Don't Blame Me! - BAIW: Gay Friends Hooking Up With Straight Men

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Content Warning: Meghan's BATW - School Shooting But Am I Wrong: Melisa: "If He Wanted To He Would" is bad advice Meghan: Give politicians their own reality shows But Are You Wrong: Weirded out by friends Reporting your sexist co-worker But Are They Wrong Melisa: Men In Stem (Grace Hopper Celebration) Meghan: Jon Ramono Write In: [e-mail] Weigh In: vote in the weekly poll on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ Buy Our Merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Join Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Follow Us: https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdYV7J5p/ Follow Meghan: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrienks/ https://twitter.com/meghanrienks https://www.youtube.com/c/meghanrienks Follow Melisa: https://www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa/ https://www.instagram.com/diamondmprintproductions https://twitter.com/SheIsNotMelissa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volvo is leaving the chaos of rush hour outside. Start by settling into your saddle-stitched Nappa leather seats. Notice the open space around you. Uncluttered, elegant, intentional, warm ambient light, and natural wood details to ground you. This is Volvo's Scandinavian sanctuary for every journey. Learn more at volvocars.ca. Optional features mentioned. hello beautiful thank you so much welcome to but am i wrong starring two people who have not once ever in their lives been even close to wrong we've never even straddled the line

of wrong we've never blown an air kiss to wrong we've just we've been so far distance from being wrong that we're we're mere little dots little specks so far away and because of that it is our duty nay i say fuck i was gonna use that in my thing later i wrote nay and now it's gonna now you're gonna know that it was all planned um it is our duty civic and what's the opposite of civic moral no civic and it's our civic duty and moral responsibility okay do you have my joke accord no they're both hondas right fuck what's the other one toyota i can't think of another one well we're basically here to entertain you simultaneously while talking shit to about celebrities pop culture current events ranting inventing about things we feel passionately about

or shit going on in our own lives and then we are also reading submissions from you about the things going on in your lives and telling you if you are the hero or the villain in your story so the show is broken up into those three segments with sorry hiccup didn't work i had one of your moments i had one of those little life just came at me um and we will get into each of those segments before they occur but we should introduce ourselves my name is megan and my name is melissa we're pretty great if we say so ourselves oh i do want to read something that somebody sent they wrote about us they wrote about us where in an email okay i'm ready for it you can also if you want to watch the video version of this podcast and see me shake the camera a little bit

um you can head on over to our patreon it's a great time over there and i promise i will begin to look more awake i got new allergy medication so shout out to everyone who recommended allegra and there's a lot of people who are saying who work in the medical field who are like switched up every once in a while like if you start to feel like it's not working next time you buy a bottle buy something else and like don't cycle back to the one that stopped working for you for a while um and everyone kept recommending flonase but again there is not a fucking like shot in hell that i'm sniffing it up my nose but that's also because that's not supposed to sniff well just i don't like shooting anything up my nose but i also don't want anyone

who takes flown ice to be like oh but like if you have to in order to breathe like my allergies like they drive me crazy but i'm not like i know people who have so much so much fucking worse allergies than me who i'm like if i had their allergies if you told me i had to like spread my cheeks to the sun every day i'd be like okay whatever i would love to sun chug every day i know you would that's gonna be when we when we get our houses next to each other we're gonna make sure there's one side's got really hot wall so you can do that it's gotta be because i need my outdoor shower and to sun chug you know i love an outdoor shower i know you do all right this says this is i'm not gonna say who it's from it says thank you eminem thank you so much for your

podcast. My partner left me suddenly after 12 years, a house purchase, a cat and a dog. I was in a good mental health place before and I'll be okay again eventually, but right now things are rough, but I can play your podcast when I'm home alone and feel like there are friends in the room with me. Thank you so much. There's not enough words to explain how grateful I am. Oh my gosh. well we are a friend to you and as a friend i say why is this person still breathing as a friend i say is there anything else i can do for you what else can we do what else can we do oh my god i'm oh oh i don't know what phase you're in right now but um as two people who have been through some who have been through some shit we can both confidently say

there is nothing more cathartic but you do need to watch yourself because we have both injured ourselves this way there's nothing more cathartic when you're going through it a punching bag oh my god oh we've we've had instructors being like you got you go skitch you're like we're going through something like oh my god i cannot but that's awful and horrific and i'm telling you right now that person is going to be plagued by shitty things for the rest of their lives until they become a different person that's just i'm so sorry but please let us know what else but thank you for listening and uh i'm glad we can give you something but let us know what else yeah please

fuck people well to pivot to something happy because hey we're going to give you a good episode um one of our favorite parts about this podcast is we love our opinions and we love to talk about our opinions but we also want to hear what you have to say so for every segment in this episode we do polls on instagram so for each episode it will say who do you think was wrong and you get to vote on which side you land on and you can always message us not always but like i say that like if you want to we love when you do like we prefer if you vote and then you say why you voted the way you did what you feel about it if you felt the same way you feel

differently personal experience anything like that um and then we read those results on fisting friday which is our friday episode so tomorrow you can hear results from last week's episode and then you know hopefully soon you'll be able to vote in this week's episode correct very correct good job megan thank you say that apple has updated apple podcast has updated the app and it's so much prettier now and it gives us the different graphics that we have someone we've got a fan in in the present they they must be knowing because who else cares besides us right who else is changing their little icon as much as we are who else made different icons for all of the different shows that they put on what who else is trying to become

their own television network on a single feed right well you know the sad thing about recording virtually besides me not being able to have some of the brisket that you made um is that i did save podcasts to listen to on my drive that i was so excited for and now i guess tomorrow i guess you're in the car with somebody i mean he'll listen to it we tend to be more music the issue is if i listen to a podcast when i'm passenger princess going to sleep that girl was getting rocked to sleep so fucking fast like I can't keep my eyes open it's like

it's like if you put me in a seat that moved in the movie theater it does not matter what I'm seeing I'm fucking asleep I am rockabye baby oh my god I fall asleep in many a movie theater that was static like a not moving seat but that's when I'm really tired or the movie is

really boring but oh my god blonde in my life which movies asleep all the time cars or movies doesn't matter car movie in the house okay well that is she's just bragging now i wish mine was like like if someone could take me on like a like a drive around the neighborhood like a baby like i would sleep so much better it'd be so nice i would love that okay well should we get into our first segment i go first okay all right now it's

time for but am i wrong our first segment where we share something from our personal life where it can be a rant or things that are just laying heavy on our hearts that we would like to talk about all right uh me i'm up first and i would like to say a hot take may not be hot to you i think you'd agree with me but it's how we work i think the saying if he wanted to he would is bad advice i don't innately disagree there's this girl on twitter who posted her name is uh classy freddie blassie which i don't think that's her real name i don't know where that came from but her username itself is megan the e-value i don't know value either of these things e v-a-l-i-u-n like megan the volume yeah that like volume okay on twitter she posted on september

29th saying a follower flew to chicago to take me to a dinner a first in blassy history and certainly a fine reminder that if he wanted to he would and then four days ago she posted i had to follow a police report against him the following day because he spammed me with over 60 calls texts and voicemails and threatened to kill me first of all do not meet followers

unless you are mutual fans of each other and even then I need you to be in a public place with tons of people around and just know that's a non-sexual or romantic

setting yes this is not safe to begin with but jesus christ that that i read that and i was so angry not just said him but it hurt no when i saw the follow-up tweet i was like i'm not glad but i'm i'm happy that the this is the we it took this to get to the realization not something much worse darker because yeah it's enough it's like we all knew it was coming and so i think there is some good behind the saying and i think that's how it originated

but then people started taking it to a level that it shouldn't be yet because i think the good part of it is that people are being helpful and they're trying to say like if you're in a bad relationship and a man wanted to put in the effort, then he would. But then people started to overgeneralize it to things like this. Like if he wanted to go on a date with me, he would fly me, he would fly. I don't know where he came from, but he'd fly to come see me and take me to dinner. And it goes back to like, in the, I don't know what years this work, but past years where it was like he's just not into you it's like that same type of thing um and I think like you know sometimes people sometimes people they might be an introvert and they don't know how to like or

they've never been in like a romantic situation before and they or they've got like anxiety and they don't know how to verbally communicate there they might be like a little socially awkward and it just like makes things makes things too simple and simplifying it and oversimplifying it and it's like yes if you're in a city shitty relationship yes if he wanted to he would but like do not use this in the sense of an early relationship when you're still trying to get to know someone and they're not like calling you every day or like you're not waking up to like a good morning beautiful type text message that is toxic but you know if he wanted to take you out to dinner he may not initially be forthright that that's what he wants but like he might get to know you

and then take you out later but we do not use this in a way that's stalkery if he wanted to he would bring you flowers in the middle of the night and sing you a song outside your window like that's not romantic it's stalkery in early stages of dating so be careful what you see what you hear how you receive people in your life because some things are just weird and it's not actually romantic it's not it's toxic it's love bombing that's the end of my thoughts i fully agree with that um as somebody who has been on the other end of wow this is so romantic um it is only romantic when you think they're hot and then you learn hot people are terrifying too like there's this idea that it's like oh no like yes if someone i wasn't

attracted to did all these things would be really creepy but if someone i was attracted to did all these things it wouldn't be the behavior is the same the behavior is the same regardless of how you feel about the person whatever it is so like there's nothing that like moths does that is okay like not sexual because at that point that's not consent if you're not if you're not into the person but like you know being helpful getting like doing those things like there's nothing that he does that like if someone else did I would be like oh that's terrifying like no that's not how it should should be at all and um the other two questions I wrote down is who is he because this whole thing if he wanted to he would this is a fan that you don't know this is not like a he

an ambiguous he you need to i think it only applies when you're in a relationship with someone or a situation with someone and you are asking verbally for what your needs are and they are verbally or non-verbally like action based shutting those down and not meeting your needs and if he wanted to he would means that if he knows your needs he would want to meet your needs that's the goal he wants to meet your needs he can't he doesn't anticipate your needs some he might understand some he might know but like you communicate your needs and if he wanted to meet your needs he would meet your needs but this whole like this can't be like an ambiguous he it has to be a specific person because otherwise yeah then you have behavior that like if you want

to take you out he would okay someone that you like someone you have a crush on that you want to take you out and like a boyfriend to have nice dates someone who you've never met who is a fan of you and i think a lot of the issue is like we start we take these like relationship goals and we like boil them down into like these like seven second tiktok clips that don't have context and they don't have the history there and people have these ideas of what they want this to be and they don't realize like either a these things aren't real they're fakes we're making we're creating this idea of like oh my man just did this this and this and it's like okay cool like a maybe that never happened or b it did but like you know you've been together for all of

these years you've asked for this you had rough times you had all of this stuff and so then people start having these expectations of things that they're so transparent and like you said like there's no warm-up to them they just happen immediately which is not the kind of i think is not a healthy amount of uh attention and effort to put into someone who you don't know like that is i will always find that unsettling and creepy because you don't know how do you know that you like me that much you don't like you have an idea of me and like i don't like that because you don't know me so this is like no knock to her at all when i'm saying that thing i just mean because i think literally could be anyone you get swept up in what you think should be right

yeah and i just mean in the sense that like her initial tweet there are so many other fucking tweets that are just like that with none of the follow-up so i'm so glad that she did the follow-up and if you don't see the follow-up there in other circumstances it doesn't mean that the follow-up it doesn't mean that that didn't happen like it that is it's it's not a safe it's not a safe thing and recognizing that i think is and i'm really glad that she posted that um publicly because for there's no reason for it like it's not but like a lot of people feel embarrassment and shame about that kind of stuff when they're it's literally not our fault at all all right all right you're up we'll slug your thanks so my hot take is more of a pitch okay

and um i'm a part of sag so i want to make this abundantly clear that what i am pitching is non-scripted for um a non-scripted network with no writers because this is about the characters that people truly are okay and i think and i know this is a bold claim i think i have solved the problem of the alt-right i have a solution oh gosh okay megan i think i've said this to you offline before and it's one single sentence give politicians reality shows we need to give them reality shows because they just want to be famous it's the trump effect but flip it and reverse it we're going back instead of ending up in politics from reality tv we are starting the political platforms and we need to be using this as casting material

we need to be seeing and saying no no you know what let's put you i will take these people on billboards over them passing bills and passing legislation some people say stop making stupid people famous i say nay don't make stupid people politicians make those people reality stars go back to what reality tv used to be bad people doing bad things in places that they weren't i don't know where they were they this was far away but i say we should add in another component we give them these are man-made we are not taking anybody's land because already done far too much of that we give them you know all the trash we throw into the ocean you know how they built a target on one where i grew up so those places they become these

little islands where they can go and we give them their own little fake countries little fake towns to run and then we give them a whole show about how they are running them i am not kidding when i say i would legitimately put my tax dollars to this because i consider it harm reduction if we get them out of there and we give them all of the fame and the notoriety they want and they can spew that shit and they can see themselves full glam a a a baked under eye some glitter wings and they see themselves on a new york times digital billboard so they can take a little instagram picture of it that is fine as long as there is no amount of reproductive rights that you have any say in are you gonna send their uh followers with them too yeah yes but here's the

other thing that we will then be able to keep a running list of the people who are following them um and the crux of it though is you know they they cannot be political on their shows so they can be an asshole they can do whatever they want to do but they cannot encourage people to vote for specific things or do any of those things they can endorse candidates they can't do any of that similar to i'm pretty sure pageants can't endorse specific can't do any of that um and in conclusion we need to treat these politicians like the ipad children they are these are grown-up ipad kids and instead of an ipad kid tell me why my phone is dictating this entire thing instead of an ipad it's a confessional camera there's a little booth in

there they talk they don't even need to be and if and if we want it and if it was successful which i know it would be we can give them the reality shows where then they're all in a house together i just think there's so much opportunity for this to give these people what they really want instead of what they're saying they want that's hurting all of us where does because they want power too so where does that come in they don't know what power means they want to be famous and they want to be rich and they want people to know their face and their name and so in all of that because they're not speaking any they're not even speaking full sentences when they're working like they're that aspect of it they're there for the in-between sit-down interviews

they're there to just fucking plow through uh an attempt at a monologue but hey if you gave them a little acting challenge if you if you had this hosted by tyra and they had to do photo shoots you just don't put that on tyra no no not a tyra not tyra tyra but uh a kind of it should be uh um sarah palin that's a wonderful call and i just think that reality tv transforms people does it make them better people i don't know but we have seen the absolute hell that people were put through on different times different kinds of reality tv and we all talk about this person signed up for reality tv show they're clearly you know a different a different kind of person and i don't know why we're coming up with all of these really ridiculous things of like oh

milf manor where the moms date all of their son's friends like oh why are we doing that when instead we could be watching lauren bobart one day do a wipeout course for the next day clean shit out of a stable she's in a simple life vibe but she's a uh pipe layer so she can also be out that's that show where horrible what's it called when the boss is coming horrible whatever that's a movie though that's not it undercover boss undercover boss where she goes and lays pipe for their island and the season finale getting groped at beetlejuice like we've seen these shows we know how this works you get that footage for yourself like come on and also you can have an influencer brand deal you want to you want to sell fit tea go for it you want to sell

the my pillows don't be happy to sponsor you want to sell those goya beans fucking sell them sell them have fun with that but take off that pantsuit and get out of the fucking capital i like that thank you i genuinely think it would solve so much we could workshop a lot but my thing is it's gonna it's the fans there's so many of them so then if we ship them off with them then it just becomes its own governing body no but i don't think we ship the fans off with them i think so what do we do about the ones that are here though they can they just join rally tv subreddits okay like you've seen but then what they get empowered to run because the kicker is is they get these multi-year deals well yeah once you get these multi-year deals

oh they can't again i told you they're living on the trash islands so i'm talking about the um the ones that uh that are the fans and then they're like watching the show they can't be political on their show that's the key like they get they get all the fame and the notoriety but they cannot offer political takes or anything of that nature that would incite people to vote for x y and z or to advocate for x y and z like we're going back to the age of reality tv where they go we don't know what politics are remember that age i don't the because armor rosa has always been there and she was in the white house think of shows like there's definitely writers well no you're not on strike anymore actually are there were they

hired as act they might have been hired as actors but you know some of those old shows on the three letter network that is mostly you know that also played music videos for a lot of those ones where it's like i want to be made into this for a day like i want to do like or um it's a your birthday party for a coming of age specific age that there's a hillary duff song for those ones those were like shitty people being shitty and nothing about them being shitty was ever discussed with their politics like it was just like this is this is brad he's cheated on every girlfriend he's ever had like let us know if you want to date him i had a friend on nicks fun but you want to like that kind of stuff when you get into the houses and you get into the psychological warfare and

games between people that's why i say we cannot do something that is like a house with all of them until there's enough time and space between the other house of representatives and the senate that they've been in together like we that we cannot empower them together like that right now this is like lauren bobart her creepy husband if he wants to be on it um the beetlejuice other person and then if any of the actors of beetlejuice would like to participate if sag um if we got our needs met but some of them are also i mean i don't know on that one but some broadway actors are also uh in the reality one then you can go on it that doesn't break the rule oh i just meant if they wanted them to reenact any of their oh performances or anything like that would turn it

into a sad performance so i'm saying if that would be the the they could want to it was off broadway too it was a colorado production i think it was touring i think it was touring um but yeah I just, I'm like, I think that we've seen so much that this is all a performance. Give them a bigger stage. And by that, I mean a channel in the double digits. Okay. So.

I see it. I see your vision. Me too. And then crossovers. Put them on a yacht. Have everybody make fun of them. Like, and also here's the thing. You go on reality TV, you're going to get mercy.

You're going to get bullied so goddamn fucking hard. and sometimes when you bully someone with bad behavior they either change or they shut up yeah and i'm cool with that and scene that's that's that's my pitch um let me know what you think sharks we are going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with our next segment and we're back and it's time for our next segment which is but are you wrong where you are listeners and our watchers you submit the thing that is happening in your life that you would like our insight on

if we think you are in the wrong, would be in the wrong, were in the wrong. And you can send that over to butamirongpod at gmail.com. Keep it under 300 words. Let us know your age, pronouns if you would like.

And it's all anonymous. So come up with some pseudonyms, aliases for the people involved. And we will do our best to, you know, well, I mean, we might not give you the answer you want, but we'll be we'll be honest all right first up so i have some gay slash queer friends let's call

them sean and cody what sean cody is a uh popular gay porn site i was thinking this is from a tv show and I was trying to figure out which one no okay so we hanging out one night being gay and Cody then asked for sex advice since they're now single and ready to have a hot girl summer better late than never and Sean and I came up with a few ideas like going to sex parties or do it at a hotel room because for some reason it's a lot better than at home like let me do it on the table. However, Sean then said, fuck a straight man, which I have a what the fuck face. And before I said anything, Cody said, oh, I already did that. Sean then said, oh, same dope. Then they. Your playlist might get you through the workday, but have you ever wondered how your ancestors

spent theirs? What work helped them build a life? How did they adapt as the world around them changed. With Ancestry, you can search select historical occupational records for free for a limited time and discover the stories behind the jobs in your family tree. You've got questions. We've got ancestors. Search free until August 31st. Visit ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply. Both laugh together. However, here I am looking down on the floor thinking immediately, thinking how he talked about sucking dick and cock. What? Did I skip a line?

No, that's a Tati Westbrook about James Charles. Like, sucking dick and cock at my birthday dinner. It's a phrasing of being like, oh my god, these people are talking about such lewd things in my whole life.

Okay, let me see if I can do a better read on this then. Thank you for the direction. And action. then they both laugh however here i am looking down on the floor thinking immediately thinking how he talked about sucking dick and cock at her birthday dinner it then got worse how they love tricking straight men and sucking their dicks and loving dl men because it hits different from bi and gay or queer people on Grindr. Again, I'm like, huh? I'm constantly seeing on gay Twitter

how some gays like to trick straight men. And I'm always confused by that. Like y'all can't find anyone from your own community. Is it really that hard for them? Am I wrong for thinking it's weird for them to go after straight men for their own pleasure? Well, my argument is, are they really straight and that is um a sentence that uh has been in my head um because i've been hit on by lesbian women and not once was i like come eat my pussy like yeah i'm a straight woman and i'm not attracted to any women so like where's the tricking coming from like when your pant is being unbuckled there's just a lot of steps to get to there so i don't understand where the tricking actually is maybe they appear to be strict but they're actually not yeah i wonder

like the phrasing of this is just like you know that like it seems like this is something that is like you said you've seen this on tiktok and they're talking about it like personal experience wise so the tricking aspect you know might be more of a the phrasing of an inside joke because yeah if you break it down like melissa said like it's not tricking in that sense because my other question would be like it doesn't seem like your red flags are up um that like this was non-consensual because like that's what tricking in my would you know what would you would think in that sense um but i think that like as when it comes to like someone saying like them saying that like oh it's different than

they love tricking them it's uh because it hits different um that it's it's like illicit things kind of similar to how you said like having sex in a hotel there's something just about like when people think something's forbidden or something is you know like this is like this is not what it's supposed to be or like you can just create a fanfic in your head to that um it that can be fun and also can be like depending on the people like in a avoidant attachment style where it's like not really ready to date or want anything serious and so going for people who you know are very much not looking for anything uh continual or public or whatever that is like it is like you know

there's something there that like you know what you're gonna get out of it but i don't think it's like i think the phrasing of it is like a little jarring in the sense that like the wording of it can feel icky so I think like I don't think that you're wrong for kind of like not liking that concept but I also don't think that they're wrong for that either you know but I also like I'm a straight woman so I think that I'm a straight cis woman so like I don't think that um my what i say is anywhere relevant to any of that um but some people people also go through phases of like of of things and you know i know people who went through phases of dating people who are accidentally older than them people who are right now so far i have no friends who did

anyone way younger than them but i was gonna say that like i had a friend who tried to date someone or like was talking to someone way younger and I literally took their phone. I was like, disgusting, like literally disgusting. We're not fucking doing this. And I was like, what are you thinking? And they're like, I actually don't know what I'm thinking. I'm like, perfect.

So like, let's not. But people can go through phases and like you actively seek out romantic and sexual relationships with people based on like what you're looking to get out of it. So, you know, I think like if you're in like a relationship phase, seeing people do that,

it just feels like, are you kidding? Like I, but it's, I don't think they want to date right now. and so it's not like they're they're not dating within their own community and so i mean like they're they're not looking for that and and i i do want to clarify just for anybody that's listening megan wasn't saying phases as in like being a gay is being gay as a face that's not what you meant just thank you that didn't even connect in my head i know what you meant but newer people may not know yeah yeah um but um

it's also like a kink like there's a whole section on websites where it's like tricked a straight guy into having sex where they're not actually straight but like it's like a kink like they they they're straight seeming or like it's like they they might have a girlfriend but they're actually five or somewhere in there and so it's like a it's a thing so i don't think what they're saying is outlandish because there's like like people are into this this is like something that's pretty normal yeah dl is a preference and it's also very okay like the same way that some people preferences it can give you the ick like it can be like the exact opposite of what you want um but it doesn't mean that one is right or wrong it's just a matter of like what

you want at the time um so i i have i have more of an issue with dl men who harm the community and people who are not you know consenting to that in that way versus people who are within the community knowing that you know this is what they're into and they with other people who are also into it okay you can also just be like this is just not the conversation for me right you know um okay you're up next i'm a 34 female who works in a male-dominated industry yikes i've had my fair share of misogyny from colleagues mostly outside of my organization over the past nine years here and i generally feel like i can handle the situations on my own we've recently partnered with another company i was introduced to their team when they visited our location this introduction

of six plus people lasted 10 seconds honestly you don't need any longer than that as i'll only deal with these people over email one of them regularly as our departments line up and this gentleman is okay i need people i think it's like a dot dot yes but i need people to parent i need i need someone to let me know what kind of fine they mean because initially i was like be like hotty yeah i immediately read it as fine and no you just meant decent with a drug yeah and that's one is fine. He's okay. He does have a coworker who is their sales manager. I do not regularly deal with him. The sales manager has now referred to me as sweetheart on three separate occasions. I've ignored it each time and answered his questions. We have zero rapport. I could not

pick this man out of a lineup. Today, I'm freshly back from a vacation and feeling zestier. I need to start using that word. I got a call from my boss regarding this partnership this morning and at the end brought this sweetheart comment. Oh, and at the end, I brought this sweetheart comment up to him. I mentioned I don't know how to address this man who I don't know, clearly doesn't know me and don't want to cause any issues

in the overall relationship between our company and theirs. My boss immediately told me he would handle it, which knowing him can be scary. My boss is a large man of the boomer generation who can get loud and it can be intimidating. Should I do the right thing by going to my boss or should I have handled it directly? I'm afraid my boss's reaction could have been over the top,

but I wouldn't have known how to approach this other man via email thanks for your input no that was great and i think that if you're worried your boss is going to do too much it's not too much because it's your boss and he makes a call if it's too much or too little like uh you do what you feel comfortable with and what is going to be safest and uh going to keep you having your job which you did you took it to your boss and he's going handle it and doesn't matter how he goes about that as long as it gets done and i don't this man other man made you feel a certain type of way and why should you protect his feelings he didn't care about yours so he'll get what's coming for him and your boss probably isn't doing

enough yeah tbh i yeah i i hate this and also like any way that you handle uh sexual harassment indecency inappropriateness like in the workplace is fine like i'm like i'm telling you any woman who is i mean any person who's facing that but like specifically in male-dominated fields women i'm like the person on the receiving end of it however you handle that is the right fucking way i don't even care i don't care if it's a misdemeanor you did the right thing like it is just like no no no so you did not do too much or too little and um i'm not gonna like applaud your boss for doing what he's supposed to do um but i would make sure that you keep that in the back of your mind too that like you're not indebted to your boss for this like someone did something

that they didn't have to do which made your boss have to do something like it was not an option for him um and he doesn't want to be in that position either and none of you would have been here if he if sweetheart man didn't do that i just i hate them well we're gonna take another break and when we get back we'll get into but are they wrong and we're back and it's time for but are they wrong where we nominate a person place or thing something in pop culture current event zeitgeist who is doing the worst not like oh they're down in the dumps but like i would like to throw them in a dump who would you like to nominate melissa i you know since we're on the theme of sexism oh i would like to nominate men in stem oh god

so every year there's this tech conference for women and non-binary people in stem called the grace hopper celebration side note all the women that were speakers all baddies i implore everyone to go look at the website because i'm like okay even general monae was there and i bet and i bet they were a nice ass outfit yeah um the event specifically aimed at helping women and non-binary people in technology to network with recruiters as well as attend panels well apparently some a lot of cisgendered men falsely signed up as non-binary people not only that but they skipped all the panels and seminars in order to beat women to the recruiting lines and while cisgender men are not prohibited from going to this event or attending it because

they've done so for years they saw the anita b the company that organized the seminar said that men came out in higher numbers this year by skirting the rules so um their impact officer Cullen White said in a statement, yesterday it became clear that there are a far greater number of cisgender men attending than anticipated. Simply put, some of you lied when you registered and as evidenced by the stacks and stacks of resumes you're passing out, you did so because you thought you could come here and take space and try to get a job. White noted that the cisgendered men also took discounted academic tickets for the event as well as interview slots that were supposed to go to women and actual non-binary attendees, who, as in a lot of fields, are the

minorities in STEM fields. And noting that some of the cisgendered men shoved and physically hurt other attendees in the rush to the job booths. And one person noted that the problem is competition is not fair for everyone. That's why a woman's conference exists to level the playing field because women are highly discriminated against in tech. If they had a career fair for military veterans, but civilians who have never served in the military crashed it, would you be okay with that? As someone who is not in STEM,

I tend to use my, I might look scrawny, but I'm fucking scrappy. And I don't use my brain. I will use my bra. I will like, let me in. I will run fucking interference.

This like, It pissed me off so much. So fucking much. Because even a singular conference doesn't even the playing field. So you can't even have an ounce of that. You're so used to having every space be for you that the second that there's one fraction

of one weekend that is not for you, you cannot stand it and you have to go there and be there. And do you not realize that actually makes you look worse? Right. Like, does not make you look desirable. Especially to people that you're going there specifically to get hired by a company.

So... Yeah. If I was the organization, I would keep tabs on the other companies to see if they hired any of those men. Yeah. Speaking of hating men, I would like to nominate a terrible man. um and this is uh i'm gonna give like a trigger warning for um school shootings and gun violence nominate john romano who at 16 years old at 16 years old um he was a school shooter at columbia high school in greenbush in new york which the shooting wounded a teacher and terrified

and traumatized a bunch of fucking students there um he was convicted to 20 years in prisons and served for 17 and now that he is out he is starting his career as a tiktoker and an influencer which ironically or not so ironically um is making his whole platform school shooting prevention and that might seem like oh okay and i want to give a huge disclaimer i'm a huge fan of rehabilitation i am like a big fucking proponent and fan of that and one of the biggest questions that people say when i say that like well what about rapists i'm like well the justice system doesn't do anything for rapists so like we're not in a society where people who physically harm other people. Our society does not scorn that or cast that off or view that as something

horrible and awful and negative. So there is no reforming that in our current society. So I'm all for reform. And in theory, in a world where school shootings didn't continually happen and we had fixed the issue, which is specifically white men and white supremacy as the root cause of these continued school shootings not mental health not that that would be something where oh you could see someone who is rehabilitated doing those things and also you don't do them for profit nor do you do them front facing so um he has been quoted saying my goal is not redemption for the school shooting which redemption is a very fucking weird word to use um my goal is prevention of other school shootings that's why i'm here that's why i share and someone a teacher

a parent and a tiktok user named you can call me kate posted a video talking about their experience as an educator um and saying that there are people who are never going to feel safe again because of him and that should not be allowed and he should not be allowed to have this platform to speak on and they were a teacher and they stopped teaching and then moved to like private and teaching out of the home because they were so terrified of that being a teacher like using their body as a shield for elementary school kids like traumatized by that and those are people who are here like to this like there are still people countless people who have lost their lives family members who have lost people but the people who have survived these things live with the trauma

of this every single day so he responded to the backlash saying despite the current backlash i'm receiving which i completely understand i also continue to get a lot of people reaching out to me, thanking me for what I do. Some of them are the parents, teachers, and even students who are frustrated with the lack of change. I believe I can help save lives. The centering of himself in this is giving school shooter. It is giving like this man is living out that it gives me similar vibes to the book, 13 Reasons Why, where one of the biggest critiques of this is like, this is something where it's like this is viewing as very cathartic essentially as someone who is faced with all of these horrible mental health issues and these things in their life and has

all of this anger and emotion towards different people they end up dying by suicide and then there are all these tapes and then they get to essentially as the viewer you're like watching from above the redempt like all that you get you don't get that and so this whole thing you are now making across canada in a volvo destination vancouver turn left to leave travel west through approaching continue toward you've arrived adventure and comfort with volvo whether you prefer gas plug-in hybrid or fully electric there's a volvo for everyone learn more at volvocars.ca not only do kids want to be influencers kids feel influenced by school shooters who aren't having platforms aren't

having these accounts and suddenly you can make yourself the fucking like i i am a god like i am like i am the ultimate one to come to like this is it's being even creepier than that because most of the kids i mean not most of them but uh kids who commit the school like you're making a different entry point to become an influencer so if they start a school shooting well you know either i die or i can become an influencer so he has over 250 000 followers on tiktok and he said that like he said that like he acknowledges that these things are very traumatizing but as if he is not re-traumatizing to people that like a face of a school shooter popping up there and he said

that he like oh i went there to die i didn't went there to go there to like hurt anyone and it's like no that's not that cannot you can sure your frontal lobes are not fully developed and you can say now with the insight that you have as you're older that you think that that was maybe a cry for help and you wanted to end you wanted your life to end but you did not want to end your own life you wanted someone else to end it but that does not mean that that negates any of the harm that you did and the impact that was caused what your intention or not your your intention there had a fuck ton of casualties and just because no one died does not mean that the people who survived that and teachers parents family like live with that trauma and they have to see your fucking

face on their for you page oh and so one of his most popular videos on tiktok he gave his take on how teachers can help students who are struggling mentally he said that while he wasn't seriously injured physically i know that mentally countless others were traumatized and still suffer to this day 20 years later because of me oh my god so why the fuck

are you on there that to me is like sadistic and like oh you're still getting off on the terror that you're like you're wreaking

on these people like you're still getting off on the fact that you have all this power over traumatized people by knowing that your face can just

pop up at any time so he does not address at all the issue of white males and white supremacy being the driving cause

behind any of this he just keeps talking about mental health specifically for white men um and then we go into uh he was it talks a lot about the aftermath of his life when he was attacked at a homeless shelter he was working at in 2022 so it was a black man who was wielding swords and that was in 2022 and his thesis of that was essentially um people can be racist towards white people and saying that the man who attacked him was black and called him the quote unquote white devil and focuses then they're entirely on race rather than mental health which is completely contradictory to what he says he's doing there

so he's comfortable speaking about race in terms of violence when it comes to a black man but not when it comes to white men being school shooters then it's about mental health then we need help with mental health but we're not talking about mental health or grace for any of that when you are on the other side of that and that man is facing more prison time than he ever fucking did it just oh literally makes me so fucking pissed and as of now his comments are still turned off and he said i weighed out of my speaking publicly would help more people than it hurt but i know my sharing my story hurts people but i do believe i am helping i think that is fucking nasty like i just think that there's oh like if you if you committed some horrendous crime

regardless of what it is the you are you're so truly reformed in this and you've been able to do this first of all you again I do not believe you can be reformed as a school shooter

in this sense because our society and our community does not view school like it is it's so fucking normal and it happens all the goddamn fucking time but like

you do that quietly behind the fucking scenes and he also didn't get any counseling like he hasn't gone to a therapist or like he even part of his

release he wasn't required to seek a therapist so it's he hasn't been and even in the sense of how we define rehabilitation he hasn't been rehabilitated no he sat in a cell and presumably hung out with white supremacists and all of his other shit like jail and prison also doesn't work so like that jail and prison is not rehabilitation like that in itself is if you go once you're more likely to go again a either because the juries and cops and lawyer in the system will look at a rap sheet and go okay you've been there once you can go there again or you have so much shit that you've gone through you've done or whatever and you are not getting the adequate physical and mental health help that you need nor any sort of like you know you're coping with alcohol or

whatever there are so many worse things that then shit gets worse shit gets worse like addiction That's why I don't think people who are addicted to things should be going to, addictions get worse. Like they don't, that doesn't work for everyone. There are so many things that can get so much worse there because like Melissa said, there's like, there's nothing rehabilitating about that process.

So that in itself is not like, I'm a changed person. No, do I think you need to rehabilitate if you robbed a bank? No, you robbed, that's, if there's no one's harmed, you're not hurting anyone. If you embezzled some money, do I think you need to rehabilitate from embezzling money from the government?

there are different things here based on who you have hurt and who you have traumatized you have traumatized children teachers parents students the ones who are at the school that you were at the ones in the town who have heard about this and then people fucking everywhere who've been traumatized by school shootings regardless if you were the one who committed that act or not so like if you truly want to do something and you want to do all of that a donate your brain to science donate your goddamn fucking brain to science go to intensive therapy meet with moms against guns meet with uh meet with all of those organizations about that and write your legislator like talk about bills you would like to get passed like do all of those things do that fucking hard

grueling work behind the scenes you are not going to get paid for that i don't think you should be able to get to profit off of crimes you've committed where there was harm done and shut the fuck up also didn't he lie and say that he just went in and like shot in the air and that's not actually what happened yep he's repainting the whole story and also and then really framing himself as a victim in the fight that he got into and with again two grown adults versus a 16 year old at a school where there are children and you have a gun so yeah i just it makes me like really fucking pissed off and i really wish there was more i think like we the country are like really afraid to talk about rehabilitation because it makes us

realize that the systems in place don't rehabilitate and we don't have things in place to do that and that things like you know especially when it comes to things like sexual assault and uh domestic violence like our society is okay with that and so even if you went through all the rehabilitation programs like as a country we don't uphold those expectations of people and so i think we don't talk about it enough and so i worry that there is like a sect of gen z who views this as rehabilitation when it's not because he's using those kinds of words and it makes me mad because you know the whole like send someone to like lock him in jail and throw away the key is very much a right-wing mentality and that is not my mentality either but like when people critique

someone profiting off of this it's like well don't we want rehabilitation it's like that's not what this is and we don't talk about what it what rehabilitation really is enough because it's daunting and we don't have it like we don't have it for violent crimes so you know makes me mad um yeah fuck this man i yeah that was gonna be mine but i was like i don't think i can mentally get into this right like do all the research for it but you did it wonderfully thank you i just i get i just get so fucking pissed that's the end of our episode thank you all for listening do you have anything you'd like to share you opened your mouth so i wasn't sure i can't keep this trap closed um

yeah that's what they got me on the streets um i don't think i have anything else to say i hope you all enjoyed this episode if you want to talk about something coming up um you can always tag us in it send it to us like we always say if you're going to send it send it first and then write down like a little summary of it if there's any trigger warnings so we don't just open to something startling but yeah i think that's it all right well thank you megan for being here thank you melissa for being here have a great day everyone goodbye we'll circle back we'll circle back but am i wrong is a production by me megan rinks and me melissa demonts plus diamond imprint productions post-production by coco lorenz and production assistance by melanie d watson