Rev Left Radio - Feminist Analysis: The Sexual and Gender Politics of Fascism

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Tai Lee joins Breht to lay out a feminist analysis of modern fascism and to assert the importance of keeping a robust proletarian feminism at the center of our socialist politics. Topics discussed include: the overturning of Roe, theocratic fascism on the American Right, the intensification of LGBTQ hate on the American Right, chauvanists and bigots pretending to be on the Left, the Manosphere and Andrew Tate, the profound insecurity behind the performance of hyper-masculinity, violent misogyny and its relationship to mass shootings, and much, much more! Follow Tai on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yungz0rn Check out Tai's podcast "Private Life" by The Red Femmes on your favorite podcast app. Check out more stuff from Tai: https://linktr.ee/chairmantailee Outro Music: Alrighty Aphrodite by Peach Pit ----------- upport Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio ...or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have back on the show my friend and comrade Ty Lee to talk about basically the psychological, sexual, and gendered politics of fascism. And I think this is an incredibly important and timely episode for a multitude of reasons. We see the rise of the manosphere online. We see the overturning of Roe. and with the Dobbs decision. We see this relentless new resurging attack on the LGBTQ community broadly. And even the declarations on the right about rolling back. Even things that we took for granted like contraception, same-sex marriage or mixed race marriage is even seemingly on the table now.

So to help make sense of this, you know, backward reactionary wave that we're all experiencing and the connections between misogynistic anti-feminist movement, on the far right and anti-LGBQ movements on the far right, I think it's really important to understand these connections and what's happening. And this is precisely the conversation that tries as best as we can to deal with some of the underlying forces promoting these sorts of formations and ideological approaches at this time. And a few guests are as insightful when it comes to this stuff as Thai. And so I'm very excited to share this with you.

And as always, if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, if you find it valuable, you can share the episode with friends or families or you can go above and beyond and support us on Patreon and you can either support us just because you believe in the project or you can support us because you want to get access to our entire back catalog of exclusive Patreon episodes as well as bonus monthly episodes at least one a month every single month so we really appreciated it it's what feeds our families and you know just thank you to anybody who listens shares or supports the show in any capacity but without further ado Here's my conversation with Ty Lee on the psychosexual and gendered politics of fascism.

I'm Ty Lee. I've been on, when was that? I guess a couple of months ago to talk about feminism. And now I'm back with all of these new things that have gone on that are kind of shocking. Things that we didn't think could ever happen, kind of all happened in the span of like two months. So I think we have a lot of important stuff to talk about today. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the changes that have happened just since our last conversation are pretty profound on this front. And so definitely always happy to have you on in general, but definitely happy to have you back on at this time to sort of help me and my audience navigate through these thorny times. And we'll get into this as well.

We see elements of the left being more or less one over to reaction in a way, just in the last few months, really, that I haven't. seen in quite a while. So that's not even mentioning the overturning of Roe. And so we have a lot to get through. So let's just go ahead and dive into it. So the first question is, you know, we frame this conversation as sort of, or you know, when you sent it to me, the headline was the sexual politics of fascism. We want to sort of explore these intersections of fascist ideology and anti-LGBQ ideology and anti-feminist ideology and how they all sort of bolster each other. So what are the sexual politics of fascism and what is male supremacy? And how does bringing in a feminist analysis help us to understand fascism more broadly? So I think that just to

start off, I think that in order to combat fascism, we must be militant feminists. And I think that's something that we take for granted for a lot of different reasons. I think that one of them is, you know, the metaphysics of male dominance are almost perfect. So you can't really necessarily see how subjugated women are as a group. It's so permeates through every aspect of our culture and it is so just entrenched in every single aspect of our lives that we don't even necessarily clock it or check it, right? And because, like, because there's men of all different classes and races who are subjugated on different axes of oppression, sometimes we take for granted that them being men is still something that gives them such a power over

women. And fascists correctly understand this and build kind of their whole entire political line off of this subjugation of women and the thing that fascists are really good at as well is they can make certain promises to women um so so you know the right um does a really good job at mobilizing women as women so what i mean by that is they understand the stakes of what it means to be a woman and they can offer women what I would consider like protectionism. So they say, look, you know, we understand that this world is very dangerous for women in a lot of certain respects. So we're going to give you the patriarchal nuclear family that's going to give you some amount of stability. Whereas, you know, the women's liberation kind of makes

women more independent. And that's actually something that's really scary. And particularly white women are attracted to the right because there's all of these promises of a kind of a surer, a surer bet, right? And the right really understands this. And you see it in, um, what's her name? J.K. Rowling. She's a right wing woman, right? And so her whole entire politics of this turf, uh, turf gender criticalism is all centered around, um, this protectionism of women protecting us, protecting us, you know, the trans enemy is going to come into the bathroom and, you know, rape you in the bathroom, right? That's kind of, so their entire politics is about, you know, understanding actually genuine fears that women have, right? Women are subject to all of this sexual violence. Women are subject to economic desperation because we're women and, you know, the way that the economy is set up, we are so dependent. on men, right? All of these fears are legitimate fears, but the right offers these really reactionary solutions to these problems and also scapegoats onto marginalized groups.

So when we're thinking about trans people within the context of the sexual politics of fascism, they sit at a very dangerous place because a core tenet of fascism is also needing to this kind of fear of difference and there's a let me pull up this one essay that I wanted to talk about a little bit here um

umberto echo has a list of what he calls the 14 common features of fascism and number five on that list is the fear of difference so the first appeal of a fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders right so when you have the when we're thinking about trans people and when we're thinking about all of this backlash against trans people trans people are so often in the fascist imaginary painted as these intruders from the outside this stranger danger coming into coming into the women's restroom to hurt women coming in to destroy the nuclear family

they're there are these outsiders that are going to fundamentally destabilize all of these things that are supposed to keep us safe right and so in this way you can think of the the anti-trans movement as a kind of racism as well and this kind of fear of the outsiders and this is really dangerous because people it's literally inciting violence against a very marginalized group. And that's really scary. And it's happening not only from the very obvious, you know, right-wing legislature that is trying to get, you know, trans people basically, trans children making them targets of the state, but also even in certain strands of feminism, which we talked about on the last time I was on the podcast, you know, the turfs in the gender critical movement, they're playing a pretty essential role in the rise of fascism. And they reveal, I think they most obviously reveal the kind of ideology of gender within a kind of fascist regime. And they express that really, really obviously in their hatred of trans people. So this idea of fear of difference is essential to that. And you see them also going after gay marriage as well. that's something that's you know on the table as under threat you know i have my criticisms of

marriage as an institution in general but you know that kind of attack on the acceptance of uh you know gay people into what they would consider the heterosexual family uh you know they are going to attack that because it's is seen as destabilizing it's the outsider coming in to kind of ruin this sacred vestige of white supremacy, really, too, as well. Yeah, I just wonder about the destabilization and the fears around it as there's a broader destabilization in our political, economic and social arenas. It seems to be timed perfectly with this new wave of reaction, even on issues that we thought were ostensibly settled 10, 15 years ago, like gay marriage.

That was pretty much a dead and buried issue. People broadly accepted it. Polls show that across the political spectrum, people were fine with it. And I really thought we're certainly going to have other forms of reaction against the LGBTQ community. But perhaps this one thing is more or less settled and we'll be fighting at different levels. But there seems to now be a reintroducing of even things that we thought were settled as now being a spearhead of this fascist revanchism, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. And, like, you know, the, you know, fascism begins in the home.

Fascism begins with these ideas about, you know, what the family has to do. You know, the family has to be heterosexual because the man has to control the woman and the children. And, you know, this is so central to their obsession with tradition. Really, it's a cult of tradition. And so when you think of it like that and you understand this obsession that they have with tradition, as something that is fundamental to their entire politics, then basically all of these things that we thought were, you know, more or less done and dusted are back on the table as things that are under threat again, you know, like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which, you know, we've

known, it was one of those things where it's like, for the past 50 years, we've always known that the most extremist elements of the right was going to attack Roe. We knew that in theory, and we would talk about it, and feminists would say, you know, yeah, they're going to go after row, they're going to go after row. But it was also kind of a cynical wedge issue that both the Democrats and the Republicans used to try to, you know, galvanize their base. And ever since I was born, and since I can remember, I kind of just figured they'll always use it as a wedge issue. and there's a lot of political currency in that, and therefore they'll always use it as like a carrot on the stick to kind of, you know, I never thought that they would actually do it.

And they've done it, and the scary shit is, is they've done it through the Supreme Court's, which is not a democratic body. You know, if you can call any of the political bodies in, you know, from the American state, Democratic, I don't know if you could, but definitely not the Supreme Court. And they basically, in the past, since I guess May, early May is when they over, when that leak came out, since then, they basically, I guess you could call it a judicial coup, you know, in the highest court of the land, basically entrenching of deeply fascist politics. and they've just done one after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other.

And, you know, overturning row was the beginning of that. And it's scary to know that we now live in a, quote, post-row world. And that, to me, was always something that was like a boogeyman, but I never thought I'd see the day. You know, and the day has come. And it is a really terrifying reality, but it's, it's central to their mission as fascists, because if you want, you know, if you want a fascist regime, you cannot give women that level of power over their own body. You know, it would, it's completely and totally antithetical to the position that women need to be in in order for fascism to work. And so the first order of business is, you know, abortion ban. it's it's very alarming it's super super super reactionary and um as we all you know we know that but

it's only the idea that that's only the beginning is really fucking terrifying it really is and you know there are many different strains of fascism but this is coming out of a specifically religious christian nationalist inflected you know authoritarianism which is theocratic fascism it is the imposition of reactionary religious ideas imposing that on the, you know, literal bodies of other human beings who do not often even share your religion, but even if they do, might not share your interpretation of that one religious claim. So it is a, you know, that that entails violence, that entails policing, that entails the carceral state, that entails suffering death and misery for women and children alike. And so in that sense, it is thoroughly violent, thoroughly fascist. and thoroughly theocratic, but the right wing in this country, whatever slice of that right wing pie you want to point out, knows that their general ideas, and so far as they have any, you know, any solutions to any problems or any vision of a future, are deeply unpopular with the American people, even deeply unpopular with elements of their own base. And so they know if they want to achieve something like this, it's going to have to be through a mechanism that is completely impervious to any form of democratic accountability.

And SCOTUS is just that. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And, you know, you can already see, you know, they knew that they had to do it through SCOTUS, but there's also a lot of ideological work being done there because now they can kind of, they can actually get people to agree with these more, you know, extremist points. So, and this is a, I may be a good time to talk about these kind of right deviations that we're seeing on the left. after all of this after what was essentially a judicial coup um the kind of air we were breathing around us has become so much more uh reactionary and volatile and you see just a rapid shift to the right across the spectrum everyone has is super susceptible to these kind of um reactionary ideologies that are now just kind of in common parlance, even more so than they were before. And so, you know, the kind of the turf gender critical stuff is kind of, I think, like a gateway drug to a larger set of deeply white supremacist politics and, and ultimately, a deeply, deeply fascist politics,

like, you know, this kind of anti-woke left, right, in scare quotes, has become even more popular in the past three months. It was already stupid and it was already present online but it's only become more popular and a lot of the people that get into that shit, this anti-woke leftism which is actually just

rightism. There's nothing to be with leftism at all. Social reactionaryism. Yeah, exactly. A lot of what gets them into that is this kind of gender criticalism. That's like the first step that will take them there. It's through the politics of gender and through enforcing these super, super patriarchal gender norms. And then, you know, they kind of start drinking that Kool-Aid a little bit. And then

in the span of sometimes it happens in like two weeks. They're basically now full-blown fascists. I've seen it now with like four different people, five different people. And, you know, Esperanza makes a great point that a lot of these people, the reason that there's so much more, susceptible to these, you know, the social reactionary fucking bullshit is because they're also not organized. So you have people that are just, uh, very alienated, atomized, isolated, who have ostensibly left, uh, views that then basically start sipping the Kool-Aid of this anti-trans ideology. They have nothing to ground them. They're online all, all day, every day, basically getting spoonfuls of propaganda just, you know, shoveled into them. And then, you know, once they start in

on the anti-trans shit, it's, it's very hard to get them to see, you know, to see where they're headed. Yeah. Well, just one of the, one of the benefits of organizing, and I know you know this, and Esperanza has pointed this out as well, is that you're accountable to an organization, you're among everyday working class people and all their very differences. You're held accountable to certain standards of behavior and obligation to others when you're just online filtering your mind through the clidoscopic prism of the internet's algorithm, you know, and you're not accountable to anybody. Let's say you even view yourself as a bit of an influencer online. You're just completely untethered from anything that would keep you grounded or keep you connected to real people and their actual struggles. And so you can easily be, you know, floated off into these fever dreams of, you know,

trans women are the main enemy and they're coming for all of us, you know, and it's just sad to see, but you can see how it happens. Yeah. And that's another kind of, that's another, like, red flag of fascism as well is, is they're conspiratorial. So, you know, they're not, they're not thinking through systems and structures and history. they're thinking through conspiracy and you know this is this is another one of the points of the 14 points of fascism in this essay and i'll send it to you so we can link it it's number seven the obsession with a plot so you know this this kind of international conspiracy against you know what what fascists would call the working class in scare quotes it's actually a petty bourgeois white male subject that they hauling the working class right um and and so they're obsessed with this international plot that's coming to uh you know that's coming after them and this is something

that is so obvious with the anti-trans should they literally think that in that that trans existence is something that is being funded by big pharma and funded by this kind of international Jewish conspiracy. It's really, really, really anti-Semitic as well. Yeah. And, you know, and it's kind of, it's super nefarious that they do this because there is criticisms to be made of the beauty industry, right? Of course, you know, selling women this idea of like this perfect image of woman and that, that should be criticized. But they lump in the existence of trans people with that critique of the beauty industry. And then they, turn it into this kind of global conspiracy of big pharma and big pharma is the beauty industry it all

kind of it's super irrational there's not a whole lot of sense to be made of it but that is certainly a part of this anti-trans movement that i in my dealings with it and in my experience with trying to get people to understand where they're going wrong i've realized that this is a core tenet of this this theocratic fascism is this this super anti-trans vitriol and you know they really really do think that it's like you know a global international conspiracy to destroy women right but as Marxists we know that you know the main oppressor of women is imperialism that you know that that is women's enemy is imperialism and so this kind of this international conspiracy serves as a mask to hide who the who women's real oppressor is you know which is you know imperialism in the bourgeoisie

so all of this is in service of protecting you know the status quo even though it posits itself as being super critical of of and aware of like what's really going on it's actually smoke and mirrors um that ends up serving uh you know imperialist patriarchy really yes taking your taking your eyes off of of the real people with power and wealth and towards the marginalized and vulnerable is a fascist move and what many on the so-called left have been doing

or these are not the left anymore but these rightists is doing exactly that by tying the entire LGBT movement really in some articulations of this more or less obvious conspiracy theory tying the entire movement to those

forces of capital as if the whole LGBTQ acceptance movement is a huge siop from those in charge. right like it gets very very crazy and it is rooted a hundred percent in conspiracy theories and you can see a lot of people that made this move getting very conspiratorial about covid and buying into a lot of like the replacement or or even great reset theories yeah that's super that supremacist i mean the great replacement theory and the great reset theory

all of that shit is you know again conspiratorial it's not historically accurate or any kind of structural Marxist analysis whatsoever. But it's interesting that like something like great replacement theory, great reset theory, these were things that were super niche, you know, like people were not really talking about them, even though if you, you know, if you are someone who is studying your enemy, which we all should be, you know, I've heard at length of things like great replacement theory. but these were like niche things that were not really talked about but now they're they're they're seemingly everywhere i mean the it has been such a regressive backslide into fascism so quickly that if you don't have a strong

ideological base if you're not organized you're really susceptible to this shit and it's scary and you know the way that it's all posited as this kind of common sense uh you know, how could, how can we didn't see it before, you know, how come we didn't see the great trans conspiracy before? Now it's so obvious. And they, and literally these people think that in the future, in the, in the next 10 years or whatever, everyone's going to come around to their side and see that we were all just duped into believing that trans people actually exist. And they, you know, now they're being unfairly, um, unfairly, um, victimized you know these these turfs these gender criticalists they really think that they're being unfairly victimized by you know the left and that soon we will all come around and realize that they were right all along it's a very heroic they view themselves as these kind of heroes as well which is another another aspect of fascist ideology well yeah the the the reactionary fascist ideology however you want to put it even just regular run-of-the-mill conservatives all of them have

this martyr complex, this idea that even though that, you know, they are in the majority of the religious, racial, even sometimes class makeup of a society, that actually they are the ones constantly being attacked, constantly being the victim of some conspiracy or some top-down approach to squish them, even though by all objective measures, you know, they, they tend to be on the majority side of every identity issue in particular and often in the petty bourgeois or comfortable middle class section of the the class strata itself and so i i think that that need to be a victim and to see themselves as under siege is a core tenet of all right wing politics and when you see people displaying that on the so-called left you know when they are actively dehumanizing and

making more vulnerable and already marginalized and vulnerable community but acting as if they're the ones who are under attack i mean that is a classic hallmark of of reaction yeah totally Well, yeah, let's go ahead and ask this next question here. And I'm actually kind of interested in this because we see this attack on women in the form, most obviously, of the Dobbs decision to dismantle constitutional right to an abortion for women across the country, and then the subsequent onslaughts in specific states, and the national hope that they're going to, you know, win over Congress, the Senate, eventually the presidency, and enact a ban nationwide. That's certainly their goal, as well as, you know, overturning gay marriage. Some people are even talking about contraception and mixed marriages, right, racially mixed marriages. It's absolutely insane. But this attack is happening at the same time as this new wave of reaction against the LGBTQ community is happening.

And so you can see how when the fascist or the reactionaries of any sort are on the march, they're on the march against both at the same time. And what you see some people on the turf side of things doing is reifying this division. you know doubling down on the division between cis and trans women in particular at a time when trans women in particular are under attack when women are under attack and they would serve you know their own interests to come together and to fight together as human beings for the liberation of inequality of everybody but these these people are driving a wedge between them such that it makes that impossible treating this not even real there's no inherent contradiction between cis women and trans women certainly even if there were one. It's certainly not antagonistic at this time. So people insisting that this is not only a contradiction, but an antagonistic one are doing this very reactionary thing of dividing, you know, women, but also just dividing the working class because cis women and trans women, you know, disproportionately make up the working class. Our job as communist and Marxists is to bring the elements of the working class together to become conscious of themselves as a class and come

together across differing identities to fight in a common cause. And anybody, you know, stopping that, actively preventing that, regardless of what they think they're doing, are serving reaction. And so I'm just wondering your thoughts on the simultaneity of the attack on women as well as the attack on the LGBTQ community. Right. So, yeah, you know, these things go together. I want to talk about how they go together. But also I think that there's an important distinction to be made as well because I think that particularly the attacks on trans people. people also have a distinct character in and of themselves.

But, so, you know, I think that the reason that they're doing these things together, right, is attacking both women and the LGBTQ community at the same time is because they understand the necessity of, like, heterosexuality has to be the norm. Because you have to have women basically being reproductive slaves within the patriarchal nuclear family. So, you know, they understand that both women and gender minorities, people have oppressed genders, people of marginalized genders, and people of oppressed sexualities, you know, you need to impose this violent heterosexuality onto all of us. So the idea that there are people breaking with that is incredibly destabilizing to the fundamental unit in which fascism operates, which is, the patriarchal nuclear family. And so that's one aspect of it, right? And also, as well, I think that we have to understand the specific oppression as trans people as something that has a character that is distinct in that now with the situation of trans people,

you have this stranger danger argument. They are the, they are the threat from the outside, which I, I was talking about quite a bit earlier and and and scapegoating them. It's fascist scapegoating saying, you know, all of this violence that is being done to women is being done to them by trans women specifically, the attack on trans women specifically. Now, this is ridiculous on its face because as we know, as feminists, we know that the most dangerous place for the woman is the patriarchal nuclear. family. It is the home. And the person that is most likely to murder you or rape you is not some random trans woman in a bathroom, but it's your husband. And so you have this whole, you know,

so they understand, so there's two things happening. They know that they need to entrench the nuclear family. They know that they need to further entrench heterosexuality and make it literally illegal to be anything but a heterosexual and then they also know that they need to create an enemy that is going to take away or that is going to create a false consciousness about who is really going to be attacking women the most which is men because of the the structure of the nuclear family so these things are working together um interconnected of course but also the the the position that trans women are used in in this ideology is a super nefarious one because it it serves to kind of mask the reality of violence against women as well um and you know this is a crazy thing that

I've realized in these gender critical discourses um is you'll see men cis men usually white uh white cis men as these gender critical feminists right and in my mind I'm like any any dude who is out here preaching any kind of feminism in that way, I'm a little skeptical of because, you know, we should be listening to women in feminism. So any dude that's taking this mantle

of being any kind of hardcore feminist, I'm a little like, hmm, interesting. As a side note, don't forget what you're going to say next, I'm sorry, but another version of that is when like I have you on or Esperanza on to, you know, present criticisms of the sex industry, completely in line with all of our left-wing communist, Marxist values and forms of analysis, the sort of person who responds most vociferously to

that, you know, when these cis men in particular, straight men are the ones that are most likely to start launching death threats and get super worked up about it. You have to wonder where they're coming from. It is not just, I am just so on the side of sex workers. I can't stand any criticism of the sex trade. No, people like UNS. Bronza are actually on the side of sex workers, actually in Esperanza's case has lived experience within that industry is coming out saying legitimate fair critiques and and you know reflecting on her own experience and then some like white cis male gets super angry starts making death threats against a trans woman I mean it's like that all your alarm bells should be going off and you should create as much distance between you and that freak as possible exactly correct and exactly right that's a great connection to me because it's the same shit with these gender critical feminist men, you know, they, they start sounding the alarm, you know, we need to protect women in, in the bathrooms. The bathroom is such a fucking thing. You know, the public aggression to these people is like a massive thing.

And so, you know, they'll come out and call it feminism. But what they're doing is basically saying that they, them as men, need to take on them. the role of a patriarchal protector, like a father figure, of all of these women who, you know, are so dumb that they can't see that, you know, trans women are such a big threat to them, right? So then, you know, the big cis men needs to come in and, and throw down the gauntlet and protect all of these women. It's protectionism. And it's so fucking reactionary. And these reactionary men correctly clock that you know this movement

is like a honeypot for them because they they can basically further entrench these patriarchal norms in the name of feminism you know and they utilize that and they take advantage of this shit when but really what they're

doing is they're saying you know we need to police these strict gender norms and these reactionary men benefit from policing these strict norms you know what I'm saying like it's so fundamental to what needs to happen to further entrench their power and so to see women getting so you know standing behind them I don't think that these women are getting duped I don't think these women are dumb you know I think that uh they understand that the world yes

as I said earlier is an unsafe place for women but rather than understanding we need to make revolution to change that they're going to go into the furthest most reactionary position to make a patriarchal bargain and basically, you know, by their protection through, through bargaining with these really reactionary men. Which never ends well for women in general. I mean, this is something that's been done historically, you know? Yeah. And, you know, again, it totally mystifies the reality of violence against women.

And it totally mystifies who is doing the beating and the raping, you know, and it places this very uh a complete fabrication you know it is a total fabrication they've made up this entire elaborate lie that trans women are the most dangerous people for cis women to be around and um and that displaces the threat of of men exactly it does but but here's the ironic thing too is they they say that uh you know trans women are men and that's why they're a threat but then will go in and and make these patriarchal bargains with actual men to protect them. And it's like, can't you see how fucking ridiculous this is? But fascism is irrational.

Yes. It doesn't have to make sense. In fact, it revels in not making sense. Yes. And even right now, as we're talking about all of these things, you know, you can start to just poke holes in all of their logic. And, you know, I have laid out all of these arguments. arguments so concisely to people that I've seen take these reactionary turns and it just doesn't

matter they don't they're so far past the point of needing something to actually be sound and to actually make sense and and that's what's scary about it because it's kind of like a cult a cult like logic you know and and and the attraction to it is is this kind of cult like attraction absolutely it's really scary yeah I was going to I completely agree with that and there's a cultish element you know you can find it cultish elements among all forms of politics especially extreme politics but specifically on the far right there's almost always this cultic element and this irrational element that is always present in these movements and we certainly see it here something you were saying earlier though that I wanted to touch on before we move on

is you're giving like these two simultaneous reasons for why the attack on women is simultaneous with the attack on the LGBTQ issue and sort of understanding, you know, what's, what's really underneath all of this. Another thing that I see on the right, in recent months, it's really, you know, sort of get into a pinnacle, is this moral panic, is the only way I could really talk about it, regarding low birth rates, population decline, and even that recent Tucker Carlson thing about low testosterone levels in men. So this sort of panic is coming at the same time as we see this overturning of.

Roe, this clamping down on women's, you know, human and bodily autonomy and rights, and this, you know, this new sort of inflected, more hyperbolic, more hysterical, hatred, attack, slander, and, you know, pointing all the guns at the LGBT community in particular. And so obviously, as you're talking about the reification of heteronormativity, especially in times of destabilization, all of these fears about low birth rate, population decline, and low testosterone revolved. 100% around heteronormative cis male anxieties, you know, and that's projected out onto the rest of society. Yes, and there's also a really racist character to all of that shit. So, you know, great replacement theory is a very popular patriarchal white, right extremist theory. And Tucker Carlson actually started peddling this on fucking national television, which is absolutely insane. Um, so basically that theory says that, uh, you know, um, white, the white race is going to be, uh, become the minority and that the white race is going to be replaced by like all of these, you know, mixed children. And, you know, it's like fucking super, super racist, obviously. And, um, and that what we need to do is ban abortion and force white,

women to give birth to white babies so that we can repopulate the white race, especially in a country like America, which is obviously a white supremacist settler colony. This is really, really popular amongst the most extremist factions of fascists in right-wing conservatives in this country. So the mass shooter who shot up the grocery store in Buffalo, he put out this manifesto, and in it, he references great replacement theory. So that's a really, obviously that was a racial hate crime. He attacked a grocery store in a black neighborhood in one of the most segregated cities in the United States of America. I mean, it was a racial hate crime. And also, there is this deeply patriarchal ideology that is flowing through it that kind of masks itself in plain sight. So, like, when I went through and read that manifesto, because I did read it, the whole thing hinges on needing women to be reproductive slaves in the household.

But he almost never even mentions the word women. I don't think he ever actually typed out the word women. in it but the whole thing the oppression of women in this way is so central to the whole entire ideology but it masks itself it's it's you know male dominance is metaphysically perfect

it's so impossible to see sometimes it hides in plain sight but this this great replacement theory and everything that you're talking about about you know the impotence of men and it also has to do with like men this fear that men are becoming effeminate

it's it's it's um this condemnation of like non-standard sexual sexual habits uh you know and and and seeing that uh if men can't impregnate women then then there's something deeply wrong with our society because it's a masculine emasculating men you know all of this shit it's so central to the the entire ideology and and the fucked up shit too is that A lot of these, you know, the mass shooters who are all fascists, people like Tucker Carlson, who is a fascist, they're peddling a lot of these ideas that they find in, in-cell communities and in-sphere communities on the internet. Like, great replacement theory, all of that shit is super popular with in-cells. Yeah. And I understand to a certain degree why people have this idea that, you know, we shouldn't give them any attention.

They're just this niche group online. Like I get what people are saying when they say that, but they're wrong because these ideas aren't niche anymore. They're being peddled by someone like Tucker Carlson. That's one of the most watched television shows in the United States of America. And, you know, basically online, social media, these forums for in cells and misogynists, are, they're doing so much of the heavy ideological lifting for this rise of theocratic fascism. And I think we have made a grave mistake to not take them seriously and to not study what they have to say. Because Tucker Carlson has been looking at it.

These right-wing fascists have been, you know, the people with power have been paying attention to what is happening with this online radicalization. Oh, yeah. Republican politicians? Oh, yeah. They're using those ideas. and they're mainstreaming them and they're becoming very popular. I mean, again, great replacement theory is just so explicitly white supremacist and so explicitly patriarchal that the idea that something that extreme was being peddled on a television show

with that large of an audience is alarming. And, you know, where those ideas are most popular are on these seemingly niche you know internet forums that that peddle in male supremacy you know and it's it's really really serious shit so I picked up this book sorry I'm kind of going on a tangent here I picked up this book called men who hate women by a woman named Laura Bates I think she's a bit of a liberal in certain senses but I think that her analysis is really good and everyone should pick this up and read about her work in terms of studying these online communities of misogynists. It's really important to understand them right now because the misogyny and the re-entrenching

of these super heteronormative ideas about gender is so central to our moment and to what's happening you know if we don't really understand that then we don't understand fascism as as like a broader political project these extreme ideas they they come from the internet well they they hold there i actually want to talk about that about the manosphere and specific but really quick i just wanted to say something about this fear that men have or you know some men the right wing men have about men becoming, you know, more effeminate in the low-t testosterone anxiety is about that, the trans anxiety is about that, even stuff like, you know, soy boys and soy face, it's very much about that. But the sad thing is, and one of the things you realize when you do any investigation

of these communities, is that most of the men who are most vociferously launching these attacks and holding up this image of rugged masculinity and traditional masculinity are men that feel interiorly that they don't actually live up to their own image. And that produces the anxiety, the insecurity, and thus the overcompensation of a lot of these men. Like, they don't even live up to the image they have of masculine men in their own heads. And yet they're the ones most vociferously pushing in lots of cases towards this end. So I just think that's worth noting. But I want to talk about the manosphere in particular. And this is kind of hit home for me because I have some nephews who are entering their teenage years, and the manosphere has become

very, very big right now, you know, from fresh and fit, which is like a YouTube channel to Kevin Samuels who recently died, but his whole thing was, you know, specifically telling black women that they weren't attractive and they were overweight and they'll never get the guy that they won a high value man, right? They started making these shirts, by the way, that men, I guess, unironically buy that says high value man on the front of it. I mean, if you have to advertise, yourself as such. You think the, you know, Doth protests too much. But there's another figure who's very, very influential, as of very recently, named

Ander Tate, and he's making the runs, and he's lifted up by figures in the comedy world or whatever, and has now become a viral sort of mega influencer star online, and his entire thing is just rampant misogyny, a deep hatred for women, and a reification of these masculinist ideas and conceptions and I have a nephew who came to me and we were watching some YouTube together you know just like whatever and he got mentioned ander Tate got mentioned and my nephew's like oh the top G that's what he calls himself the top G and you know sort of laughed about it like oh I've seen this guy on TikTok and just sort of came off as like a funny figure right you know like a viral figure that has come across my social media and that I think is amusing and so then I had

like, you know, ha ha, yeah, he is a bit of a clown, but I had to sit down and be like, but you know, everything that he says about women is the exact opposite. You can laugh at these people, you can enjoy their virality to some extent, but I just had this talk with my nephew, no, please don't take these ideas seriously. These are the antithesis of how you should ever talk to, treat or think about women. And so I'm able to make a little intervention in my, you know, 12-year-old nephew's life. But there are millions and millions of men. around this country in particular who have nobody even attempting to make that intervention

or nobody that even knows that an intervention is needed and are just being ushered down this, you know, this hallway of pure, real venomous misogyny to say nothing of the anti-LGBQ sentiments that arise in these formations as well. So what are your thoughts on the manosphere in particular? so i think that um and and you know fascist extremists will say this pretty openly that that misogyny is the ultimate gateway drug to get people into a larger set of fascist politics uh but it begins with misogyny and so with that being said uh you know as the you know the point that you just made these um we can call them men's rights activists basically

they are really popular on the internet and they're excellent propagandists they are genius propagandists they use irony they you know there's so many levels of irony to what they're doing it's that kind of irrationalism that fascists love to use um and they're everywhere they're everywhere and they prey on all of these uh you know these fears that that young boys have and and all of these insecurities that young boys have and they and they do start young you know they do target young boys your nephew's what 12 and he knew about this guy i mean that's so scary and um they basically what the manosphere says to men is that and boys is that you know The reason why you have all of these problems is because of feminism and because of women.

That is the core tenet of the ideology. They think that they've reversed it. They've said that they've, they peddle this lie that women have the most power and that women basically control the, what would they call it, I guess, the sexual arena, that women are totally in control, that women have all of this power, and that feminism is the dominant ideology in society, and that they have been sold a lie that men are, you know, actually, they've been sold this lie that men are powerful, when in fact, men are the oppressed ones, and women are the ones who have all this sexual

power over them and it's super fucking dangerous because again it mystifies the the contradiction of class of who's really you know who's really in power and who's really in charge and and what a lot of these feelings that young boys are having um they they're able to in this really twisted kind of like rhetorical move basically conspiratorially paint women as this like master race basically

and they view their biological essentialists they view men and women as essentially different animals really and that women are by nature of their like brain of our brain chemistry and the way that our brains

function we are like an inferior species that is absolutely a different species than men even and this all sounds totally insane I'm aware of that because it's total fucking bullshit as we know but

you know again they're excellent propagandists and the way that they put this information into the world onto TikTok onto all of these in-cell forums on Twitter on Instagram they're really good at peddling all of these extremist

ideas as something that is common sense And if you are a young boy who is just getting online and just using the internet, it's all just right there for you. And they create basically a community that can answer all of these questions that you have, you know, about sex and life. And they kind of create like a fraternity. And if you're a super isolated, alienated young boy on the internet, you know, it's very appealing. It's very appealing. And within weeks of getting onto these forums, then they start posting.

And already, the ideology is so potent that, like, within weeks of being on these forums, already you're going to start seeing young boys, 14, 15, making rape threats, asking other people on the forums, how do I rape a woman or a girl and get away with it? Right? Like, it's, it happens almost immediately. It's just as quick as like the anti-trans stuff happens in feminism. The turnaround is like, from curious to extremist is like, it can happen in a week. And it's, it's such like a drink the Kool-Aid type of thing.

And I think it was the editor of, what is that magazine, like Storm Trooper, that super racist Nazi rag. Oh, yeah. Stormfront, he explicitly said, you know, we recruit from these in-cell communities. This is where we find, like, the base for our, you know, our politics. It's through this misogyny. And it is so pervasive and it's like there's something called a rape cell. So, you know, we know incels. But then within the category of in-cells, there's like all of these different sub-sex.

And one of them is called a rape cell. And it's basically men who know that they can't get laid, so what they've resorted to is just raping with impunity. And who, again, who knows if these people are actually doing that or if it's purely just an online, you know, performance? But it doesn't really make a difference. It's impacted on the community is the same. Exactly, exactly right.

And another point I want to make here, too, is these are not, just five or six or seven or a dozen you know boys you know on the internet these are groups that have thousands and thousands of members thousands and thousands of people posting on these forums um and there's thousands and thousands of threads that are talking about this shit it's not super small obviously they represent a minority of men but the idea that these are just like lone extremists is wrong you know that this is a pretty big online movement it's not as niche as people want to think absolutely it's huge it's huge um and yeah there's like consentent circles so like you have the toxic like forums where they're openly discussing rape but then you go out a few degrees and then

you have the manosphere go out a few more degrees you might have the tucker carlson's and the joe rogans of the world right um and so it's all sort of connected whether the people involved fully understand those connections or not. And, you know, one of the implicit messages from the manosphere is women are the reason and feminism in particular, their movement, is the reason why you are single, are unhappy, are insecure, have no prospects in your life. It's not the economic system. It's not the hyperatomized culture that comes with the hypercapitalist system that, you know, defangs and destroys community and communality and all of these things. No, it's women and their movement for, feminism. And men, especially young boys and secure young boys, they can easily take that in

as, as, you know, just a fact. And it certainly is treated as such. And then you look at figures like, I always thought this was very interesting. I don't know if you know who Andrew Tate and Kevin Samuels are. Do you have any familiarity? No, I don't know them. There are two really huge figures in the Manosphere in particular. And you're talking about how they appeal specifically to younger boys, which I think is spot on. It's mostly younger boys. watching this shit. One of the ways that Andrew Tate does it is, you know, he puts together this entire life of, I think he made a lot of money on Bitcoin or some weird shit, right? And so he makes this whole thing about him smoking expensive cigars and driving awesome cars and living

in a mansion and having lots of women all around him all the time, you know, and he'll say things like, if you make one penny less than me, you're nothing to me, you know, like hyper-capitalist ideology alongside the anti, you know, women, anti-feminist, misogynist shit, but also the aesthetics of being cool. So young boys are definitely going to like the fast cars and the lots of women in bikinis and the cool guy smoking a cigar, you know, in tattoos. And that makes the whole allure of him even more. What Kevin Samuels did, I think, is a little different.

And he's speaking largely to a black community. And I could not, he passed away now, but I could not help but notice that Kevin Samuel's dressed almost exactly like Malcolm X in those classic pictures of X and like the suit with the big glasses, you know? And what does that convey in the black community? It conveys a sense of wisdom, a sense of I am an elder in the black community, just the aesthetics of dressing like Malcolm X. I don't know if that was a conscious choice or not. But when you're speaking to a black community almost exclusively, that aesthetic decision I think has consequences is for your, you know, credibility to that community.

And so I thought that was either incredibly cynical and sneaky on his part or just completely coincidental. But the last thing I wanted to say aside of all that is you're talking about these in-cell and these rape cell communities and how grotesque it is. And then you have the manosphere and all these elements of online communities coming together to form this, you know, this brutal misogyny. But pornography is also another aspect here. Those same boys who are on those rape cell and in-cell phone.

forums hating women are also the boys that are almost certainly only being exposed to sex and romantic sex of any sort through the distorted grotesque lens of online easily accessible pornography. So you add that into the mix. That's throwing, you know, huge amounts of gasoline on an already exploding fire. Absolutely right. And, you know, what does this pornography teach these boys and sometimes boys start watching pornography as early as like nine and ten and this is you know pornography is so violent um especially now it's gotten to such an extreme degree uh you know it's absolutely insane the things that you can find on these websites but you know what is this teaching men that uh and boys is is that um you know women are available to you

and women exist for sex and for you to fuck that's what's being taught and that's so so you have this like um you know pornography is an ideological weapon against radical consciousness absolutely it is it's propaganda and and especially when you have something like the internet and the way that you know it's pornography on demand and it's just you and your you know personal tastes however violent or ridiculous and racist they might be and it's basically like a direct you know teacher of this violent misogyny and so but it's not seen that way it's seen as something that is pleasurable right like you know the idea that watching women suffer through sex and then you beat off to it and and and you know you you derive pleasure from these images of of violence that does a number on your

brain and there have been so many studies about what pornography does to the brains of young boys you know every people of all genders you know watch it but obviously you know majority of people who are watching pornography are boys and men but um you know it does a number on your brain on a chemical level um and and and uh this also kind of ties into with like these ideas of like men being impotent, men not being able to get it up, like all of these super masculinist ideas, you know, or men, you know, men not being able to like deliver in bed, all of these fears that you see being peddled by these super right-wing patriarchal men, a lot of that can also be tied back to their addiction to pornography and what they expect out of sex, you know,

and that women can never deliver that and nor should we want to because a lot of those images are, you know, violent. You know, and then you have in young boys, men as young as like 27, 28 with like intense erectile dysfunction and things like this, that's directly linked to this kind of widespread addiction

to internet pornography. I mean, it's all connected. And that shit radicalizes you and then you go in you log onto the internet after you were just masturbating to some violent shit and then get on these

forums or even not forums even something as widespread in usage as like Twitter and then you then you see this kind of misogynistic ideology being peddled there you know it's a complete like um onslaught like a vicious onslaught of

anti-feminist misogyny constantly all the time and and because I keep saying this, but it's because it's true, you know, male dominance is so, you know, metaphysically perfect. It hides in plain sight. We can't even necessarily clock it as male dominance. We take it for granted to such a degree. You know, we don't have the, the left needs to develop the tools to fight that because in so doing, we're also fighting fascism because, you know, it's my, my wager that you do not have fascism. without the subjugation of women. So I think that in order to even be good anti-fascists, we have to really understand this stuff. And it's not pretty, and it's scary. And it also challenges some very, you know,

firmly held beliefs that we have, particularly in a country like the United States, that is so obsessed with, like, freedom of speech, right? We have to ask freedom of speech for whom, you know. And a lot of this massage. and a lot of this violent pornography kind of sneaks into our discourse and and permeates our lives through this defense of like freedom and liberty and basically what they're saying is freedom and liberty for men to abuse women that's what they're really saying but it's all couched in

this logic of like well you can't you can't you can't critique you know what what people say you know freedom of speech you can't and you can't critique what people are ingesting you know that's their personal business if they're watching pornography. That's not the realm of politics. You know, we have to protect that. Our liberties, all this fucking bullshit, you know what I'm saying? But really, that's the mechanism

in which these ideologies are protected. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, just, I mean, well said, 100% correct. And just thinking of pornography as its own rabbit hole of extremism, I think is helpful

here because it really does, I mean, just like any other rabbit hole, extremism we talk about online pornography itself is this algorithmically charged rabbit hole descent into more and more forms of obscure violent niche forms of sexual encounters and somebody who spends time on that will get sucked in that direction no matter what and and so we had to think of that as pornography in and of itself as one version of that and we need to combat it truly and I think I think a hinge point and something that comes up because you're just talking about the left needs to react to this stuff we need to respond vociferously and robustly to this very

popular hyperviral masculinist emerging tradition thing whatever formation um and so you know what do they do well they play as we said many times on oftentimes inherent male insecurity i mean porn or everything else aside being a teenager is a insecure time no matter you know what gender you are and certainly men and young boys have their own forms of insecurity through their teenage years and people like these manosphere influencers these andrew tates these misogynists who are popular online they play into that insecurity by diminishing women you know your insecurity is valid because these women are the real problem and so if we're going to take seriously this idea that the left should respond to this shit and create communities in parallel to these toxic ones that can

address the same shit, one thing that we'll have to do is address that underlying insecurity and come up with healthier ways of dealing with it, but also have to be as online, perhaps, as present online as these other forces are. Because as you said, no matter where you turn online, a lot of this stuff will be reified, reinforced, bolstering one another. And so, you know, the left is going to have to do that as well, have a presence online, dealing with the root cause of this shit, but in a healthier way. And, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Absolutely, I agree.

And I think that a lot of, like, what, you know, a lot of these insecurities that come up, particularly when it comes to sex, has to do with the way that sex functions in patriarchal society. You know, so, like, when young boys feel insecure about certain sexual relations that they might have or desire, a lot of that comes from being. taught that men are entitled to sex. That is such like a taken for granted thing in our society. And even in defenses of the sex trade that you see from these like pro sex work, blah, blah, blah, leftists, whatever, the underlying idea even in that is that, you know, men should be able to have sex whenever they want, sex on demand, which is the essence of rape culture, right?

That is the foundation of that. And so, you know, when we are teaching young boys and when we are, you know, dealing with, and of course, also teaching young women is we have to really attack that idea because it is so fundamental to all of this. And like, and it's an idea that's being taught in pornography. So it's like young boys have a kind of a break in their brain when it comes to what they've been taught since they. their children and what they learn in pornography and just the overall objectification of women throughout society in every aspect of our culture is this sexual entitlement. And so when they step out into the real world and that is not what it actually is and that women do have some sort of agency and that we do have our own sexual needs, right?

these two these what they've been taught and what they've been told and what the reality is are so different from one another it causes like a a very very vicious kind of alienation and it like a source of intense violence because you feel like you have been wronged because what you've been told is that you get free reign over women as sexual objects and it turns out hey women are actually people you know and it it causes an intense um uh fracturing of your own psyche you know it's really destabilizing and and and uh you know and that's why the most extreme of of of these young boys it's like the in cell types they go and they shoot up uh rooms full of children and it i think it comes from this this uh what we teach young boys about women and and uh When you really pick that apart, and again, it's something we take for granted, you know, because it's so commonplace, when you really pull that apart, you know, the, the ideology of this sexual entitlement is like, it's so widespread and it's so inherently violent. And it shapes most men's worldview, even if you're not a guy.

that's going out and raping women all the time, you know, it doesn't have, you don't have to be some serial rapist in order to be operating in your life in such a way that reinforces that idea. But it's, it's everywhere. And it's, it's the groundwork for so many of these extremists ideologies, you know, women exist for sex and for reproducing. That's it. And so I think, you know, we need to, as feminist as Marxists, that's like an idea that we really have to take more seriously as like a political project. It's not just like, you know, it's not about just like changing like one person's mind at a time. You know, we have to, we have to bring in this kind of feminist analysis into our organizations. You know, we have to make it the

foundation of our politics, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And if there are these factions of the left being won over by reaction on these issues, that's an indictment of us as the left, as the real left, to combat these forces, to emphasize this stuff in our organizing, in our political education, and to really center it in our analysis going forward. Because when we don't do that enough or vociferously enough or robustly enough, we see how these narratives are easily winning people over across the political spectrum. and so it's just more of us. It's our job to continue to combat this in whatever ways we can. And you tying in mass shootings to this entire discussion I think is really interesting. I hadn't really contemplated that. But certainly most of these mass shooters would fit into the category of in-cell, these angsty, violent, angry, often young men, teenage, early 20-somethings, spending way too much fucking time on the internet.

Regardless of the ostensible reason they give, some have a manifest. though some seem completely out of left field they all seem to share several of these characteristics and and that's deeply tied to the broader conversation we're having about you know the rise of fascism the manosphere anti-feminist and anti-women sentiment anti-LGBQ sentiment conspiratorialism it's all right there so yeah that was insightful no it's something that i've been really because you know mass shootings have always been a problem here but they I feel as though, as of recently, especially, they've become more explicit in like the political role that they play, because I think it's easy to throw a kind of fundamentally liberal analysis at it and see it as like individuals acting, you know, like these crazy lone wolf individuals who are sick in the head and, you know, they're they, it's painted as they're kind of, they're an anomaly. In the sense, they are an anomaly, right?

But after everything that we've just been talking about, they're actually, in a lot of senses, acting in a way that is completely consistent with what they have been told and what they have been taught. And, you know, America, the United States of America, we produce death. That's what this country does. It is a death machine. And so it makes total sense that, you know, we have. what I would argue, these political agents who have been taught all of these things that we have just been talking about on top of the fact that we live in the belly of the imperial core of a country that produces death on a mass scale, you know, they go and they shoot up a school.

It's not that they're sick in the head per se. Of course they are, but, you know, they're fucking evil people. But also, I think a stronger analysis of it is like they're also completely consistent with what it is that we do here and they're 100% acting on behalf of a political regime of, you know, that is the norm in this country. And I think that when you understand it in this way, you can see how they're, how they are, they really are political agents. You know, they're not, I'm not saying that they're, like, funded by the feds, because that's conspiratorial thinking. Of course. But they're plugged into broader structures. They're conditioned. Yeah.

Exactly. Even ostensibly non-political or apolitical mass shootings where there's no clear motive, no manifesto, no political orientation. It's still an inherently political act. Yeah, absolutely. And so there's just another book that's really great. It's called Male Fantasies. and it was written in the 70s and

you know so he uses psychoanalysis and some of that is like not necessarily up my alley but what I think is fascinating that the point that he makes in this book is and he does it through he basically finds he went and found

all of these different letters and memoirs that were written by the German proto-fascists before the Nazis came into power. And his dad was sympathetic to Nazism and also to these proto-fascists. So a lot of this book, he's trying to figure out, like, you know, why are these men, why do we become fascists? What is that? So he finds all of these letters and all of these, you know, primary materials. and basically the thread that connects them all is that they all are violent misogynists

and that um and this is kind of striking in its similarity to in cells is that they these aren't like um like players who are like sexualizing women it's a whole other layer. these men want to kill women. It's a very, not that they wouldn't rape women, but the rape is like secondary to the core belief that women pose a threat

and women need to die. You know, that this is such a part of this, the fascist male fantasy is the mass murder of women. And so, so, and the, and they, and they, and they, had these militias, you know, the German Freikor, and they were the proto-fascists who basically

They killed Rosa. They killed Rosa. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And he makes it a lot of amazing points about how he talks about this concept of the red women and that communist women, Jewish women are seen as like this massive threat to this patriarchal male power that is foundational to fascism. And so they have so many of these fantasies about the murder of the murder of red women and it's so similar to if you go on these in-cell forums and read what these people say it's almost indistinguishable from the kind of shit that you read in this book camille fantasies where he's talking about the proto-fascists who were the harbingers of of nazism in germany i mean the similarities are so striking and when you read it in that way and you understand the history

of this specific type of misogyny it is very a very harrowing view of what is to come you know it's it's not looking good and then when you see that paired with these larger you know the judicial cue in SCOTUS

in the larger political system it's like holy shit you know the fascism is it's it's real and it is fascism and I think we should call it that I think people sometimes because that word has been overused and kind of lost its meaning for a while people are scared to call things fascist but now it's like no no no this is actually fascism that's happening and and we should be able to name it as such you know 100% absolutely well my friend we have I think we're at our time

limit here. I want to be respectful of the time you have at the place you're recording. But I found this conversation to be absolutely not only enlightening but desperately needed at this time to help make sense of all these seemingly disparate trends and forces and how they're more or less structured by the same underlying values and ideological formations. And so always a pleasure to have you on the open invite. Anytime you want to come back for any reason, I just love talking with you and learning from you. But before I let you go, is there anything else you want to say any last words any recommendations or anything you want to plug um so books to read i have two that i just i think everyone would really learn a lot from men who hate women by laura bates

and male fantasies by klaus thielvite i cannot pronounce his last name i just butchered that but if you look up male fantasies and klaus his last name starts with the tea it's a very german name two books that are absolutely have been essential for me in understanding this oh and also a book called right wing women by andrewd workin that talks about you know um the appeal of the right to uh women and why women basically are signing up for their own brutal subjugation amazing book uh and also i have been doing my own podcast with a group of women that specifically is about feminism. It's called Private Life, and it's on Spotify.

It's on everything. And we're doing some cool work over there. If you want just more straight feminism, a place for that. That's what we're doing. So if you want to listen to it, please do. Wonderful. Yeah, I will link to those in the show notes. I'll definitely link to Private Life.

I'll follow and subscribe right now, actually. And yeah, I'm really interested going forward in, like, coming up with ways that the left can push back on this internet front regarding how, you know, the insecurities, particularly of young boys, are preyed upon by these, you know, manosphere types. And I certainly think whatever response the left comes up with will be rooted in in feminism, absolutely. So private life seems right down, right down that alley. Anybody that is interested in that, go check that out. And maybe we can continue talking, whether on the show or off. about ways that maybe our two shows can come together and try to promote this idea of pushing back on these specific narratives and trying to make a difference on that front.

Right. Absolutely. That sounds amazing. It was a pleasure talking to you, Brett, as usual. And stay strong. It's shit is crazy right now, man. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, you too. Thank you so much for coming on and I'll talk to you soon. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.