It's Time to Talk about J.K. Rowling

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The Federal Budget and Debt Ceiling

  • San Jacinto Shooting

  • The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

  • Outside of Politics: Backlash to Plastic Surgery

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EPISODE RESOURCES

THE FEDERAL BUDGET AND DEBT CEILING

THE WITCH TRIALS OF J.K. ROWLING

THE BACKLASH TO PLASTIC SURGERY

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers. 

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:25] Welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to update you on the money. We're going to talk about the state of the debt ceiling in the federal budget. And then we are going to finally talk about J.K. Rowling, which we have avoided for a long time.  

Sarah [00:00:41] For a long time. We did it.  

Beth [00:00:43] For a long time. But given the controversy surrounding Bud Light, the silencing of Montana Rep Zooey Zephyr, a trans legislature and the investment of time that we both made in listening to all 7 hours of the new podcast discussing J.K. Rowling, we're just overflowing with thoughts about it. And we do have a very overflowing conversation that touches on a lot of aspects of fandom and the Internet and speech that we hope is resonant for you. Outside of Politics, we're just going to keep the controversy coming by talking about a growing backlash to plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures. But first, we have a special occasion to commemorate.  

Sarah [00:01:23] Yes. Tomorrow, May 3rd, is our second book's first birthday. Now what? How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About basically everything). If you haven't had a chance to read it, we'd love for you to get a copy, request it from your library. And if you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon are Good Reads to let other people know about it. We loved Carolyn's review. She said that Now What may be better than our first book. Thank you, Carolyn. Which she used as a textbook in her classes. She called it easy reading challenging implementation, and said it's filled with ways to establish connections, which is exactly our goal. Thanks to Carolyn and thanks to all of you for reading and sharing Now What.  

Beth [00:01:56] Next up, we'll check in on Congress, the White House and the money. On Friday, we re-released an episode about how the budget process is supposed to work. Today we're going to talk through our current situation, which really has two components: the budget, which will set future discretionary spending, and the debt ceiling, which allows us to continue borrowing to pay for spending that Congress has already approved. There is a huge fight happening between the White House and the Republican controlled House of Representatives about the extent to which these two agenda items (the budget about future spending and the debt ceiling about past spending) are related.  

Sarah [00:02:44] Important moment to note that this fight only arises-- it's really surprising. It only arises with Republicans when there's a Democrat in the White House. President Trump signed debt limit deals twice and suspended it once for two years. Now, there were members of his party that were mad about that, but it still happened.  

Beth [00:03:03] That's why the House wants to tie these two things together. This Republican controlled House of Representatives recognizes that they are not going to have a lot of leverage over the overall budget because Democrats control the Senate and President Biden is in the White House. So, this feels like their chance to get in and do something big and bold on government spending. They want to condition the debt ceiling increase on a federal budget that they like that has steep cuts in it. And the White House is saying absolutely not. These two issues are separate and we are not going to negotiate about the debt ceiling. And you hear a lot of language from the White House and from Chuck Schumer about like hostage taking and that the Republicans are really putting a gun to the head of America's credit in order to try to extract some concessions around spending.  

Sarah [00:03:53] Well, I think the strategy when it started felt that way. Back in 2011, when we started down this road, a little bit pretty party and then definitely after tea party, it felt like this very radical negotiating tactic. But now they've done this song and dance so many times it's starting to feel played out. It feels like a little tired to me. Tired, but dangerous. That's how I would classify this current negotiation. And I don't even know if I like that word. Politico did a great write up of all the passed debt ceiling/budget negotiation cycles. And you see all these same patterns repeat themselves over and over again that the House Republicans need the Democrats usually to raise the debt limit. They want it to be around fiscal demands that usually fails, and Senate Republicans come in at the last minute and rescue and find a deal. You even see Joe Biden appearing over and over in these fights. And so, I still think it's different this time because of what happened with Kevin McCarthy speakership. And I don't think his leadership is a steady, I guess I would say, as Boehner. But so many speakers have lost their speakership over this fight. And so, it's not that I don't think there's any wild cards, but it just doesn't feel as radical and as unhinged as it did when they started using this as a negotiation tactic.  

Beth [00:05:24] Yeah, when you said tired, I thought, "I guess tired and the other way to look at that might be the Overton window has moved on this." When I read I think it was Steve Scalise's comments about this and he says, "Well, if we're going to talk about increasing the debt ceiling because we've amassed so much debt, we've also got to talk about how to deal with that problem that keeps putting us in the situation. And I thought, I know how disingenuous that statement is. But I also know that if you're just a casual listener, that resonates. There's some appeal in that. It's not crazy to tie these two things together. And so I think everybody is playing a game of chicken around this, knowing that some kind of compromise will have to be struck. And I wish we could just sort of fast forward through this because the economy feels so precarious in every way, this being a constant topic of conversation and sort of a storm cloud hanging over the economy at this particular moment I think is pretty unhealthy.  

Sarah [00:06:29] Yeah, all budget conversations, especially when they're tied to the debt ceiling, just wear me out. I mean, in this list of things they included in the Limit, Save, Grow Act is a rescission of the IRS enforcement funding that's become a real political flashpoint. Here's a fun fact. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this policy would worsen the debt by $120 billion. So, please don't come to me and tell me you're worried about spending when past battles-- there's all these extensions and now we're going to move this deadline down to the future. And if we don't meet it, we're going to sequester all these funds and do across the board spending cuts. They don't ever do that. They don't want to do that. They don't want to do the hard work of actually just improving our budget process or cutting programs that are popular. They want to use this to undercut Democratic precedents. But it sounds so good, like you said. I don't have a lot of patience for sort of-- this sounds super snooty, and I apologize for how this sounds. But I don't have a lot of patience around every day American conversations about the budget because I don't think people understand it. And it's difficult to understand. It is opaque. But the way people talk about it as this is just common sense fiscal policy, drives me bananas.  

Beth [00:07:47] Well, let's walk back a little bit. You mentioned the Limit, Save, Grow Act. So, let's put some framing around what's happened so far. Usually, the president goes first even though the president can't do the budget. It's Congress's responsibility. So, President Biden in March released his budget blueprint. He proposed a budget of $6.8 trillion, about a 10% increase over the previous year. Now, our first reality check and the stop along the way here is that $4.2 trillion of that $6.8 is mandatory spending. Programs that have been authorized by Congress and that we are going to owe the money for no matter what. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the things people say that they aren't going to touch. Those are the big chunk of the budget. We are always fighting over the discretionary part, which is relatively small. It's still a lot of money, but it's relatively small. Some top lines from President Biden are a tax increase on billionaires, 25% minimum tax, an increased corporate tax rate up seven points to 28%. Increased tax on stock buybacks up three points to 4%. And these increases, along with more aggressive tax enforcement-- that's what you were just referring to, Sarah-- that money for the IRS to go after more people who aren't paying taxes would bring the deficit down. The deficit, not the national debt, but how much every year we are spending beyond the revenue that comes in by about $3 trillion over 10 years. His budget also has something I think that a lot of Republicans would typically agree with. If we were in a normal world, he has $842 billion for the Department of Defense in this budget. That is big spending for the military. When you consider that this discretionary component is just $1.9 trillion, think about $842 billion of that is military spending. But we're in kind of a weird place right now where a significant part of the Republican Party doesn't want to see us spending money for Ukraine. And so, even this is not the point of consensus that it might normally be. So, President Biden puts his plan out. And then last week, the House narrowly passed the Limit Save and Grow Act, which is not a budget because the Republican caucus couldn't get together on a budget, but it set some rules to try to get President Biden to negotiate around the debt ceiling.  

Sarah [00:10:07] And it does sort of the traditional things. It freezes spending. It does increase the borrowing limit. It would reduce the deficit by 4.8 trillion over 10 years. But what drives me crazy about all this stuff is it goes after some of his biggest accomplishments, some of the green energy tax credit, the tax enforcement from the IRS, the student debt cancellation. And if we want to talk about common sense, if people really just want this framing around budget talks or spending talks-- I guess I should say, since that again this isn't a budget because they couldn't agree on that-- this idea of impose a 1% growth cap for 10 years, look around you, are there places in your life where you think I could freeze this at 1% for 10 years? Y'all we're tipping everybody. We have staffing crisis. Everything's more expensive to build. We know we're going to have to build a bunch of stuff. Does that make sense to you just on a basic level that the federal government, this massive piece of our economy, should freeze at 1% growth cap for 10 years? Honestly, I'm paying the dang tooth fairy $5. Do you think that's going to be the same in 10 years? I doubt it will be. That part drives me crazy. We're all supposed to believe intuitively that the federal government shouldn't grow. Why? Everything is growing. I don't get it. It drives me crazy.  

Beth [00:11:22] I am driven crazy in this conversation by the fact that, number one, there is a sense that you can do anything across the board in the federal government, which is so massive at this point that it's hard to keep track of. This process is terrible for the people who try to work in executive branch agencies, who try to work in the military. All of the people who are responsible for doing the many other things Congress ask them to do, having this floating over them all the time is terrible. This is like the worst way we could do it. And yet our Constitution requires that Congress pass this stuff. I wish that they were talking about all this with a little bit more flexibility because that's the truth. In addition to not wanting the government to rack up a bunch of debt-- which I think is true-- I think for the average person, two things are true at one time. The first thing is we don't like the idea that we run at a deficit and that we are racking up debt. Even as we don't fully understand what either of those things mean, it doesn't feel right to us. The second thing, though, is we want the federal government to be able to do whatever it needs to do to respond to difficult situations. If there is a war, we don't want to hear that we underfunded the Department of Defense. If there is a natural disaster, we don't want to hear that FEMA doesn't have enough money to show up and help the community. We want the government to be able to be a little bit more responsive than this process makes it seem like the government is set up to be. And that's frustrating.  

Sarah [00:12:55] Yeah, I mean, it doesn't bother me at all, but I understand I'm an exception. My whole life people have been crowing about the debt and nothing's happened. So, I worry about it not at all. Never. Not for my kids, not for my grandkids. I don't buy it. I do love your point about the across the board cuts. Because if we're going to insist on this stupid analogy to a household budget, which is not applicable, but I'll play along, is that how it works in your life? Do you just call up your mortgage company and be like, "I'm sorry, I'm enforcing a 1% cut across the board so I have to pay less for rent and less for utilities." Well, guess what the federal government pays? A lot because it holds a lot of property. So, just that stuff, it just makes me so angry when it comes from people in power. Because I understand everyday citizens don't understand the complexity of budget. I don't. I'm just pretending to half the time. Like, that's your job as a member of Congress. So stop pretending like this is just a household budget. We just need to be more reasonable because you know that's not true.  

Beth [00:13:52] I think you can see how that across the board mentality is not something that anybody believes in. when you look at the requests that are coming into the Appropriations Committee for earmarks. So this year there's been a real uptick. Congress is re-embracing the earmark.  

Sarah [00:14:07] Because we didn't have it for a long time. Now we got them again.  

Beth [00:14:10] And as we've talked about, that doesn't bother me. I believe this is a way that things get done.  

Sarah [00:14:15] I love an earmark.  

Beth [00:14:17] If all of the earmarks that have been requested this year (5,067 of them) were passed into law, it would cost $19.4 billion. And Republicans have requested more earmarks than Democrats.  

Sarah [00:14:30] Beautiful.  

Beth [00:14:30] And all of the top six requests for earmarks have come from Republicans. So, if you believe that we need across the board spending cuts but you are requesting all of these earmarks on top of it, it just shows that's not what you actually think. And, look, I don't mean to bust too much on Republicans right now. I can't believe Kevin McCarthy got this passed. He has exceeded my expectations in getting something passed that increases the debt ceiling. I am surprised and I am pleased about that. I don't know that it holds through the rest of the process from here because, again, we do have a Senate that's going to weigh in and is definitely not going to sign off on this. But he did better than I thought he would. I just think everybody needs to sit down and get to that part where we make a deal, because while all this is happening, we have First Republic Bank seized by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase. We have oil prices dropping. We have Sony shares falling. You read the economic news and you can see that what we do not need in Washington right now is a largely symbolic fight over where we end up with government spending.  

Sarah [00:15:40] And I just wish they would revise the process. It's not working anymore. You guys, it's broken. That's why we re-broadcast that episode about the budget process on Friday. Just a reminder, like, this is not how it's supposed to work. It's bad. It's broken. The fact that we are enacting this tired but incredibly high stakes fight over and over again, that's as an indication of that. And so, I would just like to improve the process, please and thank you.  

Beth [00:16:03] And I will say I do not feel the way that you feel about the debt not being a big deal and the deficit not being a big deal. I would like to see us improve. I also think an extremely precarious economic moment is not the moment to do anything drastic. I don't think we should spend abundantly more money and I don't think we should tighten the reins right now. I think this is a settling moment where we need to see what happens with these interest rates, get through the other side of COVID much more fully, figure out-- a point that the Republicans keep making is that we have these unspent COVID funds. Okay, figure out where we are with that. Why have those funds not been spent? Are they still needed for those purposes? Can they be appropriated for something else? Let's just get our arms around things. But I understand also that our political process puts House members in their offices for two years, which means they're constantly running for the next election instead of trying to deal with the present moment. Before we move on, I just want to offer a quick word of support and care to everyone in and near Cleveland, Texas, where a 38 year old man killed five people (Sonia, Diana, Julisa, Jose, and eight year old Daniel) because Daniel's father asked him to please shoot his AR-15 on the other side of the yard after 11 p.m. so their baby could sleep. We are recording on Monday, and as of this time, the suspect has not been apprehended, which exacerbates the horror for the survivors and the community. On two recent episodes, we discussed how gun culture tells people they are justified and entitled to use violence as a first response to any real or imagined threat. And I really can't imagine a more vivid illustration of that culture. And I don't know what to say except that living this way is wrong. And I hope we'll keep Sonia, Diana, Julisa, Jose and Daniel in our hearts as we work for a better culture and a better country. Next step, we are finally going to talk about J.K. Rowling. Sarah, this was your idea, and I complied. We listened to all 7 hours of the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling and all 2 hours of Natalie Wynn's response on ContraPoints, her YouTube channel. So, we're going to talk about why we did that and what we thought. I thought a good framing for this, though, comes from the ad that plays at the top of each episode. It's for a free speech organization, and the ad says.  

Ad [00:18:41] We live in a moment when free speech, the bedrock of our democracy and of all free societies, is often viewed as suspect. Where many argue that the right to free speech is too dangerous and that even listening to ideological opponents is morally wrong, many people just don't see a problem with using the law, corporate power, and even extraordinary social pressure to censor viewpoints they disagree with.  

Beth [00:19:07] This ad ran all over me because I do not think it's the same to use the law and corporate power and social pressure. But I thought that was a good framing because we're going to talk about three situations that involve the law and corporate power and social pressure around transgender rights, invisibility, and speech. As we get into that, Sarah, why did you make me do this? Why did you want to listen to this podcast?  

Sarah [00:19:29] Did I make you do it or did I just tell you I was going to do it?  

Beth [00:19:32] You didn't make me do it. Well, I knew that if you listened to it, we would be talking about it a lot. So I wanted to hear it too.  

Sarah [00:19:36] Fair enough. Well, had lots of driving time on the way to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and back where we had a lovely time. I have been in an ongoing conversation about this with my 13-year-old son, Griffin, for neon years, a long time. And he has really, really wanted me to listen to Natalie Wynn's original video on J.K. Rowling. And I was kind of resisting because a long YouTube video is just not my cup of tea. But he was like, just think about it like a podcast. I'm like, okay. So, he sent me her response and he really, really wanted me to listen to it. And I thought, okay, I'm going to, but I'm not going to listen to her response without listening to the original podcast series first. And I'd heard a lot about it. It got a lot of play. It's from Bari Weiss, former New York Times columnist and free speech advocate-- using that term loosely. And so, I was like, "Well, I need to listen to all of it. I want the full picture." And I was so exhausted at the end of those nine hours. It wasn't really full nine hours. Obviously, I did not listen to this at regular speed. I sped it up. And I must confess that I was defensive of J.K. Rowling. I felt defensive of her. That was the ongoing conversation with Griffin. And so, I sort of expected to listen to the seven hours and at the end be like my defensiveness was well placed. And at the end, I was just like, nope. If they had given sister a shovel from the beginning, she'd have dug this hole quicker. Because she does over the course of the seven hours. She just digs a hole for herself. She is defensive. She does sort of the classic definition of being phobic. It's very fear driven. Her concerns are out of a place of fear, and she articulates a sense of fear and threat over and over again over the course of the seven hours. And I feel a lot of things about gender in America right now, but fear and threat is not one of them. And so, she lost me. She just fully lost me over the course of the seven hours.  

Beth [00:21:37] My position about her has been really muddy around this issue. My position on the books is not muddy. I loved the books. Jane loved the books. Ellen is about to read the books, and I believe will love them too. And I just have a hard time believing with almost any kind of art that I need to be 100% on board with its creator to value the art. Now, I know there are lots of librarians who have written to us to say the books really aren't that good. Here are books that are better. I hear you. And also these books have been special to us, and I just can't pretend that they haven't been. And I think that's true for the broader culture. These books have been special, and it's hard to pretend otherwise. When I saw her first tweet about transgender rights, when she said something, like, "Dress however you like, but..." I just was overwhelmed with this feeling of I wish she hadn't. I wish that she could stay the mysterious author of the Harry Potter books. The Internet doesn't allow that. And throughout this series, I learned that she's not really been that from the very beginning. She went into the chat rooms when people started to do the fanfiction, and she wanted to see how these books were being discussed and she engaged with people. And email makes that a whole different ballgame than writing letters to authors used to be. It was interesting as we were listening to the series there was this letter from Kurt Vonnegut that kept making its appearance in my social media feeds. And I thought about what a big deal it would have been to get a physical piece of paper from Kurt Vonnegut and how we just expect almost people to write us back now. If we send an email to an author, we expect some form of acknowledgment that we've reached out. So, it's a totally different climate. I cannot have the mysterious J.K. Rowling that I wish I could have had. Listening to her talk more about this, I think that first tweet was a really full representation of where she is. I always thought that tweet began in a really flippant way. That sort of dress however you like. And as I listened to her, what I heard is someone who believes that. Dress however you like. I think that she would say, if she could have just a totally unfiltered moment, that she is fine with drag and cross-dressing, but it is that deeper level of a person transitioning from one gender fully to another that she really doesn't buy and that she fears is exploited as often as not in ways that are really damaging for women. And I think that's her position. I want to characterize that fairly. Is that how you heard it, too?  

Sarah [00:24:25] Yeah, I think she's definitely what Natalie calls gender critical. She just thinks that there is something about being born a biological woman that is different. And, look, I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the term didn't start out saying a transgender woman as a woman doesn't bother me. I can find space for an articulation of a different not less, not better. That's the key. She thinks it's better. She thinks it's different and better experience-- not better, but more important to be born biological woman as opposed to living and transitioning as a woman, I don't feel that way. I think they're different, not less. And so, she articulates that over and over again. Look, I think what you're saying-- and I think is a really interesting conversation that they didn't have. They got close. And I found that to be the most interesting parts of the podcast, is about fandom and fame. And she tries to articulate this sense of, like, I don't care what people think about me. That's not true. I think she feels very proud that she feels like she stuck up for something because of the articulated values in the series. I think that's fair. I still think she's wrong, and I do think there is some really problematic aspects of fandom on the Internet that they sort of touch on but miss, and I think it's harmful. I think the parts I agree with are the most is where she thought like they're going to bring you up. They're going bring you down. Heck, yeah, they will. On the Internet, if they're going to push you to the heights, they will drag you back down. And I hate that aspect of the Internet. Griffin wants to tear the books apart, and that's where we get into our biggest fights. I was saying the parts of the podcast where the fans are like, "How could she do this? How could this person who wrote this series that is embracing of the outsider feel this way?" And I thought, "You guys, did you read them?" Her biggest point is that people are complicated. That she writes these characters that, like Snape, are really, really heinous in parts and then have redemptive arcs as well. And he doesn't want to accept that. He thinks none of the characters are that complicated and that she's not a good writer. And I don't think that. I think it is a brilliant series that is mostly well-crafted. Yes, there are "problematic parts" of it and characters and naming and [inaudible]. Believe me, I've heard it all, but I don't love that sense of fandom that we must inevitably find the problematic parts of art created by human beings that is inevitably going to be problematic. That cycle wears me out. And I thought they did a pretty good job of articulating that.  

Beth [00:26:55] I don't even mind finding all of it. I think that's important. I think literary criticism is important. I think when you read any book with your kids saying, "Oh, this is the thing that I want you to notice when you see it. This is not great," it is the discarding of it wholesale once you find those things that bugs me. And I think that is what the series is supposed to provoke. This is a very heavy handed podcast series. That made me tired. The production of it is so intense. And the use of monk music-- I mean, it's called the Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. It's dramatic. It is very dramatic in a way that I find undermines the credibility of what is supposed to be its driving force, which is a conversation about speech. And should someone like J.K. Rowling receive death threats for stating opposition to what transgender rights activists want in terms of the commentary about their community? And I think that the vast majority of people would say, of course, she should not receive death threats. But that's different than criticism and activism and backlash, all of which are fair game in a society where we value speech.  

Sarah [00:28:17] The series is hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, who left the Westboro Baptist Church and her family and has changed her views. And so, I think that was sort of the entrance point to get J.K. Rowling on board, as she has this very interesting biography. Which then Natalie Wynn famously knows as CounterPoints on the Internet points, to a sort of problematic aspects of her position. So Natalie Wynn is on this series. She's in like episode six. I did not think that Natalie Wynn undermined anything that she's ever said by her appearance on this podcast. I didn't think I agree with her that it is heavy handed and is absolutely formulated and structured to be a defense of J.K. Rowling. But I still thought Natalie Wynn's points were beautiful. Now, she's way more vulnerable than she is on her YouTube channel, and I think that's probably the part she was reacting to. But I liked it. I liked hearing that part of her. I liked the way that she got emotional and talked about she still cares what J.K. Rowling thinks. But then in her response, she does this very clever thing where she does the Witch Trials of Anita Bryant, this famous eighties anti-gay activist who when you listen to the stuff she said there's no room for moderation. There's no room for redemption for her. Well, I disagree with that. I think there's always room for redemption. And watching her make this point, which she makes very well and very cleverly and ultimately comes to a very fair conclusion, which is we need these villains and we always pick women. Can we just stop picking women? And I think that's a brilliantly made point.  

[00:29:50] But I think what you got too, is what nobody really fully pieces apart here. And I think Natalie Wynn in her response kind of meshes them all together, which is what is the response of fans? What is the response and correct strategy with activism? And sometimes a lot of times on the Internet they get smushed together, this fandom and this activism. Because I think Natalie Wynn is right, that often we don't push the Overton window, we don't make change by making polite conversations around moderate politics, right? Like, doing this Meghan Phelps-Roper. There's always room for questioning and moderation and free speech. I agree with that. I think there is room for activism. But when it intersects with fandom in this way, and I don't think it's an accident that you are looking at people who play a huge role in pop culture, be it Anita Bryant or J.K. Rowling, it gets real, real messy. And we're talking about death threats. That is an absolute violation of my values. I am here for disruption. I'm here for nonviolent resistance and breaking laws. I think that is important and I can't move the Overton window and it can be a valid part of activism. But when it gets interwoven with fandom and then you feel betrayed, when you hear people criticize, J.K. Rowling, it's not "I want a new future. I want to see new activism. I want new laws." You hear betrayal. You betrayed me. And that's fandom, not policy and activism. And that's the problem.  

Beth [00:31:26] I think that's right. And the other thing that concerns me in that mash up is the pressure that it adds to really young people. We talked about this a little bit in Indiana at our speaking event. Someone asked what we think Gen Z really needs. And my response is for all of us to kind of get ourselves together and stop putting so much pressure on them because Gen Z has heard from the cradle you guys are going to have to save us. You're going to have to save the planet. You're going to have to save us around LGBTQ rights. You're going to have to save us around racial justice issues. You're going to have to save us from the guns. You're just going to have to figure all of this out. And that's too much. And I really lament that Jane has to think about J.K. Rowling as she enjoys these books. I was looking up Carolyn Keene, who wrote the Nancy Drew series because I loved those books when I was Jane's age. I never once had to think about who Carolyn Keene was or how she felt about anything. And I just discovered, as a 42-year-old woman, that Carolyn Keene was a pen name for lots of different people who wrote in that series. And that's great. That feels wonderful. I don't have to think about this at all. And I wish that were the case for fans of art that's being created in the Internet age. And it's just never going to be. We didn't have to see what Charles Dickens tweeted. We're revisiting some of those authors in light of what we know about them, and that's really hard and painful. And I'm not saying that we should never take on that responsibility, especially as consumers, as adult consumers. Yes, we have choices to make about where we spend our money and who we put on pedestals and how we talk about them. But I hate that. I hate that Griffin feels pressure to tear these books apart because he liked them so much and is experiencing this feeling of betrayal that is really intermingled with his sincere and passionate desire to be an ally to this community.  

Sarah [00:33:24] And here's why I think this is important to free speech and where we meet at the intersection of pop culture and real power. And, unfortunately, I think it's a conversation they missed in this podcast, which is I do think that J.K. Rowling experienced silencing that was damaging-- not to her. I'm not worried about her. She's fine. She articulates that over and over again. But when we do that, when we use words like TERF, which has become a slur, I think that's a fair articulation of that term. And we say you're irredeemable around fandom and pop culture. It makes conversations in real places of power that much more difficult. Fair or not? Do I think people in power should be concerned with being canceled or whatever? No, but they are. This is why I think you're seeing this escalation of tactics around these conversations in Montana and Tennessee, because the stakes of the conversation, the articulated risk of the conversation has escalated and escalated and escalated because of how we talk about J.K. Rowling in a way that has just-- it's broken down. It's just completely broken down the process. And I think what was frustrating parts to me was over the course of these nine hours, several times, everybody-- Natalie Wynn, J.K. Rowling, Megan Phelps-Ropher articulated there are really important questions here. Like women in sports, like the medical treatment of children. And I just thought, yeah, but we can't get to them because we're too busy fighting about J.K. Rowling's tweets and Budweiser cans. And it's just how long are we going to do this? How long are we going to continue to spin up and spin up and spin up so that we can't let the dust settle and say, what do we actually need to worry about and solve for here? And let me say, if you let the dust settle on J.K. Rowling, again, her argument is bad. It's bad. Again, there is not a threat here. I do not feel that. And the way she keeps leaning into it and not saying like, "I'm listening to the other side, I've worked on myself," it's just, "I did all the research. This is how I decided it is and we're done here," is really problematic. And I was not keen on the argument of, like, look at the company she keeps. But she keeps leaning in and so now it is a problem. The company she keeps. She's keeping some company with some really, really offensive people online personalities that are "gender critical" but really just discriminatory. But, again, let her dig that hole so that we can pay attention to the really important policy changes and laws and activism that needs to happen over here.  

Beth [00:36:12] The series went out of its way to build empathy for J.K. Rowling, and I didn't know much about her life story. And it succeeded with me. Like, I am so sorry that she lived in this horrific situation of domestic abuse. I am so sorry that the publisher didn't let her put Joanne on the cover of her books and that she had to make up a middle initial and a gender neutral name as she sold the books. That's terrible. I can't even imagine having written something like this and seeing my stuff everywhere and it not even being my actual name.  

Sarah [00:36:42] And super relevant to her feelings about much of this.  

Beth [00:36:45] Absolutely. Like, I totally understand how she got here. I totally understand how she got here. What makes trans issues so hard to talk about is that every person deserves the level of empathy the series gives to J.K. Rowling. Every person especially a person whose gender identity does not conform to all of society's expectations deserves the level of empathy that she gets. And the problem with gender critical alleged feminists, is that they are depriving people of their particularity around this experience. And that is where it crosses a line from being a critique or advocacy into something like phobia, because it lumps everybody into one category. She knows this. She's written it beautifully about things in other contexts, and this is the struggle with being a person. We can know something really well in one context and fail to apply it in another or fail to see it in ourselves. And I do think the answer to your question about how long we're going to stay spun up about this stuff is maybe forever, because we've always gone to books and pop culture when we need a stand in for something that is really hard and we don't know how to talk about. And I think that's exactly what's happening with Budweiser right now. If you don't know the Budweiser story, it's probably worth mentioning what this controversy even came from. And it's that Bud Light sent cans of Bud Light to Dylan Mulvaney, who is a trans social media influencer as part of like a normal garden variety sponsorship deal sweepstakes challenge.  

Sarah [00:38:34] Yeah, it was like the days of women and they made a can with her face on it as one of the days of women.  

Beth [00:38:40] But it's just a can for her; it's not being sold in stores across America. It's just for Dylan. And Dylan made a video where she's dressed up like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's with the beers. It's delightful. We can play a little sound from it here, so you can just know exactly what this is about.  

Dylan Mulvaney [00:38:55] This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever. A can with my face on it. Check out my Instagram story to see how you can enjoy March Madness with Bud Light and maybe win some money too. Love ya! 

Beth [00:39:12] And this has become a whole thing. Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting cans of Bud Light. Travis Tritt says he's banning Bud Light from his tour. And it's just getting a ton of playing in right wing media outlets.  

Sarah [00:39:23] Listen, in Paducah, we're about to come upon a big event and somebody who is booking the events at the Knights of Columbus, we're like, well, we won't be allowed to sell any Anheuser-Busch products at this event. I was like, what is happening?  

Beth [00:39:38] And so, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch releases this long statement that didn't say a lot. I thought the gist of it was like, "Hey, we're beer. We want everyone to drink beer, maybe have a beer and feel better about all this." Like, it was very like we didn't mean to offend anybody. But they didn't want to offend anybody with this statement. And I think this is like an interesting juxtaposition against the books. You have such a relationship with books, you have a different relationship to products, but both are so much easier to talk about than where policy comes in or where rights come in or where visibility comes in. I think J.K. Rowling has a very strong vibe that I could like very imperfectly analogize to don't ask, don't tell. It's like you do you, but don't change anything for me.  

Sarah [00:40:31] That's exactly.  

Beth [00:40:32] And that's not available.  

Sarah [00:40:34] Nope. Not going to work, sister. Not going to work. The world is ever changing. Things change, people advance. What I think is so interesting is the transparent political strategy from the right on this. This is a winning fight. It's like the simplistic arguments around the budget. They know it's more complicated than that. They don't care. They feel like this is winning. We know what a woman is. Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know what I thought about? I had relatives, including my father, sending me some of this. And he was like, it's just biologically so simple. I'm like, it's not. It's not simple. We all know that. You're deliberately ignorant if you don't understand biologically intersex people. Then two days after I had this conversation with him, I got a Today Show story about these conjoined twins that share torso. So two legs, two torsos, two brains. So, they have two brains and one vagina. So if it's so simple biologically, please explain to me, is that one woman or two? Please don't do this. It's so silly. It's so silly and it is deliberately obtuse, but it's a winning strategy. And so, that's why they keep doing it. Same thing with the budget. And I thought the other thing that's so transparent to me is people who have been using my entire life "You hate babies, you want to kill babies" are getting so spun up when someone accuses them of the same around transgender kids. Now, look, I don't like this rhetoric and I've been honest about this. It is not helpful to say to someone else, even while trans kids are listening, "You'll have blood on your hands." That implies that this is a hopeless situation. And I think trans kids need more than anything else adults articulating to them this is not a hopeless situation. Things are at stake here and they are incredibly high stakes for you. And we can acknowledge that without articulating that type of language. I don't think it's helpful. And at the same time, I think it is borderline hilarious how spun up these Republicans state reps get when they're the ones accused of harming kids. They got to kick people out. You can't even speak. You can't speak. You got to go. After decades of using this rhetoric, they cannot stand to have it redirected at them. And it's just the hypocrisy, it's so transparent to me.  

Beth [00:43:03] In addition to the hypocrisy, it illustrates something really important and sad that we need to address in our politics, which is that our representatives are losing the sense that their primary purpose is to represent constituents. And that's true for everyone around them. Because when you say to Montana State rep Zooey Zephyr, you can't speak on the House floor for the rest of this legislative session, what you are actually saying is District 100 Missoula, you don't get a voice in this body for the rest of this session because we are prioritizing our individual feelings of offense at remarks that your individual rep made over what this whole process is supposed to be in the first place. And whether you like what Representative Zephyr said or not or how she phrased it, she spoke for people who elected her to be there.  

Sarah [00:44:05] By a pretty wide margin.  

Beth [00:44:07] By a very wide margin. She won with 80% of the vote in Missoula. And you are saying to your constituents, this is really just about me. I'm not here to engage with representatives of other broad groups of people and represent you in that process. I am just here as a person who is part of a brand of a certain type of politics, and I'm just going to war for that brand every day. And that's all we do now. That is the fullest manifestation of the danger of speech not being valued in our culture.  

Sarah [00:44:49] To me, it's like what they're afraid of is not speech, it's proximity, because proximity changes you. And they saw that with LGBTQ marriage rights that we went through in the nineties, in the early aughts. So, it's not even what you're saying that's so offensive. It's your presence. It's your presence that they're trying to eliminate because they can debate around and say, "Well, I know biology is simple," and they can play these cute rhetorical games until it's a trans woman, until it's a black man standing in front of them. And then it becomes way more complicated. I'm working my way through the banned books and I read All Boys Aren't Blue by George Johnson. It's a great book. It has some small scenes of sexual exploration. And I just thought this is what this beautiful book that is really a testament to family values-- truly the purest of family values, caring for your elders, letting your people work on you and just the presence of black queer sexuality-- is so dangerous that you can't see everything else that's going on here. But, again, it's not surprising. And this isn't a new strategy. This isn't a new response. Again, because we get spun up in these other debates, I really feel like we missed the opportunity to plainly and accurately describe some of these incidences that are a long pattern of oppression and a long pattern of silencing so that we can't get to real issues of gender. We are going to have to work out because it's not simple and because we're not doing don't ask, don't tell and our lives are going to change and we are going to have to think about spaces and sports and what not. Not just think about, not just conversate about, not just fight about on the internet, like actually formulate some laws and processes around. But we're too stuck in these fights.  

Beth [00:46:50] If I were to sit down and talk about this with J.K. Rowling, I would want to do that with a lot of care for the experiences that she talked about in this podcast that got her here. And as we have any discussion about transgender rights invisibility, I want to do that with a lot of care. There are specific people in my mind that I want to be able to listen to this podcast and feel seen and cared about and respected. That to me is just my hope of how we can get unstuck. I wanted to watch the video of Dylan Mulvaney because I wanted Dylan Mulvaney to be a person to me, as much as somebody on Instagram as an influencer can be. As I thought about what it means for somebody like Kid Rock to get his gun out, to make a statement about how offended he was by this video. It's nonsense. When you see this video and then you look at the Kid Rock thing, it is mind blowingly dumb. It is.  

Sarah [00:47:44] I wish I could act surprised that something involving Kid Rock is mind bogglingly dumb, but whatever.  

Beth [00:47:48] It's mind-blowingly dumb. It hasn't struck a whole lot of people as mind-blowingly dumb though, because they aren't thinking about Dylan Mulvaney. They're thinking about a stand in for a set of issues that I don't like, that are uncomfortable, that hit at me in ways that make me feel like I'm losing touch with the world or that make the world seem crazy to me. However you want to phrase it. And I think just coming back into smaller spaces where people can be whole people with particularity and with those stories that create a feeling of empathy, even if you end up on different sides of it, is what we have to do. And the maddening thing about all of this is I think that Megan Phelps-Roper would 100% agree with that statement. I think the people who made the series made it with intentions that feel a lot like my intention as we do our work every day. I just feel kind of cynical about listening to something like this and believing that we're trying to shrink it down when actually it's being done for like maximum dramatic effect so that it becomes, as it is now, one of the biggest podcasts in the United States.  

Sarah [00:49:01] I think what's difficult is I think people like Natalie Wynn are going to articulate to a certain extent we're done shrinking down the conversation. The problem is now we need big conversations that have big roles that expand in big ways our ideas about medical treatment, about the treatment of children, trans children, about women in sports. The problem is we're going to have to go big. We're have to have some big rules because there are big changes coming our way. And I think her argument that it has to be hard, it's not going to be a nice small conversation; the change is going to be big and it's going to be difficult, is fair. I just think, for me, by the time I finished listening to all of it, I was even clear on my values, which is nonviolent resistance. I do not respond well to the argument of they acted ugly and we get to act ugly too. And not because of some superior morality, because I don't think it works. Because I think it does take this direction where no one can get anything done. And that should be our aim. I do think that in every situation, even Anita Bryant with a pie in the face, I don't want to lose sight of someone's humanity. And I don't think we've had in the last several years since the Internet has come on the scene, an expansive conversation, either small or big, about what do we do with bigots in a democratic society. If we acknowledge that this is bigoted? If it's Westboro Baptist Church or J.K. Rowling or whatever, what do we think the role of bigots is in a democratic society? We'll let them vote? Are we going let them speak? Are we just going to cancel them? Are we going to shun them in a way that dehumanizes them? I don't think we've had that conversation. I don't think we have some good social norms, policy objectives, whatever around, like, do we acknowledge that there are still going to be bigots and that we can't shame them out of existence? So, what does that mean in a democratic, pluralistic society for someone to hold bigoted opinions? I'm not sure we've reached a conclusion on that, because I do think J.K. Rowling has bigoted opinions about transgender people. Okay. So what next? What next?  

Beth [00:51:18] I think there are two things that I have points of departure from what you just said on. The first one is I don't know that we need a lot of big rules and laws changed. I think that what we need is a recognition that transgender people are people entitled to the rights of privacy and all the privileges of citizenship that attach to everyone else. And that's where I think shrinking it down makes the most sense. It makes a lot more sense to me to say in the context of this sport, at this level, what are we going to do? Instead of all sports at all levels. It makes a lot more sense to me to say, you and your doctor and your family and anybody else who is a professional working with you think through what is healthy and ethical and the right next step in your situation. To me, part of the problem when I hear someone speaking out against transgender rights or visibility is that they want to say, well, on a blanket basis, you should have to be this old to have any kind of affirming care or you should never be able to play this sport or whatever. I think this is all really delicate and really individualized. The other piece that I just feel a little differently about is that I think we've always been working out what the role of bigots are in the democratic society. I think the Internet has changed one component of that, or maybe just expanded it to a point that it becomes a much harder question because now we are very fragile about the idea of being called a bigot or being told that we hold some kind of bigoted viewpoint, which again is something that's existed always. Nobody likes being called a racist or discriminatory in other ways before now. And we have information flowing in ways that calls everyone to question any sort of common nucleus of facts that we can operate around as we're discussing something and gets us into our groups in a hard and fast way, so that a very discriminatory opinion can soon feel extremely mainstream. Because in our faces is the whole collection of people who feel this way and who've glommed onto feeling this way because they too at one point have been criticized in a way they didn't like and felt was undeserved. And so, now we're all in it together against this wokeness. And I think that's what I am struggling with right now. Like, how do we start to unwind that scale of that tension that we have felt for a long time about people with views that don't uphold the dignity of others?  

Sarah [00:54:17] So this is where I think I agree and disagree. I think this is a pretty new situation. I think for a lot of American history, most of human history, it wasn't about what someone called you individually because we didn't have a big sense of ourselves as individuals. We were members of a group. This idea of individual actualization that we formulated in liberal democracies, it's fresh off the presses. It's not even consistent across the globe. And I like it. I'm here for it. I want individual actualization. I want people to be the fullest embodiments of themselves. We haven't figured out that balance inside groups. It's like we want to pretend that we're not in a group. That's what I think, honestly, is so brilliant about George Johnson's book All Boys Aren't Blue. Man, he talks about both of those exceptionally well that this is who I wanted to be. This is who I was on the inside. And this is how this group, my family member of the black community, member of the queer community, that's how this membership inside the group worked on me. And it's like we haven't found that balance, which is why we say I want to be myself. But if we get treated differently by the group, we lose it because we don't really want to acknowledge that both things are true. We are individuals inside a group, and I think that tension is really on full display when we talk about bigoted opinions or being a bigot. That's why you hear that right wing talking point trotted out so often, which is this was supposed to be the tolerant group. J.K. Rowling does this in the podcast. I was a progressive. They were supposed to be a tolerant group, but they were not tolerant of my opinion. And you hear that. You hear that, "Oh, you're hypocrites because you say everybody should be able to feel how they feel and love how they love and think what they think, but you want to silence them if they go outside the bounds of the group." And I think that's a fair criticism because I just don't think we've figured that out yet, that we were all in on the group and then we kind of way swung into individualism. And we haven't found that balance between the two yet.  

Beth [00:56:25] But what's so difficult about this is what is the group?  

Sarah [00:56:29] So many groups.  

Beth [00:56:30] The groups used to be a lot smaller. The awareness that we have of-- this is why I think I keep coming back to scale as the problem. Like J.K. Rowling shouldn't have to know this many people, you know.  

Sarah [00:56:44] And what messed up the scale? The Internet.  

Beth [00:56:47] The Internet. Right. And so, as I am living my life, who's the group who is supposed to know my heart and be in relationship with me enough to occasionally hear something from me that is way off. And we're all going to have our way off thing. Everybody has a bad take on something, and most of us have a truly destructive take on something, even if it comes from a story that almost anyone could listen to and say, "Yeah, I see how you got there." That's just that's how we are, these brains of ours. And so, what group am I negotiating? And that's why I truly feel that we've all kind of lost our minds right now because we are negotiating the group as everyone I see in my feed throughout the day, or everyone I hear about when my favorite personality-- and look, I spend a lot of time thinking, are we part of the problem here? Because the groups just feel bigger and bigger and bigger and it's no wonder that our sense of insecurity is very high. And when you think about that, it again brings me back to trying to be careful. Like, a lot of what's being rejected is being asked to be careful in these conversations. But if we are all struggling with what's my place in an increasingly expanding group, and an increasingly critical group that I can hear from constantly about those criticisms, then imagine being a very young person who feels something about your own body that doesn't conform to the expectations around you and what all this noise can do as it works on you. And why I think absolutely the message needs to be one of hope and care for every person shouting about you as an avatar of a group on the floor of the Montana House. There are many, many people ready to love you and have you be whoever you want to be as a full and complete human being in their lives.  

Sarah [00:58:49] Well, and I just think it's just hard because inevitably we do have a group of 330 million people that have to run a country together. And you see that play out in the budget process we talked about in the first segment of the show. At some point, the group does have to come to some sort of consensus. Now, I think that group plays an outsized role in much of our debate, and I do think there's room for smaller, more localized discussions. We've had this conversation around Korean spas where you were at a Korean spa and a transgender woman came in and there was sort of a very heartfelt, not mean, not discriminatory conversation with the person at the desk and the transgender woman left. And I thought, okay, so rubber meets the road. Let's stop talking about it. What should we do? And I was having this conversation with a friend. I thought, okay, well, imagine if I could wave a magic wand like in Harry Potter and say, what do I think should happen next around these very difficult conversations about transgender women in previously all biologically female spaces, what would I do? And I thought, well, I guess the best case scenario would be just one place going, "Okay, we're going to try this." We're going to be the Korean spa who tries this first, and we're going to try to figure out how this will work. We're just going to workshop this a little bit. We're going to let all women know they're welcome and that this is a welcoming space. And so, you might encounter a body that looks very different because it's already a sort of emotional situation to enter an all naked pace for most women. So, what happens if we introduce even more difference in this all naked space? What does that mean? And just to workshop it and say, okay, well, this is how it worked out. That's the best thing I could come up with because, I mean, I don't think Congress should get involved. I don't think the statehouses should get involved. But I do think we going to have to talk about it, because it can't just be we put it off until Congress doesn't get involved and says this is welcome everywhere. Because that will also be a disaster if we try to problem solve on that level immediately. It's like you need a warm up. You need a ramp up situation here.  

Beth [01:00:56] Yeah. The worst place to figure this out is a lawsuit against the Korean Spa. By anyone, name your person, name your side, saying to a court, you figure this out. But at the same time, it shouldn't be up to an individual at a desk, at a Korean spa to say go right ahead into our all women's area. And I thought a lot about how would I have felt if I were in the hot tub and here comes a body that I didn't expect to see in this space. And I think my honest answer is that I would have felt a tremendous amount of anxiety for other people in the room. Who is going to have what kind of reaction here and is that going to make this person unsafe? I think my safety concern would have been for the transgender woman, not for everybody else in the room. But I would have felt anxious for other people's reactions too. And that's hard. And you're right. I don't know what we do about that, except institution by institution, business by business, place by place say, "well, how might this go and how can we learn from it?" Even when everything is handled beautifully. Even if that Korean spot had a sign on the door that said, "Attention, everyone, this is what we're doing. All bodies are welcome in the spaces that match a person's gender identity. Know that in advance." I think it would be the right thing to do. Even when that's handled perfectly, there will be some discomfort around it. That's what I keep returning to with J.K. Rowling. It cannot be you do you and change nothing for me. That's just not how it works because we're too connected to each other.  

Sarah [01:02:42] Well, and that connection to me is what is lost in the responses to people who we feel are bigoted. It's I will discard you and you will no longer affect me. I wish it was so. I really, really do. And the part of Meghan Phelps-Roper's story that is so affecting is that she speaks to that. That people reached out and said, "I still feel connected to you. I will not discard you." And they worked on her. And that is interesting, even if it isn't always accurate. But I think that's the other part that I can't let go of. I cannot pretend that by saying you're less than human because you're a bigot, that you cease to be a member of the human community with me. That has not been my life experience. That is not my moral ethical values. It is not what I know to be true. And so, when people speak and act like that, that's what I react against, because I don't like that from any side because I don't think it's true.  

Beth [01:03:40] The length of this conversation tells us that there is a lot here, and there's so much more to say about this. And we look forward to hearing from many of you about it as we continue. We always end the show with what's on our minds Outside of Politics. And I don't know that we've done a very good job choosing something Outside of Politics, as we often don't, because everything does touch on the political. But Sarah, you wanted to talk about what you see as a growing backlash to plastic surgery, and I'm super interested to hear more.  

Sarah [01:04:12] I'm just so fascinated by these young ladies coming up and having all their filler dissolved. There was a great article you sent me that when every face looks the same, there is no status. And using your money and resources to reshape your face, that seems to be part of it, is that, maybe we all don't want to look like sexy babies. I'm always shocked when people are confused by that lyric. They're like, "What do you mean a sexy baby?" I'm like, "Look around."  

Beth [01:04:36] That's right. That's what's so great about her. She can say a lot with a short phrase. 

Sarah [01:04:41] Names it. Sexy baby. And I'm a monster on the hill. I think that's super interesting, especially because the age is so young of the people reacting against this, because I do think there's been an increasing narrative that people should use fillers and Botox at much younger ages. Now, do I wish I'd started retinol sooner? I do. Do I use Botox? I do. But I just think that this sort of push and pull surrounding plastic surgery and fillers and Botox is really interesting.  

Beth [01:05:08] I started reading Sarah Peterson's mom-fluencers this weekend. It's a book about the performance of motherhood online.  

Sarah [01:05:18] Love it.  

Beth [01:05:19] And it's really interesting. And the first chapter spends a lot of time talking about how social media is this constant loop for us of feeling inferior and then superior. And you just keep going around and around. You watch the influencer and you wish you could be more like them, and then maybe your brain kicks in this defensive mechanism that says, "No, I don't. They're ridiculous." And I definitely see this in myself, especially around weight loss online and especially right now is I feel like we're having this resurgence of weight loss. I keep waiting for like the ghost of Dr. Atkins to have a feed because it just feels like we're back in that time period when even though everybody's trying to use more care in the language around it, because of new pharmaceutical options for weight loss, it's just here again and it's everywhere and it's present all the time. And so, I can feel my own brain feeling like, oh my gosh, should I be on one of these drugs? Should I want to try one of these drugs? What would that mean for me? And then kicking around to the superior like, absolutely not. It's so gross in my own head that I will even read an article about how some of these drugs that are used for diabetes treatment, Ozempic in particular, there are shortages now for patients who were using it before it became a weight loss craze. And I'll be like just to myself, "See, it's right to not be doing this because this is terrible." And all of that's unfair and silly. It's just the loop that your brain does. Again, to hearken back to the conversation about J.K. Rowling. It's like the loop that you do when the scale has gotten too big and you're looking at this group and it's setting the standard of how you feel about your own body.  

Sarah [01:07:16] When we were growing up, the main input. Into your sort of own body image was TV and magazines. And I remember I think I was probably late college or early law school, and I decided I wasn't going to read beauty magazines anymore. I had to be done because I noticed what was happening inside my own head when I would read those magazines and how damaging it was. And now it's just that input is so much wider and deeper. All the time You're seeing a certain beauty ideal. And I think the reason this reaction is interesting to me is because it's a small pushback, but it's just a different type of influencing now. Influencing you to step away from fillers. I'm still influencing you. You're still looking at my idealized version of myself on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram. And I just think of that level of input. I think that's why we see such damaging outcomes for young women on social media, because it's still media. And media works on you. And if you don't think that it does, I encourage you to look at the size of the industry. People don't spend that much money if it doesn't work. And I do think that plastic surgery is just hard. There are lifesaving aspects of plastic surgery, but I think there's that cycle of, oh, it's all elective. It's all for how you look. And we just forget that it is the experience inside plastic surgery or inside our ideas about ourselves are as big and diverse and complex as humanity itself. And I would hope that because there's that bigger level of input from social media that we get benefits too. I think the body positivity wouldn't have happened without social media. I really don't think corporate America was going to come to Jesus on that on their own. I mean, you saw Dove a little bit, but I think it had to be pushed by voices outside saying, "Is this enough? Have we gone far enough?" And so, I think I'm a little encouraged by this conversation about plastic surgery, not because I think plastic surgery should be eliminated or fillers or Botox or any of that, just because I think this is sort of the positive aspect of the social media influence. And that can have lots and lots of costs. But where somebody shows up and goes, "Is this enough? Have we gone far enough?"  

Beth [01:09:35] I think the tough thing is that social media is a space that's about consumption, and consumption is about that loop of I feel inferior, then I feel superior. I mean, when you're talking about influencing versus de-influencing, you're still in that cycle of where am I feeling inferior and where am I feeling superior? And we kind of need both of those things to motivate us to do much of anything. And I don't mean to say in any of my comments that I am down on plastic surgery or weight loss or anything. I mean, even the critique of like, oh, it's all elective, it's all cosmetic. Well, [inaudible] is like the vast majority of everything that we do and spend money on because our relationship to our bodies is huge and forms the basis of how we treat ourselves and other people and behave in the world in general, and certainly how we behave politically. I think it's more that this is another space where you feel this pull to have some kind of hard and fast rule instead of engaging empathetically with what brings people to these decisions for a whole host of reasons. And it's just a big ask of our brains to know where we are in that loop at every moment when we're saturated with not just the magazine, but talking embodied version of what the magazine used to be trying to tell us.  

[01:10:57] Well, thank you all so much for joining us today. If you have not read our second book, Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About basically everything), we would love for you to do that as we're celebrating its birthday tomorrow. And if you have read it, we would love for you to leave an encouraging review on Amazon or Good Reads and let other people in your life know about it too. We will be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, have the best week available to you.  

[01:11:35] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [01:11:41] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [01:11:47] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers [01:12:37]   Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment.  
Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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