In Bed With The Right - Episode 34： The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

00:00:00.000 Hello, I'm Adrienne Dog.

00:00:08.380 And I'm Moira Donaghan.

00:00:09.360 And whether we like it or not, we're in bed with the right. 1.00

00:00:13.980 So, Adrienne, today we are talking about one of the weirdest items of gendered cultural 0.97

00:00:20.680 production to emerge in 2024, a little show on Hulu that's become a breakout hit called 0.99

00:00:27.480 The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

00:00:30.660 Yep. And we watched a lot of it yesterday.

00:00:35.000 It is the kind of show that will make you feel actively stupider. 0.92

00:00:39.880 But I feel a lot smarter after talking to our guest today, Kate Kelly. 1.00

00:00:45.120 Kate Kelly is kind of a feminist woman about town. 1.00

00:00:49.680 She's an activist. She's a human rights lawyer. 1.00

00:00:51.960 She's worked at all kinds of progressive nonprofits and political organizations.

00:00:57.480 But her origin story is that Kate Kelly came to feminism as a Mormon, a young Mormon wife,

00:01:06.180 straight out of Utah, who attended Brigham Young, got married to a Mormon man at a precocious age,

00:01:15.020 the whole shebang. And early in her life, Kate founded an organization within Mormonism called

00:01:21.580 ordain women, which advocated, as the name suggests, for the ordination of women to the

00:01:27.620 Mormon priesthood. And for that trespass, the Mormon church actually excommunicated Kate,

00:01:34.100 which launched her onto her adventurous life as a feminist in D.C. and a big advocate, 0.83

00:01:41.440 among other things, for the Equal Rights Amendment. So Kate is a really smart, funny,

00:01:47.540 perceptive interlocutor of Mormonism for a non-Mormon, you know, a sinner, decadent,

00:01:55.280 fallen secularist like us. Hey, speak for yourself. 0.52

00:02:00.160 She made me see the show in a new way, and I'm really glad we got to talk to her.

00:02:04.240 Absolutely. So we should say a little bit more about the show. If you have not seen it,

00:02:08.500 we do dive into it like headfirst. It is on Hulu. It's called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

00:02:14.340 It's basically the Real Housewives with more Stanley cups filled with soda water of some kind?

00:02:21.560 Anyway. 1.00

00:02:22.080 Lots of soda involved.

00:02:23.260 Yeah, it's unclear. 1.00

00:02:25.040 And it follows eight women.

00:02:27.460 Jen, Demi, Whitney, Michaela, Macy, not spelled how you'd spell it. 0.71

00:02:32.900 Jessie, not spelled how you'd spell it.

00:02:34.500 Taylor, spelled how you'd spell it.

00:02:35.980 And Layla.

00:02:36.800 All of whom are, by the way, absolutely impossible to tell apart.

00:02:40.560 Yeah, yeah, very hard.

00:02:41.420 Well, except for Layla.

00:02:42.220 But everyone else is like, they just look absolutely identical.

00:02:45.500 They were all part of a group called MomTalk,

00:02:48.240 which I did not know existed until they said the word MomTalk

00:02:51.140 about five million times per episode.

00:02:53.680 And we're involved in a soft swinging scandal,

00:02:57.340 a thing that is never fully explained much to our chagrin.

00:03:01.380 A lot of this episode is us being like,

00:03:02.880 so what is a soft swinging scandal?

00:03:05.080 What's soft, the swinging or the scandal?

00:03:06.900 Anyway, it has all the things you love in a Bravo show,

00:03:11.300 although it's not a Bravo show. 1.00

00:03:12.980 You know, women hanging out outside of fancy restaurants 0.99

00:03:15.740 and having conversations about fights they're about to have. 0.95

00:03:20.420 Everyone seems to be loaded, and it's not quite clear why. 0.97

00:03:23.460 They're closeted gay husbands. 0.93

00:03:25.740 There is a sort of a scene where someone is like, 0.99

00:03:27.780 how dare you steal the thunder of my husband's porn addiction 0.76

00:03:30.740 with your ectopic pregnancy? 0.97

00:03:32.260 And you're like, oh yeah, I get this.

00:03:33.520 We're in Andy Cohen land, right?

00:03:34.880 Yeah, it's a weird, strange bundle of contradictions

00:03:40.300 and I'm really glad we got to talk about it with Kate.

00:03:43.940 Rate or review us on iTunes if you get a chance.

00:03:46.400 That really helps people find a show.

00:03:48.560 Also buy Adrian's book, The Cancel Culture Panic,

00:03:51.260 which is a rip-roaring good time and a really fun read. 0.86

00:03:54.600 Buy it for the closeted gay husband in your life. 1.00

00:03:57.300 And enjoy this unnecessarily crazy deep dive 1.00

00:04:01.880 into the secret lives of Mormon wives. 1.00

00:04:04.820 Enjoy.

00:04:05.140 so kate tell us about the secret lives of mormon wives this surprise hit show on hulu that's

00:04:16.740 getting crazy ratings and has had every feminist journalist and gender scholar scholar uh that i

00:04:25.700 know texting me with great degrees of alarm uh that i absolutely needed to watch it and thank 1.00

00:04:32.740 you for being our excuse to sit down and watch this truly insane product of television of course

00:04:39.460 thanks for having me well so maybe we can tell you where we're at because we know we know where

00:04:46.980 each other is at because we were texting about it frantically i think no phrase was used more often

00:04:51.600 than i think i'm becoming dumber by the minute or i should have covid for this um i i didn't watch

00:04:57.360 all of it, but I watched quite a bit. And one thing that I found very, very interesting is that,

00:05:04.400 you know, the show very much focuses on eight Mormon or ex-Mormon women in Provo, Utah,

00:05:10.060 and they're all active or still sort of like part of the church's life. They don't seem to be on the

00:05:15.400 outside of it. And yet, I think both Moira and I were constantly like, wait, can they do that?

00:05:20.580 Are they allowed to do that? Because on the one hand, they sort of make a performance of rigidity,

00:05:24.640 which you don't get in a show of this type normally,

00:05:27.740 such as, you know, The Real Housewives of, you know, Beverly Hills.

00:05:31.560 Anything else.

00:05:32.460 Yeah, they literally, like, they have no filter.

00:05:34.860 They have no rules.

00:05:36.300 They're just constantly, like, twerking on 20-year-olds.

00:05:39.440 It's, like, completely unhinged.

00:05:41.560 This is a show that kind of is sort of coquettish almost 1.00

00:05:46.460 in dealing with sort of the restrictions on these women, 0.98

00:05:48.920 and yet we see them do all these things.

00:05:51.580 And so that's, I guess, my first question is, like,

00:05:54.100 What do you make of this kind of very strange duality where, on the one hand, they emphasize the lack of permissiveness, but then it hits all the beats of a rony reunion, you know?

00:06:07.220 I'll have to admit that I'm not an avid consumer of reality TV in any other context, so I actually haven't seen Real Housewives, although I do know there is a Salt Lake City version.

00:06:19.620 I think my major qualification for opining on this show is that I was a Mormon wife, and so that's really my reference point for watching the show. So I may have a bit of a different perspective. Though, yes, I think it's common in every religion for there to be a set of rules, and then there's what people actually do.

00:06:41.840 i'm fascinated by this generation these women you have to keep in mind are very young yeah they are

00:06:49.420 in the range of 23 years old many of them it seems did not go to college uh got married super super

00:06:59.220 super young uh they didn't really have sort of the coming of age or the maturation period that

00:07:06.660 most other folks outside of that community would have.

00:07:10.480 You know, Michaela was married when she was 16. 1.00

00:07:13.020 Jen was married when she was 18. 1.00

00:07:14.920 Layla was married when she was 19.

00:07:17.380 These are very, very, very young girls.

00:07:20.920 Although Demi, interestingly enough, I think by my accounting, got married at 26.

00:07:25.320 And I found myself saying like, oh, what happened there?

00:07:28.100 I was like, wait, that's a totally normal time to get married.

00:07:30.640 That's her second marriage.

00:07:32.100 That's what it is.

00:07:32.920 Okay.

00:07:33.300 Oh, my God.

00:07:34.740 Yes.

00:07:35.140 She had a whole other marriage and was divorced and then got married to her now husband, who she actually met when she was nine years old for the first time, was married to someone else, got divorced, and then married him later at 26.

00:07:49.060 So, yes, that was her second marriage.

00:07:51.580 How old was he when she was nine years old?

00:07:54.300 When she was nine years old and they met, he was 25.

00:07:57.320 Yeah. So that is, in addition to their extreme youth, something that is conspicuous to me about these women is that, you know, not only the peg for the show, it's justification for its existence, is that these women are massively famous on TikTok, apparently.

00:08:20.420 they are tiktok influencers they make a lot of videos together so they sort of like cross

00:08:28.320 pollinate each other's followings and maximize revenue that way and that is something that the

00:08:36.380 show sort of assumes you know right it strikes me that like the pitch meeting for this show is like

00:08:41.820 well they have a lot of followers and if x proportion of their followers then watch the show

00:08:46.040 we will make a return on our investment making this i have to say incredibly cheaply produced

00:08:52.060 bit of television um and then what happened is that the show seems to have like escaped

00:08:58.620 terminal velocity and gone beyond their inbuilt audience right but they are performing for a

00:09:05.080 public that is not merely mormon right yes which would make it different than i think like your

00:09:11.980 experience being a Mormon wife is that like you were performing your gender as a Mormon for other

00:09:19.940 Mormons, whereas these women are kind of trying to have a crossover appeal and remain Mormon at 0.73

00:09:27.520 the same time. Exactly. That's what I find fascinating about this new generation. So I 1.00

00:09:32.640 went to BYU, which is a school that a couple of them went to, including Macy, who played tennis

00:09:37.820 at BYU. And Jen's husband just graduated from BYU. So this is the main and only really Mormon

00:09:44.140 school. And when I was at BYU, they talk about the honor code. The honor code at BYU is essentially

00:09:52.220 the code of conduct. And it's not like a normal honor code. It goes into extreme detail about

00:09:59.000 what you can and can't do, including hair color, including number of pairs of earrings, including

00:10:03.700 can you or can you not wear sleeveless shirts or shorts? It really goes into an extended length

00:10:11.540 of detail and also dictates that you can't be in the same apartment as someone of the opposite sex 1.00

00:10:17.580 at certain hours. It's quite a code of conduct. And if you don't meet the standards of the honor 0.99

00:10:23.400 code, then you're kicked out of the university. And when I was at BYU, we just didn't do it.

00:10:29.060 There was a level of naivete that I think the internet has now breached, where kids who are doing things against the rules can talk to each other. I've been in some of these groups with kids at BYU, and we're like, well, how do you pass the honor code interviews? And they're like, we just lie.

00:10:47.640 And it's like, that literally never would have even occurred to me. And so it's just this totally new generation, I think, that is very willing to both live in this performance of piety, but also completely flout all of the rules in a very public way.

00:11:09.740 and and it's almost like a performance of imperfection like the way that you hear them

00:11:16.040 talk about it in interviews is like i'm just showing that you can be this kind of mormon

00:11:20.960 that you can drink you can do all these other things and you can still be mormon and i find

00:11:25.620 that extraordinarily interesting especially since they have these millions and millions

00:11:31.900 combined between them they have millions of followers on tiktok and other platforms which

00:11:37.860 obviously goes far beyond the Mormon audience. And in fact, many Mormons wouldn't watch their 0.78

00:11:43.980 show because their show shows things that are prohibited by practicing or very orthodox

00:11:49.900 Mormons. And I've also seen a lot, maybe this is just my algorithm, I've also seen a lot of

00:11:55.180 response videos from Mormons. And the response videos from Mormons are basically, this isn't

00:12:01.100 who we are. They're very disingenuous. It's a real distancing of them because they are claiming 0.98

00:12:07.680 this Mormon title. It's obviously very much, like you said, a part of their lived reality. They go

00:12:14.060 to church, all their families are Mormon, they live in Utah, but they do not see themselves

00:12:19.900 bound by the precepts in a way that previous generations did, I think.

00:12:26.920 So the women, as you say, are all part of this group called MomTalk, a word that they seem to 0.98

00:12:32.140 be contractually obligated to utter every 10 seconds in the show. I started a drinking game. 1.00

00:12:37.900 I had to abandon the drinking game five minutes in because I was like, I don't know how much more

00:12:41.280 I can take. But the other word that comes up the most, I think, is, well, how do they put it? Soft

00:12:48.120 swinging? Oh, yes. Yeah. So the backstory that is being explained to you over and over again is that

00:12:54.140 there was a soft swinging scandal within the group, which really seems to only involve one

00:12:57.960 of them who acknowledges being part of it. It felt to me like that Arrested Development joke

00:13:02.320 about light treason. I was like, what happened? What exactly happened?

00:13:07.720 Adrian, you say that this scandal is explained, but among the things that The Secret Lives of

00:13:15.360 Mormon Wives expects its viewership to know is what soft swinging is, A, and then B, what rules

00:13:25.860 Mormonism applies that these women are breaking or, and then, you know, scolding each other for 1.00

00:13:33.400 breaking and then breaking again in the next breath themselves, you know, their performative 0.78

00:13:38.940 transgression, their performative strictness, their performative outrage and hypocrisy,

00:13:45.600 all of it is just sort of based on the assumption that you have this information. And part of what

00:13:50.840 is like morbidly fascinating to me as a you know decadent secular lesbian in in a coastal city 0.74

00:13:58.680 uh is that i don't have any of this information right so it's like it's the thrum of subtext 0.94

00:14:04.800 that i am sort of like piecing together it's like is that i thought they weren't allowed to drink

00:14:09.620 but they're all drinking and um like what is exactly soft swinging like did you did you have 0.99

00:14:15.720 sex with your frenemies gay husband or not? It's like a question I just wanted to ask over and 0.99

00:14:21.040 over again. I wasn't sure whether it was the fact that I don't know that much about Mormonism or

00:14:25.700 whether it's the fact that this is how reality TV gets constructed. Of course, I know that there's

00:14:30.340 a whole separate sort of nomenclature around Mormon sexuality, but it kind of sounded to me

00:14:35.360 that Taylor Frankie Paul, who sort of is the instigator and May Secret star of the show,

00:14:40.180 may have originated this term

00:14:42.220 and then never bothered to explain it.

00:14:44.900 And she sort of never even named who was in it.

00:14:47.340 So it's this perfect reality show thing

00:14:49.880 where it's discourse about discourse.

00:14:51.360 Like she just used this word

00:14:52.780 and basically this is about the ripple effects of her

00:14:56.720 just like having a big mouth

00:14:58.120 and like kind of coming up with this word on the fly.

00:15:00.860 Is that what, was I right to think that?

00:15:02.760 My perception of the show is that

00:15:05.380 not only is it very rooted in social media,

00:15:08.460 it's also designed to drive you to social media. And so what they want you to do is be like,

00:15:14.420 stop swinging. And then you go online and you look it up and you look, you read additional

00:15:19.820 articles or you look at interviews or you, you actually have to go online to, they also don't

00:15:26.380 include any backstory or very, very little backstory about any of the women. So if you

00:15:31.920 want to know like a timeline of their life or like, you know, did they go to college or like,

00:15:37.000 you know, there's like some very basic questions that are not answered in the show. And I found

00:15:43.860 that so absent that I really think it was by design. They want people to go online. They want

00:15:50.520 people to listen to additional interviews. They want people to find, you know, stalk them on

00:15:55.120 TikTok and Instagram and go through all their reels to find the answers. Like a lot of things

00:16:00.020 I found were people making like seven part timeline videos on each girl of like all the

00:16:05.700 things that they found out about them on the internet well you're you're supposed to go 0.97

00:16:09.520 follow them on montauk right and then be another pair of eyeballs for their like vibrator spawn

00:16:15.220 con yes it's all very integrated and it's meant to drive traffic on the internet i think it's 1.00

00:16:21.800 another thing that people i've seen are like oh these girls are so dumb they're so ditzy and like 0.99

00:16:25.700 okay these girls are many things but dumb is not one of them yeah um they are very savvy about what 1.00

00:16:32.960 they are doing you can see that in all the product placement you can see that in that they're 1.00

00:16:37.440 obviously written into the contract that they cover their business launches you can see that

00:16:42.420 in the way that they uh fabricate interactions in order to drive traffic like they have been on the

00:16:49.240 internet for a long time they're very young but they've basically been on it their whole lives

00:16:53.960 and they're some of the most successful like there was a casting call for this show it's not that

00:16:58.840 these eight just happened to be the best of friends. It's like, these eight are the ones

00:17:02.920 who made it through the casting call to be on this show. And so some of them are like,

00:17:07.700 I didn't know you then. And it was like a year ago. Like they didn't know each other in such

00:17:11.920 an intimate way before the show was cast. And so it's a very like fabricated storyline with each

00:17:19.520 of these women being put together in an intentional way because of their following and because of

00:17:25.140 they're internet savvy and because of their business sense so they all do things to drive 1.00

00:17:31.500 traffic to make money like when you see the show you're like how does this 22 year old have this

00:17:36.300 huge house with this like incredible kitchen and she's driving you know a mercedes and she's like 0.97

00:17:42.900 they're very very wealthy girls and you can see that in the show and then they like you know 0.66

00:17:48.880 randomly take trips to Park City and Vegas and that is on purpose and I think the entire show

00:17:56.120 as you're watching it you're like wait I feel like I'm in I feel like I'm in the Truman Show

00:18:02.940 or something like I'm now part of this world that they're creating and I think that was very very

00:18:09.140 intentional. It's interesting that you bring up how much money they have because something that

00:18:14.380 was interesting to me was how self-conscious they are, you know, at turns proud and defiant, 0.93

00:18:21.360 and other turns, like, performatively vexed about being the breadwinners, because all these women

00:18:27.000 make more money than their husbands. Oh my god, there is, like, literally nothing more Mormon 1.00

00:18:32.520 than this particular conundrum, and really, I think this stems from the beginning of the church,

00:18:40.300 because, and something they don't really address in the show, but it's also assumed that you know,

00:18:45.900 is that Mormonism stems from founders who practice polygamy. And so the founder of Mormonism,

00:18:52.560 Joseph Smith, had in the ballpark of 37 wives, the youngest of whom was 14 years old when he was in

00:19:00.340 his late 20s and 30s. And then Brigham Young had in the ballpark of 47. I say in the ballpark

00:19:08.380 because some of these marriages were secret. And so, yeah, we have to keep in mind that this

00:19:14.360 is the context of this religion. And I think the thing that's so ironic about it, so you think

00:19:19.300 about how did Brigham Young have 47 wives? You would have to have been fabulously wealthy. And

00:19:24.800 of course, comparatively at the time, he was, started a lot of industries when they came to 0.95

00:19:30.140 Utah and obviously kicked out indigenous communities to make their community there.

00:19:35.600 but there were so many scandals at the time this is why i'm actually not surprised that the show

00:19:41.700 is very popular there has been a continual perpetual and indefinite fascination with

00:19:46.980 mormonism in in our culture that has always existed since it was founded in 1820 at the time

00:19:53.700 it was like this total national scandal polygamy um and so one of brigham young's wives uh the 19th

00:20:00.360 wife. Her name was Ann Eliza Young. They got married when he was 67 and she was 24. And she 0.55

00:20:06.700 claimed that he had coerced her into marrying him by threatening financial ruin on her brother.

00:20:11.980 So basically she did it to, she caved to him basically to save her brother. The point is

00:20:17.260 she filed for divorce from Brigham Young and this became national news. And what she claimed

00:20:22.900 was neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion. So from the beginning of Mormonism, there were these

00:20:28.940 men that were put at the head of household and in charge of these women, but they did not actually

00:20:34.860 provide for them. So this woman, Analyza Young and others, actually had to provide for themselves

00:20:41.680 in 1873. They were just married, but basically abandoned. They had to homestead themselves,

00:20:50.080 they had to find a way to work, they had tons of children. Specifically with Brigham Young,

00:20:55.360 he had hundreds of children, but the women are the ones who actually took care of the children 1.00

00:21:01.640 and provided for the children. And then the men were still this head of household, like very 0.99

00:21:07.540 deferred to, but they didn't actually take care of any of the bills or any of the tasks. 0.99

00:21:14.300 So you see this now in the modern context where these women earn all the money, make all the 1.00

00:21:19.840 decisions like you see them literally giving allowance to their husbands to gamble they're 1.00

00:21:26.280 like okay here's $2,500 you can I mean that's a lot of money so obviously they have tons of cash

00:21:31.560 but they have to give money to their husbands as an allowance the husbands somehow still are in

00:21:39.140 control still are seen as the head of household still are seen as the one who makes the decisions

00:21:44.620 and has the last word in everything they do for their family even in the case of Jen in the show

00:21:49.600 who makes the most money and obviously is the breadwinner. Her husband is like, okay, I'm

00:21:56.180 moving for medical school now. So we're going to drop everything and go to where I want to go,

00:22:01.020 do what I want to do. And that is very, very common in Mormonism and also a legacy. I know

00:22:07.280 so many girls who ended up paying alimony when they got divorced. This is way more common than 1.00

00:22:13.260 people think because the women actually earned more money and so they ended up when they got 0.99

00:22:19.360 divorced they ended up paying alimony to the men that's also very common in the community

00:22:23.660 i'm sorry i'm like here's some context from 1873 no it's perfect perfect now something i wanted to

00:22:30.800 ask you about just for our listeners who are on you know pins and needles as to what soft swinging

00:22:35.920 is guys the explanation that seems to be given in the show is non-penetrative swinging and the

00:22:42.580 question that i wrote down here is like including oral question mark yes so is that it is that soft

00:22:48.320 swinging i mean honestly i think you're right that taylor kind of made up or at least popularized

00:22:53.320 this term but again that's also so classically mormon uh from what i've heard and again this is

00:22:59.820 me going down like major rabbit holes of like long interviews with these people taylor has explained

00:23:06.120 that they were having sex with their actual husband, but in the room with other people.

00:23:13.620 And then there was some sort of exchange, but it was unclear who participated or what those acts

00:23:19.980 were. From what I can tell, it just sounds kind of like an orgy. And again, these are Mormon girls 0.92

00:23:26.840 who grew up in Utah. They never had sex ed. They don't know much of anything. They got married when

00:23:31.780 they were teenagers. They probably never had sex with anyone else before they got married.

00:23:35.220 so I think the terms are very fluid because they also don't know anything about sex like

00:23:41.920 it might just be an orgy and they don't know what that is and so it sounded to me like they didn't

00:23:48.540 really do a lot of switching partners which is what swinging actually is it sounded more to me

00:23:54.500 like they were just getting really drunk and like having sex in the same room and some people were

00:24:00.180 watching. But I think they created a term for it because we weren't really swinging. You know what

00:24:06.740 I mean? I know that Taylor then, of course, ended up having an affair, which she talks about in the

00:24:10.720 show, and divorcing that husband. And she said, actually, everyone who was involved in that

00:24:16.380 soft singing, quote unquote, scandal is now divorced. Like every single person,

00:24:20.760 every single couple who was involved is now divorced.

00:24:23.700 There is a great deal of creativity around sexuality among Mormons, right? And there's

00:24:29.040 also a lot of verbal creativity right there is that is that called soaking okay soaking is not

00:24:35.200 real oh it's not okay i don't think soaking is real okay when i was at byu again we were much

00:24:41.920 more naive but the main thing that mormons came up with when i was at byu was called nick mo

00:24:47.100 it was non-committal make out yes so you would just like meet up with someone and who you didn't

00:24:53.720 know and make out with them and like just walk away this was very scandalous at the time um so

00:24:58.840 onigma was the thing now they're saying it's soaking i'm like honestly i don't think that's

00:25:04.440 real i when you see interviews they're like oh yeah i've heard of it but like no one

00:25:08.640 has actually ever done it it's like rainbow parties yeah it's like okay although they're

00:25:14.100 an extraordinarily sexually repressed culture you are driven to some extremes to justify what

00:25:21.660 is the natural human instinct and so there are like for example i knew of people who like

00:25:26.520 went to Vegas and like you know did some sort of elopement situation got married and then ended up

00:25:31.880 dissolving the marriage basically just so they could have sex like yeah you you are driven to 0.56

00:25:36.340 some pretty far extremes but penetrative sex without thrusting which is what soaking is

00:25:43.740 allegedly seems very unlikely because you risk getting pregnant and that's the like number one

00:25:53.540 thing that you would try to avoid so i don't know i don't buy soaking personally okay

00:26:00.160 you mentioned kate there's that there's been this popular fascination with mormonism

00:26:06.760 from the quote-unquote outside world forever partly because i think the mormons with their

00:26:14.260 polygamy with their sort of like sense of sexual danger and also with their like geographic

00:26:21.460 isolation in utah for a big part of the religion's existence they like have this

00:26:27.840 frisson of appeal and difference i think maybe especially to you know um straight white men

00:26:34.660 uh and and and you mentioned when we were talking earlier about the show it's like there's actually 0.60

00:26:41.420 nothing secret about mormon wives lives because they're incapable of keeping a secret right and 0.74

00:26:46.960 It seems like there's some sense in which they are taking on a very old Mormon tradition of 1.00

00:26:53.980 advertising their lifestyle out into the secular world. And maybe the contention within Mormonism

00:27:00.700 isn't about doing that per se, but about how they're going about it.

00:27:04.160 Oh, absolutely. Also, Utah is a very, very specific context. There's endless fascination

00:27:11.460 with this place that is essentially a theocracy. When I was there, I think it was 94% of the

00:27:16.940 the state legislature is Mormon. So it's just like an absolute total reign of state politics 1.00

00:27:23.480 and a supermajority in most places of Mormons or active Mormons who live there. And so whether or

00:27:31.800 not you participate in the church, Utah is a very specific and unique place. In some ways great and

00:27:39.460 in some ways terrible, if we're being perfectly honest. In the terrible ways, you know, specifically

00:27:45.420 to understand these girls context, Utah is routinely judged to be the worst state in the 1.00

00:27:53.120 United States for women. It's almost always number 50 on every list. And that's everywhere 0.99

00:27:58.260 from like sexual assault to participation in governance to wage gap to, you know, most of the

00:28:04.980 categories. It's also pretty routinely the place for highest per capita plastic surgery. So that's

00:28:12.920 more than la for example like i mean i believe that having looked at this show i was like i did

00:28:18.640 not know you could do that to your lip at 21 my god yes so my parents uh lived in provo the city

00:28:24.640 where these most of these girls live and when girls turned 18 their parents would gift them

00:28:30.640 a boob job for their birthday their 18th birthday so this is not only like permitted it's very 0.99

00:28:37.240 encouraged within the culture um my sister lives in lehigh utah the other day i was she's like i

00:28:42.900 haven't seen the show and i was like girl it's just your neighbors basically like and she said

00:28:48.600 girls in her neighborhood have botox parties at their house so it's like a tupperware party but

00:28:54.380 you invite all your friends over and you all get botox at your house this is very common today

00:28:59.320 uh so that's how pervasive plastic surgery and cosmetic enhancements are if you drive down

00:29:06.200 I-15, which is the main highway in Utah, you're just pummeled by billboards. LASIK surgery,

00:29:13.920 microdermabrasion, plastic surgery, just every single billboard just pummels you with the desire

00:29:22.540 to enhance your looks cosmetically. And this is because the only value to women in that culture 1.00

00:29:29.180 is how they look and can they reproduce. And so these girls are very good at being valued 1.00

00:29:36.360 in that culture. And if you have to get surgery, if you have to get fake hair, if you have to 1.00

00:29:42.420 wear all this makeup, all these things are fine in and of themselves. But if you're doing it

00:29:47.740 because the only thing you're valued for in your culture is that, that sets up a really,

00:29:53.980 really dangerous dangerous precedent and by dangerous um one of the other things that utah

00:29:59.460 has the highest of per capita is eating disorders oh this is very very common but it's kind of

00:30:06.200 become a cottage industry to have like treatment centers for eating disorders in utah there's tons

00:30:11.960 of them and they've developed this expertise because it's so common in the community my god

00:30:17.340 something very strange about the experience of watching this show is it first of all nothing

00:30:23.080 happens right it's it's like we went roller skating yeah the conflict such as there is

00:30:29.900 is incredibly low stakes but it's also somewhat hard to follow the conflict at least for me or 0.96

00:30:37.500 to discern the stakes of the conflict because none of these women can make any emotional expression 0.99

00:30:43.060 with their faces you know their faces have you know the kind of standard uncanny uniformity 1.00

00:30:50.320 of Botox and of injectables. So they all look exactly the same. It's very, very difficult to

00:30:56.480 tell them apart, but also none of them can frown or raise their eyebrows in surprise. So they've

00:31:04.660 always got these blank expressions, right? And it strikes me as like maybe an unintended side

00:31:11.760 effect of all the plastic surgery is that they're not capable of expressing rage just on a

00:31:16.320 physiological level. But like, what's more desired in such an extreme patriarchy than a woman who 0.95

00:31:21.680 cannot express discontent? Yeah. I mean, that really is the platonic ideal of a woman in that 0.99

00:31:28.740 culture is someone who can do nothing but smile. And they don't really touch on it. But prescription

00:31:35.620 drug abuse is another big problem in the state. A lot of times people won't do illegal drugs,

00:31:41.260 but they will abuse prescription drugs, particularly these Mormon moms. And so it's this 0.99

00:31:48.440 outsourcing of emotion, whether you physically can not frown or you're so hopped up on prescription

00:31:57.100 drugs that you can't feel emotions. And so I don't know, I find the conflict hard to follow

00:32:04.360 because like, also like we'll have these manufactured conflicts and they'll just be

00:32:08.720 like but i love you like or she's my best friend or you know like they try to resolve the conflict

00:32:15.040 real time and that's very mormon like that's i find the show to actually be so authentic

00:32:22.540 in so many ways because the mormons say call it contention and contention is of the devil

00:32:28.620 that's like the number one thing that you're not supposed to have and so fighting with anyone or

00:32:34.360 having a conflict with anyone would be very short-lived no matter how dire or serious it is

00:32:41.940 because you just you know it's the opposite of a new yorker you're you're never gonna yell at

00:32:47.000 anyone you're never gonna like you know have a beef with someone publicly everything in these

00:32:51.840 girls trainings is to not have this type of conflict and so when they do have it it's like

00:32:57.700 okay then we all made up in the same hour you know like that actually is very authentically

00:33:03.780 Mormon. Yeah, I thought it was funny. I called it in my notes, the real housewives of making

00:33:08.460 subtext text, because like they literally, I think, I think Michaela says like, can't wait 0.92

00:33:13.200 for your confrontation with Whitney later. Right. And I'm like, just because the producer said that

00:33:17.360 to you doesn't mean you have to say it to a camera. Like these are very savvy media operators

00:33:22.700 and very savvy media manipulators, except in that one way. They seem to be like holding a grudge

00:33:28.100 seems to be genuinely difficult for them.

00:33:30.740 Like the kind of deep, soulful hatred, you know,

00:33:35.380 we have family and my family, we're thick as thieves, right?

00:33:38.460 Like they can't, they don't seem to be able to do that.

00:33:41.840 And like, it's actually kind of charming the way,

00:33:44.960 like the show can't get going

00:33:46.800 because they're kind of refusing

00:33:48.260 to have these like deep seated kind of fights.

00:33:52.500 One thing I wanted to ask about the kind of role of emotions

00:33:55.600 that, you know, are rebel kind of, Taylor.

00:33:59.100 In some way, the whole scandal is about the fact 0.90

00:34:01.260 that she was too enthusiastically participating

00:34:04.560 in making the men around her feel good, right?

00:34:06.700 Like, it's ultimately, like,

00:34:08.240 the sweetest form of rebellion you could possibly have, right?

00:34:12.560 She then tattled, that's one thing,

00:34:13.940 but, like, but it's very clear, right?

00:34:15.420 Like, in some way, it's not that she pushed back

00:34:17.320 against the patriarchy.

00:34:18.260 If anything, she, like,

00:34:19.720 acceded to a particular version of the patriarchy, right?

00:34:22.420 And the other thing that it made me think of was

00:34:24.260 there's something here that I think you're driving at

00:34:27.040 that I found very interesting,

00:34:28.540 where on the one hand, this is a new generation. 1.00

00:34:31.760 These women talk in ways that you say, 1.00

00:34:34.000 you know, people didn't use tube, 1.00

00:34:35.100 they act in ways that would have been unimaginable.

00:34:37.780 At the same time, they are clearly using

00:34:40.460 some very old templates, as you're also pointing out.

00:34:43.220 I think that's fascinating.

00:34:44.140 And one thing I thought about,

00:34:45.160 I've only been to Provo once, I got to say,

00:34:46.840 I drove through Utah County.

00:34:48.320 And the other thing I know about it

00:34:49.780 is that a bunch of MLMs are headquartered there, right? 1.00

00:34:52.660 And so the way these women sort of in this chipper way, in this kind of like slightly 0.78

00:34:58.460 step 40, and to be quite honest, way kind of promote a particular lifestyle brand.

00:35:03.440 I'm like, on the one hand, like, yes, the way social media suffuses their world is clearly

00:35:07.680 new, but the things they've fallen back on and the fact that they can do it kind of from 0.98

00:35:12.340 a domestic setting strikes me as a very, very canny evolution of the way their moms might 1.00

00:35:18.980 have gotten rich and might have sustained their deadbeat husbands. Is that accurate? Like,

00:35:23.560 is there a through line here? Or am I just, are those the two facts I know about Provo, Utah?

00:35:29.260 Well, I think it's really important context to understand what good salespeople Mormons are.

00:35:35.560 And this transcends genders and locations. I mean, when you think about it,

00:35:40.560 the missionary program of the church is literally to export the religion. I'm a former missionary

00:35:46.380 myself. I served a mission in Barcelona, Spain when I was much, much younger. In another life,

00:35:52.020 I was a Mormon missionary. And the thing that you learn, you learn two things. One is how to sell

00:35:58.900 things that are very hard to sell. For example, an American religion to Spaniards. And the other

00:36:06.200 thing that you learn is that the only people who are on your side are your people. So you build

00:36:14.060 like a super high tolerance to rejection and that's what the experience is intended to do 0.99

00:36:21.880 and so you see these girls like doing things you're like man I probably wouldn't do that publicly 0.79

00:36:27.380 or say that publicly or what it is but they've really been inoculated to understand that their

00:36:34.220 closed community is the only community that will ever be there for them and that's all you'll ever

00:36:39.400 need. And so I think they have a super high tolerance for rejection. And that's also

00:36:46.300 obviously something that the internet teaches you. If you have millions of followers on the

00:36:50.680 internet, you're very primed to be able to withstand rejection. So I think, yeah, the MLM

00:36:56.240 piece means that they're also very, very good at selling things and getting people beneath them in

00:37:02.660 their downline. And this is just like absolutely rife in the culture. You'll notice all of them

00:37:08.960 have their little businesses that they're starting. I'm selling gummies. I'm selling

00:37:13.080 hair. I'm selling, you know, they have these businesses and they get people under them

00:37:16.960 and they're super successful at doing that. And part of that is because the culture they were

00:37:23.380 raised in. And I really want to touch on the part you, you talked about, about them succeeding at

00:37:28.560 the patriarchy, because this for me really gets at the core of not only the secret lives of Mormon

00:37:36.320 wives but also all of these other mormon women that are mommy bloggers or influencers that are

00:37:44.420 sort of performing in the trad life space so this is ballerina farm this is nora smith

00:37:51.360 mora's white whale friend of the show ballerina farm

00:37:55.180 nora smith is the one who makes like animal crackers from scratch also mormons both of them 0.99

00:38:04.980 Yes. Almost all super, super successful mommy bloggers are Mormons. They may not be super 0.93

00:38:11.840 upfront about it in their messaging. Like Norah Smith actually doesn't talk about being Mormon

00:38:16.820 in her videos or like any of her content, but you just have to like know that separately that

00:38:22.220 she's Mormon. And you wouldn't guess it because she's wearing sleeveless clothing in a lot of

00:38:27.040 the videos, which is forbidden. And so a lot of these women are honing in on this super specific 0.98

00:38:35.980 skill that they learn in the community and turning it into a business model that allows them to stay 1.00

00:38:43.920 at home and perform femininity. So if you're at home, you can have a job. If you're not at home, 1.00

00:38:52.480 you can't have a job. So even when I was studying for the LSAT in Provo, Utah, planning on going to

00:38:58.180 law school, I was in a class of hundreds of people. I was one of six women studying to go

00:39:04.120 to law school. So it's very, very uncommon even now for women to have a career outside the home.

00:39:11.260 So these women have to be creative so that they can have these careers, but also be still in the 1.00

00:39:17.100 home. And that's why there's this intersection of women influencers who are Mormon, because they 0.99

00:39:24.660 have to be creative in the space. And the last thing I'll say about this point is these women 0.99

00:39:29.800 have to make up for the fact that they are actually very successful career women by over or 1.00

00:39:37.700 hyper-performing their other feminine roles. So they have to be very pretty. They have to have 1.00

00:39:44.220 their children. They have to talk about their children. They have to pretend that they're

00:39:48.680 centering their children in their identities, even though they very clearly aren't. And you never hear

00:39:53.380 them talk about their kids on the show. And if you do see them with their kids in the show,

00:39:57.560 the kids are just like running wild and they never hold them or talk to them or talk about them.

00:40:02.900 It's very clearly not their primary identity, even though the show has the word wives in it,

00:40:08.720 But they have to hyper-perform that in order to make up for the other sin of having a career.

00:40:16.000 And I'll give an example from my life.

00:40:17.720 My mom was an attorney.

00:40:18.780 This was, even for her generation, even less common. 1.00

00:40:22.360 She was, you know, very, very looked down on in the community because she had a job outside the home. 1.00

00:40:28.120 And in order to hyper-perform, to make up for the fact that she was a lawyer, my mom would sew our clothes. 1.00

00:40:35.980 She did quilting. 1.00

00:40:37.460 She became like an expert in quilting. She was very into scrapbooking. She like really, really 0.85

00:40:44.200 excelled at these hyper feminine crafts in order to prove to people that she wasn't a bad person 1.00

00:40:53.620 for being a lawyer. Almost like a gender debt that has to be paid, right? Like you have to make up 1.00

00:40:58.920 in scrapbooking what you have spent in being a attorney exactly that's exactly it that is 0.99

00:41:08.340 literally what's happening and so these women are very successful are incredibly ambitious like 0.96

00:41:15.220 and we can talk about this later in the show but i think that's part of the reason a lot of them

00:41:18.580 have ended up with gay men um is because these gay men will allow them to have this path in life

00:41:25.960 Whereas actual straight men, Mormon men would not allow them to have this much autonomy. And so I think that they're cyber performing a lot of this in order to make up for what they know is ambition.

00:41:39.140 I think that's so fascinating. You kind of in the show, you're watching two economies of prestige, right? One is the influencer one where it's about clicks. They all mention how many TikTok followers they have, how many views they get, etc, etc. That's how they make their money.

00:41:54.140 But then, as you say, it's the community that matters.

00:41:57.100 And there is this kind of prestige that counts more, right?

00:42:01.340 And you have to balance these two.

00:42:02.860 Like one form of prestige is how you make your money.

00:42:05.360 The other is kind of what you need to live, it seems to me.

00:42:07.960 Like there are two places where this seemed very obvious to me in the first two episodes.

00:42:12.380 There's a conversation that Taylor has with her mom, Leanne, right?

00:42:16.080 So Taylor has a new boyfriend.

00:42:17.560 I think his name is Dakota.

00:42:18.900 Also the names, the incredibly Mormon names.

00:42:21.600 This is a man named Dakota.

00:42:23.400 Sorry, go on.

00:42:24.600 I know, I was like, why is this not a lady?

00:42:26.900 But yeah.

00:42:27.460 10 out of 10, no notes.

00:42:29.100 Yeah, so what had happened apparently

00:42:30.500 is that Taylor had asked on TikTok

00:42:31.800 whether she should date Dakota.

00:42:33.440 Now her mom comments on TikTok saying,

00:42:36.640 you shouldn't do that.

00:42:38.280 And then her mom is like, 0.60

00:42:40.080 you disregard from a TikTok comment? 0.50

00:42:42.500 And it's just like really interesting way.

00:42:44.040 Like I could see myself having the conversation

00:42:46.140 with my mother really like, 1.00

00:42:47.160 why are you putting this shit on TikTok? 0.99

00:42:48.940 But that's not the problem. 0.99

00:42:49.920 The mother went through TikTok, 0.95

00:42:51.160 but then she's like you performed disobedience when i very clearly told you on that social media

00:42:56.460 site not to do it i was like oh there's something interesting about like parental authority and

00:43:02.160 social media running into each other in really interesting ways and then the other thing was

00:43:07.000 one of these moments when taylor sort of almost blows up the entire premise of the show because

00:43:11.280 she's like you know when the soft swinging scandal breaks everyone was using it for clout and then

00:43:16.960 she asks did i ruin your life or did i help your life right like and of course the answer is both

00:43:22.420 right and so like the way these two kind of economies of prestige and of standing and esteem

00:43:28.360 both run parallel but also are interlaced at every point because like it's just the social

00:43:33.060 media age strikes me as so fascinating it also gave them like a foil to cast themselves against

00:43:40.180 like i wasn't part of that they're very clear like who was and wasn't they make a point of

00:43:46.720 saying there are saints and there are sinners in the group. Those are like the two sort of teams

00:43:51.740 they create within the group because there's eight of them. And so you have to try to distinguish

00:43:56.280 them somehow, even though they literally all look exactly the same. They literally buy their hair

00:44:01.300 from the same place. Like this isn't a mystery why they all look the same, but they form these

00:44:06.780 categories. And I think Taylor is kind of the foil. So they're like, okay, none of us did that

00:44:11.600 saying that she did so they can say like okay we're not like her we're like the good mom talkers

00:44:17.780 and then they also form in this group these like saints and sinners and the the things that make 0.60

00:44:23.740 them sinners are so hilarious because they all kind of wear these like according to mormons 0.90

00:44:29.120 slutty outfits they all kind of like you know dance in provocative ways they all went to vegas 0.99

00:44:34.300 together they all you know to some degree like drink or don't drink but at the end of the day

00:44:40.160 the things that make them sinners and divide the group between the sinners and the saints is the

00:44:46.700 girls who got divorced and i think that's a very important commentary on the more liberated girls

00:44:53.340 the girls who don't buy into everything the girls who don't pretend to wear under you know mormon

00:44:58.600 garments the girls who don't perform these specific acts or make themselves temple worthy they talk

00:45:04.840 about that in the show um which means you're permitted to go to the mormon temples and not

00:45:09.140 everyone is the girls who are more liberated are the ones who are it's not subtle they're they're

00:45:15.560 literally dubbed the sinners of the show yeah tell me a little bit about the mormon approach

00:45:20.100 to divorce because this is a really fascinating thing right like they a lot of them have been

00:45:27.080 divorced one of them gets divorced over the course of the show uh you can see some other divorces

00:45:32.720 common from a mile away that I think might be a part of season two.

00:45:38.660 Season two.

00:45:39.600 And yet how common it is seems maybe a little contradictory to the kinds of lives that they

00:45:45.400 are trying to perform, right? 1.00

00:45:47.460 Yeah, I think the thing that's so, I mean, Mormons get divorced just like everyone else 1.00

00:45:52.060 does. 0.99

00:45:52.420 You know, it's like 50% or more.

00:45:53.940 That's across all religions, all demographics.

00:45:57.340 Divorce is the most common outcome of a marriage in this country.

00:46:00.200 but I think the thing that's fascinating to me is how young they're getting divorced most women I

00:46:07.600 know I'm 44 most women in my age group that are I you know I basically everyone I know still in

00:46:13.260 the community is a Mormon feminist I don't know anyone who's not divorced period like there was 0.59

00:46:19.140 a woman who was making a documentary about Mormon feminists at one point she'd been filming us all

00:46:23.480 for years and she never finished the film and I said why did you not finish the film and she said

00:46:28.800 everyone got divorced and I had been following their families this whole time. And so then

00:46:35.700 literally every single person I'd been profiling got divorced. And I was like, well, maybe that's

00:46:40.840 the happy ending, you know, like maybe that's, you know, we all liberated ourselves from these

00:46:45.980 extremely patriarchal men, but that's not the story she wanted to tell. So I say that to say

00:46:50.800 it is common in the community, but it is very frowned upon for obvious reasons. Mormons believe

00:46:57.100 an eternal marriage. So that's the whole point of the temple ceremony. So you get married in a

00:47:01.900 temple. Those are those big, very flashy, white castle-looking buildings. And this is different

00:47:07.460 than a church? Yeah. So a temple is not a church. A church is just like a, you know, could be in a

00:47:13.440 strip mall, could be like a sort of low-key building in your neighborhood. That's where you

00:47:18.560 go for your weekly services. A temple is a special place where only certain people can go. There are

00:47:24.560 requirements to be temple worthy. One of them is that you pay a full tithe. So if you do not

00:47:30.100 tithe 10% of your net worth, which is checked against your tax records each year in an interview

00:47:37.080 with your ecclesiastical leader, if you do not do that, then you are not temple worthy and you

00:47:41.960 cannot go. There are other things, obviously, you can't have sex outside your marriage, you can't

00:47:46.480 drink, you can't smoke, like you have to meet all the community standards in order to be temple

00:47:50.400 worthy but you are only going to get married in the temple if you are worthy and so that reflects

00:47:57.700 an eternal marriage which they think extends beyond the grave and that you would be in this

00:48:03.020 heterosexual marriage for eternity which like yeah doesn't exactly sound like heaven to a lot

00:48:08.480 of women so but i say that to say like divorce is extremely frowned upon even if it is common

00:48:16.400 because that's really central to the cosmology of the entire project and like even like I have

00:48:22.260 a friend who got divorced and got remarried to another man but her family still invites her ex

00:48:28.300 to all of their holidays because he's her true eternal husband and they didn't get a temple

00:48:35.380 divorce and so literally the family to this day still treats her ex-husband who she's been legally

00:48:41.800 divorced from as her husband and invites him to family events. And so that's how extreme

00:48:48.760 divorce is treated in the community. Wow. So we got to talk about the gay husbands.

00:48:56.320 What's with gay husbands? I mean, sorry, not to make this about things that I care about, 0.64

00:49:01.720 but I think, well, first of all, they were not hot Mormon gays, but still, you know. 0.50

00:49:05.240 Adrienne and I were watching different episodes last night at the same time, 0.82

00:49:09.260 and i made a remark about the gay husbands and he was like wait which husband is gay and i was like

00:49:14.780 the gay one it's like wait a second you'll see and then he then he got there and he did 0.62

00:49:20.580 oh yeah and you're like oh yes oh yeah so okay i feel like this is also so 0.89

00:49:29.080 oh Mormon we're like the campiest people on planet earth we have pageants we have you know road shows

00:49:40.140 we are extremely committed to musical theater more so than any community I've ever known

00:49:46.120 every single kid learns how to play the piano like it's it's a very very campy culture when I

00:49:53.700 was at BYU someone was visiting and they're like man it's so like I didn't know that you know

00:49:59.020 Mormons were so welcoming of gay people and I'm like what do you mean and they're like I mean look

00:50:04.060 around there's so many gay guys like and I was like no they're at least they don't know that

00:50:08.400 they're gay you know what I mean like it's just an extremely gay culture I'm one of five siblings

00:50:14.580 and at least three of the five are out queers in my family so it's like a high percentage gay 0.96

00:50:21.780 but also like totally unbeknownst to the people themselves so these gay husbands that you're 0.83

00:50:28.780 seeing it's pretty likely that they don't know they're gay mormons call being gay inside the

00:50:35.300 community they call it same-sex attracted and so basically you there's no such thing as being gay

00:50:40.420 you have what they call a trial or a problem and the problem is that you're same-sex attracted

00:50:46.420 so the the person who comes across as the most gay in the show is whitney's husband connor and

00:50:53.000 there's a scandal where he's like looking at an app but it's like a little bit unclear like is 0.80

00:50:58.960 the app actually tinder or is the app grinder you know what i mean but either way he is real gay 0.93

00:51:07.740 and doesn't know it also has a porn addiction well okay that is like a whole yeah we'll get 0.94

00:51:14.200 back to that they never say what kind you know exactly well she did say several times he's

00:51:22.520 confused which is a euphemism for he's confused about his sexuality so that's like basically

00:51:29.620 mormon admitting that he's struggling with same-sex attraction so yes i mean not to speculate

00:51:37.100 over people we don't know but i guess that's the entire point of reality tv um i also think

00:51:42.340 Macy's husband is gay and doesn't know it. This is probably true of several of them. And I say

00:51:48.660 this to say because women who are as assertive and powerful as these girls are, are often not

00:51:56.800 going to want to be constricted by the type of Mormon man who, you know, would not let them go

00:52:04.040 to Vegas, would not let them have a business, would not let them, you know, even if they make 0.99

00:52:10.600 the money. I'm using the words let them very intentionally because that is the case. Like if

00:52:16.200 your husband says, no, you can't do it. And so these women don't want to be with someone like 1.00

00:52:21.900 that because they want to do it. And so I think these types of people are very attracted to each 1.00

00:52:28.800 other. And in some ways it can be liberating for them in the same way that like many of these

00:52:35.800 polygamous wives of Brigham Young were like, okay, well, I'm just going to homestead on my own 0.60

00:52:40.740 or do my own thing. So yes, I think that these women are probably attracted to gay men.

00:52:47.440 Mormons have a term called mixed orientation marriage. So they may consider themselves to be

00:52:54.340 in a mixed orientation marriage, or at some point they may discover that they are in a mixed

00:52:59.860 orientation marriage. This does not mean in the community that you have to get divorced,

00:53:03.780 ironically and even sometimes if they knew they were gay before they got married they may have

00:53:08.160 been encouraged to marry a woman in order to heal themselves of same-sex attraction so i don't know

00:53:16.080 these people i don't know what their bad stories are but i do know that this is very common in the

00:53:22.140 community and when i saw them on screen i was immediately like that is the case they are in a

00:53:28.360 mixed orientation marriage. Whitney is getting the villain at it and seems to not have any idea, 0.99

00:53:33.440 but she's my favorite because I want more of these. Oh my God. I want more of these women to

00:53:39.340 unleash their evil and their unbridled ambition. And I really find it beautiful that their gay 1.00

00:53:46.180 husbands can stand behind them and support them in their evil pursuits. And dance with them. Yeah. 1.00

00:53:52.760 Yeah. She has a lot of TikToks dancing with her husband. I'll just say that. 1.00

00:53:58.360 Yeah. So it's very funny how anxious everyone is to make sure to imply that the soft swinging

00:54:06.340 scandal that they A, can't shut up about, B, that they can't provide any details about

00:54:10.280 was not same sex. Right. Because you hear like a bunch of mom talkers in a swingers club. You're 0.82

00:54:16.460 like, oh, I mean, like your mind might run to like, oh, maybe these women got busy with each 0.99

00:54:20.460 other. There seems to be like a lot of like work done by these women on camera. Now, obviously,

00:54:26.540 like this is reality tv so maybe this is the producer doing this but maybe it's also them

00:54:30.880 just not shutting up about it seemingly wanting to be very clear that they were like not soaking

00:54:36.280 whatever they were doing uh each other's husbands and not each other meanwhile i have a great 1.00

00:54:42.500 hermeneutics of suspicion when it comes to reality tv but like these women are touching each other a 1.00

00:54:47.960 lot they are all over each other constantly and as i mean as housewives all across bravo do and 1.00

00:54:56.160 as I think people who consume a lot of plastic surgery do are just constantly complimenting each 1.00

00:55:01.540 other's boobs and butts. And it's like, yeah, right. I'm like, yeah, it's just kind of amazing 0.98

00:55:08.740 that it never comes up. Here we are just friends showing each other our labia as friends do.

00:55:15.720 Again, so gay, but like, how do you not know you're gay? But I'll tell you as someone who 0.99

00:55:22.120 was mormon and was married to a man for a decade and came out as gay uh very relatively recently

00:55:27.720 myself it honestly because of the extreme conditioning you don't ever even consider it

00:55:36.520 like i was never like pining away like i had a best friend in college uh this best friend we

00:55:43.660 like shared a car shared a house shared finances like people would joke about it like oh man you

00:55:50.020 guys are peas in a pod. And we would say out loud, we don't kiss because if we did, we would

00:55:56.960 never need men. And even that, I never considered that I was gay. Never. Like it did not occur to

00:56:06.620 me. It was so off the table that I wasn't even like, you know how gay men are like, I was tortured 1.00

00:56:12.180 since I was three and I always knew I was gay and blah, blah, blah, blah. That was not my story. 0.68

00:56:16.500 It did not occur to me. And I think also in these very close societies, women have these super close relationships in order to escape the extreme version of patriarchy. Even within Mormonism, in the Sunday agenda, there is a women-only group. It's called the Relief Society. And there's all kinds of jokes like, oh, we're getting relief from the men. 1.00

00:56:40.880 And so in Relief Society, it's always the best meeting. It's always women bonding. It's always like, you know, the time we get to be super close to each other. And so these women, obviously, they're now being perceived by the outside world, but they don't see it as gay. They just see it as like getting along with each other and forming this sisterhood that's so close.

00:57:04.360 so I don't think that they know that they're gay I think there are some of them that like

00:57:08.680 I just want like a 15 year reunion from now where like everyone is gay and out everyone is divorced

00:57:14.900 everyone is like you know done their like incredible thing um because I think that's 0.52

00:57:20.380 probably going to be the case like I think Whitney and Macy are in love obviously this is why Macy 0.75

00:57:26.480 gives her so much like leeway and Macy just has like a super gay vibe in like the best way possible 1.00

00:57:33.920 and is going over the top to forgive Whitney 0.99

00:57:37.420 and like be the one who always goes to her,

00:57:39.700 be the one to say like,

00:57:41.000 I'm your friend no matter what. 0.97

00:57:42.740 So anyways, those two have a very gay vibe to me 1.00

00:57:44.840 and I hope someday that's true 0.99

00:57:47.140 and in 15 years they can come out and be lesbians. 0.99

00:57:50.000 That might be a great hope to end on.

00:57:51.820 I love this beautiful vision 0.92

00:57:53.260 for the Mormon wives of the future. 0.89

00:57:56.380 Mormon, like two Mormon wives in one house. 1.00

00:57:58.700 You don't need the gay husband maybe in the end. 1.00

00:58:02.440 He does the gardening. 1.00

00:58:04.960 He stops by once a week to do the garden.

00:58:06.800 You can co-parent with him.

00:58:09.940 You've got your children. 0.86

00:58:11.280 You've achieved the lesbian dream.

00:58:13.020 You had a dedicated 1.00

00:58:14.920 sperm donor who's still in their lives 1.00

00:58:17.200 and lived the lesbian dream. 0.99

00:58:19.280 Yeah, and he can be on Tinder all he wants. 0.93

00:58:21.380 Or anything.

00:58:22.500 Grindr even.

00:58:23.260 Grindr even, yeah.

00:58:25.960 Okay, Kelly.

00:58:27.280 Thank you for walking us through the wild 1.00

00:58:29.340 wacky world of Mormon gender 1.00

00:58:31.100 politics as seen through this truly ridiculous show, there's nobody I would have rather talked 1.00

00:58:37.180 about this with. So thank you so much for coming on In Bed with the Right. And we'll see you next 0.66

00:58:41.680 time. In Bed with the Right, we'd like to thank the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender

00:58:47.920 Research for generous support. Jennifer Portillo for setting up our studio. Our producer is Katie

00:58:52.920 Lau.

In Bed With The Right - October 09, 2024

Episode 34： The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

Episode Stats

Transcript