women stay home, And they're they're kind of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: selling like the let's get back to the natural way
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and it'll be easier, it'll be nicer for you. When
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: all this stuff was like built, it was societally made,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: but they're selling it as like no, we're going against
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the natural order and they're doing it through look at
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the celebrity pop culture story.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're also that also makes sense as to
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: why they also sell milkmaide style dresses. They also were like,
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: you know what traditional women might want to do, spend
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: two hundred dollars on a like frilly dairy dress that
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: the Cut describes as designed in the French countryside. It's
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: said to be inspired by the quote hardworking dairy maids
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: of the seventeenth century Europe and as handmade with quote
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: luxurious organic cotton and one hundred percent feminine energy. So
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, it's very much like tied up in
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: this kind of quote natural feminine. Honestly, the second that
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I hear in any person or online place say something
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: like oh this has like the divine feminine, I'm like, okay.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Bull.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Like as soon as I hear that, I'm like, oh
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: really Okay.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: In the back of my head, I'm like, so child
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: labor is what you're talking about. That's the amount energy
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: where they get SI paid two cents an hour.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: Sweet.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Nothing says luxurious feminine energy like sane labor practices.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: That's what I've always wanted. They get that from us anyway,
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: So stay at home moms who don't get paid it
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: is like the same life.
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: I guess that's the feminine energy.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: So in addition to all of this, more problematically, they
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: also have a fertility app. So you're always telling you
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: how they're really not cool with birth control.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: They have a fertility app called twenty eight.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: The app is backed by tech billionaire and like Mega
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Trump thunder Peter til I had to say, like, I
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: simply do not advocate for anyone using apps like this,
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: just in general, but especially not one backed by somebody
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: like Teal. I could do a whole episode. This is
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: where I will talk all day. I'll just say google him.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Uh he is like us, Like he's like if mister
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Burns was a real person and also gay, Like that's how.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I would describe him. And there's so much to stay there.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: But yeah, less he was still better and like he
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: had morals. Les Luthor had morals compared to him.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he is not He's a not only is he
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: a bad dude, he's also bad in some like ways
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: that if I talked about them here, you would be
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: like that sounds like something out of a comic book,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: but it's real. Yeah. So he's one of the fund
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: one of the funders of their fertility app. They grew
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: interested in the women's fertility app space because many women.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Hugo Boom said, uh or that she knew we're having
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: trouble getting pregnant, and she said that she wanted to
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: develop a product that would quote empower women to understand
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: our bodies. Through some fortuitous networking, they ended up having
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: a meeting with Peter Teal and they asked him to
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: invest in a wellness app based on the typical twenty
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: eighth day menstruation cycle.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And Teal was like, is no one else doing this?
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: And it was like, no, no one else and he
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: was like, Okay, well sounds like a good idea. A
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: spokesperson for TIL confirmed that he invested two million dollars
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: in the app and they raised three point two million
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: dollars in total. The app pushes a message that hormonal
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: birth control is bad for you, Goodbye toxicity. One advertisement
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: read for the birth control detox supplements it sells through
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: the app. I'm gonna say on my tech podcast.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: There are no girls on the Internet.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: I work with the producer who has a lot of
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: experience directly writing and reviewing privacy policies for digital health app.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: So I asked him to take a look at twenty
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: eighth privacy policy.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't great. Here's a go rundown of what
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: he told me.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: He said the privacy policy doesn't emphasize going out of
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: their way to.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Protect users privacy.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Their section on third party tracking basically says that third
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: parties will have access to your personal data, but disavows
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: any responsibility for what those third parties do with that
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: personal data, so doesn't fill them with confidence. They put
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of responsibility on the end user. For example,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: you can set your browser to refuse all or some
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: browser cookies, or alert you and cookies.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Are being sent.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: He says, if they sincerely wanted to respect users right
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: to privacy rather than capture the value of their data
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: while disavowing any risk, twenty eight would describe strong, proactive
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: steps that they're taking to protect users personal data. Instead,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: this privacy policy is all about mitigating their risk by
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: shifting it on to unspecified third parties and by shifting
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: it onto the user themselves. So, especially in a climate
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: where people are being criminalized for information like this, I
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: would not recommend anybody trust any of their sensitive intimate
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: data to an app without a very robust privacy policy
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: in place. I especially would not recommend that anybody give
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: that data to somebody that's connected to Peter Teel who
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: is connected to Donald Trump, Like that is just not
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: something I would recommend.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: No Smindy signs off on that. So that's concerning. We've
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: got a lot of concerning things we've gone over. But
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: just to bring the point home, Bridget, what is what
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: is the big deal with EV and why is it
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: so problematic?
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean, I think it's very problematic because listen,
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: there is nothing wrong with like online content that speaks
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: to all different kinds of women, all different kinds of
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: women's experiences and perspectives.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: To me, the whole point.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Of being a feminist is that it allows for women
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: to choose paths and perspectives that work for them.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: However, EV I find problematic because it is designed to
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: sell that lie I was talking about earlier, that lie
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: that makes women not being in the public and civic
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: sphere look glossy and glamorous, which isn't just wrong. It
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: can be dangerous, It can be hurtful. And even though
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: that is dangerous, it's also very enticing. Very I can
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: understand why that's appealing, especially in a climate right now
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: where everything.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Is confusing, everything is chaotic.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: I can understand the desire for women to be like,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I just want my soft life at home. From that
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: piece quote, even critics of evy acknowledged the appeal of
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: its messaging. It's a perfectly pretty gateway drug to ideologies
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: which exist to protect the privilege and further disenfranchise the marginalized.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: That's from Sarah Peterson, the author of the book Mo Influenced.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: And I would say something that makes it even more
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: concerning to me is that when something is happening, and
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: it's happening in a space that has sort of been
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: relegated to women people, there's not really a lot of
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: eyes on it. There's an automatic assumption that it's like
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: just a fluffy, poppy space and what happens there doesn't
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: really matter to anybody, or is not of any consequence
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: to anybody. It's And so I think that because the
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: kind of people who care about extremism and media and
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: all of that might not be looking at a space
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: like ev online too hard, precisely because it speaks to women.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: That means that EVE can advocate for positions that even
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: even conservatives would say are extreme and not really have
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: a lot of people pushing.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Back right, And so I think it's a really really.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Effective way of potentially radicalizing women into a pretty extreme ideology.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: So we absolutely need to be paying attention to what
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: is happening in these online spaces. And probably my biggest
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: personal beef is that she's lying to us.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: She is lying to women.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: She has a very a very belittling attitude about women,
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: and that comes through so clearly in this piece.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: So the founder that I've been talking.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: About, Brittany Hugo Boom, she runs a media and tech
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: company that she says gets half a million eyeballs across
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: social media, while also saying, well also telling you other
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: women that, oh, you don't have we don't have the
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: aptitude to do exactly what it is that she is
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: doing successfully and making money from. When asked about women
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: running businesses and the piece, she said quote, I think
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: when most women try to do that, they fail, then
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: they feel upset about it when it's not really in
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: their nature. This is how she feels about women, And like,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I know that to be a lie.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: The reason why I know it to be a lie.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Is because she's doing it so like she knows it's
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: a lie too. She is lying to you to make
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: a buck, and that is ultimately my big beef with
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: this publication.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: I think the conversation is always kind of funny. It's
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: that whole level of when marginalized communities have to compete
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: with each other and so they're gonna do everything they
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: can to get out their competition, instead of realizing that
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: the supremacy of men and white men are the actual competition.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: And she's like, yeah, don't do this because you're not
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: going to be as good as I am. Obviously because
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: I'm white, I can't run a business. I'm white, I'm Christian,
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: and I got a Christian husband.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: He knows well, Like it's really.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Fascinating because the again, when we had that conversation about
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: women in magazines, the influence of magazines is deep, is deep,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: and it runs for years and years and years and years.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: When we talk about a good housewife, we talked about
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: southern living like that those are core memories for me,
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: specifically about my mother and then from my mother's generation
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: that to them was the perfect life. So kind of
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: again that cyclical point of being like we need to
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: go back to the Southern living standard of housekeeping, which
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: means that women stay home and that is their full achievement,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: is how they maintain their home. And it's interesting because
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: EVI is kind of bringing that back and understanding how
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: to indoctrinate young women, just like we've talked about young
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: men and podcasts. This is one of those forms of
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: understanding that, Okay, in order to radicalize young women, we're
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: going to do this, and we're going to do this
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: in the way of like reminding them of the good
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: old days that they don't know anything about. They have
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: a fantasy of whether it's watching Little House on the
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: Prairie or hearing about Little House on the Prairie, whatever
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: what not, and we're going to use that to tell
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: them they're going to fail, so why not try it
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: this way?
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: And you could see why that would be a really
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: compelling story.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Like like ing.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Again, like I have to be at somebody who a
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: lot of my I mean, I'm not a tradwife, but
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of treadwife interests and hobbies Like
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: I like preserving things, I like cooking from scratch, I
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: like gardening, I like all of that.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Like I can understand.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: I just really see the ways that, especially right now,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: we are selling women this very enticing lie that if
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: they actually buy, like buy, that it is incredibly dangerous.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Like there was a whole trend of like real treadwives,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: women who really like left their left the working world
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: and got married and had kids and then like you know,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: really relied on their their spouse for everything, talking about
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: how damaging it was for them and their children, like
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: there are real steaks women do this. And so I
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: don't think there's nothing wrong with being a stay at
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: home mom, a stay at home parent. Absolutely nothing wrong
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: with that, but we should not be glamorizing that without
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: also telling the truth about the reality of what that
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: looks like and the ways that can put you at
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: risk and what you should be doing to mitigate those.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: Risks, right especially when we know right now lawmakers are
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: really trying to turn back that clock in that level
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: of taking rights away from women, making sure they can't vote,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: taking their financial abilities as well, Like we're seeing that
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: is happening right now as they're trying to introduce this
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: intossentate to in order to go back to that, in
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: order to take away rights from women. And when we
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: were like Okay, cool. Some women obvious like well, like
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: they're like this this could be self life.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have to talk about it.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: I have seen this, like threads of this attitude picking
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: up steam online with like younger and younger women. There's
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: that whole trend of like young girls wearing shirts that
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: are like, oh too pretty to work and things like that,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Like that might seem cute, but really, like really take
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: a step back and think, like, what is it that
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: we're advocating for. Are we advocating for systems that are
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: actually going to protect like like put us at risk
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: or protect us? Like I think that we, you know,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: we we rightly talk a lot about the radicalization of
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: men and boys, we should also be talking about the
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: radicalization of women and girls through online content, because yeah,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: I just think that we're setting up a generation of
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: women and girls to really put themselves at risk and
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: may not maybe not even realize the ways in which
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: they're doing that.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and that's something Samantha and I have been
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: talking about a lot lately. So as always, Richie, every
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: time you come on, we're like, we have a million
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: other things where you need to talk about. So thank
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: you so much. For taking the time and bringing these
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: topics to us. We really appreciate it. Where can the
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: good listeners find you?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: You can listen to my podcast. There are no our
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: girls on the internet.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: New season is dropping on May fourteenth, so please check
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: it out. Yeah, they can follow me on Instagram at
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: bridget Marie and DC Yes.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: And can't wait can't wait to do this again? Listeners
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: go check Bridget out on the podcast Excited for the
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: new season on social media or on other episodes of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Stuff We Never Told You and Yes. If you would
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: like to contact us you can. You can email us
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: a hello, a stuff Wenever Told You dot com. You
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: can find us on Blue skyte Mom Stuff podcast or
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff We Never Told You
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: for also on YouTube. We have te piplet store and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: we have a book you can get wherever you get
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: your books. Thanks as always start at superroducer Christina, executive
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: producer My and a contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: to you for listening stuff on over told you this
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: prediction of by Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: you can check out the I Heart Radio ap Apple
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: podcast or where we listen to your favorite shows,