00:00:00.000You know what's more terrifying than a man in a red hat screaming about socialism?0.61
00:00:10.660A teenage girl in a $70 pastel crewneck sweater quoting Charlie Kirk between bites of an acai
00:00:17.500bowl. This week we're stepping into the rhinestone-studded world of the Turning Point USA's
00:00:23.700Young Women's Leadership Summit, a conservative influencer pipeline disguised as maybe the most
00:00:31.120fun slumber party you've ever been to. It is also wildly effective, and I do not think we are
00:00:37.580talking nearly enough about how this is a direct pipeline for Gen Z women to turn to the conservative
00:00:44.180party. My guest today is journalist E.J. Dixon, who covered the conference for The Cut and came
00:00:50.700back with one of the most incisive, unsettling dispatches that I've read in years. The pipeline
00:00:57.400is strong, the vibes and branding are immaculate, and the messaging, check out of the workforce,
00:01:04.180find a husband, smear beef tallow on your face, and have as many babies as possible, is working.0.56
00:01:12.360Today EJ and I are talking about the rise of conservative femininity as an aesthetic,0.90
00:01:17.160one that promises a simpler life, a prettier existence, and happiness. Actual happiness.
00:01:26.440The thing that we need to talk about is that this is so much bigger than Donald Trump. These girls
00:01:31.560are not necessarily drawn to Donald Trump or anything that he represents, but they are being
00:01:37.360pulled into the conservative movement because the influencers in this movement are so damn good at
00:01:43.360what they do. Speaking of these influencers and their well-curated lies, quick reminder that
00:01:49.920Everyone is Lying to is coming out so freaking soon, so get your orders in today. It's one of
00:01:55.620the most fun reads of the summer, and it's going to take down the patriarchy a few notches.
00:02:00.720But back to how the conservatives are brainwashing teenage girls.
00:02:06.100Hey, EJ, how you doing? Hi, thanks for having me on.
00:02:09.560Oh my God, thanks for coming back. So your latest article for The Cut was a peek inside Turning Point USA's Young Women Conference, which is just a world and a vibe and a cultural phenomenon that I'm obsessed with and that I want to tell my audience more about. Let's start out. What is Turning Point?
00:02:32.780Right. So Turning Point is an organization founded by Charlie Kirk that is primarily it's a right wing organization that's primarily targeted at high school and college students.
00:02:44.580There are various youth chapters on various campuses and it's aimed at recruiting, I guess is the right word, Gen Z students to conservatism.
00:02:57.720And I think they're doing a really good job. Even a few years ago, I would have said it was kind of fringe. And I don't think it, maybe I'm wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't feel as fringe anymore, especially because the clips from it infiltrate social media to an insane extent.
00:03:18.080I mean, these videos are watched sometimes, sometimes millions of times. And so it's no longer something just happening behind closed doors. It's something being broadcast to a whole generation of young girls, right?
00:03:30.820Yeah, I was actually really surprised by when I was talking to a lot of the young women there.
00:03:37.820A lot of them said that they weren't brought to the movement by any female influencers like the usual suspects like Alex Clark or Brett Cooper or Ken Zowins.
00:03:49.160They actually came to the movement because of the clips they had seen of Charlie Kirk on campuses debating with students.
00:03:56.280so that that surprised me uh that i mean i had seen the clips before and i knew that they had
00:04:02.060gotten a lot of traction but that they had been so influential with that specific demographic
00:04:06.220uh was a little a little surprising to me yeah yeah and i also didn't know i considered going
00:04:13.100to this emily emick and i were like we should definitely go and emily's like we would get
00:04:17.400kicked out i'm like i don't i don't know if we would so were they welcoming to what what could
00:04:22.560still be called i guess mainstream press they were incredibly nice everybody was incredibly nice to
00:04:27.740me even the people who didn't want to talk incredibly nice incredibly polite uh even the
00:04:33.640people uh railing against the left-wing media and antifa and blm because obviously we're all
00:04:39.920in cahoots with each other everyone according to them yeah yeah yeah um even they were incredibly
00:04:45.040nice incredibly polite um turning points was it was very nice and very polite i mean i got a call
00:04:50.480before I got there being like, hey, listen, are you doing this in good faith?
00:04:54.080And I was like, yeah, I mean, I don't I don't do anything in bad faith.
00:05:20.480And that was exactly what you wrote, too. I do think you did a great job peeling back the curtain on this world with that question in mind. You know, why is this working? Why is this branding? Why is this cultural shift happening?
00:05:34.880And I watch clips from these videos. I post some clips online. And I watched a lot of the conference because they're not really hiding anything. It's in plain sight. They broadcast it on YouTube. And these girls look like they're having the most fun. It looks like a delightful slumber party.
00:05:55.580It doesn't, like I said, it doesn't feel like a fringe movement anymore. It looks, if you listen to it on mute, delightful. And then when I turn the volume up, I'm like, oh, God, no, no. Mostly from things that I was hearing out of the mouths of Charlie Kirk and Alex Clark. But the enthusiasm is high, right?
00:06:17.520And I think if you are a young woman between the ages, if you're any woman, like that enthusiasm and that sense of community feels contagious and exciting.
00:06:36.660Talk to me a little bit about some of the young women you interviewed.
00:06:40.400One of the things that I found very interesting is that they weren't necessarily drawn in by Trump.
00:06:45.460Not everyone even really liked Trump, but they liked the conservative movement.
00:06:50.300And that feels like two different things, but also really great branding, because the fact that you could dislike the president and what he stands for, but still like this movement, that's a big deal.
00:07:01.120I heard almost nothing about Trump while I was there.
00:07:03.360I have been to right wing rallies before and the branding is very Trump.
00:07:09.780I mean, obviously, it's very Trump centric.
00:07:11.420There are photos. People are wearing T-shirts with him triumphantly raising his fist at Butler and everybody's wearing MAGA hats.
00:07:20.760I saw like maybe five women wearing MAGA hats there.
00:07:24.300And everybody I talked to was like not really a fan of Trump or Elon Musk or any of the other figureheads that we traditionally talk about attracting people into this movement.
00:07:37.560They were really drawn into the movement.
00:07:40.120The one word I kept hearing over and over again was leftists are angry.
00:07:48.740Leftists, they feel that leftist women in particular are angry and embittered.
00:07:55.460And they don't, they're so tired of hearing about all the social issues that, you know,
00:08:04.060the machine that everybody on the left is raging against.
00:08:06.440And they kind of just want to like. I keep thinking about like the Ali Wong stand up special from a couple of years ago where she goes, I don't want to lean in. I just want to lie down like these women don't want to lean in. They just want to lie down there. Their lives are difficult and the economy sucks. And they think that becoming tribe wives and being conservative would make their lives easier.
00:08:31.600and the right does and right-wing influencers like Alex Clark do a very good job of selling
00:08:38.100that image of selling that image despite the fact that I would say Alex Clark is currently1.00
00:08:43.220one of the hardest working young women in media right now yes despite the fact that she is making0.98
00:08:48.580a podcast nearly every day and trying to build a media empire she is still building that empire0.99
00:08:55.020on the backs of telling young girls slow down check out find a husband you know spend you you1.00
00:09:00.520really should be at home with your children. Meanwhile, she's child free and working her ass1.00
00:09:06.200off. Yeah. And I asked her about that because obviously that was the one thing that struck me1.00
00:09:10.680throughout, you know, the entire conference. It wasn't just her. Like pretty much every woman
00:09:14.880who was on stage speaking was like a very driven career woman. Some of them had kids,1.00
00:09:20.880some of them did not. But the message was the same. It was drop out of the workforce. You can't
00:09:26.100have it all. Something is going to suffer. Have it prioritize having kids because because a career
00:09:31.940can always wait. And I asked Alex about that. Like, do you see any tension between the fact
00:09:36.460that you are 32 and child free and an extremely successful career woman and you're going on stage
00:09:43.720and you're saying more beef tallow, more babies to these young women? And she was like, well,
00:09:49.980this was god's plan for me like i if if i if i got married and had babies i would drop all of0.99
00:09:57.200this in a second uh this was god god's plan for me to sort of encourage other women to pursue the
00:10:03.180path that i did not was essentially what she said and this was a recurring theme like throughout
00:10:08.080the conference when i would ask these women about this like this is god's plan for me it but it's
00:10:13.700not god's plan for other women who i'm addressing it's just god's plan for me which seems a little
00:10:19.180bit convenient but it seems very convenient this is god's plan i'm chosen i'm a chosen one and but
00:10:27.300you know these young women they're they're not chosen they're something different did you ever
00:10:32.600see um god i forgot rebecca larson is the name of the tiktoker uh did you ever see that tiktok
00:10:39.000um that rebecca larson made where she talks about um conservative women no this is sort of a tangent
00:10:45.880You should look it up. It's really it's like a two minute video. It's it's like really damning. She's basically just making the point that inherent to the ideology of conservative women is this idea that they're the exception and not the rule. Like they're the special ones. They're the chosen ones.
00:11:03.140Yes, I've heard about that. I've heard about that. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And in talking to these young women, actually, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to zoom in a little bit. In talking to these women, did you find that they are ambitious? Do they want to be Alex Clark on stage? Or do they want to do what Alex Clark is telling them? That's what I want to dig into a little bit more.
00:11:24.500in talking to these women did you find that they are ambitious do they want to be alex clark on
00:11:37.560stage or do they want to do what alex clark is telling them that's what i want to dig into a
00:11:41.940little bit more they don't all necessarily want to be influencers they don't all necessarily want
00:11:46.520to have like supercharged careers but pretty much every woman i spoke to wanted to have a career or0.98
00:11:50.260was on the past toward a career. Right. Because they do seem ambitious in the end. And they're1.00
00:11:55.800also, you know, absorbing all of these lessons that women should check out of the workforce to1.00
00:12:02.620have babies. They should prioritize having babies. Charlie Kirk took the stage and I posted this on0.99
00:12:09.180my Instagram. And look, I'm not I'm not going to pretend that my following does not lean very
00:12:14.900progressive, obviously. But I posted the clip and it's of a young woman saying, what do you
00:12:20.460think about college? Charlie Kirk is famously, you know, a college dropout and he thinks college
00:12:25.300is bullshit, or at least that's what he tells people. I think he's, you know, just a little0.99
00:12:28.520bitter. So it was Alex Clark, by the way. Yeah, exactly. So what he says is college is only useful
00:12:37.000if you want to get your MRS degree. And there were cheers from the crowd. You know, also a little
00:12:43.760bit of like hesitation but cheers you should only get go to get your MRS degree don't listen to0.79
00:12:48.220professors it should be okay for women to say I'm just going to college to find a husband then he
00:12:52.820says particularly at SEC school would be a good place to find a husband to which there were a lot0.96
00:12:57.380of cheers because I think there were a lot of SEC hopefuls in the audience among the young women
00:13:02.240so they're hearing that message I posted that to my audience and they were like this is insane it's
00:13:08.160not real like this isn't really happening I'm like it's really happening like this is this is
00:13:11.380literally happening at a conference that, you know, millions of young girls can see online.
00:13:16.500Were they were they accepting of that kind of message or were they like, no, I want to be the
00:13:21.420kind of boss that Alex Clark is? No, they were absolutely accepting of that kind of message.
00:13:26.660And I would press them on this every time I spoke to them. Like, you know, I I was like, listen,
00:13:31.020I find this very confusing. Like you're you're telling me you're standing here and you're telling
00:13:35.840me you want to be a nurse or you want to be an influencer or you want to go into corporate
00:13:41.600America. But you're also telling me that you want to stay at home and serve your husband and serve
00:13:47.660your children. Like, do you not see these two things as contradictory? Like, do you not see
00:13:52.660this as adhering to the exact same have it all ideology that you guys are railing against?
00:13:58.860and they were like no because it's not about like it's not about um what did they say it's it's not
00:14:07.480about having it all it's about choosing one or the other at a specific time that was their main
00:14:12.640that was their main reasoning it's about like choosing one or another at a specific time and
00:14:17.300also whatever god calls you to do and i don't know i mean you can think whatever you want about
00:14:24.080that counter argument uh i have my own feelings about it uh but they figure out a way to sort of
00:14:31.340um to sort of make sense of of the contradictory messaging they're receiving here and also
00:14:38.360turn it points you said they were recruiting at that conference like they had a table set up
00:14:43.800that was like recruiting these young women for jobs so like literally like you go you go into
00:14:51.720you go into one room and they're telling you, would you do you want to work here? Do you want
00:14:56.080to help build conservative America? And then you turn the corner and you're listening to a speaker
00:15:00.300telling you to drop out of college or unless you want to get your MRS degree. Like, I'd be very
00:15:06.140confused if I were them. I would be very confused, too. But I think the overall branding is just very
00:15:12.240good because they are serving up this image, you know, saying, but this looks so enjoyable. This
00:15:19.260look so fulfilling and so purposeful and so happy with their soft, focused Laura Ingalls Wilder
00:15:25.560schtick. And I agree that, you know, what they're seeing from the so-called left at this point is
00:15:34.600they're like, you all look pissed. You all look pissed and angry and tired. And that doesn't seem
00:15:38.920fun. And what they're offering seems fun, even though what they're offering is a fantasy, because
00:15:44.020It is hard to have both. It is hard to have choice. It is hard to drop out of the workforce and then pop back into the workforce if you don't have a social safety net, if you don't have equal pay for women. All of the protections that progressives would give to these girls that would offer them these, actually offer them these choices. But I don't think it matters because the branding is so good.
00:16:03.200Exactly. And and I also want to be sorry, my baby is crying in the background.
00:16:08.320Well, you know what? And that's fine, because we are women who do all of all the things. This is what life actually looks like when you're a woman with a job and with children.0.91
00:16:15.440Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Like I was going around this. Well, well, we can talk about this at another point. But my personal experience definitely affected the way, you know, my reporting on this. But regarding the branding and regarding the criticism that the left is bitter and angry all the time and sort of raging against the machine without having anything concrete to offer these women.
00:16:39.160And like the one thing that really struck me that I tried to drive home in my piece and that actually, I think, proved a little bit controversial when I was looking at the comments on social media, which I almost never do, by the way.
00:16:52.300But I was same. Right. We're trained not to. Yes.
00:16:55.680And there were a couple of people being like, you know, this is this is a puff piece. Like we're basically, you know, endorsing the fact that these these people are right about certain things.
00:17:08.980And the thing that I do think they are right about, like, I agree with them that the left's angry, embittered railing against the machine messaging.
00:17:17.360I don't think that's effective. Like I could totally understand a 20 year old girl growing up in Missouri or whatever, turning on Rachel Maddow and being like, what is what is this going to offer me?
00:17:30.200You know, like, what is this doesn't mean anything to me. And I don't think the left is particularly good at branding. I don't think that the leftist version of feminism for a lot of women is particularly appealing or effective.
00:17:48.120and i completely understand why they're swinging so opposite of the independent you know that why
00:17:55.800the pendulum is swinging in such an opposite direction because we're not very good at this
00:18:00.640like we're not very good at reaching these young women no we're not no we're not we're just we are
00:18:04.860not very good at this branding we're not very good at this social media imagery and yes the left does
00:18:10.460not look like an attractive option for them and they've the right has the right has made it very
00:18:15.020pretty a lot of it is a lie again everyone is lying to you of course it's a lie but it doesn't
00:18:19.180matter it does they love the lie they love the lie and they believe the lie and it's like i don't
00:18:26.700know i mean i'm 36 years old i work i have kids and if i went up to these women and told them0.79
00:18:32.300it's really fucking hard they don't want to hear that it's the truth it's they don't want to hear
00:18:38.020And it's much more attractive to them to see women like Hannah Nealman or Nara Smith, like, building these girl boss brands essentially off the backs of this trad wife lifestyle that they're promoting.0.96
00:18:55.800Because they're just never showing the work that goes into it, the labor that goes into it, the help that they either have from paid help or from family members with the children.
00:19:03.720And then, of course, the generational wealth that Hannah Nielman has to support all of this fantasy lifestyle and support the building of this empire.
00:19:24.660but also I mean the things that and the things I try to tell young women on book tour too I'm like0.58
00:19:29.140yes it's hard and like but also I do really like my life I'm super happy I'm like a nine out of
00:19:35.120ten on happiness if I weren't hustling to sell a book right now I'd probably be a ten out of ten
00:19:38.940but at the same time yes it's work and it's hard and you have to make money in order to like be
00:19:45.240able to support yourself and your family and everyone has to do work but that's not a pretty
00:19:49.880message like no one wants to see me here with my like unwashed hair yelling at my kids to like
00:19:55.400get out of the house uh so that i can do a podcast it's just not sexy and the algorithm
00:19:59.620of instagram doesn't like it yeah no i mean me neither but i would never position myself with
00:20:05.240like a face the face of leftist feminism for precisely that reason um i i feel like i feel
00:20:12.700like the most successful um image of a leftist feminist that we could promote is like i don't
00:20:19.340know like a really hot 25 year old girl like going out and doing ketamine every week a hundred percent
00:20:24.600yeah i don't know i'm i'm sort of joking but sort of not but also sort of not i mean you know one
00:20:31.860of the things that alex clark said she's like more babies and beef tallow less blue hair and birth
00:20:36.720control and like you know when you dissect it not it doesn't make any sense at all it makes no
00:20:42.100sense but then it sort of it's sort of appealing to these young women yeah i mean the branding is
00:20:50.140so good like the merch tables especially alex lark's i want to know i want to know all about
00:20:54.840the merch tables because i would have bought merch just to have it i love i was very tempted
00:20:58.880oh my god i love weird merch do you know do you want to hear the weirdest merch that i still have
00:21:03.500from what is it i think what the republican convention was in tampa in 2012 right it was
00:21:11.6402012 or 20. No, it had to be 2012 because before I was married. And I got these like rubber
00:21:17.920wine stoppers that were the heads of all the Republican candidates. So it's Newt Gingrich
00:21:24.400and Santorum. Oh, my God. That's so funny. I want to I want a Rick Santorum wine stopper.
00:21:30.580I know. I know. And they're so they're they're in my house like I use them. OK,
00:21:35.360they're so weird. And every time I look at them, they bring me so much joy. So I would
00:21:38.540have gone fucking crazy at this merch table what was on it yeah i mean the alex clark merch um0.90
00:21:44.840you know it's like 70 dollar crewneck pastel blue sweaters with like prayer hands and a ring and0.98
00:21:54.780like raw milk on it like i literally i have a sticker on my computer right now that says dump
00:22:00.560your socialist boyfriend that i got from the business because i thought it was so funny
00:22:04.320because it's so fun that's so fun i know yeah and it's like and it's like stuff like that like
00:22:09.140very um gen z brand like um somebody somebody i was on a podcast and somebody was like yeah
00:22:17.240it looks like they're advertising natural wines like gentle colors beige pastel like cutesy gen
00:22:23.740z slogans it's very oh there was um a shirt like a crop t-shirt that said call me crunchy
00:22:30.040yeah yeah it was just very like like I got it you know it's really good merch it's really good
00:22:37.620merch I'm actually I'm wearing another t-shirt from the 2012 convention right now that says
00:22:42.800rednecks for Obama and like it's back when I think that you know progressives used to be a
00:22:47.540little bit more fun too it's like it actually says rednecks for Obama and it has a picture
00:22:51.740of a pickup pickup truck on it and I love it so much it's like torn up and tattered and it's the
00:22:57.000best yeah I've been thinking about this all week actually because this is sort of a tangent but
00:23:01.640like one of my best friends is uh this guy mildly and he tweeted about like the the NYC mayoral
00:23:10.620candidate Zoran Mondani's wife being super hot and him being like wow she's super hot and he's
00:23:17.460just getting yelled at like oh my god by the left you know like oh don't stop objectifying like
00:23:23.820women maybe maybe like maybe don't objectify women and say that somebody hot is hot and it
00:23:29.780just makes me think like you know we used to be like funny we used to be like the funny party we
00:23:34.640used to be the funny ones that's the thing used to be the funny ones and we're not anymore we're
00:23:39.140the deadly serious unfunny ones and i get it because the world is deadly serious and often
00:23:42.860terrible but it's just not attractive in terms of branding in terms of bringing on young voters
00:23:48.780no i think it's totally okay to call someone hot it really is to call someone hot it's like fun to
00:23:54.480call someone hot it's yeah can we just have fun again say horny things like nobody is gonna die
00:24:01.160you know it's uh yeah so i've been in especially in the context of this conference i was thinking
00:24:07.360about that a lot this week like we should just like we're boring like we should be boring can
00:24:13.180we just bring fun back again like make america fun again is what i want yeah yeah exactly
00:24:18.700mafa more mafa yeah and the beef the beef tallow thing does get me because it is actually the last
00:24:26.780thing that i want to spread all over my face and i'll do anything to get rid of fine lines but
00:24:30.080i don't know what is really like what is it it's beef fat beef fat yeah yeah it's very fat um and
00:24:38.020it's so stinky like the stinkiest thing you could possibly put on your face um and they're like
00:24:42.820they're like yeah it's like so good for your skin it softens your skin and i'm like so does vaseline
00:24:47.460so yeah it's just but whatever it looks like it looks lovely on instagram when you're walking
00:24:53.880through a field of cows and cattle although i will say i was at my friend sarah's house uh the other
00:24:59.920day up here in the capskills and she's got chickens and i won't go near that chicken coop because the0.98
00:25:05.000ground is covered in chicken shit and it is disgusting and i especially will not go near it1.00
00:25:09.120barefoot ew yeah i think i think these girls who want to like adopt a track wife lifestyle should1.00
00:25:14.920probably like actually visit a farm and they should or a chicken coop and well you know what1.00
00:25:19.940they're gonna smell like shit they're gonna smell like shit they're gonna smell like shit all the0.99
00:25:23.620time and um the other day we also had to stack like a year's worth of wood because the wood guy0.99
00:25:28.840just dumped it on the lawn and left and that took two days and i'm in so much pain okay so0.98
00:25:34.660homesteading shit is painful and stinky a lot of the time but no one's showing that and it doesn't0.97
00:25:39.160it doesn't matter because no one's gonna believe it yeah it's not for me i'd rather not yeah yeah1.00
00:25:44.560I mean, I did it. I did it. And you know what? I was like, but at the end of it, I wasn't like, that was so satisfying. I was like, next time I'm paying some dude to stack the fucking wood. Okay.
00:25:55.640All right. Let's take one more quick break. And when I get back, I want to talk about how the lens that you brought in. You are a working mom, lives on the East Coast. What was it like going into this conference as you?
00:26:24.540Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,
00:26:27.380grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.
00:26:31.180With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts
00:26:34.860covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating.
00:26:39.720Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.
00:26:42.360I want to know how you went into this and then how it surprised you, how how these young women surprised you and also how some of the speakers surprised you.
00:26:55.780um yeah i was very honest with them i was like i i knew that going in their hostel
00:27:04.620and interrogating them about various policy details or power like stances that i disagreed
00:27:11.360with i knew that wasn't going to be the right move right so i definitely went into it less
00:27:16.320hostile than hostile is in quotes but like less um pointed than i would a typical interview
00:27:23.880because I I didn't want to like debate with them on abortion like that wasn't the reason why I was
00:27:30.060there right the reason why I was there was to understand why this movement is appealing to
00:27:34.640them so I was very straightforward with them and I was like listen like I am a liberal I think you
00:27:41.360and I would disagree about a lot of things but I think we would also agree about something and I
00:27:46.620think we should just like sit and have this conversation and they were very receptive to
00:27:50.880that that that was very successful um it's completely counter my my instinct my husband
00:27:57.480and my father my dad always tell me like I approach every conversation like an interview like I'm I'm
00:28:02.640I'm pretty aggressive about like volleying people with questions usually but um yeah I mean that's
00:28:07.820not I didn't think that would be successful here and I and I think I was right um and you know they
00:28:13.680definitely were on their guard uh they definitely made assumptions about me and uh that probably
00:28:23.660influenced what they were willing to tell me but i was uh very pleasantly surprised by how
00:28:30.820kind they were and how much they actually wanted to like tell me why they think the way they think
00:28:37.780and some of them i'm not gonna say all of the women i talked to were like super bright and
00:28:42.700thoughtful but but some of them a lot of them were you know like a lot of these young women
00:28:47.480were like had clearly been in a position where they had to defend their views to other people
00:28:52.940and had like really thought about it and even if I disagreed with their reasoning on every possible
00:28:58.680level like they had they were thoughtful and intelligent and insightful and I really like
00:29:05.380talking to them um the speakers were a different story uh i would the thing that most surprised me
00:29:12.980about the speakers was just how aggressively they were driving home the um get married quit your job0.65
00:29:20.460have kids point right right yeah which to me is just the fastest way for a woman to lose autonomy0.98
00:29:26.540and agency just especially when you do it young um and maybe as we were discussing like especially1.00
00:29:34.540when these women were basically like uniformly all pursuing careers or were in college.0.60
00:29:39.640Right. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that is the huge disconnect for me. And again, I think it's because0.92
00:29:45.740their branding is just not showing the labor of all of that, because there is some messaging in
00:29:50.300this that says, you know, I think you wrote that Dana Loesch, the former NRA spokeswoman, said
00:29:57.160in her speech, you cannot have it all at the same time. Something will suffer. That is often true.
00:30:02.540It is indeed a truism, but it wouldn't suffer as much if we had things like state-subsidized daycare, universal basic income, paid family leave.
00:30:12.060But when you brought that up to people, they were like, but that's communist.
00:30:16.140Which, again, it's good branding against those ideas because those ideas are what would make the things it seems like they want, families young to get married, and then the ability to get back into the workforce.
00:30:28.220Those are the things that would make that possible.
00:30:31.800That's how I know who's going to pay for it. Yeah, those were the most those are the most common reactions. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I they they're just very effective. Their branding is very effective.
00:30:43.260They have very successfully convinced these young women that the social policies that could help them have exactly what they want, which is or say they want, which is to stay at home and raise their children, are against their best interest, even though they, you know, as you and I know, they are not.
00:31:05.800If these women really wanted to stay at home and have kids and rely on a single income, you would think they would be open to the idea of UBI, right? You would think that they would be open to affordable daycare, but they're just not.1.00
00:31:28.340They're just not. They're just not. That has been demonized to such an extent. And again, none of it makes sense. I mean, because Brett Cooper, who has a wildly popular podcast, and I do not think that we can underestimate the reach of these influencers at this point.
00:31:45.560I know that they don't hit everyone's algorithms, but they are doing insane virality and impressions at this point. And Brett Cooper said, you know, you don't have to stay at home and make sourdough starter every day. You will fall somewhere in between the poles of lean in girlboss feminism and stay at home motherhood and pursuing a career. You can build a life that's uniquely yours.
00:32:11.120Again, none of that is possible without the kinds of options that a social safety net would give you. It's just simply not. But I think they are presenting a man as the plan without acknowledging the economic realities of the fact that, you know, when men drop out of the workforce or when men are laid off, as so many will be, as their jobs are replaced by AI in the next few years, they have a much harder time getting back into the workforce than women ever will.
00:32:37.740and that a man's salary is not something you can necessarily depend on.
00:33:04.020They're having a huge amount of difficulty.
00:33:05.700And they say it's because of the toxicity of hookup culture, because men have learned men, men in their demographic have learned to just expect sex without commitment and to avoid intimacy.
00:33:20.820And they feel like they're entitled to it. And it's and it completely detracts from their ability to actually meet these men who could give them the life that they want.
00:33:31.800And that made a lot of sense to me. Like, I don't entirely disagree with that. You know, I don't think it's necessarily like I wouldn't say it's quote unquote hookup culture. I think there's probably like a confluence of different social factors contributing to to that sense of entitlement.
00:33:45.880But like that wasn't really discussed at the conference, like the fact that we live in this world where men are raised to feel entitled sexually to a lot of different things and how that complicates these women's vision of the future.
00:34:06.900Right. Like they're looking for somebody to settle down with and have babies with when they're 18, 19. These men are not being raised, for better or for worse, to want the same thing. So it's like a practical obstacle, I think, that is also not really being addressed in the rights messaging to these young women.