The Hoely Hour - E173 Split The Bill Or Split Up?

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Sprinkle Sprinkle! Ladies, if you don't want to split the bill on your first date, just stare at him when the bill comes! Liz and Amelia get back to their roots and discuss a plethora of dating scenarios, and a listener writes in to share an important story about how the Dalkon Shield IUD permanently impacted her family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. see terms is there a difference between the mob and the mafia i think that they are i'm about to talk way out of my ass but i how i've always thought about it is like um like nationality

like the mafia feels like the mob feels italian yeah is one one's like italian maybe one's irish hold on i feel like there's a chinese mafia three six mafia welcome to the holy hour a podcast about sex relationships mental health and everything in between i'm amelia samson and i'm liz ball follow us on instagram and tiktok at the holy hour i'm on instagram and tiktok at amelia samson and i'm on instagram and tiktok at liz ball so hard you can also watch us on youtube or listen ad free on patreon at patreon.com slash the holy hour Check out our merch at theholyhour.com and email us your spicy stories at holyhourpodcast at gmail.com. You're so far away.

I know, but you know what? Touch feet. Giving the people what they want. We're touching feet right now. Yeah, this is exclusive content. Subscribe to us on Patreon if you want to see us touching feet. Maybe I'll just put this clip on Patreon. Yeah, just this.

Yeah. This is for the patrons only. we're just i feel very um like you and i are both hand holders this feels worse yeah but similar yes like i feel connected to you in this moment through our souls it takes a lot of trust to uh touch feet do you get souls of our feet soul mates um if i weren't wearing socks i wouldn't do this just so you know why would you that hurts my feelings i'm just kidding it's not you it's nothing personal feet freak me the fuck out i just same with frank he hates feet it's so funny i don't know there's something about him where i'm like okay that's too much yeah mr liz sometimes

his feet are nasty yeah ski feet yeah and they get too close to me in the summer like get that shit away from me at athletes feet like any sort of athlete skiing even like weightlifters that's why it's called athlete's foot oh man um uh your gift that frank got you and mr liz got delivered the other day i can't tell you anything about it it's really small but he's really excited i want know well maybe one day like a yeti um the fabled mr liz yeah i'm not making him up he just walked by yeah he does go to a different school but he exists okay in in my house yeah right you just keep them locked up here um i you know both of my both my topics go hand in hand today so do you want me to do you want me to jump off or do you want to jump off

um how long are yours short mine are also short uh-oh they're not they're not too short i think we could have some some fun discourse love that with at least one of them okay you know what same with mine should we should we thumb more what's rock paper scissors for who starts okay we're gonna rock paper scissors yeah okay best one out of one well you can go first no this is so much more fun i love a little competition that's true okay well it also depends on what you want to do like if you want to be first or if you want to be second what do you mean oh so whoever wins goes first i don't really care sure okay yeah rock paper scissors i guess i'm going first okay i didn't want to go for no i'm just kidding um okay so here are my topics one of them is breaking

boobs we haven't had a talking tits in a long time i was gonna say talking tits did you hear when joe biden was asked what his secret to a long healthy marriage is what he said no oh my god i'm scared he said the secret to a long healthy marriage is great sex don't even of course i it was i wish everyone could hear my eyes rolling she just rolled they rolled all the way into the back of her head i both love and hate this let me tell you why i love it because they never let this man talk and then the second that they do he just comes out with an absolute fucking heater crazy yeah like hell yeah this is what we've been missing out on not letting this man just speak freely honestly i think that uh maybe more republicans would be on board if they

had let joe biden talk i know i agree except you know like obviously like but they're also like the same republican twitter is like mad about this lauren bober got fucking groped in the middle of a musical donald trump talked about grabbing someone by the pussy yeah but people are like why why are you mad about this married man having great sex with his wife yeah allegedly right i mean it's all dr jill biden yeah fuck yeah she ben shapiro doesn't know that women are supposed to get wet when they have sex i like how they act like so appalled when something mild like that happens yep but we'll just like stand behind the crazy stuff that republican like politicians will say yeah or like mac gates like being like a whole predator

yeah literally yeah so anyway i'm happy for joe biden i'm so happy he's having good sex that old old rickety man is still clapping cheeks i'm just honestly i imagine both biden and trump are just like completely not fully there like yeah i mean yeah they are so old uh-huh they're both so old did you see um john stewart's back on the daily show did you see him talk about the age of the two of them it's a really good bit i need to see it i've seen some of his other more recent bits it's so it's it was people were mad at john stewart for calling out the age of joe biden but it's like it's true they're all they're all too fucking old mitch mcconnell i'm sorry yeah dropped out today i saw thank god we still have to wait till november yeah i know get this

fucker out of here he looks like a turtle yeah i feel like he's just like a corpse being powered by like a little alien man behind his eyes but my second topic it's not a breaking boobs but my friend was staying my best friend was staying with me this weekend she is a psychologist and she was saying that you know how we've talked in the past about how healthy it is to plan sex now psychologists are saying the reason for that and maybe they've been saying this all along but now they're like teaching it too they're saying that it's because when you're dating someone you have like all day to like prep for like oh i'm going on a date tonight like i might have sex you can like mentally get into it that's a good point you lose that when you're living with

someone yeah you know it's like should we fuck which is fun sometimes like do you have uh yeah do you have time tonight right do you have three men for me to just pump one out but when you are like hey should we like have sex on thursday it's like okay i can wear a wig it's like we can pretend we don't know each other yeah i can see you from across the bar with my wife we could like your vibe who's playing the wife yeah yeah um but i thought that that was so it makes so much sense yeah like because we've talked so much about like emotional foreplay and like that kind of goes along with that of like yeah it's the excitement yeah you know of the potential yeah and it makes so much sense why that would mean that would be why planning sex is like such a positive thing

for couples I just hadn't thought of it in that way like the planning aspect of it yeah like not the planning aspect of it like the prep aspect of it you know yeah that was interesting I like that yeah it's a it's a good way to think of it um no but I wanted to get your opinion on this so a friend of a friend has been like seeing someone recently um the friend of a friend is a man a straight man so he just started like going on a few dates with someone and she hasn't um like split the bill or like taken turns paying and i feel like it's like a like how do you navigate that so he's like kind of annoyed that she hasn't like split the bill so he's been paying for every date yeah so i first i just want to know what you do like when you're first dating somebody

like how do you when the bill comes what do you do i always take my card out i always offer to split especially the first few dates i've said this in the past but i don't want to feel like i owe someone something like if they pay then i have to like go out with them again that is exactly what I said to Mr. Liz I was like I because Mr. Liz is the one who asked me like how long would you wait when dating somebody before you like would split the bill or like offer to pay and I was like I like date one like I'm splitting the bill because I don't want to feel like I owe you anything if I don't like you yeah and I know that's not necessarily how it works but like for real I don't want to have any sort of like collateral yeah exactly yeah I just I just want

to pay for my shit and you pay for your shit and if we like each other we could see each other again and then eventually we can figure out who's paying for what totally you know yeah and I mean like there's there's been historically so many instances of men getting like like expecting sex when they pay for dinner and so it's just like the safe bet to just not like but and then I was like okay as a man with these like there are still these stereotypical gendered roles of like okay you're going on a date and the man should pay which sure fine whatever um if that's what you want that's great but also make that clear yeah but like how do you as a man like approach that conversation then yeah um because i was like is he like pulling out his card and is like oh no

well I'll take care of it or like I'll take care of this because I feel like every time I've had this sort of interaction on a date where we're paying for stuff like it's pretty natural it's like yeah it's like oh yeah let's just split it or um or like no don't worry I got this one yeah or you can get the next one or something yeah saying something like that I think would be the way to do it or like you know like now I'm like he's in too deep yeah I mean it's been it's been a sec now but yeah i feel like i also want to know what this woman does does she just sit there and stare at him when the bill comes i do honestly power move totally this girl's got balls there have been one of my friends who lives on the east coast was going on like a bunch of dates and he

really liked this girl but she was like just expecting him to pay for everything and it was just like such a turnoff for him at the end of the day like he's like I really like her but like I am I'm spending a lot of money on and it's like it really it turns into like this like unfair responsibility for someone when we're all just out here like trying to survive yeah um well and then it's like okay you need to let this you both need to build your wealth yeah because if this works out you want to be in a good financial place yes yeah absolutely no like totally down the line but also i feel like there's a way to be like so when the bill comes like how do you want to do this do we want to just like split it down the middle you know say it like

that or like oh let me just cover this and then like i get this one and you get the next one that's a good way to say it or like um do you want to just like i'll just put my card down you can bedmo me that's my favorite line because now i'm like how is he gonna get out of this very non-committal yeah and i don't listen if you want like traditional relationship like and traditional gender roles in your relationship that is totally fine yeah i i don't care what other people do in their relationship but i do think that you should make it clear what your expectations are absolutely front because if you're not on the same page if you want like a traditional gender role boyfriend who pays for everything i think you know you should tell him that totally absolutely you know

yeah absolutely but then also i feel like there are some women that just have been raised to just think that men pay for everything and not i don't say that like in a derogatory way but like it's just like they were brought up to believe that that's how it works does that or something yeah you know yeah i totally get that and then in that sense it's like how like you're saying like how does he approach that especially now that he's been paying for dates like bringing it up now would kind of feel like is she going to always expect this like you need to nip it in the bud as soon as possible yeah totally and if you bring it up now like so do you want to do this one because like i've done the last few it's like oh are we keeping fucking score like we don't know

we don't know this girl so it's like how is she going to react to that i know i want to ask her yeah i have no idea who she is or whatever i just am so curious like is she is she doing it on purpose yeah that's what i want to know if she's like intentionally like the bill comes and she just sits there and looks at him politely yeah i know that that's interesting i want it because it really is even if it's how she was raised that really does feel like a power move like oh absolutely you know what if you're one of those girls who wants to do that do it and then like tell us about it because i am just curious i would never do that but i honestly maybe i would do that if the date sucked yeah i'm not paying for this true and then i'm gonna change my number but now

they've been on a few so it's clearly the dates are good yeah unless she's just like trying to no i think the dates are are good i think they've been going well so yeah and then that's even more incentive to figure this out yeah of like i really like you and also i think that this should be a little bit more of a fair situation yeah yeah yeah it's it just it it brings up so many different like points of contention in traditional gender roles and like the patriarchy yeah because i do think that there is a little bit of an issue with there's not a lot of space for um modern men in patriarchy like old traditional patriarchy because like i i feel like men are in this middle ground where they're like i don't want this to be complicated like yeah but they're you know

they're not they're not women and they weren't raised with all of these societal expectations just I don't like dumped on them from the day they're born you know not in the same way that women are yeah but like I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in the best way I guess like I just think that most modern men are normal however they were probably oftentimes raised in a household where their mom is the first one to work and maybe their grandma didn't yeah so their mom is a working woman who is also doing all of the housework yeah because they're trying to break out of this like traditional yeah gendered expectation but the housework still falls onto her so now we have a bunch of men our age who have grown up seeing their mom do everything

yeah so then they're like well my mom did it why can't you do everything so there's just kind of like a weird split in expectations of like well how do we find a clear path forward in modern dating when we're all trying to navigate gendered stereotypes it's such a good point i hadn't thought about it that way how like were like the generation before us was trying to make it all happen that's such a good point yeah they were the the women who wanted it all yeah a family they had a family they had jobs they had um a household to take care of and like cook for and clean whatever they're doing everything see that's so interesting because i feel like a lot of like the the misogynistic bullshit that i see online of men talking about like this kind of expectation

yeah they want a traditional woman who pays for things yeah yeah and but then is like hot yep and will take care like cook and clean and all that it's like a it's a woman who like doesn't make more money than him but still splits the bill on everything like i don't want a woman that like i want a woman that just like stays at home and does the housework but also doesn't expect me to pay for everything it's like how does the how explain that say that slower well and like if if that's what you want if you want a traditional relationship then you need to be a traditional man you need to be able to afford to support this woman's entire life yeah like her lifestyle go back to the factory now go back to the factory go back to the coal mines if you want to be a

traditional man i just yeah it's it's an interesting um dynamic to observe and then like on the opposite end you you see like kind of the the same extreme beliefs in women but then they're like trying to code it as feminism of like well men should pay for everything and also like give me entire equality and control yeah you know yeah and that's when i say fem cell that's what i'm totally referencing but an actual fem cell is an incel just a woman like they're like the kind of girl who's like well boys hate me because i'm ugly yeah and every hot girl is bad and mean because i have a chip on my shoulder about it yeah like men don't want a real woman these days that's a femme so yeah yeah well and then i just like i can't remember what subreddit

i was on where i was just reading like these women not having realistic expectations for how a man is like you're we're losing the plot yeah we're losing the plot when we're just like the a man should be and do all of these things but he had like a whole life before you yeah you know totally it's like okay you both have your own shit you need to work through you're not some perfect person who prince charming's gonna walk in and like sweep you off your feet and do every single thing that you want him to do yeah you know yes totally I feel like as a society I mean this is just like a more like broad idea rather than like this specifically but I do feel like the wheels are kind of starting to fall off on everything

like absolutely it's like we were like speed training like toward something good and then it just like got a little bit out of control and got rickety the other thing that is i don't know if it's like a complaint necessarily but did you ever listen to anna ferris's podcast unqualified no so it has changed a lot um when i first started listening to it in 2016 it was so different it was very like comedy focused and now it's very like self-improvement focused wow um but her producer his name is sim sarna um i just remember his name but uh sometimes like so she'd have a guest on like a celebrity guest and then um they do like improv and play games and whatever and sim would screen people to give advice to like relationship and dating advice and that's why it's called

unqualified because she's unqualified to give this advice that's funny and um before like so anna doesn't know what the situation she's going to be giving advice on is and um sim would like set up the call and then he'd be like you're gonna be talking to this person and they're having like this problem with in the relationship and then Anna would be like how old how old is she and then Sim would always say like something between like 22 and like 26 and I remember hearing like Anna being like I told you to not fucking pick these like young people and then he's like no it'll be fine and I was like 26 at the time so I'm like no like they're serious like they need your help or your advice and um now that I'm 32 I'm like no yeah I totally understand where she's

coming from because I would be like babe you're 24 yeah break up with this guy yeah like shit's already not going well and you're 24 and it's been like three months now that was my foot I didn't fart um I thought it was your stomach um yeah if somebody would have just like smacked me upside the head when i was 24 i would have like really saved myself a world of hurt in a relationship i saw a tiktok of this woman saying she's like i don't think your soulmate is gonna be the guy that all your friends and family hate real and it's so fucking true like if you think like about like the idea of a soulmate is it gonna be someone that all your friends and family are like this guy please we are just like holding our breath waiting for you guys to break up yeah you

know i wish i had i wish someone had just sat me down and said that to me because it doesn't need to be some complicated thing no but also you have to be so willing to hear it at that age too like i dated some really questionable creatures you know and i was like so sure about like 75 of them and looking back on it i'm like i was a digmatized a lot of the time but b like i wasn't in a place where somebody could sit me down and just be like hey don't fuck don't fuck around with this person this is not worth your time if somebody would have said that to me i'd be like no it's fine you don't know them like i know them well if they but if they sat you down and said like i don't think your soulmate is gonna be the guy that all your friends and family hate i thought that my

soulmate was someone that all my friends and family hated for like a long time in like right after college if they said it that directly would you be like would you still be in denial i think so i think that i wasn't ready to hear it at that age is the issue fair enough but now looking back i look at myself then and i'm like hello no like i think if honestly at any given point in time if someone had been like all your friends and family hate this guy yeah do you really think your soulmate is someone that your friends and family hate i would be like no you're right yeah it's just i've had so many friends that have like i haven't liked their boyfriend but they've loved them so much that i'm just like you know i'm just gonna keep it to myself because they can't hear

this right now and then when they get out of the relationship they're like oh nobody liked him why didn't anyone tell me and it's like that wouldn't have changed anything that's why nobody told you because then it just causes a rift yeah and you want to be able to like be supportive of your friend without making them feel alienated i do think every woman on the face of the planet has had a friend where you're like i fucking hate their boyfriend yeah yep kick him to the curb a couple of weeks ago but like my friends just all went through this renaissance like this month of just like breakup breaking up with just the worst dudes like so many of them we love to see it it was the best like yes this is all i've wanted but it was like they wouldn't have been

able to receive that kind of information at the time but it's so obvious from the outside and i look back on some of the people that i dated i'm just like what the fuck what was what what was i was i in heat for like years like what was wrong with me when people i i don't know if this happened to you but when you and your ex broke up was everyone like yeah we didn't like him um or no because they didn't let so what had happened was they liked him and then he cheated on me and then we got back together and he like went through the whole like everyone hated him when we got back together obviously he went on this whole apology tour of like making it right with everyone and then they all loved him and then we broke up again and then everyone was like god fucking

damn it he he bamboozled us did this shit again yeah because i mean he's not a bad guy i mean he did really bad things but he did kind of like make himself a better person at the end of the day like he did the work it's it's definitely easy to want to like vilify your ex but i think as you heal and get older in general you're like yeah we were both fucking idiots because we were young but and they you know they did do these things that go against my values and really hurt me but hurt people hurt people totally and the opposite of hurt people hurt people is um uh healed people heal people i've never heard that i heard it on tiktok and they might have said something else but it's true healed people help heal other people it's true it's like my

little my little support group a garden of flowers picking themselves yeah join us on discord i'm trying to move off of facebook everyone should everyone try and move off of facebook i am amazed at how many people are still posting on facebook oh yeah i'll log on just like i just find something i i'll log on because i'll log on when i'm bored yeah just to see what weird shit the weirdest person i haven't talked to since high school is posting yeah absolutely yep yep or just someone you met once in college and you're like who the fuck is this yeah there are so many people i have on facebook that i'm like how do i know this we have like a mutual friend that doesn't make any sense yeah yes it's so bizarre you're like oh was i just adding everyone did did we go to college

together yeah or if it's like a a woman who got married and you don't recognize their last name you're like oh yeah who is this you go through their relatives to see if one of the relatives last name stands out oh facebook oh zuckerberg zuck um what was your second topic that was it oh was the on affairs thing oh wow we really like ran a gamut there i love that yeah um let me see if i have any other quick little notes i have um a debate but i want to ask you about it's like pretty old it's like 10 years old but i was just talking to frank about it um stephen a smith the uh sports guy the like face of espn basically he said he got in some hot water when um that football player i think ray rice knocked his girlfriend out in an elevator do

you remember that no it was it was bad it's i mean it was like it was on video he just like decked her and she and then he dragged her out of the elevator what the fuck and steven a smith it was really fucked up and how the nfl responded to it was really inappropriate and but that's neither here nor there just that's that's a deep well but um steven a smith was saying on his show that and he got a lot of trouble for it that women who date nfl players or athletes who are very clearly like violent guys he said don't make them mad and on paper like up front when frank told me that he said that i was like what the fuck fuck that you know but then and he was like i completely agree but then he was trying to he was like saying later on he's like steven a

smith was saying i have said a lot of really stupid fucked up shit in the past that i don't stand behind i stand behind this because i'm not saying that it's your fault but i'm saying if you're if you're dating somebody who is very obviously violent who like very obviously has like a swiss cheese brain you know from like all of like the head trauma and you're going into this knowing that you're dating a violent guy and you're making that decision the very least you can do to keep yourself safe is just to not piss them off like if you're making that choice for yourself it's like you're choosing to go into a tiger pit yeah exactly and even if they're like somewhat domesticated like there's still a violent animal at the end of the day that can

kill you right and you're making that choice but it's never your fault so it's it's a murky area yeah and i wanted to hear your opinion on it i mean i i agree with what you're saying like it is a murky area like if this person is known to be violent yeah and has been violent to other people especially other women um and i do understand that there's there's going to be times where you don't know this going into a relationship that they're going to be a violent person 100 um and i wouldn't say like sure on paper on paper you can say don't make them mad yeah um because i don't think that's a fair statement though because you don't know what is going to piss off someone who is emotionally volatile and unpredictable totally um and someone who is

physically abusive is probably also emotionally abusive and an emotionally abusive person is going to make it impossible for you to know what is going to upset them yeah they're always going to be upset they will find something to be upset about so they have a reason to lash out at you it's like a hairline trigger yeah i do think too like this that statement that he made doesn't fit everyone that's abusive it definitely does not if you're dating like a publicly well-known athlete who is also known to be violent that that information is everywhere it's kind of like chris brown it's like if you are going to choose to date chris brown just know all of the other shit he's done to women yeah it's atrocious totally and if you're choosing to be in that

like do what you can to not get hit which is like really fucked up because there's never any other instance that you put the put that onus on women and the thing that you can do to not get hit is not date this person exactly so i think that's ultimately what it comes down to is like you need to value yourself enough to know that like you deserve so much more yeah than tolerating someone or trying to convince yourself that like you're going to change them yeah and i do think that the appeal of like i can change them i think that that comes from like obviously unhealed childhood trauma of like one of your parents behaved like this and was emotionally unavailable or abusive and you are recreating it in your romantic life so you can try and heal that part

of you like if I can if I can fix this person it'll fix the wounded part of me yeah and it's also I'm sure the other side of that too for people who don't fit that kind of background is like if you think somebody is attractive and they have a lot of money and then they have this very bad quality it's like well i can change the bad quality it's like no you can't that has never worked for anyone i mean like being physically attractive obviously i think while shallow that's the world we live in you know yeah attract people are going to be attracted to attractive people yeah um and then with money like while i also don't tunnel i don't agree with that like dating someone just for their money you guys got to be on the same page about that you got to be

an agreement like oh yeah yeah you are also dating me for my money because it is a resource and a source of protection totally and i mean it back to the tradition theme like women didn't even have they weren't legally allowed to have their own bank account until like the early 70s which is insane and i think their husband still had to sign for them yes yeah yeah they had to sign to say well in the 60s is when that law initially passed that women could have their own bank account but their husband had to sign that they could they were allowed to have their own bank account and even then most banks would still refuse to provide that for women so in the scheme of history like we don't have a lot of financial and experience with financial independence yeah so

like having a reliable source of income does offer a form of safety and protection yeah um but anyways if we had our own money they figure we wouldn't need them and that's scary yeah we don't we don't they're in the find out phase we want you and some of you are unwantable and that is a personal problem focus on being more wantable and maybe somebody will want you and but that doesn't go for everyone that just goes for you fucking dickheads nobody nobody listens to this as a dickhead but maybe it'll reach someone yeah show this show this clip to someone who needs to hear it look me in the eyes someone you want to start a fight with be more wantable yeah uh but i just i feel like i also need to add a contingency to this

conversation of like abuse is not gonna be something obvious and upfront especially like physical abuse by the time a lot of women are in that position they're already like they're not just like staying there and tolerating physical abuse they're they've been manipulated and gaslit and they are doubting their own reality um they could also be like you know financially held hostage in this relationship there's a lot of different dynamics so i just don't want to seem like dismissive of like this is really straightforward no 100 no this is 100 like the discussion that we're having is 100 around like people that are very well known to be like really toxic abusive people if you're going to throw yourself into that lion pit

like then you have to protect yourself you just have to that's also why i think you know it should be a regular thing to do background checks on um someone you don't know that you're maybe like going on a date with or starting to date yeah a lot of information's public yeah or just like make it legal to like tar and feather abusers yeah like fill their shoes with concrete and sink them to the bottom of the hudson you know that's what the mafia should do i mean i'd pay for that you know i'm not saying for legal reasons give our taxes to the mafia we basically are at the end of the day um i feel like the mafia has better values than the american government i just watched the most interesting fucking documentary about the mob

called get gaudy is there a difference between the mob and the mafia i think that they are i'm about to talk way out of my ass but i how i've always thought about it is like um like nationality like the mafia feels like the mob feels italian yeah is one one's like italian maybe one's irish hold on i feel like there's a chinese mafia three six mafia is there a difference between the mob and the mafia i'm so hyped all this mob and mafia talk is getting the cats riled up the terms the mafia and the mob are not synonymous but they are often used interchangeably the mafia can refer to the sicilian mafia or italian organized crime in general the mob can

refer to other organized crime groups such as the irish mob um or organized crime in general so the italians are mafia heard so i think that then get gaudy john gaudy was must have been the mafia but it is so fucking interesting and it's about trying to take down the leader of the mafia in new york when the mafia runs everything in new york basically um and like how it's just it's a very interesting this is a little bit off track now so i won't get too into it but i highly recommend it's so interesting from like a police politics standpoint it's amazing anyway i mean now that i'm thinking about it too like we could easily start our own mob of organized crime and our organized crime will be breaking um laws that

infringe on our rights as humans and americans oh my god yes whatever whatever is that that's called getting abortions where you're not allowed to that's our mob that's abortion mob yeah this one last note that's a random thing that i remembered so a long time ago uh i think when i was in college the onion had a headline about like an abortion mega complex like oh my god it's like a mall for abortions and there were a lot of people who didn't realize that it was an onion headline and that it was satire and they're like sharing it on social media like this is ridiculous this is appalling that is this is so stupid it's hilarious that's ridiculous uh so we got a really nice um well we've gotten several emails from you guys it was

a it was a popping week in our inbox please keep it coming we love hearing from y'all yes yes and honestly it does give us some really helpful content for you guys because the podcast is for you yeah as much as it is also for us to hear the sound of our own voices yeah um i'll say it and just hang out just hanging out and listening listening to ourselves excuse to see liz for an hour and a half every week yeah yeah exactly it's also for y'all yeah um so when you guys do write in we we seriously love it but uh we got this very interesting email from someone as a follow-up to my um iud investigation in history so uh the headline says the dalkin shield killed my aunt and that's what this email is going to be about hi liz and amelia i have listened to the

podcast for a long time and i was so glad to hear your recent episode on iuds and your focus on the dalkin shield i'm an american writer living abroad in austria and i work part-time as a professional storyteller last october i told my aunt diana's story in a pub in public for the first time and i want to share it with you now i don't usually give trigger warnings but for this story i will it is brutal and deals with pregnancy loss and horrific mistreatment of women diana died before she could become my aunt and the circumstances surrounding her death became a family secret it was one of those we'll tell you when you're older things but i'm old enough to know it's high time that someone speaks out about it she was only 24 when

she died on july 5th 1972 i was born 17 years later on july 4th at the time she was working at harvard university's fog fog museum as an assistant to the director it was her dream job they loved her i remember visiting cambridge as a teen and my mother drove us out of the way on the route home pulled the car over and rolled down the passenger window when i asked why we were there she stared she stared past me at the apartment building behind us and said that's where diana died my mother is gone now too my grandfather died a few years later i recently inherited his desk and went back to boston to sort through it inside were hundreds of musty letters from his two daughters reading diana's words was the closest i've come to a conversation with her

she was smart and gorgeous legendary she went to all the best schools and her strawberry blonde hair fell in perfect waves without styling before she even graduated high school the boys at yale declared her the conquest of the year that's in quotes goals thanks a colleague said she was always dazzling yet another harvard or mit date my mom said diana once called her from university and said oh chrissy i'm double digit i'm in double digits probably for dates fuck yeah uh reading her letters poems and journal entries i saw we had a lot in common i wish i had 10 of her looks but i think i have something of her mind pretty sure she had undiagnosed adhd and also possibly celiac disease like me and we were both

shameless flirts now i've only dazzled the occasional harvard grad and mostly women but diana had a wild streak in her that she'd have recognized in her niece at the time of her death she was living in sin with a man she couldn't marry he was jewish she was catholic his family wouldn't stand for it for birth control diana was fitted with an iud called the dalkin shield now some people know that name already especially after your last episode but 50 years on the story has mostly been forgotten the dalkin shield was a cervical clamp with a flawed design that allowed the wire to transmit bacteria from the vaginal canal directly into the uterus it caused extreme pelvic infections horrific pain and on top of that it wasn't very effective at preventing pregnancy

if wearers got pregnant it caused spontaneous septic miscarriage and dramatically increased the chance of ectopic pregnancy which occurs when the fetus begins to develop outside of the uterus whether the fallopian tube or in the cervix which is what happened to diana she knew she was pregnant she knew her body but the doctors didn't believe her silly woman we've put an iud it would be impossible the urine test extremely unreliable back then was negative and they declined to do a blood test this was at harvard university by the way so they sent her home where she bled out in her bathtub now my sister and i remember this part differently i remember diana died in the bath my sister recalls that she died in the ambulance either way she was gone before anyone

could help her even the harvard trained doctors across the street we both remember this they had to wash her blood from every wall in the bathroom jesus it's hard to imagine now but in 1972 the thought of how she died was a great scandal with much of the blame falling on diana the family kept the details of her death quiet to protect her reputation and were further silenced by the lawsuit lawsuits they filed but anyone that lawyers can come after is dead now and the horrors of the dalkin shield are public knowledge the class action lawsuit filed a few years after was one of the largest in history over 200 000 injuries were cited and 17 deaths diana was one of those with the lawsuit settlements the family donated three art pieces to the fog museum in her

name as the direct result of that case in 1976 the fda began mandating testing of all medical devices so things have changed but not enough the company continued selling the device in austria australia into the 80s and countless more were hurt three years ago i was sleeping with a guy and the condom broke i called my austrian gynecologist for an emergency appointment Because of a health condition, I can't take hormonal birth control or the morning after pill anymore, so my only option for emergency contraception was to be fitted with a copper IUD. Because it was a Friday afternoon, the procedure was performed without pain medication or cervical dilation because the doctor didn't have time to wait for the medicine to start working. the procedure was so painful i screamed and began shaking uncontrollably so hard that the soreness of my muscles took longer to heal than the iud pain did oh and the device

costs 600 euros because while medical care is affordable and fantastic in austria especially compared to the u.s birth control isn't covered in austria and no the guy did not offer to help of course that's so fucked it is a constant struggle for women that our doctors do not believe us about our bodies or our pain or and the results can prove deadly the problem is even worse for black women who are almost three times more likely to die from complications of child birth studies show doctors estimate iud insertion to be half as painful as patient patients report i cannot change much in this world i cannot bring diana back but i have made it my vendetta that it should be illegal to perform this procedure without offering pain management. My unhinged

dream is to create a website called the Diana Network where doctors and medical professionals like gynecologists can sign a pledge not to insert an IUD without offering pain management to their patients. Patients could choose to visit these providers instead. In the long term, I hope to advocate for policy change. I have no idea if this is possible, but my partner is a programmer and i am very good at being annoying same and i have some part of diana's intelligence mixed with my mother's creativity what i need is support or someone with a better idea if you share this and your listener contacts you please put them in touch with me maybe we can do something when i told this story on stage i had been bleeding uncontrollably for months

i took countless pregnancy tests terrified history was repeating i ended up in the emergency room for the bleeding on Thanksgiving. I had the IUD removed and months later things are beginning to return to normal for me. I understand the story was brutal but I would like to end with two bittersweet victories. Here's one. My IUD came with a card listing the device number in case of recalls and a card you can carry in your wallet in case of an emergency. That card exists because of the EU's response to the FDA's regulations. It exists because of Diana's death. When my grandfather cleaned out diana's apartment he took her wallet and hit hit it in his desk where i found it last year while visiting the boston area to sort through my inheritance items from him and

my mother inside were small details of a life cut too short her harvard parking pass her coop card a snipping of a latin song brutally a reminder for a doctor's appointment on july 6th the day after she died visiting home with my partner we brought diana's wallet to harvard fog museum and asked about the art donated in her in her honor but were turned away after learning the pieces were buried in the archive collecting dust with her memory walking through harvard square we purchased a baby-sized letterman jacket in the harvard shop it was a gift for a friend's son not for us but the question of when it would be for us when i would have a baby hung in the crisp fall air at the register the cashier offered a student discount if we had id i put on a cheeky

smile and asked how recent does it have to be why are you alumni she said i pulled out diana's 51 year old coop card and told a light version of the story oh that definitely works she said and while the 25 off doesn't count for much it meant that it meant that 51 years later diana's story was still alive at harvard and that's priceless thank you for your episode and for reading this novel length letter and for your episode love um the listener i i don't want to say their name of course but um she did include some pictures of diana her wallet in a short clip of the story when she told it on stage last year um in vienna um but this is really awesome that she that she shared this with us yeah that's amazing so here's some of the pictures

oh wow she really was beautiful it's like it's so i love these photos of her lana del rey is quaking yeah lana del rey has been really quiet since this story dropped um thank you so much for sharing this what like it's wild because it's already devastating to know that this happened but to hear like a a story of somebody that was directly affected by it well really drives it home i mean diana is one of the 17 reported deaths and the fact that you know someone who is related to her listened to this podcast i think is pretty incredible yeah it is it really is and um i don't know why i'm getting emotional no it's emotional no it's okay

give me a second okay i was not expecting i almost started crying while reading it yeah okay the fact that this listener wants to create a foundation like yeah i'm i'm so happy that we have the opportunity to amplify this and hopefully like connect her with maybe people who are familiar with policy change or creating non-profits or yes things like that you know I don't know how to do that but I am really hopeful that we have some listeners who want to come together and and provide knowledge and information and support yes and if there's anyone that wants to be connected with the who wrote this um I am hereby I I promise I will check my messages I normally don't but this is this is a reason for me to

start to we would love to connect y'all so message me or liz or both of us or the podcast instagram the podcast instagram might be the best but yes we will be monitoring our messages if anybody wants us to connect um you to this listener um yeah like you're saying i mean it's i feel so lucky that we're able to be like a hub for yeah this connection to be made because it's so important um and i i mean i would be more than happy for us to continue like amplifying this message especially if it starts to you know the ball starts rolling yes 100 yes but i think it's a fantastic idea yep me too oh and that reminds me before i forget another listener had commented on patreon and i think this is yeah pisces bestie commented um if you're a long-time listener you

might remember pisces best bestie reference um but she commented on patreon and she said i don't know how many other um gynecologists do this but mine gave me misoprostol to take the night before which helped soften slash slightly dilate my cervix my iud insertion was relatively painless and mostly just felt weird i was crampy afterwards but nothing extreme i'm curious of others experience with taking this medication prior to the procedure so when i was deep in my research because i was deep in my research looking for um a copper iud that was smaller that i could somehow get maybe in um canada or something and when i was looking on reddit uh there were a few women who referenced that medication um mostly in canada so i do wonder if you have to like make a specific

request for it yeah and that's i mean it's when i saw that comment i was like we have to remember to read this because it's so important to be yeah to speak up for yourself and to know what your options are yes um one last note and i think we can wrap this up yeah um i was talking to one of my friends who had a baby like probably a year ago and we were asking her questions about pregnancy and she was telling us all kinds of different things and i was like it is insane to me that women have been giving birth since the dawn of time and we do not know so much information about our bodies and what happens to us during pregnancy and during child birth yeah it's fucking insane yeah how it is just like shh don't talk about it yeah i mean if if men

gave birth first of all if men gave birth women would be the ones in charge but that's neither here nor there but if in this current climate if men gave birth i'm sure that we would have way more information about it and everything in general it's so bizarre yeah it is i think it's also it makes me wonder if like the two are kept separate like the information about pregnancy and childbirth is so taboo and kept secret because it changes your perspective on sex and if we are you know combining the purpose of sex with like the pleasure of sex you can't really like sell sex or objectify women as easily as you would like to or as easily as the world has made it to sexually objectify women and children it's just wild that like men will and like you know ingest

but like we'll call big boobs mommy milkers and know that that's the purpose for them and still be able to like sexualize them it's bizarre it's crazy i mean a lot of other countries don't do that because like being topless isn't this big taboo thing because breasts aren't like as sexualized right yeah and um i read a study where they talk about how like on a nude beach you maybe initially are very like excited because you're like oh my god this is crazy because being naked is like taboo but the like it it shows that over time like i think after a few hours you stop seeing it as sexual and it's just like because it's normal yeah so yeah i don't know normalize the actual purpose of our bodies and knowing about it i want to see like brain studies of like that

like how getting used to like being around a bunch of nude people and being nude yourself like what that changes chemically it'd be interesting to know yeah because there is a sexual component of it yeah to begin with so it's interesting would you go to a nudist beach yes i'd go at least once like i wouldn't like hang out yeah i mean i'd hang out i wouldn't go just to be like wow look at those look at those tits yeah and then leave but like i wouldn't go to be like you know what i'm gonna go relax on a nude beach you know i would just like i don't know like check it out see what's up would you i don't know it totally depends on like the type of nudist beach because what kind of people are going to a nudist beach people who

like don't give a shit yeah and just want to like vibe on the beach or probably creeps you know yeah creeps have to end up on a nude i just feel like yeah they're a kid in a candy shop they know nude nude beats beaches exist yep but yep it's just like you know that that's the that's the question of it all yeah i i don't think i would go to an american nudist beach no hell no because i'm thinking about like you know have you ever gone skinny dipping with your girlfriends yeah see that's fun hell yeah it's empowering yes i don't know it's fun to skinny dip with your friends yeah because you're just like we're just girls yeah i like being nakey with my ladies yeah but like i and because it's like oh you can be naked safely around other people yes yeah

you know yeah i think that's why it's so like it's fun and freeing yeah it's also vulnerable to begin with and then you like it like you get more comfortable and then it becomes liberating yeah that's a beautiful journey for your brain to go on yeah exactly um should we wrap yeah i feel like we've been how long have we been talking an hour and 11 minutes oh it feels like a lot longer than that i'm gassing um cool yeah well when we love you you go the highest and i go the lowest yeah it's beautiful my low is not low enough two sides of the same coin baby that was pretty low thank you fuck i've been working on it and it shows bye