Bitchy History - Speaking Ill of the Dead — Charlie Kirk Edition

00:00:00.000 It's something that's, you know, kind of bitchy. 1.00

00:00:03.820 Pretty bitchy. 1.00

00:00:04.780 Bitchy? 1.00

00:00:05.560 I know. 1.00

00:00:06.040 It was just, you know, bitchy. 1.00

00:00:08.100 Well, first of all, you're a little bitchy. 1.00

00:00:10.560 That's next level bitchy. 1.00

00:00:12.860 Welcome to Bitchy History, where we cut through the myths and nostalgia to get to the raw, 0.99

00:00:17.300 unvarnished truth about the past. 0.99

00:00:19.300 With sharp analysis, a feminist lens, and just the right amount of bitchiness, we're

00:00:24.140 here to show you that history isn't just something to study, it's something to question. 1.00

00:00:28.220 Let's get started.

00:00:30.000 Hey friends! Long time, no see. I kind of ghosted you for a while, but I have really

00:00:36.540 missed you. Thanks for sticking with me through the silence. I wasn't slacking off. I was

00:00:40.580 working very hard on a very big move, packing up my life, crossing the ocean, and relocating

00:00:46.040 to nice, foggy, rainy England. And now I am here, just about to start my master's in

00:00:51.480 gender studies, which means, yes, I am on track to become even more insufferable than

00:00:56.180 before, imagine me with more footnotes, more feminist theory, and even bigger eye rolls for 0.99

00:01:01.640 every conservative dude with a podcast mic who thinks feminism is destroying civilization.

00:01:07.400 With that energy, let's get into it. Welcome back to Bitchy History, where yes, 1.00

00:01:12.140 we do speak ill of the dead, especially when you were a misogynistic, racist sack of shit who quite 1.00

00:01:17.800 literally made the world worse every time you opened your mouth. And yes, I'm talking about 1.00

00:01:22.700 Charlie Kirk. Let's clear up one thing before this episode gets started. I'm not a fan of

00:01:28.100 Nazis. When Nazis cease to be Nazis, whether through extensive therapy, lobotomies, or

00:01:33.960 death, I'm pretty okay with that. The trials in Nuremberg were a-okay in my book, and up 0.84

00:01:40.080 until the last few days, I thought that was a pretty uncontroversial opinion for those

00:01:44.900 on my side of the political aisle. But apparently not. But today's show is nonetheless about

00:01:50.920 Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, podcaster, right-wing youth influencer, and

00:01:56.460 a man who unironically said that a few gun deaths a year is worth it to keep the Second

00:02:00.740 Amendment, which is exactly how he died. Kirk and his entire organization built their brand

00:02:06.800 on convincing young people that feminism is a scam, birth control is mind control, and

00:02:11.840 happiness is found only in subservience to a godly husband, among many other racist and 0.69

00:02:17.380 homophobic comments. He attacked the LGBTQ plus community, wokeism, DEI, racial equality,

00:02:23.840 and essentially everything that didn't benefit his existence as a mediocre straight white man. 0.97

00:02:28.840 Congratulations, Charlie. You are in a very small subset of people in history who contributed 0.53

00:02:33.320 absolutely nothing positive to the world, and in fact, made it worse with every single solitary

00:02:39.060 action you ever took. Have fun down there with Aaron Burr, Phyllis Schlafly, most of the Lee

00:02:44.360 family of Virginia and several Latin American dictators. That's a non-exhaustive list, of

00:02:49.620 course. If your favorite abjectly horrible person isn't on it, forgive me, but we don't

00:02:53.880 have time. Now, if this had just been some guy shouting into a YouTube void, we could

00:02:58.800 laugh and move on. But Kirk's platform reached millions. His conferences were packed with

00:03:04.020 teens and college students. Politicians cozied up to him. And his talking points weren't

00:03:08.680 just harmless debate. They were pipelines into regressive policies that hurt women, people 0.75

00:03:13.580 of color, queer people, and anyone else he deemed un-American. So buckle up, because

00:03:18.900 today we're digging specifically into the insanely shitty things Charlie Kirk and his 0.98

00:03:23.040 Turning Point Circus have said about women. We'll cover some of his greatest hits, from 0.92

00:03:27.420 telling Taylor Swift to submit to her husband, to declaring that birth control turns women

00:03:32.260 into bitter harpies, to insisting that college for women is basically just husband hunting.

00:03:37.420 We'll also cover his sidekicks, Candace Owens blaming women for literally every problem 0.88

00:03:42.160 in the world, Alex Clark telling us that the kitchen is where the revolution starts. Spoiler, 0.99

00:03:47.460 that is not the revolution I signed up for. And I like cooking. By the end, you'll see how

00:03:53.560 Turning Point USA is just the latest stop on a misogyny tour that goes back centuries. The cult

00:03:58.880 of domesticity, 1950s June Cleaver propaganda, Phyllis Schlafly's stop ERA, different decade, 0.99

00:04:05.780 same old woman get back in the kitchen bullshit. Well, so now let's meet Charlie Kirk. Charlie 0.97

00:04:11.680 Kirk was born in 1993, which makes him younger than me, not that you could tell. I asked a few

00:04:16.940 people how old they thought he was, and the answer generally put him in around 45, further proof of

00:04:22.480 my theory that evil ages you like milk. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and unlike the young

00:04:28.260 conservatives he constantly criticized, he didn't actually spend much time in the liberal hellscape

00:04:33.660 of academia. In fact, he basically skipped college entirely. And while I'm sure many talented and

00:04:39.720 intelligent people dropped out of college and contributed great things to society,

00:04:43.880 I just have my doubts about someone who washed out after a single semester of community college.

00:04:48.740 Not because community college isn't valuable, but because Charlie seems like the kind of guy

00:04:52.960 who'd drop intro to biology because the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell

00:04:57.700 sounded too socialist. Of course, being a college dropout didn't stop him from launching Turning

00:05:02.760 Point USA in 2012 at the tender age of 18. His pitch? College campuses are full of leftist

00:05:09.160 indoctrination and conservative students needed protection. Strong words from a dude who probably

00:05:13.880 barely attended classes for the four-ish months he was enrolled at Harper College.

00:05:18.240 Do I have proof he didn't attend? Absolutely not. He just gives off that vibe. Be honest,

00:05:23.440 you know he does. One of Kirk's earliest claims to fame was telling a story about how he was

00:05:28.780 denied a spot at West Point because a less qualified black woman was accepted instead.

00:05:33.540 This was his big affirmative action grievance tale. Years later, he admitted he'd been

00:05:37.820 exaggerating. Okay, lying. But the damage was done. That story played perfectly to conservative

00:05:43.480 donors. Suddenly, this kid had coke money and a shiny new youth activism organization.

00:05:49.040 Now, I want you to picture Charlie Kirk at 19. It's a scary image, but roll with it. He's not

00:05:54.160 a college student, not a veteran, not a policy expert. But what he does have is a gift for

00:05:59.500 outrage and the uncanny ability to say things like feminism is destroying America without

00:06:04.660 realizing he sounds like he's been possessed by a ghost from 1955. Or maybe he did realize that he

00:06:10.480 was intentionally channeling Joseph McCarthy. I guess we'll never know. Turning Point USA started

00:06:15.540 small. Tables on campuses, recruiting student ambassadors, memes on Instagram. But it grew

00:06:21.160 into a multi-million dollar empire. Today, TPUSA hosts giant conferences with thousands of

00:06:26.880 attendees. They run social media accounts with millions of followers. And they're one of the

00:06:31.020 most important youth organizations feeding into the Republican Party. One of the many topics that

00:06:36.400 Kirk and TPUSA leaned heavily into was, of course, gender politics. Why? Because nothing riles up a

00:06:42.860 conservative base faster than the idea that women are out of their control. Whether it's abortion,

00:06:47.860 birth control, or just the fact that women are pursuing careers, Kirk positioned himself as the

00:06:52.500 savior of traditional values. And by traditional, he meant when men made all the rules and women

00:06:57.960 heavily medicated themselves with booze and pills so they wouldn't smother their husbands with a

00:07:02.300 pillow. Snark aside, this was a deliberate strategy. Conservatives have always used women's

00:07:07.840 bodies as battlegrounds, whether in the 19th century anti-suffrage movement, the 1950s housewife

00:07:13.100 ideal, or the 1980s stop ERA campaign. Charlie Kirk was just this generation's Phyllis Schlafly,

00:07:19.320 but with worse hair, somehow, and a lot more TikTok clips. But if you think I'm just being

00:07:24.360 too harsh, wait, because his actual quotes make my sarcasm look generous. Let's start with one of

00:07:30.260 his most recent masterpieces of misogyny. In 2025, when Taylor Swift announced her engagement,

00:07:35.820 the entire internet was in a frenzy of congratulations. Everyone except Charlie

00:07:39.980 Kirk, that is. Instead of a simple good for her, Charlie got on his podcast, clenched his jaw like

00:07:45.240 he was trying to bite through a steel bar and said, submit to your husband, Taylor. You're not

00:07:50.900 in charge. And most importantly, I can't wait to go to a Taylor Kelsey concert. I can't say it

00:08:00.820 without laughing. You got to change your name. If not, you don't really mean it. It's almost like

00:08:07.100 Charlie Kirk has never heard of a stage name. Have you have you ever heard of a female artist

00:08:13.340 changing their stage name when they got married, especially when they were wildly successful

00:08:17.800 beforehand, but immaterial to that. This is a wild statement for someone to make. First of all,

00:08:26.000 why? Why would she need to submit to her husband? That's an insane 1950s concept for a woman.

00:08:33.840 She is not a 1950s wife. In fact, she has spoken about that in her music. The 1950s shit they want

00:08:41.880 for me. If you think this is a woman who is suddenly going to become a conservative that 1.00

00:08:48.020 supports your party because she got married to someone who is also pretty liberally minded,

00:08:55.140 um, what? What? Earlier in this same rant, he goes off about how marriage and having children

00:09:04.700 and all of these things makes you more conservative. I would like to know what he

00:09:09.880 thinks he knows about that. He has literally been a conservative talking head since he was 18 years

00:09:16.780 old, since long before he married his wife and had children. Even if it did make him more conservative

00:09:24.040 to have children, that was because he was already on that side of the line. In my opinion, I would

00:09:29.160 think that having children would make a person who was liberal more liberal, because the same ideals

00:09:34.440 would apply, but that's an entirely other argument for us to be having. But that's right,

00:09:41.460 America's most successful pop star, billionaire businesswoman, songwriter of a generation, 1.00

00:09:46.640 and Charlie thinks that her biggest priority should be submission and babies. Why is Taylor 0.96

00:09:52.460 Swift living rent-free in the brains of conservative men? Because she's the antithesis 1.00

00:09:57.840 of their worldview. She's a woman who built an empire on her own terms. She owns her masters. 1.00

00:10:03.120 she commands stadiums, and she has more wealth and influence than many male billionaires have. 1.00

00:10:08.440 And she did it without needing to submit to anyone. So of course, Charlie Kirk has to drag 0.64

00:10:14.180 her down to his level. In his warped logic, if Taylor Swift rejects feminism, she'll suddenly 1.00

00:10:19.320 become a trad wife icon, maybe even a J.D. Vance supporter. Yes, he literally speculated that 0.98

00:10:25.700 marriage would turn Taylor from cat lady to Republican housewife. Newsflash, Charlie,

00:10:30.600 the only thing Taylor Swift is going to submit to is her accountant when she files taxes on her 1.00

00:10:35.220 fortune. Historically, this is the same old playbook. In the 19th century, women who pursued

00:10:40.240 public careers were called unsexed. In the 1950s, female movie stars were accused of being lonely 0.99

00:10:46.600 spinsters. Every generation has its Taylor Swift, an independent, successful woman who terrifies 1.00

00:10:52.000 the patriarchy just by existing. And every generation has its Charlie Kirk, more than a few 0.94

00:10:57.300 of them, clutching his pearls and demanding she submit to the patriarchy. Now let's wind back

00:11:02.560 the clocks a year to 2024. Kirk is on stage at a TPUSA event when he delivers one of the most

00:11:08.640 jaw-droppingly stupid lines of his career and says this. A lot of them are on birth control too, 1.00

00:11:15.840 and birth control like really screws up female brains, by the way. Every single one of you need 1.00

00:11:19.960 to make sure that your loved ones are not on birth control. It increases depression, anxiety,

00:11:24.040 suicidal ideation birth control is the number one most prescribed medication for young ladies under 0.95

00:11:29.700 the age of 25 they they will give birth young ladies birth control for pimples for acne for

00:11:35.080 to control their moods their period it is it is awful it's terrible um and it creates very angry

00:11:40.700 and bitter young ladies and young women um that then that bitterness then manifests into um a

00:11:47.280 political party that is the bitter party i mean the democrat party is all about bring us your

00:11:51.480 Okay, first of all, let me be clear. I'm a lesbian who grew up without health insurance,

00:11:56.540 which means that I have never been on birth control even once in my life. I'm still bitter,

00:12:01.980 and I'm still a liberal. That has a lot more to do with the existence of ideas like Charlie Kirk's

00:12:06.860 than any hormonal medication that I could ever have been taking. But I'd also like to know where

00:12:12.160 my free shit is. Do I have to apply for that? Do I have to be on birth control to get it? What 0.98

00:12:17.360 what free shit am I getting? Because, quite frankly, I could use some. Somebody get in 0.99

00:12:23.420 touch with me about where I apply. Local DNC chapter? Where? But let's fact check for a

00:12:29.520 second. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says birth control is safe,

00:12:34.120 effective, and has mental health benefits for many women. But sure, let's trust the guy whose

00:12:38.940 medical degree comes from the University of Pulling Statistics out of his ass. What Kirk 1.00

00:12:43.200 is really doing here is recycling a very old fear, that if women control their own reproduction,

00:12:48.440 they won't need men anymore. Historically, this goes back to the invention of the pill in the

00:12:52.920 1960s, and probably even further. Conservatives lost their mind over it. They argued that birth

00:12:58.240 control would destroy families, make women promiscuous, and collapse society. And you know

00:13:03.060 what? In a way, they were right. The pill did transform society, for the better. It gave women

00:13:07.940 the ability to delay marriage, pursue education, and build careers. It was one of the single most

00:13:12.820 important tools in dismantling the patriarchy, which is exactly why Charlie Kirk hates it.

00:13:18.220 So when he says that birth control creates bitter women, what he means is,

00:13:22.000 I can't stand that women don't have to rely on men like me.

00:13:25.400 In that same rant, Kirk also declared,

00:13:28.800 We basically told a great generation of young women, don't get married, don't have kids, 0.99

00:13:33.320 go get a corporate job, and it's created mass political hysteria.

00:13:38.480 And then in their early 30s, they get really upset because they say,

00:13:42.060 you know the boys don't want to date me anymore because they're not at their prime and people get

00:13:46.120 mad when i say that which is true if you're in your early 30s i'm sorry it's like you're not as

00:13:49.800 attractive in the dating pool as you were in the early 20s but again you have your corporate job

00:13:53.360 and cats so i thought you you know um i'm just gonna say that uh i would rather have literally

00:14:01.160 any job and a cat versus being attractive to anyone like kirk or any of his friends um then

00:14:09.760 again, I am a lesbian. So maybe I am missing out on some core part of the heterosexual female

00:14:15.080 experience. So my straight female friends will have to let me know. Are you that worried about 0.99

00:14:20.940 it? Because I don't think you are quite personally. Also, women in their 30s are dope. So if one of

00:14:28.660 them wants to date me, let me know. Because I'm not worried about dating a woman in their 30s. 0.94

00:14:33.180 I don't think you've expired. At all. Of course, I'm 35, so what do I know?

00:14:39.780 But nothing screams fragile masculinity like reducing women's to cartons of milk with a

00:14:44.700 sell-by date. This is straight out of the Manosphere playbook. Red pill influencers on

00:14:49.240 YouTube love to say that women hit the wall at 30, as if human beings are iPhones that stop 0.98

00:14:54.380 updating once you pass a certain age. But historically, this isn't new either. In the

00:14:59.040 19th century, unmarried women over 30 were labeled old maids or spinsters. Newspapers

00:15:04.800 warned that single women would die alone surrounded by cats. Sound familiar? In the

00:15:09.600 1950s, magazines ran articles advising young women to marry young or risk being left behind. 0.69

00:15:15.940 Kirk is just rebranding spinster panic for Gen Z. He wants young women to believe they have a tiny

00:15:21.500 window of value, and that value is only measured by their ability to snag a husband. Here's the

00:15:27.040 thing. Women in their 30s today are thriving. I've just gone back to school. They're starting 1.00

00:15:31.980 businesses. They're leading companies, running for office, raising families on their own terms.

00:15:37.140 Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk is on a podcast telling Taylor Swift she's not in charge.

00:15:41.660 Who exactly was past their prime? But perhaps the most absurd stage for Kirk's misogyny was

00:15:48.020 the fact that TPUSA had the audacity to run something called the Young Women's Leadership 0.99

00:15:53.600 summit. You'd think that a woman's leadership conference would be about empowering young women 0.95

00:15:58.360 to pursue careers, education, political influence, but not in Charlie's world. At one of these events

00:16:04.640 in 2025 in Grapevine, Texas, a 14-year-old girl asked Kirk about pursuing political journalism.

00:16:11.980 This was his response. I think there is an argument to bring back the MRS degree.

00:16:16.820 and no seriously and just be clear that's why you're going to college right don't lie to yourself

00:16:24.140 like don't like i'm going i'm studying sociology no you're not we know why you're here and that's

00:16:27.700 okay actually and that's a really good reason to go to college actually especially an sec school

00:16:35.080 like you will find a husband yes this grown man told a teenager barely out of her childhood that

00:16:43.820 her best bet at higher education was to treat it like a dating app with a tuition bill. He even

00:16:49.140 doubled down, saying most women go to college to find a husband, not to learn. And because he

00:16:53.780 apparently hadn't squeezed all the misogyny juice out of that lemon, he added that if you're not

00:16:58.080 married with kids by age 30, your chances of either drop precipitously. This is what passes

00:17:03.740 for leadership training in TPUSA. A man standing on a stage telling young women that their dreams

00:17:09.460 don't matter, their education doesn't matter, and their only value is to be a wife and mother.

00:17:14.460 It's almost comical. Young Women's Leadership Summit should just be renamed Young Women's 0.70

00:17:19.500 Submission Summit because that's what they're really teaching. And this too has deep historical

00:17:24.360 roots. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who fought against the Equal Rights Amendment in

00:17:28.660 the 1970s, used the same tactic. She told women their true fulfillment was in the home while she 0.55

00:17:34.360 herself toured the country giving speeches, writing books, and building a political empire. 1.00

00:17:39.460 Candace Owens is the modern version of that contradiction, making a career out of telling 0.99

00:17:43.900 other women not to have careers. The hypocrisy is glaring. Charlie Kirk made millions telling 1.00

00:17:49.580 women to give up work, travel, and ambition while he flies around the country cashing checks from

00:17:54.580 donors. If women actually followed his advice, Turning Point USA wouldn't even have female 1.00

00:17:59.760 staffers to book his flights. But hold on. If you thought Charlie Kirk was bad, buckle up. 0.86

00:18:05.460 because the machine he built has an entire arsenal of misogynistic sidekicks. 1.00

00:18:10.800 And the wildest part, some of them are women. 1.00

00:18:13.560 That's right, TPUSA copied the Phyllis Schlafly formula decades later. 0.85

00:18:18.620 If you want to convince young women to give up their independence, 1.00

00:18:21.560 you need women standing on stage to deliver the message. 1.00

00:18:24.620 The trad wife aesthetic sells better when it's coming from someone in heels and lipstick, after all. 1.00

00:18:29.420 So let's talk about two of the biggest offenders, Candace Owens and Alex Clark. 1.00

00:18:34.980 Candace Owens has made a career out of saying the quiet part out loud.

00:18:38.820 Back in 2019, at a TPUSA Young Women's Summit, she stood on stage and declared, 0.53

00:18:45.200 Who is the most extreme feminist that you know today? 1.00

00:18:48.940 Mine would definitely be Chelsea Handler, maybe Sarah Silverman, right? 1.00

00:18:53.900 Definitely Lena Dunham, Alyssa Milano.

00:18:57.600 And ask yourself a very simple question. 0.83

00:19:00.100 Do you think those women are happy? 0.56

00:19:02.520 there's no chance that they're happy there's no chance that they're happy so then you that is why 1.00

00:19:09.060 i believe that feminism is a scam and it's not about uplifting women it's about tearing women 0.86

00:19:13.700 down ah yes that great old scam in which we make women able to make their own decisions and not be

00:19:21.780 reliant upon men for everything in their lives such a scam owens has also dismissed me too

00:19:29.520 as a left-wing scam, accusing feminists of being angry and bitter, and insisting that 0.97

00:19:34.320 modern feminism isn't about empowerment at all. Now, this is a familiar conservative talking

00:19:39.400 point. Feminism doesn't empower women, it victimizes them. Schlafly said the same thing 1.00

00:19:44.000 in the 1970s, calling feminists man-hating women who just wanted to destroy the family unit. 1.00

00:19:49.700 Owens is essentially selling a warmed-over version of the same ideology.

00:19:53.260 But she didn't stop there. Oh, no, no. In 2023, at another TPUSA Young Women's Summit, Candace outdid herself. She looked at a room full of young women and denounced.

00:20:05.740 Well, the truth is, is that we got here from women.

00:20:10.740 The transgendered movement has been ushered in by women.

00:20:15.300 I was explaining this to Charlie just now on his radio show. I said every ill that we are fighting right now in society has been brought forth by women. 1.00

00:20:22.680 Every ill? Every ill? Really? Poverty? Women's fault? Racism? Women's fault? Climate change? 1.00

00:20:29.600 Women's fault? Apparently even the Great Depression was caused by some housewife in 1930 mismanaging 1.00

00:20:34.700 her grocery list. Her example, however, is the trans rights movement. According to Owens,

00:20:39.700 women ushered it in, and honestly, I don't even know what to do with that logic. Like, 0.97

00:20:44.180 does she think drag queens appeared out of thin air because of too many girl boss brunches? 1.00

00:20:48.580 Actually, no. She just thinks that we're too soft-hearted. 1.00

00:20:51.320 We feel too much.

00:20:52.560 We're genetically predisposed to nurture,

00:20:54.900 and that just makes us too soft-brained to make decisions in society.

00:20:58.800 It's a neat trick. 1.00

00:20:59.840 Telling women that they caused all the problems, 1.00

00:21:02.060 and then she sells them the solution. 1.00

00:21:03.660 Return to the kitchen. Stop voting. 1.00

00:21:05.540 Stop trying to speak your mind. Everything will be fine.

00:21:08.100 Don't worry your pretty little head about these big decisions. 0.92

00:21:10.540 Let the big, big scary men take care of it. 1.00

00:21:13.560 And let's not forget her 2024 podcast rant about airline pilots.

00:21:17.200 She said, and I quote,

00:21:19.580 But unfortunately, that is the reality of what happens when it comes to DEI.

00:21:23.100 And what he is remarking on is true. 1.00

00:21:25.540 I would be terrified if I got onto a plane and I saw a woman.

00:21:30.000 And it's important to keep in mind that this entire bit of misogyny on Candace Owen's part 0.99

00:21:35.080 was done to back up the racism of Charlie Kirk,

00:21:39.220 who said that he's scared when he sees a black pilot.

00:21:43.060 Terrified? Why would they be terrified?

00:21:44.960 Do they think women or African Americans are incapable of learning to fly? 0.99

00:21:50.280 Never mind that women have been piloting planes since before Candace Owens' grandmother was born.

00:21:55.520 Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart are somewhere rolling in their graves and planning ghostly vengeance. 0.98

00:22:00.620 Candace insists that she's just anti-DEI and worried about quotas.

00:22:05.060 But let's be honest, she was saying out loud what a lot of sexist men think,

00:22:09.200 that they don't trust women with jobs that involve responsibility. 1.00

00:22:12.660 We're just too dumb for that. 1.00

00:22:14.960 So to recap, feminism is a scam, women caused all of society's ills, and women pilots are 1.00

00:22:20.520 terrifying. Ladies and gentlemen, the communications director of Turning Point USA. Or at least, 0.99

00:22:25.820 she was. And then, of course, there's Alex Clark, host of TPUSA's Poplitics show, who serves up

00:22:32.360 gossip, tradwife content, and diet culture TikToks disguised as conservative commentary.

00:22:37.840 At another one of those ironically named Young Women's Leadership Summits, she told a weird,

00:22:42.620 convoluted story about why she thinks women in the 1950s were actually depressed you see the

00:22:49.140 truth is that women in the 50s were miserable but it isn't for all of the reasons that we're told 0.60

00:22:57.780 we were living in a time where conveniences were going crazy women had all of a sudden we had 0.90

00:23:07.280 microwaves and dishwashers and all these things. We had oven, oven pre-made dinners that we could 1.00

00:23:12.480 just stick in the oven. Everything was easier. And so women felt purposeless and a little bit

00:23:18.440 decorative. And with that came a really deep feeling of discontentment. 0.98

00:23:28.840 one where the feminist movement preyed on those feelings and told women, 1.00

00:23:36.860 you know where you'll find your true purpose? 1.00

00:23:39.220 You'll find your purpose outside of the home.

00:23:42.420 Right. Yes. So we were just miserable because, let me check my notes here,

00:23:48.080 we had too much time on our hands to think thinky thoughts,

00:23:52.240 and we just got really bored because our housework was too easy to do.

00:23:55.540 Right. So the real answer to all of our problems, ladies? 1.00

00:24:00.000 Less conveniences. 0.97

00:24:01.500 We were so much happier when we were hauling water in from the well

00:24:04.740 and making lye soap to wash our clothes on a metal board.

00:24:08.100 That's where we need to go back to.

00:24:10.220 And remember, she was saying this to an audience of young women at a leadership summit.

00:24:15.640 Imagine being a teenager, signing up for what you think is an empowerment event,

00:24:19.920 and being told that your true calling is making sandwiches,

00:24:22.660 but only if you make the bread from scratch, because if you buy it from the store,

00:24:26.840 that just leads to too much time on your hands to think things.

00:24:30.540 What Alex Clark and others are really doing here with TPUSA is selling the tradwife aesthetic.

00:24:36.620 They glamorize homemaking, submission, childbearing, packaging it all with vintage dresses,

00:24:42.140 Pinterest-perfect kitchens, and Instagram filters. It's Stepford Wives, but with ring lights. 0.95

00:24:47.560 So what do all of these examples have in common? Well, Charlie Kirk used his massive

00:24:52.300 political activist platform to elevate women who would push a vision of womanhood that is

00:24:57.020 narrow, controlling, and deeply misogynistic, and only benefits one group of people. Men.

00:25:03.440 It's strategic. Having Candace Owens say that feminism is a scam hits differently than if

00:25:08.160 Charlie Kirk said it. Having Alex Clark talk about the kitchen revolution lands a lot different than

00:25:13.520 if Matt Gaetz does. It's women policing women, which makes the message seem a lot more palatable

00:25:18.860 to young audiences. But the end goal is the same. Convince young women to abandon independence,

00:25:24.580 embrace submission, and become foot soldiers for conservative politics. 0.69

00:25:28.440 But here's the thing. Charlie Kirk didn't even do anything original. Turning Point USA isn't

00:25:33.940 original. None of this misogyny is new. What they're doing is just reheating the same gender

00:25:39.040 politics casserole that's been sitting in the back of the fridge since the 1800s. And let me tell you, 0.74

00:25:44.140 it smells worse every time it comes out. So let's do what we do best on bitchy history. 1.00

00:25:49.520 Trace this shit back. Long before Charlie Kirk was telling women to submit, American society 1.00

00:25:54.980 was already hard at work enforcing that script. In the early 19th century, middle and upper class 0.98

00:25:59.820 white women were expected to embody the cult of true womanhood, or the cult of domesticity.

00:26:05.100 The rules? Be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic. That was it. Those were your four 1.00

00:26:10.580 career options. If you tried to get an education, write books, or engage in politics, you were

00:26:14.800 warned that it would literally break your uterus. I might be exaggerating, but that's more or less

00:26:19.320 it. Doctors and ministers claimed that higher education would cause hysteria or infertility.

00:26:24.820 Sound familiar? Kirk and Owens telling us birth control screws up women's brains is just a remix 0.75

00:26:29.800 of the 19th century claim that algebra might make you infertile. But even then, women resisted. 1.00

00:26:35.360 They organized reform movements, fought for abolition, started schools. Every time 0.99

00:26:40.220 society said stay home, women found a way to push the boundary. Fast forward a century and we land 1.00

00:26:46.300 in the 1950s, the golden age of women. Know your place. This is the decade that a lot of people at 1.00

00:26:51.700 TPUSA are constantly fetishizing and fantasizing about, except for Alex Clark, apparently. The

00:26:57.580 ideal? June Cleaver with her pearls and spotless kitchen. Women were told their patriotic duty was 1.00

00:27:03.180 to stay home, bake casseroles, and raise children to fight the Cold War. Advertisements and TV sold

00:27:08.520 this fantasy relentlessly. But let's be real, the 1950s housewife ideal was a lie. Millions of

00:27:14.580 women were working, often women of color and working-class women who had no choice. Divorce 0.99

00:27:19.300 rates were climbing, and surveys showed women were miserable, in fact. Tranquilizer use among 0.98

00:27:24.240 housewives had skyrocketed. The happy homemaker was propped up with Valium and vodka. When Charlie

00:27:30.720 Kirk told Laura Ingram this, and by the way, we look at the mental health data. Young women are

00:27:35.460 not okay. Half, that is right, half of liberal white women say that they have some form of mental 1.00

00:27:41.360 health issue that has been diagnosed by a doctor. What he neglects to mention is that women in the

00:27:46.240 1950s were just as miserable. They just didn't get diagnosed or treated with more than a tranquilizer

00:27:51.980 and a commandment to not be a frigid bitch when their husband wanted sex. They don't care if 1.00

00:27:56.820 women are happy. They just want us to shut the fuck up about it if we aren't. That's why he put 1.00

00:28:01.360 such an emphasis on us being diagnosed. But Charlie Kark telling young women at a leadership

00:28:07.080 summit to abandon college and raise more children than you can afford, that's straight out of 1950s

00:28:12.160 propaganda. And once again, in the 1950s, women resisted. Second wave feminism erupted in the 60s 1.00

00:28:18.560 and 70s precisely because women were suffocating under this enforced domesticity. We're not going 1.00

00:28:24.080 back. And now we get to Charlie's spiritual grandmother, Phyllis Schlafly. May they both

00:28:29.560 be toasty for eternity. In the 1970s, Schlafly launched the Stop ERA movement to prevent the

00:28:35.280 Equal Rights Amendment from being ratified. Her argument? That equality would ruin women's lives.

00:28:40.740 She claimed that if women had equal rights, they'd be drafted into war, they'd lose the right to be 1.00

00:28:45.560 supported by men, and society would simply collapse. If you want more information on that,

00:28:50.120 I've got an entire episode on the ERA already. And here's the hypocrisy. Schlafly told women

00:28:55.680 their true role was in the home, but she spent decades building her own career as a political 0.96

00:29:00.440 activist, lawyer, and author. Sound familiar? Candace Owens telling young women not to have

00:29:05.440 careers while making her entire living from a career in politics is the exact same playbook. 1.00

00:29:10.560 Schlafly weaponized women against women. She mobilized housewives, church groups, 1.00

00:29:14.980 and conservative women's organizations to block the ERA. And she succeeded. The ERA

00:29:19.680 remains a pipe dream to this day, largely thanks to her.

00:29:23.940 TPUSA's Young Women's Leadership Summit is basically Stop ERA 2.0. 0.91

00:29:28.860 Dress it up however you like.

00:29:30.380 Heels, ring lights, TikTok, dances, but the message is the same. 1.00

00:29:34.400 Real women submit. 1.00

00:29:35.940 Real women reject feminism. 1.00

00:29:37.900 Real women stay home. 1.00

00:29:39.840 So let's connect the dots. 1.00

00:29:41.800 The cult of domesticity said women must be pure, pious, submissive, and domestic. 0.72

00:29:46.160 The 1950s fantasy said women had to be housewives and mothers in order to fight communism.

00:29:51.500 Phyllis Schlafly said feminism was a scam and women should stop fighting for equality. 0.99

00:29:56.080 And now, Charlie Kirk and TPUSA have been saying that feminism is a scam, 0.94

00:30:00.860 birth control is brain poison, and women should submit to a godly men. 0.97

00:30:05.040 It's the same script, century after century. 1.00

00:30:07.660 The only thing that's changing are the costumes and the technology.

00:30:11.360 Where once it was sermons and pamphlets, now it's YouTube clips and Instagram reels.

00:30:15.260 Where once it was June Cleaver, now it's tradwife influencers in prairie dresses holding sourdough bread.

00:30:20.900 And here's the irony. Every time this rhetoric resurfaces, women push back harder. 0.99

00:30:25.800 The cult of domesticity gave way to suffragists. The 1950s housewife fantasy birthed second-wave 0.99

00:30:31.500 feminism. Schlafly's Stop ERA campaign sparked feminist backlash that energized women into 1.00

00:30:36.880 politics. So if history teaches us anything, it's that Kirk and his crew may be loud,

00:30:41.800 but their misogyny will eventually fuel another wave of resistance.

00:30:45.920 And here's why all of this matters. Charlie Kirk was never just some misogynistic dude bro with

00:30:50.680 a microphone. He created a pipeline. TPUSA uses memes, conferences, and speeches to normalize

00:30:57.460 contempt for women, and that feeds directly into policies. Abortion bans, attacks on contraception,

00:31:03.100 Christian nationalist laws. And now with Kirk's death, that pipeline has a new stage,

00:31:08.160 martyrdom politics. The backlash is being weaponized not just to defend his ideas,

00:31:12.660 but to punish anyone who criticizes him. People have already lost jobs for mocking his

00:31:17.300 assassination online. Whole companies are disciplining employees for stray comments.

00:31:22.180 It's not just a movement, it's an enforcement mechanism. Let's start with the obvious, abortion. 0.79

00:31:27.640 TPUSA has been relentless in pushing anti-abortion rhetoric to its young audiences.

00:31:32.680 It's not just abortion is murder, it's also laced with contempt for women who seek abortions. It

00:31:37.820 wants to punish them. This rhetoric is strategic. If you convince people that women who want

00:31:43.160 abortions are just promiscuous, unethical, horrible people, then you don't have to engage

00:31:48.480 with the reality that abortion is health care, that one in four women in the U.S. will have

00:31:53.540 one at some point in their life, and that restricting access is killing people. And

00:31:58.160 it's working. The Dobbs decision in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, and now abortion 0.77

00:32:04.040 bans are sweeping red states. TPUSA students are being mobilized as the cheering section

00:32:09.060 for those laws. But it's not going to stop at abortion. Kirk's crusade against birth control

00:32:14.220 isn't just a random rant. Conservative politicians are openly questioning access to contraception.

00:32:19.960 In 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas literally wrote his Dobbs concurrence that the court should

00:32:24.400 reconsider cases that protect contraception access. That's not a fringe position anymore.

00:32:29.520 It's mainstream conservative policy. Just recently, the Trump administration destroyed

00:32:33.820 $10 million worth of birth control meant for women abroad. And in their statement to the

00:32:38.820 New York Times, a USAID representative said this, President Trump is committed to protecting the

00:32:44.840 lives of unborn children all around the world. The administration will no longer supply abortifacient

00:32:50.340 birth control under the guise of foreign aid. You heard that right. He's saying that birth control

00:32:56.160 is an abortifacient and therefore should be banned. They're coming for our birth control.

00:33:02.280 When Kirk tells his followers that birth control screws up women's brains, he's softening the

00:33:07.500 ground for the next wave of rollbacks. It's about creating a culture where restricting birth

00:33:12.100 control feels reasonable. They're just protecting us. And then, of course, there's the Christian

00:33:17.500 nationalism. When Kirk told women to submit to a godly man, he's not just quoting Ephesians. He's

00:33:24.040 plugging into a broader movement that fuses evangelical theology with Republican politics.

00:33:29.460 Christian nationalists want America to be a Christian nation, which in practice means

00:33:34.200 enforcing conservative 1950s interpretations of gender roles, sexuality, and family structure.

00:33:40.080 Women should be helpmeets, men are the head of the household, and LGBTQ people are erased from 0.78

00:33:45.260 public life like we never even existed. TPUSA Faith, one of Kirk's spinoff organizations, 0.51

00:33:51.140 is basically a youth pipeline into this worldview. It teaches young people that feminism, abortion,

00:33:56.320 and queer rights aren't just political issues, they're satanic plots. And here's why it matters. 1.00

00:34:02.200 TPUSA is one of the most effective recruitment tools that the right has for young people.

00:34:06.860 Think about it.

00:34:07.740 You're 17.

00:34:08.800 You see a TPUSA meme on Instagram about how feminists are cat ladies. 0.59

00:34:13.080 You laugh. 1.00

00:34:13.740 You share it. 1.00

00:34:14.300 Then you go to a TPUSA event where Candace Owens tells you that feminism is a scam. 1.00

00:34:20.320 Then Charlie Kirk tells you birth control is poison.

00:34:22.800 Then you're introduced to pro-family politics,

00:34:25.060 and suddenly you're voting for candidates who want to criminalize abortion and ban books in schools.

00:34:29.700 That's the pipeline.

00:34:30.400 It's not about one outrageous comment.

00:34:32.920 It's about building a culture where misogyny feels normal, even empowering,

00:34:37.100 especially for young white men who feel that they've somehow missed out on the American dream

00:34:41.220 and desperately want to blame that on someone.

00:34:43.780 And if we ignore it, the policy consequences will be catastrophic.

00:34:47.860 Before we close out this episode, let me clear something up before someone starts clutching their pearls.

00:34:53.200 Murder is wrong.

00:34:54.260 I'm not out here celebrating assassination as a political tactic.

00:34:57.280 No matter how much you hated Charlie Kirk, political violence isn't justice, and it just

00:35:01.840 creates martyrs. But acknowledging that doesn't mean we get to ignore his words and actions.

00:35:07.140 He wasn't simply a conservative with strong opinions. He was a megaphone for cruelty.

00:35:12.060 He told women to submit, said birth control was brain poison, declared women expired at 30,

00:35:18.180 and spent years tearing down reproductive rights, racial equality, and queer existence.

00:35:23.380 All of that damage doesn't vanish because he's dead.

00:35:26.440 And now with his death, the conservative movement is already turning him into a martyr.

00:35:30.260 Erica Kirk is giving speeches promising retribution and that his movement will go on.

00:35:35.120 Elon Musk and others are demanding that critics be held accountable.

00:35:39.000 Companies have fired employees over this.

00:35:41.980 NASDAQ, the Carolina Panthers, even the Secret Service have disciplined people who spoke about his death.

00:35:47.360 It's not just grief. It's a crackdown on what conservatives claim Kirk was all about.

00:35:52.580 Freedom of speech.

00:35:53.920 There's even new reporting showing figures like Vice President J.D. Vance appearing on The Charlie Kirk Show,

00:36:00.200 engaging in the same rhetoric that Kirk has always pushed.

00:36:03.660 That tells you something. His ideas were never solo acts.

00:36:07.060 They were part of a broader, organized ecosystem of conservative voices.

00:36:11.880 And now many of them are treating his death like a rallying point to push the same ideas further and faster.

00:36:18.440 What we aren't seeing is accountability for his misogyny, racism, and authoritarianism that he

00:36:24.080 spread. What we are seeing is a backlash against anyone even daring to criticize him. And we even

00:36:30.380 see members of the Democratic Party, liberals, and leftists going along with this. His death

00:36:36.120 doesn't erase harm. It intensifies it because now it's wrapped in martyrdom. Let me be clear that I

00:36:42.740 do not feel bad about pointing out that some people deserve to be criticized after their

00:36:47.620 death. When Carolyn Bryant, the woman whose lie led to Emmett Till's lynching, finally

00:36:52.360 died, I celebrated. Not because I celebrate death in general, but because some people 0.73

00:36:58.420 spend their entire lives inflicting harm and never once doing anything good. Their absence

00:37:04.340 is a relief and a net positive for society. Charlie Kirk belongs in that exact same category.

00:37:11.040 So no, I'm not going to speak kindly of the dead.

00:37:14.180 I will speak ill of them.

00:37:16.120 If the dead use their lives to make the world a worse place,

00:37:19.440 we owe it to the world to call them out on that.

00:37:22.820 Charlie Kirk might be gone,

00:37:24.160 but the damage he has done to society is still here

00:37:27.180 and it is still going to keep being propagated.

00:37:30.040 And the best way to deal with his death is not with silence,

00:37:34.060 not with empty memorials, but with resistance. 0.66

00:37:40.680 That's it for this episode of Bitchy History. 0.78

00:37:42.960 If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself.

00:37:45.540 Subscribe, review, and share it with someone who loves history as much as we do.

00:37:49.740 Until next time, stay curious and keep questioning the world around you.

00:37:54.080 History.

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00:37:55.480 History.

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00:37:57.100 History. 1.00

00:37:58.060 Wanna bitch, right? 1.00

Bitchy History - September 19, 2025

Speaking Ill of the Dead — Charlie Kirk Edition

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Transcript