The Insurgents
Ep. 357: Katrina vanden Heuvel & Serene Khader Interviews
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello, welcome. This is a solo episode, but it is a dual interview episode. I'm Jordan Yule, and I've got two great conversations coming up for you. First, Katrina Vanden Huvo, publisher of The Nation, joins me to talk about her latest column in The Guardian, where she talks about Bezos' influence over the editorial page, and as somebody who has written over 500 columns for The Washington Post, we get her take on that in the current state of the media, as well as the ongoing potential peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, whether we should trust the US as an honest broker, and how she feels as somebody who has been calling for a diplomatic end to this war, since early 2022, just after this war started, how she feels about now three years later, we may be seeing progress on that front, but it isn't coming under a Democratic administration. She warns that the Democratic Party is becoming a war party. After that, I'm joined by Serene Cotter, a philosophy professor at Brooklyn College and author of the new book, Faux Feminism, why we fall for white feminism and how we can stop. I read it before our conversation, it's really good. I would recommend it to you all, and especially a lot of our male listeners. We spend part of that conversation talking about how corporate white feminism is exploited by the right to make men feel worse. Of course, there are real issues affecting young men, but these same issues, these issues of a lack of prospects, a bleak economic future, existential threats like climate change affecting us all affect all of us, but the way they are spun by the right and exploited by right-wing content creators and messengers and demagogues, ultimately, they turn it into a uniquely male problem. We get into that issue as well, so stay tuned for that conversation. And if you can, go pick up Faux Feminism, I think you'll like it. So let's get into our conversation now with Katrina. (upbeat music) Joining me now is Katrina Vanden Ruhl, publisher of The Nation, a storied magazine, one that many friends of the show have either written for attributed to Katrina. It's an honor to have you here. How are you? - Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for having me on. You've written for The Nation. - I have. - Yeah. I love Ford's storied. It sort of consigns us to the past, but we turn 106, this year we're 160 years old. And we're not surviving. We're doing, well, thriving is hard to do in this environment, but we're keeping it together. And I think 160 years old of independence is pretty powerful. - It's really impressive. I was talking to my wife about this conversation yesterday and explaining the legacy of The Nation. It's just, it's so impressive. And you talk about the challenges that media institutions are facing right now. You have a new piece in The Guardian adding to that. Could you talk about what you're seeing in the media landscape from your perspective, the challenges that some of these legacy institutions are facing? - Absolutely. I mean, I note in the column that in 1996, we did a first center fold, glossy center fold, with four octopi, GE, ABC Disney, just to mark that news even back then when it was more supported was a cog in corporate calendars. And I think what that's become more and more a problem in these days, I think that reporting going on, a lot of it's really good. I'm on the Hillman Media Foundation Board, great journalism award for social justice and peace and corporate malfeasance. But the support for journalism, Jordan, is so tenuous. I mean, if it's in oligarch, which we've now come to call moguls or media moguls oligarchs, what Bezos did at The Washington Post and what we've seen kind of on-bended knee capitulation of a media oligarchy to Trump, 'cause they have business in Washington before relevant agencies. So I think it's been made more transparent what we've lived with. We probably need to reinstate the fairness doctrine, but that's not gonna happen under this FCC. But what's happened is also you. There are all kinds of media now. There's legacy media, which sounds a little old, but is valuable because I think of the scale it can bring lawsuits against a state for withholding information about death penalty cases or the Watergate that we're reporting. But new media is evolving. And we at The Nation understand that it's not just podcasts, it's independent radio, which I think is underestimated. All kinds of offshoots and publications, like Marshall Project, which was founded by a nation intern about 12 years ago, that gave impetus to more criminal injustice reporting. So I think it's a scrambled media terrain as is our politics and much more, but it's challenging and hopeful, I think. But the corporate capitulation is quite stunning. It's not just the Washington Post, it's CBS, ABC, across the board. We'll see what happens to MSNBC. It's gonna be spun off. That too is part of corporate structure. So we'll see how it fares. Cost cutting is a big part. I mean, I begin my column with 15,000 journalists have lost an ABC, what it does to make profit is cut. Cut people, cuts newsrooms, cuts news. - And we're seeing some outlets and news sites organizations shift to artificial intelligence generated pieces, which is to me very ludicrous. The Los Angeles Times had an experiment, if you wanna call it that, or an implementation of that that went horribly awry last week where within a day, it was talking about the KKK and just really bizarre stuff. - No, AI without morality. But what I really worry about is the future of work. I mean, I think the impact on, for example, people who drive trucks or who are doing services and jobs that can be sadly easily replaced by AI. There needs to be some real hard thinking about it. And it's interesting our representatives are dealing with a continuing resolution on the budget stuff, right? But there are not many people who know about, there are very few scientists, engineers, techno people. So that's also part, the Supreme Court decides on an AI case, but it has no real sense of it, except maybe there are clerks having done research. But I think it's something we wanna do more on the future of work and leisure. - Yeah, it must be both. - It's complicated as a publisher supporting the 35 hour week, but I'm doing, but we haven't quite moved it. - Yeah, well, there's one thing I wanted to ask you about, in this column, you talk about how you've written over 500 columns for the Washington Post between 2011 and 2022. And many of them were during, most of them were during basis as 10 years. - Days and time. Yeah, I mean, and I wrote once a week, most of the columns were at the new washingandpost.com, occasionally on the page. But the real issue is that I was writing about Amazon, strikers, labor issues, and inequality issues, tax issues that related to growing inequality and nothing. I mean, I had some very fine editors who made the copy better, but I never got like, you can't write about this. So what you can see that changed quite vividly. Now, I will say David Shipley, I've known, he was the one who left finally. He did, you know, he finally, he comes in as most new editors do, I guess, and says we're going in a different direction. I mean, I'd been writing for a long time, but it was not about, it was not about Bezos, Bezos. And look at what happened to a cartoonist. That's where we often see self, not self, but censorship. The cartoons have a power sometimes that copy words don't. So and tell us if that's how you pronounce it. We never, I mean, maybe it's floating around the internet, but the column she did, which she resigned over, because they wouldn't print it, was kind of making mocking Bezos's dictum. - Would you, in this current state, this is Bezos saying the editorial section, or the editorial page, the opinion section, must promote free market ideals and impersonal liberties. Would you write for the paper in its current state? - Well, I would write a column about the Amazon monopoly issue in the context of free markets. I mean, I'd put it up on its head, but I've never seen, I mean, I'm sure it's happened, like William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane, he ginned up a war, Spanish-American war at the turn of the century, last century, but I've never, we've seen oligarchs cut jobs to make more profit, but this was a really direct, this is what I wanna see published, and this is what will be. And I hope, I don't think you're gonna see people having fun with that, because the lead editorial editor Ruth Marcus, not lead, but she'd been at the paper for 40 years, her copy, which was likely to be generous in its criticism of Bezos, was the publisher refused to print it. I mean, that's stunning, but yeah, I think one could have fun with personal liberties, freedom of the press. If you can't, then you're not a reporter columnist journalist, but I don't think Mr. Bezos or Matt Lewis, who rebuked or turned down Ruth Marcus, are gonna print anything of great satire. I personally think reality has overtaken satire. So, my mother was very friendly with Terry Southern, Dr. Strangelove, et cetera, he gave up after Rumsfeld. I don't know what he'd then he passed away, but I don't know what he'd do now. Musk in the Oval Office with a little kid, and Trump just gazing out at the scene. It's like, but then there's cruelty. The cruelty piece could also be attacked or satire. Jonathan Swift type of satire. But there's a meanness and cruelty, I don't need to tell you about some of these cuts we're seeing and the deportation possibilities. They've already started. And the attack on institutions. And at heart, I believe there's an attempt to delegitimize the media as an accountability check. The idea of just getting rid of all the buffers, all the guardrails is at play. - You talk about historical examples of yellow journalism or wealthy elite controlling and shaping media. And I think people have criticized some sort of legacy institutions like The Post or The New York Times or cable news in the past for having bias in a selective hiring process. But this seems like a new frontier where Bezos is explicitly writing. This is the topic. These are the topics that you are going to cover. And this is the viewpoint that will be published. Why is he so brazen here? What's different about this? - It's a very interesting important question because we've seen a number of oligarchs, but I think he's testing the limits maybe, you know? I mean, he's going to open up a new arena of contestation of dispute. And he also has maybe the other oligarchs, for example, the physician, South Korean physician in LA who has messed around with the endorsement process of the LA Times. He may not have as ambitious a business plan as Bezos or as arrogant a sense of himself, you know, that he can be God. I do think those, and I believe there are two, there may be more, but those who have worked the space arena like Musk in the Starling, really, and Bezos. He has his blue capsule or... (laughs) - Blue origin. - And that there's something going on in the head if you want to conquer like colonized space as well as the planet Earth. So I think there's a little bit of that spirit. And, but it is a new frontier of what he did. I mean, you could see buying a magazine or a newspaper and deciding that the editorial page is just going to be what you want it to be. And it's what it's doing is treating a newspaper or media as a kind of, not a public good, but like a little cache that you have, which I think Bezos believes that he paid $250 million for the Washington Post. I mean, that's money, but in the context of what he has, there have been families. I mean, there are people with means who I think do want to build a media environment that is fair and just. I read about a project today where there's some people with means, resources, who want to bring back all the alternative weeklies. Now you're too young to remember the alternative weeklies, but they played a role sort of like the internet or social media at a different time with some pretty good reporting and it built a regional media. For example, The Stranger, I think it was in Oregon anyway, but I think there are new experiments, which are good. Bezos is not interested in new experiments, I think, except ones that make fabulous amounts of money. He has his experiments to play with and pretty space piece though, I think is real. - I want to pivot to another area that you're deeply familiar with. You've written writing about and thinking about for decades and that is Russia and Moscow's influence in Eastern Europe and you've written many pieces since just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, stressing the importance and the necessity for a diplomatic end to this war. Now it is three years old as of February this year. And again, you were early and often on this topic. We might see some progress on that front, but what is your current assessment of the diplomatic or potentially diplomatic negotiations that could end this war? - Yeah, thank you for asking. I mean, I've been studying Russia and the Russian media since 1982 and I worked with feminists and dissident communities in the Gorbachev years. So my views are informed by history. First of all, Russia invaded Ukraine, that's not disputed. But the ability to find a negotiated solution or diplomatic resolution has been on offer since about six weeks after the invasion. And it was scuttled for different reasons. I don't want to go into the details, but you did have on the table, so to speak, the idea of autonomy for Ukraine, security guarantees, all these things that are now appearing in the possibility of a temporary ceasefire, security guarantees for Ukraine, autonomy and no NATO. I mean, that's on the table. My view is that this is not World War II. I'm sorry, it's not like Munich. People are talking about how Russia would go to the Eastern European countries invade them, et cetera. We saw Russia how weak it is. I mean, it conquered 20% of Ukraine, which is too much, but it wanted to take over Kiev, I mean, and Ukraine in a month. The demographic crisis, the brutality of the battlefield in my mind is an important reason to find a resolution. Ukraine has lost 10% of its population, maybe more if you factor in those who fled the country. So it's a demographic crisis and Russia is a crisis. So you could see a war of attrition and continue for a number of years, especially because there's so many contesting, competing ideas. Trump is now back to giving intelligence and weapons. The intelligence piece is even more important than the weapons in some ways, but you will see the destruction of two countries. Many may feel that is the right thing to continue, but I do think the narrative that if there is a resolution, Russia will go east and conquer Eastern Europe and the Baltics and expand is not the case. It's weak in many ways, it's economy is weak. And I think it wants a security answer, not an expansionist answer. So these are very unpopular forces, Putin, Trump, Russia. The Ukrainian leader, it's interesting, has become more popular in the last week since the notorious Oval Office showdown. And so I think it's the envoy to Russia picked by Trump, Mr. Whitcoff is in Moscow now, I believe. I suspect he'll meet with Putin tomorrow. I suspect there will be motion and movement, but it's gonna take time. And I think it's better if there's talking, talking for a month to resolve rather than killing. I do worry about the nuclear escalation if this war goes on. I do see in this war, not World War II, but World War I, where thousands of men were killed every day on battlefields, different kinds of weapons now, but that's also made me think the way I do. I feel that it's not just Russia, Putin, it's also the nature of the world architecture, security architecture. And I feel that it's been so militarized in these last years, that that could lead to Europe being fully remilitarized. And what that means is one threats, nuclear dangers, but also the resources that are so needed to rebuild countries. I mean, first of all, how will Ukraine be rebuilt? There should be frozen assets of Russia used, but we are not good at rebuilding, helping to rebuild countries. We tend to walk away. And both countries, especially Ukraine, they're gonna need a lot of assistance. One problem is for the Democrats and progressives that Putin is Trump and Trump is Putin. It's scrambled. And to some extent, when Trump talks about curbing ending war, the messenger is so kind of chaotic and gives you whiplash. - You mentioned that meeting in the Oval Office with between Zelensky and Trump and Vance and Marco Rubio. Many people on the left saw that as just a disaster or embarrassing or just a kind of a circus. There might be some who see that, especially on the right, who see that meeting and interpret that as Trump and Vance being tough on Zelensky, who has become, you know, he was very close with, yeah, liberal figures. He was seen as a hero, portrayed as a hero. And the way the right has framed this war is that it drains US resources. We are just wasting money on this war that we shouldn't have any involvement in. And finally, Trump and Vance go in there and they talk tough with them. And then after that meeting, you see openness from Zelensky for diplomatic talks. What would you say to somebody who has that view of that situation? - Right. - What should they understand? - You mean that he was kind of coerced or bullied into submitting to a process of peace. I think, first of all, it was a 50 minute meeting as I understand, and we've seen 10 minutes, the kind of vitriolic, explosive 10 minutes, where Trump ends saying this is gonna be good TV. And Vance works hard to be the adopted son of Trump and the pit bull and the attack dog. And Zelensky is surprised in that meeting 'cause he's been treated as a hero for the last years. There's been no critical, and maybe people feel that's the right thing. I think holding a country accountable, even, I mean, the martial law has been on for a year. Media's been banned. Of course, it's been banned in Russia. It's more complicated. It's not to say that Zelensky's not a hero of a kind, but to ignore what's happening in Ukraine, it's gonna build up a lot of expectation. That meeting has, Zelensky, and I think his ambassador, who was at the meeting, who's head was in her hands for some of it, immediately went and wrote notes and things like that. And I think he's reestablished a relationship now with the Trump administration, where they met in Saudi Arabia with Ukraine and its representatives, and the intel and arms continue. And Europe, I think, this is important. Europe has decided it will become the guarantor of security if Trump and team continue to bash the institutions. Many Europeans believe one is needed. The danger is, again, Europe is gonna spend a lot of money in times of economic troubles on arms and not on their needs, society's needs. I mean, there are things like pandemics. I think we're sitting here on the anniversary. There are things like nuclear proliferation. There's a climate crisis, which we're not gonna get very far with drill baby drill, but there are a whole set of issues where I think cooperation among countries, I'll stop, but I'll say one thing, I think the meeting in the Oval Office was just, again, surreal. I mean, it was like, but the fact that President Biden didn't speak to President Putin for three years, any nuclear person who deals with nuclear dangerous threats, do you have no contact? Maybe there was a back channel one day, but there was no contact down the lines of the administration, which is dangerous in this world. - I'm curious how you would rate Biden's tenure as it relates to this issue. You might remember, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had a memo where they said, "Hey, please, as we continue to support Ukraine through intelligent sharing and arms transfers, please keep diplomacy as one option on the table." And they just dismissed them, leading to many of them rescinding their names from this letter. Like how would you rate the Biden administration? - I was going to Washington. I was going to Washington. I was in Washington that day into evening at the Tabernan running a panel on the Cuban Missile Crisis anniversary with great people from the National Security Archive, Tom Blanton, Svetlana, Ambassador Jack Matlock, who was Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union, talking about the need for cooperation on this issue. The Progressive Caucus letter had been put together in July by a very good leader from Illa Jayapal. They didn't go back to the offices to update because there had been ugly things happening in any war. So there was freakout. And per milla Jayapal was caught. She kind of blamed her assistant, this guy, wonderful guy, keen bot. But that showed how this issue is just combustible. And I do think, I really do worry about the Democratic Party becoming the war party. I thought Biden's tenure was important in terms of domestic politics. He got constrained by Republicans on a care agenda, but on labor issues, on industrial policy, on NLR, National Labor Relations Board appointments, I mean, you couldn't do better than some of what he'd done brought people into the administration. On foreign policy, it was as if it was 1947. I mean, this world is more complicated. Yes, there are autocrats, there are authoritarian figures, there's strong men, but to recreate this divide at a time when there are other issues. And I think he really believed it was a new Cold War, which in some ways it is, in some ways it's not. And he moved the guy, the goalposts. We weren't gonna send weapons, then we're gonna send weapons, then we're gonna send weapons which could go into Russia. And so there was a no diplomacy, which has been demonized as appeasement. When diplomacy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, if you hadn't had it. - What a world we would live in. That is something you say you're worried about the Democratic Party becoming a war party. On the other hand, on the Middle East, on the Middle East, I do think there's not enough in the Congress though Bernie Sanders and arms. And I don't think the Republican Party is horrific war party, certainly the Trump forces on issues of Palestine, of crimes, of ICC crimes. So I'm just thinking in terms of the remilitarization, if people are gonna support that deeply, it's gonna skew political parties. And I think the nation has many through lines, but one constant through line has been the idea that it's hard to have true democracy with endless war. And I fear that we've seen since, for much of our history, wars, wars, bases, arms. So anyway, I was part of that crazy group which opposed NATO expansion. There's like Ben Cohen of Ben and jurors and George Kennan. - Now that Trump is trying to bring, or the Trump administration is trying to bring these parties to the table, we saw after a meeting with the Russian counterparts of Trump administration, roiled the feathers of European leaders in Zelensky a few weeks ago, saying, well, there aren't really diplomatic talks if Ukraine isn't involved. But now they're talking to, of course, Zelensky, they're meeting in Saudi Arabia. That said, I'm still cautiously optimistic that this could result in a lasting agreement with security assurances that Ukraine desperately needs. So do you trust the US to be an honest broker here? - That's a very good question. My saying, my mantra, I don't know if you remember trust, but verify. This was Gorbachev and Reagan, trust, but verify. This was usually nuclear issues, distrust, but verify. I'm not sure I trust America. I don't not sure I trust Ukraine. I don't know if I trust Russia. Diplomacy needs a basis of trust, but it's not solely about trust. I think it's important that the two sides are talking. 'Cause that was gonna cut it off at the top, as you said, Ukraine said it has to be at the table. Well, they're slowly coming to one table. I'm not sure about how the ceasefire discussion will be long-term. Everyone wants that because if you rearm and go back to war, that'll truly shatter any mistrust, trust. But I think it's important that countries which have been at war with no engagement are talking. If you, Vietnam War, by the way, there was a lot of time spent on the shape of the table. Was there gonna be square around? So when people got all agita about like, where's Ukraine at the table? It's all over right away. I'd say, you know, these things take years sometimes. This really needs to move in a better direction, but the long-term may take long. So I'm a believer in history. I really do. I mean, not boring, history can be boring, but it can be living history too. Like if you have a sense of connection, if it's tethered to the past too strongly, it's not valuable. But if it relates to what we're seeing, you can sense that we've been through this or certain ways been through it. There's a resilience. There have been, I'm still kind of crazed about, you know, Dick Cheney. I mean, we were debating torture. Now it's sort of settled, I guess it's horrific. But you know, we were debating things that just made our country seem illegal. Newt Gingrich advised Republicans not to get a passport when he was speaker 'cause it was dangerous out there. - And I think that's the one thing that many world travelers would urge kind of cloistered or sheltered Americans to do to get out and broaden their horizons. And I think they would find themselves becoming more welcoming and understanding and inclusive people as a result. - Well, I know that I'm a provincial 'cause I've lived in New York much of my life, but we'll find ways to become less provincial in this period. Thank you for having me, I'm hot for now. - Thank you so much for joining me. I really, really appreciate it. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - That was a really good conversation. I highly, highly respect her. Really appreciate that she was willing to come on the show. And now I think you're going to enjoy my conversation with Serene. And now I'm joined by Serene Cotter, author of the new book, "Foe Feminism." Why we fall for white feminism and how we can stop. Serene is also a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and holds the Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College. Lot of work, many titles, an accomplished academic and writer Serene, thank you so much for joining me. How are you? - I'm great, thank you so much for having me, Jordan. I'm excited to be here. - I'm excited to have you here. I just finished your book, "Foe Feminism." This morning, I've been talking about it with a couple of friends and I have so much to ask you. I really wanna dig in, but first I have to ask you a question. We ask many of our guests just to get to know them better, just to understand who we're talking to. Serene, are you a gamer? - I am absolutely not a gamer. - Many of the men in my lives are my lives. My life are gamers, including that. I don't know if this will give me any cred, but yesterday I asked my brother, have you ever tried flaming hot cheetos? Where have this been all my life? And he said, of course I'm a gamer, I'm a gamer. So I guess flaming hot cheetos might be my connection to gaming, I'm definitely not a gamer. - You know, we'll be generous here. We're always looking for ways to strengthen our ranks. I think we're gonna have to include you. I think understanding gamer culture, gamer identity is really important. So I sure I'll count you among us. - Cheetos are the deep connection that unites all of us. - Yeah, people say class, I think you're right. I think it is, it's flaming hot cheetos. Serene, like I mentioned, I finished your book and I'm wondering if you could give listeners a primer. What is to you faux feminism and what should people? I know we have a lot of male listeners. They might not see different shades of feminism. They might see it as kind of a catch all term. And I know they certainly see the way it's used in a derogatory sense from the right. But how do you differentiate white feminism from what you see as a more inclusive and uplifting and collective form of feminism? - Full feminism for me is a form of feminism that prioritizes the interests of elite women above the rest of women or even throws non-elite women under the bus. And a lot of what I try to say in the book is that white feminism and neoliberal feminism and these other faux feminisms are really united by this deep belief that feminism is about individual freedom and that's the goal of the movement. And what I'm really trying to do in the book is to reorient our conversation about feminism to say that feminism isn't at bottom a movement for individual freedom. It's a movement against hierarchy and in particular a movement to end the form of structural hierarchy that we call oppression. And I think part of why that's really important, especially for an audience like yours, is that it makes very clear immediately how feminism is aligned with the struggle against white supremacy and with criticism of capitalism. I think one of the reasons we've sometimes seen feminism end up serving elite women and you know, actually we see girl-boss feminism where I also talk about uses of feminism that align with imperialism. I think a lot of why we end up seeing that is that we don't recognize that feminism is a struggle against a deep type of inequality that afflicts women and gender expansive people as a group. I think many people now think feminism is at the end of the day about individual women just being able to do whatever they want to do. - Yeah, you talk about how like, choices, individual choices is often framed as feminist. And there are entire schools of thought or online brands or products or essays and columns about is ex-action feminist or can I do this and be feminist? And like so much of like modern activism, people see consumption as a form of activism. And I think this is an extension of that. It's, am I able to buy this and still have this identity or set of beliefs? How do you distinguish these choices or consumption habits from actual like radical action, inclusive feminism? - Yeah, I think the big picture is really switching from a focus on the choices that individual people make in their personal lives to questions about the menu that we make our choices from. And I think and I say in the book that this emphasis on like being a feminist in your personal life, like it partly has a radical history because of course it's very true that women's personal lives and gender expansive people's personal lives have been a place where a lot of injustice happens, right? Like people ignored rape for so long, partly on the grounds that they would say things like this is the politics of the bedroom or something like that. But there's also like this idea that our personal lives our political has gotten very kind of out of hand in the like kind of age of rampant neoliberalism that we're in. And one of the stories I tell in the book, for example, is that a lot of the root of this idea that feminism is about not non-judgment is actually in like the mommy wars of the 1990s when which was this important period because feminists were winning in a lot of ways. And then Republicans came up with this clever idea which is to say feminists hate stay-at-home moms, right? And there's this, we see echoes of that today in trad wife content that says things like feminism is telling you to drink red wine until you're always dry up or something like that. And the truth of the matter is that focusing on questions about whether we're gonna judge each other misses the fact that the menu of choices that women are choosing from is rigged and turns our eyes away from really intense, important issues that affect women's choices around care, labor, motherhood, career, which is that our society has no solution for a person who wants to be economically independent of another person and wants to have children or engage in caring labor toward elders or something like that. This whole idea that the options are to be a stay-at-home mom or to be a career woman. And that's only any way if you have the race and class privilege where being a stay-at-home mom was ever an option. Like that whole menu is a messed up menu. The only way to liberate women is to change that menu by providing economic support for care work. But we're never gonna do that if we keep thinking that feminism is about kind of patting ourselves on the back and being like, oh, it's great that you're a stay-at-home mom. Oh, it's great that you have a career when really the deep problem is a form of capitalism, but it's a form of capitalism that is racialized because the work of caring for dependent people is largely put onto women of color and also increasingly onto immigrants and men of color. And it's a form of capitalism that is deeply gendered because it doesn't even recognize the work that's being distributed unequally as work. There was another point kind of along those lines about individual choices. I didn't realize or I guess understand until reading this that the phrase self-care has been co-opted. Could you talk about the origins of this phrase and how you see it used now? Yeah, the term self-care, it seems, was coined by the black feminist lesbian activist, Audra Lorde, whose poetry many folks might be familiar with. And she coined that term in one of her books that was about her struggle with cancer. And so she really, if you could read the passage where she talks about that, it actually begins with this intense meditation on how lucky she, a black lesbian feminist writing in the '80s, has been in her life that she's able to receive medical care. And then what she says there is like, self-care is a part of the struggle, but it's self-care is a part of the struggle partly because I can only recommit to the struggle if I have cared for myself enough to keep giving back to the struggle. And I think today when we hear the term self-care, it's not the idea that it's about keeping your, serving yourself so that you can be part of the struggle is really absent and it's been turned into like, get a massage, make some time. Or I mean, a whole other kind of more pernicious element that I feel like I can kind of share on this like left-ish podcast is this like, I don't want to have any relations with anyone because they're toxic. And it's self-care for me to not engage with anyone. And of course, I agree that it can be self-care to not engage with people who are genuinely abusive. I'm not trying to deny that. But the original purpose of the self-care discourse was to say that self-care is partly a gift that you give to the struggle when you participate in the struggle. And also that self-care is particularly important for members of society who are told that they don't deserve pleasure and joy and calm and vitality. - Now, one of the things that I appreciated about this book and it helped me gain a greater appreciation and understanding of was the ways that what we understand white feminism is and as and how it is kind of used as essentially a tool of oppression for women of color. You talked about domestic work. You talk about service work a lot also in this book. And I'm wondering what should people and especially for like the guys listening to this, you often will hear people kind of knock successful, corporate, often white women who frame themselves. As like the feminist corporate leader, Cheryl Sandberg gets hit all the time for her book, Lean In. What should people really understand about this dynamic and how this is used as a tool of oppression? - I think partly that the girl boss is, she's a problem, but she's really the tip of a much deeper iceberg. I'm a philosopher. And so what I think about a lot is kind of what the, I think a lot about values. And I think about the ramifications of arguments, like several steps ahead instead of just kind of the next move in the game. And so one of the deep reasons that the idea that feminine is the individual freedom becomes a weapon against women of color is that there's this idea that culture is the same thing as patriarchy or that relations with other people are the same thing as patriarchy ends up really serving as a justification of women of color and has a really long history in imperialism. So one example that I talk about in the book that comes from the contemporary United States is Mickey Kendall's story and hood feminism. She has this great chapter that's called The Hood Hate Smart People. And it's about how white women always assume that her black community was against her success. Because if you're attached to a community of color, that community of color must be dragging you down. And that history has a very, like it has an even deeper imperialist history where we like, you know, there's this narrative about the enlightenment that basically says something like, oh, you know, everybody used to be primitive and now the West is no longer primitive but people in other cultures are primitive and patriarchy is evidence of that. And then it's not hard to see how we get from there to arguments that hijab should be banned or in the kind of extreme examples that the use of feminist rhetoric to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. I mean, you will hear personalities justifying that saying that well, wouldn't women be better off without Islam? This deep idea that feminism is about individual freedom is a part of the problem and has this really long colonial history. - Well, yeah, many, many people on the right who were opposed to the US's withdrawal from Afghanistan finally after 20 years pointed out, oh, well, you know, the women there are suffering now that we've left. I would imagine they didn't have a great experience over the past 20 years with us there either. - And it was just so strikingly cynical 'cause that's clearly not their motive. - Yeah, and it really also, I think, that sort of right-wing realization that being bombed might not be a great thing for women either. I think it also speaks to another reason that what I call the culture myth, like the idea that feminism is about freedom from culture is a problem. And that's that this idea that culture is oppressive and other cultures are oppressive. Like, it's not just a vehicle of white supremacy. Like, part of how it works is by erasing the history of colonialism and the effects of capitalism on these places, right? Like, why aren't people who are making that point curious about why the Taliban became the government of Afghanistan in the first place? But like, there's a concrete history here that has to do with the Cold War and the interests of the great powers, but circulating in the Western imaginary, like the go-to explanation is that it's something about the culture of Muslims that has caused this horrible, you know, extremely, extremely sexist, patriarchal treatment of women. - I'm curious, what would you say to a young man listening to this thinking like, well, what do I need that book for? Like, I know, yeah, I'm a progressive or I'm a lefty. I understand these problems are intersectional. Why should I read this? What's your message to them? - I have a couple of messages for them. One has just come for the rich stories about feminist activism that has been done historically. That is actually left activism and actually anti-racist activism. If you accept sort of the popular media narrative about it, or even the narrative that you might hear in many college courses, you might get the idea that like, what feminism has always been is just the movement of the suffragists. It's always or just the movement of housewives in the 1960s. And so you might think that feminism is a more elite movement than it actually has been. And the book is really full of positive stories of activism led by women in the labor movement, by women of color, and by women in the global south that really shows another vision of feminism as something that's aligned with other struggles to end hierarchy. And really, the book makes a case that this has always been there. It's not like some people have to invent. This has always been there. These stories just have not always been told as feminist stories. The other thing I'd say to come for is some critical thoughts about men and masculinity, and also how we might imagine it differently. Because a big part or like one downside of what I'm calling freedom feminism is the assumption that the liberation of women can happen just by changing women. And the truth of them and by telling women that they should go out there and be assertive or that they should work harder. I think a fact about feminism that men need to acknowledge is that men need to change. And they need to change especially because, and this is another central idea in the book, the gender division of labor continues to be a very real problem in women's lives. And they might get a little more mom content that they would want in there. But I think these stories are important. And I also try to offer some stories of maybe more better forms of masculinity. And one of them that I love is the story of Rivashi Sanyi in India and the Parnas school for boys, which is a school that she has, she started out having a school for Dalit girls in India based on radical feminist pedagogy. The community eventually said like, "Well, what about our boys?" And basically one of the things that came out of it was ways that this form of patriarchy isn't working for men, and especially it's not working for non-elite men. So one of the messages that that movement really tries to perform and that's coming out of these boys narratives is like, well, how is this idea that you should be a provider working out for you in a world where you are very poor and facing a lot of cast oppression? Like, it's not working out for you. It's giving you this ideal that you're never going to be able to meet. Like, wouldn't it be better to instead think of yourself as kind of part of a family unit and a relationship that's facing the world together instead of as being this man who's never going to meet this ideal that has been socially set up for him? So I'd also say come for maybe some possible stories about how to reimagine masculinity. - Yeah, on that point, like we are living in a, in the United States specifically, we're living in a country that, through threats of automation and outsourcing and a transition to gig work, there are seemingly fewer and fewer sustainable and robust opportunities for everybody, right? And that has been exploited, especially by the right and framed as a problem solely and uniquely affecting young men, largely young, white men. And Trump rode that era or that wave of young male angst to, back to the White House, Republicans are feeding off of it, we're having this national conversation around, who's the Joe Rogan of the Left? Because a lot of isolated young white guys will watch that show and other shows like it because they find some sort of meaning or purpose it in consuming that content. So could you talk about how this fits into or in part explains that problem and why we should see these struggles as interconnected, not just affecting young white men? - I was gonna ask if you were really the Joe Rogan of the Left. (laughing) - Definitely not. (laughing) - Definitely, you're definitely not. But how does this help us see these struggles as connected? I think, you know, part of the story is, I think we already know, or I think most of your listeners know that whiteness has been used as a kind of cudgel against the working class to try to convince the white working class to invest in their own interests at the expense of workers of color and at the expense of poor people of color and at the expense of immigrants. I think part of what this book adds is a story about how gender is like that too. Like that being asked to invest in your masculinity at the expense of solidarity with other people who are more on your team than you realize is at the end of the day going to be a losing battle. And at the end of the day, a lot of the things that feminism strives for are things that are as Bell Hook's families famously said, like really for everyone. I talked about the importance of value and care work to ending the gender division of labor and to uplifting domestic workers in particular. But the truth is that like, I think maybe this is, you know, a naive thing to think but I think a lot of men would rather have richer, more fulfilling relationships with their families, with their children. Like, why are they being told to invest instead in this kind of masculine role that isn't going to work out for them? When there are actually like real moral and political benefits and kind of rich meaning to be taken from solidarity with women and solidarity with gender expansive people because obviously one of the places right now where it's important to talk about hegemonic masculinity is the way that this administration is using and creating animosity against trans people and hoping that this will work especially to get male voters to support them. - You mentioned before we started recording, there's also an element here where that same type of sentiment is exploited for fascist purposes. Do you have, I guess, historical examples or an anecdote or something that people could see or hear that would help them understand how the same type of pitting groups against each other within this context has been used before and what they should be worried about and on the lookout for going forward. - Yeah, I've been actually in conversation a lot with a young scholar named Syra Rifey who is writing a dissertation about fascism and one of the things that she really points out is that fascism has kind of always been about people being emissurated and capital sort of realizing that if there's kind of a right-wing candidate that will take that emissoration and exploit it that capital can kind of ride the co-tales of that candidate. But the way that that will happen is usually by telling people to substitute in group, out group, anger for anger about the capitalist system or anger about the white supremacist system. And so I think that's so clear right now when we see that people are concerned rightly about various forms of the economic hollowing out of the country, but the idea that this is caused by trans people is clearly kind of a, I mean, it has nothing, it actually has nothing to do with it, right? And the, I think there we may also see a claim to say like, oh, aren't you more worried that your masculine gender role is being threatened then and aren't you worried that your ability to, I mean, remember when Trump said in the election protect women whether they like it or not is being taken away by these trans people who are eroding the gender binary, you know, so, and I mean, it's very striking, right? Like when you think about the content of things like, you know, last night, your listeners don't know what they were recording, but we're recording the day after Trump's address to Congress, when he tells us that his great accomplishment is that he's creating gender roles for the United States of America and in official language for the United States of America. Like, how do these respond to real people's everyday needs? They don't and what they do do is deeply compromise like the basic rights of people who are absolutely in need of our solidarity. - Yeah, it's just, to some people, they might think it is a low hanging fruit or just him throwing red meat to his base. Like, I think the Gulf of America thing, obviously it's ridiculous and stupid. Doesn't have as great of significance as the national language which could create complications down the line in terms of paperwork, people, if these programs still exist, accessing the benefits they are entitled to, if they are relying on social safety and programs could present an obstacle there. It's already difficult of a system enough. It's already a difficult system right now to navigate. And then of course, the gender binary, we know it's ridiculous, we know why they're doing it, but like all of these things together stack up and create a more divisive, hateful, really society that further marginalizes people that we should be looking out for. And if we are progressives and leftists and we're committed to those ideals, we have to fight for it. And it's just shameful to see people kind of abandon these fights or causes, wash their hands of it and say, "Well, it's unpopular, electorally." Then make it popular. We've made things popular before, fight for it. It's very frustrating. - Well, and people's basic human rights are not a popularity contest, right? And I think it's very important to remember that it's a long history in this country of cases where, for example, courts have had to intervene to do things like enforce desegregation of public schools because that was an unpopular cause to some people once too. And I think it's really important when we hear these arguments that say like, "Oh, he's just throwing something to his base," to remember that there are concrete policies being put in place that dramatically affect people's lives. Like, if we may effectively have right now a travel ban for trans people because of these executive orders, there are states moving to make gender affirming care into child abuse. I mean, think about what that means that like you, as a parent who's trying to care for your child, are worried about your child being put in the foster care system. I, as a public educator in a large city, thinking about what if ICE comes into my classroom, right? Like, these are people who are saying that this is just throwing a bone to the base, like are also missing the fact that real people's lives and interests are already being very, very dramatically affected. - Well, Serena, I've, I really enjoyed the book and I've enjoyed talking to you. Is there anything else you would like to add that people should understand about the book or the school of thought? - I think I would just add that a big part of the idea of the book is that feminism is a movement for us. It's not just a movement for individual freedom and I think that's incredibly important in this political moment where effectively fascists are trying to divide us against each other and see how far we can get telling individual people, oh, do what benefits you and don't worry about anybody else. I think this is absolutely a moment to think about solidarity and to think about, for each person to think not just about their own individual interests. And I think that's always what feminism has been about and the book is full of stories and strategies about how to practice that kind of feminism. - Absolutely, extremely relevant. Unfortunately, relevant as well. - More relevant than I thought. - Right, well, Serene, thank you so much for joining me. Faux feminism, why we fall for white feminism and how we can stop is available now. Go pick it up, can't recommend it enough. Serene, thank you so much for joining me. - Thank you so much for having me Jordan and I'm for all the work that you do. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You