Strict Scrutiny - We Read Josh Hawley's Book So You Don't Have To

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Josh Hawley's book/polemic on the trials and tribulations of American men also gives us a window into the dark worldview that informs his politics-- so unfortunately, we needed to see what all he's saying. We decided to do an informal book club to discuss the horrors within, and we invited the only person whose opining on masculinity we actually want: Jonathan Van Ness. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Hey, everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? A crossover with the Strict Scrutiny podcast. My wife, Kate Shaw, her co-hosts, Melissa Murray and Leah Lippman, joined to discuss the Supreme Court's big decisions this term. The point of the Constitution and the separation of powers is that you don't want any one of these branches to consolidate power in a way that allows them to dwarf any of the others. You have to look at how different this court has been since it became a six to three conservative supermajority. The court has just, it seems to me, given a permission structure for Trump to do everything in his wildest imagination he might want to do, but might have been somewhat constrained by the

prospect of legal accountability from doing. all of that is now gone. That's this week on Why Is This Happening. Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow. Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex.

All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. Hello, and welcome back to Strict Scrutiny, your podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. We are your hosts. I'm Kate Shaw. I'm Leah Littman. And I'm Melissa Murray. And listeners, prepare yourselves because this is a very, very special episode. We have such a treat in store for you. I almost cannot contain myself. I have no words. So Leah, go. Tell them what the treat is.

So we had such a wonderful time with Amicus of the Pod, Jonathan Van Ness. We knew we needed to have them back on, and we think we found the perfect occasion to do so. A plus occasion. A plus occasion. A plus. Well, if we're grading the occasion, I might give it an F, but I'm hoping it will generate an A-plus experience for our listeners. So regular listeners of the show know that we stay up on the goings-on of the sprinter who moonlights as a senator, Josh Hawley, who in between some long runs and light jogs manages to find time to conduct rather unhinged questioning of various judicial nominees on the Senate Judiciary Committee and some light insurrection encouragement to boot. So listeners, if you are not familiar with Josh Hawley, we might run a few clips so you get an idea of who this person is. So here's a clip of Josh Hawley at the Katonji Brown Jackson confirmation. You had an 18-year-old who possessed and distributed hundreds of images of eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds and 10-year-olds, and you gave him, frankly, a slap on the wrist

of three months. Do you regret it? I don't remember whether it was distribution or possession. It was both. Do you regret it? In the law, there are different crimes that people commit in this area. Judge, you gave him three months. My question is, do you regret it or not? Senator, what I regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications to be a justice on the Supreme Court, we've spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences. And I've tried to explain. You regret that we're focusing on your cases? I don't understand. No, no, no. I'm talking about the fact that you're talking about seven very serious cases.

I'm glad we agree on that. Some of which involve conduct that I sentence people to 25, 30 years. Three months in this case, Judge. Do you regret it? You haven't answered my question yet. Do you regret this sentence? Senator, I would have to look at the circumstances. Senator, I've answered this question many times from many senators who've asked me,

so I'll stand on what I've already said. So you have nothing to add about why these crimes, why these images, in your view, do not signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense. That's Hawkins. You say in Cooper, I understand the government's argument, but I don't find them persuasive, the fact that they were pre-prevescent children, from the standpoint of characterizing this as an especially egregious child pornography offense. That's page 58. Senator, I've answered this question. I've explained how the guidelines work, and I'll stand on my answer. But the guidelines

are not mandatory. I wish they were, but they're not. The Supreme Court made that determination. I'm trying to understand why you think it's rational not to sentence criminals based on the number of images they have. You say that this is a policy disagreement that you have with the guidelines. This gets to the core of your judicial philosophy. Yes, that's Josh Hawley introducing pornography into a Senate confirmation. All very, very normal. Equally normal has been Josh Hawley's Islamophobic-esque line of questioning at the hearing for Third Circuit nominee Adil Manji. Adil Manji has still not been confirmed by the Senate and has actually lost the support of Democratic senators because of this line of questioning that has tried to link Adil Manji to terrorism. That's not the greatest hit, though, on the Josh Hawley

parade of horribles. At number one with a bullet is Josh Hawley, who has maintained that Naomi Rao of the D.C. Circuit is simply not socially conservative enough to be on Trump's SCOTUS shortlist. Query who would fit the bill for one Josh Hawley, if not Naomi Rao. It truly boggles the mind. So all to say, we occasionally habitually mock Josh Hawley and call out his actually disgustingly gross behavior. And we don't do this because it sparks joy for us. We do it because Josh Hawley is actually among the authoritarianism forward Gilead curious entrepreneurs in the federal government. So knowing what he is up to and what he is working toward is vitally important. And because it is so important, we, the three of us, as an act of service and of love for

our listeners, not for Josh Hawley, held our collective noses and read his book slash polemic, which is titled, I'm going to try to say it with a straight face, Manhood, colon, The Masculine Virtues America Needs. So we read the book and we reviewed it for the Michigan Law Review's upcoming book review issue. So it'll be available for your reading or hate reading pleasure shortly. And more broadly, you know, we've talked on the show about how various political officials with the cooperation of the courts are engaged in an effort to restore traditional sex roles and clawback advances that women and LGBTQ people have made. And this book really lays all of that, the entire agenda out, right? It says the quiet part out loud.

And so we thought it was important to give both readers and listeners a glimpse of the worldview that animates Holly's book, that he is openly trumpeting because he thinks it is a path to political power. And we wanted to suggest that this worldview is very similar to the worldview driving the conservative majority on SCOTUS. Or we should say BRODUS. Or SCRODUS, as the case may be. And as we noted at the top, we are joined by Jonathan Van Ness, JVN, who will help break down Josh Hawley's conceptions of manhood and masculinity, read them for filth, and as importantly, help us have a good time doing so. So welcome to the show, Jonathan. You guys, I'm so happy to be back. I miss you all the time. You are my Roman Empire podcast, except for I listen to you and think of you all the time. I think you're doing such important work. And wow, that book is... I mean, I just started twitching involuntarily.

Interestingly, on my right side, which according to Eastern medicine is my sun side, which is your masculine side. So my right side, my sun's side is literally rebelling at this very thought of this book. But I'm really proud of you guys for reading it. And let's get into the horrors. And also, Melissa, your ability to assign pop culture references to such dark, conservative activism is equally as amazing and inspiring like inspiring as it also is scary because it almost makes it sound like i'm like gilead curious yas but then i'm like wait no focus this is serious no you don't want to be gilead curious you don't want to be no no no but again, the gist of the book is a little Gilead curious. So I'll just give you a brief description, listeners, because we read this, so you don't have to.

Basically, the gist of the book is that American men are really taking it on the chin, which is to say that men are the victims of a society with its woke laws and policies that are trying to rectify the historic discrimination that women and girls have suffered in this society. And to be very clear, Josh Hawley isn't wrong about some of this. There's considerable social science and empirical evidence that backs up his claim, at least when we're talking about boys and men who are not in the highest income brackets and socioeconomic status. So there is just a lot of research about men falling behind in terms of higher education, especially among the middle and working class, not so much among the upper classes who tend to be the leaders of

society. But in any event, scholars and policymakers have all talked about the range of factors that contribute to the gender gap in higher education, the gender gap in employment. Then they have real, actual, factual, empirical support for what is driving this. Josh Hawley wants to talk about this, but again, he doesn't really want to talk about it with any rigor. So by contrast, Josh Hawley's description of this problem is that it is animated almost entirely by what Hawley calls Epicureanism, which is a code word for liberalism or progressivism. And he says, quote, men have been told this nonsense for decades now by the press and the politicians. The nonsense is apparently equality and equal rights for women. In these circumstances, under the influence of this creed, the creed is the Equal Protection Clause, is it any wonder that so many men now feel adrift, bereft, and yes, ashamed to be men? That's on page nine. And under that label of epicureanism

or liberalism, Josh Hawley lumps a lot of different things. So there is the left's denigration of men, the left's insistence on self-care, also screen time, including video games, porn consumption, which, as I said earlier, Josh Hawley is very preoccupied with. Declining marriage rates are another symptom of epicureanism. Delaying or abstaining from parenthood, ladies, another sign of epicureanism. And of course, the zero tolerance policy found in many schools alongside the childhood diagnoses of ADD and ADHD. All of this is the work of the liberal left, and all of it is a concerted campaign to stick it to men. And as Melissa was just alluding to, there are scholars and policymakers who have basically said there is a kernel of truth to what Hawley is saying, which is that American men are falling behind in all kinds of ways.

But Hawley, of course, wants to lay the blame at the feet of women and progressives. And what folks who've actually studied this phenomenon have come up with is, you know, there are lots of different potential causes and interventions that might be appropriate to actually address the plight of American boys and men. But what Hawley thinks is that what we need to do is read the Bible and read it in a highly selective way, which I suppose is not surprising given the proclivities of the current conservative Supreme Court justices for highly selective reading of all kinds of texts. Here, let me just read a couple of quotes from Hawley's invocation of the Bible.

So, Abraham was tempted to abandon the promise of his marriage and seek for solace elsewhere. He gave in for a time to his doubt and despair, and yet Abraham did not give up, not ultimately. He found his nerve. He pressed on. He honored Sarah, returned to his covenant. He waited for her child as his heir, and in time, God rewarded him and Sarah with a son. Narrator voice. Melissa, what's omitted from that version of the narrative that Holly offers? Before Abraham begat a postmenopausal baby on Sarah, he first had a whole-ass kid with a servant girl named Hagar. And we might question Hagar's ability as a said servant girl to consent. But again, totally selective.

The Clarence Thomas School of Bible Reading. Well, that passage has been read out of the Bible, much like they have read out the Establishment Clause from the Constitution and other provisions as well. Holly invokes the Bible in part because he thinks that the solution to all of our problems is that American men need to live their lives according to five biblical archetypes, which we are going to talk about now. So I'm actually going to lump two of the archetypes together because Holly kind of does so as well. And that is the archetype of the father and the archetype of the husband. First, can we ask JVN, what do you think about this? All the things that are befalling American society and American men.

Is it because of self-care? Is it because of self-care? It's because someone put a mask on and took care of themselves, took a nap. I thought what was so interesting when I was reading all of my like highlighted portions from the book is how so many conservative policies are at the heart of what he thinks the problems are. Like the crisis of fatherlessness. Like if you look at family separation, which is like really mass incarceration and the way that we have... When you think about mass incarceration, it does affect people who have less income, majorly BIPOC people. But there's just a lot of overlap that he refuses to see the nuance on. And I just keep thinking the real enemy of conservatism is nuance.

Even when he's talking about they can't even say what a, you know, they can't even say what a woman is, or they can't even say what a man is, which are so much transphobia, like, all throughout this. Like, the refusal to see the difference between, like, biology and then, like, the expression of gender, like, biological sex and gender. There's a refusal to see that, a refusal to understand that.

And just, like, this... When you look at what he's talking about and where it comes do you guys know about sabrina strings dr sabrina strings she's major she's like one of my faves no enlighten us she just wrote this book on like um the death of romance i had her on getting curious and it kind of is talking about this from like the females pov but on romance but because anything is everything so much of what, you know, women are dealing with is all of the stuff that Josh Hawley, these policies are making things so much harder for women. And it's making it harder for romance and connection and families

of any type. But it's just so interesting the ways that everyone are going about trying to approach this in such different ways and such scary ways. We're also scared of each other, but we should be scared of him because Jesus. We should be scared of him, but it's such a great point that many of the contributing factors that he identifies for the decline of men are in fact attributable to conservative Republican supported policies. So he noted delaying or abstaining from parenthood. Well, who the fuck opposes parental leave and family leave newsflash, right? It's not the Democrats or the zero tolerance policies found in many schools. Who is all about, right? Like calling the police and having these disciplinary policies that are overwhelmingly affecting children of color. Again, like it's not primarily Democrats and progressives.

And not just leave. Right. But funding for postpartum care and, you know, actual Medicaid expansion and other state programs that provide people who have just given birth and babies and kids access to basic fucking subsistence. All of the most conservative states in terms of their governance are the worst in terms of those policies. Like people plan their families and abstain or defer parenthood so they can afford it. Yeah. And also like thinking about Sonia Passy, who's like the founder of Free From, which is this organization that is like experts on intimate partner violence. Because so much of this really goes to intimate partner violence. And we don't even call it intimate partner violence, but the policies that Republicans refuse to like enforce when it comes to like

the ability to prosecute intimate partner violence, like protect people who are in abusive relationships. And then the way that like pregnancy can play into that it's so messed up and then we're like scapegoating trans people and all of these other people when really these policies are making it so much more dangerous for women genderqueer people anyone who doesn't make a lot of money it's just making it worse for everyone we loathe. So to this kind of vision for America that Holly entreats men to follow is to live according to these biblical archetypes. As I was noting, one is the father and one is the husband. And Holly just proclaims, and this is a quote, the mission of manhood is bound up with fathering. And at the same time, right, he says, you know, marriage is where, quote, a man learns to open his life to another and bind his fate to hers,

right, end quote. So defining marriage as between a man and a woman. And the idea, again, that all of these problems would be fixed if men just have children is wild because it seems to depict and just expect that women are going to be these vessels for men's redemption. They just need to bear children so men can be good it's it's almost like women should not wear sexy clothing so men won't rape them or sexually assault them same same energy yeah very similar you guys it's so hard like when i read the quotes like my i noticed my like toes curling and my like fingers curling and it's like, I'm like, ah, it's like, it's almost like, it's so hard. What was it like to read this book? Because I read this book and I was just like, Jesus, this is, I mean, just like, like the selective reading of the Bible,

the fact of these archetypes, um, the, I mean, this is a man with a family and we hear very little about his wife, who is a Supreme Court advocate trying to keep medication abortion access off the table for people around the country. And he has a daughter. We never even hear about the daughter. Like, women are completely erased from this book. I mean, it is about manhood. I guess that's par for the course. of this but they knew that if they could like speak about like link like their like religiousness to policy as much as possible that that would help them but behind closed doors like they don't

believe any of this but his book is so convincing that he drinks the kool-aid that i'm like maybe he really does actually believe i can't tell with him because he's really committed to the, and he's not Gilead curious. He's like full, hardcore, he puts the G in Gilead or whatever. It is hard to tell whether this is complete opportunism, like he's doing this instrumentally because he thinks it'll be politically palatable to a certain group of people that he imagines will continue bolstering him and pushing him forward and advancing him in the political spectrum. But I will say, to the extent he is drinking the Kool-Aid, other people are drinking the Kool-Aid too, because as Leah suggests, there is a lot of this sort of archetype

lace logic and language in many of the cases the Supreme Court is spitting out under this new conservative six to three supermajority. So the emphasis on husbands and fathers and a man's mission to be a father works right in line with Dobbs with, you know, and women must be mothers and 303 Creative, the case that basically said that gay civil rights have to yield to free speech, Masterpiece Cake Shop, Fulton versus City of Philadelphia, all of these cases where we're sort of talking about heterosexual marriage and the opportunity for those who are religious believers to abstain from a vision of marriage that might be more expansive than heterosexual marriage. So I mean, all of that is very much in keeping

with the court's jurisprudence. And I wanted to call attention to two other archetypes that Holly spends a lot of time on. One of them is the archetype of the quote-unquote priest. And Holly is very clearly nodding to evangelical Christianity. He's explaining in the book that men are not, quote, simply charged with building the world into a temple. They must also serve as priests, quote, bringing God to the world, end quote. And it's a lot easier, I think, to be a priest bringing God to the world if you get a government subsidy to do that. And perhaps that helps explain the court's jurisprudence in cases like Kennedy versus Premerton School District, where the court authorizes the praying coach, Coach Kennedy, to conduct his prayers in front of enormous audience on a publicly owned high school

football field. Or maybe it's more in keeping with Carson versus Macon, where the court allows a no aid policy to be invalidated so that religious schools can get public funding. And I mean, to JVN's point about, has he really sort of like bought this all? Has he drank the Kool-Aid or sort of what exactly is motivating him here? It is, I think that, you know, however terrible it is, and it's truly an atrocious book, I do think in some weird way it does – it is an authentic expression of his real convictions and not pure political posturing. And I say this – I could be wrong. Maybe it's both. feminists, LGBTQ people, secularists, like these are the villains. And actually return to kind of traditional sexual mores and religiosity is the prescription. He could have cast religiosity and

sort of like faithfulness in kind of broader, more ecumenical terms. It's so narrowly focused on a single Christian and evangelical Christian vision of what it means to be godly and to live in a family and a marriage. And it doesn't even pretend to be any more expansive in sort of who it is interested in reaching than that. And I think that maybe that is just the only valid, recognizable model of American patriotic manhood that Hawley is willing to concede. And even I think for a lot of conservatives, that is an unbelievably narrow conception of sort of like what it means to be a person, American and a man. But that's what what Hawley thinks is valid and legitimate.

He also seems to think that like Hollywood and just like the entertainment industry, but like the amount of like misogyny, transphobia, and just like kind of pro-man POV bias that is in Hollywood that people have to swim against every day. It's not like a little, it's huge. And you are very rewarded for, I mean, Joe Rogan has one of the most highly visible and profitable podcasts around. Chappelle is one of the most highly paid comedians on Netflix. People who have conservative values and who say things that are widely considered to be transphobic and who clearly make trans people's lives harder day in and day out are very financially rewarded. So this idea that things are just so left in Hollywood is also just not at all true. There is actually a very wide

range of political views in Hollywood. And so I think anytime people try to separate it so much into us versus them, in the way that he does it here when you just lack critical thinking and nuance like because porn's been around this is also what sabrina dr sabrina strings talks about in her book but like she really kind of lays it at the feet of like you know like at the start of it it was like playboy because like the idea of like romance the way that he's talking about this is like that you're really supposed to have your partner's like best interests at heart and stuff and like not be a misogynist like piece of shit um whereas like and it's like and that was the time when people were like oh

well you you only treat women like this is she's like chaste enough and like honorable enough and if she shows too much of this or that then like she's not she's not it and she's like kind of not worth it but that didn't become like widely culturally acceptable until like after world war ii was like in the 50s with like the rise of playboy and that's when she kind of thinks like culturally there was this like bigger shift but this didn't just now stop working like and there was this really funny thing i saw on um or someone sent to me like that had been a thing on x it was a picture of um what's that actor's name from sex in the city he was like trey you know like he had the erectile dysfunction kyle mccoughlin yeah yes and it was like the death of woke is like men aren't men anymore but then it was like this picture of him from like 1982 with his like shirt off with this

like skimpy little like kind of like early 80s outfit when he was like playing something in like the early 80s just to say that like men have been expressing like a lot of different like fashion and like ideas about breaking like gender norms that we would consider like conservatively like not the thing for a really long time like this didn't just start and like when target started like having a pride section you know yeah i don't know exactly when holly would say like we sort of took a wrong turn. Probably when Barack Obama was elected, if I had to sort of pinpoint it. Maybe also when women gained the right to vote. So it could be either very recent, like either.

Either 2008 or 1920. Unclear. But there's, you know, a flattening and a simplification. I think part of the simplification, too, is that which men are really behind here? I mean, like, he's not down and out and beleaguered. The guys he's palling around with aren't down and out and beleaguered. They wield enormous power. They've gone to college.

I mean, this is a guy who's, like, talking about the educational outcomes outcomes of men and he's got three degrees from three elite institutions. I mean, it boggles the mind. I mean, like you said, JVN, like the antithesis of what they're doing is nuance. And that's exactly right. This isn't nuance at all. Like part of what he's saying is true for a certain subset that he and his ilk will not minister to because they have such antipathy for redistribution, whether it's economic or educational. So this book is not about the true down and out and beleaguered men who are falling behind. It's about him and his cronies, and they're not falling behind. They're actually on top. That's what she said.

Leah, that's what Leah was saying. It's like the policies, right? Because like Republicans are the ones who have like shipped all the jobs like to like country, like, you know, off of the U.S. Like they're the ones who have like weakened like the middle class or at least like the way that I understand it. Like they don't pay people a living wage. They don't give family leave. They don't make it so that anyone can really achieve upward economic mobility easier. So like they're really their

policies. And also like look at health care, look at like gun control, like people who are like working class and like don't have as much money, like they're the ones who pay the price for these policies that Republicans keep enforcing. That is just so true. So maybe to pivot back to the sort of structure of the book a little bit. So as we were talking about, the book is divided into these kind of archetypes that Holly kind of explores. Leah already mentioned the father and the husband archetypes. And Melissa was talking about the priest archetype. So then there are two more. One is the builder and one, save the best for last, is the king.

So let's start with builder. You know, he suggests that, you know, there's this affliction of dependence that he's part of his diagnosis of the problem with contemporary American manhood. And he says the antidote to dependence is building. And just as we think there are important connections between some of the claims Hawley is making about the husband and the father and the priest and Supreme Court cases. I think that's also true about the builder and Supreme Court cases. So you have the Supreme Court in recent cases really trying, it seems, to sort of value and valorize the kind of rugged individual who wants to build and make something as against this leviathan of the federal government trying to take something from him because it's, of course, a him. So there's a case from two terms

ago called Sackett about an individual, a couple that basically like wants to dump a lot of gravel on their land and it's going to pollute some wetlands. And you know what? Wetlands are important to keeping water clean for all of us. And the Supreme Court basically says it's fine. Like we can't really, it would be intolerable to prevent them from doing that. And actually a case, just this term called DeVilliers versus Texas, which is just a case about whether a claim can proceed but is also about this sort of Texas rancher who's being disadvantaged by the state of Texas. And so it is just the court loves nothing more than kind of holding up this image of the rugged, manly individual against the federal government and obviously siding with the manly individual. Okay. But I think we should talk about King as well, because the last section of the book is about exhorting men to lead. I mean, he is saying this with a straight face. He says, quote, it is good for a man to exercise authority, good for him and good for those around him.

So I don't know if toes and fingers started curling,, he is like patriarchy. That's so chilling. That is a scary line of many, many scary lines in the scary book. And then, but despite the importance of men leading, the left today warns shrilly that male leadership can only ever amount to domination. That's like the whole, like, we're just saying like beating up your partners and like trying to force everyone to have the exact same religious ideals as you is not great that's not saying that masculinity is bad and your inability to make a distinction between those two things that scare me even though you have a big adam's apple, which is, you know, we like a big Adam's apple, but we don't love, you know, anything else really about you. So maybe it's like linking what you were saying

about the king archetype to one of the earlier archetypes we were talking about, which is father and husband. You know, again, the conceit of this book is that American men are downtrodden. But when you're thinking about, say, some of the court's recent cases, like the Emtala case, which did effectively create one class of people who are required to lose bodily organs in service of Idaho's preferred vision about how society should be structured, namely that women and pregnant people should be forced to bear children, again, even when they are at risk of serious health consequences and loss. And that is going to be so because of the Republican justices on the Supreme Court,

because that is their vision for the country and how they think it should be ordered. And it is just really striking. Again, you know, we were previously talking about whether this is like an authentic vision of Holly or some posturing, but I don't think, you know, like the Republican justices on the court are posturing. I think this is an authentic vision for them about how society and laws should work that again, like women and pregnant people can be pressed into service and made to do these things at immense personal familial sacrifice, you know, because that's just their worldview. I mean, the next part, when says that American men need to wake up because God made them kings, not subjects. Like, and you need to be a king of your domain the way that your, like, fathers and grandfathers were.

What? Like, Mr. Howard. This is... It's not great, you guys. I top of a profoundly and straight cisgendered men at the top of profoundly hierarchical system in which they are owning this mantle of king and everyone below them is a subordinate subject. Like, that's really explicit. We sort of think his vision is that he wants to be, I don't know, like a kinder, gentler

version of Andrew Tate and appeal to millions of American men. A less muscled version, too. Less cut. You know, I think, I'm sure Holly works out. I feel like we've observed this before. Not like that. No, no, no, no. But he also clearly neglects leg day. He does not work out. He's got like very skinny legs and enormous shoulders. And I think you need a better balance in your workout. What do you think, JVN? If you were his trainer, what would you advise him to do to balance his physique better? You guys, I'm not the person to ask about this. If you've ever come to my comedy show, I have a lot of deep-rooted shame about this. I am like,

I don't know if I can say it to you guys after the morning that we've already had. It's been a rough morning. It's like hard for me to stay on topic with this book because he's a nightmare to read. But now I'm reading like all my highlighted passages and I'm like, this is also like TBH, my first like book review podcast. And my ADHD is like, was really refusing to play ball until now. But now I'm like really dialed in. I'm back to the book. I am. And maybe we need to edit this out because I am ashamed to say it.

I'm physically attracted to him. I'll just fucking name it. Okay. I'm physically attracted to him, but I hate his policies. Okay. I hate his fucking policies. I hate his fucking policies. Okay.

I do. But I, we talked about it last time. I'm also physically attracted to Mitt Romney. There's this principle vibe. There's this shoulder pad thing. When you have like a big Adam's apple and shoulder pads, it just makes I don't know.

I don't like it. Obviously, I think that the world has recently seen that I'm a complex person and I'm very layered. But Howley's got that fucking Adam's apple, honey. I know. He's an insufferable erectionist. He's a white nationalist. He's a Christian nationalist. It's a problem. He's an insufferable erectionist. And he's a white nationalist. And he's a Christian nationalist.

Not Mitt Romney. It's a problem. I'm working on it in therapy, okay? No, I'm talking about Josh Hawley. Okay. I have this. You guys, I'm recovering from sexual compulsivity. I've talked about it in my book, okay?

I have this uncanny ability to divorce someone's personality from their physical body. I do. And even though I'm non-binary, you know, they're always talking about biology, which I also talk about in my show. Like, biologically, I'm hardwired, attracted to men with big Adam's apples, biologically, okay? And my body can separate their hideous policy from their being, and I'm ashamed of it, okay? But shame thrives in secrets, and so we just have to name it. That's what the truth is. But I fucking disagree with him, and I want him to lose his fucking place in office. But can I just say something really quick about, there was this quote in here that I

just, it really struck me about, oh, well, the thing about like the center of God's creation, that's all really scary. Let's get from, it's like Man for Others is the title of chapter five. And he's talking about how the biggest threat our society faces is that the male longing for adventure and heroism is dangerous. That a man's desire for accomplishment is oppressive. That masculinity is toxic inherently. So whatever identity men construct and life they make had better take all that into account and had better screen out the objectionable elements of masculinity, which are by liberals reckoning most of them. This mixed message puts young men,

especially in a bind, they are supposed to fashion an identity entirely of their own choosing in order to be authentic, but leave out the features that have defined for millennia. Good luck with that. No wonder young men feel bewildered. The classic identity of masculinity was never what it is now. It only became that recently. It was a whole invention in the last 40 to 60 years. And if you know anything about queer history, you would know that every culture has had all these different expressions of genders, even in the West. And he keeps talking about like the Bible has like guided us through like the Roman Empire and antiquity all the way through now. Honey, the Roman Empire and antiquity was not what it is now. Like it was a hot freaking mess where men had like all sorts of wives and they

were doing all sorts of things with all sorts of people. And it was like not cool for kids and certainly not like this idea of like a good space for everyone. So the way that he just has, like, a selective idea of it, like, it's clear that he's not a historian, nor is any of the justices. Well, clearly not Roberts, anyway, who, like, didn't know that, like, abortion is actually deeply rooted in this country's history. And, like, Benjamin Franklin had an abortion recipe

in his, like, little diary. But the other thing was, thing was this country and the Constitution was for land-owning white men. So that is a problem because everyone else has had to fight for the recognition here. And so that's really what we're saying is bad, not masculinity, just that the Constitution was founded on the idea that only white property-owning men could vote.

And we're saying that that ideal that it was built on and men could vote and we're saying that like that ideal that it was built on and the wealth that was amassed under that and chattel slavery and the removal of like native americans from their lands and the funds that were made off of that that refused to be redistributed that's the problem and then like men beating up people and like gun violence these are the problems not like traditional masculinity we love tom selling we love a big adams apple we love wide shoulders honey but we just don't love these fucking policies, you know? Like, so I just don't understand what the goddamn problem is. But what I think you were saying gets at something really profound and relates to something I think Melissa had alluded to as the clear subtext of the book, which is it is about the narrow group of elite white conservative men who have been accustomed to idea of sharing political power and authority, right? Allowing anyone else to be in a position of authority to actually be decision maker, to

be Supreme Court justice, to be congressional representative. And that is, again, like the group of people that Hawley seems to actually be concerned with, given that he's not engaging with any of the anti-redistributive policies that would actually benefit people in lower income brackets, and instead depicts that as some kind of evil dependence that his view for America would just remove. And so the vision that he's clinging to, like the reason why pointing out the fact that America has an exclusionary past is threatening to him is because like he wants the exclusionary past to be the exclusionary future. And that is, I think, part of what he is resisting.

He also quotes Andrew. I'm still back on the Mitt Romney thing. Oh, but wait, he keeps talking about Andrew Tate. Didn't Donald Trump have dinner with Andrew Tate? also quotes Andrew... I'm still back on the Mitt Romney thing. Oh. But wait, he keeps talking about Andrew Tate. Didn't Donald Trump have dinner with Andrew Tate? Let me Google that. Did Donald... Didn't he? He had dinner with that white supremacist guy. What's his name?

I don't know. Nick Fuentes or whatever? Yeah, I don't see anything... I don't think Tate can come to the U.S. Isn't he Roman Polanski? Yeah, I don't see anything. I don't think Tate can come to the U.S. He's like Roman Polanski. Under some criminal immediately. Yeah, I don't think. But I just like, you're right, but like in the day.

But I wonder, but like how is it the left's fault? Like I wonder how Holly makes Andrew Tate the enemy and the left the enemy. Because really like Andrew Tate is like... That is something from the right. The left didn't do that. I don't understand how... It's like everyone is the problem except for him.

Should we explain who Andrew Tate is and then maybe some connections between him and Holly? Maybe not everyone is deep in men's rights. Oh yeah, I just got scared to read the passage because it's so dark. Someone else wanted to take a stab at describing who is slash what is Andrew Tate? Andrew Tate is someone who I was never physically attracted to. I'll do it. Someone who I can say for the record I've never been physically attracted to.

I'm relieved of you. Yeah. I can use his words. So Josh Hawley says, The case of Andrew Tate, a social media provocateur and self-styled, quote, success coach for men comes to mind. Tate's idea of success apparently involves sleeping with as many women as possible, berating them, abusing them, and celebrating it all as manly and as, quote, freedom. As reported by the New York Post, a very refutable news publication, Tate, quote, advised his followers to, this is the part I didn't want to read, it's like, you know, just abuse people, women. And then he canceled that if a man in a relationship has sex with someone else, it's not cheating, it's exercise.

Meanwhile, if accused of cheating himself, it's... It's leg day! But then he's talking about just like literally pulling a machete out to someone's freaking, like to a woman's neck. Like this is like what he was just like talking about. And also, Holly talks about this. I mean, it should have, like, a trigger warning. If I posted something just talking about something, like, he just talks about it like it's Tuesday. You know, raping this and doing that with Andrew Tate.

Like, there's no, like, respect for, like, the violence that he's talking about so casually, like, all throughout this. It's so gross. Yeah. Yeah, and Tate, we should say— I'm losing my attraction to him by the second all throughout this. It's so gross. Yeah. Yeah. And Tate, we should say- I'm losing my attraction to him by the second, you guys. Glad we could help. Good. But yeah, but Tate, in addition to- Holly, not Tate. Yes. No, there was never a Tate attraction. No, we got that. And that is excellent. And I'm sure

that's not changing over the course of this conversation. Oh, yeah. But so then he got arrested because he had like Romanian Domino's pizza boxes in this video that he made. And then he got arrested by Interpol because of these, like, Romanian Domino boxes or something, and the internet turned his ass in. But he'd been, like, I think he was, like, he was, like, trafficking people and, like, literally, like, been accused of, like, all sorts of really, like, rapey. Yeah, he's under indictment for sexual assault, human trafficking. All sorts of bad. All of that. Yeah, he's under indictment for sexual assault, human trafficking. All sorts of bad. All of that. No, that's right.

And Hawley does kind of nominally distance himself from certain, again, of the most violent and violently misogynistic aspects of Tate's worldview and public persona. And we should say even before he was a social media personality, right? Like I think he was a kickboxer. But it's very clear that the distance that Hawley imagines or at least posits that separates him from Andrew Tate is nowhere near as vast as Hawley seems to want to convince his readers it is. Yeah. And maybe just to take two examples of that. So, you know, we mentioned that Holly is entreating men to be fathers and husbands, you know, Andrew Tate just like tweets out or puts out on X, you know, sex is for making children. Um, and so like their worldview, it is quite similar. There's more to it than that. Leah. Say the rest. Okay. So the other part of Andrew Tate's tweet is also anti-LGBTQ, which we also identify.

And anti-women. And anti-women. Also, in some ways, it's anti-men. It's anti-everybody. Okay. So the second part of Andrew Tate's tweet that says sex is for making children says, any man who has sex with women because it quote feels good is gay so again anti-women anti-pleasure anti-men anti-lgbtq he just packs it all in in one sentence

and that doesn't i don't even know that doesn't make sense i don't understand like a man who has sex with women because it feels good is gay? Isn't that like opposite? Fellas, is it gay to like sex? It isn't gay to have sex with women than it says about anything. That is a real self-own. It is a real self-own, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Mitt Romney would never. You can laugh at that, Kate. Oh, my God. Mitt Romney really would. And I do feel like he's a little bit more, you know, at least Mitt voted to remove Trump from office. That's what I always tell myself when my timbers get shivered when I see him stride onto my TV screen.

You're not the only one. There are a lot of people. So I know someone who is like a big muckety muck in the repro community. And she says she would climb Mitt Romney like a tree. Like you are not the first person to say that to me. That's why I was taken aback by it. Cause I thought it was a very singular appetite. Apparently that resonates.

No. Yeah. That resonates. I thought that we talked about this last time. See, I've talked about a very singular appetite. Apparently not. That resonates. No, yeah, that resonates. I thought that we talked about this last time. See, I've talked about this so many times, I can't remember who I've said this to. But yeah, for me, it all started in Salt Lake City. Yeah, I don't think we've had this particular conversation. No, we did talk about John Roberts, but not, I don't think, yeah.

You called Neil Gorsuch a silver fox, but... You did call Neil Gorsuch a silver fox. Yeah. Which did make us throw up in our mouths a little. Actually, I do take that back. I think I did that for a reaction, you guys. I do. I can legitimately say Mitt Romney, yes.

You don't believe it. No, not Neil. That seems so much more right. Yeah, not Neil. I mean, yeah, that face is like not it for me at all. I don't know what I was thinking, you guys. I think I was in Texas during that episode. You would not take a run at Neil Gorsuch.

No, I was going through it that day, I think. I take it off the record. But Mitt, I stand by that. And I refuse to budge on that one. can I connect something we were saying about Andrew Tate to Neil Gorsuch though even though you have you know disavowed your previous statements about him so as we were saying you know Josh Hawley kind of attempts to put some distance between Andrew Tate's more violent expressions of misogyny and Josh Hawley's other expressions of misogyny, even though their worldviews are in some respects quite similar. And I think this kind of relates

to our efforts to draw connections between this book and what the Supreme Court is doing. Because when you think about, again, I know I referenced the Ampala case before. It's just top of mind. When you think about what the court is doing, again, essentially requiring women to bear these life-altering consequences, health-altering consequences, that is a kind of violence. It is just done under the language of the law and with these kind of questions that the justices are bandying about, about how about a conditional spending program or how about preemption? But when the rubber hits the road, the, you know, again, operative arrangement that they have endorsed is that states can prohibit care that is necessary to save someone's major bodily functions and major bodily organs. And it's, again, you you want to talk about violence, that to me is an example of it. She's right, though. A hundred percent. I mean, the way that he keeps talking about- No Adam's apple, but I can make some points.

No, a hundred percent. And really good ones, by the way. The way that he talks so much about Epicureans, that he talks about it more and more. It's interesting because my friend Alok, who I'm just obsessed with, they have this theory where part of why the conservatives get so angry when they see non-binary queer people expressing themselves in public is because when you let yourself express yourself and you don't repress, there's this like anger and jealousy at the sight of this. And he's literally talking about that you need to like deny yourself what makes you happy, deny yourself who you are to conform to this idea. And the reason that our society is failing is because people aren't doing that. They're just expressing themselves too much. And that's a lot of where I think his anger comes

from in this niche of evangelical, where they're like, we're suppressing ourselves. We're doing what we were told to do by God and by this book or our interpretation of it, so other people should too. I think that's really interesting because he really is saying that with like not even saying it without saying it. He's like literally saying that. So one thing I wanted to get your take on JVN is recently Josh Hawley allowed his wife to argue before the Supreme Court. And I'm only being half. I don't know what the dynamics are. I mean, we got very little mention of her and very little mention of his daughter in the book.

It's almost as though women don't exist. But we know she exists because she appeared before the lectern at the Supreme Court on behalf of the Alliance Defending Freedom to argue against the availability of mefapristone, one of the drugs in the two-drug medication abortion protocol. Is it inconsistent with manhood to have your wife out in the world working and talking to five male members of the Supreme Court? Is that manhood? Is he enlightened? Like, what is this? I don't understand. Is this feminism? I don't know. What do you think, JVN? I mean, it's just giving if it weren't so scary, you would laugh. You know, it's just so, yeah. He clearly hasn't fully rejected nihilism, darling.

Or something. That's like, you know, chapter eight, rejecting nihilism. Well, I mean, but it is interesting because like I see this in J.D. Vance too. This is sort of a thing with people like J.D. Vance too. Like J.D. Vance is always sort of espousing

these kind of like manhood adjacent themes about traditional families and, you know, like how important traditional family is and he's definitely against paid family leave

and all of that. Yet, he has a wife who he met at Yale Law School who's incredibly accomplished, who clerked for the Supreme Court and is a working lawyer. So I mean, some of this sort of feels a little bit like traditional family, traditional values, breadwinner husband, dependent wife for you, but not not for me i get to have like sort of you know a different kind of actually no it's actually really interesting because it's very gilead and like that main care it's like it's okay because she's working to further the values of like christian nationalism so it's like your wife can work as long as she's working to enforce

these structures and these ideas and i think that men in power have often seen the way that like their partners can help to further their influence and spread their influence which i mean you even saw that with like we love um oh my god my gay brain we love um who are the ladies who learned or who like fought for the right to vote in the 20s the The suffragettes. The suffragists. The suffragists. Yes, the suffragists. I kept wanting to be like segregationist and I was like, that's not it. But in some ways they were because they did not fucking include Black women. That's not it.

But they also did not include women of color. That's true. You're right. But that's another way that you saw the way that power works and the way that it has to work in its kind of own time. And I think that both the left and the right has this show itself. The gendered aspect of white patriarchy. I don't know that J.D. Vance's wife is involved in conservative causes.

She sort of stays out of the frame. But I think it's a real good point that often the gender politics, the racial politics. Yeah, it's yeah, it is all wrapped up. And there is all up in there and like, you know, her relationship to power. Also too, just like the book review of it all, the titles of, or the chapter titles are really like intense. Like, and isn't the last one, like who's going to run the country? Like, that's really what he's scared of.

Other people have too much power and too much voice. That's really what he's scared of. And this is like a call to action because he's like... No, that's a great point. He's such a rude ass. I can't believe I ever said he had a good Adam's apple. I think that's right.

It is this kind of profound threat that sort of the advances made by women and people of color and LGBTQ folks represent to Hawley and to Zill. Because Melissa was saying earlier, like, that's the kind of fundamental anxiety at the heart of the book that motivates it. And I also think that, you know, Hawley and we were talking about his wife, Erin, you know, I think he is holding himself out as the he wants to be the standard bearer of the Republican Party in the next generation we right now have this gerontocracy and there is going to be a gap at some point in which there will need to be a new leadership class

I'm sure he wants to run for president and he either way wants to be an important defining figure in the political life of the country and his views are terrifying and so that's why we thought it was worth the maybe masochistic undertaking of reading this book and reading it carefully and trying to sort of country. And his views are terrifying. And so that's why we thought it was worth like, you know, that maybe masochistic undertaking of reading this book and reading it carefully and trying

to sort of pull the threads on the actual claims and worldview at the heart of it. Because this is someone who is not only in dialogue with the laws it's developing on the Supreme Court today, but I think is poised to be a major national political figure. And this is the world that he envisions and would like to bring about. And it's really important to be clear eyed in our view of that. One more little tiny thing. I feel I hope I didn't talk too much and ruin this episode. I'm so glad that you guys had me back and I love you guys so much. But I lived in Kansas City when Josh Hawley got elected in 2018 because I was shooting Queer Eye at the time. And my dad and stepmom currently live in Missouri. And I talk and fight with my dad a lot about politics. But the point of what I was going to

say is, is that the brand of the culture that Josh Hawley is selling is deeply palatable for a huge swath of our country. And, you know, I've been really curious on my pod about spirituality and the way that like spirituality and more importantly, religion interfaces with our politics and like, and like, motivates people to do things. And this is a really important time. So what you guys have done here is really important. And it's really important that we understand no matter how masochistic and scary it is, what is going on on the other side, because they are not only deeply in conversation with like the future of the country, but they are really influencing what's happening and people are really buying what they're selling. So thanks for continuing to do all your guys's great work. Well, likewise,

thanks so much for joining us today. I don't know if I'm ever going to look at Mitt Romney the same way again. I don't think I can. But JVN, thank you for reading this book. We know it was a big lift. It was a big ask. We read it too. We read it too, and that's all I'm going to say. And we really appreciate all of your insights.

Again, the book is out. You don't have to buy it. We read it for you. Just listen to this or read our forthcoming review of the book in the Michigan Law Review. The review is called Of Might and Men by me, Kate Shaw, and Leah Lippman with our research assistant, Jonathan Van Ness. We should give you a little credit. You guys did so good. We're going to drop you in the dagger now.

Well, until next time, Jonathan, I'm sure we are going to come calling on you again to join us once more since these clowns give us a never-ending stream of material to be working with. It's always so great to have you. Thank you so much for joining us, Jonathan. Thanks for having me, you guys.

I just realized after you said that, Melissa, this is his idea of profiles encourage. Like this is his like love letter to America. I'm, oh my God. Oh, profiles encourage the JFK book that he wrote before becoming president that his dad got published. Well, that's a terrifying thought. Scary, you guys. We need...

Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Wow, that is a deep cut, JVN. I had to save it for the end, you know. I pulled a Vanessa Williams. Save the best for last. So good. Wait, you know what?

Also, we just need to talk about really quick, PSS, just really quick, and then I'm going to literally be late for filming. Before we started this, and I don't know if I hit the recording i'm in vegas shooting queer eye now and i'm in a a little closet in our airbnb that's covered in blankets so that's what's giving uh this you know view um and i was like oh my gosh i look really shiny i need to like just powder the face really quick and then kate was saying can we say it kate sure tell your can we tell

the full our full healing story yeah the people? Because it's also the antidote to this fucking book. It is. Yeah. Your husband was filming where you were filming yesterday and he left his powder. And so you're like, oh my God, I need my powder. And I just think that is so great because I've literally done twice on like, spoiler alert, these men love a little concealer and a little powder. They want to feel good too. So I'm teaching a lot of guys like how to do that this season. Cause I'm like, they don't even know how to color match. They don't know like the right order to do anything. So I'm just like teaching them really quick so they can have like, you know, more confident under circles.

Yeah. So they, you need to actually teach them how to do it. And we all need to spread the word that it is completely fine to powder your nose and conceal those dark circles under your eyes. In fact, we'd like it. And we should all embrace that. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah. You guys should feel the pressure to do it too.

This is a good positive note to end on. And also you just feel so much cuter. Normalize and even skin tone. Normalize and even skin tone. Thanks for having me, you guys. Thank you so much for joining us. So the Supreme Court seems to think having Trump as a monarch sounds great and to that we say no fucking way or as justice sotomayor put it with fear for our democracy i dissent so show that

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