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SMNTY Classics: Jacinda Ardern · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane
0:07
Speaker 1: never told you a production of iHeartRadio. We're a bit
0:19
Speaker 1: behind the loop on this one because we've kind of
0:22
Speaker 1: pushed off our classics. We have a couple coming up
0:26
Speaker 1: that are news based, but we're like a month behind.
0:30
Speaker 1: But this first one is about just Into Arderne, who's
0:33
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who announced fairly recently,
0:38
Speaker 1: pretty suddenly, that she was going to resign her position,
0:42
Speaker 1: and it sparked this whole conversation about burnout, because essentially
0:49
Speaker 1: that's what she said was I don't have enough gas
0:52
Speaker 1: and to think anymore to keep doing this and doing
0:54
Speaker 1: it well. And then she talked about like, hey, let's
0:58
Speaker 1: get married with her husband, who who is a celebrity
1:01
Speaker 1: by the way, And there was some controversy in Wellington
1:05
Speaker 1: Paranormal because he's in an episode of Wellington Paranormal and
1:08
Speaker 1: people thought it was some kind of political move. Oh really, yes, yes,
1:12
Speaker 1: he's in the kind of like giant Sea Monster one
1:16
Speaker 1: because I think he's like a fisher. Yeah yeah, funny, Yeah. Yeah.
1:21
Speaker 1: It's got a whole section on their Wikipedia because when
1:23
Speaker 1: I was just kind of like when are the new
1:25
Speaker 1: episodes coming out? I looked like this controversy, but me
1:31
Speaker 1: and Bridget did this episode a while back because she
1:36
Speaker 1: was one of Barry. She's the second world leader I
1:40
Speaker 1: believe to give birth an office. So it also started
1:44
Speaker 1: a whole conversation about that's and about pregnancy discrimination and
1:48
Speaker 1: just discrimination against women in general when they have kids
1:52
Speaker 1: and what they can do. And then also we've seen
1:54
Speaker 1: a lot with her COVID response compared to who the
1:58
Speaker 1: rest of the world, but especially the US. So it's
2:01
Speaker 1: always we do have a bunch of people kind of
2:04
Speaker 1: lined up that we're going to have classics and updates
2:06
Speaker 1: about them. You know, nobody's perfect. There's always problematic things,
2:09
Speaker 1: but there are reasons we wanted to talk about them.
2:12
Speaker 1: So please enjoy this classic episode. Hi, this is Annie
2:21
Speaker 1: and this is a Bridget and you're listening to Steph Mom.
2:23
Speaker 1: Never told you quick warning, just so y'all know you
2:37
Speaker 1: can probably tell from my voice I'm under the weather,
2:39
Speaker 1: so I'm a bit smiff Lee and that more raspy
2:43
Speaker 1: than usual. Just FBYI podcasting wall sick. I'm a professional.
2:47
Speaker 1: Let's do this. You are a professional, Bridget, and another
2:51
Speaker 1: professional is the subject of this episode today, and that
2:55
Speaker 1: is New Zealand Prime Minister just Send our Dern. Our
2:59
Speaker 1: Dern was a like in October of twenty seventeen, the
3:02
Speaker 1: youngest prime minister the country has had since eighteen fifty six.
3:06
Speaker 1: And if you haven't heard, she gave birth in June
3:09
Speaker 1: to a healthy baby girl. And she is only the
3:12
Speaker 1: second world leader to do so while in office. Wow,
3:16
Speaker 1: that actually surprises me. On the one hand, good for her,
3:19
Speaker 1: but to only be the second person to do that
3:23
Speaker 1: is is surprising to me. I'm like, oh, I would
3:25
Speaker 1: have assumed there have been more considering childbirth is a
3:28
Speaker 1: thing that we do. It's like we've spoken about before,
3:33
Speaker 1: Bridget where it's good, but it's sad that it's so good,
3:40
Speaker 1: you know, like it's it shouldn't be only the second.
3:43
Speaker 1: That's kind of shocking, but that is the case. She
3:50
Speaker 1: arrived to a public hospital in her own car, driven
3:53
Speaker 1: by her partner. She's the first leader to ever take
3:57
Speaker 1: maternity leave. She's going to be consulted and continue to
4:00
Speaker 1: read cabinet papers while she's away for six weeks. But yeah,
4:03
Speaker 1: she's taking a maternity leave. Good for her. Right. In
4:08
Speaker 1: an interview with Radio New Zealand. She said, I am
4:11
Speaker 1: not the first woman to multitask. I am not the
4:14
Speaker 1: first woman to work and have a baby. There are
4:16
Speaker 1: many women who have done this before. I love that.
4:20
Speaker 1: I just love that she's someone with such a big
4:23
Speaker 1: platform is normalizing that it's okay to be a busy,
4:26
Speaker 1: successful working woman and also take maternity leave. I think
4:30
Speaker 1: it was Cheryl Sandberg who made headlines for not taking
4:33
Speaker 1: maternity leave, and like, you know, if she didn't feel
4:35
Speaker 1: like she needed it, fine, But I just think a
4:38
Speaker 1: woman who is successful and driven at a working woman
4:41
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, I'm taking my leave and you can
4:43
Speaker 1: do just really models that it's okay. Doesn't mean that you're,
4:47
Speaker 1: you know, doing a bad job at your job if
4:49
Speaker 1: you take the time that you need after you have
4:51
Speaker 1: a baby. No, I would argue that recognizing that you
4:54
Speaker 1: need that time and that other things than work, surprise, surprise,
4:59
Speaker 1: are I think that's the mark of a good employee
5:02
Speaker 1: and someone who is good at their job and recognizes
5:04
Speaker 1: their limits. I think it's good and I've wanted to
5:08
Speaker 1: mention her partner is the host of a show called
5:11
Speaker 1: Fish of the Day, and he's planning on being a
5:14
Speaker 1: stay at home Dad, and when asked why they're not married,
5:18
Speaker 1: are Durn answered, it sounds terrible because we're very committed
5:21
Speaker 1: to each other. Marriage is just not something we've really
5:24
Speaker 1: gotten around to. We haven't correctly sequenced perhaps, and her
5:28
Speaker 1: partner Clark Grayford, said he liked that they were doing
5:30
Speaker 1: everything in reverse. I like that too. I mean, I
5:35
Speaker 1: mean they are reflective of many, many, many sort of
5:39
Speaker 1: less traditional couples out there, who are partnered, who lived together,
5:42
Speaker 1: who don't live together, who who are co parents, Like
5:45
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's cool that they are
5:47
Speaker 1: illustrating and modeling what we all know is very true
5:51
Speaker 1: from this living in the world, that not everybody who
5:54
Speaker 1: has a child is married together, Like there are all
5:57
Speaker 1: kinds of ways to be a family. Yeah, that too,
6:00
Speaker 1: I mean we all know it to be true, but
6:02
Speaker 1: we so rarely see it. I feel so and when
6:04
Speaker 1: we see it, I think we're like even, I know,
6:07
Speaker 1: you know that this thing, this kind of thing exists,
6:10
Speaker 1: But when I encounter it myself, I'm like, oh, you're
6:13
Speaker 1: not married and have a baby. Like it's it's so
6:15
Speaker 1: hard to break that internal thing that's set up for
6:18
Speaker 1: by society that says, oh, to have a family, you
6:21
Speaker 1: have to be married, lived in the same house. Blah
6:23
Speaker 1: blah blah. Yeah. When I was first reading about this,
6:26
Speaker 1: because a lot of listeners suggested that we talk about
6:29
Speaker 1: talk about this, I was like, Oh, she had a
6:31
Speaker 1: baby in office and she's not married. Wow, this shouldn't
6:38
Speaker 1: be shocking at all, because there are so many people
6:40
Speaker 1: that have these situations, very similar situations. Our Dern is
6:45
Speaker 1: New Zealand's third female prime minister. And if you're wondering
6:51
Speaker 1: who the first world leader to give birth in office was,
6:54
Speaker 1: it was Pakistan's at two time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
6:58
Speaker 1: Both leaders were thirty seven when they gave birth, and
7:00
Speaker 1: our Deurn's baby was born on what would have been
7:03
Speaker 1: Bouto's birthday. She was assassinated in two thousand and seven.
7:07
Speaker 1: And while Bootso hid her pregnancy as long as she could,
7:09
Speaker 1: Ourdurne let people know six months in advance. So this
7:13
Speaker 1: is wild. Her pregnancy was such a big secret that
7:16
Speaker 1: most of her colleagues had no idea that she was
7:19
Speaker 1: even pregnant until she delivered the baby. A member of
7:21
Speaker 1: the cabinet said about it quote and then lo and behold,
7:25
Speaker 1: suddenly we learned that she was not only gone and
7:27
Speaker 1: delivered democracy, she's also delivered a baby. She got a
7:31
Speaker 1: cea section and returned the next day, not realizing that
7:34
Speaker 1: she was the first world leader to have given birth.
7:37
Speaker 1: And this happened during a time of political turmoil in Pakistan.
7:40
Speaker 1: After having a baby, she made it through a vote
7:42
Speaker 1: of no confidence and her government was facing an onslaught
7:46
Speaker 1: from a military funded right wing alliance. Boutso later said
7:50
Speaker 1: it was a defining moment, especially for young women, proving
7:53
Speaker 1: that a woman could work and have a baby in
7:55
Speaker 1: the highest and most challenging leadership positions. So they're kind
7:59
Speaker 1: of almost mirror opposites. And she sort of paid her
8:03
Speaker 1: baby and went right back to where. Yeah, it didn't
8:07
Speaker 1: take she Charyl Sandburg did it. She didn't take the
8:09
Speaker 1: Charyl of Samburg did. That's gonna catch on, I know it.
8:13
Speaker 1: Months later, Bhutto's government was dismissed and a rival came
8:17
Speaker 1: to power who criticized Bhutto as being quote greedy and
8:20
Speaker 1: that she was putting motherhood, domesticity and glamor over her
8:24
Speaker 1: duties to the country. But how because she didn't even
8:27
Speaker 1: take time off. I think it's because when she was
8:32
Speaker 1: pregnant with her first child. The leader of the military
8:36
Speaker 1: sacked the government so that elections would be held when
8:38
Speaker 1: Bhutto was in the final months of pregnancy and hoped
8:41
Speaker 1: she would be unable to campaign as effectively. But they
8:44
Speaker 1: got the date wrong and news of a baby on
8:46
Speaker 1: the way added excitement to the campaign. Oh my god,
8:49
Speaker 1: people love a baby. People love a baby. Like when
8:52
Speaker 1: a celebrity or somebody is pregnant, people are like, oh
8:54
Speaker 1: my god, she's pregnant. Like that does that doesn't surprise
8:57
Speaker 1: me that that generated a level of at least one
9:01
Speaker 1: excitement and publicity, but also maybe a little bit of goodwill. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: it definitely backfired, and some theories that maybe it didn't
9:08
Speaker 1: backfire but Bhutto purposefully spread misinformation about her due date.
9:13
Speaker 1: Oh that's actually diabolical. Have you ever seen the movie
9:17
Speaker 1: Knocked Up? I have not, so one of the plotlines
9:20
Speaker 1: and Knocked Up is Katherine Heigl's character is like an
9:24
Speaker 1: e news journalist and she's an on camera like she
9:28
Speaker 1: interviewed celebrities and she finds out that she's has an
9:31
Speaker 1: unplanned pregnancy and she's terrified they're gonna fire her. That
9:35
Speaker 1: like you know she can't be pregnant on TV. They're
9:37
Speaker 1: gonna let her go, even though it's technically illegal to
9:39
Speaker 1: fire somebody for getting pregnant, but we all know it happens,
9:43
Speaker 1: and she is really surprised to find that they love it.
9:48
Speaker 1: They love her being pregnant, They love the idea of
9:50
Speaker 1: her interviewing other pregnant celebs and all of that. So
9:53
Speaker 1: if this reminds me of that, yeah, I think we've
9:56
Speaker 1: done an episode on this show before about ba b
10:00
Speaker 1: mania and why why people get so excited about celebrity
10:05
Speaker 1: babies in particular, and it goes back a long way,
10:07
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe other people weren't as surprised by this
10:10
Speaker 1: as I was. But I remember reading like Royalty. I
10:13
Speaker 1: guess that's obvious. But back in you know, seventeen hundreds England,
10:17
Speaker 1: when royals were pregnant, it is very exciting and people
10:21
Speaker 1: would place bets on the gender and read every bit
10:25
Speaker 1: of news about it. So it's a it seems to
10:28
Speaker 1: be kind of a it's not going away. It's not.
10:33
Speaker 1: It's not. So we have some more to talk about here,
10:38
Speaker 1: but first we're gonna pause for a quick break for
10:40
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor and we're back, thank you sponsor.
10:53
Speaker 1: Before becoming New Zealand's Prime Minister, our Durn served as
10:56
Speaker 1: the opposition a labor leader, and on her first day
10:59
Speaker 1: of the job she was asked, a lot of women
11:02
Speaker 1: in New Zealand feel like they have to make a
11:03
Speaker 1: choice between having babies and having a career or continuing
11:07
Speaker 1: their career. So is that a decision you feel you
11:09
Speaker 1: have to make or that you feel you've already made.
11:13
Speaker 1: And when the interview became focused on that and the
11:17
Speaker 1: right of employers to know if an employee or potential
11:19
Speaker 1: employee intended to take maternity leave, if it was acceptable
11:24
Speaker 1: for the Prime Minister to do so instead of policy questions,
11:28
Speaker 1: our Durn got angry. Quote, it is a woman's decision
11:32
Speaker 1: about when they choose to have children and it should
11:34
Speaker 1: not predetermine whether or not they are given a job
11:37
Speaker 1: or have job opportunities here ourn Yeah, yeah, I just
11:43
Speaker 1: think that having someone so powerful be the person who
11:46
Speaker 1: was going through that and saying that and saying yeah, like,
11:48
Speaker 1: I'll do what I want. It's up to me to
11:50
Speaker 1: decide what I have a baby. I have body autonomy
11:52
Speaker 1: and my professional life should be completely separate from that. Yeah,
11:56
Speaker 1: and after this whole exchange, the uproar that followed propelled
12:00
Speaker 1: to the front pages in newspapers around the world. She
12:03
Speaker 1: said that dilmas she faced giving birth to a baby
12:05
Speaker 1: was no different than the one faced by most women
12:07
Speaker 1: in the workforce or not in the workforce. Although it
12:11
Speaker 1: felt like she'd come out of nowhere, she had been
12:14
Speaker 1: working in politics since her teens and she entered the
12:17
Speaker 1: New Zealand Parliament at the age of twenty eight. The
12:19
Speaker 1: excitement fell around the world at her appointment as Prime
12:23
Speaker 1: Minister has been dubbed just Sinda Mania. We love to
12:27
Speaker 1: give a catchy nickname the things we do we do.
12:32
Speaker 1: A group called hashtag knit for Jacinda started a campaign
12:35
Speaker 1: of knitting baby clothes and blankets for hospitals and shelters
12:38
Speaker 1: in her honor, which I think is so cute. I
12:41
Speaker 1: do too. Knitting is something that I always have wanted
12:44
Speaker 1: to learn, but I put it on the backburner, like
12:47
Speaker 1: immediately I have the thought you should learn to knit,
12:49
Speaker 1: and then it immediately is like maybe later. Yeah. I
12:52
Speaker 1: actually have seen so many interesting cases where knitting is
12:55
Speaker 1: sort of used as this like radical feminist art of
12:58
Speaker 1: reclaiming something that's domestic into something like radical, like the
13:02
Speaker 1: woman who made those pussy hats with the Women's March
13:05
Speaker 1: or here in DC sometimes things get nit bombed, where
13:08
Speaker 1: like people will knit things over them, like if it's
13:11
Speaker 1: an offensive sign or something, someone will like knit something
13:13
Speaker 1: and like drape it over. We should both. We should.
13:16
Speaker 1: We should learn how to knit by the end of
13:17
Speaker 1: the summer, even me. We should, and then we could
13:20
Speaker 1: do an episode and talk about it, and while we're
13:22
Speaker 1: podcasting will be knitting because we're women and we can multitask.
13:27
Speaker 1: Seeing a woman hold this position of power is meaningful.
13:31
Speaker 1: One of our Durn's favorite things is seeing the faces
13:33
Speaker 1: of little girls light up when they see her. Quote.
13:36
Speaker 1: If they see a woman in a job like this
13:39
Speaker 1: and it has an effect, then that's wonderful. And it
13:42
Speaker 1: is wonderful. Yeah, I mean, there're probably so many little
13:44
Speaker 1: girls out there who will be inspired to go into
13:46
Speaker 1: public office because of her. Yeah, I hope. So when
13:50
Speaker 1: critics pressed Urdurn about her ability to wear both hats,
13:54
Speaker 1: she responded, none of them detected. I had a pretty
13:57
Speaker 1: bad morning sickness for three months of establishing the government.
14:00
Speaker 1: It's what ladies do. So this could not be more true.
14:04
Speaker 1: I have this theory that women are more likely than
14:08
Speaker 1: men to go to work sick because as women, like,
14:11
Speaker 1: we just need to suck it up and go in
14:13
Speaker 1: and like you don't want to see like your you know,
14:16
Speaker 1: week or frail or blah blah blah. Heaven forbid. I
14:18
Speaker 1: remember during the election when Hillary Clinton felt faint and
14:22
Speaker 1: all the news reports were like, oh my godess so
14:24
Speaker 1: she okay, she's old and frail and sick and she
14:27
Speaker 1: can't be president. And it's like, no, she went to
14:29
Speaker 1: work with the flu, as many women do, Like that's
14:32
Speaker 1: what we do. Yeah, I agree. It kind of reminds
14:36
Speaker 1: me of when we did the Women in Pain episode
14:38
Speaker 1: and you made that joke about the woman in the
14:40
Speaker 1: emergency room with the harpoon and just says, it's fine,
14:44
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a bother get to me whenever.
14:47
Speaker 1: I'll just be here. Don't worry about it. It's true,
14:51
Speaker 1: and we actually have some numbers behind that to back
14:55
Speaker 1: that up. But first, one last quick break for a
14:57
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
15:09
Speaker 1: So our Durn's right. It is what ladies do, and
15:12
Speaker 1: we're doing it more and more in the US where
15:15
Speaker 1: we are lagging way behind when it comes to maternity
15:18
Speaker 1: leave since this Bureau data collected between two thousand and
15:20
Speaker 1: six to two thousand and eight showed that sixty six
15:23
Speaker 1: percent of mothers giving birth to their first child worked
15:26
Speaker 1: through their first pregnancy. If you look at data from
15:29
Speaker 1: the sixties, about sixty five percent of pregnant women took
15:33
Speaker 1: off of work a month before birth. These days, that
15:36
Speaker 1: percent is at eighteen while eighty two percent of women
15:39
Speaker 1: work until within a month of due date. Women are
15:43
Speaker 1: also going back to work more quickly after giving birth. Yeah,
15:47
Speaker 1: this will probably surprise no one. According to a Pew
15:50
Speaker 1: Research Center survey, they found that when compared to fathers,
15:54
Speaker 1: mothers were far more likely to face a workplace interruption
15:57
Speaker 1: like reduced work hours. So we're basically working more but
16:02
Speaker 1: also being punished for more, right, and no surprise. Pregnancy
16:06
Speaker 1: discrimination is still a big thing in the US, and
16:09
Speaker 1: women who are pregnant or might become pregnant faced emotions mispromotions,
16:13
Speaker 1: are even possibly getting fired. Discharge makes up one third
16:17
Speaker 1: of complaints as of twenty ten and twenty fifteen. The
16:21
Speaker 1: US Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, the EOC, and Fair Employment
16:25
Speaker 1: Agencies at the state level had filed almost thirty one
16:28
Speaker 1: thousand cases of pregnancy discrimination. This despite the nineteen seventy
16:33
Speaker 1: eight Pregnancy Discrimination Act making it illegal to deny women
16:36
Speaker 1: job opportunities or promotions because she is or might become pregnant.
16:41
Speaker 1: Across all industries, races, and ethnicities, women report pregnancy discrimination,
16:46
Speaker 1: but Black women are hit the hardest. It didn't surprise
16:49
Speaker 1: me at all. I've actually worked in places where there
16:52
Speaker 1: would be if if there was even a room or
16:55
Speaker 1: that someone was pregnant, it would there like a hush
16:57
Speaker 1: would fall over the office. And you know, people if
17:00
Speaker 1: if you were wearing baggy clothes like like it was
17:03
Speaker 1: almost like people were afraid that people would even just
17:05
Speaker 1: think not even if you were, they would just suspect
17:08
Speaker 1: that you were pregnant. Wow. I had an office once
17:13
Speaker 1: where these people used to play. Some of my coworkers
17:17
Speaker 1: used to play a game called Fat, Fashionable, or Pregnant,
17:23
Speaker 1: and they would try to, like based on your clothes,
17:27
Speaker 1: ascertain if you were just if your baggy clothes was
17:30
Speaker 1: a fashion thing or because you're fat, or because you're pregnant,
17:34
Speaker 1: which sounds like a really classy game. Yeah, very very classy. Indeed,
17:41
Speaker 1: a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission the
17:44
Speaker 1: e HRC from twenty fifteen found that in Britain, fifty
17:49
Speaker 1: four thousand new mothers are losing their jobs annually, and
17:52
Speaker 1: that the number is up from a decade earlier. Another
17:55
Speaker 1: distressing stat is that ten percent of pregnant women reported
17:58
Speaker 1: being discouraged by their employer from getting checkups for both
18:03
Speaker 1: mother and child after birth, and seven percent reported a
18:06
Speaker 1: pressure to quit. Wow, that is so messed up, like
18:10
Speaker 1: basically pressuring you to put your baby, your unborn child's
18:13
Speaker 1: life at risk by foregoing checkups. Yeah, and you know
18:17
Speaker 1: now that you've had a kid, just we don't need
18:20
Speaker 1: you here anymore. Just quit, let's leave. That's terrible, what
18:23
Speaker 1: a terrible work environment. Pregnant women have reported working harder,
18:28
Speaker 1: as we touched on earlier, to avoid the stereotype of
18:30
Speaker 1: being distracted and unable to concentrate. So clearly we have
18:35
Speaker 1: a lot of work to do to change this. Yeah,
18:38
Speaker 1: we got to catch up. This is unacceptable. It is
18:42
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear from listeners around the
18:44
Speaker 1: world about what the situation is in your nick of
18:47
Speaker 1: the woods. And speaking of listeners, it's time for listener
18:50
Speaker 1: mail Sophia wrote, I just wanted to say something about
18:56
Speaker 1: Anne Rice's hypocrisy regarding fan fiction. In spite of making
18:59
Speaker 1: an active effort to ruin people's lives for writing about
19:02
Speaker 1: her characters, including having her lawyer's attempt to destroy unrelated
19:06
Speaker 1: small businesses owned by fanfic writers, she actually came out
19:10
Speaker 1: in full throated support for Fifty Shades of Gray and E. L. James.
19:14
Speaker 1: Apparently only her own intellectual property is to be protected.
19:18
Speaker 1: Anne Rice wrote a series of Sleeping Beauty erotic novels
19:21
Speaker 1: under the pseudonym A. N. Rocular. Three of the books
19:25
Speaker 1: were written in the early eighties, and a fourth was
19:28
Speaker 1: released in twenty fifteen. In the series, Beauty wakes up
19:31
Speaker 1: to the Prince raping her and is taken to his
19:34
Speaker 1: kingdom as a sex slave. Problematic but non con non
19:37
Speaker 1: consensual and dub con dubious consent fantasies can be explored
19:41
Speaker 1: safely through erotica and fan fiction if that's what people
19:43
Speaker 1: are interested in. The framing device of Rice's work pretty
19:46
Speaker 1: clearly establishes that the content is not how healthy BDSM
19:50
Speaker 1: relationships are conducted in a way that Fifty Shades emphatically
19:54
Speaker 1: does not take that kind of care. There was a
19:56
Speaker 1: fair bit of controversy involving Rice shooting down any DISCUSSI
20:00
Speaker 1: on her Facebook page that was remotely negative about fifty
20:03
Speaker 1: Shades and blocking a lot of people for expressing their
20:06
Speaker 1: concern that the series romanticizes abuse by not establishing that
20:09
Speaker 1: stocking and rape are not cool things for your boyfriend
20:12
Speaker 1: to do. I did have a thought in regards to
20:14
Speaker 1: the culture that's around slash fiction that you may not
20:17
Speaker 1: have been aware to cover. It's a negative aspect of
20:20
Speaker 1: the fandom which I hope will continue to disappear. There is,
20:23
Speaker 1: unfortunately a great deal of internalized misogyny among creators of
20:26
Speaker 1: transformative fiction. In some cases, it's the part of the
20:30
Speaker 1: fick where the canon girlfriend is reduced to an out
20:33
Speaker 1: of character shrew who must be swiftly removed without the
20:36
Speaker 1: male characters looking bad for leaving cheating. It's the sort
20:39
Speaker 1: of thing I hope has fallen out of fashion, but
20:41
Speaker 1: it was one of the things that turned me off
20:42
Speaker 1: fan fiction a while back. There's so much value in
20:45
Speaker 1: these creative spaces, which are predominantly built and driven by
20:48
Speaker 1: women and girls, or, in the case of the world
20:50
Speaker 1: I'm currently working on women and a smattering of men
20:53
Speaker 1: and non binary individuals. I think my main reason for
20:56
Speaker 1: bringing up the internalized misogyny, which can be tied to
20:59
Speaker 1: fetishizing MLM relationships but not always that can crop up,
21:03
Speaker 1: is actually so that people who might have encountered things
21:05
Speaker 1: like that can keep looking for something that speaks to them,
21:08
Speaker 1: even if they're initially confronted with negativity. I have made
21:12
Speaker 1: close lasting friendships with people I have RPID with, role
21:15
Speaker 1: played with, and the right groups can become vital support networks.
21:19
Speaker 1: And I could definitely go on about the pros and
21:22
Speaker 1: cons of this sort of collaborative fiction, but I'm already
21:24
Speaker 1: writing far more than I meant to. She also mentioned
21:28
Speaker 1: in regards to our Action Figure episode and the whole
21:30
Speaker 1: switch up of the Ironman three plots so that there'd
21:33
Speaker 1: be a male villain action figure instead of a female
21:36
Speaker 1: villain action figure. They never even made the action figure,
21:40
Speaker 1: so it was pointless. It was all pointless, you know.
21:43
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I am kind of here for this
21:45
Speaker 1: and Rice dragging, Like, who knew An Rice was this
21:49
Speaker 1: much of a not so nice person. I think an
21:54
Speaker 1: Rice is going to come for us. Yeah, are we
21:57
Speaker 1: are we start? This? Is this the beginning of a
21:59
Speaker 1: new podcast? Few? Dude? Does she have a podcast? I
22:02
Speaker 1: don't know. Anne Rice, if you're listening, come on our podcast,
22:05
Speaker 1: you coward. Oh man, I'm gonna have nightmares to night.
22:09
Speaker 1: An Rice is at my door. I did want to
22:13
Speaker 1: mention this because the internalized aslogyny she's talking about, that's
22:16
Speaker 1: something I have seen as well, and I was always
22:18
Speaker 1: kind of confused by when I was younger, like, why
22:21
Speaker 1: is it that Jenny from Harry Potter is suddenly just
22:24
Speaker 1: a horrible human person that is so one dimensional? And
22:29
Speaker 1: this makes a lot of sense to me, So I
22:30
Speaker 1: did want to did want to include that in there,
22:33
Speaker 1: that it is unfortunate but a lot of times the
22:36
Speaker 1: girlfriend is reduced to just a shrill shrew that you
22:42
Speaker 1: need to get rid of very quickly. Oh I hate that. Yeah.
22:46
Speaker 1: And the one time I wrote Harry Potter fan fiction,
22:48
Speaker 1: like the only negative things I ever got was like,
22:52
Speaker 1: ken you please, like why are you even including this character?
22:54
Speaker 1: Get rid of her? I hate her? So hopefully it
22:58
Speaker 1: is moving away from that, and certainly there's so much
23:02
Speaker 1: more out there. So if you have been turned up
23:03
Speaker 1: by that, keep looking, keep looking. It's out there for you.
23:08
Speaker 1: Our next letter comes from Kursten. Kirsten writes, I identify
23:12
Speaker 1: as bisexual because that was the first word I heard
23:14
Speaker 1: us that made sense for my identity. As many young
23:17
Speaker 1: people do, I started learning about sexuality via Tumbler and
23:20
Speaker 1: other online forums. I grew up in the rural Midwest
23:23
Speaker 1: and had an incredibly limited queer representation. But I saw
23:26
Speaker 1: the word bisexual online with its definition of attracted to
23:29
Speaker 1: people of multiple genders. I was like, oh, yes, that
23:31
Speaker 1: makes sense. At seventeen, I was searching for a bisexual
23:34
Speaker 1: podcasts and came across the Sminty episode, and it made
23:38
Speaker 1: me feel so seen. I didn't hear the word pan
23:40
Speaker 1: sexual until much later. I'm twenty one now and my
23:43
Speaker 1: first ever relationship, and my significant other identifies as non binary.
23:47
Speaker 1: We've never talked about the ins and outs of the
23:49
Speaker 1: way I identify, but I know that they don't think
23:51
Speaker 1: about my identity excludes their gender in any way. When
23:54
Speaker 1: I started dating my significant other, I debated using pan
23:57
Speaker 1: sexual more interchangeably with my bisexuality, but I still prefer
24:00
Speaker 1: my by label. I'm attracted to people of all genders,
24:03
Speaker 1: but the way I'm attracted to my partner is different
24:05
Speaker 1: from my crushes on boys, and those are different from
24:08
Speaker 1: my crushes on girls. They're all equal and all important
24:11
Speaker 1: to my identity. But I like the way people perform
24:14
Speaker 1: their gender. It just doesn't matter what gender it happens
24:16
Speaker 1: to be. It's been so great to see more by
24:19
Speaker 1: and PAN representation, and I'm so glad you guys talked
24:21
Speaker 1: about it. It will help teenagers and grown adults in
24:24
Speaker 1: the by PAN spectrum feel seen and have even more
24:27
Speaker 1: room to understand their own identity. I'm with you, Bridget.
24:30
Speaker 1: Every time I think about Janelle Money and Dirty Computer,
24:32
Speaker 1: my queer heart beats a little faster. This is such
24:35
Speaker 1: a nice letter. I'm so happy that folks out there are,
24:38
Speaker 1: you know, exploring their sexualities and exploring you know, what
24:41
Speaker 1: it means for them, trying things on, deciding you know, hey,
24:45
Speaker 1: I want to keep this label, even though this label
24:46
Speaker 1: also seems to fit me. You know, I think that
24:49
Speaker 1: we should all be a little bit more you know,
24:51
Speaker 1: open and in fluid about about these things and really
24:54
Speaker 1: find the label or labels. Let speak to us and
24:58
Speaker 1: Janelle Money, how great is she? She's pretty great. I'm
25:03
Speaker 1: glad that all of that's happening as well, and I'm
25:04
Speaker 1: glad that we're having these conversations more often and more
25:08
Speaker 1: out in the open, because I can tell you I
25:11
Speaker 1: never really heard about pan sexuality or bisexuality when I
25:15
Speaker 1: was younger, and I would have really appreciated having more
25:21
Speaker 1: available to me to learn about it. Definitely thanks to
25:26
Speaker 1: both of them for writing in. If you would like
25:29
Speaker 1: to write to us, we would love to hear from you.
25:31
Speaker 1: Our email is mom Stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com. You
25:35
Speaker 1: can also find us on the social media is We
25:37
Speaker 1: are on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You and
25:39
Speaker 1: on Twitter mom Stuff Podcast, and thanks as always to
25:43
Speaker 1: our producer, Kathleen Quilliad