How Does Patriarchy Affect Me?

what is up daddy gang it is your founding father alex cooper we call her daddy naomi snyder welcome to call her daddy thank you naomi is a practicing psychoanalyst in new york city and she lectures and publishes on the intersections of social injustice and psychological struggle prior to her work as a psychoanalyst naomi worked as a lawyer in the human rights field i actually discovered your work naomi by a recommendation from none other than the great jane fonda oh my goodness jane fonda has heard of this book that i'm really excited i was like how on earth did alex cooper hear about this book i'm going to hear that it came to you through jane fonda that blows my mind wow she's truly the day that i met her i think my life was changed forever she's incredible and i know obviously that you and psychologist carol gilligan co-authored this book we're going to talk about a lot today called why does patriarchy persist and it was originally published five years ago and in your opinion i have to ask is patriarchy still persisting great question you know i think before i can even answer the question the first thing is to really even answer sort of what is patriarchy right so even though like if it's still with us today and the reason i do that is because in my experience a lot of people see patriarchy is a shorthand for men versus women and i think the real like there are many problems with that reductive kind of view of it but one of the main ones to me is that it sort of completely obscures the the cost that patriarchy has for both men and women so like in terms of thinking about whether patriarchy persists today i'm really thinking about whether patriarchy persists in terms of like the rules of the game so not just sort of who are the winners and the losers but the rules about who can succeed what success looks like and how one succeeds so we define patriarchy in the book as a sort of order of living that puts some men above other men all men above women but it's sort of based on this gender hierarchy and binary so that like the rules of the game essentially are that in order to be a man and to succeed you have to disavow all the parts of yourself that the patriarchy deems to be feminine meaning your emotionality your relationality you have to be this kind of stoic independent heroic kind of figure and that your vision of success for you is to be able to take care of others financially and rely on no one else so the rules of the game for women as they've always been and still are today is that to be a good woman you have to be selfless you have to put other people's needs before your own and it's both shameful and guilt-inducing to put your own needs first however to be a successful leader to make it to the top that kind of selflessness becomes a liability so women are kind of faced with this really fucked up situation where it's like oh to be a good leader i have to be autonomous i have to be unemotional i have to be all these things but to be those things i'm then going to be seen as bitchy or as moaning or so it's like to go back to your question five years on to patriarchy and such a great question our biggest fear was that people would say what the hell are you talking about patriarchy doesn't persist anymore like you can go you got like you know what am i talking about i've been a lawyer i've like been to university like who am i kidding and what i would say to that question of like is it still persisting i say it's persisting as it always has but it's now out in the open and it is violent and it is like the gloves have come off and of course like we can't talk about patriarchy persisting right now without talking about the jobs decision and the kind of pulling back of women's reproductive rights and to me that's sort of some of the standout absolutely no i appreciate you walking me through that because i know that obviously all of these all of the questions i'm going to ask today are so complex and layered and there's years and years and hundreds of years of history that go underneath obviously what we're talking about and i think that's such a great point you made of like of course we're allowed to vote but uh shouldn't we have been able to in the first place like shouldn't we be considered equal so i think it's like yes we've had progress but that doesn't mean that we're we've accomplished all of it and so i think that when we have this conversation the sad truth is that some people may be listening to this and the minute they heard the word patriarchy they're like oh i'm out i don't listen to this like this is just too much for me or you know i don't want to hear about this could you maybe in like two sentences i know this is so fucking hard because it's like how do we put in two sentences how would you explain the patriarchy to someone who is typically confused by the concept and that just needs like a two line three line statement about like what it is call her daddy is brought to you by dove have you guys heard that dove just dropped a dove reimagined version of the classic don't ya to launch their new alcohol-free whole body deodorant a true 90s baby throwback moment the best part is that dove's new whole body deodorant is alcohol and aluminum free combining 72 hour odor control with nourishing skin care it's gentle anywhere you apply it which keeps you feeling hot not burned for external use only the new dove whole body deodorant alcohol and aluminum free learn more at dove.ca oh it's a great question though one way i have of answering it say i'm speaking to a woman i'd say you know that voice in your head when someone's really pissed you off and you're really hurt you're really angry and that voice in your head that says who are you to say that to someone like what right do you have to tell them that you're upset what gives you the right to hurt someone in that way by like telling them they've done something wrong to me that's the way that patriarchy is so alive for so many of us we don't even see it out in the world it sort of exists in our heads in that way i get what you're saying i think sadly if every woman listening to this podcast can pause if that self-doubt that is so ingrained in us you may not even see it as self-doubt it's just a part almost of who we are in our decision making at times because it's been so ingrained in us of like don't cause controversy don't upset people be the peacemaker and obviously it's hard to identify that's why this conversation is so like heady for people because it's like what the fuck is the patriarchy and it's difficult but it's an internal thing that we've been raised to have in us so it didn't just one day appear it's literally been since the minute that we were born yeah and you know it's helpful that you've just said that in such a clear succinct way you know like here's another way that i think it's sort of those invisible things that we take for granted that just like that we see is just the way things are but actually that's patriarchy so for example i'm a new mom which has taken me into an encounter with patriarchy in a very sort of alive way and so for example i've had a conversation with some new mom friends and we're talking about the way that when our husbands take the babies out they are met with such applause oh my god what a great father wow and then like instead what we're grappling with is the sort of like side eyes when when we're out in a restaurant with our baby there they're like oh that mom like having a glass of wine well it's sort of like they're sort of like invisible like no one's saying anymore women should stay at home and take care of the kids like that's not what's going on there'd be sort of like subtle kind of judgments we face there's like essentially a hierarchy and a framework that's been designed for what equates to the masculine and the feminine capacities and i know you wrote a lot about this in the book which is like masculine it's like independent rational um emotional stoicism and then feminine it's like dependence and like emotional sensitivity and caregiving and so there's a lot of negatives and weakness that are aligned with femininity as opposed to the masculine and so therefore it elevates men over all women at all times i would add one thing to that that the feminine it is idealized but devalued so caregiving is something that we say oh isn't it she's so selfish what a wonderful thing but what do we pay caregivers right that is like one of the things like yeah we think it's great but it's not valued in the way that men's work quote unquote is valued in society yeah that's a great way to say it i know we lightly mentioned you know someone that you asked like well why would someone want to turn this off and i think that obviously there are some women that may be listening to this who don't believe in the patriarchy or at least they don't believe that it fx them right they say that they have a great relationship with their boyfriend and they haven't had any issues within their job and they just don't understand what everyone is complaining about why everyone is constantly pushing the feminist movement and all that what would you say to that person that feels like they haven't been affected yeah again i think the first response would be sort of like i mean wow like tell me your secret because for some women you know that may be more or less true that in their lives they really have managed to cultivate relationships a work life in which they really feel like these kind of archaic norms that don't affect them and so i want to take that person at their word and not presume that i have a better sense of their reality than than they do right what i've discovered is when you do ask questions typically sort of what happens is you hear that the story is actually much more complicated and things that that person has just chalked up to well that's just life or you know this is a problem of mine actually we're like sort of putting a socio-cultural lens to something that they've seen as an individual failing so for example like a woman who says you know i don't i don't have any issues with the patriarchy i'd like i used to be a lawyer i have a lot of lawyer friends and you know it's like i've like modded up through the ranks and you know an issue that now i'm struggling with is my investors are telling me if i want to make it to that next step i just have to be more self-excited and that's a problem that i've always struggled with and then it's like they're talking about it because you actually know there are all these external factors that have meant that to be self-assertive has come at a great cost to them and that it's not just an individual problem but they're up against something very real this conversation there are obviously moments where we can pinpoint a tangible example of patriarchy and we can comment about you know how many times has a woman sat getting ready to get dressed and it's like well i'll be taken more seriously if i wear this outfit for the interview than if i wear this skirt that i really like that i got the other day it's like well why are we feeling that we can't wear a nice skirt because we're gonna be objectified by the men and we're still gonna be put in a place where we're not being taken seriously and so like there's moments i know that's like the classic one of like the looks and what we wear but that's just to like bring it down so people can understand like yes there are tangibles where you can see it but i think what we're getting at and what you get at so brilliantly in the book is like patriarchy exists internally and it shapes how we think and feel and how we perceive and how we judge others and how we judge ourselves and our desires and every relationship we interact with in the world it's intertwined in all of those decision makings and so to start to unravel it i understand why there are some women that are like this doesn't affect me it more just so means that they're they have found a way to live their life that they're happy with the dynamics and i'm not ever judging anyone with that i think unfortunately there are moments in dynamics where the patriarchy is exacerbated and so many women are like how am i not getting paid the same as men that does bother me and maybe it doesn't bother some women but i do think for the collective it's like we should we should have enough self-worth and self-esteem that we do fight for that equality for all women because then it's like the generations to come our daughters their daughters it's never going to end and so it's kind of the same thing of when there's a friend that was mean to one friend or a couple friends like well they weren't mean to me it's like i understand that but there's also an accountability for the greater good that we need to take oh my goodness everything was i have like so many thoughts and response to it like how do you live in a messed up social situation even on that you're not necessarily one of the biggest victims of you might be one of the like winners in that system but you still see it what how do you live in a society that is so unfair and not being waged every day you have to learn not to see it and i think that is what is so powerful about patriarchy you have to learn not to see the inequity i want to give a concrete example of this you're in a relationship with someone who every time you bring up a problem they say what is wrong with you you just nag and nag and you can never let it be and you know we were just having a nice time and we brought this thing up and what's your problem you have to learn to see things from their perspective and switch off your own frustrations in order to not be enraged yeah you saying that also just brought up a thought for me of like i think there's also this feeling that we are annoying by talking about this and we're complaining and we're not staying in our lane essentially and we're trying to be these like fighters for this good justice and like some people look at it like just shut the fuck up like everything's fine like especially coming from like oh like you're a white privileged woman and i understand that however as a white privileged woman using my platform is very important because if i can feel it i can only imagine what the minorities feel and the underprivileged women feel it's like it only is amplified times 100 and so i get frustrated where i can feel women and even myself in moments straying away from talking about it because it's the same thing when people started to just move away from the feminist movement because it's like i feel like we're just like annoying people seriously and like you don't actually want to keep pushing for change and what then ends up happening is there is this divide between women of the women that are like let's just keep it as it is and then the women that are like this is bullshit because you're right when you're in those fights with a man and they're telling you you're just being really overly sensitive like maybe you should take a minute and then come back or even in a meeting the women are not as credible as the men and what the men are saying and you can't be as assertive and you can't be and if we're too assertive we're a bitch and then they're a boss if they do it like there's so many things that are so ingrained in our society that in order for a woman to take a step forward and to try to elicit any type of response in her immediate area most of the time she's met with disgust and she's pushed away and she's overreactive and she and so it's it's really hard to do it on your own and it's infuriating that is the key like hold on to that rage right because the rage is what i think propels you to want to do something about it and you're right no it is it's maddening it's really really maddening from a psychological standpoint and i know this is basically what your entire book is about slash proving why is the patriarchy still persisting today actually that's really the question that that drove carol and i working together like for us it was a conundrum you have all of this research coming out that says basically healthy secure relationships are the key to like psychological and physical health so why is it the patriarchy persists and it doesn't just persist out there as something that we knock up against but it persists in almost intimate relationships right like what the hell is that about and basically what we discovered was that in part patriarchy persists because it serves a psychological function to be a patriarchal man meaning a man that sort of disavows disconnects from his vulnerability his need for relationships his emotional life not only does that give him incredible access to material gain it offers him a psychological armor in the world he no longer needs to risk the vulnerability that comes with being an emotional person basically what we found was in a culture where the conditions for healthy relationship are so impossible because the rules of the game patriarchal norms that kind of shame those relational capacities then becoming the patriarchal man and disavowing your relationality becoming the patriarchal woman who's all about the needs of others there's in addition to all the kind of social capital you gain there's also this sort of like like psychological armor that you're now wearing and so it's kind of like that woman who then says oh patriarchy might affect you not me i'm totally content i appreciate you explaining that because that's what i found so interesting in the book is like we don't act outside of these gender norms out of fear of losing relationships not being loved not being accepted because when we stay in the gender norms we are able to maintain this level of just equilibrium of like everything's fine we'll just i'll just say right here i won't act out but by subverting it's like by doing that and not being interested in pushing forward you then what you're saying you're detaching from your actual internal needs and they're so suppressed and they're so below because above those are what has been instilled in us in the patriarchy of don't act out don't be loud don't be angry don't do this it's like we don't actually we're not able to locate what you actually want what actually would make you happy it's very complex and i know there's a lot of layers to it but i love the word detached yeah no i just love that you're saying detached because i think that's what the that is what if anyone is wondering if you're listening to this and you're getting so frustrated like it doesn't affect me that probably means you're detached exactly yeah it probably means you're not in touch with what you really want to need because basically it's a compromise it's like look if this is if this is as good as it gets and complaining about it being frustrated about it just means that i don't even get what's good about it then what am i going to stop complaining about it i'm going to stop even knowing that there's anything to complain about but here's the rub and i think this is like the really key thing yes it has a psychological benefit but the point is reality still exists you're still getting burnt and that's the problem with these defense mechanisms you're still getting burnt you just don't even know about it it's like yes there's something protective about not being in touch with your vulnerability there's something protective about not being in touch with all the the pain and the frustration that comes with unfair treatment but at the same time if you're not in touch with any of those things then you lose all ability to do anything about them to change them what we see is all kids are suffering right now and rather than making that sort of something about social media or something about what's going on with these what's so messed up with this generation i really want to ask what's going on with our society that we have a whole generation of kids across the gender spectrum that are suffering and what's going on that the rates of girls suffering in this way are so much more than boys like everyone's suffering but what is that if you don't believe patriarchy exists is it just hormones are you gonna tell me it's like that it's such a good point i love that you just said that because you're so right it's like you can't dispel the fact that there are so many young women and young girls that are struggling i mean all the way down just like the way we look and how objectified we are it's like it's there's such a fixation on your worth is entangled into the way that you look as a woman and again like not trying to be like graphic here but like if you think about like when a woman has like oh like i don't have a six-pack like i have like you know a little pooch belly and like i'm eating good like leave me alone and if a man has the same exact thing he's still considered you know he's successful and he's got to go on and the woman she's completely devalued like oh she's not fit she's not thin but it's like we see all these men with beer bellies and yet they're still considered attractive because why but then a woman it's like you're not even considered beautiful or worthy or no one's attracted to you because you don't fit the exact standard that a man has put as to what women need to look like and as women we have not objectified men in the way that they have objectified us we have not had the power to objectify them essentially because our words are way less impactful and powerful than what the man can do to us yeah i want to add some things to what you're saying one is one is about thinness right yeah why is it you know thinness for women and it's funny i think you saw a shift and it's like coming back right there's like a them pick you know they're like what is it about thinness and i was with a friend the other day and i was like you know i think part of it is about that like disavowal of desire women in the patriarchy of women gaining social capital is to disavow desire desire of women whether it's for food whether it's for sex is shameful so we become more powerful by becoming sexless you know objects of desire with no desire of our own and so it's kind of like the anorexic there is a huge you know the psychological benefit of the absolute control that comes with that i desire nothing i'm all about the desire of someone else but like wow the suffering that is the mutilation to the self that is beneath that so i think in a way thinness is the perfect encapsulation of this like no one is going to deny that a thin white woman especially in this culture does not get some huge social capital and yet to get that there's like there's both physical mutilation and like desire the very essence of what it is to be human so like to be sexual to eat to have desire but don't you think naomi when i think about it what's crazy is like another when you said like how could you can't deny the patriarchy exists and i don't know if this is specifically patriarchy but if you think about it's like why historically for women has there constantly been a trend in what body type is desirable and then we see people injecting putting fake butts in and then getting ribs removed because the hourglass is in and now the straight board no hips when has ever there been a body standard that has shifted every decade for men you know it's such a good point it's like i would say that one of the things that you're talking about is this gender binary and hierarchy again men have mind body split right and so the mind is gendered masculine and that is what's valued about them women it's all like they're just bodies but just vessels either objects of desire or containers of life right and in a way it's like you're so like yeah that's such a good thing it doesn't really matter what the standard is it's the fact that throughout like it changes constantly but the fact is it's the thing that women have been judged by the whole like the whole time it's like what you've got to say is kind of beside the point is how you look you said something before and i want to actually get to a conversation of women versus women but something you said about how men are able to have a body and mind split and women it's like a lot of our self-worth comes from how do we look our body and not just even from our own self-worth it's how do we have like human capital in the world like how are we when we walk into a room if you look a certain way you're going to have a advantages i just feel so bad because when you think about it how so many men of course i'm not negating the fact there are so many men that have insecurities but the amount of men that wake up in the morning and don't think about their body in the way that women do if we were able as women to get to a place where body and mind were separate yes that rate of suicide for young women would probably be changed the mental health issues that women are having would probably at least be lightly alleviated because what we're saying is like why have women been so pigeonholed into like i remember getting made fun of by boys like you have no butt you have no butt when i was in high school and back then it was like there were celebrities that were really getting rising to fame with like butt injections and everyone all the guys were like a girl with a butt is like the hottest thing now it's like oh my gosh like skinny model why are we subject to change based off of what a man is allowing to be the what is sexually attractive and then we all just have to go get our injections or go get it and then if you don't it's like well then you are just not attractive and it's really awful how much it affects us men will never understand because they have never had a body norm that they've had to conform to yeah and it's a really good point i think a couple of things one is like sure like men have insecurities they're human right the difference is where there's insecurity the root is and how they're able to manage them right so from a man who's insecure about his body he can compensate in all sorts of ways right whereas the difference is it's not just her inner insecurity it's the fact that that's being fed back in the world that she lives in it's that your thinness affects your ability to get a job as a woman it's not like it's not just about like oh do i feel good in myself and so and also like shluffy guys are able to have great relationships right or you know it's like it doesn't really impact their their social capital and also they're like their attractiveness whereas for women it's like it's huge and i think it's dehumanizing i would like to know though as we're talking about this and you lightly brought this up like what is your psychological understanding of why the patriarchy pits women against one another how on earth can patriarchy persist without creating competition among women without pitting some women against other women it's sort of like it's integral to the whole thing if women joined other women in supporting all women then the patriarchy wouldn't stand a chance there's more of us than them right one of the ways that patriarchy does this is it splits women into the good women and the bad women right the women that are worthy of respect protection and some sort of like value it creates a culture of competition where we're all vying for a limited social capital it's not just that women are subjects to violence it's that women that don't play the game aren't even worthy of attention i think a question i have that may piss some people off but i was just thinking about this there are people that the internet and the world right now really deem as like these women have set such an unrealistic body expectation and image that a lot of young women don't feel like they can live up to whether it was they got surgery on their butt or their hips or their fate whatever it is and there's like a specific group of women i think a lot of people are constantly saying like you are fucking up young women yeah my question is is it their fault though so funny that you say this i was just following my phone earlier and saw this like article that was about because this is the group right the kardashians that are so much like kind of the um right the the poster child for what you're saying and it was a criticism of kylie jenner who i think it was like in season three was like i really regret the ways in which i changed my body to conform to these beauty standards and i don't want my daughter to do the same thing and i think part of the problem is that when we don't see patriarchy we just see it as individual women and we say it's the kardashians fault they're the ones who have created this problem i think it's much more nuanced than that i think you have to acknowledge what were the conditions what's the social situation for kylie jenner to become a billionaire in this society she had to mutilate her body in certain ways i think that if you blame her as an individual then you perpetuate the patriarchy in a certain way by sort of making women the target of your anger rather than the system at the same time i think that as women we have to own our complexity in the system we can't just keep hanging with victims of it so kylie jenner can't just say oh i regret this she also has to say you know like i've benefited from this hugely i have to take responsibility for the fact that this was a cost to me but it's one that i made and i benefited from and i actually did a lot of harm by doing that to myself and to other women it's like i think the problem with patriarchy is a problem that there's almost like do i've done to victim part of the narrative where it's like women are either victims or they're villains i want to say that no like hi again she's neither just a victim or a villain she's like the rest of us in this fucked up situation of patriarchy trying to survive it and she made a choice and that choice came with huge consequences massive benefits to her also huge costs that she's now grappling with and she doesn't want her daughters to make that same decision like i think with women it's not just situating ourselves as victims but it's also owning our choices in a way that's not about self-isolating about blaming ourselves and blaming other women i completely agree because i think there's a resentment that women have had towards that family and yet you're like well hold on i remember in an episode that kylie was like i remember my first kiss and this kid made fun of me because like i he was like she has no lips and it's like the reason that these women and they are not the only women they are 0.00001 percent of women in the world are doing it they are trying to feel better about themselves because they are insecure about something that is not technically appealing to the male gaze at the time and i think what is the issue is like instead of again i agree there has to be some accountability especially as a public figure but they didn't wake up one day if there was if the world was just all women and they were attracted to hetero relationships they probably would never gotten surgeries if it was all women in the world they would never have gotten surgeries but because there's this male gaze and there's this equity that you gain in order to if you look like something that there's again that goes back to the patriarchy you want to look like something because you are going to be more valuable in the eyes of a man and now what i do empathize with although they have to take accountability is their bodies their daughters are not going to look anything like their bodies they're not going to have the hourglass shape they're not going to have the you know what i mean and so now i'm sure as mothers they're going to have to realize oh wow right my daughter isn't going to have these lips or this butt or whatever it is and so again it really does send back to like not that i'm even trying to talk about the Kardashians there's so many women that are going through it like changing ourselves to appeal to men because we are valued at such a higher rate when we look a certain way but pitting women against women like fuck you Kardashians you made me feel insecure no they didn't the patriarchy made you feel insecure because they played into it and it just capitalized on it but you chose not to and that's okay but like we can't be mad at them because this is quite literally generationally everyone's seeing it Marilyn Monroe like you just keep going back there's always going to be a woman that set a standard that other women envied or hated on because they didn't have it but we almost can find empathy within like they're essentially appealing in a different way to patriarchy and i just i don't know it's a really interesting conversation it's much an interesting conversation i think you could almost like take and you're right it's not fair to just make this about the Kardashians but you could take them as a sort of like a metaphor or as a kind of expression of everything we're talking about of like why patriarchy persists on the one hand they are victims of it right it's like on the one hand that story is so moving right of like what was this all based on this is based on her being vilified and shamed based on her body and so essentially what we're talking about is she changed herself to conform to patriarchal sentence like it is a visual manifestation that we can all see that like expresses what we all do on a psychological level every day to varying effects right we change ourselves to fit in and in doing so we do two things we will do three i would say we help ourselves in certain ways we we sort of like we make a choice that says i'm not going to be one of those women who gets left out i'm not going to be the woman at the dance who doesn't get like called on i'm not going to be forgotten i'm not going to be one of those like whatever we want to call them and so like she changed herself there were huge benefits to that at the same time in doing that she became part of the patriarchal culture itself right she became a woman that other women looked up to as a sort of like expression of what they needed to be in order to to survive and to make ends be deemed as beautiful successful etc etc at the same time she made a choice that has huge costs to herself like i'm just thinking like what does it mean to be beautiful in the eyes of everyone in the world because you you've completely changed the way you look right like what does that do to your self-esteem it basically says but who i really am is like ugly and disgusting like and like you say there's that hugely sad thing of like not looking like your own children and like i think also she's saying like she doesn't want her children to have to tie their sense of worth to yeah like jesus she wants to see themselves as beautiful irrespective of the sun yeah i think also the point is like we again as women pinning against ourselves we have to also take some accountability when people are like they've their people are ruining it look inward you don't need to copy anyone you don't need to follow anyone no one told you to get lip injections no one told you to get ass implants like there are beautiful other people in hollywood also that didn't do that so there's also some accountability of like there was no psa that these people were asking anyone to follow what they were doing of course they were making a lot of money from the way that they look but i think the overarching thing is like we're constantly looking towards a woman to blame and to find some type of comfort and being like oh yeah they they have fucked us up no the patriarchy has fucked us up because it's like why is one of the biggest industries in the world cosmetics why do women feel the need to wear makeup and then don't like i know obviously there's so many different things like we love to wear makeup but actually like it really comes down to we're not good enough we need to put things on our face to look a certain way but there's an accountability level and there's also a really really looming dark feeling of even if you take the accountability and you try to work on it there's so many other people that aren't so is it even worth it and so i guess my last question for you naomi is like what are ways that we can collectively resist the patriarchy oh yeah and patriarchal thinking so i think there are two one of them is to really like be aware of and challenge patriarchal gender rules and norms so challenging the idea that women should be perfect that women should be selfless that women's value comes in their looks so it's like different from like vilifying individual women but really calling attention to the standards themselves i think though also there's a second one i think it's about amplifying the voices of resistance and i think this was your point earlier right like what is your role especially as a white woman a woman with privilege it's like we don't need some like savior complex it's not about our speaking for other women but we can amplify my own friend and really one thing that i do want to mention because i think it's not getting enough attention in western media is the feminist uprising in iran that is being led by young girls and it is a cross-generational cross-gender resistance meeting but it's young girls that started it and i think it's so cool i think it's totally like turning on its head our views of not just iranian women and this western-centric view of them as like victims but also young women in their power but one thing a friend said to me today and i was like so i thought it was so moving those women didn't ask for anything from the west except they said amplify our voices don't we don't want your money we don't want your charity we just want to we just want a platform and like where it ends and i think it is a hopeful note is we talk about the voice of resistance in our book that we're each one with this like human capacity for relationship to resist all of those things that get in the way of it and so i think if there's anything that we can do it's that when we hear that voice even if our first response is like god that woman sounds so bitchy that woman sounds so it's like take a pause and even if you disagree with them you don't have to agree with them that's the point it's like the huge difference between patriarchy is like we don't all need to agree with each other when you hear that outspoken woman when you hear that vulnerable man give them a platform amplify it you don't even need to agree with it so that's i think one of the like huge ways amen i mean we could have talked for hours and i really appreciate you going through this with me because i know even we started like it takes a minute to start talking about it in a way that's like ingestible and it's a lot and it's literally our everyday life and i know in the book you brilliantly basically refer to patriarchy as like this ghost like it's an unseen thing that's just around us and there's you know different versions of that in the world that we see but for women right now this is our fight and this is the battle that we have to deal with and i think it's really important especially as the next generations come to just be talking about this because no one was able to as loudly and as effortful as we are now like we are now really able to have podcasts to go on television shows and you're not getting canceled they're not shutting off the screen like we're able to talk we're able to discuss this and that is so powerful so let's do it as you say that it makes me think i don't like i'm not you probably know your own story better but what it's making you think is like your trajectory right and how you ended up like sort of taking this like taking it into your own hands you want to make me think it's like women of our generation have this opportunity because you don't have the same gatekeepers right you took like and so you can say what you want you can bring the women on that you want to bring on and like yeah i'm not like you know i'm sure you come up against it and some people like that alex cooper but the point is you know you're not like relying on some sort of radio network to say like yeah i'm gonna put our airtime you can't say that right right like i remember when i released my abortion episode after roe v wade was overturned and i was like i don't give a fuck if people are pissed about this like i'm gonna use this as my platform anyone else can post what they want but i'm gonna post about this and so i think it's so we're so fortunate that we are in a time that we're able to speak about this but we're also we cannot deny the fact that we're not there yet and it's gonna we won't even see it i know we won't see it in our lifetime but what i want to see is more progress in our lifetimes with that my daughter's daughter's daughters are one day hopefully actually considered equal human beings and again that then spans from not just women but minorities and non-binary and trans and just anyone in the lgbtq community it's just so important that we start to normalize a conversation rather than hide from it and disengage from it because it's our life it's literally what we're living and breathing every single day so i cannot thank you enough for coming on i really really appreciate the conversation i know the guy gang is going to probably listen to this three times and like okay this is heavy we need to adjust this we need to take notes but i i really thank you this was this was incredible oh i'm really grateful thank you so much you