There Are No Girls on the Internet - Moral panics around "cancel culture" are failing us all, especially when it comes to talking about sexual violence

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Last month the Cut published a piece called Canceled at 17, about a teenager who was ostracized after sharing a nude image of his girlfriend without her consent. Survivor and activist Wagatwe Wanjuki�� explains why the "cancel culture run amok" framing doesn't help any of us understand sexual violence or rape culture.Read the piece: https://www.thecut.com/article/cancel-culture-high-school-teens.htmlFollow on Wagatwe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wagatwe  Follow Wagatwe's work on Patreon: https://t.co/xzCO3yLG2f Join our newsletter: Tangoti.com/newsletter Want to support the show? (thank you!) Subscribe, tell a friend, leave a review, or buy some merch at There Are No Girls on the Internet’s store: TANGOTI.COM/STORE Say hello at [e-mail] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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mentioned sexual violence. Because we're so ignorant about rape, why are we so ignorant about rape in a large part because of the media? Why? Because capitalism makes the media incentivized for us to be ignorant about it. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. It seems like moral panics about cancel culture are everywhere. And partially, I kind of get it. It is so much easier to flatten out. complex situations into a cancel culture run-em-up trend piece that will get tons of clicks

and attention, but doesn't actually inform or help us understand things more clearly. So what happens when we rely on lofty buzzwords like cancel culture in lieu of a deeper exploration, especially for a topic that's really important and sensitive, like sexual violence? Recently, the media outlet The Cut published a long read about a teenager who they say was canceled by his classmates after he non-consensually shared a nude image of his girlfriend with his friends. Now, there is a lot going on in this piece, and you should probably read it to really understand today's conversation. But the main framing device and argument is that the teenager is actually the victim of canceling, and this feels really unhelpful to me. So I really want to talk about

what gets left out of the conversation when this happens. Survivor and Independent Scholar Wagatwe-Wanjuki says that this cancel culture framing doesn't actually really get us to a more useful understanding of sexual violence or rape culture. So you have a really, like, long and storied career as an award-winning, like, international anti-rape activist and survivor justice advocate. Can you tell us about this work? Yeah, it goes way back. Well, yeah, I guess now it is way back. Oh, my college wasn't that long ago. Yes, it was that long ago. But I started out as an activist.

I was assaulted in college, and my school didn't handle it really well. And at first I blamed myself, but then the next semester actually met another survivor. And we realized that it wasn't just about our stories because we noticed a lot of similarities with the same administrators. So we got together and we fought for a better sexual assault policy. while things were picking up at school, I got expelled. It was under a really shady situation, but, you know, it happened. And so I was like, all right, since I'm not in school, I guess I'll take it, like, to the internet and do more. And I would blog about it.

And that was really pivotal because other students from other schools saw my blog. They reached out to me. We joined forces, and we asked the Obama administration, to enforce Title IX in a better way. We're saying, hey, we're being failed. And they actually listened to us, which was really interesting in a lot of ways. So taking it from there, just seeing the power of social media, but also the power of traditional media as well as somebody who was like a contributor

and did a lot of communications work. So I've always have been working around media, social media, activism, survival rights, policy, that sort of stuff. It's just very near and dear to me. I would say the phrase, you know, the personal is political is definitely a guiding force for what I do. Yeah, something I really admire about your work is the way that you're continuing to use the Internet

and digital media to educate, but also sort of entertain and really show people, you know, better ways, better frameworks for how they can understand things like survivor justice, consent, and the way that those issues are playing out all around us, whether it's on reality TV and our culture in the news, you're really somebody who I think is excellent at using the internet to cut through what can sometimes be a confusing and chaotic topic. Thank you. Yeah. I think it's really because I was so misinformed when I started out as an activist, not even just as an activist, but as a survivor, taking a while to even identify what happened to me. And I thought back and I was thinking, I was like, the media told me it was just about a. stranger in the alleyway attacking you. And I was thinking about how being like unprepared and misinformed are so well connected. And I am also like not super a people person, at least not in

person. On the internet, it's cool, right? So it was just, it seems like just to be a really good combo of sort of saying, okay, I see where these problems are. I like being on the internet. It's really rapid pace. Let's challenge all. these assumptions that are there in the media and like how can we change our relationship to media even if we can't change it because I think it's so easy on especially on Twitter right and even I would say even a little bit on TikTok to get really outraged to pile on people and just say like it sucks but I notice there's all these circular things so sort of like instead of getting mad every single time and not really thinking about the deeper implications or like how it can be systemic

you know, let's move towards that lens looking at the systemic stuff because it's just, for me, I like to ration my outrage. I want to be strategic. I wanted to be effective, you know, it's tough because it's also like the world is on fire, but also then you have your own personal life stuff that you need to deal with. And since a lot of folks are very inflammatory on their, on social media and on internet, I think it's really important to show a different way. How can you be authentic?

How can you be sincere? But also just like how can you still be rooted in reality, right? And like I try to like maintain my values and as much as I can, you know, in terms of just how I interact with information and try to be, I try to be useful. I want to empower people. I don't want to just tell people how to feel. I want to be like, this is how I feel and this is why. Here's what you can take from it.

Late last month, the cut published an article called Canceled at 17 about a high schooler they called Diego, who, while drunk at a party, shared a nude image of his then-girlfriend Fiona with his friends without consent. Now, to be frank, what he did is a crime in many jurisdictions. But the article goes on to talk about how the students at his school ostracized him for what the peace states was just a, quote, stupid drunken mistake on his part. The piece spends a lot of time on what this all feels like for Diego emotionally, who the article goes out of their way to describe as a sweet, goofy kid who was being shunned by his classmates. We're also told that the climate of the school really fueled all of this behavior. The student body, back in in-person schooling after lockdowns,

were now reflecting on incidents of sexual harassment and assault from years prior with new eyes and feeling new anger about the ways the school handled them. Feeling fed up by administrators, the students take matters into their own hands. They organize a walkout to protest the schools in action. They circulate a list of kids to watch out for it. So I actually think there is a lot going on in this piece that is useful to unpack. Like what happens when adults fail to create a safe and supportive learning environment for young people, so much so that those young people take matters into their own hands?

And what are the racial dynamics that play behind the fact that the majority of the young men on the people to watch out for list are boys of color? Or what are the institutional factors that play here? For instance, in 2017, the Trump administration's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, completely overhauled Title IX, the federal civil rights law that governs how schools must handle sexual assault in schools.

But this piece doesn't really get into any of that. Instead, it tells us that Diego is the victim of cancel culture run amok, that young people fueled by social, media wokeism have come together to ruin the life of a sweet kid over one tiny transgression. That piece from last month in the cut. When I saw that piece, I thought, wow, this intersects with so many of the issues that I know that you care about. And so you were the first person that I was like, I really want to know her take. What were your initial thoughts on that piece? Oh, man. I feel there was so many waves of it, but first I was rolling my eyes because it starts off canceled at 17.

I'm like, oh my God, not canceled, right? Because it goes back to the whole cancel culture stuff. And I was thinking how that's already inherently anti-black. And I remember the cover was a clown. It was a clown, like a sad clown on a skateboard. So it was already like framing it as this like this child. And then you read it and quote unquote, he was canceled. It was just that he was ostracized.

after sharing nudes of his girlfriend non-consensually, right? And then there's also a little hints about him potentially being abusive in other ways. And so it was just, it was a perfect example of empathy, right? The framing. It was a very, I think it's a worthwhile topic. And I think she touched upon things that other people should have covered, basically. the way that it was from his point of view, like if you read it,

sort of like, he's the victim. There was a lot of, she spent a lot of time talking about how badly he felt, how badly his parents felt, how, you know, all these sort of things, how bad the administrators felt. It was always about everyone but the victims, how badly they felt.

Very little spent on the victim, what she thought, any of those sort of things. So that was just very, that stood out to me. And also the timing stood out because it technically was a Title IX story, even though they made it seem like it's about this boy being victimized. And they did this on the week of the 50th anniversary of Title IX. I think it was a week up or the week after. So it was just very much like a part of this backlash against Title IX, which is a civil rights law. I feel like folks don't say that enough. like this is about civil rights and education.

And also just part of a larger part of the backlash to me too. Yeah, I mean, that's something else that I really like how you framed that because one of the things that stuck out right away for me for that piece was the way that Diego is framed as this, you know, good kid, blah, blah, blah. And his ex-girlfriend, the person that he, you know, non-consensually shared nude images. of the writer goes out of her way to talk about how beautiful she was in this way. That just feels a little suss. It almost feels like the implication is that Diego was so proud of her beauty that showing these images, even without her consent, she really should have almost been like complimented or flattered.

And something about the way it was framed just made me think that the writer was trying to get us, the reader, to think like, well, is what he did really so bad? Yeah. It was essentially another way of saying she was asking for it by being so beautiful. And that was really, and that was a way to make him seem less responsible. And it was really creepy because these are children. Why are you talking about how attractive a child is? And especially we're going to be talking about sexual violence, right?

Sharing someone's nudes, non-consensually, is a form of sexual violence. So why are we talking about attractiveness? Because now you're blurring the lines between sexual violence and sex. And I think that is a big part of rape culture. And that's something that the media loves to do. It's just sort of saying, well, how did the victim ask for it? How is the perpetrator not that responsible? Let's take a quick break.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. At this point, it seems almost impossible to have not encountered at least one piece about cancel culture run amok. Friend of the show, Michael Hobbs, has a friend of the show Michael Hobbs, a great episode of his podcast you're wrong about, all about how most of the time these pieces making puffed up arguments about the threat that cancel culture plays in our workplaces and college campuses are usually just cherry-picked anecdotes that totally fall apart under any scrutiny.

Yet, media outlets, even pretty mainstream ones like The Atlantic, keep churning them out, lending credibility to this idea that people are routinely losing their entire livelihoods for saying or doing one small off-color thing. It's yet another way that our digital media ecosystem has incentivized these divisive, but ultimately kind of meaningless buzzwords, to describe situations in ways that make us all less informed and more divided.

You hit on something earlier where you said that it was a story, it was like ostensibly a Title IX story, but then they use this framing of, you know, cancel culture run amok. Why do you think that's the framing that they chose? It feels so unhelpful, I think because they want it to be unhelpful. I think we also have to understand the role of media and around issues like this, that

it's a form of social control in a sense that it is basically reflecting the values of the people in charge, right? So it's going to align with the values of the systems of oppression that we have in force, like heto-patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism. They hate rights. So the media is going to use language. The media is just going to use language that is going to be very vague. I think that's very much something that is common amongst reactionaries in general.

They will use very vague language so they can twist it, right? Because they started it off as canceled. You have to open it up to see what it's about. Then you're like, oh, this kid did something really bad. And not only that, the language she used before she even told us what he did, was like, please don't judge him, blah, blah, blah. I was like, whoa, there. Like, very heavy-handed.

Like, I mean, I've read a lot of bad things about sexual violence, but that was really shocking where she was just explicitly like, don't judge this boy who did something objectively wrong. So, yeah, I think it's just about it was able to use this umbrella where it's like, either you're an assailant or you said something racist. Then she also just like stopped saying. what different kids did and then giving us their opinion as if it's truth, right? So it's just, it's a manipulation tool is the, is the short of it. I see time after time after time after time,

all of these pieces where it's like cancel culture run amok. And it's like actually this seems like a couple like a couple of anecdotes that you've really cherry picked and and really blown up. or it just feels like a lot of breathless writing about something. But there does also seem to be like an actual story worth telling in the piece, I would argue, because when I read that piece, all I could think was like, wow, these young people have been so clearly failed by the adults in their lives that they feel like, and the institutions in their lives, that they feel like the only way that they can get any kind of justice is taking matters into their own hands. And no shit, turns out a bunch of teenagers acting on their own without any kind of like meaningful guidance or institutional support might not handle things in the most productive way. And I'm wondering like why not tell that story because it's a story worth telling.

You know, I think part of it is that, you know, part of the backlash, it's a way to sort of recalibrate power. So I would see this as a way to sort of like, okay, too many people were supportive of Title IX and sexual assault survivors. So let's sort of shift the script. I think cancel culture on a muck is just a lot easier to write. And it's a lot, you can do a lot of innuendo, a lot of implying. This is just part of, again, we're very much in this reactionary culture. We're trying to like, we're seeing people using the media to sort of reclaim hegemonic masculinity or toxic masculinity.

I always say they're like excusing the toxic part to reinforce hegemonic masculinity. Because with hegemonic masculinity, you know, a lot of theorists will talk about how it's about how there's power in a legal sense, then also like in the public sphere and then also in the private sphere. So it's a way to sort of reassert that power by not looking at the real problem. The media loves episodic framing when it comes to sexual violence. violence is something that's been studied. And they also studies also show that when you have an episodic framing, when you sort of like say it's this kid being victimized, people are less likely to be supportive of survivors because they're not going to really know that this is part of a cultural problem. And when people realize that this is a cultural problem that hasn't gone away, people are going to

start thinking, wait, who's benefiting from this? Wait, who's not changing things? So I think it's a way to maintain the status quo and essentially because how many adults are going to write about themselves being like failing a bunch of kids. Very few people are going to be willing to admit that. So what do you do? You kind of like shove it under the rug. All right. It's the cat's out of the bag. We couldn't control the activists. Right. Like you're welcome y'all. Right. Like I feel like my friends and I were activists and people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to fix that. And so instead of validating, it as a real thing. They go to this other angle that's just very, yeah, it's manipulative. It's dishonest and they know what they're doing. Do you feel that the media just consistently fails survivors

in the way that it frames and tells your stories? Absolutely, absolutely. So it was really interesting. I've been reading about just media and campus sexual assault and the different connections between it. And there's been a long legacy of specifically white women. coming out to doubt sexual violence and education. So it was more so about campus sexual assault specifically, starting around in the 1980s, 1990s. And it was about like, this was before there was a lot of research out. So first it was sort of like, do we really know we need data?

We don't really trust it. Just a bunch of women lying. Then the data came out. They were like, the data's wrong. This is just, it doesn't make any sense. Blah, blah, blah. So now the argument here is that, cancel culture has gone wrong.

And then when you use cancel culture, you can blame low-key black people, right? You can blame the internet, quote, Twitter. You can just blame a bunch of minoritized groups and sort of like it's a way to funnel that resentment against people who've been getting more visibility. One thing is about the racism and the piece. I mean, it's so interesting because she,

they do mention that like the boy, like most of the boys who were like sort of singled out were all boys of color. Yeah. So that is something that's been used increasingly in the past couple. Actually, they started using that line, the reactionaries, the anti-Title-9 people, when my friends and I sort of came on the scene. And so they're trying to make it sort of like framing it as these white girls are trying to ruin these black boys' lives. And that is really awful in a sense because, all right, I know as me as a black survivor and someone who was assaulted by a black person, I hesitated to come forward for a while because I did not want to reinforce that representation. I think it's really harmful when media only talks about men and boys of color as potentially perpetrators or only as the accused because you're erasing them as victims. And then you're also silencing the people that they do victimize.

Because the thing is, is most sexual violence is within the race. But they don't talk about that. And so it was really messed up of how they, like, tried to emphasize that while erasing the victims. Because, like, maybe most of the victims are girls of color or people of color. But we don't really hear that. She talks about the activists being mostly women of color. But then she labels them as tribalistic.

you know, and exorcistic, you know, like really trying to be like, these are these irrational, like, primal thing. And it was really interesting how she kind of frames it as like, it's a primal thing when you're supporting survivors and being an activist. But God forbid, but everyone else, right, the abusers, their enablers, they're all the rational people. And there was also like a little bit of a dog whistle where she talked about privilege in ways to just sort of. show that like if you believe in privilege, then you're going to be somebody who will be a counselor, like someone who cancels. And that's bad. There's a lot of like little like nitpicky things. Oh, and then when she talked about him going on a trip, learning about the civil rights movement.

And then she was like, that's where he learned. Oh, that's right. That's where he learned about negative power. I was like, ha. Ah! I was using. a civil rights movement to like equate it with a boy committing sexual violence against his ex-girlfriend. What are you doing? So, you know, the way that they like really like to like move us away from true power conscious analysis, right, and try and flatten it so like anyone can be a victim. And when they mean anyone, it's the people with the most power. Yeah, the people with the most power who happen to be facing some consequences for their bad behavior. He still got to go to four proms. So first of all, you still have friends.

Number two, you're not poor because proms are not cheap. But anyway, yeah, if you're going to four proms, I don't know. I mean, it's a little hard for me to be like, oh, you're being socially ostracized. Four proms. That's a lot of problems. Like, you're popular as hell. What? There's another thing that's like, yeah, it's just like these white ladies, you know?

And you know that it just hits at that white liberal racism. It's like, oh, no, I don't want to support something that accuses black. boys of rape, but then they don't talk about how basically with anything in regards to school's code of conduct, students of color are disproportionately disciplined. So if you're only doing it around rape, you're just being racist and you're using rape culture to do it because that's really messed up to only care about it when you're trying to undermine survivors who are often survivors of color. Absolutely. And I think the piece does at once is sort of concerned.

controlling around like, oh, I don't want to be, you know, criminalizing boys of color, but then also blames people of color for this like cancel culture run amok. Like it's like, well, geez, which is it? Exactly. Definitely playing both sides and hoping that you don't catch up on it, right? And I think, unfortunately, I'm sure most white people would not be able to pick up on that because it's just sort of those things that you can read in between the lines. But it's, it's really weird how they're using race in this really manipulative way. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

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Let's get right back into it. I feel like it is part for the course for the way that we are using. We're seeing issues like race and gender, like just become these issues that are just used to inflame instead of having like thoughtful conversations. They're just being used to like stoke tensions, like further stoke tensions. Yeah, I think education has always been a site of like inciting tensions and trying to spread moral panic. So I think this is just another way that they're manifesting that. Yeah, I see that so often echoed on the internet. I think that it's, I mean, this is just my

personal pet theory, but I think it's like why Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter in part, because it's like, minorized groups and groups who historically have been marginalized and had power taken from us are able to use these tools to build power, to build a voice, to build moments, to build culture and to push back. And I think that that is really threatening to a certain type of person really, really committed and, you know, really committed to having power and making sure that people like us don't really have it. Yeah, it's a lot of the council culture rhetoric is about, like, who has control over to public square, right? Who can control the discourse, who can influence it. And so since, yeah, minoritized people are, have had like, you know, just unprecedented.

and reach now, they are going to use traditional media where white people, where the rich white men have control and they're going to commission these sort of things to legitimize a sense of canceling and then also in sense to legitimize people who dare to speak up as a survivor, people who dare to be in solidarity with survivors. It's just very much about condemning everyone who dares challenge to status quo. Yeah, are there ways that you, like, in a perfect world, how would the internet and media and our digital ecosystem, like, how could those institutions actually show up for survivors? Is there a world where that could exist? Oh, it definitely could exist. It's not going to exist with the way things are now, just because I think something that's

something that's happened that a lot of people don't talk about, is that, you know, so much media, has closed, right? There's just lost less competition. There's been a lot of mergers and stuff like that. And there's some theory about how when that happens, when there's less competition, there's more incentive to cater to the narrative of the people in charge of hegemonic narratives and the hegemonic discourses, which is why you'll get more like rape culture, more racism, why, you know, fascists will get platforms more easily than like victims of police violence. What we have to do is essentially have media organizations that are trauma-informed. And also, their values are not about making money or catering to power, but rather challenging power. Because this is something that you need to

have an expertise. You need to be educated about. It's really complicated to talk about sexual violence because very often I read things. And I can read in between the lines, but I know most people would not be able to do that. They wouldn't know that, you know, when I was reading the article. It was kind of like best hits of all the different reactionary things that I've seen when they're talking about Title IX. So it's just about incentives, changing the incentives. Who gets funding? Who gets to lead newsrooms, right? Who gets disseminated and how it's really, when you think about it, we're very much in the domain where, yes, social media has been great, and we have chipped away a little bit at that power, but we still have to acknowledge

that the power and the media has is just disproportionately in favor of, you know, a few old rich white dudes. And that's by design. Yeah. I mean, I think so often when I think about like what will it take to get to a better future, one, you know, one where survivors are supported, it's capitalism. It's like, it is tearing down systems and institutions. And it seems so, you know, lofty far off, but it seems to always come back to that. It was actually realizing the connections between rape culture and the media that made me realize, I was like, oh, capitalism has to go because there's literally no financial incentive to be against

rape culture. There's only so many financial incentives. And if every single business is existing to stay in business, to make as much money as possible, that's a huge disadvantage for survivors and for the entire society because mere exposure to rape myths and headlines actually influences people. They're more victim blaming. They accept more rape myths. And then people who are inclined to commit sexual violence are actually more emboldened. So these are all messages that we are all living with the implications of that we don't really talk about. That's just really upsetting. But yeah, it. Capitalism is, we have to think about how basically capitalism, as we know it, in the United States, was built on sexual violence, right?

It's the sexual violence against indigenous people as form of colonialism and then sexual violence against enslaved Africans, where raping people could literally create more capital. And so when we think about that legacy, if we think about this economic system that we're in that has been. run to normalize sexual violence because it is profitable. We have to throw it away. We're not going to be able to really dig out there. Like obviously, I'm going to do what I can. But yeah, capitalism and heteropatriarchy, right? We just have a lot of sexist people, a lot of cissexist people, because we're seeing the rise of transphobia and the way that the idea of groomers, right, people are able to use those labels, those like, you're a predator, you're this, you're that strategically because we're so ignorant about rape.

Why are we so ignorant about rape in a large part because of the media? Why? Because capitalism makes the media incentivized for us to be ignorant about it. Yeah. I guess it's difficult to not see the ways that these things are all connected. And like once you start pulling that thread, you're like, oh, shit, it's the whole ball of Yarn. It's like, throw it all away.

It's just, it's all, it's, this is why intersectionality got so popular, right? Because people were really drawn to the idea of like, this is all connected in some way, some point. You know, to go back to that piece, something that really, I kind of got stuck on after reading it is that the idea that it's, it was the perpetrator who was like ostracized. When I was young, when I was in high school, I, you know how like every high school. has like that thing that happened in your school. Well, the thing that happened in our school was that a female classmate of ours, her boyfriend showed a video of her to our entire school and to

like neighboring schools. And when I tell you like, she was completely ostracized, I don't even remember the guy's name and she was the one who had to like, I think they left, I think they moved away. Like it was like the biggest thing of our school. And so, you know, we were all in high school. certainly, I mean, I think back and I'm like, wow, we really fucked up and failed that young woman. But today in 2022, part of me was so surprised that the party that was ostracized was the perpetrator, not the victim. Because that certainly wasn't what the vibe was and what I was in school.

Same. I mean, I think that was something a lot of people were saying on Twitter, like, whoa, they actually ostracized the perpetrator for once. Yeah, I was really surprised because it makes me. think about slut walk. In 2011, a Toronto police officer suggested that women should avoid dressing like sluts to avoid sexual violence. In response, anti-rape activists started the slut walk movement to protest rape culture,

victim-blaming, and slut shaming. Slutwalk was about, like, 2011, something like that. That sounds right, yeah. But it made me think about how, you know, feminists are trying to reclaim the word slut, even though, depending on your identity, it's not exactly, like. as achievable, but that's like another conversation. However, it was about how slut, we used to talk a lot about how the word slut was used against victims of sexual violence because they would be the ones who were bullied. They would be the ones who'd be ostracized. It was basically showing how

slut shaming was an umbrella term to sort of hide what actually is being done to whom, who has the power, who's the real victim. So this was really surprising. And I think because it is so more common for the victim to be ostracized, it made this decision even more interesting because it's sort of like, oh my gosh, if it starts, this is going to be bad. And it really frames it as like it's normal and good for the victims who are usually girls, right, to carry that shame and the consequences of the actions of their perpetrators. Yeah, you just, I mean, it's normal and good for the victims who are usually girls to carry that shame. I guess especially today when we're all having this conversation about a 10-year-old child who is a survivor of rape who was pregnant, impregnated, this idea of like what we ask women and girls,

what shame we ask them to absorb to keep these societal things running, to make sure that this power imbalance doesn't shift back. And I guess that's just really weighing heavy on my heart right now. The way that you put that really stung a little, I guess. Yeah, I remember I was reading something and I realized that and I was like, oh, shit. I was like, oh, they're okay with this. Oh, they think we deserve this. Oh, like, it's just sort of like, oh, damn it.

This is why I don't believe in giving gory details. I don't believe that showing the violence will convince people because there are a lot of people who think that's just how the world is supposed to be. And I think that's something that we need to reckon with because I think I'll make us more effective in our strategy and how we respond. But especially we're thinking about how, you know, Christianity very much has shaped our sense of what victimhood is. And when you take that in consideration, you have to think about Jesus Christ who's like the ultimate victim. And they use Jesus Christ as a way to sort of show that suffering is good in a sense, right? And it's kind of twisted in a way to be like, this is just all a part of God's plan.

Your suffering is a part of God's plan. It brings you closer to godliness. And when you're in a society where the marginalized people are seen as inherently bad, right? Women are the original sinners, you know, trans people and queer people are, you know, they're deviant, then it's sort of like this weird concept of like if you're suffering, we're kind of helping you. Like it reminds me so much of that Zornyl Hirston, quote, if you're silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.

Like teaching us that we should find empowerment through our suffering or that should be like, you know, a badge of honor. Like I'm just so done with anything that tells me that something, that is negative for me, that I should be happy about it. I'm so done with that. And I feel like that that is in our culture everywhere. Yeah, definitely is. It's definitely a way to sort of maintain, not sort of, it's one of the many ways that they maintain the status quo, because it's a sort of gaslighting as well, right? Because if it's, if suffering is normal, then we don't need to think about systems of oppression. We don't need to think about rape culture. Because like, that's just how the

world is. And so it's like it was sort of like an anti-call to action. If you think about the article it says, right? Because it's like, don't change. No, no, no. Like just if you blame the victim, if you cuddle abusers, that's okay. That's cool. You know, it's, it's, it's low-key that. Like, don't get too worried about all the hubbub on Twitter and college campuses. Like, it'll be okay. It's a call to inaction. Exactly. So given where we're at, everything that's happened in our culture, when it comes to survivors and how we fail them, don't support them, tell their stories.

When you think about what's on the horizon, are you hopeful in this moment today? How are you feeling about what it means to be a survivor and to have survivor stories be told? You know, I'm hopeful in a sense where I have seen from my time on college campuses where it was really hard for people to talk about rape to now we're having bad.

high schoolers doing rallies and like getting administrators to resign. That's amazing. Like I see so much progress where students are really stepping up. They're occupying frat houses. They're occupying administrators offices. Like people are catching on and I'm seeing it. And that gives me hope. I think it's easy to fall into despair when you're on social media doom scrolling,

especially since I feel like I just, you know, I follow a lot of news. I follow a lot of anxious people. follow a lot of vulnerable people, you know, but there is progress. If there wasn't, they wouldn't be fighting back against us so hard. They're cheating. They're cheating. And we're still beating their asses, so. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from Iheart Radio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

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on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm CJ Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season, and I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments.

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So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your, 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase out of my skin. And I just, like, really regret not living in the present more.

You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. costs. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program.

Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.