Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 55: Let Women Have Nice Things

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Ep. 55: Let Women Have Nice Things · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Hello. Hello. Oh. Everyone
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: just jumped back five feet.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Sorry. Let me repeat that. Hello.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: So tonight Brie sounds like a man,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: but I promise she's still Brie. I'm still Brie.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: It's actually deeply terrifying and I hate it.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Well, is everybody else having a bad day? I think probably at least 50 of them. I've talked to several people today, and everybody's just tired of existing.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It's that time of year, I think, we're, like, reaching the end of the school year. It's almost summer. People getting ready for vacations, but they're not quite here yet. Plus also it's gray and disgusting outside. Amongst other things.
• 1:20
  Amongst many other things. Would you like to share?
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: No. Alright.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So feel free to commiserate with Brie. Yeah. Even though she's not sharing anything with you.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: You know, sometimes it's just like a culmination of a lot of different little things that just make you Eeyore. And you think, is life worth living? Wow. And then you have, like, a glass of wine and it is. Good.
• 1:55
  Healthy That's my advice.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I think the better advice would be, like, you know, read a book, as Brie's been doing for most of the day.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Yep. Not most of the day.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I've been working. Well, since you got home. Yeah. The funnier part of this to all of you is that she's sitting there hugging an Eeyore plushie whose tail comes off. He's so comfortable.
• 2:18
  Those are the best. Have you guys Target has them, but, like, they come straight from Disney. I forget what they call them, but they're like these pillows stuffies. I don't know. They're big, and they're so it's kinda like a Squishmallow, but
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know. They're so soft. And they're all kinda sleepy.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They all look sleepy.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I have which one do I have? You have Sven, don't you?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: No. Charlie has Sven.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Isn't this interesting content for you guys? Which stuffed animal does it listen to?
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Really don't remember. I have one of them, and for the life of me, I can't remember what it is.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I was Wallie?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Nope. That's not
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I was so particular about which one I wanted because I've been waiting. Every time we go to Disney, I'm like, which one do I want? Oh, let
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: me guess. You got the Walrus from Alice in Wonderland.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They make that.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Or Roz from Monsters That would be disgusting.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Or She couldn't come up with another weird, obscure character.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I know. I was gonna say the villain from The Incredibles, like, you know, right at the beginning or the end, where he's like a mole. Oh, yeah. But I couldn't think of Oh, you could do mole from Atlantis. Oh, good call.
• 3:37
  Did they make a stuffed animal out of him? Atlantis Disney? Mhmm.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Is it? No. It was none of those, but I still I still don't know which what it was. So you guys can live with that mystery. However, I highly recommend running to your local Target and purchasing one because it is the best thing to cuddle ever.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Just as an adult, sometimes you need a little cuddle. You do.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Forget a partner. Forget other humans. It's a stuffed animal.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: That's where it is. It's kinda like pregnancy pillows. You know?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Pregnancy pillows are very comfortable.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Who says they're just for pregnant people? And in fact, I think that's rude.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Actually, I saw somebody on the book talk, which we'll talk about in a minute. Mhmm. And she had a giant pregnancy pillow. And, like, that was her whole reading setup. She had the pregnancy pillow around her, and then she had, like,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: a support pillow for her
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: back, then she had all of
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: her Looked like a great time. Maybe I should invest.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe you should. They take up your entire bed. There's no room for anyone else.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: That's just me.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. So there you go.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: All by myself and my pregnancy pillow.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Anyway. So today, we had said last week that we were gonna launch into a book called Women and the Gender of God. But we simply did not have time.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Simply could not find a moment. No.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: It it's been a long, long week, boys and girls. And it's a book that I really, like, wanna give time to. Mhmm. And I just I didn't have it this week. So hopefully, we'll get back to regularly scheduled programming next week.
• 5:22
  But this week, we wanted to do something that we used to do Mhmm. Back when we first started.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Some current events, like a more low key chat, and you can pretend that you're sitting on my bed too. Which is where we are.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: When we first started doing every week episodes, the opposite weeks, we said we were gonna do current events and, like, a shorter episode. And then that died real quick. We're bouncing back to that.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: We decided, you know what? Crap. We can do whatever we want.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: It's really how we live our lives actually. I often decide, crap, I can do whatever I want.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Mostly in a Target. Target's a dangerous place. Mhmm.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I just bought two books there today. Actually, three because I bought one for my daughter, but it's fine. We're not gonna talk about that. In case you need this information, Target has buy one get one half
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: off their books. Nobody needed to know that.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Sorry, but now you know. I think it's for Mother's Day.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: But anyway, so today we're
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about current events, and we wanted to focus on ones where women are kinda the center of the story.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: As we should be.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I saw a TikToker, and I can't remember what her title was, but it was basically, like, only women news. Her mission basically is that most of the news that we see focuses on men. Even if we don't really realize that bias, I was scrolling through just the general news. I didn't look specifically for anything. Yeah.
• 6:53
  And I could not find an article focused on women. So I had to, like, specifically look for it. Do you remember during the COVID when was it one
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: of the people who played in The Office, they did, like, a whole news segment called, like, good news? Mhmm. I enjoyed that.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The first article I wanna look at is something that, like, is not super current. It's actually from last year, but I just heard about it, and I find it fascinating. Fascinating. Fascinating. So this article comes from Tasmania, interestingly, on Australia.
• 7:30
  Back in 2024, so November to December of twenty twenty four is when this story really got picked up. In Australia, there was this museum and a portion of the museum was set aside by and it was the wife of the owner. And she created this space and said only women are allowed to enter. Mhmm. Except for, interestingly, the they called them butlers.
• 7:56
  All men. That's the only way that men could come in. But other than that, it was all women. Now this opened back in 2020. Mhmm.
• 8:05
  Didn't have a problem at all, which is fascinating to me and I think speaks to a different culture than we have here in The US. Because the moment something like that opened in The US, there would be lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, and it would just be chaos. Yeah. Like, it's I'm laughing about it a little bit, but it's that's exactly what would happen. Mhmm.
• 8:26
  So she opened this. It was for women only, didn't have a problem until 2024. In 2024, a man came in. His name was Jason Lau, and he wanted to visit the museum or this portion of the museum. Mhmm.
• 8:42
  They called it a lounge. And, obviously, because it was a women's only thing and he was neither female nor identified as such, they said, sorry. No. And he got very upset. And so he sued because, of course, he did.
• 8:59
  Now when I first heard about this I was like oh well it probably was like an organization or something that sued. Nope. Just one angry dude. So he sued and the judge sided with him which is interesting because this had been open since 2020. Not a problem.
• 9:14
  Mhmm. But the judge sided with him. Now I really don't know how to say her name properly, but the woman that started this, her name is Kersha Keshell is how I'm gonna pronounce it, could be dead wrong. But that's what I'm gonna say her name is. She countersued and took it all the way to the supreme court.
• 9:36
  And supreme court was like, actually, I think this is okay. I guess there's a law that says it allows for essentially discrimination within this type of space, so not allowing a certain people group in, men in this case, if it promotes equal opportunity for a marginalized group. Now remember, this is not US laws, this is Australian laws. But it's really interesting because I thought of it in this context of like I don't think anyone wants the ideal world to be a space where there's spaces for only women and spaces for only men. Mm-mm.
• 10:14
  I don't think that's the goal. And I don't think that's necessarily she's a little extreme as I read through this so maybe that's hysterical. But I don't think that's anyone's ideal situation. But a, you're making a statement here. Mhmm.
• 10:29
  There have been plenty of spaces throughout history, and that's something that the judge said as well. There have been plenty of spaces throughout history that women were not allowed. Yeah. Whether that's a private club or government leadership or church leadership is one that I really thought about. Where, like, women literally aren't allowed in the room when some of these big decisions are being made.
• 10:53
  Mhmm. And so here's one space where men are not being allowed. And this man just couldn't handle it. He just couldn't function. And on the other hand, I thought about why something like that can exist and why it makes sense that it exists.
• 11:14
  And I thought when you have a people group, like women in this case, that have been marginalized, that have been made to feel unsafe around another people group, which in this case is men, and they suddenly have a space where they know it's just them. Suddenly that becomes a much safer space. It becomes a comfortable space. It becomes a space where they don't have to worry about, Oh, this guy's been staring at me for days, and now I gotta deal with that situation, or Someone's gonna make a comment. Not that women can't do that to each other, certainly, but I mean, as women.
• 11:54
  I I don't have to explain this to you. You know what I'm talking about. Mhmm. But I thought about it kind of in both of those contexts. And the judge, one of the things that he said was, the ladies lounge provides women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I thought that was so interesting. I thought that was really good.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Because our entire life we're disadvantaged Mhmm. Constantly. I mean, maybe it's not that way for everybody, but just in general, it's just harder. Mhmm. It's harder being a female.
• 12:31
  Trying to get people to respect you or treat you the same as they treat men or, you know, just having a period. It's freaking hard.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's freaking hard. I think that's what gets forgotten or talked down about so often. Women have it really tough. Just to be seen, you have to work twice as hard. And that's just to get to the baseline.
• 13:00
  Forget about rising above and getting into leadership positions, getting into rooms where decisions are made. You have to work 10 times as hard just to get to baseline.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. And then you're constantly being judged. Mhmm. If you're pushing too hard to get into those leadership positions, you're looked at as like a bulldozer or bulldog or other B words. Or they ask you, like, Well, don't you want kids?
• 13:28
  Or don't you like, you're judged no matter what decision you make. It's just difficult.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Love that the judge and it was a male judge in this case. I love that he saw that, recognized it
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And made this statement. Because it's a big deal. Mhmm. It's a big deal to publicly say women are disadvantaged and they don't deserve that. Mhmm.
• 13:51
  It shouldn't be a big deal. But heaven knows in the current climate, or at least where we are in the current climate, you can't say stuff like that. You have to pretend that women are on equal footing even though we are so far below equal footing, like, we're being stepped on.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Now the woman that started this, I I just think, like, the whole story of it is absolutely hilarious. When she was first told to shut down, they she was shut down not for super long before she then was able to get back into the supreme court. But for the time that she was shut down, she found a law that said that, essentially, the one segregated space there can be is a woman's bathroom. Mhmm. And so she took all the art that had been in the little portion of the gallery, she stuck it in the bathroom, which I thought was, like, the best sass ever.
• 14:44
  And there's some really interesting art. Now there were originally, she said that there were Picassos in there that, like, men were not allowed to see, but that was kind of just part of it's more of a performative art thing.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And they weren't real Picassos, but they do also have some very interesting art there. It also says that she created the space to highlight the exclusion Australian women faced for decades. So she's highlighting some of the female artists, things like that. And it says the exclusion they faced for decades includes decision to ban them from drinking in the main section of bars until 1965. What?
• 15:19
  That's so recent. I mean, if you really look back through female history, it's not that long ago that we just started getting little bits of rights. Like, I think it was
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: in the '70s that women could open up credit cards without their husband being on there. And, like, it's crazy. I'm not
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: sure if we'll get to this article or not, but one of the articles that we might talk about has it talks about, like, women's health and how underrepresented women are in the health care industry. And it said that until 1993 in The United States, Medical Testing, like when they're testing drugs before they come to market, did not legally need to include women. These are not drugs that are, like, for the prostate. Okay? These are drugs being given to women.
• 16:10
  And until 1993, Okay. That is so recently. That's recent. Or like period products.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: How often were they not using actual blood to test them with? Super
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: absorbency level.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: And now you have things like Flex Foam, and they work.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Well, but also, there has been all kinds of stuff in period products that's so bad for your body because they're not being tested properly, because there's not the same amount of regulation for women's products.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: When's it within the past couple years, they were like, oh, casually, there's, like, shards of metal in tampons. But it's fine, though. Worry about it. By the way, just so you know. But it's fine.
• 16:50
  But it's Why would why would you need shards of metal in that?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Because it's fun. Good times. But yeah. So as of December of last year, they were opened back up, doing their thing. And, yeah, again, I don't think that this is, like, in an ideal world, there's all these spaces exclusively for women.
• 17:11
  I think in an ideal world, we all respect each other enough that we feel safe in spaces together.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: That's what feminism is. I saw something the other day that was, like, people are thinking that feminism is just pursuit of power. Right. In the way that men dominate over women now. Mhmm.
• 17:31
  They picture feminism wanting women to rule over men. Mhmm. But that's not what we want. We just want people to be equal. We just want everybody to live in peace and harmony, treat each other with respect, and have everybody have the same opportunities.
• 17:47
  It's not that one needs to rule over the other. Right. I saw someone
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: one of our Facebook people that we follow, she had posted something about how every time you speak about women's equality or feminism in the church, it's always about that it's always well you're just trying to take over power in the church and she's like the moment that someone says that to you you can see what they value Because if they're talking to you, they know it's not power. They know that's not what you're after. But what they're scared of is losing power. Mhmm. So the moment that someone says that to you, that's their main concern.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. And I think that's why, and we've talked about this in the past couple of episodes that we've done, throughout history, people trying to erase the presence of women in the Bible and what they did to contribute to Jesus' mission and going so far as being like, No, no, no. These women, they weren't women. They were actually men. Just trying to take away any contributions that they had to make them seem
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: less. Right. Well, any strength and power that they have would have to kind of trickle in, right? Like, if they had those rights and powers, then the women of the modern church would need to have those same rights and powers. And because church structure tends to be all about power, because societal structure tends to be all about power, I remember sitting down with a pastor, and I'm absolutely sure I've said this before.
• 19:27
  Yeah. But I sat down with a pastor, and he was very intense about confronting me about my feminist views. And it was very funny because I said, you know, I've I've researched this a lot. And he said, well, I've researched it too. Boys and girls, any of you tell me that this random male pastor knew more about this than I do at this point?
• 19:50
  You've been here for 55 episodes. But he said to me, you know, I the more I read the Bible, he's like, I don't know why God would do this. I don't know why God would give power or give authority, I think is what he said, only to men. The only thing I can think of is that, you know, women are very strong, and if you gave them any bit of authority, they would just take all of it. And I just I don't think I said anything to him at the time because this was quite a while ago and I was not the extraordinarily outspoken person that I am today.
• 20:26
  But just to hear that, to hear, Well, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile, as opposed to,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: what if we worked together? Think of how much farther we could go. Right. If we were able to take an inch and get a mile out of it, think about how far we could go. Because then we could encourage the men alongside us too, to say like, hey, look what I can do.
• 20:52
  You can do this too. We can be better together. And I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: think that's the point of this art exhibit, this art installation. No her point might be different but as I'm reading it is to say yes as a performative piece we've carved out this space especially for women and there is some value there again like I said like there's some peace there's some safety in that but we're making a point we're making a statement women have been excluded for so long and this is what it feels like Not that we're gonna do this absolutely everywhere, but in this one instance, just to show what if men had to go through what women went through?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: In the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: smallest way.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: In the safest way. But what if men had to deal with that, too? And what a statement, too, to say, like, to feel 100% safe and comfortable, I have to separate myself from a whole people group. And there is a difference. There's like a weird energy, a weird good energy when you're in a, like, and with a group of women.
• 22:08
  You know? When you're chilling in the bathroom and someone ran out of toilet paper or someone needs a tampon or, Am I gonna can somebody tighten my bra strap? Like, there's just some, like, community, some special community when you feel completely safe. Right. I think that's what, for me, what
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: it boils down to so often is that feeling of safety. Because and countless times when you talk about men being aggressive, men abusing women, things like that, you'll hear, but not all men. Not all men. And here's the reality. About one out of four women will be assaulted by a man in their life.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: One out of four. That's twenty five percent of us. That's an absolutely wild, horrifying percentage. And if your people group, whatever they happen to be, was being attacked, twenty five percent of them by any other people group, wouldn't you automatically be afraid of that entire people group? Yeah.
• 23:10
  It's not ideal, but it keeps you safe. Mhmm. And so when you, yeah, when you eliminate that threat, there is this feeling of peace and safety. Mhmm. Not that you're always gonna be safe in a group of women, but it's just a different dynamic.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: And what I struggle with, too, understanding is men and their obsession with, like, Well, my job is to protect. My job is to protect you. Protect because you're just so weak and fragile, and I need to protect you. But what are you protecting me from? You're protecting me from other men.
• 23:44
  What if we just said, stop being so terrible, men?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: We do. We ingrain into men, like, be a protector instead of be an advocate. Yeah. Because that changes the game. Saying teaching all of our young boys be an advocate says fight for the women in your life.
• 24:10
  Mhmm. Whereas being a protector and I'm not saying that you don't wanna protect the people that you love in general.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Women do that too. You think about, like, the
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: mama bear, right, business. Like, women are lifting cars. Women could take you out. But the moment that you start saying, like, your identity as as a man, in this case, is to be a protector, first of all, infantilizes her. Mhmm.
• 24:41
  It makes her into someone who can't protect herself. And as women, we do need to learn to protect ourselves because, again, 25%. Like Yeah. That's a huge percentage. Even with the male protectors.
• 24:51
  Mhmm. You know?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: So they're not doing a great job.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: So it infantilizes them, but it also creates this weird dynamic of, like, now someone's gotta be the aggressor. Right? If you're gonna be a protector, there's gotta be an aggressor. So who have we turned into the aggressor? Oh, the entire gender that we told, the only emotion you're allowed to have is anger.
• 25:13
  Yeah. Maybe it's that. Maybe we should stop.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should stop.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe we should allow young boys to have other emotions.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And to tell them advocate for instead of fight for. You know? Like, change the language that you're using because it changes their identities. It changes words matter, how they handle situations. Anyway, another one that I wanted to talk about because Brie and I are such readers now.
• 25:42
  And when we're done with this episode, both of us are going back to our books. Yep. 100%. But I wanted to look up some stuff about BookTok. My passion.
• 25:54
  Because I have seen so much backlash about BookTok.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: We're here to defend BookTok. I don't know
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's as far as I wanna go. But there's BookTok, and then there's the people that hate BookTok. And it feels like a twilight situation. There's the people that love it, and there's people that hate it so violently that they're ready to throw you off the side of a bridge if you like it. My gosh.
• 26:17
  Don't throw me anywhere. It was actually not the easiest thing to find an actual article about it. There are a lot of anti book talk videos. Mhmm. But I wanted to find an article.
• 26:28
  And so this comes from the new feminist.co.uk. So it's a UK based one. And it's just kind of more of, like, I would say, like, a blog article from last year. And she talks about some of the some of the ways that BookTok has functioned and some of the backlash. And I just thought it was really interesting.
• 26:48
  So she said some of the things on YouTube YouTube that pop up when you type in the word book tock. Some of the first things are book tock cringe compilation, book tock brain rot, how TikTok ruined reading. What? I know. So when you dig into those videos and you pay attention to what those people are saying that hate the BookToks, it's very much primarily men and some ultra conservative women, but primarily men talking about how the books recommended on booktok are not literary enough.
• 27:23
  Who cares? They're not intelligent enough. That tends to be like the biggest thing that you see and it's it feels very sexist. It feels very one-sided.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I think we said it in the last episode, anything considered, like, stereotypically feminine, so apparently reading stereotypically feminine
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: is considered frivolous and weak. I actually read another article, like, to kind of inform this one, and it was about how men in The United States are not reading. Like, at a crazy percentage, they're just not reading at all, particularly not reading fiction and it called it a crisis. Because there's such a benefit to reading in general obviously but there's a benefit to reading fiction in particular with what it does with your imagination, with how it allows you to interact with other people, how it allows you to see different situations. There's a lot of benefits to it.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'll be honest with you. I didn't start reading until, like, a few months ago. I spent almost my entire life not reading unless I absolutely had to. Because I think, for me, I, like, struggled to learn how to read for a long time. And maybe it's just like I thought I wasn't good at it, or I couldn't, or just getting through a book I took forever compared to my stinking sister.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: So sorry.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: My sister can get through like a thousand page book in a blink of an eye. Sorry. But now that I've turned 30
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: The thirties are the time you read.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm just really having a good time and stop hating on me having a good time.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I think that's so part of it, and I'll talk about this too, part of the, I think, hatred coming out, again, it's very gender specific.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: But she talks about how in, like, the nineties, the eighties, nineties, a huge percentage of the bestseller books that you were finding were written by men. And she talks about Stephen King, Ian McEwen, like all these major male authors that were writing most of what you were gonna see. Mhmm. Now that's changed. So she says the week that this was published, which was last year, but on the New York Times bestseller list, nine out of the 10 books were written by women.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Mhmm.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And then she goes on to give this percentage, and this is a study from I think it's Deloitte. But they found that male authors tended to have an almost even split of readers. So 55% male to 45% female. Not a huge difference there. Whereas female authors have about 81 women in their audience and only 19% men.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: That does not surprise me at all.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: It doesn't, but that speaks to that other article that says men are not reading. Why aren't men reading? Because suddenly, the books that they're seeing aren't written by other men.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: And
• 30:43
  how
• 30:44
  dare
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: And
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: how dare they? Submit my mind and my imagination to a woman. No. How dare I? I think it's just so interesting because you look throughout history and there was a time where they didn't even want women to learn how to read because that maintained male power, right?
• 31:01
  Because they only had the information, they only had the education. And then they're only gonna pass on what they want to the women. But now women are reading, right? And we're soaking up a lot of knowledge. What are the men doing?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Another thing that they're talking about is a lot of what's on BookTok is they call it smut, Right? It's like the spicy Hey.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Watch out. And
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: whether you're having men complain about it or, again, hyper conservative women, the complaint is, well, this is rotting women's brains. Right? Like, how dare We should them to stop reading now. How dare women read about sex? Like, because that's what a lot of not all obviously, not obviously, all of it depends on what you're reading.
• 31:48
  Some of these are horror books. But pronounce that a little
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: bit more. No. Sex and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: horror books. That's not what I said. But the complaint now is coming from men Mhmm. That women are reading about sex. And how dare they?
• 32:10
  Very dare they? How very
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: dare they?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Which is just so fascinating. Mhmm. Because the porn industry primarily geared towards men. Right? You look at Game of Thrones geared towards men.
• 32:29
  When does the complaint start up? The moment women enter that sphere. Yeah. The moment that women step into that bubble, it's like,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: They're not complaining about that. They're not outraged about that. They're outraged about a book that, at the end of the day, harms no one. Right. Like, right.
• 33:09
  No one was harmed in the
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: process of writing this book. I mean, maybe a few paper cuts. Maybe a few paper Maybe a few Depends on the book you're
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: reading. I don't I just I think that's so so interesting to see that divide. And it's such an archaic divide that came from religion as we look at like and actually Beth talks about this our best friend Beth talked about in the making of biblical womanhood how in the medieval period women were considered more sexual.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Because sex was considered sinful. Not sinful but like closer to sin, I And because men were supposed to be above all of that, they were not considered as sexual and so women were. And now we see this very flipped script and we can see it coming from kind of like the 1950s church. And I'm sure obviously before that as well but that's where I'm kind of thinking of it from. Women are supposed to be pure and chaste and men can do whatever the crap they feel like.
• 34:11
  Right. And now women are breaking out of that because we have social media to talk to other women and I think there's a lot of value in seeing positive models for sex for women. Yeah. Because there's not a lot of that. There's a lot of male centric focus in this world.
• 34:34
  And so a lot of women, particularly Christian conservative women, grow up not knowing about their bodies. We've talked about that before. Grow up not knowing what they need or what they like or any of those things because we can't talk about it. Right. And I think there's some value in women seeing positive experiences.
• 34:55
  And I'm not saying, like, read horrifying books, but, like Mhmm. There are certain books that you know, there's a scene or two, and it talks about positive experiences.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or being able to open your eyes. And the same thing to saying, like, Oh, what I'm experiencing isn't normal. Yes. Maybe I should talk to someone about And
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: just opening that dialogue, whether it is with someone else because you're in a bad situation or whether it's with your partner because something isn't working for you, and now you have the words to say it. And again, men aren't upset about the industry that's talking to them. They're upset about the industry that's talking to women. And I find that disturbing, but not surprising. No, not surprising.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: I think of that scene in Beauty and the Beast when Belle is reading by the fountain or something. I'm trying to picture it. I think she's reading by the fountain, and Gaston comes up to her, and he's judging her for reading because it's a very, like, singular activity. Mhmm. Right?
• 35:56
  Do you think that plays into the male loneliness epidemic? They're just feeling, like, alone. And they're like, hey, I don't want to read, but I also don't want you to read because I'm feeling lonely. Can we watch a show together?
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: That's actually really interesting because so obviously, I'm a huge reader. My husband is not. I have tried. I have tried to get the man to read books,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: but it's just not his thing.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. And eventually, he might, but, like, right now, it's not his thing. Yeah.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Open to change like me.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be his forties. Maybe. Maybe that's when it'll hit. But instead you know, we used to, before bed, sit and watch an episode of show or whatever, whereas now I'm doing a lot of reading. So he hangs out.
• 36:42
  He pops in his headphones and watches the show on his phone, and I'm reading right next to him. We're still spending that time together. We still pause and talk and whatever. And it just functions a little bit differently, but it works out really well for us. Yeah.
• 36:54
  And I think even if you have a partner that's, like, not a reader and you certainly cannot get them to be a reader, you can still spend the time together. It doesn't have to be where men are alone.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And your whole life doesn't have to be together. Like, you can enjoy different things. You're not two carbon copies of each other. You can enjoy different things and fill your cup that way and then come together, and I don't know where I was going with that sentence.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I think that worked. I think, too, part of the backlash and this is not talked about necessarily in this article, but what I see as part of the backlash is reading takes up some time and effort. Right? And women still, in our culture today, predominantly are expected not only now to work because the economy is such that you can't not, but also to be the primary person cleaning the house, making the dinners, taking care of the kids. Mhmm.
• 37:54
  That's just the general expectation. You can look up tons of studies on this. But if she's reading, if she's focusing on something, if she's doing something just for herself
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Then that takes away from all all of these other expectations put upon her. She might actually not make dinner every day. Yeah. There might need to be distribution of chores. And I've felt this a lot because, as a parent, so many women have told me, I'll be like, Oh yeah, I've been reading a ton.
• 38:28
  Was what, like book 43 or something of the year?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: You have a problem.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so many people are like, Ugh, I would never have time for that. And it's mostly women. It's not mostly men. It's mostly women.
• 38:38
  Oh I wish I had time to just sit and read or whatever and there's this undertone of like you're neglecting your responsibilities as a woman as a mom as whatever because we're women And the expectation is that we will have no time for ourselves, and we will do nothing for ourselves.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Especially American women, I would say. We expect people to have just a fried culture? Busy culture? Yeah. Like, I have to have 10 plates spinning at all times.
• 39:13
  Otherwise, I'm not successful enough, and my drive is to be successful.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Whereas taking that time to do something for you, whether it is reading or whatever, according to our earlier episodes, men do taxidermy, and women embroider.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: And that's what we do.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: If you don't get that joke, I promise it's not sexist. We talk about this all the time. We were trying to find the most stereotypically ridiculous feminine and masculine hobbies, and taxidermy seemed very masculine.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Taxidermy made the most sense to us. Killing things, gutting them, and stuffing
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: them with cotton. But we didn't say hunting. We simply said taxidermy. Someone else can kill it.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. Just taxidermy.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But whatever it is, whatever your hobby happens to be, taking that time for yourself makes you better at caring
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: for other people.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Makes you better at interacting with other people. Better at your job. Because at the end
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: of the day, we're all just people. Give us all a break. Quit putting titles on me. Just I'm just a girl, and I like to read.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there was, like, a movie quote there. I was waiting for one. I'm just a girl
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and life is a nightmare. That's the way I did. So But true. Yeah. I
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna have time because we're gonna make this a shorter episode. I don't think we'll have time to go into the third article that I had found, but it was on the disparity between men and women in health care. Mhmm. And I would recommend going and reading it. It's super interesting.
• 40:52
  It's on Miller School of Medicine, and it's called FemTech Programs Set to Revolutionize Women's Health Through Technology. And it talks all about kind of, again, that gender disparity, how women are just just not dealt with at all. One of the interesting stats in it, it says a recent congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, however, showed that only 8.8% of NIH grant spending from 2013 to 2023, so very recent and ten years, focused on women's health research. 8.8%. Eight point
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: eight %. And I'm feeling it.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: And it also talks about how there's women don't even know that they're being underrepresented in things like understanding what a heart attack looks like for women, in understanding how mental health care differs between men and women. I saw a video yesterday of an OBGYN,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: and she was like, If your doctors are not offering proper pain management for things like putting in an IUD or different things that women typically have to do without any numbing. She's like, go to someone else. Advocate for yourself because this is important. And they show on TikTok some of the different procedures and like what they would look like and what they're doing to women without any sort of anesthetic like oh let me quick throw some pliers up inside you cut out a part of your body and pull it out yep That's insane. Well,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: mean, like I said earlier, until 1993, it wasn't required in The United States for women to be part of medical studies. We have to advocate for ourselves on a whole different level. And unfortunately, like, you kind of have to prepare yourself to do it because it's hard. It's hard to look at a doctor and say, Nah. It's hard because you feel uneducated in the subject, so you're just like, I'm just gonna trust you blindly.
• 43:02
  You know, there are some things that I think obviously you do wanna trust your doctor on. Mhmm. But if you feel that you are not being heard Yeah. That's when you really need to look for someone else. So that's that.
• 43:14
  The article is really long, and again, I don't have time to go into it, but super interesting. I loved reading about it because they were talking about how this particular group of women is organizing, like, all of these different apps and different people and different AI aspects to create, like, a really comprehensive health database for women. So love seeing seeing that. But that was just some of the articles about women by women about topics that I was interested in that I wanted to talk about tonight. Hopefully, next week, we're back to back to what we thought we would do.
• 43:50
  No guarantees. This is our podcast. Yeah. Alright. If I don't let Brie go and either go to sleep Or wallow.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: I just wanna wallow. Alright.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna let her wallow. Do you have any fancy chocolates left?
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I do now. Wallow with fancy chocolates. And maybe some wine.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. Fancy chocolates and wine. Wine. Alright. I'm gonna let go Brie go do that before she dies here, right here on the podcast.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I hope you guys are treating yourself well.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Okay. We'll see you next week. Love you. Bye.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Bye. Love you.