Boys and Girls in America (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry)
Added 2024-10-03 16:40:23 +0000 UTCThis conversation is a little different. We thought that exploring the life of, say, Russell Kirk might not be the best way to spend the weeks before such a consequential election, so this is the first of a few episodes that won't be about a text or a life, but about the 2024 elections—hopefully digging a little deeper than most, and with a special concern for the themes and topics of Know Your Enemy. To help us get started, we had on a great friend of the podcast, playwright and screenwriter Dorothy Fortenberry, to talk about a presidential campaign that "smacks of gender," from declining sperm counts to abortion to the lives of moms, dads, and children today. In short, it's an unguarded discussion of how we can better care for each other in a world that's making it harder and harder to do just that
Sources:
Dorothy Fortenberry, "The J.D. Vance sperm cups were probably a troll. But they got me thinking," Slate, Aug 23, 2024
— "'One of Those Serious Women': Andrea Dworkin's Radical Feminism," Commonweal, April 29, 2019
Mollie Wilson O'Reilly, "When Abortion Isn't Abortion," Commonweal, Mar 21, 2022
Listen again:
"Suburban Woman," Oct 29, 2019
"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell), Sept 2, 2021
"'Succession,' 'Extrapolations,' & TV Writing Today" (w/ Will Arbery), May 4, 2023
Comments
This episode was so cis and straight.
charlotte
2024-10-21 17:37:29 +0000 UTCI've been thinking more about y'alls comments about Harris's "Opportunity Economy" rhetoric. I agree that it is largely anodyne neoliberal language, but I think it is also likely related to her being a Black woman. "Equal opportunity" was the institutional language of colorblind ideology in the late 60s and 70s used to short thrift the more radical demands of the civil rights movement - the idea that racial outcomes didn't matter if the opportunities were theoretically equal. I think Harris is embracing this language in part to bolster her centerist credentials and avoid the more race-conscious remedies that were a part of the 2020 primary. This rhetoric also is unfortunately meant to assuage White anxieties over Black politicians redistributing resources to Black people. Anodyne seems to be the point. Also, since this podcast sufficently Wills-pilled me, I can't shake his brilliant analysis of the mess of the "competitive race metaphor" of opportunity rhetoric as foundational to liberalism. The question for the upcoming election, in Wills' terms, would be whether more voters feel "touched by the picture of the race" or for the "need for a new place at the starting line" (239).
Daniel D.
2024-10-13 15:50:27 +0000 UTCAgreed – see my comment above issues with the sperm study she cited as proof that the right is correct about some things
Matias Kaplan
2024-10-10 22:27:26 +0000 UTCJust looked through the show notes and saw that Dorothy actually links to this exact journal article in her Slate piece from August 2024 and then cites the study's author, Shanna Swan supporting the sperm case in a private email. Dorothy does link to a good Scientific American article that makes many of the same points I made above about issues with Swan's 2017 paper https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-sperm-counts-really-declining/ We don't have to hand it to the right when the science is wrong
Matias Kaplan
2024-10-10 22:26:44 +0000 UTCLong time listener first time caller etc etc. I wanted to push back on Dorothy's reading of some of the science. For instance – the claim that "sperm counts are declining" comes from IMO a pretty sloppy paper that has been cited endlessly with little thought. To my knowledge every popular media piece that claims sperm counts are declining ultimately leads back to this paper. Here is the paper and the sloppy figure is Fig 2 https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/23/6/646/4035689. Basically they draw a trendline where I think there is none. The claim that sperm counts are declining is not supported by data and was sad to hear it repeated on your great podcast Looking around and found someone who did a twitter thread outlining most of my issues with the study https://x.com/callin_bull/status/1372730026630598659
Matias Kaplan
2024-10-10 22:20:01 +0000 UTCPerhaps I’m alone in this, but I found Dorothy just a bit too credulous on “genitals shrinking” and the like. I know science isn’t the wheelhouse of this pod, but population health studies are much more complicated than these kinds of conversations would lead you to believe. I know IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE IN SCIENCE, but let’s not get careless.
Blackford Oakes
2024-10-10 21:11:43 +0000 UTCI loved the Andrea Dworkin shout out and thank you for linking to the article by Fortenberry! Would it also be possible to get the citation for the essay from the book in which Dworkin discusses wishing she never had to write about her body? (Am I getting the quote right?) Thank you, thank you <3
Maria Mathioudakis
2024-10-07 03:52:04 +0000 UTCSuch a great ep! Thank you!
Lisa M
2024-10-06 21:58:25 +0000 UTCWhat do you think of David R’s “coalition of nothing” comment ? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/past-present-future/id1682047968?i=1000671899881
Thomas Donnelly
2024-10-06 09:27:54 +0000 UTCThanks Axel, that clarification is helpful to consider, but I still disagree that the Left does not prioritize families and care. There is a lot of diversity on 'The Left" but there are lots of policy proposals that benefit families - covering costs of child care, education, healthcare community resources like parks and libraries. Left is also generally supportive of disability rights and equal access to resources. Under Biden proposals childhood poverty dropped significantly. I think that it's an incorrect framing to make that dichotomy between individual freedom and family and I don't understand how someone could say the Left doesn't support families. This is especially the case if you consider that family does not require people to be locked into traditional roles and power structures. I think it's strange for people from traditionally privileged positions (inhabiting roles supported by church and state and get various benefits) to feel like they are losing something if benefits or supports are implemented for people who dont have the same to privilege (non traditional family or life structures). It does not have to be a win / lose set up.
Karen
2024-10-06 01:03:30 +0000 UTCTo be fair, I don't think Dorothy actually said that people who don't have kids don't value family or community. She was saying that the left often focuses on individual freedom and the diversity of life paths to the exclusion of effectively addressing issues that affect parents and families, but that community and care does not only come from blood relatives (citing the example of Kamala speaking of a woman who ran a daycare, aunts and uncles, etc.) That said, I agree that too much of this discussion, both from JD Vance and his absurd comments about "cat ladies" and from the more family-positive discussion had here, frames not having kids as a choice that privileged women make, while many people don't have kids for various other reasons beyond their control, and it isn't always because they sat down one day and said “career, not family”. I'd also be interested to hear more about how men who don't get married and have children are perceived (but it is telling that it's childless women who are always the focus).
Axel Herrera
2024-10-06 00:18:35 +0000 UTCJD Vance’s comments about childless cat ladies struck a nerve with me, as someone who is close to so called “childless cat ladies.” The fact is that forming long term relationships with whom we can have children is very often out of our control, and I resent the fact that it is often framed as an active choice. Many people who don’t have kids or a partner, and are at a stage of life where it is no longer possible, are that way because they were unable to or didn’t meet the right person. At times it almost feels insulting that the failure to form a family or long term relationship is discussed as simply not choosing to do so.
Leo Martin
2024-10-05 22:39:41 +0000 UTCPoint of clarification: there was a part of the discussion where Dorothy said she should pressure you to have kids and then suggested that people who don't have kids d don't value family, community or care. This suggestion is short-sighted, incorrect, and left me very uneasy. There are people on the Right -Lisa Marchiano - who have written articles saying biological women who don't bear children are stunted and shallow. Many people who don't have kids have been through a long, often pain process, that included many factors they couldn't control. Ya'll did a great episode on Masculinity that was nuanced and thoughtful. Perhaps commentary on gender that specially focuses on Women or the Feminine should be given more time, space and consideration (not just talking about Women in the context of an election, and talking about Women as this monolithic (cis het white upperclass with kids) group.
Karen
2024-10-05 22:31:23 +0000 UTCThis episode was a really tough one for me too. When people talk about gender from an only a cis hetero normative perspective it feels like that reinforces gender stereotypes that I experience as very painful. I.e. "What do women think about the price of eggs?" Also, the unspoken assumption that biological parents care more about kids because they have kids. I would love it KYE could somehow include more expansive and inclusive perspectives about gender.
Karen
2024-10-05 21:57:01 +0000 UTCTo build on Dorothy's point about kids and the COVID-era, the media tends to sanitize what happened into terms like "learning loss." Even focus on the tremendous burden on parents (which is true, moms especially) obscures the way in which kids were utterly demoralized and at sea during "zoom school." As a parent, I don't think I'll ever shake the sight of my elementary age kids staring at screens for hours on end, shrinking into themselves when they should have been flourishing. To this day, I'm astonished that no school in our area could figure out how to give kids a healthy communal learning environment for over a year. They could have met up once a week at a park, formed small groups, taken a forest walk. Anything! What happened instead deserves some real scrutiny. Edtech providers got everything on their wish list and digitized education got entrenched in schools. I do think the sensitivities about family keep some of these issues from being aired on the left. This was a great conversation and I hope some of that will change.
Rachel
2024-10-05 18:50:11 +0000 UTCFinally, a discussion about topics that matter to Americans: the cost of eggs and sperm.
DC
2024-10-05 02:42:59 +0000 UTCAlso finally killing it with the imprssions
Sam
2024-10-04 21:44:45 +0000 UTCIS MAT OK?
Sam
2024-10-04 21:40:04 +0000 UTC"Best thing for social conservatism is to be a socialist." Fucking awesome line.
Garett Smith
2024-10-04 21:04:30 +0000 UTCMy wife and I became parents last year, and I have to say that the experience of starting a family with a young child has made me feel like much of the organized left (I'm talking specifically about the socialist left, like DSA, which I have been a proud and active member of since the late 1990s) is fairly out of touch with the things that people in our situation, a cohort that numbers in the tens of millions, have to deal with every day. I think that means that we tend not to prioritize issues and demands that are very salient to many people (we had little or nothing to say about the expiration of the expanded federal child care credit, for example), and I think Matt was right to point out that this allows the Right to dominate an extremely important part of the political terrain in this country. I am not really sure what the best way to tackle this practically is (to be clear, I would never advocate abandoning our commitment to respect and support a very broad array of family and kinship arrangements), but becoming a parent has underscored for me just how much of a political problem this is for our side.
Chris Maisano
2024-10-04 15:43:00 +0000 UTCOn Dorothy’s point about the Harris child care proposal, one very cynical question I have is whether Kamala/Walz actually wants to support SAHMs and other family based child care or if she just wants to pay PMC women to use their brains outside the home only. It’s kind of a feminist question and also an electoral strategy question.
Chad Bailey
2024-10-04 14:00:26 +0000 UTCSome of the stuff Dorothy says here I really appreciated. As someone who has followed a kind of process of moving right to left, I’ve sometimes had the intuition that I can still get the things I liked about conservatism on the left (focus on community, critique of social atomization, presenting a clear vision of what it actually means to live a good life) and Dorothy has put these thoughts into words better than I’d managed to do so far.
Zachary Roussie
2024-10-04 12:51:25 +0000 UTCDorothy, i appreciate that you recognize that Trump’s attitude tpward women and sex is same as what Dworkin said about “all sex is rape” bc before she said that, she qualified that IF we in our society see sex as an act if domination or see heterosexual sex as co quest THEN all sex is rape. Like she was not saying that all orgasmic experience was ever rape. Her vision was orgasmic experience without it being about domination, which was really not popular amid the deep rough and tumble sex confrontism of 90s feminisim (which we also love but)
mary lingwall
2024-10-04 12:15:18 +0000 UTCIt's very strange to hear Dorothy ask the Democratic Party to pass a some bill that addresses climate change, even imperfectly... because that is what they did with the IRA. It's an imperfect climate change bill that lays out a better future. I and everyone else I know who works in sustainability fields is shocked at the success of its investments. it is definitely a highlight of our President's dimming legacy and deeply disappointing to hear it get ignored again.
Neil Flanagan
2024-10-04 00:41:49 +0000 UTCHonestly, honestly, I could have listened to the three of you continue to talk with each other for hours… Please please please do this again.
Eric Duran
2024-10-03 23:23:08 +0000 UTCI'm glad Dorothy eventually clarified that there she believes there are other kinds of family formation the left could embrace to be part of the conversation on how family is important. I personally had an abusive childhood and never wanted to visit that on another human being. Between my anxieties about that and the environment and the state of the world I made a common Gen-X era left wing decision to not have kids. However, in exchange I've cared for loved ones at the end of their lives. Moved closer to be near family, spent significant time with my nephews and nieces as well as my brother and father. Some of us just have complicated, messy lives where a child of our own wouldn't fit.
Preston Crawford
2024-10-03 22:44:53 +0000 UTCThis idea that young men are moving to the right isn’t really supported by evidence. A lot of articles are written about it, but then you look at the underlying data and it’s almost always that young women are moving rapidly leftward while men are staying about the same.
Jon
2024-10-03 21:45:36 +0000 UTCI teach at a title 1 high school school in Ohio and learning loss is definitely real. Hard to know how much is Covid and how much is unlimited phone usage but I think people would be shocked at how low some of these kids are. We'll be seeing reverberations of this learning loss for a LONG time
Tim Combes
2024-10-03 21:12:05 +0000 UTCI live in midtown Atlanta. Boil water advisories and power outages are a fairly regular occurrence here. The chemical explosion was a first though. The day after, no exaggeration, it smelled like a pool outside. Days later we still get a misty haze every morning.
Derek Hart
2024-10-03 21:03:54 +0000 UTCI often am reminded of the part of Plato’s Republic where they discuss the “Ring of Gyges.” If a leader can profit from the appearance of justice, then what incentive do they have to be just? Why would any established politician bleed their political capital for issues that may get them primaried by corporate backed candidates? If a candidate can assume the aura of “progressiveness” through the tekne of political messaging, targeted advertising and scare monfering about fascist opponents- then there’s little hope for them changing.
Isaac Suárez
2024-10-03 20:12:13 +0000 UTCThis is a very good conversation and I appreciate the perspective. That being said, I feel like Harris’s silences speak louder than her words. She doesn’t talk about alternative family structures or cash assistance for children because it’s not something she’s willing to do. Harris won’t consider these options because, at base, she doesn’t want to step on the toes of her corporate donors and the Democratic Party status quo (a status quo that remains deeply aligned with Clinton era austerity, and Bush era subsidies for the military industrial complex and large multinationals.) Whether Harris wins or loses, I feel like we’re past the point of smart policies and pragmatic political suggestions. Harris won’t change- her entire ethos is sustaining a status quo (one which is deeply discredited with the American public, and benefits from a rabid right- since the Democrats can bank on being the “lesser evil.”) Democrats would rather lose than listen- since they profit from failure and do not govern in the interest of most Americans.
Isaac Suárez
2024-10-03 20:08:15 +0000 UTCOkay i obviously made this post before getting to the “uncle, guncle” portion which made me smile really hard and tear up a little. Again thanks for this conversation. I love what you said at the end Matt about wishing we didn’t have to have this conversation but being glad that you did ❤️
Kathleen P. Lamothe
2024-10-03 19:47:20 +0000 UTCHoo-boy I’m only half way through the episode but this one is bringing up allllll the feels already! Maybe y’all will address it as I keep listening but, as a childless leftie trans woman who’s also an auntie to lots of nibblings & friend’s kids, a part of my heart keeps screaming “it’s really hard to have conversations with rightwingers about family they call our community pedophiles, ban our books, & criminalize our teachers, doctors, and other members of our care networks ya know?”. *sigh* Anyway gonna listen to the rest of it now…thanks for sharing such a beautiful conversation , tough as it is ❤️ #BrokenheartedLeftieAunt
Kathleen P. Lamothe
2024-10-03 19:18:26 +0000 UTCHere is the jawn yours looking for https://youtu.be/myyn9SFGSzo?si=a87eMtvdGqYOFAFV
Rick Perlstein
2024-10-03 18:45:57 +0000 UTCHigh-larious that wingnuts are going on about studies showing frogs becoming less maculine because in the late 70s a study on , supposedly, "bisexual frogs" was their fave meme about wasteful government spending. I guess they made their peace with it...
Rick Perlstein
2024-10-03 17:33:23 +0000 UTCHigh-k
Rick Perlstein
2024-10-03 17:28:41 +0000 UTC
