0:10

Welcome to Blocked and Reported. I'm

0:13

Katie Herzog and joining me today

0:15

while Jesse is very very drunk.

0:17

We have two very special guest

0:19

hosts, Kat Rosenfield and Phoebe Maltz-Bovey.

0:22

Kat is a critic and the author

0:24

of fantastic murder mysteries, including most recently

0:26

you must remember this. And Phoebe is

0:28

a columnist and editor at the Canadian

0:30

Jewish News and a co-host of its

0:33

Bonjour Chai podcast as well as... Chai.

0:36

Oh really? I already fucked it up. That

0:38

makes sense. It is a Jewish podcast, not

0:40

an Indian podcast. First correction of

0:42

the show, Bonjour Chai? Yeah,

0:44

well done. Okay, well done. All right, thank

0:46

you. She's also the author of the 2017 book,

0:49

The Perils of Privilege, which was certainly ahead

0:51

of its time and I think would be

0:53

of great interest to many of our listeners

0:55

today. And together they host the podcast Feminine

0:58

Chaos, Kat and Phoebe, Phoebe and Kat, welcome

1:00

to Blocked and Reported. Thank

1:02

you. Thank you. You

1:04

two, I should say, you two

1:06

are actually sort of responsible for

1:09

this podcast because the

1:11

three of us are in a group chat with Jesse and

1:13

you started Feminine Chaos in what year was it? 2018 I

1:15

think? Yes, that was

1:17

the first blogging heads version of it. Oh yeah,

1:19

that's right. It was blogging heads. So you guys

1:21

started your show and we're on this

1:24

group chat together and it was just like, I think Jesse and

1:26

I were just straight up jealous. And so

1:28

we decided to team up together and make this

1:30

show. So as a thanks to

1:32

you both, I've decided to give you his start of the

1:34

money. Oh, perfect. Thank you

1:36

so much. I love that

1:38

you guys started your podcast after us and

1:41

then immediately exceeded us by like an

1:43

order of magnitude and success. This

1:45

is like where the student exceeds the master

1:47

or whatever. You know

1:49

what we had going for us was

1:51

COVID. We just got extremely lucky with

1:54

the timing. Also Jesse's illustrious sex appeal.

2:00

Her cat is also a comic. Or

2:03

is that we've got a great show Planted

2:05

a what I would like to talk to

2:07

you both about his home renovations because we

2:09

are all and Nazis life. but I suppose

2:11

we should save that for in person. So

2:13

instead we're going to discuss issues that are

2:15

close to all of our hearts. three women

2:17

and scandals in the world of young adult

2:19

literature. Or before we get to that, I

2:21

want to as you both something that I've

2:23

been thinking about a lot recently. This is

2:25

something that Animals brought up on the show

2:27

when he was on last month, and he

2:29

basically argue that. Elon Musk buying

2:31

Twitter destroyed Twitters power as a mechanism

2:33

for cancellation. So I'm wondering what you

2:35

both think about that. and I'd like

2:38

you to think about this in the

2:40

context of one specific culture where issue.

2:42

And that's me too. So cat, let's

2:44

start with you. You recently wrote a

2:47

column for Unheard titled how Me To

2:49

Became to Cringe for America of rape

2:51

allegations lost their power so how are

2:53

you thinking about those To that poem

2:56

was pegged to the release of Christine

2:58

Blasi Ford's new memoir, which. Is coming

3:00

out a bit a bit late in

3:02

in time to jump on the tree

3:04

and me to train. She's a we

3:06

have moved on your seriously it's so

3:08

I was really interested to see when

3:10

there's no more came out like it

3:13

didn't get very much advance buzz. and

3:15

then on the day of you know

3:17

there were there were a few reviews.

3:19

It was nothing like the kind of.

3:21

What if really experts? It's like a lot

3:24

more fanfare for this. be rid of me

3:26

to folk hero who is releasing a book

3:28

or you know for for first book and

3:30

said it was almost slave. It was almost

3:32

like see people are kind of uncomfortable and

3:35

embarrassed at even having to look back at

3:37

how we all behaved at the moment. would

3:39

receive lazy for with such a big deal.

3:41

she's like that high school friend who like

3:43

you lover but you don't wanna hang out

3:46

with her because you know she's gonna bring

3:48

up the really embarrassing thing that you disagree

3:50

with Scissors of Indian you'll. Echo for use

3:52

as soon as I said it anymore.

3:54

Typically bring it up in a agricultural

3:57

hearing? Yes, Yeah, exactly. So,

4:01

you know, I do think that like, we've

4:04

seen me to kind

4:06

of come and go, right? And

4:09

in 2019, we had the books, what

4:11

is it, Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow, and then the other

4:13

one she said. So we had the movement,

4:15

and then we had the books about the movement, and

4:17

then we had the movie about the book about the

4:20

movement. And now, you know,

4:22

and then people were done. People were

4:24

like, you know, all right, enough with

4:26

sexual assault, let's all get obsessed with

4:28

race, and instead of believe women, it

4:30

was like, shut up Karen. And

4:33

remarkably quickly. Yeah, especially because it was

4:36

white women all of a sudden went

4:38

from being the victim to the villain.

4:40

Exactly. Exactly. So

4:42

now, on the cold light of day, I

4:44

think that for Christine Blasey Ford to show

4:46

up, like, and her book is just basically

4:48

retelling the story of how she decided to

4:50

come forward and testify that, you

4:52

know, Brett Kavanaugh jumped at her at a party in 1982.

4:57

Like, we were at the point

4:59

where we were sort of trying not to think

5:01

about that, where you're looking around and you're like,

5:03

okay, you know, in hindsight, perhaps things all got a

5:05

little out of hand. And so I

5:08

was just interested to see that, yeah, she got

5:10

this very lukewarm reception. Even the

5:12

reviews of her book that were kind of like

5:14

dutifully positive were not

5:16

glowing. And the New

5:18

York Times was like outright disdainful. It called

5:20

her book prosaic. Okay, yeah. So I found

5:23

that I found your piece about this really

5:25

interesting. And this came out at roughly the

5:27

same time as this piece this

5:30

week in New York Magazine about

5:32

Andrew Huberman. Do you want

5:34

to explain this? I have to admit, I did not read

5:36

all 10,000 words about it. I was

5:38

more interested in the reaction to it. So will

5:40

one of you give the sort of short

5:42

version of what this piece was about? I can

5:44

try. Andrew Huberman

5:48

is a bro podcaster

5:50

as well as a Stanford professor. So he

5:52

has, he wears two hats. And

5:54

he wears a

5:57

third hat, but not the other sort of.

6:00

Hat lower down on his body that he maybe should have

6:02

worn but

6:04

basically This is

6:07

a great big expose Like

6:11

this Carrie Howley wrote it, okay In

6:16

the cut about how basically what

6:18

all the while he's preaching self-help

6:20

and optimization he's also been Concurrent

6:24

he's been doing some non ethical non-monogamy

6:26

with a bunch of different women Which

6:28

I'm struggling to figure out how these

6:30

two things are in conflict with each

6:32

other. Yeah, that's the confusing bit, right?

6:34

So does it do these things have

6:36

anything to do with each other? And

6:38

I guess like I came away from

6:40

this thinking wouldn't it help your sort

6:42

of cred in that world and that

6:44

type of podcasting If you

6:47

are a bit of a cab, I don't know So

6:49

that's what I found interesting about the response

6:51

to this piece again So I didn't read

6:53

this piece because I have a I have

6:55

a rule about not caring about podcasters love

6:57

lives I don't think podcasters should have

6:59

love lives. It's disgusting. I'm not gonna read about

7:01

it But I did I did

7:03

follow the reaction on Twitter

7:06

and what was interesting to me about

7:08

this is that it was

7:11

Not you like my feed was not

7:13

evenly divided among people saying that this

7:15

was that this guy is a dirtbag

7:17

and a sleaze the majority

7:19

of the of the commentary that

7:21

I saw was people saying a This

7:25

is fucking cool or B Who

7:28

cares that was the majority opinion that I saw was

7:30

people saying this shouldn't be a story and that to

7:32

me Shows some real shift

7:34

since the height of the me

7:36

to movement where any not

7:39

even non-famous person's Sex

7:41

life was could be held up for scrutiny at

7:43

any time by the media and this guy is

7:45

legitimately famous And now we have a lot of

7:47

people saying who cares even if what he did

7:49

was I mean I don't think it's particularly cool

7:51

to like She on

7:53

five different women at one time He comes

7:56

across from what I can tell as really

7:58

a pretty big douchebag But

8:00

to me, that says something that we have

8:02

really moved on from this moment, if the

8:04

majority opinion is this should not be a

8:06

story. This is a hit piece and this

8:08

should not be a story. Well, I also

8:10

wonder whether we are literally recording this at

8:13

the end of the week of that exact

8:15

vibe shift because the cut also published this

8:17

piece about the case

8:19

for dating older men or marrying

8:21

older men. I don't have this

8:23

open. Oh, yeah, sorry. The case

8:25

for marrying an older man by

8:27

Grazie Sofia Christie. And

8:29

it's a very, I mean, I don't know whether it's like a

8:31

sort of dine square

8:34

type aesthetic or

8:36

politics, but basically,

8:38

it's very much post

8:40

feminist. It's something

8:42

between being a kept woman

8:45

being a tradwife and advocating for that. And

8:47

it's not even advocating for that in the

8:50

name of feminism. It's just plain advocating for

8:52

that. And I just

8:54

thought it was interesting that the cut would

8:56

feature that the cut has really figured out

8:58

the formula for how to still have an

9:01

article go viral on Twitter. I'm not sure

9:03

that any other outlet can consistently do it.

9:05

But just in the past couple of months,

9:07

we've had, you know, the big non monogamy

9:09

piece, the polyamory piece that people were talking

9:11

about. I think people are unfortunately still talking

9:14

about the Superman piece, this

9:16

older men piece. Totally. Emily

9:18

Gould's essay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

9:22

So the Hebrewman piece, you

9:24

can really sort of like, you can feel

9:27

the ghost of the sordid expose that it

9:29

was supposed to be, like lurking in the

9:31

background unfulfilled because it never quite got there.

9:34

And I think that I don't

9:37

know, I mean, I really love

9:39

Carrie Howley's writing. And I enjoyed

9:41

that article, like on on

9:43

its literary merit alone, because it was fun to

9:46

read. But journalistically, it does feel

9:48

really kind of thin. And

9:51

it strikes me that like, there

9:54

would be a version of this article, and

9:56

I think it may be in 2019. or

10:00

2018 at the height of

10:02

me to madness, where

10:05

the writer could have hid the ball much

10:08

more and at the end you would come

10:10

away believing that he is basically a

10:12

sex criminal as opposed to just a really

10:14

bad boyfriend. But

10:16

instead, I think that the

10:19

kind of big reaction that I saw with

10:22

respect to this piece so much was people

10:24

would get to the end

10:26

and be like, I was waiting for the other shoe

10:28

to drop the whole time and nothing ever happened. What

10:31

did this guy actually do? This isn't really news. It's

10:33

just that. You should have inserted the word trauma a

10:35

few dozen times. I

10:37

think, I mean, maybe I'm giving her too

10:39

much credit, but I think maybe she had

10:42

too much integrity to kind of drag the

10:44

article into that territory or maybe just saying

10:46

this because I really like her work. But

10:48

yeah, this piece is not what it would

10:51

have been a few years ago and

10:53

the reaction to it was also not what it would have

10:55

been a few years ago. I think that a few years ago,

10:58

people would have basically wanted this guy

11:00

to suffer professional

11:03

and social death for

11:05

having been just non-ethically

11:07

non-monogamous. Although I also have

11:10

to say, in a

11:12

very predictable way, there was nothing that

11:15

this guy did that he did not

11:17

advertise he was going to do in

11:19

advance multiple times. And the fact that

11:21

the women are supposedly very surprised by

11:23

this, I don't know. But

11:26

they're now in their group chat with their Care Bear names

11:28

and I wish them well. Another recent

11:30

example that I think says something about

11:32

the moment that we're in is that

11:34

of Yasha Monk. So Yasha

11:36

was accused, was this maybe six weeks ago

11:38

or so, two months ago, he

11:40

was accused of rape on Twitter. The

11:43

woman who accused him, her name is

11:45

Celeste Marcus. She's a managing editor at

11:47

the magazine, Liberties. And she

11:49

wrote a piece detailing this alleged

11:53

sexual assault that she experienced and

11:55

then she didn't name her perpetrator

11:58

and then later she went

12:00

on Twitter and she named Yasha. And

12:02

immediately after that, after she

12:05

named him, Yasha was a

12:07

contributor to the Atlantic and the Atlantic announced

12:09

that he'd been fired. Yasha

12:11

has denied this, I should add, and as

12:14

far as I know, his actual employer, not

12:16

the Atlantic but John Topskins University, has not

12:18

taken action against him. But I think a

12:20

year or two ago, or definitely

12:22

four years ago or five years ago,

12:24

this would have been a multi-week

12:27

media saga. This would have been

12:29

the fucking cock of Twitter because

12:32

Yasha is the sort of public

12:34

intellectual who a lot of

12:37

people who would have been like

12:39

the former Blue Check Twitter, the

12:41

sort of progressive journalist can't stand.

12:44

And maybe they've all fled from Twitter, maybe

12:46

this was a huge story on Blue Sky,

12:48

but this just wasn't that biggest story on

12:51

Twitter. I think I may have a different

12:53

theory about it that has nothing specifically to

12:55

do with Twitter and maybe it is too

12:58

galaxy-brained. But I'm going to try anyway,

13:00

which is that there's just too

13:03

much else going on. And this is

13:05

just caring about sort of women

13:08

as victims, especially like well-off

13:10

white women as victims or

13:13

upper middle class white women, whatever. It's

13:15

just too many sort of topics

13:18

ago. So I'm

13:20

thinking about this is the work

13:22

that's really galaxy-brained like the whole

13:24

October 7th sexual assault discourse,

13:27

right? People were saying,

13:29

oh, isn't it so surprising that

13:31

progressives aren't up in arms about

13:33

this, well, up in certain arms,

13:36

that's something else. But yeah,

13:38

but like I didn't find this surprising

13:40

at all, not just because of how

13:42

things fall in terms of culture wars,

13:45

and Israel Palace done

13:47

stuff, but like specifically in terms of the

13:49

Me Too angle, like why wouldn't the usual

13:51

suspects care? Who are the usual suspects? Like

13:53

the usual suspects moved on to race and

13:55

they moved on to transition, now they moved

13:57

on to Gaza. old

14:00

news for them anything about that any group

14:02

of women Who

14:05

are understood in this framework as privileged?

14:08

It doesn't they don't like I was not surprised

14:10

I guess what I'm saying Yeah, it does seem

14:12

pretty clear that the moment has passed and it

14:14

is there's something a little bit I don't

14:17

know if it's depressing maybe just sort of

14:19

telling that the things that the culture seems

14:21

to care about really are sad And we

14:23

are we're in the Israel-Palestine cycle

14:26

firstly. I do not like this cycle. This is

14:28

a very bad Yeah, I want this one to

14:30

end. This is worse than slap bracelets Okay,

14:33

Phoebe. Well since we're talking about women, let's move

14:35

on to your segment. You are currently writing a

14:38

book on female heterosexuality Is that right?

14:40

Yes, I am so the book I'm

14:42

writing and it's with signal which is

14:44

an imprint of penguin Random House, Canada

14:47

It's tentatively titled the last straight

14:49

woman. Oh nice. Thank you and

14:52

it's in reference I

14:54

should say it seems ridiculous a tongue-in-cheek about

14:56

something you're doing but whatever it is It's

14:59

about a cat It's a biography

15:01

of cat So it's in reference

15:03

to this idea that straight women not unlike

15:05

lesbians are a dying breed and that this

15:07

is It's not fashionable anymore.

15:10

It's not a thing in society anymore.

15:12

And yet here I am last one

15:14

standing That sort of

15:16

thing. So it's some people when

15:18

I've said I'm writing a book about straight women have

15:20

said Sort

15:22

of have thought that I'm trying to like make there

15:25

be more straight women and that is not I'm

15:27

neutral on the number of straight women there are do

15:30

we actually need to Make

15:32

a lab designated to creating more street women.

15:34

Are they are they a dying breed? Maybe

15:36

one in Wuhan a Bioweapon

15:40

worse than the world has ever seen Okay,

15:45

well what do you mean when you say

15:47

straight women are disappearing yes, so There's

15:50

this idea that straight women are disappearing, but it's

15:52

not entirely true So most

15:54

people including most women do still say

15:57

in polling and such in the US

15:59

and elsewhere they're straight. But

16:02

new polls from Gallup and elsewhere have

16:04

shown in recent years that there are

16:06

increasing percentages in the

16:08

US and elsewhere identifying as

16:11

LGBTQ with some extra letters

16:13

sometimes in some form. And

16:15

what the polling really shows is that the

16:17

big shift is coming from young women. So for

16:20

those of us of our generation familiar with

16:23

sort of 1990s sex panics,

16:26

there was always this kind of discussion that like once you could

16:28

live as a gay man, all the men

16:30

would just leave their

16:32

wife and rent a big house together

16:34

on Fire Island. And

16:37

that did not happen. That did

16:39

not happen. But straight women like

16:41

women who will call themselves straight

16:43

in a survey, there

16:45

are not so so many as there

16:48

used to be. And do you think

16:50

that this is because there

16:52

are in fact fewer straight women that

16:54

women are less likely to be heterosexual

16:56

or identify as heterosexual because

16:59

of because they actually want to

17:02

have sex with women or is this are

17:04

they doing it to be cool? Yes and no.

17:07

And it's really, really hard to figure this out

17:09

in terms of numbers because

17:12

you can it's very different. So

17:14

like if somebody says that

17:16

they are part indigenous, you

17:18

can look that up. People can look into

17:21

this, there can be an answer. There's a

17:23

whole website. Exactly. If there's a

17:25

married woman married to

17:27

a man who says she's bisexual,

17:29

I mean, what are you

17:32

going to do? There's no like

17:34

lie detector test sent to her

17:36

house. It's extremely easy to fake

17:38

this. Although I will

17:40

say I have kind of changed my

17:42

thinking on this. I used to think

17:44

that lots of women who said they

17:47

were bisexual but never actually had any

17:49

same sex experience were faking it. And

17:51

I've sort of changed my opinion on

17:54

this in conversation with sex researchers and

17:56

some sex researchers even think that the

17:58

concept of sexual orientation doesn't

18:00

apply to females the way

18:02

it does to males. And I

18:05

talked about this on the show a little bit last

18:07

week. This sort of comes up frequently. But I have

18:09

sort of shifted my thinking on this to the point where I've

18:12

started to think that there are a lot

18:14

of women who just sort of say they're

18:16

bi because there's some cultural capital or say

18:18

they're pan because there's some sort of some

18:20

cultural capital there. But I also think that

18:23

most women are probably a little bit bi. I include

18:26

lesbians in that category too, which is a

18:28

little bit of a – okay,

18:30

everybody wants to talk. Can

18:33

I just quickly jump in here? I've just been

18:36

writing something about this. It's not out yet. But I

18:39

think that there is this interesting

18:41

thing happening here where because sexual

18:43

orientation – it used to

18:45

be that you said, well, here's my

18:47

sexual orientation. And it really did have

18:50

a direct connection to who you wanted

18:52

to physically engage with. But

18:55

at this point, the idea of

18:57

sexual orientation is in fact an idea

18:59

in a lot of senses. It exists for

19:01

a lot of us in this theoretical realm

19:03

where it's like you're being asked who

19:05

are you attracted to. And I think that

19:07

that can take a lot of different forms.

19:10

There's the idea of who do you

19:12

theoretically not object to sleeping with. And then

19:14

there is the question of what kind of

19:17

porn do you like watching if you

19:19

like porn or what kind of fantasy

19:21

scenarios do you find exciting. And then

19:23

at another end of

19:25

the spectrum, there's the question of – and

19:27

what would it be like if you were

19:30

actually physically in a bed with your naked

19:32

body pressed up against a person's naked body?

19:34

Does that change things? But young

19:36

people, especially who are the ones

19:38

who are identifying as bisexual in

19:41

droves right now,

19:43

a lot of them, their coming of

19:45

age and their sexual and social awakening

19:48

is happening online. It's

19:50

happening outside of physical space. And so of course

19:52

they conceive of it in a way that has

19:54

little to do with like whose

19:57

body parts do I want inside me.

19:59

Yeah, they're not. they're not having sex at all.

20:01

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that they're all in,

20:04

or no, not in cells, vol cells, vol

20:06

cells. Yes. So, too

20:08

many aspects of this. But so,

20:10

yeah, so this new polling actually

20:12

came to my attention via Catherine

20:14

D, aka default friend, quote,

20:17

tweet of an NBC tweet sharing the

20:19

new polling. And this was

20:21

specifically about the number of young women

20:23

identifying as bisexual. So she

20:25

wrote, this is a meaningless difference unless

20:27

it's reflected in their behavior, not just

20:29

their identification habits. Ask me

20:31

how many bisexual friends I have who

20:35

haven't so much as seen another woman naked,

20:37

forget had sex with one, keep it moving.

20:40

So this, that's kind of the view of

20:42

like, it's all nonsense. And I don't think

20:44

that that's it exactly. And

20:48

especially because there are,

20:50

you know, people know their sexual orientation

20:53

sometimes very often, in fact, before they

20:55

have sex with anybody. But

20:57

also, conversely, you get things

20:59

like the woman in

21:02

everybody's favorite polyamory memoir more.

21:05

There's a part where she tries to threesome

21:07

with another woman because a sexually adventurous woman

21:10

just does that sort of thing. But she

21:12

can't get herself to be sort of wired

21:14

to enjoy it. And it's really hard to,

21:17

hard to read, because she's just so

21:19

sort of miserable through it. And it's

21:21

also the second time that she does

21:23

this, right? Like this is she considers

21:26

herself bisexual. So well, that's

21:28

where okay, so she has a line where

21:30

she says, maybe an FFM threesome would be

21:32

a safe way to test the deaths of

21:35

my bisexuality. There is no

21:37

bisexuality. However, because friction is

21:39

friction, she is brought to orgasm

21:41

in this by the woman

21:43

in this threesome. And that does not

21:45

seem to me to indicate anything

21:50

profound about bisexuality. But I really do want to

21:52

talk about the fluidity thing because I

21:54

have like a really weird take on it. Yeah.

22:00

The fact that she was able to

22:02

orgasm with a woman, to

22:04

me, says basically nothing. Let's

22:07

just envision for a second, let's all imagine for a

22:09

second that we're in prison. We're males

22:11

in prison. We are heterosexual. This is

22:13

my favorite fantasy scenario. This

22:15

is sort of what I mean when I say

22:18

that sexuality can be contextual. A dude in prison

22:20

who gets a blowjob from another man in prison

22:22

isn't necessarily doing it because he's bi or gay.

22:24

He's doing it because that's the only outlet

22:27

available to him. Right, right. I'm imagining

22:29

a story about a guy who intentionally

22:31

commits crimes to be sent to prison

22:33

to get blowjobs from men. This

22:35

is your next YA book, Kat. It is. Please.

22:39

Probably not racy enough for YA. Anyway,

22:42

continue. The fluidity thing.

22:45

So there is definitely a theory that

22:47

all women are bi or a little

22:49

bit bi or a lot bit bi, whatever. That's

22:52

why anybody who

22:55

sleeps with women would be into that

22:57

as an idea. It

23:00

is supposedly sort of the science of how women are

23:02

wired. There is

23:04

this idea that basically the sexual

23:06

orientation, as we understand it, is really just

23:08

the way it goes for men. Sort of

23:10

like the thing where we know

23:12

the signs of a heart attack, but only the signs of

23:14

a heart attack in men. Right. Men

23:16

are who have been studying. Right. Right.

23:20

So, these ideas seem to mainly

23:23

come in one way or another, and mainly sort of

23:25

via the journalist

23:27

Daniel Bergner, who's 2009 New York Times

23:30

article, What Do Women Want? Became

23:34

a 2013 book with the same title.

23:36

So it's Lisa Diamond's 2008 book,

23:39

Female Sexual Fluidity, and then research

23:42

by Meredith Tivers and others

23:44

on sort of basically which

23:46

imagery women's eyes

23:48

or crotches respond to leads

23:52

like one's effects to them.

23:54

Right. So they put like electrodes

23:56

on a woman's body and then measure the

23:59

physical response She's shown different

24:01

poor and different erotic situations. I

24:03

think in one scenario, women

24:06

were watching like monkeys fuck and

24:08

their bodies actually physically responded to

24:10

this. And they, I think that

24:13

an evolutionary biologist would say that this is

24:15

like a protective mechanism because women

24:18

are more likely to get raped, sex can

24:20

be physically damaging to women and so women's

24:22

bodies just respond to basically anything. They

24:25

just rev up the machinery the second there's sex in the

24:27

air. They're like, all right, I'm ready to go. Exactly. Pretty

24:30

much, pretty much. And Chivers herself

24:33

has said as much about this. So this

24:35

idea that first, like there was this idea

24:37

that science has shown that, you

24:39

know, women react anatomically

24:42

to men, women,

24:45

monkeys, and therefore are up

24:48

for anything with any species or

24:50

gender, whatever, and that may

24:52

not in fact, quite add up.

24:54

And then this, the other book,

24:57

Female Sexual Fluidity, that is a little bit

24:59

more complicated. So it gets a lot of

25:01

pushback these days because, because

25:04

Lisa Diamond does not talk about trans people.

25:07

Oh, dear she. And because

25:09

if you're talking about women's sexuality

25:11

operating different from men's, obviously, and

25:14

that is really her thesis, you're saying

25:16

things that you are not allowed to

25:18

say today. That would really complicate things

25:20

if you're talking about female sexuality, but

25:23

you also include males under the category

25:25

of female. Right. Well,

25:27

that's the thing. So but what's funny is because

25:29

she's in the book, she anticipates totally different pushback.

25:31

She's worried that because she's arguing against a kind

25:33

of born this way interpretation of sexual orientation, at

25:35

least for women, she's worried that people are using

25:38

her arguments to support conversion therapy

25:40

or men hitting on lesbians, things

25:42

like that. But

25:44

that was not so I had a

25:46

sort of a different qualm

25:49

with this book, which is

25:51

that it's a study of 100

25:54

women who she found, I believe

25:56

in her gender studies classes, 11 of

25:58

them straight identified

26:01

at the project. So, so

26:03

the finding that's it tells

26:05

you this book tells you a lot of interesting

26:08

things about why women

26:10

who don't identify as straight, even who identify

26:12

as lesbian will sometimes have

26:14

relationships with men. It doesn't

26:16

really tell you a whole lot about straight

26:18

women. And that was something that really jumped

26:20

out at me. And there are these moments

26:22

in the book where she's talking about sort

26:24

of the capacity straight women have to form

26:26

a really intense friendship with another woman or

26:28

to notice that a woman is beautiful and

26:30

things like that. And it's true that relative

26:32

like straight men can be sort

26:35

of homophobically weird about these things to

26:37

do, you know, but I don't think

26:39

that being interested and having

26:41

and capable of having a close friendship

26:44

with another woman or thinking a woman is beautiful, it

26:47

speaks to any sort of special capacities. And then

26:49

you see that in cases like in

26:51

more or in some other

26:54

books that I'm writing about where women

26:57

will try, they believe that they need

26:59

to, that all women like sex with

27:01

another woman shortly and then they try it and it

27:03

turns out that that is not in fact the case.

27:05

Yeah, I think if you're gonna, if you're trying to

27:07

study female sexuality, or

27:09

especially straight women, the

27:11

place to recruit for your studies is not

27:14

a gender studies class. That is another aspect

27:16

of it. Good sociology class,

27:18

psychology class, Spanish class, gender studies, that's

27:20

really gonna skew towards the, you know,

27:22

hairy pitted lesbian. I

27:25

mean, I think there is so there is

27:27

definitely something observably true about there being more

27:29

by women than by men. But so this

27:32

actually isn't necessarily saying

27:34

as much about women as it is about men

27:36

and how men kind of aren't allowed to be

27:39

by it as much. And so

27:41

Jane Ward's book Not Gay, which Jesse

27:43

actually wrote about in 2016, it

27:46

gets at the ways that men's sexual fluidity

27:49

kind of exists in the world, but then

27:51

gets categorized as something else. I have

27:53

a question about this as well. Like

27:55

when a man identifies as bisexual, for

27:57

instance, is there more of a, an

27:59

expectation attached because of the way we

28:02

conceive of male sexuality, that he is

28:04

going to follow that up by actually

28:06

getting naked with and doing sex with

28:08

a man. Yes, and I think it

28:10

also I think there's also the relative

28:14

impact it would have on his

28:16

popularity in the opposite sex dating

28:18

world. So the stakes are higher.

28:21

This is something that River Page said on the show last

28:23

week, a man who is

28:25

bisexual is much more likely to have

28:28

sex with other men because it is

28:30

so easy for men to have sex with

28:32

each other. You get on Grindr, you can

28:34

literally order it up like DoorDash. It's

28:38

incredibly easy for men to find other men to have

28:40

sex with and it's just if a man

28:42

is going to if his goal is to have sex with

28:44

women, it's a lot more work because men are much more

28:46

likely to have these no strings

28:48

attached, sexual attachments than women are.

28:50

Yeah, so that actually gets to

28:52

something else, which Trace,

28:55

your researcher helped me a lot with figuring

28:58

out some data for which more than I

29:00

can possibly cite here. But basically, a lot

29:03

of people will point to the fact that actually by

29:05

men and by women, form

29:07

opposite sex marriages most of the

29:09

time and say like, aha, they're all

29:12

faking it. But that doesn't

29:14

really tell you that what it tells you

29:16

is that it is just there, there's a

29:18

heck of a lot more straight people out

29:20

there. It's just a lot easier. Actually, sort

29:23

of not quite gender-neutral, but it is a

29:25

lot easier to just find an opposite sex

29:27

partner. And if anything, I guess, the

29:29

math on this is such that they

29:31

find by people find same sex partners

29:33

more than you would think, if anything,

29:35

but just not 50% of the time

29:37

or anything. I'm actually surprised

29:39

that it's that by men are more likely

29:42

to end up with women than men that

29:44

surprises me. But by women, for

29:46

sure. I saw some polling, I believe,

29:48

last year that found that a really tiny

29:50

percentage of bisexual women are actually in

29:54

married or monogamous relationships with women. It was something

29:56

like around 1%. 90%

30:01

are in relationships with men. And I will say, buys

30:05

are sort of like the lowest point on

30:07

the totem pole on the LGBTQ hierarchy,

30:09

which is sort of ironic because they're

30:12

also they make up the greatest percentage.

30:14

But buys are and maybe this is

30:16

changing, although I don't think it is,

30:18

as long as I've been

30:20

in queer communities, by people

30:22

are sort of the ones that that gets

30:25

shit on the most. Really not like, not

30:27

the non non binary, the non

30:30

binary wife. I

30:32

wouldn't even yeah, I wouldn't even consider the non

30:34

binary wife to be actually a queer person.

30:37

Why isn't it really that was so funny, the

30:40

New York Times identified this as a queer couple.

30:42

And I'm looking at the picture of them. And

30:44

I'm like, what am I not understanding here? Oh,

30:46

but what turned out to be queer about them?

30:48

It was this article, a lifestyle article about couples

30:50

who lay together but live apart. And

30:52

this couple had lived apart for a time, a husband

30:55

and his non binary wife. And

30:58

they had this whole thing that they're like queering

31:00

relationships. And it turns out what what the big

31:02

revelation was, it wasn't that they were non monogamous

31:04

or something like that, it was that they decided

31:06

that it's actually okay if they eat different things

31:09

for dinner at night. So

31:11

like, anytime a straight man

31:13

has a like a hamburger for dinner,

31:15

and his wife has a salad, they're

31:17

queering heterosexuality, I guess, if

31:20

he was eating the salad, and she was eating

31:22

the burger would be queering. But if he's eating

31:24

the burger, and she's eating the salad, that's still

31:26

that's still straight. There was

31:28

a similar a similar

31:31

cover story in some queer men's magazine gay

31:33

men's magazine, like, I don't know if it

31:36

was the advocate or it was a couple

31:38

years ago. I'm sure that

31:40

we that we talked about this in

31:42

the group chat at the time, Nico

31:44

Tortetello and his wife, you guys remember

31:46

this? Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. Cat,

31:48

please, please describe this. I think this

31:50

is the guy who was on the

31:52

show younger, right? Yeah, he's a like,

31:54

classically handsome. Yes. So I love the

31:56

show. And I loved him

31:58

on it. And When I started to

32:00

catch wind of what kind of a public presence

32:03

he has, especially with regard to his activism as

32:05

a so-called queer

32:08

idol, I was just... I

32:11

don't know. It made me feel differently

32:13

because he is a very traditionally

32:15

masculine, good-looking man,

32:18

adult human male,

32:20

in a relationship with a

32:22

very conventionally attractive, conventionally feminine

32:25

woman, adult human female. And yet they are, I

32:28

guess, just because of vibes, because

32:30

of the aesthetic they adopted, because

32:32

of what they say about themselves

32:34

in magazines, they're like one of

32:37

the biggest celebrity queer couples in America. Yeah, I

32:39

just pulled it up. It was from the advocate.

32:41

This is in 2017. This

32:44

is what a queer family looks like.

32:46

Nico Tortetello and Bethany Myers are reinventing

32:48

what it means to be a family.

32:50

And there's a picture of an incredibly

32:53

heterosexual-looking, very attractive heterosexual couple on

32:55

the cover of this magazine.

32:58

And part of it is, I guess, they

33:00

both call themselves bisexual. I don't know if

33:02

he's ever had a

33:04

dick in his mouth or not. I wouldn't frankly,

33:07

I wouldn't be too surprised. She

33:09

says she's non-binary. I don't know if she

33:11

actually dates women, but just by calling themselves

33:13

non-binary, they qualify as a queer couple. I,

33:17

of course, find this incredibly

33:19

grating. And yet,

33:21

at the same time, I'm struggling with

33:23

this cognitive dissonance, because I also believe

33:25

that most women are like kind of

33:28

bi. I do. Yeah,

33:30

I mean, this is okay. So there's

33:32

another thing. So you are both familiar

33:34

with the writer Park McDougald? Yes. Okay,

33:37

so he tweeted that in

33:39

response to all the stuff about the all the

33:41

women, the young women being bi, he

33:44

wrote, bisexual just means

33:46

Democrat. And I

33:48

kind of think that that it's

33:51

it's silly, but I think that

33:53

there's a little bit to that. And

33:55

this kind of gets like a bit what Kat

33:57

was talking about as well about what people really,

34:00

really do if faced with

34:03

options. And this is also, I hate to say it,

34:05

a sex in the city, wherein

34:08

Charlotte is faced with options

34:10

and in

34:12

theoretical options and realizes

34:14

that she is straight. But basically,

34:16

I think it really

34:19

is this new idea, like there's no such thing

34:21

as an ally anymore. Like if you're a woman,

34:23

if straight woman cannot be an, there's no like

34:25

straight ally. And I sort of wonder how much

34:27

of this comes from this idea of like the

34:30

straight woman in the gay bar as this really,

34:32

really problematic interloper. But now

34:34

if you say that you're some

34:36

sort of queer, you can

34:39

kind of be there and it's okay. And

34:42

it's also just like there are just a

34:44

lot of different incentives for women to say

34:46

that there's something other than straight, even if, by

34:49

all accounts, that is the thing they are. So

34:52

there's also just this idea that if you're

34:54

sexually adventurous, you have to at least speak

34:56

to an open mindedness and maybe even engage

34:59

in some proof, whatever. But

35:01

I think there are just

35:03

many incentives that and it

35:05

co-exists with homophobia. It's not like either or,

35:08

but I just don't think you get this with men. Like

35:10

I don't think I don't think there even is the category

35:12

of sexually adventurous for men. I think they are just like

35:14

assumed to be up for whatever.

35:17

It's called men. Yeah, yeah, basically, it's

35:19

called man. So yeah,

35:21

but I do think that this idea of bisexual

35:23

as Democrat seems right, because I think there's

35:26

something about if you say if a

35:28

woman says specifically that she's straight, where

35:30

it sounds like she's saying something a

35:32

little bit Karen ish, a little bit

35:35

judgmental, a little bit like, like

35:37

she's squicked out as versus like that

35:39

she's into men in some sort of positive sense.

35:41

Yeah, I mean, I think Park is on to

35:43

something there. I mean, with the exception of maybe

35:46

Kristin Sinema, I don't think she's a Democrat anymore.

35:48

I Don't think it's quite

35:51

like a one to one correlation is like,

35:53

in be mean, socialist. That's like there are

35:55

no, you're not going to find a non

35:57

binary conservative. I Went looking for one. The

36:00

I why but here's a Libertarians are they

36:02

really counts. Yeah how how deep into the

36:04

woods is you have to go? I moved

36:06

here. I moved to the was just such

36:08

as the try to find one I think

36:10

an interesting experiment would be to. Everybody

36:13

out here going to this. talk to your

36:15

mom or if your grandmother she still alive

36:17

about her sexuality, Go next time you touch

36:19

your mom, ask about her sexually. I think

36:21

a lot of this is is generational and

36:23

a lot of women like if you look

36:25

at polling the number. people who call themselves

36:28

bisexual or gay or lesbian is so my

36:30

slower among the baby boom generation than the

36:32

center isn't and. Obviously a

36:34

lot of that has to do with

36:36

changing social norms and homophobia and acceptance.

36:39

and I just I'm very curious to

36:41

know. That. If older people think

36:43

that they would have if they had grown

36:45

up in a different generation, if their sexuality

36:47

is something that would have explored more, I

36:49

just I think that like I'm a i'm

36:51

a diagram armor on the Southern on the

36:53

Kinsey scale. And I still believe that if

36:55

I was born in Nineteen Forty Nine or

36:57

Nineteen Fifty, I probably would have ended up

36:59

married to a man with children. Even

37:02

as good as gay as I am

37:04

now, I just don't think that that

37:07

would have been my lies had there

37:09

been. How did How did Not acceptable?

37:11

Well, that's the whole sort of compulsory

37:13

heterosexuality that Adrian Rich argument than women.

37:16

especially. It's not that there is more

37:18

homophobia directed it women, but rather that

37:20

there's more of an expectation to find

37:22

and opposite sex partner of women rates

37:25

and that has been receiving so. Whether.

37:28

You're talking about the opportunities of women

37:30

to partner with other women or to

37:32

to stay single or whatever. That is

37:34

definitely much more possible than it was

37:37

in the past. Socially possible? Financially possible,

37:39

and I define it's I watch a

37:41

lot of old sitcoms and just the

37:43

amount of time that women characters on

37:45

old sitcoms like from the seventies, eighties

37:47

nineties, whatever. Talk about finding a man

37:49

like a man walks into the room

37:51

and they're all like. Which.

37:53

Man is this. You know who's going to

37:56

end up with that man, You know, and

37:58

you just don't really get that any. And

38:00

I think that's a good thing and I think

38:02

that's a good thing for women of all sexual

38:04

orientations. But I think that the

38:07

majority of women are still going to want to be

38:09

with men. And I think that the reason I think

38:11

that matters is that there's this

38:13

way that feminism kind of evolved to

38:16

basically say, let's get

38:18

rid of men who needs them, it's we're

38:20

better off without them. And I just don't

38:22

think that that's going to work for the

38:24

majority of women. It is so

38:26

funny that you mentioned the trope

38:28

of the like, you know, there's a man who's

38:31

who's going to get him, right? Because you don't

38:33

really hear that anymore. The last time I actually

38:36

experienced that trope, it was in real life

38:38

instead of on TV. It

38:40

was before my grandmother died. She was 105 when she went.

38:43

So she she'd been around for a while long enough to see

38:45

a lot of tropes come and go. And

38:48

she was going to be visiting with her at her assisted

38:50

living facility. And we were taking her back to her room.

38:53

And when we got in there, there was this like

38:56

carpenter in there fixing a bookshelf or

38:58

something that had broke. And

39:00

she turns and looks over her shoulder at me and my

39:02

mom and she's like, I saw him

39:04

first. My mom and

39:06

I were both like, Yeah, yeah, girl.

39:10

All yours. Get it. You can

39:12

have him. And

39:14

that's how my grandmother fucked a carpenter. I'm just

39:17

kidding. Her last act on earth.

39:21

Not a bad way to go. Hey, that that would be the

39:24

perfect way to go. But anyway, that's the next to the

39:26

episode right there. Okay, before we

39:28

move on, I'm curious if for people who

39:30

identify as 100% gay or 100% straight, I'm

39:35

not talking about people in the middle, but people

39:37

who really see themselves as either totally heterosexual or

39:39

totally homosexual. Do you ever have

39:41

sex streams about the opposite sex?

39:44

Let me know right into the car. Don't write me a

39:46

mail address. I don't want to get there. Join right in

39:48

the comments. Put it on the Reddit. Let me know. We're

39:51

done. What about you? I'm

39:54

writing a straight one book. I'll admit it.

39:57

I don't have sex dreams about women. And

40:00

I don't

40:03

have a political opposition to having them. Like

40:05

that's where the whole thing. Yeah. My

40:07

theory is that it shows up in a subconscious, but

40:10

Kat. Yeah. Yeah, I guess,

40:12

you know, I will admit that I do have sex

40:14

dreams about women. I knew it. I knew this about

40:16

you. All

40:19

right, anything else? Well, Kat's going to be getting

40:21

a lot more email. All right,

40:23

email your dreams to Kat. I

40:27

was like, what am I doing saying this out loud right now?

40:31

No, it's fine. Yeah, so hit me up

40:33

with all your most disgusting emails. It'll be

40:35

a nice break from the ones I usually

40:37

get, which are boring. You can read them

40:39

on feminine chaos. All right,

40:41

let's take a quick break first and add for

40:43

our free listeners and then housekeeping. Every

40:46

day while we're on the road, people

40:48

around us endanger themselves and others by using

40:51

their phones while driving. They think they're

40:53

hiding it, but we've all seen them and know exactly who

40:55

they are. For instance, there's the sneak

40:57

peeker who darts their eyes between the road

40:59

and their text. There's also the

41:01

gata ticketer looking upset because they just got

41:03

a ticket for using their phone while driving.

41:06

And what about the fast scroller who can't drive

41:08

five minutes without updating their social feeds? Or

41:11

the nightlighter who has that mysterious glow illuminating

41:13

the inside of their car after dark? Do

41:16

any of these sound familiar? If they

41:18

remind you of yourself or someone you

41:20

know, rethink your behavior before you find

41:22

yourself becoming the fender bender, the veering

41:24

off the rotor, or worst of

41:26

all, the driver who killed someone. Put

41:29

the phone away or pay. Paid for by

41:31

NHTSA. Do any of you guys want to do

41:33

it? I can't do it anymore. I'm so sorry. This

41:36

is Blocked and Reported. We

41:39

collectively are a podcast. You

41:42

can visit the Blocked and

41:44

Reported website, which is blockedandreported.org, to sign

41:46

up for. This is not a premium

41:48

episode, right? This is a free one. Yeah,

41:51

so go, you cheapazoid, go

41:53

and sign up for the paid

41:55

episodes at blockedandreported.org. There's also a

41:58

Reddit, which I do. don't know

42:00

the address of but it is very

42:03

exciting over there on reddit and

42:05

what else don't buy the

42:07

merch pretty much it if you want

42:09

to support the show as Kat mentioned the

42:11

best way to do it is to go

42:13

to block them reported org where for just

42:16

five dollars a month and up you can

42:18

become a premium subscriber you get at least

42:20

three extra episodes of this podcast every month

42:22

actually for this month we have one coming

42:24

out tomorrow I believe on Candace Owens the

42:26

canning of Candace Owens and you

42:28

also get access to our great

42:31

and growing community over there the comment section

42:33

you get advance notice when we

42:35

have live shows and we do have some live shows coming

42:37

up that we're not quite ready to announce but there's looks

42:39

like there's gonna be a little bit of a mini tour

42:41

this summer and

42:44

I think that's it all right thank you Kat

42:47

thank you is it is it time is it time you've

42:49

got the wheel oh my goodness

42:52

okay so I'm gonna tell you guys a

42:54

story about some drama in the young adult

42:57

section community which is something that I

42:59

have been reporting on since

43:01

2017 this is like kind of my

43:03

my big break and breakout in the

43:05

world of culture writing reporting on toxic

43:07

YA Twitter drama and

43:09

even though I have mostly

43:12

moved on from writing about that I

43:14

still like to kind of peek back at that

43:16

world from time to time because it's just an

43:18

absolute snake pit it's sort of like um you

43:21

know when you you break up with your

43:23

worst boyfriend but then you still use an

43:25

alt to look at his Instagram account just

43:28

because he's late it's like okay what kind of

43:30

a mess is this guy gotten himself into no

43:32

he's a very successful bro podcaster that's right

43:37

so this story concerns

43:39

a YA author named Molly

43:41

X Chang and I'm wondering if that name

43:43

sounds familiar to either of you nope vaguely

43:45

vaguely vaguely okay I'm gonna give you guys

43:48

a hint Molly was a supporting actor in

43:50

the Kate Crane good reads drama late last

43:52

year and Katie you guys did a bar

43:54

pod segment about this and we also discussed

43:57

this on feminine chaos yes so I do

43:59

remember this Kate Corrain was

44:01

the debut author who had a sort

44:04

of nervous breakdown and started review bombing

44:06

other debut authors on Goodreads as one

44:08

does. That is correct, yes, as one

44:10

does and poor Kate Corrain is I

44:13

don't think she's institutionalized

44:15

anymore but she was briefly and you know

44:17

we wish her well. But

44:19

Molly Chang, the story is

44:21

about Molly Chang not Kate Corrain, she

44:23

was one of Corrain's victims. Her

44:26

debut novel is called

44:28

to gaze upon wicked gods and

44:31

so you might remember that when Kate

44:33

Corrain had her meltdown and did all

44:35

of this review bombing she was particularly

44:37

criticized not because she made a crazy

44:40

ham-fisted attempt to torpedo the Goodreads ratings

44:42

of other authors but because

44:44

she is a white woman and some

44:46

of the authors she was targeting were

44:48

not and that includes Molly Chang who

44:50

is Chinese. Okay so very

44:52

specifically this is going to matter later, Molly

44:54

Chang was born in China and she

44:56

didn't learn English until she was 13

44:58

and most importantly she's Manchurian from a

45:00

city called Harbin. So although she

45:02

has some Han Chinese and so I'm going to start

45:05

that over. So

45:07

although she has some Han Chinese ancestry everything

45:09

I found online shows she identifies as Manchurian

45:11

and that makes her a member of an

45:13

ethnic minority in China because the vast majority

45:16

of the population there are Han Chinese. Okay

45:19

and now I'm going to give you guys a

45:21

mini history lesson which I'm going to get through

45:23

as fast as I can. Manchuria is in the far

45:25

north of China, Chang city, Harbin is further north

45:27

than North Korea and in the

45:29

Chinese context Harbin is a kind of a weird place

45:31

because it was actually founded by Russian

45:33

settlers who went there to build the

45:36

railroad. So when the

45:38

Russian Revolution happened white Russians not

45:40

the drink the fallen Russian aristocrats fled

45:42

there in huge numbers and it became

45:44

the largest Russian enclave in the world.

45:47

So then there's a decade or so of

45:49

political maneuvering between the Russians and the Chinese

45:51

but then that comes to a grinding halt

45:54

because the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and

45:56

they turned it into their own puppet state.

45:58

Okay I assume this did not well

46:00

for the the Manchurians. It did not. And I'm

46:02

going to skip the grim details of exactly what

46:04

the Japanese did in Manchuria and in the rest

46:07

of China throughout the 1930s and up through the

46:10

end of World War II because it's

46:12

it's really pretty gruesome. But the one

46:14

thing you need to know because

46:16

it's relevant to this story is

46:19

Harbin was a location of this infamous

46:21

thing called Unit 731. And so Unit

46:24

731 was the bad place. Okay,

46:26

it was run by a guy

46:29

named General Shiro Ishii, a combat

46:31

medic officer who is basically like

46:33

Joseph Mengele, except Japanese. And

46:36

it was said a really horrific

46:38

human experiments, biological, chemical weapons research,

46:40

just horrible, horrible stuff. And

46:43

ultimately between 200 and 300,000 people died

46:45

there. Yeah, you know, not

46:52

great, not great. So Chang comes from

46:54

a part of China that has this

46:56

really distinct and unusual history of colonization.

46:58

It was controlled in turn

47:00

by the Russians and the Japanese. And

47:03

if you were Manchurian, you might now say that

47:05

it has been colonized by the Han Chinese, although

47:07

depending on who you said that to you might

47:09

get some angry pushback because in China, that would

47:11

be a very controversial idea. All

47:14

of this is to say this is the

47:16

history that informs Chang's novel. So again, the

47:18

novel is called to gaze upon wicked gods.

47:21

And the novel isn't set in Manchuria.

47:23

It's a fantasy world inspired by Manchuria,

47:26

sort of like how Game of Thrones

47:28

was inspired by 15th century England. And

47:31

the story is about a girl named Ruying, who

47:34

has magical killing powers. And in

47:36

the story, her homeland is invaded

47:38

by troops led by the evil

47:40

Prince Antony, who finds out about

47:42

Ruying's magical gift and kidnaps her

47:45

and tortures her until she agrees to use it to

47:47

help him, which is kind of fucked up, except that

47:49

as I understand it, this is also how Jesse meets

47:51

all his girls. I think it's

47:53

very cute that you think that Jesse has ever had a girlfriend.

47:55

But I want to make a horse joke here. But is it

47:58

that one jump to the shark? Oh

48:01

no, you can make horse jokes. He's

48:03

not here. All

48:06

right. So in the

48:08

context of why this is a young adult

48:10

fiction drama, some of you have probably already

48:12

guessed where this is going. In Chang's

48:15

novel, Ruying and the Evil Prince fall in

48:17

love, and then the story becomes a romance

48:20

between oppressor and oppressed. And I want to

48:22

be clear. Oh, so is this

48:24

sort of like when it's the Nazi

48:28

Jew romances, which

48:30

are apparently a thing? Yes. Yeah. That

48:32

comparison. And when I say a thing,

48:34

I mean in young adult literature, I

48:36

don't mean like in history. You mean

48:38

in your in your wildest fantasies. You

48:41

don't have sex dreams about women. You

48:43

do have sex dreams about Nazis. Exclusively.

48:45

But not female ones. No,

48:47

definitely. Very much. Yeah. OK,

48:52

so if you are familiar with the weird

48:54

contours of the YA world, which Phoebe, of course you are.

48:56

So you'll understand that it was controversial

48:59

already for her to be exploring a

49:01

plot like this because, yeah, it is

49:03

a power imbalance and that's problematic. And

49:08

Chang explicitly marketed this book as

49:10

a kind of an own voices

49:12

story, which is to say it's

49:14

like a story about marginalized or

49:16

marginalized coded characters by somebody who

49:18

shares the marginalization. She

49:20

wrote a Twitter thread where she said that

49:23

her book had been inspired by her Manchurian

49:25

background. And what

49:27

she wrote was to gaze upon

49:29

wicked gods is inspired by the

49:31

folklores of my grandparents, including my

49:34

Siberian Manchurian grandfather's ghost stories of

49:36

Manchuria, old Siberia and Unit 731

49:39

and all the ways we are lucky to be alive.

49:42

And this actually may have been kind of

49:44

a mistake because a lot of advanced readers

49:46

seem to have interpreted that tweet in the

49:48

context of the novel as Chang

49:50

saying that she had essentially written

49:52

a romance between a Manchurian peasant

49:55

and a Japanese war criminal. And

49:57

if you go on Goodreads today, you'll see a lot of people who have been

49:59

lot of one-star reviews and people using one

50:02

phrase over and over and that phrase

50:04

is colonizer romance and

50:06

this is where the drama

50:08

kicks off. So I have

50:10

a representative review from a

50:13

Goodreads user named Naheed Pico

50:15

which is fun to say

50:18

and this really sums up the complaints but I need one

50:20

of you to do a dramatic reading of it because I feel

50:22

like I'm talking too much. So you're

50:24

telling me this book which is

50:26

marketed as an enemies to lovers

50:28

romance a romance that

50:30

they want us to root for to

50:33

the point where we've where you

50:35

we even got Anthony's point of view and

50:37

he mentioned how he loves her and she

50:39

even knows he loves her and stuff is

50:42

doing unit 731 against her people. I wanted

50:44

to throw

50:46

up I feel like I'm being gaslit

50:48

and going crazy how are people rooting

50:50

for this romance how is anyone marketing

50:53

this as a romance how are tropes

50:55

being mentioned regarding this romance when Anthony's

50:57

literally doing a disgusting genocidal torturous act

50:59

against her own people. There

51:01

is nothing excusable about that as

51:03

if all the horrible shit he

51:05

did to her before this wasn't

51:07

enough including fucking electrocuting bracelets kidnapping

51:09

blackmail etc. I feel

51:12

like even the bad reviews about this

51:14

book aren't talking about the experiments analogous

51:16

to unit 731 enough like hello I

51:19

am being gaslit. Okay

51:21

so just to be clear that that was in

51:23

all caps that I am hello I am being

51:25

gaslit. And that was the end of the quote

51:27

you are not being gaslit. Oh I am. Stop

51:29

gaslighting us about being gaslit. Alright so question for

51:32

you guys how much romance have each of you

51:34

read in your lives? Any? I

51:37

mean enough you know I had the dog eared

51:39

coffee of flowers in the attic underneath my bed

51:42

same as every other woman of my generation I

51:44

think. Not really any I

51:46

think my father's mother would read a

51:48

bunch of this so I

51:50

am aware of it as a genre but I

51:53

mean I think it's possibly the best-selling genre of

51:55

all time but my question is and you two

51:57

might not know the answer to this I

52:00

would assume though that romance

52:03

between a captor

52:05

and a captive is probably

52:08

a fairly common trope. Yes.

52:10

I would say so. I mean, just

52:12

based on like the covers alone you

52:14

think about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm

52:17

sure I've seen some like hot Nazis on covers of Danielle

52:20

Steele books at the grocery

52:22

store before. Did you? Okay.

52:26

Maybe not Nazis. This is the ones that Phoebe

52:28

wrote under a pen. That would be very awkward

52:30

with my job at the Canadian Jewish News if

52:33

I had a secret second job in

52:35

that realm. I'm working on the New

52:37

York Magazine expose about that right now. Phoebe,

52:40

you are going to be so canceled. It's

52:42

your time. It's your time. Okay. It'll be

52:44

great for your podcast. But all right. So

52:47

long story short, Nahid's Pico obviously

52:49

did not enjoy this book, found

52:51

it deeply problematic on a number

52:54

of fronts. And she's not alone. There

52:56

are a lot of reviews like this or several, I

52:58

shouldn't say a lot. They're

53:00

posted in January or February of this year

53:03

and they are mostly gripes about

53:05

the colonizer romance, the unit 731

53:08

parallels. This

53:11

one was posted in January and

53:13

it is thorough. It is 2,839 words long. And

53:19

in addition to the unhappiness with

53:21

the tropes, she also complains about

53:23

the writing style and specific plot

53:25

points. So all

53:27

this is to say this is actually

53:29

quite different from Kate Corrain's fake reviews,

53:31

which were nowhere near as detailed and

53:34

clearly were not done by somebody who

53:36

had actually read the book. This person

53:38

clearly did read the book. And

53:41

so this is where Ching really did mess

53:43

up because she should have left this alone.

53:45

I don't know. Are you

53:47

guys familiar with the kind of conventions

53:49

surrounding good reads that like authors are

53:52

not really supposed to interact with reviewers

53:54

except to like tout their reviews? No,

53:57

I don't spend time on good reads. saying

54:00

I spend the time on Kiwi

54:02

Farms in HN, never good reads.

54:04

Yeah, where it's healthy and everybody's

54:06

a gentleman. There's a

54:08

lot of etiquette on Twitter about if

54:10

somebody negatively reviews your book, you're not supposed

54:12

to start doing a

54:14

big one of 500 thread

54:17

at them about why they're wrong. Right.

54:21

And if they tag you in it, you're supposed to pretend you didn't see. So

54:25

Cheng should not have called attention to this, but

54:27

for whatever reason, maybe she

54:29

got out over her skis or maybe she

54:31

just had PTSD from the whole Kate Corraine

54:33

thing. In late February,

54:35

she started tweeting her concerns about

54:38

quote unquote fake reviews on Goodreads.

54:41

And she wrote, I don't know if this is

54:43

Kate or a racist copycat who is out to

54:45

harass me, but since this isn't the first time

54:47

I was targeted, I'm a little paranoid. So if

54:50

you've genuinely read the book and enjoyed it, can

54:52

you please leave a review slash rating to

54:54

neutralize any further star bombing? This

54:57

is a huge mistake. Katie,

54:59

you mentioned Kiwi Farms. There's a phrase they have

55:01

over there, right? Don't touch the poo. Yeah. Yeah.

55:05

Okay. Cheng touched the poo. She touched

55:07

it. Goodreads is, as I've

55:10

mentioned, it's an intense place. It has its own

55:12

very kind of like bespoke etiquette. And even though

55:14

it is marketed as a place for readers to

55:16

connect with authors, readers do kind of tend

55:18

to see it as their safe space. And

55:21

it is then a huge norm violation for an

55:23

author to draw attention to negative reviews. So

55:26

now everybody who had already left

55:28

a negative review sees this from

55:30

Cheng. They're like, she's saying

55:32

we're fake. She's saying we're racist. They

55:34

start posting updates to their reviews, saying

55:36

that she's targeting them for harassment, that

55:38

she's trying to silence her critics. So

55:40

then other people start leaving one star

55:42

reviews on that basis. And now you

55:44

have an actual review

55:46

bombing campaign. And

55:50

then on March 10th, our friend

55:52

Nahid's Pico posts an update with

55:54

a very serious accusation of

55:56

authorial misconduct. Phoebe, you were

55:58

very good when you were first... dramatic reading, would you like to

56:00

read this one too? Edit March 10th.

56:03

Why is the author attempting to dox

56:05

me? I've always been

56:07

a private account. I,

56:09

and then there's an upside down smiley face, which

56:11

is like the opposite of being

56:13

happy, I guess. Oh no, that's a frown. I don't know.

56:16

Do we even know what the upside down smiley face means? World

56:18

is upside down, that makes sense. So did she really try to

56:20

dox her? So okay, before we

56:22

get to this part, we do need to talk

56:25

a little bit about who Nahid's Pico is. Wait,

56:27

are we going to dox Nahid's Pico? Yes, no,

56:29

that would have been really fun. But

56:32

she kind of doxed herself, or

56:34

at least in so far as revealing anything

56:37

about your identity online is

56:39

doxing. So she's anonymous

56:41

on Goodreads. But after this, she

56:43

very dramatically revealed herself to be

56:46

one Sidra, AKA Sid the SFF

56:48

kid on Instagram. She

56:52

is a small Muslim book reviewer on

56:54

Instagram. Like she's a small person? Yeah,

56:57

she's a, no. I have

56:59

no idea, she might be. Petite, okay. I

57:01

could not say. I don't want to spread

57:03

rumors about the size and stature of Nahid's

57:05

Pico. What

57:08

I will say is when I say small,

57:10

I mean she's a small account. She has

57:12

like a few thousand followers. She

57:14

posted a statement on her Instagram

57:17

about this whole controversy. And the

57:19

statement claims to be on behalf

57:21

of an anonymous group of unknown

57:24

number of BIPOC book reviewers who

57:26

are upset about Molly Chang's behavior.

57:29

And I assume that that's gonna be in the show

57:31

notes if anybody wants to read the entire thing. More

57:34

interesting though is that on that same

57:36

post, she wrote a really long caption

57:39

claiming that she was terrified, like shaking,

57:41

crying, throwing up, because Molly Chang was

57:43

trying to dox her and attack her

57:45

and her sister who is an

57:47

author. So now things are getting really

57:49

sorted. Phoebe, I have more for

57:51

you to read. I have sent you excerpts. Can

57:54

you do a dramatic reading of

57:56

some of this comment section? Absolutely.

58:01

The TGUWG author used her

58:03

personal influence to smear and

58:06

drag my sister's name, career

58:09

among the author community during my sister's

58:11

debut week. And there have

58:13

been private confessions to it through a mediator

58:15

proxy. There are multiple witnesses to

58:17

this behavior too. The TGUWG author

58:20

has a major deal with a huge

58:22

following. Okay, so can I just interrupt

58:24

to say that I feel like I

58:26

just was doing a vision test? Is

58:29

that the name of the bug? To gaze upon

58:31

wicked God. Yeah, okay. Suddenly I

58:34

just thought like, are they

58:36

gonna tell me I need glasses but only one side? Okay,

58:39

and it continues, I will not stand

58:41

for this bullying and harassment against my

58:44

sister's career when she is a far

58:46

smaller and Muslim author. Dot, dot,

58:48

dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, a bunch of dots. I don't know how many dots. No,

58:50

don't read the dots. That was pretty much part of

58:53

it. No, I thought you read the dots. I thought

58:55

you were supposed to read each dot individually. And this

58:57

is right before Ramadan. During Ramadan, this is the new

58:59

during Pride Month. It might be my favorite part. Katie

59:01

is a Muslim. This must be really, it

59:04

must hit you really hard. I'm triggered, offended, and hungry.

59:11

Okay, so this

59:13

is where things start to get really convoluted if

59:15

they're not convoluted enough already. As

59:18

I understand it, Molly Chang

59:20

got in touch with a

59:22

mutual friend privately to find

59:24

out the identity of Nahid's

59:26

Pico, aka Sidra, the science

59:28

fiction fantasy kid. And

59:30

it's hard to say why she did this. Maybe

59:33

she really did still think that it was Kate Corrain

59:35

with another fake account. I don't know. But

59:37

when Sidra found out about this, she

59:39

was really, really mad. And

59:42

she posted some screenshots of herself texting

59:44

about this with the mutual friend that

59:46

she mentioned saying things like, but dude,

59:48

why is Molly getting involved in reviewer

59:50

spaces? This is not

59:53

okay. It's extremely unethical. Does she not

59:55

realize she's setting dangerous standards? And then

59:57

there's another one where she says, why

59:59

is she reading her review? views as

1:00:01

an author I can probably answer that

1:00:03

question. And why is she trying to

1:00:05

find out their identities? And

1:00:08

this sort of seems like a

1:00:10

like a when food reviewers go

1:00:13

in like wear wigs to a restaurant

1:00:15

that they're reviewing. Which

1:00:18

actually makes sense. This doesn't. Yeah,

1:00:20

it's like, I don't know. It's it's why

1:00:22

is she reading her reviews? Why

1:00:25

are you googling yourself? Why are you attending your own funeral?

1:00:29

So things then get even wilder, because

1:00:31

there are also a bunch of screenshots

1:00:33

in this array from Sidra sister, who

1:00:35

you'll recall is an author, having

1:00:38

a conversation with a mediator who

1:00:40

tries to explain Molly's side of

1:00:43

things. And this mediator was none

1:00:45

other than Ziran J. Zhao. And

1:00:47

if that name sounds familiar,

1:00:50

it's because she has been featured

1:00:52

in all three bar pod book

1:00:54

drama episodes in the last four months. All

1:00:57

friends. She is

1:00:59

the Kaiser. So say of

1:01:01

online book drama. So

1:01:03

I want to make sure I've got all this straight. So Molly

1:01:05

Chang tried to privately figure out the

1:01:07

identity of this reviewer Sidra for unknown

1:01:10

reasons. And then Sidra accused Molly

1:01:12

of trying to dock and harass

1:01:14

her family. And right before Ramadan,

1:01:17

that's in person. And then

1:01:19

Ziran J. Zhao steps

1:01:22

in to mediate this drama between Molly and

1:01:24

not Sidra, but Sidra sister. Yes. Okay, so

1:01:27

that part isn't really relevant to the main

1:01:29

controversy, but it's the source of some pretty

1:01:31

amazing content that shows just how absurd and

1:01:33

high school these dramas can get. There's

1:01:36

a whole series of screenshots between the sister and

1:01:38

zow that read like something out of a burn

1:01:40

book. And my favorite is out of context. The

1:01:43

sister saying, it also just feels racist that

1:01:45

I would be desperate enough to be jealous

1:01:48

of her. Did Molly explain

1:01:50

her side of things

1:01:53

ever? Yeah, she did. And I'm not gonna bother to

1:01:55

quote from that because at this point, it's all kind

1:01:57

of tedious. But long story short, it seems like she

1:01:59

was not actually trying to dox

1:02:01

anyone. Her communications role in

1:02:03

private messages, and she wrote this explanatory note where

1:02:05

she didn't even name Cidra. She just keeps referring

1:02:07

to, quote, the author as in the author of

1:02:09

the Goodreads review and the sister as in the

1:02:11

sister of the author. But

1:02:14

this is just a side note, ultimately, to

1:02:16

the main crux of the drama, because remember,

1:02:18

we still have the problem that Molly X

1:02:20

Chang wrote a colonizer romance. And

1:02:23

this is where things got even worse for

1:02:25

Molly, because now other Chinese people like Chinese

1:02:27

from China started hearing about her book. And

1:02:30

so we remember Molly's Manchurian, she's an ethnic

1:02:33

minority in China. You guys

1:02:35

may be aware ethnic minorities, not super well

1:02:37

treated in China. I've heard that. There are

1:02:39

no stickers up about that in Toronto. So

1:02:41

I actually, only one issue as

1:02:44

far as my neighborhood is concerned, but interesting to

1:02:46

note. I'll Google it later. If

1:02:48

only a paraglider had been involved, maybe. About

1:02:51

this. So probably not. According

1:02:53

to Molly, once this

1:02:55

controversy broke out of the YA Twitter

1:02:57

sphere, she started getting attacked by Chinese

1:03:00

nationalists, Han supremacists, Asian incels, which

1:03:02

are even worse than regular incels.

1:03:04

Unlike the doxing thing, here the

1:03:06

source of the controversy is actually

1:03:08

just straight up bullshit. People are

1:03:11

accusing her of writing a unit

1:03:13

731 romance, which again,

1:03:15

she did not do. But it doesn't

1:03:17

matter because now this rumor is

1:03:19

running absolutely wild, including in Korea,

1:03:21

where people have their own strong

1:03:24

feelings about the Japanese occupation. And

1:03:26

I have to say the Korean response to this

1:03:28

book makes YA Twitter look like tiny amateur babies.

1:03:32

Somebody wrote a post about it on this big

1:03:34

Korean website, and I'm guessing at the pronunciation here,

1:03:36

it looks like it's the coup. The translated

1:03:39

comments say things like, there

1:03:42

will soon be a novel about dating Hitler.

1:03:44

And there actually

1:03:47

is or no, not Hitler, but Nazis.

1:03:49

Maybe. Oh, okay. Untapped Untapped

1:03:52

Fanfiction Potential. One of you guys

1:03:54

get on it. Phoebe, this is your next

1:03:56

supermarket book. I'm taking those. Okay. So then

1:03:59

another one. wrote, even if that

1:04:01

writer gets shot, I have nothing to say.

1:04:03

And then there's another one

1:04:05

that says, even though the author is

1:04:07

of Chinese descent, she is still American.

1:04:09

The author's parents and grandparents probably know

1:04:11

this history, but I guess she grew

1:04:13

up without receiving education at home. And

1:04:16

I'm highlighting these comments because what

1:04:19

they illustrate is that at a certain point

1:04:22

in a controversy like this, the truth just

1:04:24

completely stops mattering to anyone. Like these people

1:04:26

are just convinced that the novel is a

1:04:28

unit 731 romance, which it's not. And

1:04:32

they've convinced themselves that Molly Chang is Chinese

1:04:34

American, which she's not. She's Chinese from China and

1:04:36

she actually lives in the UK now. So

1:04:39

this you see actually, I think a

1:04:41

lot online, people assuming that everybody is

1:04:43

in America talking about America and as

1:04:46

the resident Canadian, even though I'm also American,

1:04:49

I just have to say it's

1:04:51

a thing. It's Canadian erasure, honestly.

1:04:54

Up in Canada, do you guys have your

1:04:56

version of like Ian Miles Cheong, like someone

1:04:59

who lives in Malaysia, who's just absolutely obsessed

1:05:01

with Canada? No, we just have Canadians who

1:05:03

are absolutely obsessed with America. Thank

1:05:06

you. That was a cue. That

1:05:08

was like basically a cue. Yeah. My

1:05:11

good friend. Friend

1:05:13

of the pod, right? Uh-huh. Okay.

1:05:19

I have one more Korean take to offer, partly

1:05:22

because it's just incredible, like for just galaxy

1:05:24

brandiness and partly because Phoebe, I think that

1:05:26

you're going to especially appreciate it. And I

1:05:28

want to thank Jessica, the 80s baby in

1:05:30

particular, for digging this up for me. The

1:05:33

comment is, if Norman

1:05:36

Finkelstein got banned from academia for telling

1:05:38

truth about Gaza, you won't see me

1:05:40

shed a single tear over a

1:05:42

colonizing fiction getting banned. Okay.

1:05:46

So one day Norman Finkelstein is going to write

1:05:49

a YA novel, definitely putting Hitler in it. And

1:05:51

that's what's going to bring peace to the Middle

1:05:53

East. So that's what I'm holding out for. The Hitler

1:05:55

romance we've been waiting for. Oh God, I can't wait

1:05:57

to read it. Okay. So now we are. Finally

1:06:00

coming to the end of this story things

1:06:02

are really spinning out of control from Molly

1:06:05

Chang at this point Right good reads is

1:06:07

mad at her Korea is mad at her

1:06:09

and extremely online Chinese in cells are sending

1:06:11

her messages accusing her of having Racialized rape

1:06:14

fantasies and saying things like Zijin

1:06:16

Ping should send agents to execute this

1:06:18

bitch. He might do it He I

1:06:20

know like really kind of playing with

1:06:22

fire on that one Um, and this

1:06:26

is the sad part of the story though. Not

1:06:28

because she was executed Not

1:06:32

amazing like good just

1:06:34

amazing narratively But

1:06:36

no she ended up spoiling her own book to

1:06:39

try to get people to Definitely

1:06:41

for alone So eventually

1:06:43

she got on Twitter and she

1:06:46

explained that the book features an

1:06:48

unreliable narrator And then she revealed

1:06:50

that the sequel is entitled to

1:06:52

kill a monstrous prince Which

1:06:55

does suggest that the heroine and

1:06:57

the evil prints are perhaps not

1:07:00

going to be having a colonizer

1:07:02

romance happily ever after Yeah

1:07:06

sad for them I was really rooting for those

1:07:08

crazy kids but the people who are outraged about

1:07:10

this book don't care about any of this and

1:07:14

If they're paying attention, they're not gonna stop

1:07:16

being mad because at this point It's not

1:07:18

about Molly Chang or about to gaze upon

1:07:20

wicked gods It's really about the people who

1:07:22

see her in her book as an avatar

1:07:24

for whatever their kind of pet most hated

1:07:26

thing is Whether it's

1:07:29

colonizer romances or authors misbehaving on

1:07:31

good reads Some people even accused

1:07:33

her of grooming young women by

1:07:35

writing a Colloidal rape

1:07:37

fetish book that quote

1:07:39

will absolutely cause real-world

1:07:42

consequences I'm just gonna assume because

1:07:44

these are why a books that all of these

1:07:46

reviewers are nine to ten years old But

1:07:50

this whole thing about the think of the

1:07:52

impressionable young women that's not a new line

1:07:54

of argument, right? No, no

1:07:57

Like there have actually been versions of that complaint swirling around

1:08:00

around forever. People were like, flowers in the attic

1:08:02

will normalize incest. And there was a thing about

1:08:04

video games. It was like, oh, Mortal Kombat, like

1:08:06

kids are going to try to really rip each

1:08:08

other's spines out and like eat them. So

1:08:11

criticism like this is annoying,

1:08:13

but it's kind of like

1:08:16

it's kind of classic. You see it a lot and

1:08:18

it's not going to sink a book. And

1:08:20

what's interesting is that it actually does take a lot

1:08:23

to sink a book at this point. Yeah. So what's

1:08:25

the status of this one to gaze upon the wicked

1:08:27

gods? Is it is it canceled or did this was

1:08:29

this actually good for sales? So

1:08:32

we won't know for a little bit because the book

1:08:34

is not out yet how it's selling. But

1:08:37

thus far, it is not canceled. And

1:08:39

this is, I think, the optimistic part. I

1:08:41

think we are seeing a little bit of

1:08:44

a vibe shift, as we were discussing at

1:08:46

the very start of this episode, not just

1:08:48

in terms of how we receive me to

1:08:50

stories, but also when it comes to canceling

1:08:53

stuff, even in YA. You know, in the

1:08:55

world of YA, I suppose this is probably

1:08:57

what passes for a happy ending.

1:08:59

I mean, nobody ended up in an

1:09:01

institution. Nobody ended up canceling her own

1:09:03

book. The author merely had to spoil

1:09:06

her own book before publication to get

1:09:08

everyone off of her back. Well,

1:09:10

thank you for this, Kat, and thank you both for coming

1:09:12

on the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you. This was

1:09:14

great. Check out Feminine

1:09:16

Chaos at femchaospod.substack.com. This

1:09:19

has been Blocked and Reported. Our show is

1:09:21

produced, as always, with help from Tracing Wood

1:09:23

Grains and Jessica the 80s Baby. I'm Katie

1:09:26

Herzog, and we'll be back next week with

1:09:28

a new guest host. Oh, wait, it's not

1:09:30

new, it's Ellen.