00:00:00.420This is the first time that we have recorded an episode where I'm sitting down and I have
00:00:04.600actually no idea what we are talking about. So for listeners, Caro invited me to an appointment
00:00:09.860called Two Girls, One Cup. And I texted her and I go, what the fuck are we talking about tomorrow?0.99
00:00:16.680Today's episode of Diabolical Lies is brought to you by Buckeye1748, who recently left a review0.86
00:00:24.580on our Apple podcast that, Katie, I'm gonna have you read. Oh, no! I cannot tell you. I saw this
00:00:33.060last night, Katie. I have been kicking my feet for 24 hours. Read the title first. Okay. Okay.
00:00:42.660Felt Attacked as a Male. Two stars. Two stars. Not one. As a liberal white man, I was looking
00:00:49.800for a new podcast and stumbled upon the Scott Galloway episode and left feeling attacked to
00:00:55.160be who I was. While I don't agree with many things Scott says, it felt like an entire episode of
00:01:00.500unjustifiable bullying. Editor's note, we read statistics. Like something out of a liberal Fox
00:01:09.680News. While I do support many things they said, the delivery was hard for me to digest. Yeah.
00:01:16.280I felt strongly enough about this that it's the first review I've left for literally anything in years, including when Dr. Sellers push repetitively for a review.
00:01:28.720Okay, the first sentence of this of like, as a liberal white man, I felt attacked. I'm like, this is literally like the birth of gender studies. Like, we are clearly doing something correctly. Number one, anyone who just like skims through podcasts and clicks on a new one with no context is a serial killer.
00:02:13.760Right. I also just love the idea of a liberal white man looking for a new podcast. I'm like,
00:02:18.560oh, are the 5 million that are catered to your exact demographic not enough that you like had
00:02:22.860to find something new? Anyways, it just felt like a perfect intro for the conversation that we're
00:02:28.440about to have today. Before we get started, we actually have a few pieces of housekeeping
00:02:32.780to discuss. I think first and foremost, we have a bunch of new listeners to the podcast
00:02:37.360over the last month. And so I thought it might be useful to reintroduce ourselves since this is a
00:02:42.020very lo-fi podcast and we don't always do that. So I'm Katie Yaddy Toshan. I am a financial and
00:02:48.820economics writer. So I have a book called Rich Girl Nation, which is a personal finance book.
00:02:54.280And then I founded and own a company called Money with Katie, which is where I, it kind of started
00:03:00.080as straightforward, tactical, personal finance. And then like accidentally- Katie radicalized.
00:03:06.480Became a pathway to radicalization. And yeah, now I'm here co-hosting a culture and politics podcast that only periodically makes my Fox News mom cry.0.93
00:03:18.820And I am Carol Clare Burke. I am a thinker about town.
00:03:27.580I think about stuff and it has slowly gotten me into a position of quasi-authority.
00:03:33.180I have a novel coming out in April that's going to be another piece of housekeeping later on.
00:03:38.360It's called Yestria if you want to pre-order it.
00:03:40.640And you and I, Katie, met about two years ago now.
00:03:44.200And long story short, we just started talking about a lot of things in text,
00:03:49.320and we would send each other voice memos.
00:03:51.180And we just wanted to basically take our voice memos and turn it into a podcast.
00:03:55.200And so we soft-launched it about a year ago,
00:03:57.900and now it is a more formalized podcast that airs every other Sunday. So you get two episodes a
00:04:04.020month. Sometimes we do bonus episodes, but the cadence that you can always count on is that it's
00:04:07.860every other Sunday we release a long form episode and it really runs the gamut of what we're
00:04:13.760interested in. I think you and I are obviously both interested in feminism and womanhood, but
00:04:17.600we talk about private equity. We talk about terrorism. We have a big episode on Epstein
00:04:22.220coming up. One thing you'll notice is that our episodes are very long. That's intentional because
00:04:27.380I think we both find short-form things a little bit stultifying and the level of rigor that we
00:04:33.940are trying to bring to these conversations in order to get at something genuinely new and
00:04:38.720interesting takes a long time. So you will probably find that you're listening for around
00:04:45.380two hours. But one of my favorite early reviews of the show was like, this show is two and a half
00:04:51.100hours long and yet somehow it feels concise. And I think we really pride ourselves on that.
00:04:56.540So I think the primary purpose of this show for Caro and I is, you know what, I'm not going to speak for you. I'll say what it is for me. To stretch myself intellectually to really challenge my own beliefs about things and kind of grow my understanding of the world and kind of the schema by which I'm like interpreting these current events.
00:05:16.620But the secondary benefit of this show is that Cara and I decided from day one that we wanted it to be a force for good beyond just yapping. So we redistribute 33% of all subscriber net revenue, merch net revenue. One in every $3 we make is given away to some sort of worthy and relevant organization or cause.
00:05:42.700And sometimes we give them to one of the Diabolical Lies logo groups, which you'll have access to if you're a paid subscriber.
00:05:48.960Other times we executive order it and we decide what we're going to give to.
00:05:52.640But that's another really cool element of the project.
00:05:56.960Yeah. And as this podcast has grown, so has the community.
00:06:00.360And there are a lot of paid subscribers who now meet up now.
00:06:03.180There are different regional groups. That's really fun.
00:06:05.660So on that note, if you're listening, I don't know what platform you're listening to this on,
00:06:10.240but we are curious how you are finding this show so we're going to put a little poll super quick
00:06:17.700in the show notes for this episode and if you can just take a second and tell us like i heard about
00:06:24.760you on a tiktok or like i found you all scrolling on substack or you know like the person that this
00:06:30.820episode is dedicated to you were just like a serial killer scrolling apple podcasts saw our
00:06:36.320amazing show art and clicked on it. We want to know how you came to Dirty Little Liar Town.
00:06:42.640The last thing I'll say is that sometimes we get questions about the name. And Diabolical
00:06:46.480Lies was inspired by the Harrison Butker commencement speech in 2024, where he said
00:06:52.740that feminism was the most diabolical lie that women have been told. So that's where the name
00:06:58.060comes from, if you're confused. Yeah. We're always thinking about you, Harrison. We see you when
00:07:03.100when you're sleeping and we know when you're awake. And the third piece of housekeeping is
00:07:07.560about my novel, Yesteryear. We're getting ready to launch Yesteryear this spring and I'm announcing
00:07:14.400our launch night, which is April 7th. It's going to be a Tuesday and I would love for as many
00:07:20.000diabolicalized listeners to come. It's terrifying for me to invite people to something like this.1.00
00:07:25.620Well, tell them where it is, Caroline.
00:07:27.120It's going to be in New York City. It'll be at a place called Symphony Space, which is a very
00:07:31.000cool like performing arts center and we have a really fun evening planned and i'm going to be
00:07:36.240joined on stage with claire parker and ashley hamilton of good noticings so this is like
00:07:41.080our first and currently only planned sort of pseudo diabolical lies crossover with good
00:07:47.000noticings which i'm really excited about yeah i think it's going to be really fun i am going to
00:07:51.380have a larger book tour then i will share the dates of that when we finalize it but this is
00:07:55.700going to be like a particularly special night where we kind of talk about all things america0.67
00:08:00.380and womanhood and trad wives and I wanted to share it with the diabolicalized community first. So1.00
00:08:05.940we're going to have details in the show notes for anyone who wants to get a ticket. You can get like
00:08:09.520a regular ticket or you can do like a ticket book bundle, but please come because I would like to
00:08:13.220have a career as a novelist and pretty much everything is riding on this. So just take that
00:08:18.740into consideration when you decide whether or not to attend this on a Tuesday night. I'm going to
00:08:22.940start posting Craigslist ads. Like what they did for the Melania showing where they're like paying
00:08:27.460people $50 to be seat fillers. And they're like, you have to stay the whole time.
00:08:32.360Honestly, Katie, I accept. Please continue to do that. I don't need this to be legitimate. I just
00:08:38.060need it to look good in photos. That is my real goal for this. So anyways, all joking aside,
00:08:43.100I'm very excited about that. This has been a long time coming. And yeah, it's going to be crazy to
00:08:48.740actually be able to talk to people about this book that has just been like, in my head. You read it
00:08:53.500and we haven't talked about it yet. We still need to talk about it.
00:08:55.820It's so fucking good. I can't wait to interview you about it for the Karo episode.0.87
00:09:00.580Okay, is that when we're going to talk about it for the first time?
00:09:02.820I think that that would be cool, yeah.
00:09:08.240Wow, my palms are sweating. Okay, so Katie, today we are talking about three topics that
00:09:14.660I have wanted to talk about for a very long time now. Little behind the curtain peek,
00:09:18.680I have like a running list of ideas for Diabolical Lies in like one of those stickies on my computer.
00:09:23.500and sometimes it's a topic that I think is worthy of a full episode and sometimes it's like a book
00:09:28.580or a theory or this little nugget of info that I want to kind of wedge in somewhere I think you
00:09:33.760and I both often have that we're like you read a book that changes your life but you want to figure
00:09:37.940out how to fit it into an episode so each of these ideas that I want to talk about had a separate
00:09:42.480bullet point and it was only when we did the Scott Galloway episode that I was like oh I can just
00:09:47.500neutrable at this. We can just get this done in one day. So today we are talking about Usha Vance,
00:09:54.020Rama Duwaji, and a book called The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by lesbian scholar and academic
00:09:59.940theorist Jane Ward. Katie, you have not read this book, right? No, I've never even heard of this book.
00:10:05.880Okay, I mentioned this book once. I think it was on an AMA a while ago. And it's one of a small
00:10:11.600collection of books that has rewired my brain. And I've been wanting to do an episode on all
00:10:16.920the theories that are inherent to this book. And again, I kind of figured it out when I was
00:10:20.700thinking about Usha Vance and Rama Duwaji. So I just want to talk really briefly before we get
00:10:26.400into like an If Books Could Kill style profiling of these two women. I kind of want to explain why1.00
00:10:31.620I feel like it's worthwhile to talk about this right now when you have, you know, gestures
00:10:36.400wildly so much taking place in America and we are rapidly approaching the cliff and the emergency
00:10:42.120break is broken. Well, and now we know we have a lot of white male liberal fans who are dying for
00:10:47.920us to talk about women and not men. So, Buckeye1704, this one's for you, babe.
00:10:55.440This episode is literally dedicated to him. So, the bulk of today's conversation is about these
00:11:00.820two women, Usha Vance and Ramadwaji, who are both political wives and also just kind of like0.87
00:11:05.520cultural ciphers for the American public. But they're also just, at the most basic level,0.99
00:11:10.840examples of two different versions of heterosexual love. And so in that sense, I wanted to kind of
00:11:16.320compare and contrast. And then when we were doing your ICE episode, Katie, I realized that there was
00:11:21.880even more of a need for us to have this conversation now, a conversation that we have
00:11:26.720been dancing around and kind of implying on this podcast for a long time, but we have never just
00:11:31.660dedicated a full episode to, which is what is straightness? What is heterosexuality?
00:11:37.120apparently we seem very straight alternately we seem in love with each other depending on who you
00:11:45.640are exactly what did that one commenter say a podcast relationship truther he's like my ears
00:11:51.460perked up yeah you know i mean to be quite honest i think that seeing how listeners perceive you and
00:11:58.280i has made me more interested in this conversation where it's like what are the implications of
00:12:03.640someone saying that I am straight? What do they think they know about me if they say that I'm
00:12:08.080straight? In the Scott Galloway episode, we kind of talked about how there is this broad perception,
00:12:12.640even in like progressive spaces, that men and women are different. Men have to be protectors.
00:12:18.160They need war. And if they don't have like a world war to contribute to, then they will act out. And
00:12:23.640women are the guardrails, right? Like this is just generally accepted. We've talked about this so1.00
00:12:28.160many times. And then your ICE episode really kind of clarified things for me as I was writing this
00:12:32.720episode about the idea of surplus men. Can you just summarize that really quickly for people
00:12:37.620who didn't listen to that episode? Sure. So the surplus males theory that we talked about in the
00:12:42.500ICE episode was something that was brought to my attention by a woman named Therese Lee. It's a
00:12:47.8602002 paper that basically studied the social or societal effects in Asian countries that had
00:12:55.000gender-specific abortion. So they essentially killed off a lot of female infants. And so what
00:13:02.520they ended up with were societies that were demographically skewed toward men and when you0.61
00:13:09.400have a bunch of men outnumbering all the women in a patriarchal paradigm where like women are the
00:13:15.080means by which you validate your masculinity and achieve status and esteem it essentially led to
00:13:21.780this situation where you had a lot of quote-unquote surplus males or males who were unable to achieve0.99
00:13:28.640that status or esteem in society clustering together and fucking shit up for people.0.98
00:13:35.600And so the way that it was involved into the ICE episode is the surplus males theory applied0.99
00:13:40.120to basically like ICE agents and these men who want to become ICE agents because it gives
00:13:45.960them both income and meaning, which is something that the surplus males theory suggests these
00:13:52.480men lack. And so it's like, okay, well, they have these violent tendencies or these
00:13:59.140inclinations toward, oh, I should be a protector, but they have nothing to protect because no one1.00
00:14:04.160will fuck them. And so they start tear gassing children, basically.0.99
00:14:08.160And again, the implication at the end of this argument that people are sincerely making is0.94
00:14:12.280that women should be marrying these men. That if more women were serving as like the guardrails and0.86
00:14:17.420also as the source of purpose for these men, then we would not have this polarized environment that1.00
00:14:22.960we have now. And I mean, to be clear, this is pretty much the entirety of like the gendered
00:14:27.580underpinnings of the Heritage Foundation's policy recommendations for everything. Everything that
00:14:32.940they want to change about the policy as it pertains to marriage, to children, to family
00:14:37.400formation, it all kind of hinges on this idea that if you can get men into stable marriages with0.53
00:14:44.340women and then obviously have them procreate that that is like the silver bullet that will make
00:14:50.280society operate well and which will actually prevent future government intervention down the1.00
00:14:55.620line this is why they all hate welfare this is why we have like the carceral state like it's all
00:15:01.060connected but it's it's funny the way in which this just very explicitly shows up in documents
00:15:07.000like project 2025 because it essentially lays out this thesis for you yes i am so glad that
00:15:14.160You brought up the Heritage Foundation because in addition to like the roving band of unfuckable and deeply violent men we call ICE agents, the Heritage Foundation has also been very active recently.
00:15:24.540This is kind of, as Katie hinted, the American right-wing think tank that is behind Project 2025.
00:15:28.860They are also largely the group that orchestrated the fall of Roe v. Wade.
00:15:32.600And they recently released a new report, their latest report, which is called Saving America by Saving the Family, a foundation for the next 250 years.
00:15:41.960There you go. Featuring W. Bradwell-Cox.
00:15:44.780Yep. So, Katie, I want you to read a little segment from this report.
00:15:49.380The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage, the committed union of one man and one woman, is its cornerstone. It is the seedbed of self-government.
00:15:59.920the home is where fathers mothers and their children cultivate virtue and practice cooperation
00:16:08.240responsibility stewardship and self-reliance without families a country cannot create
00:16:15.220meaningful work and prosperity it lacks a store what are these words a storehouse
00:16:22.520It lacks a whole lot of something to cover up nothing.
00:16:27.180It lacks a storehouse of strong and brave men to protect itself from hostile aggressors at home and abroad.
00:22:50.920For those who aren't familiar, Yale Law School is like a bastion for conservative thought,
00:22:54.920which is useful background info. I know we think of the Ivies as like little lib-out stations,
00:22:59.980but that is not the case for Yale Law School. So while she is at Yale Law School, she is already
00:23:05.380known there as someone to watch, as someone who is at the top of her class. She serves as an
00:23:10.640executive editor on the Yale Law Journal. Barack Obama famously, I think, was the editor-in-chief
00:23:15.500of the Harvard Law Journal. It's just a very, very prestigious spot to have. She has friends.
00:23:20.640She is featured on, like, lists of Yale's hottest students, and it is during her time at Yale Law School that she meets one James David Vance.
00:23:29.140Was that his name back then? Or was he—
00:23:31.460Oh, no, actually, thank you. No. What was his name? His name—I actually was looking this up. No, J.D. Vance lies about everything related to who he is. What was his name? James David Hamill to Vance.
00:24:11.680he is also a rabid opportunist and a pathological liar.1.00
00:24:14.780We don't have time to unpack all of this. You can listen to the If Books Could Kill coverage of Hillbilly Elegy. But like TLDR, he grew up in Ohio in like a lower class family. His parents got divorced. His mom was an addict. And then he became famous for representing Appalachia because he visited his grandparents in the summer. But like I looked into this and as far as I understand, his grandparents weren't even living in Appalachia at that point. It was just that they had spent most of their lives in Appalachia.0.98
00:24:39.500But, like, they weren't even there when he was visiting, but, like, because they were from there, he made the statement that, like, he got, you know, hillbilly vibes.
00:24:48.160And it's very, like, six degrees of separation for the area that you claim to represent.
00:24:53.160Okay, listen, J.D. Vance has as much claim to Appalachia as I do.
00:26:03.360If I ever decide that I value my parents' approval more than my intellectual career, y'all are going to be like, why is Katie co-hosting Jesse Waters now?
00:27:55.660We're going to talk about it briefly today.
00:27:57.100so much is made of it, of like what she thinks about politics. And we really only have rough
00:28:01.840assumptions to go off of. But I will say at this point, at the beginning of their marriage,
00:28:05.940we actually know quite a bit about like where they stood politically. And I think their politics were
00:28:10.560roughly similar and very moderate. Usha was a registered independent who had on more than one
00:28:15.400occasion voted Democrat, but worked for conservatives, spent time obviously in
00:28:19.680conservative bastions of thought. JD was a conservative who was like very open to liberal
00:28:24.860debates and liberal friends. Like that has been reported by more than one publication that he was
00:28:29.580known for being like very friendly with liberals, very interested in having conversations and
00:28:33.520debates. So it seems like they had a lot of similarity in that way. And for the first half
00:28:39.600of their lives together, they have a very progressive marriage. Remember, JD is average
00:28:43.860at best and Usha is like exceptional. She's an exceptional person. But I will give him a little
00:28:49.400bit of credit. He genuinely during this time period of their early marriage seems to like
00:28:53.540admire and respect and support his wife yeah that was his first fucking problem this bitch1.00
00:28:59.040thinking that she can do stuff with her brain so they have an interfaith marriage at this point1.00
00:29:04.100jd has not yet converted to being a trad cath but he is christian and he wears traditional hindu
00:29:09.480garb on their wedding day they have blessings in both faiths the christian and the hindu faith
00:29:13.740they start having children their children's names are ewan vivek and mirabel vivek is a very
00:29:19.340Indian name. That is not a name that J.D. Vance would come up. I'm sure his next kid will be
00:29:23.920named like Tom or whatever the fuck. And as they have children, Usha's career is on the rise and0.98
00:29:28.980they follow her career because her career has exponentially more potential. This is even after
00:29:33.720she starts having kids. So they go to Kentucky, to D.C., to San Francisco. And every step of the
00:29:39.180way, she's doing the kind of work that you would dream of as a Yale Law School student. She clerks
00:29:43.840for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who is now the Chief Justice. She clerks for and will
00:29:49.000later defend the honor of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She gets a lob at an incredibly
00:29:53.660prestigious law firm specializing in civil litigation. And during the same time period,
00:29:58.300J.D. is just like doing what he can do to be near her, right? Like he's a law clerk for less
00:30:03.180respected judges. He gets a gig as a corporate lawyer. He goes into venture capital. This is
00:30:07.220around the time that he meets Peter Thiel. Yes. So during this time period, he meets his daddy,
00:30:12.720Peter Thiel. But again, like for a Yale Law School grad, even meeting Peter Thiel is not
00:30:18.340that unusual. Like, this is the most prestigious law school in the world. Like, everyone who goes
00:30:22.320is probably going to have a good career, a very good career. But Usha's career is the kind that
00:30:27.700you would expect for someone who aspires to be a Supreme Court justice one day. This is not the
00:30:32.260career of a woman who plans to be a stay-at-home mom. Yeah, it's about as elite as you can get.0.78
00:30:36.580It's not just elite, but it's playing the long game. People who, like, might want to become
00:30:41.660stay-at-home moms later probably would go into corporate law immediately to make as much money1.00
00:30:45.700as possible, as quickly as possible. Usha's playing the long game. Being a clerk for Supreme1.00
00:30:50.280Court justice is long game shit. I feel like I'm, you're kind of making me like Usha. I'm like,0.99
00:30:57.040damn bitch, go off. Yeah, it should be. There's a lot, I think that there is a lot, and again,1.00
00:31:02.280we will talk more about this, but like, there is a lot to respect about Usha. She is like,
00:31:06.920no bullshit, a supreme intellect. There's no frills around what she accomplished.1.00
00:31:11.440This is like me reading yesteryear and being like, am I supposed to like Natalie? Because I really like Natalie. I'm like the naked ambition.
00:31:23.980So then one day, unfortunately, Usha's time in the sun runs out. Okay, jump scare time. Wake up, babe. Your husband has found his footing as a blind and lobotomized shit can foot soldier for fascism. And the tides are about to turn.
00:31:40.480So, in reality, these are slightly overlapping timelines, but J.D.'s rise looks like this.
00:31:45.600He releases Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 to universal bipartisan fanfare because the only thing liberals and conservatives can always truly get behind is a shared endeavor to low-key thinking poor people are idiots.0.99
00:31:56.920Again, no time to discuss that book.0.99
00:31:59.040Listen to the If Books Could Kill summary.
00:32:01.020J.D. starts mapping out his political aspirations with one Peter Thiel, who will eventually give $10 million to his first Senate campaign.
00:32:08.740He starts out as a never-Trumper when he's doing these media appearances.
00:32:12.380Again, Hillbilly Elegy was very critical of Trump.
00:32:15.320But then he does what all ambitious opportunists do,
00:32:18.520and he just totally folds and starts fawning over Trump.
00:32:21.680Yeah, this is the period they gave us all those interview clips0.99
00:32:24.360where he's, like, calling Trump Hitler and shit.0.99
00:33:53.400This is what you get for your second star
00:33:55.700is me giving this generosity to James David right now.
00:33:59.720I wouldn't say that J.D. Vance is an idiot.1.00
00:34:01.860I would say that he is, in some ways, profoundly mediocre, for all the reasons that you've listed, but in other ways, clearly has demonstrated an understanding of navigating powerful people and ascending in powerful spaces.1.00
00:34:18.460Getting into Yale Law School and, like, shacking up with the smartest woman you can find there is actually a pretty strategic move.
00:34:28.380And then to basically identify the fact when you are presented with a connection to a man like Peter Thiel, that doing whatever he wants you to do is actually your quickest path to relevance and power, also a type of intelligence to recognize that that's your ticket.
00:34:45.020And what's so ironic about it, though, is that within the MAGA world, J.D. Vance is, like, their intellectual.
00:34:53.220He's the one that sane-washes everything and makes it sound even a little bit cogent because he is surrounded by genuine morons.1.00
00:35:03.300The only caveat I would add to that, I think you're right that he has a certain kind of intelligence.0.53
00:35:07.160I stand by like just reiterating again and again that he is he is a plant compared to his wife in
00:35:14.340terms of like neurology but the only thing I will add to that is that people like Peter Thiel or
00:35:20.200Elon Musk they don't put money behind anyone that they think is their equal so I will push back and
00:35:25.340just say like JD Vance is smart in that he knows how to climb certain ladders but even then I think
00:35:32.000that these people are letting him climb ladders because he is so pliable he's controllable right
00:35:36.580And so, that is like a, he is not the mastermind in the situation, I guess is what I want to say. I think at any given point, he might be masterminding his own life, but other people are masterminding him. And that is like the game that he is kind of within.
00:35:49.340I guess what I wanted to call attention to, though, in this particular instance is essentially like what we saw during the vice presidential debate. He's smooth. And in those types of rooms, I think that, you know, beyond being pliable, the fact that he's articulate and he lies with such ease, I think is what makes somebody like him so attractive to a person like Peter Thiel, who can smell the ambition and the mediocrity on him.
00:36:16.540But he's a smooth talker in a way that, you know, even though he lacks charisma, he lies very easily.
00:36:28.060The fact that that was like your defense of him.
00:36:30.960I love that. He may be charmless and disgusting, but he lies well.0.98
00:36:39.800Yeah. Yeah. So, J.D. Vance becomes vice president.0.99
00:38:08.160She's extremely well-spoken, as you're about to see. She has a feminine affect that isn't overbearing in the way that some conservative influencers can behave. She's charismatic. She's beautiful. She's by far the most likable and intelligent woman in the Trump administration. Again, a tool that they cannot use.1.00
00:38:24.620I watched every interview of her that I could find, and she did an interview with Meghan McCain over the summer that we're going to watch a few clips from. And we're going to watch, Katie, a clip where she talks to Meghan McCain about how they raise their children culturally. And I want us to think again about how I described the early years of their marriage compared to how Usha talks about it now.
00:38:47.820You know, obviously, when you're deciding to marry someone and you're falling in love with them, you think of so many different things going forward about your future.
00:38:55.860And you are Hindu and your husband is Catholic.
00:38:58.960I'm just curious, because I have quite a few Hindu friends in my life, how you incorporate your faith together in your lives and with your children.
00:39:07.660Well, at the time when I met JD, he wasn't a Catholic.
00:39:11.780And when he converted, we had a lot of conversations about that because it was actually after we had had our first child.
00:39:17.340Maybe it was after Vivek was born, too.
00:39:20.140I'm having trouble placing the date now.
00:39:23.120But, of course, when you convert to Catholicism, it comes with several important obligations, like to raise your child in the faith and all that.
00:39:30.520And we had to have a lot of real conversations about how do you do that when I'm not Catholic and I'm not intending to convert or anything like that.
00:39:40.860I don't think I've ever seen her speak before.
00:39:42.380I actually think it was a really helpful thing to happen because we were obligated to have those conversations as a part of his conversion.
00:39:51.020And it felt like I could be a part of it and have some, you know, say over the way that the direction our lives were going.
00:39:57.760So what we've ended up doing is we send our kids to Catholic school.
00:40:00.720We got their lives and made them Catholic.
00:40:02.700And we have given them each the choice, right?
00:40:05.500They can choose whether they want to be baptized Catholic and then go through the whole step-by-step process with their classes in school.
00:40:12.380And so far, our oldest child has done that, and we'll see what our second child does.
00:40:17.020But we make going to church a family experience.
00:40:20.240The kids know that I'm not Catholic, and they have plenty of access to the Hindu tradition,
00:40:26.280from books that we give them to things that we show them, to the visit recently to India
00:40:32.040and some of the religious elements of that visit.
00:40:35.900So it is a part of their lives, and they know many practicing Hindus as a part of their lives in their own family.
00:40:41.140Do you celebrate, like, Diwali or Holi with them? Any of, like, the traditions?
00:40:46.400Um, we haven't—we're actually hoping to have a Holi party, so we're looking forward to that next year.
00:45:38.420Okay, now let's see what Usha said to defend J.D. Vance and these comments, okay?
00:45:43.360again this is a master class in heterosexuality all right he made a quip in service of making
00:45:51.280a point that he wanted to make that was substantive and it had actual meaning um and i i just wish
00:45:58.260sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time
00:46:03.420just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase because what he was
00:46:08.480really saying is that it can be really hard to be a parent in this country and sometimes our
00:46:13.100policies are designed in a way that make it even harder. And we should be asking ourselves, why is
00:46:17.660that true? What is it about our leadership and the way that they think about the world that makes it
00:46:22.340so hard sometimes for parents? And that's the conversation that I really think that we should
00:46:26.140have. And I understand why he was saying that. What do you say to the women who were offended
00:46:29.960or were hurt by that? Well, I think I would say, first of all, that J.D. absolutely at the time
00:46:37.980and today would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have0.66
00:46:42.620a family who really you know was struggling with that so thoughts katie dude get this woman a0.97
00:46:47.900political career i know elegant she is miles ahead of him thank you unbelievable well i think what she
00:46:56.680was saying what he meant is just that it's so hard to be a parent in this country that's not
00:47:01.640what he said but damn that's better than any defense i've ever heard him give of that phrase
00:47:06.240katie it's a democrat talking point too which i find to be so elegant like that it was so0.95
00:47:11.460not even remotely what he was saying but it is so classic like again when you think about this
00:47:17.080coming down to the idea of a marriage it feels very 2016 of like how many times have you seen
00:47:22.420a wife being like oh he didn't mean that he meant something entirely different and like well now
00:47:27.000you're just putting words into his mouth and i'm like no i'm actually just listening to the words
00:47:30.120that that fell out of his mouth so as you noted there have been an insane number of racist posts
00:47:35.700about her and plot twist it's like always coming from the right which poses a very tricky problem
00:47:40.560for JD Vance. Like you mentioned, Nick Fuentes called JD Vance a race traitor. Jen Psaki made
00:47:46.740a comment on air where she was like, Usha blink twice if you're okay. And then JD gave a response
00:47:51.480where he's like, anyone who's mean to my wife, whether it's Nick Fuentes or Jen Psaki can eat1.00
00:47:56.740shit. And it's like, are we comparing the two? Like Nick Fuentes said you were a race traitor0.99
00:48:01.560and Jen Psaki was like, is Usha okay? But JD has to do stuff like that, right?
00:48:06.720And also, your posture has not been to defend her or your children.
00:48:13.220Do you remember when the Doge, that one Doge 19-year-old, they had discovered a bunch of crazy white nationalist tweets from him where he was making extremely racist comments about Indian people, and JD defended the Doge kid.
00:48:30.340It's like, dude, if you won't even, that's how you know, though. If he won't even defend his own sons from, like, forget the wife. He doesn't, like, whether he respected her at one point or not is kind of irrelevant now. He clearly does not respect her now. There's no way.
00:48:45.960But if he will not defend his own son, his own child from racist comments, that man has no allegiance to anyone or anything.
00:48:57.180That's a great, I forgot that that even happened.
00:48:59.100So there has been, as we have discussed, a lot of speculation about Usha.
00:49:03.260There were rumors about divorce over the summer.
00:49:05.740There are rumors that JD was slipping it to Erica Kirk.
00:49:08.540Yeah, because of Erica Kirk's traditional,
00:49:10.820the traditional morning leather pants of the grieving widow.0.97
00:49:18.160So then, of course, we get the pivot of the century
00:49:21.380with Usha announcing her fourth child, okay?
00:49:24.280Sorry, let me, Usha did not announce that.
00:49:26.580JD announced that. Usha is in the choki in, like, the basement of their house doing whatever she does during the day when the kids don't need her.0.60
00:49:35.780Exactly. So I want us to see this clip, again, from her interview with Meghan McCain about how she felt about the idea of growing her family. Now, this was in June.
00:49:47.340They announced it this month, but just to, like, get the math out of the way, she would have been either already trying or they would have started trying immediately after.
00:55:32.560I didn't hear specifically what she said about when I can or when it's time.
00:55:37.500But to indicate an interest in going back to work in one of the only long-form interviews that she has done to this point is a very calculated admission.
00:55:48.760That is not something that she would be saying.
00:55:51.140I think, unless she was trying to either prime the ground for that to happen and kind of like float the concept to see what reception is like to it and or something that she just earnestly feels very strongly about.
00:56:04.680And I just want to note, yes, being second lady, I'm sure, is a pretty serious obligation in some respects.
00:58:38.840But I think what I am trying to point out here is that it is not an uncommon pattern in political couples that the man runs for office forcing his wife to give up everything when the woman was the more qualified candidate to begin with.
00:58:50.920Like, in a world where things made sense, Usha would be the political candidate here.
00:58:55.280Yeah, she would be vice president.0.83
00:59:11.180And there are, of course, plenty of qualified men, too, but there are a lot of fucking unqualified men who run for office and win simply because they are men.0.94
00:59:18.320And I think that this is why Usha Vance is so triggering.
00:59:22.720There is so much about her politics, about J.D. Vance, but I think there is this story of their marriage that many women look at and immediately understand and identify with, and it is kind of infuriating.
00:59:34.220So now we're going to get into a little bit of academic background about why ladies are so angry.0.57
01:00:20.760Sure. I think that's a good answer. So, the general mainstream belief about sexuality is that you are basically born how you are. You're born with your sexuality.
01:00:30.100You're born either being sexually desirous of the opposite sex, so that's heterosexual,0.77
01:00:34.460or you're born with queer desire, the range of which obviously runs the gamut depending on how
01:00:39.100much you are a Republican. So the mainstream Republican belief is that everyone is born
01:00:44.360straight, but that some people are turned queer, hence their fear of drag shows.
01:00:54.000Yeah, of course. The mainstream liberal belief is that everyone is born the way that you're born.
01:00:58.840You can be born straight, you can be born gay, you can be born bi, but you don't have any control over that. And so we should give everyone the same access to rights and legislation and dignity, etc.
01:01:09.000It is also just kind of culturally accepted that to be queer is to live a very hard life, that it is much easier to be straight and that, you know, if you're conservative, your goal is to try to fix queer people.
01:01:21.780And if you're liberal, you feel bad for them and you try to defend them, but you still kind of fall under the idea that like, well, who would choose to be gay? Of course you wouldn't choose such a hard, I mean, there's the famous Family Stone scene where Sarah Jessica Parker is like, why would you wish for your child to be gay? That's just, it's such a hard life. And Diane Keaton is like, incredible.0.99
01:01:41.040So Jane Ward challenges all of this very directly.
01:01:45.480Katie, I'm going to have you read a few excerpts from the introduction.
01:01:48.060And I'm just going to note, too, I have a feeling that this book would make a lot of people uncomfortable.
01:01:54.340I have a feeling that it does make a lot of people uncomfortable.
01:01:56.320It has certainly challenged so many notions that I have.
01:01:59.700And so I will just say, like, we're doing something unusual in that we are just focusing exclusively on this book.
01:02:05.920And so people can decide how much of it that they agree with.
01:02:08.260But I think it is really, really radical and not enough people have access to it.
01:02:12.360So I'm going to have you start with this section right here.
01:02:17.760This book argues that the basic premise that heterosexuality is easier than queerness requires renewed investigation.
01:02:26.420For instance, if we were to take this premise to the contemporary lesbian feminist Sarah Ahmed,
01:02:31.280we would be encouraged to consider that one of the ways heteronormativity sustains itself is by
01:02:36.280telling and retelling a story about how heterosexuality makes people happy, while
01:02:41.540queerness produces difficulty and suffering. This story about queer suffering under the force of1.00
01:02:47.420heteronormativity is true, but it is also only a sliver of the story about queerness, and it is
01:02:53.120one that masks not only queer joy and pleasure, but queer relief not to be straight. The story
01:02:59.520about the benefits of heterosexuality is also one with wildly differing levels of truthfulness
01:03:04.640or explanatory power once subjected to an intersectional analysis. This is fascinating.
01:03:12.060So there are a few fundamental arguments made in this book, each of which, again, I think are
01:03:16.060going to strike a number of our listeners as radical and maybe uncomfortable to consider.
01:03:19.560So number one, Jane Ward does not accept the idea that we are simply born with fully established
01:03:25.280sexual desires. We might have genetic predilections, but we are cultured into desire.
01:03:30.900We are cultured into heterosexuality. We are cultured into the relative stigmatization of
01:03:36.400certain forms of pleasure. And queerness, Ward argues, can absolutely be understood as a partially
01:03:42.580conscious desire and decision to extricate yourself from a system of oppression. So I'm
01:03:48.060going to have you read another little section here. One of the foundational principles of
01:03:53.340lesbian feminism is that each person's sexual desire is their own responsibility, if not0.86
01:03:59.080something they can choose, then at least something they can choose to examine and take ownership of.0.83
01:04:04.840A far cry from today's born-this-way approach to sexual orientation, which has been most widely0.96
01:04:10.440embraced by gay men, lesbian feminists claimed their love of women as a cultivated political
01:04:16.180stance and active opposition to heteropatriarchy. Okay, you know what this is making me think of
01:05:25.200Good thing only 100,000 people are going to listen to this.
01:05:27.880I'm sure I'm not going to say anything objectionable.
01:05:31.960There are a few elephants in the room that we're going to, like, walk past as we go through this conversation.
01:05:35.980The first one is, yeah, this is an impossible conversation to have in mainstream culture.
01:05:39.780Ezra Klein could not have this conversation because, like, as soon as you factor in any level of awareness or agency or choice into the conversation about sexual desire,0.73
01:05:48.880You are going to have a whole raft of Republicans going, see, they are choosing to be gay.0.63
01:05:53.540They are being influenced by drag shows.0.51
01:05:56.020But the real argument here that Ward is making is not as fixated on people like choosing or not choosing.
01:06:02.160And again, like she already makes caveats about choice.
01:06:09.280And again, this theory wouldn't make sense under the logic we have, which is that being queer is miserable.0.57
01:06:15.120You have to begin to accept the idea that being queer is a joyous lifestyle, is maybe even a preferable lifestyle, in order to begin to understand her theory that, for example, these lesbians who are making it a cultivated political stance would want to do that.0.58
01:06:30.580And so you're already starting to shift your worldview to make room for this idea that someone would ever want that.
01:06:38.240So again, number one, our sexuality is not totally pre-established at birth.
01:06:42.660Number two, the idea that heterosexuality is more punishing than queerness is.
01:06:48.820I want to be very clear that Ward acknowledges the violence that queer people suffer.
01:08:59.620would often happen between, like, a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl.
01:09:02.980Like our understanding of marriage was absolutely just about property consolidation, wealth hoarding, maintaining a bloodline.
01:09:10.220And I imagine like with the agricultural, like if most people are living in kind of like an agricultural society, even the decision to have children, I imagine, was more about like populating your home with workers.
01:09:52.440but sexuality, which is when we basically instilled meaning
01:09:56.480in the act of sex, has been contested for a very long time.
01:10:00.200I found an amazing article by the BBC about this, so I'm going to have you read some of this.
01:10:05.160You know what this is making me think of, too, is the kind of mainstreamification of figures like Louise Perry and these other reactionary feminists that we've talked about who argue that sexual liberation or the tendency for women to have sex casually was like, oh, this was A, the fault of feminism, and B, the reason why women's rights are now degraded.0.89
01:10:29.660because women are giving it up too easily.
01:10:31.560And it's really interesting to think about that argument
01:10:34.300in the context of the conversation that we are having now,
01:10:37.160where you think about meaning within sex
01:10:53.180And again, the idea that, like, there is before and after,
01:10:56.520and the before and after is, like, 1960.
01:10:58.700And it's like, no, this was contested and very fluid for hundreds of years as we were figuring out, like, what humans are, what are brains, what are people, how different are men and women, all these questions.
01:11:10.100So, okay, I'm going to have you read this.
01:11:12.960Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals, writes Han Blank, a scholar and author on the topic.
01:14:46.740But it's also interesting because, again, during this time period, a lot of people were having sex with one another, with the same sex, whatever.0.69
01:14:54.020And it was just stigmatized culturally.
01:14:55.680It was like, you can't share it because you have to be having sex for having a baby.
01:15:01.000I think the distinction that I find most fascinating about that is that the distinction between the act versus the agent, the idea that like an act could be homosexual or heterosexual, but that you're not assigning that label to the person engaging in the act because that creates a lot more fluidity around like the human is not labeled in that way.
01:15:21.140It's just that like these things are hetero or homosexual.
01:15:24.260Exactly. So, it was pretty easy up until, I mean, it's probably pretty easy even now. We've talked about this in our Lily Phillips episode about the homoerotic behaviors in Iran.0.59
01:15:36.080How men in Iran have, like, very homosexual relationships with one another and will go to baths and, like, it's a whole thing because male-female relationships are under such tight lock and key.
01:15:46.120Oh, yeah. Okay, wow. For a second, I was like, what the, was I there for that recording? What the fuck are you talking about?
01:15:53.080We've covered a lot since Lily Phillips, who has also undergone a religious conversion, RIP.0.99
01:16:00.520So anyways, it's usually easy for people to get away with same-sex pleasure because women can congregate with other women and men with other men, often in these restrictive communities without being watched.
01:16:10.580So here is what I mean about the definition of heterosexuality changing.
01:16:13.920In 1901, a medical dictionary defined heterosexuality as, quote, an abnormal or perverted appetite towards the opposite sex, okay?0.99
01:16:25.2801923, Merriam-Webster defines it as, quote, morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.
01:16:31.800In 1934, we finally get a definition that feels relevant to today, which is, quote, manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex, normal sexuality.
01:16:45.080This is a massive shift that takes place where heterosexuality goes from being something kind of disgusting and unacceptable to something that is inextricably connected to reproductive sex.
01:16:55.520Jane Ward calls this the notion of mutual likability, like the idea that women and men can and should be attracted to one another and that should matter in a marriage.
01:17:04.980Like the idea that it should matter at all whether or not women are attracted to the men that they marry.
01:17:09.280This is recent. And I don't think it's accidental that this shift of social understanding comes during a time period of, like, rapid intellectual and industrial growth. Like, you have a new reason for why people should stay in the marital formation. You have people coming to cities. You're living in the wake of the Enlightenment. You're at the dawn of scientific innovation where we're learning, like, just how similar humans are. You're in the thick of, like, suffragette and civil rights movements.
01:17:32.140You need something else to undergird the desire for reproductive sex, and you need to have a reason for why people should stay married. And so, it's no longer that you have to, but you want to. You want to. You're attracted to your husband. Don't you want to have sex with him? It's normal. No.0.61
01:17:49.820As any married woman could tell you, no.
01:17:54.180That's why we start podcasts with each other.0.86
01:17:56.960Exactly, exactly. That's where we get all of our energy out. No, I will never stop making homoerotic jokes with Katie.
01:18:02.140So in some ways, you're giving people more agency. You're like, I guess, opening a door to desire. But you're also like creating very explicit ends with very dubiously established claims. Like, I don't know if you read much about Freud, but his whole theory was that kids would become successfully heterosexual only through having an incestuous desire for parents. And this is like still commonly accepted.0.97
01:18:23.520Yeah, isn't this, this is where like the Oedipal complex comes from.
01:18:26.760Yeah, that's just like a theory that a guy made up.
01:18:28.920That's why I refer to myself exclusively as my cat Sam's mommy girlfriend.
01:18:39.320The result of this kind of like social construction of heterosexuality is that a lot of people, men and women alike, end up in what amounts to like an extremely violent and unpleasant trap.
01:18:50.440So I'm going to have you read a quick little aside that kind of gets into this, I think, tension between the idea of, you know, violence against queer people and violence against straight people. So this is what she has to say about that.
01:19:03.560Let me be clear. Homophobic violence happens to young people and adults, to women, men,0.97
01:19:09.620and trans people. It happens to straight people when they are gender variant and or presumed to
01:19:14.620be queer. And it happens most harshly to queer people of color and poor and working class queers.
01:19:19.960In all cases, it is tragic. But misogynistic and racist violence happens to straight people too,
01:19:25.580and in many ways, gendered and sexualized and racist forms of violence and suffering
01:19:30.080are much more unrelenting for straight women than for anyone else.
01:20:49.980We might choose to focus, as the Chinese feminist journalist Leta Hong Fincher has done, on0.55
01:20:56.240the role of the state in encouraging women to embrace men's mediocrity. Oh, Usha, paging Usha,0.97
01:21:02.580to pretend to desire men they do not want and to roll back their own accomplishments for the good
01:21:08.400of the nation. Wow. Thoughts? Very Usha coded. Yeah. I can see why we're talking about these
01:21:16.660two things together. Yeah. I was thinking about the Disney Pixar thing and how in the last 10
01:21:21.940years, there has been a little bit of a shift in that. We have seen changes in how women are1.00
01:21:25.920depicted. And like, the resulting fallout is massive. Like, when you think about how much0.99
01:21:31.440work goes into this project, the ultimate proof of how much work goes into maintaining heterosexuality
01:21:37.040is that as soon as we started to have a little shift in that, people freaked out. Like, women1.00
01:21:41.440don't view themselves just as wives anymore. And you see how quickly Republicans and members of
01:21:47.140the Heritage Foundation have scrambled to try to pull that back. They were like, well, unfortunately,
01:21:52.480ladies, now we need to have a fascist takeover because you're all getting a little too mouthy.1.00
01:21:57.120Exactly. Exactly. So the tragedy of heterosexuality is twofold, according to Jane Ward.1.00
01:22:04.340Number one, it's that heterosexual relationships are inherently defined by the influence of sexism
01:22:09.820and toxic masculinity. And number two, women will spend their whole lives trying to fix men,1.00
01:22:15.640which leads to just like an exhausting game of up and down for their entire lives.
01:22:20.460I think it's important to note that Jane Ward is not saying that, like, men and women aren't meant to have relationships or that you can't be attracted to the opposite sex.
01:22:28.300I think it's so much more about the conventions and the social mores that come with it than it is about your pleasure and desire.
01:22:34.920And one thing she points out is how so many men and women in heterosexual relationships are completely lacking in the tools to give each other pleasure or even to understand one another.
01:22:43.420I was actually thinking Katie about the episode we did about um the episode we did where the woman
01:22:49.140caught her bangs when Hillary Clinton lost and then her husband Jeff was like I don't know what's
01:22:53.580going on wait I completely that was dude that was like a that was a complete political realignment
01:23:02.000for that woman she got one bad haircut and like renounced feminism forever she did and her husband1.00
01:23:08.580again like didn't know how to help her he didn't really understand why she cared about abortion0.97
01:23:13.180like they did not understand each other.
01:25:30.480While straight men's desires for female bodies
01:25:32.800is often portrayed as an incredibly powerful force,
01:25:35.620Many men's notorious confusion about what produces female orgasms, their disinterest in providing oral sex to women, and their dramatically narrow ideas about what constitutes a female body worth desiring—waxed, shaved, scented, dieted, young, etc.—suggested that heteromasculinity is characterized by a much weaker and far more conditional desire for women's bodies than is often claimed.0.99
01:33:17.160If we just return with a V to the quote-unquote natural state of being of heterosexual stay-at-home womanhood, that we'll be happy.0.94
01:33:26.460All right. So now we're going to move on to Rama Duwaji, the first lady of Gracie Mansion and Mayor Zoran Mamdani's wife.0.97
01:33:35.520So there are a number of, there are a striking number of parallels between Rama and Usha beyond the obvious, which is that they're both two brown women who have like skyrocketed to fame as the wives of polarizing politicians.
01:40:30.940So this gets into something that I talked about in our Scott Galloway episode, the idea of using0.76
01:40:35.400queerness as like a way to reimagine heterosexuality. And I, again, think that0.87
01:40:40.660that can be something that can make people very uncomfortable. This is something that I first got
01:40:44.320from this book. This is something that Jane Ward talks about explicitly, that, like, a lot of
01:40:48.960theories that heterosexual couples benefit from already come from queerness. So, one example would
01:40:54.040be conscious uncoupling. Obviously, Gwyneth Paltrow became very famous when she and Chris Martin did
01:40:58.960that, but that comes from queerness. Any sort of conversation about your sexuality, about what you
01:41:04.560like about like giving into sexual pleasure role play that comes from queerness and something that
01:41:11.980word talks about is that like a lot of straight people would be benefited from moving through the0.52
01:41:17.240journey that queer people do which is asking yourself questions about your sexuality like
01:41:21.840why are you straight what does being straight give you what does it mean to you when did you1.00
01:41:26.800first know you were straight what do you like about being straight what do you like about men
01:41:31.020or women? What is it about them that attracts you? Like framing it more as like a, I don't even like
01:41:36.340the word choice here, but framing it with a little bit more intentionality or curiosity,
01:41:41.380as opposed to just kind of being like a default background fact that's implied by your own
01:41:46.760sex or gender. Yeah. I've honestly never thought about the question or how I would answer the
01:41:53.100question, like, when did you know that you were straight? Well, I was just about to ask you,
01:41:58.160can you think of that well I mean I remember I got in trouble a lot even in preschool and
01:42:04.280kindergarten because I was very boy crazy even as like a preschooler like I would I remember there
01:42:09.960was this preschooler in my class named Cody who I would chase around the playground and like try
01:42:16.740to kiss him you're like chasing after him with like a crayon scribbled prenup and I would get
01:42:23.340put in time out for it so yeah I guess whatever listener was like Katie we can tell you're straight
01:42:27.680I guess you did clock me because I feel like I've always been very boy crazy.
01:42:33.820When I think about my relationship to straightness at the earliest age, I think it was
01:42:38.020very informed by the content I consumed.
01:42:40.640Well, because obviously a preschooler doesn't have sexuality.
01:42:43.420Actually, Jane Ward would probably disagree with that and say that we have access to pleasure
01:42:47.960from a very early age. We might not have words for it. It's not like you necessarily know how
01:42:52.080to act on it, but children do access pleasure at a very young age.
01:42:56.660we've talked about this before too yeah like it's something that we don't really know what to work
01:43:01.020i think it was the internet is porn the idea that like children the onset of sexual pleasure is very
01:43:06.960early and we just like don't really know what to do about that something she says that i find
01:43:10.920really interesting is that babies are born with like an almost infinite access to pleasure and
01:43:16.460that our access to pleasure basically gets whittled down as we get older and that's not
01:43:20.400just sexual it's just like the touch of a hand on your back or like the ability to be really
01:43:26.040connected to your pleasure and to not feel any negative emotions about that is something that is
01:43:31.180deeply interrupted by the time you're an adult. Every piece of pleasure either has a reinforcing
01:43:37.780mechanism or a disrupting mechanism, I would say. But yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting
01:43:43.640that like when you are queer, I won't speak for every single person, but at least this is how
01:43:47.480Jane Ward talks about it. Like you have to answer those questions and you often have to answer them0.95
01:43:52.560a lot sometimes to people that you have to like prove something to often in a way that's probably1.00
01:43:56.720very traumatic but the plus side of that again in the name of moving past just queer suffering is0.90
01:44:02.800that you find a name for the things that you like because you have to create a language you have to0.83
01:44:08.480figure out what type of queer you are you have to figure out who you're attracted to and there isn't
01:44:13.020just one answer there is a spectrum and so with that you start to say like hey I actually like
01:44:18.420this type of female body or like I like when I'm a top or I like when I'm a bottom or like I like
01:44:23.560doing this type of dangerous role play I like playing this type of game I like doing all these
01:44:29.460things and it's something that you can be much more upfront about because you have to but we
01:44:34.160are completely stripped of that language as straight people I can think of so many examples
01:44:38.940of like situations where women and men can't even say like the smallest thing of like would you put0.99
01:44:44.520your finger in my butt or something in that. You know what I mean? Like any request feels so0.98
01:44:50.800dangerous because you're like, is this normal? Is this normal? Are my desires normal? Oh,
01:44:57.720interesting. And you don't know because we also don't talk with any specificity about it.
01:45:03.360Well, and I think that this is where there is still such a difference between even straight1.00
01:45:08.240men and straight women, because I think that there's a level of permissiveness around women's
01:45:15.060sexuality that just absolutely does not exist with men. A straight man cannot have gay sex0.99
01:45:22.380once and then be like, yeah, not for me. You know, like that. Right. It's not an act. It's who you1.00
01:45:27.760are. Whereas a woman, someone who identifies as a straight woman could have sex with a woman once1.00
01:45:32.220and be like, ah, not really my thing. And it doesn't like devalue her in the sexual marketplace0.75
01:45:37.280in some cases you could argue that it actually makes her more interesting or more valuable and
01:45:41.680so I think that like if we're talking about who has the least access to sexual expression
01:45:46.420or curiosity or questioning or like the language with which to express those desires
01:45:51.240it is straight men or men who identify as straight part of why I wanted to have this
01:45:56.380conversation is because I feel like I do want to say on the record it is a weird experience to have
01:46:01.080people who have never met you in person make assumptions about your sexuality and like make
01:46:06.120assumptions about your marriage i know that katie and i give snippets but like we don't share our
01:46:11.620whole lives nor do we we're actually very careful about not sharing a lot of our personal lives our
01:46:17.700personal conflicts on this show and so i think it was when i started to see people like pretty
01:46:23.360frequently make assumptions or jokes and again all lightheartedly it's not bad but i started to
01:46:28.500be like wow people have a lot of perceptions about who we are and a lot of the implications
01:46:33.000come down to us being straight. And it's like, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that
01:46:37.600you know what type of sex I have with my husband? Does it mean that you know how I see myself? And
01:46:41.660I think the theory is yes. The idea is like, yeah, we know how straight couples interact. We know
01:46:46.440what the standard of conduct is. And if you are a progressive person, you do not say the same
01:46:51.860for queer culture. I think we've been educated at this point to understand that there is a vast
01:46:55.680spectrum. And so the goal for like a lesbian feminist like Jane Ward would be like,1.00
01:47:00.500how can you create that for heterosexuality how can you be kind of pulling down the tightness of0.93
01:47:07.200those walls of the social construct so it's like yeah i'm a woman and i like having sex with a man0.64
01:47:11.640but i actually like this type of sex and i actually like this type of relationship and we don't like
01:47:17.700to be married or we like living in different houses or any of these things you don't have0.65
01:47:21.320any terms for that and i think that if we started to do that and again that is harnessing queer
01:47:26.740theory, specifically lesbian feminist theory, that is how you start to get to a place where
01:47:31.540you have, frankly, a relationship like Zoran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji, where you have people
01:47:36.060who are theoretically heterosexual couple. We don't know shit about their sex life. We don't0.98
01:47:40.880know shit about their relationship, but we know that he views her as a person. We know that she0.85
01:47:45.320is not his property. We know that she has not submitted to him or given all of the things that
01:47:50.760we expect women to give in marriages. And I think the great irony of all of this is that J.D.,
01:47:55.640Vance and Usha are over there with their, like, quote-unquote interfaith marriage. He's Catholic,
01:48:00.140she's Hindu. And the most progressive marriage is the one that has the Muslim couple, which has
01:48:06.600all of these, you know, Islamophobic associations around it about how men treat women. And Zoran
01:48:11.900Mamdani is viewing his wife as a far more complicated and autonomous human being than
01:48:17.280J.D. Vance has ever done with his. Yeah, I think within white Christian nationalism,
01:48:22.700Islam is really the boogeyman. It's that versus the West, right? And so white Christian nationalism0.98
01:48:29.500is often talking about like the values of Western civilization. And it's almost always like the
01:48:34.100foil is Islam. And I think it's really funny that the claims that are made about what Islam does to
01:48:39.980women are all the things that you often see white Christianity doing to women.
01:48:45.760Yeah. Obviously, so much of this episode leads to a similar conclusion as the one we did with
01:48:50.220Scott Galloway, like the idea that the way forward for men and women requires a reinvestigation of
01:48:56.220what queer scholars have been doing. You have to be looking, especially at lesbian scholars,
01:49:00.820to have a clear understanding of straightness because straightness is so all-encompassing1.00
01:49:05.320that it is hard to see the boundaries of the territory that you live in without someone with
01:49:09.380a different perspective to kind of guide your path. It's really hard to understand that this
01:49:13.740is a social construct, that it is so recent, that it is socially enforced, and that it is not natural.
01:49:19.160Like, I think a thing you say on this podcast all the time is, if it's so natural, why are you working so hard to uphold it? The effort that is made to reinforce straight culture and the immediate disintegration we have seen of straight culture with just a little opening of the door with the idea of women's rights, with the idea of Pixar movies that aren't just about little girls getting married, like, it has been immediate.
01:49:43.060Well, and I think it's imbued with such stakes, too. Think about how the Heritage Foundation describes the importance of heterosexual marriage. All of civilization will crumble without it.
01:49:55.540Right. Yeah. And so I think Jane Ward gives a lot of different examples of how straight couples can like learn from queerness and like basically inject elements of queerness into their marriages. You talk about different types of sex acts that kind of allow you to mess around with dominance and submission. You talk about having those conversations, asking those questions, reorienting what your relationship should look like.
01:50:18.240But I also just think more broadly, when I think about how fucked up everything is right now and how politicians on the right are just like scrambling to consolidate power, scrambling to restore the state of marriage, the falling birth rate, trying to keep all these cities under order with like literal martial law.
01:50:38.120I think that doing this research made me feel so hopeful because these politicians are not wrong. Something has changed fundamentally, and if they don't get it back, everything is changing.
01:50:51.780The dissolution of marriage and the ability for women to refuse to marry men is, I think, the most radical act of the last several centuries. It is on the level of the ending of slavery. And I think the implication of this mass behavior is already right now leading us to a radically different world.0.61
01:51:13.300So it's like the world feels destabilized right now because it is. We are destabilized. But I think that we are going to be restabilizing to a better place. Like, it's not going to work. The cat is out of the bag, like the woman's out of the house, and I don't think that they're going to be able to get women to go back.
01:51:29.980And what the Heritage Foundation wants to do is create a form of marital slavery.0.99
01:51:33.720They want to get rid of the right for women to divorce.0.93
01:51:58.440Again, this is why people are so fucking terrified. People are having a radically different relationship to gender. That has begun to change. And this effort to, again, put it back in the box is so intense because of what is at stake. But it is very clear to me, I think, that we are only going to go in the direction of more gender fluidity and more queerness, only that won't be the word. I think that we won't have those terms. I think a lot is going to change in the next several hundred years.0.67
01:52:27.200Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think this effort is bound to fail. I saw somebody use the word extinction burst online the other day, and I thought that that was a really good way to put it. It's just like the frantic grasping and the chaotic feeling of the old way trying to reassert itself right as it's becoming irrelevant.
01:52:49.080And I think that it's a little bit funny because to loop it back to the ICE episode, I feel like at the end of that episode, we came back to the importance of humanity.
01:53:00.880And what this history has kind of shown me, I think, and the big aha moment for me in today's episode has been the idea that associating sexuality with someone's identity as opposed to their behavior is a relatively new phenomenon.
01:53:19.700And I think that anytime you can point to stuff like that in the historical record, which frankly is like most things, because our understanding of ourselves and like our bodies and all of it is so relatively new and always evolving, I wouldn't be surprised if 50 to 100 years from now, queerness was considered the default in the way that heterosexuality is kind of like culturally the background default now and that anything is a deviation from that.
01:53:49.100And to your point about it not being called that,
01:53:50.760I don't think there will be a label on it anymore.
01:53:55.420That is like the evolutionary direction