We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - On Cussing, “Cattiness” & What Feminism Means to G

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

1. Glennon lets f-ing loose about the misogyny in our cursing lexicon—and how it reveals our hidden conditioning. (Note: Don’t listen with the kiddos.) 2. The connection between how little girls are taught to avoid conflict with each other and how adult women are called “catty.”  3. What Glennon really means when she says she’s a feminist—and why she’s baffled when a group fighting for their own equality turns on another group fighting for theirs. 4. Why Glennon says that the teenage years may be her favorite parenting era yet. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We keep throwing this party and there keeps being guests. And it's just my favorite kind of party because no one's really here at my home. It's just, it's perfection in every way. This is episode, you know, two of the week. We can do hard things. So of course, this is that we can do easy things episode. We're just taking it easy breezy as we always do, right? Amanda and Abby. Yeah, that's totally our mo. Easy and breezy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Light. Okay. So what's up this week? I woke up this morning feeling very content because we actually have a house full of children right now, teenagers. So our oldest has a couple of friends staying with us for a week. And so they were at our house and then our middle had two friends sleeping over last night. And the younger one also did

so we had this house full of teenagers and I remember sitting on the couch last night we were playing some scatter grays game or something charades of some sort and thinking oh my gosh I was so afraid of having teenagers because the world scares the crap out of you about how much they're gonna suck but actually I think that the teenage years, while there's been plenty of drama and trauma, is my vibe. I think it's my favorite parenting slice. I think that's it. You're good at it. I mean, you know why I think I'm good at it. I remember a long time ago reading this New York Times article by this brilliant person who said that what teenagers need is just a potted plant, parent, which basically means

that once the teenagers come around, your job is to behave in always like a potted plant in the corner. Like you're there. Okay, they need you. They think they don't need you, but they need you more than ever. But they need you in a very different way than they need you and their young, which is they just need you to be there and quiet and not just inert and maybe hydrating, but that's it offering that. I mean, also until they have those sweetheart, there's a lot of stuff that happens that requires feeding said teenage children that requires your wife, Abby, that requires me.

Well every potted plant needs a wife and I got myself on. But I just have this, I'm a sister, you and I have talked about this theory where like we're expected to just love parenting, but that's ridiculous. Parenting is too wide of an experience, right? It's like actually most of the people that I know, they have one time in parenting that they've really vived with. Like they either loved being pregnant

and then once the kid was born, they're like, oh, the good parts over her. They like love babies or toddlers or preschool. You know, but it's like, everybody matches one. Can you found yours yet? And I'm holding out. Mine's just around the corner. I can feel it coming.

It's just any minute now. You know, my mother-in-law is like that. She's also an older kid one. That is her preference. And I remember her saying, I mean, if I would have known what the top, she's five kids, by the way, one of whom is my husband, and he is the fourth.

And she said, I Definitely would have only had to I'm saying it's very I think that the The the niche I feel like saying I like parenting or the expectation you're like all of it is being like I like life No one no one likes all of life. It's just a very, it's all, so I feel like there's gonna be a period upcoming. I'm kind of liking right now. Bobby's nine and I feel like it's like he's his own little person.

He goes and does things, but he still wants to play with me, doing things. Sometimes he's still interested. He's still cuddly. It's like this very sweet spot, but he's not like, he still wants me around a slice, but not like a lot. Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. So I can show up really well in small slices, and that's, it's my maximum level of performance is.

I think God must have known my personality, because I think for a long time, I thought that I wanted to have a baby of my own, but I actually think that God must have known that that wasn't gonna be good for me. That I think that the formed person, eight to 13, eight to 18 now, 13 to 18 now is the kind of my jam.

Like I can have having the conversations, like not dealing with poopy diapers. Like I really think that I got the best of all of the worlds. And I'm sorry that you all had to stay up so late with breastfeedings and late nights and stuff. Although I am, you are getting payback now, babe. I do all late night driving. Listen, every time the kids have to be out to 11, which is a terrible thing about teenagers,

that they freaking make, every time I begin to feel guilty about allowing you to do the night shift, I think back on all of the midnight feedings and how you just geniusly miss them and arrange to this so beautifully. And I do not feel guilty any longer. Okay, I loved so much our conversation about gender. And we decided that there were so many beautiful questions from our incredible pod squad that we saved them all for today And we're gonna get to as many of them as we can

So let's jump in. Let's hear our first question about gender actually is our first question to write in it is It is you ready? Uh-huh, ready. Okay Here's the first question. Hi G G, what do you say about this? I am a woman who is much more comfortable with men. Most of my friends are men because I find women to be so competitive and caddy that I just can't take it. Thoughts? Mm-hmm.

My first thought when I hear this question, which I hear quite often in many different iterations is that I want to call 911. I want to call like gender triage. I want to just like circle up all of the most wonderful women I know and ship them to this person and just bring her back to life because I just, I can see what the world has done to her. And I understand it. I've seen some of that in my life.

It makes sense, but it makes me sad because what I do know is the most important, beautiful parts of my life are relationships with women. So, I mean, let's say this. First of all, I cannot say to you, although it makes me, you know, sweat and shake a little bit to hear people make generalizations about women like women are caddy and competitive. Okay. I do want to resist the feminist urge to just say that is bullshit, okay? Because there is, I understand what she is saying, okay? Massage and E can manifest itself with women feeling like we have to

be competitive with each other. And what I would say is that that's not inborn in women. It's not like we're born competitive with each other and caddy with each other, okay? If we are competitive with each other or more competitive than say men are, that is because we've been born into a world in which at every table there are 12 seats and 10 of them are for men, okay? And two of them are for women.

And so since life for for us on this Earth, tends to be one terrifying scarce game of musical chairs, we do tend to have to be competitive with each other for those two seats. Why are men more relaxed with each other because they just can be, because there's more space for them in the world, because they're not tokenized like women are.

They aren't pitted up against each other, like women are so scarcity is is placed in front of us as a reality and we react to that in a very appropriate way by feeling like we have to be competitive with each other because in fact we do. All right. The catiness thing always gets me. And I, okay, here's my theory. I could be wrong, but not likely. Okay. As I always bring up, I was a teacher.

Okay, I was an elementary school teacher. Thank God for many reasons. One of the reasons I got to see up close, how we train little girls and boys in this world. I got to see it happen in real time in front of me. And what I wanna try to describe to you right now is this scenario. Every time a little boy had an issue with another little boy, that little boy would be told to deal

with the other little boy in an honest, straightforward way that they could work it out. Okay. The little girls when they had problems with each other, everybody, every adult would lose their shit. The parents, the teachers, don't say, don't be, be nice, be nice, right? Like a little girl would say, Tammy, doesn't like me. Why doesn't Tammy like you? Like we can fix this. Everything was based on feelings. Girls over and over again.

We're taught to swallow their own feelings, to make the other person comfortable, right? To not rock the boat, to not cause any outer conflict, to be nice. Okay? So, little girls are not taught to deal directly with each other. All right, we are trained to swallow conflict, to swallow when people bother us, to swallow when we don't like people. God forbid, we don't like somebody else to act like we like them. But the truth always comes out sideways. If you can't say it directly, it comes out sideways. So here's the gossip. Here's the caddiness. Here's the whatever. We are, what I do believe is that women would stab each other in the back less. If when we were young, we were allowed to stab each other in the front. That's really good. Right. That's what men are allowed

to do. They're allowed to say the thing, do the thing, work through it, be direct and get through it. But women are terrified of doing that because the world has taught us to be terrified of doing that. So I would love us to be able to be more direct with each other, but that's something that we're going to have to decondition ourselves from because the world has trained us not. Babe, I have to tell you something that you, I don't know if you know this actually. But I venture to guess that there's a lot of women listening to this that fancy themselves a guy's girl, right? And I think that that's, before I met you,

I think that that's who I was. I think I was somebody that secretly, because I got this male acceptance and I got to the seats at the male tables, I was also a part of the problem that you, men would talk poorly about women around me and I would like let that happen. and I would let that happen. Men would, I was like one of the guys, you know what I mean? And I think that we have to examine those kind of relationships that we have and why we have them, because if it weren't for you

to have pointed these things out to me to be like, whoa, why am I doing that? Like I am a feminist. I'm like out in the world trying to help women secure more rights, but here I am inside of my own body actually believing that maybe women are just competitive, too competitive and caddy because I've been sitting at the tables where that was the information I was getting.

So just examine the relationships you have. I'm Jonathan M. Hevar. I'm a podcast producer and someone who likes fancy things. But I grew up working class. My parents were immigrants with factory jobs. And because of that, I think about class a lot. And I want to talk about it. That's what we're doing on my new podcast, Classy. And what did you all eat? You know, trailer food. I was like, girl, we're not doing that anymore.

You'll hear from people who told me awkward, embarrassing, and strangely intimate things about what class means to them. She said, you know, for the house cleaner, I hide the tag on the $6 bread, and I just thought, don't you think she knows that you're wealthy? You're hiding the tags from yourself. Classy. A new podcast from Pineapple Street Studios. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. I think we're disregarding the whole truth about gender, which is that it is completely hierarchical. Like, it is not, you are either or.

It is one is better and one is not as good. So, when you are saying, you're a guy, I mean, that is actually the gender binary wasn't a binary at first. Like, there wasn't a gender binary until the 18th century. Before that, many doctors just dictated that there was one biological sex. It was male. Women were inferior to men in that they had not properly developed. Their penises were tucked inside of their bodies. Legit, this is for real.

My God. So there was one ideal sex that was male, then there was not male, not male, okay? Just like there was one ideal race and that was white and everything else was not white, okay? So, so what people are saying, I mean the whole idea of a binary started in the Industrial Revolution where the separate spheres and we had to say that women were domestic so that they would be in charge of what's at home while men went to work, okay? But it was not at all and value assessments were placed

on that because when we started to say, all men are created equal, we inherently needed to say that women were unequal so that they would be denied and and place biological and characteristics on them as inherent. So there would be a reason why they would not be allowed to have this equality. So anyway, what I'm saying is that like inherent in that is saying, I am as good as. I do not, I am a guy's girl. I do not lack the deficits that are associated with other women. I, Abby, can hang with the dudes because I'm not sensitive. I am not whatever male is defined as. Female is defined as the opposite of that. It is not looked at. It is said male

is superior and strong and powerful. Therefore, women is the opposite of that. So, so saying that there is, I guess some truth and experience of that for some people that has not been my experience, the competitive and caddiness has not been my experience. But what I'm saying is people are saying, I can hang at this table. I am not like the average woman because I have swallowed the conditioning that makes me believe that the average woman lacks what the guys have. And that is that on that. Thank you. Retweet drop. that. Thank you. Retweet drop. I love this right in because I'm just obsessed with bad words in general, but my favorite right in which we got several fuck yes, we can discuss the gendering of profanity.

Okay, language obsessed with it. Okay, obviously for many reasons. But within this context, because language reveals all of our conditioning, what we say just reveals what we believe, right, and who we are. Okay, and so here's my issue with gendered insults, is that they all have power attached to them, right? So I had this conversation with a dude recently, and he called somebody a pussy,

and then he was saying, I challenged him on it, and he said, okay, how come I can, I can't say pussy, but you all can call each other dicks, or you can call them end dicks, okay? Because you're so frequently just calling people dicks. Yeah, I'm like, when do I call them even a dick? Like, I don't think that I do that, but okay, I, whatever.

The point, what I was, what I tried to get at with this dude, what I tried to get at with this dude, what I tried to get at with this dickhead. With this. So. All right, here's what I want to discuss. The word dick, okay, when we call someone a dick, we are usually referring to someone who is like overconfident.

He's just wildly entitled. All of himself. He's just full of himself. He has too wildly entitled. He's just full of himself. He has too much power. He, or he has, he thinks he has more power than he really does. He's just oozing with entitlement. So we don't, we don't call people

who are expressing weakness, who are showing weakness. Dicks are pricks, right? Dicks and pricks are folks who feel over empowered. Pussies, on the other hand. Pussies, we call people pussy when they are weak. Okay? When they are just crumbling with weakness when they're showing vulnerability. We don't call someone who's over who's feeling drunk with power a pussy, okay? Pussies are weak.

All insults attached to women's genitalia are weak, right? A pussy is someone who is weak Which means the gin is a weak, okay? A dick is someone who's strong, which means that we believe penises are strong, okay? And also furthermore, on this topic, can we discuss the fact that most of the insults, the gendered insults we hurl at men are actually insults to women, okay? Son of a bitch, I'm going to and call you a son of a bitch,

which really, all I called you as a son, I'm really out of nowhere insulting your poor mother somewhere, right? She's not even here. She's a bitch, your mom's a bitch. Okay, that's what we're saying. When we call someone as a mother fucker. I'm just gonna start saying, going after people. You're mother's. You're saying. When we call someone as a mother fucker. I'm just gonna start saying,

go ahead, you have to be funny. Just say, I'm just a bitch. You might as well. Mother fucker, okay? Mother fucker, okay. So how is that an insult to a man? All right, they call each other mother fuckers.

Fucker, by the way, is someone who fucks. So that's a solid, like a compliment. The only one who's being insulted there is mothers everywhere. You are so terrible that you fuck mothers. Okay. Oh my god, I'm sweating so much. I cannot believe our children are going to listen to this is so good. I love it. Well, I hope to God they'll think about their gendered insults after this conversation. douche bag. douche bag. Okay. You are so disgusting.

That what I have labeling you as is a thing that some women use to clean their body. Which, by the way, is disgusting because your body is already self-cleaning. Yeah. Instrument, you don't need any of that. The layered. It's misogyny inception. The layered.

Yeah. Okay. So what I'm saying is even when women are minding their own goddamn business, we're not even there. The dudes are insulting each other. Okay. We're being insulted. Right? I just, oh, are insulting each other. Okay, we're being insulted, right?

I just, oh, and by the way, when I show up somewhere and do something awesome and brave, guess what people call me? Ballsy. They're saying to me, they are looking at me and they are saying, you are so brave, you are almost like a guy. Yes. That's right. I'm just showing up like a

guy. I'm showing up like a brave woman, but you're finding a way to even erase my womanhood in this moment. Right? You know, you're so sad. It's almost like you're a dude. You freaking douchebag. Right? So if a woman shows up bravely, she's a man. If a man shows up weekly, she's a man. If a man shows up weekly he's a woman. It's just... And you know what Pussy comes from? It's from the word Pusolanimus, which was a word that was just a descriptor for women. Literally was just what women were described as. Okay, so then it evolved, but it does mean woman. So there's that. Oh my god. Woman? You know what?

And it means cowardly. It means cowardly by the way. That's the word means cowardly. And then the whole female genitalia, the Latin word for that is shame. Okay, shame. One. Poudenda. Shame. Okay, so you are cowardly and shameful. And now I'm just talking about your genitalia. Okay. Good God on earth. Okay, and I don't know what we do by the way because I love a good insult. Well, anyway, I had some feelings about gender. Just a few, which we can. We can.

We can. I love. Reminder to put the little e on this episode. Also, how cathartic is it to say someone it cuss words? Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much.

Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, I love it so fucking much. Oh my god, we have another write-in. Let's go. Ready for it?

Yes. Okay. You call yourself a feminist. What does that mean to you? Okay. This word. I have actually been, babe, how much would you, I've been thinking about this so much lately. Okay, so much lately. And I am going to describe something that is a new thought for me.

And so it might not come out perfectly, but I'm just going to do my best and just ask everyone to be full of grace. Okay, so here's what I've come to understand about what I mean when I say I am a feminist. And I'm sorry if it pisses people off. Not a shory. Okay, I'm just, I'm a woman, so I say I'm sorry. When I say I am a feminist, I actually don't think that I mean that I am on the side of women. Okay. Oof, that's going to be side of women. Okay.

That's gonna be a best time. I know, pull that and just run with it. I know, but let me just say more things. Okay. I think what I mean, like the truthiest truth I'm trying to get at when I say I'm a feminist is that I am on the side of whoever is getting most royally screwed at the moment by power. Okay? So what I mean is if I went into a

culture where women had been oppressing and marginalizing men for millennia. I would be a masculineist or whatever the other one is. Okay? I have come to this kind of deconstructing of what I mean by feminist recently with the phenomenon that I don't align with and that I don't understand, which is this idea of a turf feminist, a trans exclusionary radical feminist, okay. So, JK, okay. So that's the acronym that I got it. Right. So I'm sure you'll know what who they are in a hot minute after we record this because they'll all be on our social

social. I don't care. Actually, please don't. I do not understand why a group who has spent so long why a group who has spent so long fighting for equality would then turn to another group who is fighting for equality and not wide open arms them to the movement. I don't understand the hypocrisy, the irony, the arrogance, right? You and I have talked about this at length, sister, and you have some amazing thoughts about that. Well, I mean, it's the correct.

I mean, the people who should be the biggest champions and empathize most, radical feminists with transgender women should be the biggest champions. But it's also the history of white feminism. I mean, that hypocrisy and that lack of alignment with marginalized groups is all the way through the history. So basically where there is a, where white women's status is perceived as threatened by the liberation of any other marginalized group,

feminism as a movement has historically always, not only cast them aside, but actively, as the turps are doing with the transgender woman, actively lobbied against their interests, because of this idea, not only of political expediency, but also the idea of what we talked about with the males and distinctiveness threat. You are a threat to the boundary on which I base my entire identity. And so in the case of like if you just look at the suffragettes right? So Elizabeth Katie Stanton, who's like the one of the most celebrated suffragettes, she actually campaigned against actively going around the country campaigning against the 15th amendment, which would grant Black men the right to vote because she saw that as an insult and a threat

to white women's status that Black men would get it before white women. She also, the basis that she used, okay, so the same way that TERFs are vilifying transgender people, the basis she used to do that was to say that this this vial conception of black men as potential rapists, right? That whole horrible thing that can you know, continues to prevent culture is completely inaccurate. And by the way, that's what they do now with the transgender people. Like think, think, oh, they're gonna get you in your bathrooms. Think about bathroom bills.

Right. They're always finding a way to make the person who is most screwed by power seem like the predator. Right. Which by the way, I mean, you know, let's just acknowledge the fact that like black people were being literally crucified by lynchings throughout this entire period, most of which were based on false claims that black men and black boys had rape white women. That's right.

So she's leaning into this whole idea of them as a threat, which then threatens their lives. And, and by the way, sets up this whole notion of feminine fragility, which is saying that white women need these rights, not because they're equal, but because they need protection from this outside threat. Okay. because they need protection from this outside threat. Okay, so that happens over and over and over again. We finally get the 19th amendment. We totally leave behind the fact that black men and white and black women were completely disenfranchised

that whole time after we got it, right? So white women get the vote, we're like sweet, let's celebrate. They're completely disenfranchised by voter laws. And we never look back again and do anything to help them, which is exactly repeating itself now, right? We elect Trump out. Few. Great. Thank God we're safe again. And all of the voting laws that are happening right now in the South after George's historic show up in the last election, they're all being disenfranchised again.

And we're just going on our merry way like sweet. That's a relief. I mean, it's just, it is at the core of everything that white feminism has been and transgender people. So please just think carefully every time you hear one of your what a turf or a lawmaker say, well, we have to protect women. You'll see this now in the sports conversation, right? Oh, we can't let trans kids into sports.

You know, the first a minute ago, we were supposed to be scared of trans people in bathrooms, right, that's what they were leading with. Now we're supposed to be scared of trans people taking over the sports. I mean, where have they been protecting us all of fucking long? Right, all of the people who are so suddenly, it's like whenever patriarchy finds someone

to hate worse than women, they suddenly love women. Like they suddenly want to protect us. Like I would love to see every single one of these lawmakers who's suddenly so interested in making women sports fair. I would like to see the list of all of the other efforts they've made over the years to to ensure equality in women's sports. So over and over again women inside of sports are telling the world what they need To make sports fair. They need investment. They need to be paid. They need health care. They need but All of that goes on answer. Don't be fooled. Right. Don't be fooled. Whenever they tell us that they're trying to protect women, it's always horseshit, right? They are not trying to protect us anymore

than they were trying to protect us during the civil rights era. They're just trying to use women as an excuse to keep groups oppressed. That's right. That's right. as an excuse to keep groups oppressed. That's right. Okay, let's finish up with what is quickly becoming my favorite part of the whole podcast,

which is our pod squadder of the week. Hey, Glenin and sister, my name is Jim. I'm sure I am one of many men who listen to your podcast and who have read or listened to Untamed. It's an amazing book. You two are two amazing women. And I'm proud to say that I'm a feminist. And I'm also a gay man, and I think your book really resonated with me in that when you

talk about the struggle of women and misogyny, the same could be said about gay men as well and how we're As a boy were raised to not be gay, you know, I'm 56 years old and you know My parents were set in their ways and I wasn't supposed to be gay. I was married. I have a son. He's grown He's also gay as well but I guess what I'm trying to say is, oh my gosh, the feelings, the things I feel are so deep and sometimes I think, why do I feel so deep and so hard, I wish I could just shut everything off.

I don't really have a question and I don't really know what to say, except I think I must be the male version of you guys and I love you guys so much and I love your podcast and I just do. You guys are awesome. Keep doing good work and yes we can do hard things and I woke up this morning with that song in my head. So I thank you, I thank your daughter, Pish, and I thank Grindi Karla. You guys are great. Thanks. I don't even want to, I just want to end with Jim.

You're beautiful. I hope you never, ever shut any of yourself down. We need more of that, not less, not ever less. Thank you, Jim. All right, like Jim, let's all remember this week until we meet again. That life is really hard, but we can do hard things. Love y'all. hard but we can do hard things. Love y'all. I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlyle. I chased desire, I made sure I got once money And I continued to believe that I'm the one for me And because I'm mine I want the line because we're adventurous in heartbreak so man a final destination Rest in nation, clap, they've stopped asking directions

And some places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home and through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do a heartache I hid rock bottom, it felt like a brand new star I'm finally fine. Cause we're adventurous and heartbreak So man, a final destination

With that we stopped asking directions So places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do a hard thing This world finished her rose and heart breaks on land We might get lost but we're only in that

Stopped asking directions Some places may have never been And to be loved we need to be long We'll finally find our way back home Through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things. We can do hard things, is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts, especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.

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