Bitchy History - March 28, 2024


The History of the Pro-Life Movement


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 6 minutes

Words per minute

180.65

Word count

12,002

Sentence count

170


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 something that's you know kind of bitchy pretty bitchy bitchy i know it's just you know bitchy
00:00:07.680 well first of all you're a little bitchy that's that's next level bitchy
00:00:12.200 welcome to bitchy history the irreverent history podcast where one history professor gets to bitch
00:00:17.860 about history and the impact it has on the world today hi everybody welcome back to bitchy history
00:00:24.040 i know it's been a little bit it's been a hot second uh but this semester's been a little bit
00:00:28.680 wild, and so as a result, you know, I haven't been able to get as many episodes out as I would like,
00:00:34.680 but mea culpa, I'm coming to you with a really, really special episode today to make up for all
00:00:39.120 of that, which I think will make you guys very happy. This is also the very first time that
00:00:43.160 we've done a video episode of the podcast, so for those of you who are watching on YouTube,
00:00:48.060 hi, you can actually see my face now. This is the first time you've been able to do that, really.
00:00:52.880 So today we are going to be doing an episode on the history of the pro-life movement,
00:00:56.640 but what is really special about this episode is that I am having Gwen Levy got your name right
00:01:01.920 this time right is that right yes good okay uh on as a guest and this Gwen is a musician that I
00:01:08.940 came across on TikTok that was where I was introduced to her music uh she came out with
00:01:13.060 this song uh when when did you release it I released it in September of 2023 so it's the
00:01:19.300 opposite months yeah yeah it's now about six months this is a great song called Barefoot
00:01:23.640 pregnant which just encapsulated everyone's frustration over the current issues with GOP
00:01:30.200 and how they are treating women's bodily autonomy. So before we get started I'm going to play you
00:01:34.840 guys a little clip here from the music video if you have not heard the song because if you have
00:01:39.800 not it's criminal you need to go need to go download it right now it's on you know all the
00:01:43.880 streaming platforms so
00:01:48.360 that's the good old boys drinking whiskey and rye
00:01:53.400 what do we do with the women in our lives let's keep them
00:01:58.120 barefoot and pregnant and down on the farm cooking in the kitchen and cleaning
00:02:05.560 out the barn praying in church a credit to her
00:02:10.920 gender popping on babies like a pez dispenser nine out of ten evangelicals would agree let's keep her
00:02:21.880 barefoot and cracking like the good lord
00:02:27.080 it's an absolutely fantastic music video as well as a fantastic song every time i watch the video
00:02:31.640 i just i'm like crying and laughing at the same time which is great uh so gwen would you like
00:02:36.680 I'd like to introduce yourself for the audience.
00:02:40.080 Hello, everyone.
00:02:41.780 Yeah, I feel the same way about the song.
00:02:43.380 You can almost hear the tears behind the smiles, you know.
00:02:47.180 I'm Gwen from Gwen Loving the Breakdown.
00:02:51.180 My band and I are here in Nashville.
00:02:53.880 And yeah, I don't even know where to begin, to be honest.
00:03:00.380 No, I'll start off with a few questions.
00:03:02.380 So obviously, you were inspired to write the song
00:03:06.080 based on current events, current political events.
00:03:08.380 But what really cemented the idea of the song in your head
00:03:12.180 when you started to write it?
00:03:14.160 Yeah, so when Roe v. Wade was overturned,
00:03:16.400 I remember sitting,
00:03:17.740 I used to work in a boutique shop here in East Nashville.
00:03:21.140 And I remember sitting in the shop
00:03:22.960 and just feeling this incredible wave
00:03:27.040 of depression and anger and just shock.
00:03:32.040 shock. And I had heard that, you know, they had released the, the Supreme Court decision a little
00:03:40.740 early that someone had leaked it. And I just think it kind of flew over everyone's heads,
00:03:47.500 at least for my generation, our generation, you know, no one even thought that Roe v. Wade would
00:03:55.020 be overturned at our age, I feel like. And then there was a bunch of abortion clinics saying,
00:04:01.220 well we told y'all but i think no one was paying attention um which is another reason why roe v
00:04:07.380 wade wasn't made into law and i know we're going to get into the whole history yeah um so i was
00:04:15.300 deeply shocked by it and um i'm someone who i'm a survivor of childhood sexual assault so when this
00:04:23.060 happened and i heard that they were especially for girls who are sexually assaulted that they
00:04:29.620 they weren't gonna be able to get the healthcare
00:04:31.620 they need and deserve.
00:04:33.180 It really struck a chord in me.
00:04:34.700 And I went to my co-writers,
00:04:35.940 Will Rambo and Trey Austin here in Nashville.
00:04:38.580 And I said, I really, really wanna write a song about this.
00:04:41.560 This is so important to me.
00:04:43.620 And we, I remember Will was like,
00:04:47.580 hey, we have this idea for you, Barefoot and Pregnant.
00:04:51.240 And from there, I remember the right went really quickly
00:04:54.600 and some of the best rights always do.
00:04:57.740 and it felt like magic because I was completing my EP,
00:05:01.800 which is a five song short album.
00:05:05.200 And I always have a social commentary
00:05:07.760 on all of my songs, all my albums.
00:05:10.660 And we needed that.
00:05:12.340 And then Barefoot and Pregnant came to be
00:05:14.500 and we knew that we were ready to go in
00:05:16.260 and record the album.
00:05:17.400 So that's how it came to be.
00:05:19.780 That's my own personal story.
00:05:21.500 And I know I'm not the only woman
00:05:23.280 that has had stories like that.
00:05:25.220 So I needed, I knew in my heart, I knew I wanted to give a voice to people that didn't have one.
00:05:31.600 And I've always been told I'm the girl with the voice.
00:05:34.480 So, you know, I was like, I better use it, especially now when, you know, so many people are suffering.
00:05:41.000 Yeah, being able to use that voice is so important.
00:05:43.140 I think it's, I mean, I would say more women than not have those stories, you know, whether it was when they were a child or as an adult or just anything.
00:05:52.760 it is it is shocking the amount of people that have have those stories I just I mean I've shared
00:05:59.020 this with people but in the past but that I've been roofied twice in my life which is just
00:06:03.220 absolutely like it destroys even if nothing happens which in my case in both cases pretty
00:06:09.760 much nothing happened um it that went further than the roofing but it just breaks your trust
00:06:15.080 yeah absolutely and um yeah there it's a real crisis it's not just a health care crisis it's
00:06:25.000 also um just a a real tragedy what's happening right now for women it's a civil rights crisis
00:06:31.500 absolutely absolutely so um i'm getting chills right now talking about it so
00:06:37.760 it is mind-boggling and just thinking about some of the the laws that have been passed
00:06:44.580 in or are attempting to be passed in some states right now i remember listening to something i
00:06:51.460 can't remember which state it was right now off the top of my head i should have written it down
00:06:55.220 uh but they were trying they were trying to pass a bill for exceptions for uh girls under the age
00:07:00.740 of 13. and they approve it what was it was it tennessee it was yeah because i remember
00:07:08.420 gloria johnson brought it to the table and they shut it down yeah it was insane and
00:07:13.860 And the reason behind one of the complaints was like, oh, this would allow children as young as a year old to get an abortion.
00:07:19.440 And it's like, well, first of all, I don't think you understand how how the human body works.
00:07:23.880 But secondly, yeah, that it would if it was necessary.
00:07:27.900 Why would you not want them to be able to, you know, exactly.
00:07:30.840 And most of the people who are making these laws, I mean, they don't even know how pregnancy works.
00:07:37.380 I mean, most of them can't even get pregnant themselves.
00:07:40.000 so it's mind-boggling to me how misinformed and uneducated our lawmakers are specifically about
00:07:49.500 this issue yeah as i as i like to say to my when i'm talking about it with my dad i was like you
00:07:55.380 know these are these are the kind of people who are making these decisions who still think that
00:07:59.360 women pee out of the same hole that they that they had the baby out of like they don't know
00:08:03.720 anything about the human body my dad used to be a science teacher so it drives him up the wall
00:08:08.640 and it's just it's absolutely insane that these people are allowed to make decisions about my
00:08:14.720 body instead of me and my doctor making those decisions like that should never there should
00:08:19.820 never be government involved in that at all it's just it absolutely drives me insane I mean
00:08:24.820 it's it's so great to have a you know a message or a theme for your albums when you're coming out
00:08:31.560 with having some sort of social message uh how did you end up deciding to do to do that with
00:08:37.380 your music i've always written about different social issues and that's been a big part of who
00:08:46.740 i am but i've i've all i definitely you know i grew up right outside of washington dc my parents
00:08:54.100 were very politically involved and really got me involved i started campaigning i remember for
00:08:59.380 president obama when i was 13 with my dad and my mom and so politics was always a part of our
00:09:06.580 family even though I wasn't going to be a politician so the fact that my music and advocacy
00:09:14.500 can come together with my music can come together with my advocacy is really important to me and
00:09:22.340 it's become even more important obviously with this issue I mean I wasn't I remember one of my
00:09:27.580 biggest most controversial songs was about weed you know being pro pro 420 pro weed and that was
00:09:34.540 and that was even though in Nashville you wouldn't think so because there's so many drinking songs
00:09:40.260 but weed is still so taboo here it's it's wild um and then fast forward maybe four years later
00:09:47.340 after my first album and here we are and I'm a woman singing about pro you know being pro-choice
00:09:54.340 um you know I have these certain controversial elements I would say there's five that are kind
00:10:00.360 of working i think i wouldn't say against me it's for me and for others i want to be that
00:10:06.660 just true to who i am which is i mean i'm just myself honestly i'm not pretending to be anything
00:10:12.600 else so i hope that's that's the way to be that is the way to be and speaking of your advocacy
00:10:17.920 i think one of the things that made me like i i loved the song but then i was like ah well i
00:10:23.680 wouldn't necessarily i don't always follow every you know musician that i like on tiktok or things
00:10:28.440 like that. But I started following you on TikTok because I kept seeing that you have a very similar
00:10:34.280 MO when it comes to dealing with trolls as I do, which is what a friend of mine likes to call
00:10:41.460 the Louisville slugger approach, which I absolutely love. And so you do a lot of advocacy for
00:10:48.080 obviously pro-choice, pro-choice stuff on your TikTok channel, and you have to deal with a lot
00:10:53.820 of angry uh angry men uh pretty much predominantly of course there's probably some angry pro-life
00:10:59.420 women scattered in there as well and that's when it's status is when it's women it really is yeah
00:11:05.260 misinformed ignorant men i can deal with but it's one of the women it just breaks my heart
00:11:10.780 i was teaching off topic but i was teaching yesterday in my in my uh entry level american
00:11:17.020 history class we were talking about the 1950s and kind of the push to move women back into the home
00:11:22.060 and uh and there was a book that i'm reading for my phd project and uh in it basically the the
00:11:29.740 author is talking about how any woman who doesn't want to be a mother doesn't want to be in the
00:11:33.180 home raising her children is mentally disturbed um and the the irony of this book is that it's
00:11:39.660 written by a female doctor a noted physician no less like she was probably known and had a career
00:11:47.820 right and she would probably have advocated for having women lobotomized exactly uh this is a
00:11:54.780 this is a woman who not only was like pulling the ladder up behind her but sitting on fire
00:11:59.500 like as she was pulling it out because she's not gonna let any other woman be up there with her
00:12:03.180 which yeah and that's you know the brainwashing runs deep and i you know if you don't agree with
00:12:11.500 abortion for yourself you want to be a stay-at-home mom i have my best friend to stay home at home mom
00:12:16.780 I always say that that was but that was her choice and that's the most important thing here is that
00:12:21.260 women deserve the choice to choose whether they want to be a stay-at-home mom or have a career
00:12:26.860 the rest of their lives like both my aunts never married never had children and they had very
00:12:32.220 successful careers and are very happy um I think there's this whole stigma that's thrown around
00:12:39.340 that oh women aren't happy if they're working and they don't have children and all these things but
00:12:44.220 you know one of my idols is stevie nicks and i love stevie nicks and she never married her
00:12:48.940 children and i think she's pretty freaking happy so yeah she's doing it too long there's nothing
00:12:54.860 stopping you from being happy being happy is not about like having a certain lifestyle or
00:12:59.740 certain way of living that's not that's not how that works at all but yeah you get so much insane
00:13:05.020 and just utterly ridiculous hate on on tick tock uh and maybe talk a little bit about that how it
00:13:13.100 how it affects you and i i mean i think you're taking from what i've seen of you posting responses
00:13:18.860 i feel like you're a little bit the same as me which is you kind of feed off of the hate where
00:13:22.620 you're kind of like haha i've made them angry i enjoy this but also it probably gets a little
00:13:27.740 bit stressful too it does i you know at first when it first started going the song first started
00:13:35.100 going viral i got nothing but hate i don't know what the algorithm was doing it was targeting
00:13:39.820 people that just were very anti-choice and I remember it took a real toll on my mental health
00:13:46.980 because especially the comments that I have gotten about my weight that's like the easiest thing for
00:13:53.860 them to try to attack and as someone who struggled with eating disorders body dysmorphia I've gotten
00:13:59.180 to a place where in the music video I was like I that was like the most beautiful I'd ever felt
00:14:04.940 that day. I was the happiest I'd ever been. And here are these random men trolling me and attacking
00:14:11.040 me and putting my face next to pictures of Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars and making me feel
00:14:16.840 absolutely ashamed of myself. And that's something that I've really had to overcome. And I feel like
00:14:24.320 I have. And those comments don't affect me the way they used to, which I'm glad to say I'm on
00:14:30.700 the other side of that but um I mean it got really intense and I have gotten death threats
00:14:36.920 I've gotten people saying that they're gonna put me against the wall at my shows like just
00:14:41.540 insanity and these are people that claim to be pro-life and I always point that out because how
00:14:47.720 can you advocate for that and then they even try to use the bible to justify them saying they want
00:14:54.640 of take my life it's it's absolutely what's going on and i know that it has gone on i mean there's
00:15:02.420 so many people that have been openly pro-choice you know abort doctors who performed abortions
00:15:09.340 i mean people who've really lost their lives and being in nashville getting up on stage
00:15:15.540 talking about you saying the word abortion and then singing barefoot and pregnant in front of
00:15:21.400 people that i know that have that crowd at least is not pro-choice and i mean it's i feel like it
00:15:29.480 you know people are always like you're so brave but it it's bravery but it's also knowing it's
00:15:34.600 the right thing to do so and i'm not the only one out there doing the same thing yeah and
00:15:40.920 unfortunately we haven't come that far from you know the days of like loretta lynn being being
00:15:46.360 banned from the airwaves for for recording the pill like we have not come that far and i've had
00:15:52.120 doors slammed in my face from people in the music industry uh i know someone who's been working the
00:16:00.200 music video getting it to cmt and all these other outlets um was even saying that they're a little
00:16:08.120 disappointed with the way that more of the progressive country stations etc um have kind
00:16:16.200 of just not really put a spotlight on this and it's just such a polarizing issue even for people
00:16:25.480 who are progressive in country music and um i mean now they're finally starting starting to accept
00:16:33.480 people of color and country music gay people i mean but being pro-choice is now the uh i don't
00:16:42.440 know if we can touch that kind of thing so i do that that's too much we've gone too far which is
00:16:47.560 insane because going back with the history of country music is not the history of of right-wing
00:16:52.440 conservacism it really is not it's you know johnny cash there's nothing like politically
00:16:58.440 conservative about johnny cash or loretta lynn or any of these like big names dolly parton for
00:17:04.680 crying out loud right there's nothing like politically conservative about the music they
00:17:09.160 put out it's always been very very progressive very you know pro-woman pro pro native american
00:17:16.400 pro freedom all of these things and it's just it's wild to see how what it's become which
00:17:22.000 is a whole other episode that i need to do at some point about what happened to country music
00:17:25.980 after 9-11 oh my gosh yeah something you know and you know it's like if you don't wrap yourself in
00:17:33.100 the flag and you know oh yeah all that stuff then you're not going to make it in country music and
00:17:38.760 listen you know i love country music i kind of i wouldn't i almost want to say fell into country
00:17:46.500 music i've always loved it and i've always been told you can sing it really well um but i didn't
00:17:52.720 grow up on mainstream country music i grew up on you know people like neil young and um the old
00:18:00.880 school stuff that was yeah yeah yeah just and um you know linda ronstadt and bonnie rayett you know
00:18:07.760 people that had country influences but weren't necessarily straight country but what i love
00:18:15.760 about country is you know our groups like the chicks who were really my first introduction
00:18:22.480 when i was growing up to mainstream country music and i love that it's predominantly
00:18:31.280 the roots are anti-establishment so you would think that absolutely to come out blazing but
00:18:40.080 it's really really suppressed and it's still absolutely at least at least we do have that my
00:18:45.600 favorite genre my favorite genre of country music will always be the the the angry wife murders her
00:18:52.000 abusive husband uh genre which is you know prototypical goodbye earl the chicks right yeah
00:18:57.360 um it's it's one of my favorite genres of the entire of the entire area of music i have so many
00:19:03.280 of those songs like i have an entire playlist of it on my on my uh apple music but yeah it's a
00:19:10.480 wonderful wonderful thing and before we move on i just want you to know you look phenomenal in your
00:19:16.240 music video so anyone who is sending anything negative about them like i write murder mysteries
00:19:23.360 in my off hours so i know a lot about about disposing of people you know just letting you
00:19:28.960 know have fun now let's put it out there I can't help you now but it's on the
00:19:32.720 podcast but yeah exactly right but yeah absolutely you look phenomenal in the
00:19:41.080 music video the music video is just so great I love the little like Sylvia Plath
00:19:44.860 references and things like that it's just it's very layered and I just I love
00:19:49.580 the line dancing pregnant women and all of that it's an amazing music video and
00:19:53.860 those are all my friends you know people like yeah all friends and Marcus my partner is the
00:20:01.360 drummer in it and that's another thing another another issue for another day being in Tennessee
00:20:09.360 is being in a racial couple but we've gotten some horrible comments which I'm shocked even though
00:20:16.540 my mom just keeps saying I'm naive you know yeah you think it's gotten better than you get hit right
00:20:23.280 a face with it which is is really unfortunate like you guys look so happy together every time
00:20:27.760 i see pictures of you guys on instagram you look so happy together like anyone who knows about that
00:20:31.680 is ridiculous it's anyone love and i just i i don't understand people who are something is
00:20:39.600 insane it is insane people are very um well they're evil there's a lot of evil people out there
00:20:45.360 unfortunately i used to just call them kind of ignorant but no it's just straight up evil at
00:20:49.520 this point yeah and they're projecting that onto other people they're you know just really unhappy
00:20:54.880 in their own lives and exactly internet feeds is a you know breeding ground for hate and trolls
00:21:03.680 unfortunately even though it's gonna be a wonderful place like it brought me and you together but
00:21:08.400 exactly but there's a lot of bad people yeah a lot of bad people out there i've done a lot of
00:21:14.880 deep i have been doing a lot of deep dives into trad wife and mra spaces basically for phd
00:21:22.720 topic and it's a it's a lot it's a lot there's a lot of bad people out there like
00:21:31.120 today with someone we're trying to put together this whole political fundraiser for
00:21:36.400 you know people the tennessee three and then other political candidates and it's gonna be
00:21:41.920 music festival and everything and just one of the people who was helping organize it was talking
00:21:47.840 about trad wife and i just wrote a song about that and so yeah yeah but i just you know i didn't even
00:21:57.440 know what that was when i first heard it and she didn't either we're talking about it and it's a
00:22:02.960 wild thing to be in and a lot of the people in the mra spaces need to be on all of the lists
00:22:07.600 for all of the criminal behaviors where i'm like you are a walking red flag like there's nothing
00:22:14.160 uh mra so the the men's rights activists like they are all terrible
00:22:22.400 it's insane they're they're terrifying i don't know but yeah so let's uh let's hop into kind
00:22:27.840 of a history of the uh the pro-life movement a little bit um so i've done i've talked a little
00:22:33.440 bit about this on my podcast i talked about it in the episode where i did the history of abortion
00:22:37.600 But I didn't really delve too deep into this. And so I knew bits of it. And as I started to pull
00:22:43.260 together more research for this episode, the angrier and angrier I got, because it's just
00:22:48.380 one like awful thing after another piled on top of each other. In my podcast, I'd already talked
00:22:55.380 about like the formation of the American Medical Association in 1847, which is where we kind of get
00:23:01.440 this male-dominated area of medicine, which decides that, you know, hey, women don't need
00:23:07.580 to be helping women give birth. We don't need midwives or any of that stuff. Men can handle
00:23:12.360 childbirth because that's clearly the people that should be doing it, right? Oh, God. They are just
00:23:18.460 an absolute nightmare. Like, so many problems with them. Yeah. So, and I sent you the notes on it,
00:23:27.380 but I know there were a lot of them. Like my notes were just wildly extensive because I kept
00:23:31.980 finding more and more stuff that just was like, they said what? They said they did what? Yeah.
00:23:38.840 Yeah. Yeah. But we go back, like way back, 1847, you get the formation of the American Medical
00:23:45.620 Association. And then you go even, you know, right after that, you get this, the chair of the AMA
00:23:51.320 committee on criminal abortion he wins this prize on an essay that he writes which is a book called
00:23:58.520 why not a book for every woman i love just some random dude being like here's a book i'm gonna
00:24:04.840 write to tell you you're a bad person for policing your own body like yeah go ahead yeah no i was
00:24:12.280 gonna say even though men have that freedom of course they can do whatever they want they don't
00:24:17.400 have any problems they can just do whatever right uh but yeah he writes his book is absolutely
00:24:24.600 there's just so many bad lines from it um but i thought i'd share a couple of quotes with the
00:24:29.640 audience uh physicians have now arrived at the unanimous opinion that the fetus in utero is
00:24:34.840 alive from the very moment of conception that was not true that was not true but this is where that
00:24:39.560 that whole concept comes from because before this this had never been an issue no one had ever
00:24:44.120 thought that the fetus was alive from conception that was not the way the
00:24:48.320 Catholic Church felt that was not the way the Protestant Church felt that was
00:24:50.780 not the way English law felt like nobody was doing that they didn't even care
00:24:55.460 about this issue like it wasn't an issue just okay you're lucky you can have an
00:25:00.860 abortion and it saves lives and yep yeah it was it was a woman's issue right
00:25:07.400 women were kind of non entities as far as the law was concerned in many ways and
00:25:13.340 And unless they do something like things you're a man, they weren't going to police their movements that much.
00:25:19.160 And so, you know, this was a woman's only issue.
00:25:22.420 Midwives help you give birth.
00:25:24.060 Men are not allowed in the room at all, really.
00:25:27.740 Right, right, right.
00:25:28.900 Very true.
00:25:29.520 This is a woman's purview until the mid-1800s.
00:25:34.140 And it just, it's wild.
00:25:36.300 They suddenly are like, ah, yes, now, now we know that life starts at conception.
00:25:41.220 Because why?
00:25:42.060 because, well, racism. Horatio Storer was just absolutely, he was the kind of guy who definitely
00:25:47.880 believed in the great replacement theory, you know, where he's like, oh, yeah, we got to make
00:25:52.200 sure white women are having more babies, which is predominantly what his issue is.
00:25:55.660 Make sure that white women weren't going to become the minority.
00:25:58.760 Exactly. That's his main, main issue. And this is 1866, right? And so this is right after
00:26:03.560 this end of the Civil War. And there actually is a low birth rate for a variety of reasons.
00:26:10.180 and yeah go figure and he is concerned that that that black women are out
00:26:16.900 producing white women as far as as birth rates are concerned and so they need to
00:26:21.280 make sure that white women stop having abortions that they have more children
00:26:24.580 which honestly feels like that's the exact same thing they're doing today
00:26:28.600 right it's not even it's partially a race issue but it's also just an issue
00:26:32.620 if we need more cheap labor so if kids yeah and they're trying to make it seem
00:26:38.560 like of having an abortion like being pro-choice is racist but it's quite the opposite because
00:26:45.360 women of color are the ones that are the most affected by abortion bans because you know they're
00:26:51.760 they are the poorest in this country and it's just abhorrent really it is that what's happening
00:26:59.680 and they try to say that's what they do that pro-life moves the pro-life movement says that we
00:27:05.680 They flip everything in the opposite direction.
00:27:09.780 Really, they're the ones that deep down believe that.
00:27:13.880 Yeah, they're absolutely horrifically hypocritical in the way that they address these issues.
00:27:18.500 Like, I remember back in the day, I was never pro-life, never a pro-life person, but I was more aligned with the Republican Party at one point in my early 20s.
00:27:27.480 And I remember talking to pro-life people who try to make these arguments that being pro-abortion is racist because Margaret Sanger had issues, like, Sanger has issues. I'm not going to deny that. She was not the best person when it comes to issues of eugenics.
00:27:44.780 that being said eugenics was like a common issue for a lot of people at the time she was not
00:27:49.340 outside the norm um and also because well there's more there's more abortion clinics
00:27:54.220 planned parenthood puts more abortion clinics in ethnic minority neighborhoods or things like that
00:27:59.020 and i'm like that's not racist that's just responding to a need that's that's free market
00:28:06.780 principles 101 right capitalism right if more people need it in an area you're going to open
00:28:11.340 more places and the fact is is that most white women not people who are in poverty obviously
00:28:16.540 but most white women have access to medical care in a much easier way than most minority
00:28:22.380 women do and so it becomes a an issue and Planned Parenthood doesn't just do abortions
00:28:27.500 they also do so much else so many other things for underserved communities so less than seven
00:28:33.180 percent of what they do I think so yeah I haven't looked at the numbers recently but that's the
00:28:37.660 the number i remember from most recent discussions yeah and they want to cut funding for planned
00:28:42.080 parenthood and yet they send all this money to the military for viagra so because god forbid
00:28:50.840 the soldiers can't get it up like that that's going to just destroy them mentally they can't
00:28:55.980 possibly go out and kill people if they can't if they can't get it up the logic escapes me
00:29:02.100 actually it doesn't escape me it makes perfect sense because the you know military is so hyper
00:29:06.900 masculine uh but it's just that there's a lot to take in with that there is definitely
00:29:12.360 over 50 percent of our tax dollars go to the military i know oh my god it makes me so mad
00:29:20.280 i'm like why i remember a while back they talked about shelving a research and development project
00:29:26.320 they had on a new jet like a new fighter jet and they decided they didn't want it like the
00:29:31.660 military had never wanted it they didn't need new fighter jets but they'd still spent like
00:29:36.660 billions of dollars on this research and development project only to shelve it
00:29:41.060 and somebody did the math and they realized that all of the student loan
00:29:44.260 debt in america all of it could have been paid off by
00:29:48.180 just that one research and development project
00:29:51.220 but no no we can't possibly forgive student loan debt
00:29:54.340 they want to keep people poor and that's women barefoot and pregnant
00:30:00.740 i know it is it's very pregnant and then the poor men they get recruited into
00:30:04.740 military it's a whole cycle it's a whole thing i sound like a conspiracy theorist like that guy
00:30:09.220 from you know it's always sunny in philadelphia who's like ah it's all connected but it really is
00:30:14.180 all connected like i start looking at it it's there there is kind of a terrifying under underlying
00:30:21.220 uh conspiracy to all of this yeah it's a it's a sad reality yeah yeah you know and then the
00:30:29.460 opposite side has their wild conspiracy theories except that there's no real proof in that
00:30:36.100 what they're saying there's so many well honestly i think government is just like
00:30:42.100 five conspiracy theories stacked in a trench coat on either side that's all that's going on
00:30:46.180 there's a bunch of people trying to control everybody i you know i don't know both sides
00:30:49.940 of politics and tend to kind of leave me uh drier than the sahara desert at this point
00:30:54.900 I'm not for it. I'm not for it. I mean, like, yes, of course I vote. And of course I'm involved,
00:31:01.360 but I'm not enthusiastic about it the way I used to be.
00:31:06.980 All right. Yeah. So let's keep talking about the history of this. So the stuff in the 1800s
00:31:13.620 is wild, but the real pro-life movement doesn't really get started until later, right? And this
00:31:20.840 the the real pro-life of it isn't going to get its big start until kind of the 1960s 1970s
00:31:26.300 and it has always been really wild to me to know that the southern baptist church
00:31:32.220 in particular was pro-abortion uh up to a certain point it was it was i was really surprised to
00:31:41.680 have read that as well yeah it's a very very strange thing uh you know it's it's very odd
00:31:48.260 to know that you know you've got people in the southern baptist convention in 1971 saying we
00:31:53.860 call upon southern baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion
00:31:58.340 under such conditions as rape incest clear evidence of severe fetal deformity and carefully
00:32:04.600 ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional mental and physical health of
00:32:09.800 the mother not even just not even just death emotional and mental health of the mother so
00:32:16.440 important which is what they're fighting against now which is wild in so many ways absolutely but
00:32:22.920 it is it's such a it's a very very progressive stance for the 1970s oh yeah southern baptist
00:32:29.720 church to hold and then you just go well how how did it change where did it go wrong and
00:32:37.000 i've realized again that i sound like a crazy person because i attributed all like one one dude
00:32:42.120 and i'm like peter wayrich if i could go back in time and do something like and set one person on
00:32:49.640 fire it would be peter which is a name that probably nobody knows because he's just this
00:32:56.120 like random tiny bitty character in conservative politics back in the day uh but he is he's at the
00:33:04.680 core of so many problems in conservatism i don't know how familiar you are with the heritage
00:33:10.920 foundation oh yeah yeah right so they're becoming a much more popular like they're a much more
00:33:16.520 well-known figure right now because of the whole project 2025 thing and they're trying to basically
00:33:21.560 create a dictatorship um peter weirich yeah exactly and peter weirich is the guy who founded
00:33:29.560 the heritage foundation wow i mean he's at the core of so much which is why i sound like a
00:33:34.680 conspiracy theorist when i talk about it it's all it all comes together yeah back up what you're
00:33:41.960 saying to be fair so exactly it's not a conspiracy if you have the facts to back it up like if they're
00:33:47.080 saying it there's a trail that leads back to this person exactly and like it's not it's not fair to
00:33:55.960 say that you know that that no one was pro-life before this obviously they were or there wouldn't
00:34:01.000 have been a need for supreme court cases like roe v wade right if everyone had been pro-choice
00:34:06.600 and there had been no problems with access to abortion before this there would have been no
00:34:10.440 need for it like after 1900 every single state had a had abortion bans in place basically and
00:34:18.040 you know people like billy graham obviously were very anti-abortion um things like that so it's
00:34:24.520 not like it didn't exist the catholic church was very anti-abortion very big on this but it hadn't
00:34:28.760 really been a political move until then which i think is really weird uh even james dobson like
00:34:35.480 i mean i don't know focus on the family um i grew up listening to adventures and odyssey so you know
00:34:43.720 big big religious uh you know thing for the southern baptist church james dobson also said
00:34:48.200 that it was okay to have abortions like abortions were a reasonable thing that you needed to have
00:34:52.360 them it was you know pro it was good for the for children and mothers and all those things and it
00:34:57.880 it should be down to the individual person to make those decisions it's like huh yes back when
00:35:02.640 people were saying individuals you know uh yeah even after yeah honestly at its core what i think
00:35:10.420 is that any way they can use to control people the masses by whatever force they they really
00:35:19.980 don't care because they just want to hold their power and money is power to them and they want
00:35:26.380 hold their place and that's really what probably uh they realized they're like well we can control
00:35:33.740 people by feeding them these this by feeding them this misinformation about abortion so
00:35:42.380 it's just another way to control the masses and to control women because exactly yeah i want women
00:35:49.740 running the world that's for sure they don't they don't want that despite the fact that you know
00:35:53.820 historically speaking women generally do a better job at most times right look at it and look well
00:36:00.860 i just think about like the episode i did a while back on homesteading where it turns out that
00:36:05.900 statistically speaking women were more likely to prove up their claim and actually successfully
00:36:13.340 hold on to their land when they claimed a homestead in the west than men were because men were wimps
00:36:19.740 and when the going got tough the men went back east and women were like my life's always sucked
00:36:25.740 my life's always been hard work this isn't any different you know so one of my favorite bits of
00:36:31.420 a diary from a female from a single woman homesteader during that period of time is
00:36:35.900 talking about how she's like wakes up from a nap and she's taking a nap outside and she looks and
00:36:40.860 she sees a rattlesnake and she grabs her shotgun and she shoots the rattlesnake and she's like
00:36:47.020 i'm just not going to take naps outside anymore you know and i'm like yeah that's a terrifying
00:36:51.260 woman right there who can definitely handle her business and yet but so many people want us to
00:36:56.620 believe that women have just been these you know dainty little flowers and incapable of anything
00:37:02.780 for so long for all of time and what you said about it being about control is absolutely right
00:37:09.580 because none of this has actually been about i mean way rich was a very very strongly catholic
00:37:15.740 like like a orthodox catholic yeah so i'm sure he was pro-life regardless of this but he used this
00:37:26.220 not because he cared about you know this as a major issue but because it was something to get
00:37:30.460 people to the polls that's what it was it was a way to convince people to vote republican um
00:37:36.780 in the 78 and 80 election any way to sway people and control them yeah that's all it was you know
00:37:44.140 and it just always you know yeah that's why donald trump is pro uh pro-life like he he's
00:37:52.620 that man i'm sure has paid for several abortions but it's whatever he can do to control and take
00:38:00.620 power it's like he doesn't actually believe what he's saying it's all it's like it's like a game
00:38:06.620 to people exactly none of it's about the actual children none of it's about because if it was
00:38:11.340 they would they would care about the aftermath they would care about children who are born into
00:38:18.100 families that can't you know yeah they should ignore abortion the way they ignore the foster
00:38:25.680 system which is so broken and people are like oh well you could just give the child up for adoption
00:38:32.040 so my argument there is you're always you're not only going to put a child out there that's
00:38:38.800 unwanted and is going to go through this horrible foster system.
00:38:41.640 But you're going to make a woman, force a woman to give birth, go through the trauma
00:38:45.960 of that, and then have to go through the trauma of giving up a baby because she can't afford
00:38:51.540 it mentally or emotionally or physically, like to have the child.
00:38:55.840 And it's just, they don't care about life.
00:38:59.580 Yeah.
00:39:00.000 And to force a woman in America where we have one of the highest maternal mortality rates
00:39:06.240 in the highest in in the first world right um to give birth regardless of her wishes that is
00:39:14.800 you're asking her to risk her life yeah because it's very dangerous and people you know i've had
00:39:21.520 men argue online with me like well how do you think you're here like how do you think all these
00:39:26.000 people are here and i was just watching a documentary about salem obviously when the
00:39:31.120 puritans were running the country they had a whole they had whole graveyards dedicated just to women
00:39:37.280 who died in childbirth like absolutely so common and you're asking women to be livestock basically
00:39:46.640 just giving birth yeah and especially it comes down to also the maternal mortality rate is so
00:39:53.600 much higher for women of color yes and they just do not care they do not care about these women
00:39:58.800 because when it comes down to it in many ways this is a continuation of of of racism it's a
00:40:04.480 continuation of of an attack on people of color because yeah sure we don't really care if you
00:40:10.240 know they're saying we don't really care if women of color die in childbirth because that that
00:40:15.120 actually suits our purposes just fine and you know they don't care about that at all and it
00:40:21.280 It is wild to me because the whole crux of pushing for abortion to be a major issue in politics happens because segregation and racism was no longer cool.
00:40:34.420 Like it was no longer something you could use anymore to use as a political point.
00:40:40.620 And because Bob Jones University and all of their insane, like just insane segregation.
00:40:47.340 they didn't allow that they didn't have an integrated school until like the 60s and then
00:40:52.160 they didn't allow white and black students they segregated their white and black students even
00:40:56.780 after that and they didn't allow like interracial dating they didn't allow any of those things
00:41:00.600 and the irs eventually comes at them and says you can't do that if you want your your your tax-free
00:41:07.040 status if you want to remain not paying any taxes because you're a religious you know whatever
00:41:12.180 this institution is you have to actually follow the laws yep surprise surprise and they were like
00:41:19.320 oh crap they're not gonna let us get away with this anymore on in private private schools anymore
00:41:25.260 and it's you know and all of a sudden you have these people going oh huh racism's not cool
00:41:33.220 anymore we gotta we gotta rebrand we gotta we gotta find a new topic to control people with
00:41:39.160 and they're like you know what women suck yeah because it all is connected and at the point
00:41:47.080 that abortion that making abortion an issue was just another way to push a racist agenda
00:41:54.180 which is always like i said before wild when people say that being pro-choice is racist because it's
00:42:01.740 quite the opposite quite the opposite and it's another reminder this constant constant reminder
00:42:07.100 that i find of the importance of intersectionality in in feminism because so often you get these
00:42:13.260 people you know this is the typical white woman feminism where they act like everything is about
00:42:17.980 them i think the worst the worst thing example of that after roe v wade was the absolutely
00:42:24.380 ridiculous assertion that well the the uh the reservations can just open abortion clinics there
00:42:31.180 so that people can use you can use them because they're technically not under u.s law and yeah
00:42:36.860 yeah they were like oh the not to mention the cliques are already so at capacity i mean you
00:42:45.320 can't even get an abortion most people can't get an abortion time it's just so wild and because
00:42:50.420 have closed um and women have to travel a state so you're saying keep them on the reservations
00:42:56.780 well how many women need abortion and need this health care and who's gonna fund these and who's
00:43:02.640 gonna build them and why why do white women have the audacity i say as a white woman to to ask
00:43:09.380 native americans to risk their you know their setup on their reservation of white women's health
00:43:17.000 yeah especially considering the long long long long history which is another episode i need to
00:43:23.560 do at some point of uh of sterilization of native american women and the stealing of their children
00:43:29.060 and all of the other things have happened like no no no white women don't get to ask
00:43:33.480 native americans to set up clinics for them on their
00:43:37.860 what what's left of what they have yeah i mean you know what if they offer and you want to fund it
00:43:45.740 that's fine but don't go asking them to do it that's not that's not for you to ask at all
00:43:51.400 under those circumstances i never heard that that's yeah it was it was right after it was only it was
00:43:56.580 a few months it was the first couple of months after roe was overturned and i was like you know
00:44:01.700 talking to a lot of people were talking about like what can we do about this what's going to be the
00:44:05.300 you know what are we going to do to protect abortion rights and things like that and
00:44:09.620 that was a suggestion that came out that started getting started circling around on tick tock and
00:44:14.820 and other websites and there was a lot of people like question the audacity of that suggestion is
00:44:23.540 yeah it made me mad i was about to lose my mind when when it came up because it's like no
00:44:29.460 no you don't get to make that suggestion at all uh when you have pretty much ignored
00:44:35.940 intersectional issues for the most part for for decades uh i mean certainly we're getting
00:44:41.540 better about that now but for a long long long time it was just oh white women and then if black
00:44:48.260 women are like hey we also have issues that are unique to our experience because you know being
00:44:53.220 black in America is a far different experience than being white or being Hispanic or being Native
00:44:57.480 American and white women are like nah it doesn't matter your opinion doesn't matter like you know
00:45:02.380 we're not going to listen to any of that and it's like you guys you guys are the worst why are you
00:45:07.520 doing this? I have not like just um my partner Marcus he he's black and talking to his mom about
00:45:14.840 the things that she had to deal with growing up it it's insane and um in comparison you know it's
00:45:24.280 just and people forget that and it wasn't that long ago and that's why they're trying to keep
00:45:30.700 racism alive and honestly this conversation just makes it even more clear to me that that's what's
00:45:36.220 going on so yeah I mean it's obviously a race issue yeah it all connects so
00:45:44.660 tightly into this issue of of keeping people in their place of you know
00:45:50.800 keeping people of other people of color in their place keeping women in their
00:45:54.840 place and making sure that I have this bumper sticker on the back of my car
00:45:58.340 which which makes makes guys mad all the time I can tell because I get
00:46:01.600 tailgated by guys in trucks. I have two stickers. One says feminist killjoy, which I think they
00:46:06.960 don't like too much. I think it's funny. I teach women's history, so I've been called a feminist
00:46:12.880 killjoy by students before jokingly. But the one that I think really makes it mad is may you have
00:46:18.880 the confidence of a mediocre white man. And so much of everything that's going on these days
00:46:24.520 in politics is is wrapped around the issue of mediocre white men no longer being able to be
00:46:33.340 just automatically successful just because of their race and their gender and they're like oh
00:46:39.080 well I can't get into schools because of affirmative action and then they overturn
00:46:43.460 affirmative action and you know they're still not it's like you know based on your credibility
00:46:53.700 um and you're trying to blame uh people of color and women so your lack of skill i this idea that
00:47:02.400 like oh they're coming here when it comes to like immigrants oh they're coming here and stealing my
00:47:05.760 jobs oh right did the neurosurgeon steal a job from you the guy who like pumps out septic tanks
00:47:14.160 like no he didn't steal a job from you you were never going to be a neurosurgeon now there's
00:47:18.480 anything wrong with your job. That's an important job. But people who are immigrating here are not
00:47:23.680 taking your jobs. They are completely different subsets of people with, honestly, we have a very,
00:47:30.260 very classist and elitist system for prioritizing immigration in this country. So we are,
00:47:36.720 you know, bringing in people with, we're bringing in skilled people, not anyone that we're making
00:47:41.900 it more and more difficult for people who aren't skilled workers to come in. And, you know, I've
00:47:46.040 to emigrate to to europe i get it lots of countries have those systems set up uh but those countries
00:47:51.320 don't have a you know plaque on their statue of on their the statue that represents their country
00:47:57.000 that says give me your tired your poor your huddled masses like they had no expectation
00:48:02.200 of taking in the needy yeah they're kind of based on that right and uh i mean it only got worse
00:48:09.320 after the trump administration my dad works in immigration law and um he was a research
00:48:14.440 consultant and i mean it just literally the laws just got worse and worse so the fact that they're
00:48:19.640 saying immigration and illegal immigrants coming in has never been as bad as it as it is now that's
00:48:25.880 not true it's actually a lot harder to get into this country especially with all the attention
00:48:30.840 on our borders and i mean ever since 9 11 really too i mean it's just been insane so i mean you've
00:48:37.560 been to the airport since then so i know i have to fly i have to fly next this later this week and
00:48:42.840 i'm already like dreading it just from the very start because i hate flying i'm very nervous flyer
00:48:48.360 i'm flying on a boeing so that's not helping me either i'm like i'm gonna die no
00:48:56.680 i know i know it's always scary my aunt was a world traveler she worked for the world bank so
00:49:00.600 she lived all over the world afghanistan cambodia london so she lived all over and she was always
00:49:06.040 flying she's like i said flight anxiety and she used to say gwen there are millions of planes that
00:49:13.640 take off all the time and i'm just like you know what that helps me put into perspective so i just
00:49:22.280 i like to get the jokes about the boeing thing because i told my students that i had to do
00:49:26.600 i do an online class for my students because i'm flying out and so i had to cancel classes and move
00:49:32.040 the online for one day and i told them you know that i was flying out and i was like pray for me
00:49:36.520 i'm gonna be on a boeing flight and one of the students goes so are we supposed to pray that you
00:49:41.240 come back or that you don't because then we won't have to finish the semester and i was like that
00:49:44.680 is rude say that to me uh like that that you're gonna get a failing grade in this class if you
00:49:50.360 make jokes like that like he's like no but if you don't come back you won't be able to fail me and i
00:49:54.200 was like i will leave a note i will leave a note to the head of the department to fail you if i
00:49:58.600 i don't come back based entirely on this conversation kid yeah yeah absolutely and it's
00:50:05.280 just you know like people who don't travel have don't have a world view so they can't see how
00:50:13.140 every the world is functioning they're just in their bubble and those people i you know
00:50:18.700 those people it's really rude but you you know what i mean they they they're traveling they're
00:50:24.120 They stay ignorant because they choose to be I mean you can live in your mom's basement and access information and educate yourself
00:50:33.300 but
00:50:34.980 Hello a lot of people that they don't right don't yeah, I don't bother
00:50:40.460 There's a lot of people who are very happy ignorance is bliss ignorance is easy. Oh, yeah
00:50:45.420 They will they will continue it. I'm right because I'm a man and I'm like right you're doing with your life
00:50:53.380 and you'll get these people like talking about issues like like abortion you will get these
00:50:58.500 people who are just fundamentally so ignorant about the entire discussion and you can't even
00:51:02.980 talk to them about it because some at some point they're too ignorant to even start the conversation
00:51:07.700 because you have to give them so much extra information just to bring them up to the right
00:51:11.940 level and yeah and yeah it is this issue people like well everyone everyone was always against
00:51:16.900 abortion and i was like no they weren't they weren't this is a real this is a really recent
00:51:21.220 thing this is just like 100 the last 160 years like is really and that's there you know benjamin
00:51:28.660 franklin wrote instructions in his almanac for how to restore the courses like it's not this is
00:51:36.020 a normal thing that everybody knew about restore what do you mean the courses that your your
00:51:42.420 monthly courses so basically there was an issue that you would you could have um a problem in
00:51:49.380 which your your courses stopped for some reason they would never say what it was it was like oh
00:51:54.420 there's the blockage you're not you're not menstruating properly and so here's here's a
00:52:00.260 recipe to restore them and what it was was an abort is an abortifacient is what it was
00:52:06.180 and i mean in the in the instructions of the one that's in benjamin franklin's almanac uh it
00:52:11.940 literally says something about how like to prevent this from happening again don't take you know
00:52:16.740 don't um don't talk to all the pretty boys who offer you ribbons like basically the implication
00:52:21.380 is like keep your legs closed you won't have to do this again but there's also not it's also not
00:52:25.700 very judgmental like the book itself it's like here's here's a problem that women often have
00:52:30.980 young women often have this issue here's how to solve it and if you would like to not have to
00:52:35.860 solve it again here's my recommendation but if you need to solve it again you can do this again
00:52:41.460 right it was not it's actually not written in a judgmental or or harmful way of saying like you're
00:52:47.300 a bad person because it's happened to you it's a normal responsibility yeah exactly nobody says
00:52:54.420 that in those books yeah all the people in my comments you call people yeah legs closed oh
00:53:00.340 well no one wants to get you pregnant anyway yeah we're gonna have that issue speaking speaking uh
00:53:07.060 first of all you're very happily in a relationship so they're just jealous they're just jealous i
00:53:12.580 mean the funniest part is always like it's it's hilarious and then one time this guy went on his
00:53:19.460 page and was like you got to break up with her man all this stuff and he was like coming he was
00:53:24.900 coming to my defense and i was just oh my gosh who does that who does that you gotta break up with
00:53:31.620 her like i i've always if i was i'm the petty enough person that i would be like i'm gonna
00:53:37.940 marry her just so you can't like now i'm gonna do that i mean that's not a good reason to get
00:53:43.140 married petty this is not a good reason to get married but uh that would be a great way to
00:53:47.460 announce it i think our best way is just to stay together and be happy and exactly just make
00:53:53.940 everybody else like deal with it and just be like you know what we're happy and we're together and
00:53:58.660 you can't tell us what to do and yeah and it's just i've been watching right now the binge watching
00:54:04.020 call the midwife um so i don't know if you've ever watched that yeah i've been binge watching
00:54:10.180 it i'm like on season three i think now and i just think of that that show a lot when people
00:54:14.260 say things like you could just close your legs or you can just you know whatever and it's like
00:54:18.820 first of all no birth control is 100 effective so if you're in a relationship and you are having
00:54:24.580 sexual intercourse with it with your partner in a heterosexual relationship
00:54:29.540 there's always going to be a chance for that and that does not mean you've done something wrong
00:54:34.100 right and you can't afford that baby yeah and men can have all the sex they want but women
00:54:42.340 you know just because we can get pregnant doesn't mean we lose our bodily autonomy when we become
00:54:47.060 pregnant even though i've had men in my comments say women lose their bodily autonomy when they
00:54:52.420 get they literally think that yeah they think that somehow you are no longer a person yeah but quite
00:54:58.580 frankly we're only a few we're only a few decades past the law considering women to not legally be
00:55:04.740 a person once she's married like yeah we just celebrated how many years of women being able
00:55:10.740 to have a credit card without 50 years yes exactly 50 years since that yeah yeah i saw i shared that
00:55:17.060 and i was just just it's a wild thing to know that you couldn't i i'm planning on doing an
00:55:21.940 episode with my mom at some point in the near future she always has this story she loves to
00:55:26.900 tell which is um she was living in uh right after my my older brother was born uh she's living in
00:55:35.140 in louisiana and she went in my dad worked in the oil field so he was gone a lot of the time he's
00:55:40.660 gone for like weeks at a time and she went into a library card and they wouldn't let her get a
00:55:46.180 library card because my dad wasn't there to sign for it and this is after this is way past 74.
00:55:51.860 um and so this is like 89. look at the library card you can't read you're not allowed to read
00:55:58.580 without your husband's permission of course not yeah you know you know and their argument i think
00:56:02.580 was something i i may be wrong about this but i think the argument they made was that like well
00:56:06.980 we can't know that you'll be able to pay your light fees and like what were light fees in 84.
00:56:13.620 like i don't know a half a cent a day like what what are we so worried about yeah it's
00:56:19.940 a ridiculous story and but but i tell that to my students almost every semester when we start
00:56:24.100 talking about women's the history of women's rights issues and students are like wait when
00:56:28.420 was that and i was like yeah this is this is like 83 84. and they're like that's not long ago that's
00:56:35.780 let you get i show i speaking of like showing people how long ago it was i like to show people
00:56:40.980 pictures of ruby bridges as she is now um and she's just she's so young like she's she's in
00:56:49.220 she's not old at all you know and it's they they suddenly realize oh huh segregation wasn't that
00:56:55.780 long ago like this was really and my favorite story about that which is totally unrelated to
00:56:59.700 abortion but i love to share it is that my first semester teaching i was talking to my students
00:57:05.540 who had this little like in-class discussion thing about the civil rights movement at the
00:57:09.700 the end of that section and I asked students like you know what's one thing that really surprised
00:57:15.820 you about what we talked about this kind of thing and one of the students is like how young Ruby
00:57:20.160 Bridges is like that really really surprised me and then she followed it up with it kind of puts
00:57:25.340 it into context why everyone's so worried about people talking about civil rights they don't want
00:57:29.800 us to know what our grandparents were doing exactly and I was like it's an awkward conversation
00:57:37.460 have to find out what your you know what your parents what your grandparents were doing
00:57:41.540 or great-grandparents were doing during this era yeah exactly before the pandemic and black lives
00:57:47.220 matter i mean i didn't learn half the stuff i've learned in school and nothing we we just glossed
00:57:54.980 over it and i mean there's so many atrocities that happened and we don't talk about it and
00:58:04.020 you know like i said um you know what was the the black stock um it was uh the town where it's like
00:58:13.060 basically the black wall street greenwood yeah great greenwood and tulsa yeah yes and they
00:58:19.940 bombed and killed everyone there and it's wild i never learned about that in school it's like
00:58:27.300 you know in germany the holocaust you have they have where you walk around there's plaques from
00:58:32.740 the old jewish family lived here but for slavery what we don't have that people aren't remembering
00:58:38.820 that instead we have confederate soldier statues and i mean andrew jackson's still on our 20 bill
00:58:46.180 and his home the hermitage is here in tennessee and i passed by it on my way to the recording
00:58:51.860 studio and i'm just like can this just please like he should not be celebrated anyway no and
00:58:57.780 that's what that's what those are doing and celebrating them but when it comes down to it
00:59:01.380 But yeah, I mean, so much of this is interconnected.
00:59:03.340 That's why, you know, I get off topic so often on these episodes because, again, everything is so interconnected when it comes to history.
00:59:10.640 But this is why it is so important to talk about these histories because, you know, the histories of slavery, histories of racism, histories of abusive women and things like that.
00:59:22.460 because if they're allowed to become politicized to the point where oh we can't talk about this
00:59:27.020 because it's a political issue and you can't talk about it in history classes because you might be
00:59:30.940 trying to convince your students like brainwash your students it's like i'm sorry that history
00:59:37.820 has a liberal bent to it like i'm sorry that that's the way you feel about this that's the truth
00:59:43.500 and they don't hear it because they they don't they literally want to just be ignorant and
00:59:49.900 that's the saddest part too it is it really is super sad and i don't i don't know how to combat
00:59:55.820 that it's very difficult i mean i do my best right i teach and i make my podcast and i make
01:00:01.640 my tiktoks and i do those things but it is it is very disheartening sometimes to see how much
01:00:06.660 people want ignorance because it is so much easier to control yes and i mean speaking of slavery i
01:00:15.500 always say forcing anyone to do something with their body and life against their will of slavery
01:00:20.080 and then they're like you're just being so extreme like you know that there's no such thing as
01:00:26.060 biological slavery just because you're a woman and I'm like this is literally you are enslaving
01:00:31.360 women by forcing them to do something with their body and life when they didn't choose it and they
01:00:37.280 just for no benefit and then they always bring up Margaret Sander and Planned Parenthood and
01:00:42.200 how racist the pro-choice movement is and i'm just like well it's quite the opposite but
01:00:47.020 it's just it's always going in circles with all these different people you know yeah so many of
01:00:53.240 them aren't interested even if they know the truth they you know whether they know the truth
01:00:56.640 or don't know the truth because sometimes they know when they're just spouting the party line
01:01:00.280 for for whatever reason um but yeah they they're not interested in the truth they they are interested
01:01:05.920 in in a pushing an agenda and then they complain that we're the ones pushing the agenda and i'm
01:01:11.240 like you're projecting onto this because I'm not I'm so I sit there and I really do consider
01:01:17.560 my lesson my lesson plans I consider am I actually pushing an agenda am I not giving students
01:01:25.380 all the relevant information am I kind of skewing what I'm talking about here and then I look over
01:01:31.860 it and I look at the notes and I'm like no this is just what's historically accurate yeah it's
01:01:36.940 just that for conservatives, this seems like it's skewed. And that's because they want
01:01:41.320 to believe in some sort of like fantasy of the past that has nothing to do with reality,
01:01:46.540 which is exactly what I'm presenting a paper on next week, which is, you know, on the 1950s
01:01:52.200 and people having this skewed perspective of what it is. It's a fairy tale. They want a fairy tale
01:01:57.820 of history. And that's always what they want for some reason. And they don't want to talk about
01:02:03.600 the fact that you know abortion has just been a giant attempt to control the voting populace
01:02:10.880 uh instead of you know it's not an honest issue it's never been an honest issue
01:02:16.000 for the very beginning it's been political since store started off by trying to convince
01:02:21.600 white women to have more babies it's been it's been political so and thank you so much for coming
01:02:28.400 on the podcast it was a really really fun conversation i could go on time with you and
01:02:33.920 we could we could but i figure people have a limited people have a limited time span they're
01:02:38.480 willing to listen in on a podcast but you know i do want to do an episode on country music at some
01:02:43.520 point so maybe you'd want to come back on and do that because i really love like i listen to it
01:02:49.440 but i'm not but not a musician by far so be nice to have another perspective on it talking about
01:02:54.400 how how country music shifted after 9 11. interesting topic in in nashville and being
01:03:00.560 progressive and yeah absolutely i'll send you i'll send you a video we'll plan that out for later
01:03:07.040 this year we'll get that on the books at some point yeah it'd be awesome uh so yeah uh everyone
01:03:13.520 why don't let everybody know where you can find you and that way they can follow you and download
01:03:17.200 your music and just have a really great time with it the same way i do so yeah thank you
01:03:21.760 you again for having me professor Meredith and yeah if you're my followers
01:03:26.980 and watching definitely fall Meredith as well and but you can find me at Gwen
01:03:31.700 Levy music and at one living the breakdown on all social media so pretty
01:03:37.940 much on everything I think at this point so and if you hopefully take time
01:03:43.420 It doesn't actually get banned, but follow me on Instagram, Facebook.
01:03:48.520 All the stuff, yeah.
01:03:49.500 Huge shorts.
01:03:50.820 Right, and if you have any trouble finding her, you can always go look at my Feminine Rage playlist,
01:03:55.360 which has Barefoot and Pregnant on the playlist, so you can find her through that, certainly, and look her up.
01:04:01.260 So, and that's linked, I've got a link to that playlist on my website, bitchyhistory.com, obviously, you guys know.
01:04:08.320 I just, I still love my podcast name.
01:04:10.700 Somebody told me it was going to be hard to market it.
01:04:12.740 And I was like, I don't care. I really don't. I love this.
01:04:16.340 Both your gut. Both your gut.
01:04:18.880 All right. You know, thank you.
01:04:20.840 Barefoot and Pregnant was going to be.
01:04:22.960 It was going to be a bad name too. Yeah.
01:04:24.680 But no, it's perfect. It's the best possible name you can have for it.
01:04:27.800 I'm on your career. I'm like, no, I am just getting started.
01:04:33.020 You're just going to, yeah. And you've done phenomenally.
01:04:35.580 Like people are really into this song. They really, really love it.
01:04:37.900 And I have to admit, I haven't, I've only listened to a couple of other,
01:04:41.540 other songs from you but i need to download at some point yeah yeah that one that one kind of
01:04:46.140 went on my my regular my regular repeat playlist because i like to scream it with feminist songs
01:04:51.960 in the car like that's what i do so um more on this new album we're working on right now so
01:04:57.260 fantastic yeah i'm so super excited to hear about the trad wife one because that is
01:05:01.780 yes like i i i'm so excited for that because i love that concept i love it yeah so thank you
01:05:08.400 so much for coming on and uh yeah we'll see you i'll see you back here on the show at some point
01:05:13.460 because i definitely would like to have you back on in the future uh on a lot of different topics
01:05:17.620 so yeah it'd be awesome and uh everybody you can find find the podcast on bitchyhistory.com
01:05:23.260 uh please subscribe you can also subscribe to the sub stack on bitchyhistory.com
01:05:27.600 uh so that you can get more information about the episodes and things like that
01:05:31.520 uh and i also have some paid content coming out now too so uh consider consider signing up for
01:05:37.540 the paid version it's only five dollars a month and uh you help me to get uh you know pay for my
01:05:43.440 coffee and pay for flights to conferences and stuff like that so uh yeah that'd be wonderful
01:05:48.320 all right you guys have a wonderful wonderful day and i will see you next time see ya
01:05:54.240 thank you for tuning in to hear me bitch about history if you're loving the show don't forget
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01:06:25.380 What a bitch, right?