Why Fathers Start Reading Feminism

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Should we get started? Should we just launch right in? Yeah. What do you got for us today? I have for us. Well, let me preface it this way, because I'm gonna it's it's a little bit like, you know, we're gonna talk about feminism. And so like men commenting on feminism. Let me just preface that I recently had a daughter. Okay. And you congratulations. Thank you. And she's doing fine. And she and you also have a daughter. Yep, but we're both like dads of daughters. And I got concerned about like my daughter's life in America. That she, what would her more you know, status be as you know, in terms of equal rights and in terms of you know equity, in terms of you know economics and stuff. And I was a little bit interested and concerned about that. And so I started to read a bunch of books about you know, uh, sort of traditional feminism, but the the history of feminism, the advancement of women's liberation, and then also sort of recent, you know, patriarchy, third wave, fourth wave feminism books. I read, I read probably five books on on on this stuff, including the two main books on the patriarchy, one called The Creation of the Patriarchy, which was in like the 80s and there in the 90s, and then one very recent book called The Patriarchy Still Exists or something like that. And I read those both quite interesting, illuminating. And by reading all that, I came up with a solution, uh, not for feminism, but to help the advancement of the liberation of women, which I'm always been in favor of, but I'm especially committed to now that I have a wife. I'm a wife for a few years, but a daughter who will be growing up. So, yeah, so the solution is it's kind of a two-parter, but they they're correlated together. One part of the solution is feminism moves forward, the advancement of women progress, it seems to me, uh, from reading these histories, when they allie themselves and act like a labor movement.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So that's one thing. So we're gonna talk also talk about that. And then the other thing is we measure feminism wrong, we talk about it in the wrong way in the academy and in general. Everyone talks about in terms of waves of feminism the wave first wave feminism, second wave feminism, third wave feminism, fourth right. And I think that's the wrong way to talk about it. And instead, we should I've constructed a five-tier way of talking about it. Okay, and I think that's a more accurate way. And what's interesting is America is only at about tier three, but other countries are at tier five.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Five is good.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

You want to be uh the best. Five is like total equity, total equality. Women are safe and protected.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

DEF CON four, DEF CON three. Right.

The Five Tiers Framework

SPEAKER_00 3:19

It's like Def, yeah, it's like Mach 4, Mach 3, Mach 2. Okay, it's like a it's like a level. So you can use that, it's kind of like are the civilization levels, like you know, Dyson Dyson sphere, right? You can have like civilization level one, two. This is like that, but for women's liberation. So I want to propose this as a solution because I think it would, if we reframe, we need we need women's liberation to get out of the doldrums, like that it's been sort of in the doldrums for about 30 years. We haven't really seen much progress, and actually we've seen steps backwards with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a number of other things. We and we it's actually really important not just for women, but for men who believe in equity and justice, for actually the women's movement to actually stop being in the doldrums and stop falling back and actually advance. And so that's why it's a solution is like I think this is how we could do it. Obviously, maybe I'm not the best messenger, I don't know, but I think it's important for people who care to share ideas. And so I'll share this idea.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, well, let's dig in on it. I love it. That's fine. Okay, I think, yeah. So are you gonna teach me? You're gonna teach me this five.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Let me tell you the tiers, and then that will explain the other part, which is like the um uh um the the the why it needs to act like a labor movement and not like an advocacy organization. And we'll also we'll talk about mangoes. And do the I always always talk about mangoes because they've been taken over by mangoes.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Do your five, I was gonna say, do your five tiers form some sort of a uh a good acronym? Is that what we're getting to? I wish they did. No, they don't.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Wait, P-I-N-V-E-F. Pimv. Pivf. Piv pivvet pim pimvef.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Well we'll we'll work on it. We'll see what we'll see what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Maybe we can get it. Okay. Okay, so in the hist this follows the history, so it's not like there's no it's not a ranking of values, like which you know, maybe the third fifth phase actually might be the most important morally, but in the history, it's gone through these five phases, and so I'll and and it's also kind of repealed back from those phases too. So, in a way, there's some kind of way that these okay. So, one is the first phase is property. Women gain the right to have property. Okay, makes sense, right? Just to own property, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Because there was a time when it was like that's not you have to be married. You are actually you are a property of your husband. So you're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

And the way that women though, and and each tier has strategies that worked to gain that tier. So if if you go back in history, women gain the right of property by petitioning men. They just petition women and women and men, men like us who are allied with women, right, wrote their names on petitions to give women the right to have property. They submitted those signed papers to governmental bodies made up entirely of men who only were voted in by men to say you should give women property, vote the right to have to own property themselves. And that alone, without any kind of action outside of signing petitions, got women the right to property. So that's pretty good. There was no need for like a war, there was no need for like, I don't know, there was no strikes, no boycotts, no direct action, no breaking windows, no effective, no, no ethical sabotage, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

No A demonstration of public will in my own.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

And not even demon, and and not even a protest, not even protest, street protest. Just sign our petition, just hear it, turn it in. Please give us this. And the men looked at it and said, you know, there are a lot of problems. If women don't have property, it causes all kinds of problems and it's not good. And women could have property. Okay, let's give them property. So, first tier property, petition. Second tier, independence from husband, also petition, only took petition. So women said, you know, men, women should be able to not be married and not be like a pariah just for not being married. They should be able to own when their husband dies, they should be able to inherit the husband's property. It shouldn't go to like the husband's brother, and then the woman gets attached to their family or gets left out in the cold, right? Women should be able to be independent of their husbands. So that was the second tier, and that's petition as well. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Then we get petitions doing pretty good so far on the scorecard.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

You know, that was the interesting thing from reading these histories, is everyone acted like you know, women were, you know, like there was a patriarchy, right? Where the men were like not willing to like give off, give away the power, but actually women just asked and then they just got it got it. So that's good.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

The guys are like, Oh, you weren't you wanted to have pro oh okay, here you go.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, basically, I mean, enough people had to sort of say, and men, some men had to ally with the women and say, Yeah, like give the women property.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

This is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Um, yeah, it's not it. First of all, it doesn't work very well, and also they deserve it, like they ought to have it, you know, just for being people. Okay, the third phase or or tier is voting, political ability to have a political voice. That one took petition primarily, but then also protest. So we're all we all know the suffragettes did protests, they even did effect uh ethical sabotage, they would break windows, they would create ruckuses, they would be not violent, but they would create a ruckus and damage even to property. So it required uh uh protest to do that. Uh, and that is what got women the vote in uh 18, let's see here, in the United States. Let's see here. It's uh wow, the internet is like trying to cover it over and not allow it to say what it is. This is bizarre. It's late, it's late in the 1800s or early 1900s. Anyways, they proposed they they they fought for it for like a hundred years, although they didn't fight for it very well. Um like for example, one thing that I learned from these histories of feminism and and and of women's rights and liberation was that women women actually the women's rights movement started to support the anti-slavery movement very strongly in like the 30s and 40s, all the way up then into the civil war. And they kind yeah, well, I mean, it doesn't it doesn't, right? Because what happened was well, here's the thing when the civil war ended and they had liberation and they had the 14th Amendment, which protected stopped slavery, but it only enfranchised men, the male slaves. And they didn't get the right to vote for another 40 years, and the women's rights movement people were really mad when that happened. They felt like they got totally screwed over, right? Uh sure because they fought what they felt like shoulder to shoulder with you know the black slaves to eliminate the abolitionists struggle. We are groups of disenfranchised people, and then the slate, and then they were like, Nope, just the men get so that was bad. That was bad. That was a misstep. I mean, in a way, I mean it's not bad that they it's good they removed slavery. It's maybe the women helping is good that the women were in support of that, the w the women's right people. But it's kind of interesting that the women's right people, it wasn't really strategic to achieve their aims, maybe, um, because they got screwed over. But, anyways, it takes petition and it and in the past it takes protest to get the right to vote. Okay. Okay, but again, not vi not major. I mean, the suffragettes were pretty major protest, but not a civil war. You know, it took a civil war to get rid of slavery, didn't take a civil war to get women's rights. Uh, which, you know, this is where the kind of the story of the patriarchy kind of gets me a little bit. I think it's a bit of a misnomer because if if it's truly a patriarchy, it would take a civil war to to take back those pol that political power, I think. And it just didn't. It's just protest and and and and petition.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

One thing that strikes me as pretty different between those two struggles is the amount of like economics tied into the slavery, you know, that's not into you know, the the amount of money that people lose immediately from slavery becoming illegal versus they're like, oh, women women just gaining the right to vote.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Right. I guess. Yeah, sure, there's an economic aspect to that too. But women gaining the right to vote, I mean, it's a power aspect. The power like imagine, you know, women like today, women vote pronoun, like I think somewhat majority Democrat. So like if you today, if women didn't have the right to vote, you know, and you went and said, let's try to get the right to vote, people who Republicans would block it. They would be like, no, because they don't want to lose right, they just they're gerrymandering racially. Why don't they have the same right? They would have the same. So I mean, back then it was the same thing. Like the men in power who thought man women aren't gonna vote for me, they would have tried to block the the women's right to vote.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

But it still went through. So that so that's pretty interesting, like that that that that went through. Uh took a long time. I mean, you know, 1776 all the way to 1906 1906, I think is what it came up with here. Um, okay, then the fourth level is equal rights. So this is equal, like you're literally men and women are politic like totally equal. And America does not have this yet. Famously, the what's called the Equal Rights Amendment.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Uh wait, it does not have equal there is equal rights.

Property To Voting And What Worked

SPEAKER_00 12:43

There is not equal rights between women and men. The equal rights amendment has never been ratified. Oh, it was passed by Congress in 1972. Oh, it has met the 38th state ratification threshold in 2020, but it today faces legal challenges. Yeah, and it faces legal challenges regarding a lapsed deadline, leaving its official statute as the 20th amendment disputed despite advocacy for its adoption. So Virginia in 2020 was the 38th state to ratify the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and meeting the three-fourths of the state's requirement for a constitutional amendment, but now it's been challenged and it has not published the ERA, and lawsuits are ongoing.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

What is the basis of people I don't understand what people are mad about, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

So the Equal Rights Amendment. So America has not achieved level four feminism, and there's another level over that after that.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Okay, so what's what's level five?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

What's the level five is full equity? The S class. Okay, full equity. And that means that you know women are not the same as men. They, of course, because they carry what they carry children, they um, you know, they're a different organism than men are, right? They uh they and men are different in their own way too, but you know, but both genders, both sexes require being treated in a way that gives them maximum freedom and maximum protections, you know, so that they're fully, fully free. And so, for example, things like universal childcare and uh, you know, Scotland and some other countries have free um free uh feminine products so that uh economics doesn't block women from just living with having periods every month, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Um taxes, for example, what they call it the pink tax, I think I've heard that.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Right before oh yeah, sure. Pink tax, you know, and then equal equal pay, which although equal pay would already be covered by the equal rights, so just the ERA would block the equal pay, I think. Okay, anyways, so it's so but anyway, if there's not exact this is why it's tiers, it's not totally black and white, but equal full equal full equity would mean like women have you know reproductive, obviously control of their bodies reproductively, and they have access to the three the things that they need as women to just operate as women and be part of society without there being like barriers to them that way. So that so America has not achieved four, and it's very, very partially achieved some of five, and so it has a long way to go, and it basically hasn't made much progress since the 80s, and that's because four and five move on from petition and protest and require striking, boycotting, and voting. Ah so you have to use the power of vote that you got in tier three to achieve tier four and five, but you also in history it shows, and in the countries where they have achieved levels four and five, like Iceland, Norway, uh, Sweden, very, very uh uh full equity women uh countries, the difference between those countries and our country is just that their labor movement didn't stop in the 80s, it just kept going. And the women's movement came along with it and was aligned with it and moved with it and in favor of it. Whereas in America, the labor movement got destroyed by the Reagan era um regulations and kind of cultural stuff, but also feminism and the women's light movement abandoned the labor movement and went into the mangoes. This is where the mangoes come in. Okay, so mangoes are media, academics, and NGOs. So feminism is largely moved forward today by people in the media, you could imagine. Okay, I know what that is. Media people, journalists, and and uh, you know, musicians, and then and then uh and then academics is a huge part of feminism, you know, feminist women's, you know, are you studies things?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Are you in the academics? Are you part of the A of mangoes?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Are you I am part of I'm an M. I'm an M. I'm the man. I'm a we're media. We're we're we are media, sure. Yeah, I mean, I am unfortunately part of the academics, but I'm aligned with I'm aligned with labor, though. I'm a labor advocate, so I I try to not uh I try to lean into the work. Yeah, I don't want to be an academic, and then and then and then the NGOs is just like advocacy organizations. An NGO is just like, you know, you can think of any you know women's organization. Oh, it's this woman or that woman organization, you know. And unfortunately, the mangoes don't lead to progress, they just kind of move the pieces around without actually making progress. Um, because the media just kind of endlessly debates things, academics just kind of endlessly debate things, and NGOs actually are funded to fight. If they succeed, they lose all their funding. And so they're not, they want to make superficial progress, but they don't actually they're not actually incentivized to make full progress, right? Whereas labor unions are incentivized to get all of their demands, they're incentivized to get universal child care, universal health care, universal access to, you know, child time off parental leave, paid parental leave, right? So labor unions and the labor movement are incentivized to go all the way to full equity. And then also they use the strike and the boycott as well as the vote. So labor unions organize their members and the public to vote for certain ways. They also organize their members and the public to boycott and to strike. And so the women's movement in other countries, which used the vote petition, you have to continue to use petition, you have to continue to use protest, but you have to add on to that voting and then also labor uh striking and boycotting. If you don't do that, then historically no country that has been able to do that has been able to get women's greater women's equality and then women's full equity.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

So if I'm thinking about it like it's a car, because I know you love cars, so this car analogy should be very good. But if like voting is sort of like the steering wheel that I'm turning it, and then the striking and boycotting becomes the sort of affecting the gas pedal. Yeah, you're like, you're like, you don't have any money, you don't, you know, like, and they're like, okay, I we we like the gas to keep coming. What do we need to do? They're like, you need to listen to us when it comes time to turn the steering wheel. And then it's like, ah, this now we've right, now we've got progress.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Yeah. And you know, whether you're voting for men, women, it doesn't matter who, but as long as you're voting for people who say, I will support women, I'll get child care, I'll get uh women, uh, you know, uh maternal or or even just parental paid leave. You know, I'll get women's right to choose all these things that are full equity and I'll get the I'll I'll I'll demand that the equal rights amendment is passed and made into a constitutional amendment.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

You know, um the vote you have to vote people into I will tell some people that it's not already a thing because every I at least one person in this conversation thought it was a thing already.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

It's not, yeah. It's really messed up when I learned that. I just like went through the roof, especially as a father of daughter of a daughter. And I can I I just care about people in general. The idea that 50% of people would not have equal rights is completely bananas. Um, so anyways, so yeah, this is kind of the idea. I think I think I think it's really important for us as a as a as a united sort of liberation of humanity front to help and be like, hey, women's movement, we gotta like get back on track and be making progress because there's such an important flank of the whole movement of liberation. Uh, and if they aren't on track, uh then we all kind of flag, you know, because because yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So is the idea to like more activate the mangoes and make them more useful? No, we gotta get the mangoes out of it. Get a different a different.

The ERA Gap And Full Equity

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I mean, the mangoes can hang around and be there, but they need to stop being the leaders of the movement. And they need people who are rank and file, like just people in the street, like normal people, have to stop thinking, oh, success. We have a funded NGO or oh, success, we have a media, a member of the media is a woman's advocate. No, none of that is success. Those are just uh performative. Um, they might be so they might be able to become like loudspeakers for petition, protest, voting, strike, boycott. But if they aren't, if they're just like discussing things or being outraged every day for one thing or another, then it's a waste. It's it's not gonna work decorations, not not actual. The the the best example here is me too. It it was it it was uh the appearance, it gave the appearance of some sort of success or struggle, you know, the struggle towards women's liberation.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

People people talk, they're like now that it's um post me too era, post me too era, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

You know, but it doesn't the reality is no laws changed. The ERA is not passed. There is not parental and maternal leave, right? There is no, you know, the women who ran for president lost both of them against a total narcissistic psychopath. So there there really wasn't. I mean, you people will point out there are some improvements. Okay, I'm sure there's some things that happened. It's a thing that happened. I'm sure there's some consequences to it that were positive. But the reality is the big, the big motions have not moved forward. Uh, and and and that's because it wasn't accompanied by, in my opinion, voting, cur voting really driving the vote with it. They didn't really convert Me Too into an electoral thing. They kept it in this sort of business, women in business in leadership. Uh, you know, how many women are on the board, how many CEOs or something? And that just that just doesn't advance, you know, regular women's lives. And then they didn't, they absolutely didn't turn it into any kind of strike or boycott, which they totally could have, because it is a kind of working world thing. They could have said, Oh, well, we're boycotting these 10 companies that have terrible women, you know, relationships and were, you know, like Uber at the time. Now it's sort of better, but Uber at the time had these terrible relations with women. Why didn't the Me Too movement call for a boycott of Uber? They didn't. Same thing with strike, they didn't call for like women to all walk off the workplace until the ERA is passed. That they could have done that. Like there were leaders of the Me Too movement who had millions of Twitter followers who were doing it who could have said, let's turn this into, and then I think it would have had more of a consequence. Well, at least history suggests that it would have been more successful.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

I think I might have heard a little bit of a stink about the Uber thing because people because of the CEO being, you know, one of these people caught him. Now that I'm thinking about the whole Me Too thing, a lot of it was contextualized, a lot of it was contextualized in like taking down specific men, being like, Oh, we have this person, this person, this person, some of whom who were only temporarily stopped and are now doing just fine.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

But some of them, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

But it was good we took it. Like you're saying, it the end result of that is like ping, ping, ping, we shot a few people out of the sky, but we didn't lift up the floor of the problem that's competitive thing anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

You know, and that's exciting, and NGOs can get involved, and the media can have a feeding frenzy, and academics can write a bunch of papers and books about Me Too and the Me Too era and blah blah blah blah blah. But you know, yeah, and they can write like postmodern feminist critiques of Me Too and blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

But it doesn't Harvey Weinstein not making movies now. That's fixed. No, but so there is progress.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

I mean, those monsters, monster predator guys, shouldn't be just guys like and then they're like, good job done.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Wash our hands, we're done. Right. It's like no, we could have done it.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

It could have been turned into something so much stronger if it was if it had said if they had said, okay, now we're gonna I don't know what the targets would have been because I'm not, I wasn't, you know, but you you choose some targets that are strategic.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Use like you're saying, you use labor principles, use you know yeah, tie a strike striking boycott and voting.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

I mean, they didn't even turn it into a voting thing. I mean, there was the women's march, which I'm sure people were like registering people to vote, and clearly there was a kind of Trump is bad, you know, women don't, you know, like, but something like 50% of women voted for Trump. So they clearly didn't actually make many inroads into all women. Like they just sort of were like, Well, we as the leftist women don't like Trump. But in actually to actually have an electoral success, you actually kind of have to put your own sort of allegiances aside and be like, How can I meet other people where they're at and and get them onto my side? And and there wasn't that, it was more like just a kind of tete à tete.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, because that's kind of that's my question, sort of when I see these no kings marches. I'm like, they're like, look, millions of people, millions of people. I'm like, and they're like, I'm like, okay, but what is what what's the change? What's it's bigger than the last one? I'm like, okay, but they're like now the president is gonna know that people don't like it. I'm like, I think he knows. He knows they already know what's the you know, it's like showing I I just I think it's good and get getting people activated is good, but right I don't know what the I don't know how useful that is sort of.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

If instead those used, I mean, I don't know. I mean, my con I mean, I've done some research for this episode, and so I'm very I'm more convinced for sure that you know, vote, strike, boycott, and actually some uh ethical sabotage. The set well, at least the vote the suffragettes did some ethical sabotage. There's not a lot of ethical sabotage that I found in like, for example, Iceland's women getting full equity. There's not really sabotage, it's mostly just labor strikes and boycotts and stuff. They're all Vikings anyway.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

They're just like they're Vikings, yeah. We have we have axes, we're just gonna grab our axes or so.

Why Feminism Needs Labor Tactics

SPEAKER_00 26:58

I don't know about ethical sabotage. But yeah, and and in terms, but in terms of the me, I mean, I can't critique them because I haven't done the research, but yeah, to me, it seems like a big protest on a Sunday, right? Not even a work day where you would have a walkout to do the protest, but on a Sunday where everyone's already off work, it it really that's gonna have almost no effect. Um, whereas if you said, here's 15 companies that are publicly traded that are that sell things to normal consumers that are all their CEOs have not condemned Trump, uh stop by like boycott them all. Here's the alternatives for each one, give them an alternative where the CEO has condemned Trump. For example, just that would be massive. Like, you think CVS's CEO has condemned Trump? No, like well, just get all those old folks who are in the No Kings rally to stop getting their prescriptions filled in CVS or or whatever, you know. I mean, probably both Walgreens CVS. Unified movement, like but actually start that has an economic result, yeah. Yes, and then and then it would have an immediate effect, I think that would be much stronger. Oh, yeah, but but uh but I can't speak to that. I think the main thing for this episode is just it'd be great if the women's rights movement would really take all those leaders, there are these brilliant women who are de educated, connected, wealthy, ready to go, or you know, in not just wealthy, but you know, have resources to run this movement. I think if they start using and ally themselves with labor, I mean they should go and call up major labor unions and be like, we're forming an alliance. Like we want to be a part, like we want to be, you know, not we can't be in your labor union necessarily, but we want to be advocating alongside labor. And they don't do it, they don't do it. That those conversations don't happen. Let's not be allies. Yeah, other hist other countries and the American history shows that when labor when when feminists alie themselves with labor and then move forward towards the the goals of labor and the goals of feminism that overlap maternal, you know, maternal pay, maternal time off and you know, um, you know, child care and all the you know things equal pay for women. Labor loves that shit. They love that, they love that they want to fight for equal pay for half their members. Of course they want that, right? So if they if they can work together like that, that's what a history and in other countries has actually yielded the actual advancement of women's liberation into full equity. And if you don't do that, it just people you can show up and you can keep protesting and petitioning, which are the old way, and you can even try to do a little voting, although I haven't really seen even much advocate, you know, voting working. Yeah, you could you can basically keep protesting and promoting, and it just won't work because protest and promote and petitioning only worked for the first three. Now you have to go further.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Striking involved, yeah. You need to get the money.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

And to some extent, the labor the yeah, and even the labor movement stuff actually started before the voting and and helped it. It it wasn't, I don't think it you could say it was like the thing. I think petitioning and protesting was really the the strongest, you know, part of that struggle, uh, at least from the two history books that I read. I mean, there are other people who know a lot more than this than I do, but that though you know I read the main, you know, main up-to-date histories of this. And uh, but but but there was so there was labor stuff before that, uh, and women were you know joining labor unions and the labor unions were were advocating for them. But but it was you know, anyways. So I won't I don't want to say that the labor part had nothing to do with the getting the voting. It did, but then it it um you really have to ratchet up that labor to get those phase four and five. Yeah. The real tragedy here is with calling Bernie supporters Bernie bros, right? Yeah, right, and actually driving a wedge between and and Warren, Elizabeth Warren saying that Bernie was sort of misogynistic and said, no, a woman couldn't be president or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Um Bernie Bro wasn't a compliment, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:05

It was it was always a it was to say that he's like a he's like a m misogynist. He attracts misogynists. That was the attack. And it was Hillary who invented that attack because obviously she was trying to beat him, but it drove this deep wedge in between labor, which is like Bernie, you know, leftist labor-focused politicians and that movement, with the new left and women, you know, identitarian, sort of more mango, sort of identitarian left women movement stuff. But now that's starting to forge back together with the justice democrats. So, like AOC is the perfect example. She's a total feminist and wants, which is great, women's liberation, but she's also like the laborers, also we have a fight for tenants' rights and labor unions, and she doesn't really come out and say let's do strikes and boycott. But maybe that's not for her to do as a politician. It really should be these, you know, the organizations I think outside that should do it, and then the politicians should sort of react to that rather than be like the leaders of it. But she's you know, she's an example where you're like bringing back, so I think that's a it's not there yet because we haven't really seen strike boycott, you know, uh hardcore voting uh electoral like advancement of of women, but at least you're seeing AOC as an example of bringing those movements back together again, which Hillary rendered apart in this horrible way, and War Warren almost in a way continued that rent.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Uh I do remember lots of infighting. Yeah, that was rough kicking up. Well, what about the usually a dirty word is lobbyist, but what if is like for voting, getting voting, that seems to be how you get people's ears now. Is that I mean it seems insulting to treat women as a special interest group, but is that a is that a viable way to maybe get some movement on things? What do you yeah?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

I mean, I don't think you should tie any, you know, you shouldn't tie any hands behind your back, you know. The histories that I read were, you know, the history up until now, and a lot of the labor actions that got women full equity, feminist and women and labor actions that got women full equity in like Norway and Holland and Iceland and stuff, those were in like the 80s and 90s and 2000s. And those are countries where like Citizens United was not, you know, they did they can't do lobbying like you can't at America, right? Right. So that might be a lever that didn't come up in the history because it's so recent, you know, and it's only America.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

So you're saying removing Citizens United would be a good well.

Mangoes Media Academia NGOs Explained

SPEAKER_00 33:43

I'm just saying with Citizens United, you know, women could raise money and spend unlimited funds on elections to support people who supported women's rights. Whether that's I mean, I'm not saying, you know, so that's just money is money, it can be paid for anything, you know, good or bad. Um then that's I mean you can get rid of it. I think it's probably good to get rid of it. I mean, I'm not in I'm not in favor of Citizens United. But but whether it's a whether it's a thing that will definitely work um to bring about full equity and equal rights for women, again, the history could not say because it's never been it, the history is it hasn't been written yet, right? It's only been we've only had intense lobbying like this for like 30 or 40 years, and that's when the that's when the you know in the meantime, the other countries that have succeeded at this have used labor not lobbying to do that. Okay, so what are the other but only as well as labor stuff?

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Okay. You you said there are some that have already got all five uh the aspects you think strong. Where where are those again at?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, so the best places are the Scandinavian countries. Basically the countries with the most advanced labor movements.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

They seem to have the best quality of life things nailed down across the border, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

That is Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland have the best women's rights, high gender equality, political participation, and safety. They're just safer. They have the best maternal health, they have the best legal protections. And Denmark and Iceland, Iceland especially, is usually considered sort of the top. Iceland is sort of amazing. And and and Iceland actually has a famous um um they have a famous strike that they did. So, and this is part of the reason why Iceland has the best women's rights. So in October 24th of 1975, 90% of Icelandic women went on strike. So they all walked off the job. All 90% of women.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

And they were fighting, they were protesting gender inequality by refusing both paid and unpaid labor, bringing the country to a standstill. This even the women even abandoned household chores. So the women refused to even do chores around the house. 90% of women. It was a pretty, pretty profound thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Do you know does it say what the effort was like what's the first one? This was called the law.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

This was called the law. Yeah, yeah, just uh gender well, gender inequality. Uh it doesn't say the exact uh things here, but yeah. But then so the the Icelandic women, there were some threats to the Icelandic women's rights recently, and they wanted to kind of push things forward more. So they actually had another one. Um, I think it was night 2023. Right. And it looks like lest ye forget. Right. And in Poland in 2016, they held a Black Monday, which was modeled on the 1979 Icelandic strike, and there's another global international women's strike, which is a global vision inspired by the Atlantic strike that spread in 2017 and 2018, but then has not continued. So this idea of women not only walking off the job, but refusing to cook dinner and do dishes and do any chores and do anything, right? Uh, which is maybe seems a little funny because there's a lot of that's pretty nice to dramatize paid labor that you design. Absolutely. I mean, obviously, you should take care of children, you know, who are like crying in bed, you know. That's pretty sad, shouldn't hurt the children. But um, but you know, that's a pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

The point is that it's like that's a joint uh that's a split responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

That's not just over and we have like women's history months and you know, these kind of academic mango sort of women's rights people are like women's history month. Well, we have International Women's Strike Day, and I don't hear anything about it. I don't hear anything. Why aren't why aren't the Me Too Twitter people and the feminine and the women's the women the women's history month people and why don't they? I mean they can keep doing the women's history month. I don't mind all that's great. Women's history, great. With me too, great, you know. But add to that, okay, we're all gonna walk off the job on this on this Monday. No one do any work, don't do any tension, which yeah, do actual labor action and direct action, which they don't do, and they don't, you know, so it's a bummer, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

It's a bummer. Because everyone it people can ignore a celebration, you know, and what you're doing if with striking a protest, you can just ignore it. Yeah, you can just say, okay, I'm not gonna go there that time, you know. But right, it's when it's an economic movement or something that's boycotting and striking that affects someone's purse strings, uh they they know you know the people who don't want to notice are forced to notice sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know who you know who does boycotts really well is the right wing. They do it really well. We don't realize that because we don't think the right wing is sort of boycotting because it seems like a sort of left-wing thing to do. But actually, right wing people are really good at boycotting. One of the best examples recently was remember when there was a trans commercial, like a trans actress was in a commercial for Budweiser.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Oh, right, right.

Me Too Without Votes Strikes Boycotts

SPEAKER_00 38:56

And then all these guys protested by boycotting Budweiser. And Budweiser went from Anaheim Busch, the makers of Budweiser, went from the number one beer company in the country to the second. They moved down from the first to the second beer company because of that boycott. And you know, do you think do you think any beer company or any other masculine-coded company will ever put a trans actress ever again in a commercial? Right. No, because of a boycott, not because you know, the Manosphere got mad on TikTok and posted tweets about how they don't like trans actresses, but because they did a boycott. Right. Yeah, they forced that. And that's what that's what the women should do, and that's what the left in general should do.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

I was gonna say, I grew up in the church, you know, in the church, I grew up as a religious person. That was a playbook that you know they would talk in and be like, hey, we don't like this company. Let's boy, you know, there was a famous boycotting Disney thing in the like in the 90s happened where people were like mad that they were having did it push things, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Did you see people see it push things?

SPEAKER_01 40:05

I think it was mad about like uh uh gay appreciation or pride, gay pride days in the park or something. And I don't think it, you know, culturally now in 2026, you're like, yeah, you didn't shut that down. It's there's still gay people. It's okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

It's still going. Uh I th I think maybe with Christians, you know, Christians who are so extremely motivated by Christianity that they're willing to do a boycott, is probably a minority of the country. I mean, big minority, but it's a minority. Women and feminist women, like women who think, hey, women should have better, you know, better pay, better equity, maternal pay, maternal time off. Yeah, that's a lot of women. Like, that's not that's not all the women, maybe. Maybe some women are, I don't know, I'm a trad wife. Although even trad wives should want maternal paid maternal leave, then they can like be a trad wife and like hang out at home with the kids or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

It's an immediate issue for half of the population, and it's a it's a non-zero issue for the other half of the population, giant chunk of them who are like if you're not a person.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

I don't have to pay a woman to think that this is right, and like you know, women, men, men are fathers have wives if the woman well, really we should have parental, we should have parental paid leave for both. But even if we were a little bit not perfect and we just gave women paid leave for six months or whatever, that would really be nice for the fathers, too. Like it's really nice for the whole household if one person can keep their job, get paid even 60% maybe of their salary for six months while taking care of the kid more or less full-time, you know, passing, you know, that's a huge benefit for the men too. Although we really should have um both should be given months, months paid, at least at least six months each paid.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

I think new parents should be given some sort of a blanket like uh it's insanity pass because you know, if you just if you do general crazy things in public, because like it's such a changing of your whole life. You're like, oh, we have to accommodate a new human who does nothing for themselves and screams constantly. And I didn't, I thought I knew, you know, I read books and I thought I knew, but nope, turns out it's different than all of the things all the time, so yeah, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

I like that insanity pass. You can just hold it up and be like, it's an insane. I haven't no, no, no, leave him alone. He has a newborn.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

It's proof of a child under yeah, like I've I've reasoned my brain is not yet combobulated correctly, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Discombobulated. Well, anyways, that's the solution for today. Okay. I don't know. Have we covered have we covered it?

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Are we I think the the action, so it's a it's a step about action that helps the women's movement. What's the action that gets us toward it is I guess trying to get more people are.

Iceland’s Women’s Strike And Boycott Power

SPEAKER_00 42:57

And so it more has to do with women seeing that that labor, these labor actions and alignment with labor unions is not just like a preference thing, it's a critical strategic choice that has to be done if you want to move the women's movement forward. If you don't, or if you kind of don't care, you know, if you just are gonna keep being successful on Twitter, if you just keep being outraged about women being mistreated, and that's just your deal, yeah. Well, first of all, then you're a jerk, right? Because you don't actually want the success, like the actual completion of the project. Because on some level, you are like, I still need women to be mistreated so that I have project. Otherwise, I'd change my Twitter strategy or whatever, right? So if you're like that, then you know, screw you. So we need people who are actually committed to really which is most people. I mean, most people are, and I even people who even Mango's, I think are like, no, I really am committed. Well, then they need to, I think they need to look at the history. I and they can come to a different conclusion than me. But to me, it's pretty obvious on the lay it out like this is it's pretty straightforward. And and I think rating countries pretty clearly and saying, look, America's at 3.7, it's not even at four, and saying we're at 3.7. How do we get to four? How do we get to 4.5? How do we get to five? And then saying what strategies actually work. And it's clearly boycotting, striking. Uh, it's clearly boycotting, striking, and doing a more inclusive voting approach. Yeah. A more inclusive electoral strategy where you don't have feminists like Hillary Clinton and Warren throwing rocks at Bernie Sanders who would have gotten maternal leave and childcare and Medicare for all, which which massively helps out women and mothers to have Medicare for All. You know, so so you know that was a huge mistake.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Yeah. They're the same, they're cords on the same struggle, not like completely separate things.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah. And maybe we'll get a, you know, the way to get a woman president is to maybe first have a Bernie Sanders president, like a president who, you know, advances these allied, you know, feminist and labor. Yeah. A labor president, I think, is a feminist president, even if he isn't outwardly feminist or, you know, um that is feminine. Like that is a support of feminism, is labor unions and and labor stuff like this. So but I think a strike would work really well. I that's part of the reason we have the union of moms episode. People can go back and listen to one of the first episodes of this, which is not age today. You could go back and listen to that. It it rings completely true today, which is women are mothers and women, women who are gonna be someday be mothers, can all join the union of moms and have strikes and boycotts and and voting and members, you know, sort of a membership fee, which then creates like an organization uh around that.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

In in such a fractured, like modern scape, like it's not everybody watching NBC, ABC, CBS anymore. Like, how do you get everyone aligned for like a strike together?

SPEAKER_00 46:02

It's it's well that's where the mangoes can do it. I mean, the mangoes are all they've got the loudspeakers, right? They they there are there are women and people on Twitter and on these things where if they send out a newsletter, two million, you know, half a million women get the newsletter, they get the newsletter, and if they say we're doing the strike big this year, we're doing the women's international strike huge, big time, and we're we're holding a rally together with these four labor unions, and we're gonna get women in our membership into the unions that can like, hey, these are not unionized areas, we're gonna unionize those areas through our women membership. Right. So they need to they need to pivot their strategies away from well, we're gonna try to create a trending hashtag, me too, some other trending hashtag, which doesn't really achieve anything, and switch to this more aggressive labor approach. And if they do, the history suggests and the other countries suggest it will work much better, it will succeed much faster. It still will take years, probably, and it'll still be a struggle, and it'll take time and effort and work and hard, but it's it's pulling the right levers on the machine, as opposed to sort of pulling all these levers and pressing all these buttons that don't actually affect the drive chain of the machine. Like it doesn't actually move the thing forward. Uh, you're just sort of pulling something, but yeah, yeah. You feel like, oh, we did this trending hashtag. Oh my god, we got guys fired, we did this thing. Um, but it's like, okay, at the end of the day, root cause of there's still no ERA, there's still no maternity leave, paid maternity leave, there's still no universal child care, there's still no equal pay, you know, laws like so power through collective organizations.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Yes, I mean let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

And this is this is what would make and what what people should realize too is this is what would make like MAGA and Republicans like shit a brick. Like this is the kind of thing where real power would start to move away from them and towards like actually making the country like better. Right, yeah, the people. And so what you want to do is you want to do what will scare your enemies the most, right? And this is the kind of thing that scares their enemies the most, not another mango-led, you know, outrage about some language pronouns or something like that. That's all mango stuff that that the enemies like that, because they just turned around, they take the most extreme example and they say, Look, the most extreme example is I can condemn this. And a lot of people in the middle of the country go, yeah, the most extreme example that is kind of stupid, like you know, whatever, or I don't like that. That does sound kind of crazy. But if you say, Hey, we're gonna walk off the job, why? Because we want women to be paid equally as men, or we want maternal paid leave. All the people in the middle of the country are gonna be like, Yeah, there's no extreme thing that you can pull out of that to then basically, you know. So the right the the people who are against this, mostly the right wing. Oh, there's some women who are right wing who want whatever more equality, but generally the right wing politicians they don't have in their policies like oh advance the liberation of women, right? So they would really be shitting a brick if the women's movement actually took on these attributes, but they don't, and so it it plays into their power, and that's why right wing people run the whole country, even though they're a minority of the country, they still run the whole country, and it's because the all their their opponents don't use the right strategies to beat them.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Yeah. And they decide to put their differences aside and vote in the block to get, you know, like Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

They say, Well, I'm Christian and you're a warmongering financier, crypto bro, whatever. Well, let's vote together. They'll be both one. Donald Trump. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So so they can they can beat us, you know. Anyways, I think it's a good I think it's good. I hope, I hope people do it. Um, because then, you know, hopefully do in the next 18 years, and then my my daughter can come of age where she has equal rights and you know, equality. You got a good chance.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

I think I mean the next 18 years are gonna be there's a lot of changes. I think we're gonna happen bad.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

No, we're dead. Done. We're done. Oh no. I think it's I think we're totally here's the new parent insanity.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

You get to claim new parent insanity now.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

I've I've completely lost it. I've become a full pessimist. I used to be very optimistic. Now I'm like, ooh, things are not going good.

unknown 50:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

I think what's happening is white people, white nationalists, essentially, like fascist white nationalists who have always been in charge of America, they were in charge using minority majoritarian strategies. And then basically, when Obama became president, they all like woke up like this, like snapped their fingers, woke up and realized that they were gonna lose the majority of the country. And so the last since Obama, they've been very rapidly and very successfully adopting minoritarian uh strategies to dominate the country.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

So, like if you look at, for example, like ironic since they don't like minorities.

Minoritarian Politics And A Hard Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah, but they are they that's part of the thing that scares them, is they know they're going to be a minority and they've been mistreating minorities for hundreds of years. They know they're like, they're like, oh, we're gonna be mistreated. Right. So they're basically moving from a majoritarian strategy to a minoritarian strategy, which is like you know, limiting the right to vote and controlling, you know, tiny, tiny pathways of power, kind of bottlenecking power, and then taking control of those bottlenecks. Um, and so, and so uh, especially the right to vote, they're trying to limit that as much as possible. And so if you look, for example, at the way Chinese my populations in like Malaysia or Indonesia, who are like small, they're like 10, 12 percent of the country, but they have this wildly outsized power in the country, is because they use these minoritarian controls to take power. And and actually, most places in the world, it's a minority that controls the country, not a majority. America, for its whole history, has been a major exception that the majority actually dominated the country. The white Christians dominated the country. In the rest of the world, usually it's a minority that controls the country. And so now America's just converting back into what the rest of the world usually is, where a small, whereas, where a minority dominates the country. Um, and so that's what's happening. And and it's it really was Obama, the Obama presidency made them all realize wait, if they hire a black, if they can get a black guy elected, then this whole this whole party, white, you know, white supremacist, nationalist, cat Christian party, is over, and we need to like lock it down. And so they've been doing that since then. And Trump is a sign of their success that they're able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

The hard pendulum swing the other directions.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

And I think this pendulum has rocket boosters on it, like it's just gonna go and break off and go off and keep going.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Does it go? Do you think it ever goes swings back? I mean, that's that's what you like about a pendulum, is that it swings.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

It never America has never swung America has never swung anywhere. It's always been a white nationalist Christian fascist country. Always. It always has, even under Obama, the white nationalist, fish, fascist Christian country. Under under Obama was the largest transfer of wealth from black Americans to white Americans since slavery. And that was because the housing crisis vastly disproportionately affected people of color who lost their homes, and he bailed out the banks, which were all white people and the stock market, which is all white people on stock market. And so, and so the black people all lost a bunch of black people lost their homes from the Sun Pride Mortgage, and a bunch of the stock market went through the roof and the ri the banks all you know, golden parachutes and everything. So, under the black president, we still had a total white nationalist Christian fascist outcome. And so, you know, there is no pendulum. You know, it's just a right-wing country, you know, it's a Republican country. It's a so we could change it, but it would take, I think this would be part of it, would be women saying, We're gonna use the power of labor. If they did that, that would some real power would start to shift because that's the way to really get power is to hit the pocketbook. And you couldn't do it temporarily, just like Europe, just like all these countries, you have to keep doing it. You have to know that that's button that button still exists. Yeah, you just have to push it whenever they forget. Yeah, because guess what? Capital never stops, never sleeps. It's always trying to get as much as it can, and you know, yeah, and so you have to do it. But yeah, so I'm I'm pretty, I'm pretty, yeah. America is uh it never was like lost, it's never been like found and now we lost it. It's like no, it's just always been bad, and now you know that's it.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Me, me as a generally just a lazy person in general. I love the idea of a don't work button. I mean, I want to keep that button. I want to keep that button very not to mention like free health insurance, active working, free.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Free child care free. I'd love those buttons to be hit too, you know. Free health care, free, you know, for I should say tax-funded health care, tax funded, you know, child care. It's not free, but you know, tax, it's free at the point of use.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

How about yeah, we we work toward easing the anxieties of the population. Yeah, we freaking we go, right. Oh, what are the large and common anxieties? Oh, here's one. Let's ease it. Let's use it. And then after we've done that a number of times, we have a less anxious population and it's better for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

What are you gonna do? Wouldn't that be crazy? A good country can't have that. Gotta have everyone scared of their own shadows and scared of their neighbors and pissed off. I will be scared.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

I will be the optimistic one because I think you get 18 years, your daughter has a chance of at a at a better country than she is in now. It's possible. We can do it. Oh my god, that would be great.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

We'll see. I mean, I think even I'll uh to to try to strengthen my pessimism. Look at women's right to vote being denied after the Civil War. You know, that's that's they still, you know, this they they that's amazing. That's an amazing that was an amazing outcome that the women supported the anti-slavery movement for through third for three decades. Uh well, they do they supported forever, but they basically stopped fighting for women's rights and started fighting for slavery against slavery in the 30s, and then in the 60s, they won and then they got nothing.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

It's like everyone on the outside of a you know a siege, they're banging on the gates of this city, and then the gates come crashing down, and everyone's like running in, and they're like, No, no, no, hold on. Not you guys, yeah, just not you guys, not you guys, just some just someone stay outside.

Closing Push To Strike And Boycott

SPEAKER_00 56:36

And it wasn't like oh five years later or ten years later they got it. It was 40 years later, like it was two generations later of women with no right to vote. So, yeah, some of the yeah, we'd be cool. We gotta push harder here. You gotta push harder. All right, well, we're done. This is good. Sounds good, fantastic. Get out there and strike and boycott everybody, men and women alike. Let's do this. Join together, labor unions, women's unions. Win mom win union moms. All right, everybody. See ya, see you next time. See you next time, but it's a good one.