Feminist Professor

In this episode, we will consider the rise of the ‘angry white man,’ the man who experiences aggrieved entitlement because he has not been delivered the social power, authority, and resources promised by patriarchy. The angry white man—who may resent downward economic mobility as much as feminist challenges to gender hierarchy—has been recruited as a voter, protestor, and warrior in the fight for normative masculinity (which, by extension, requires normative femininity). We talk about the political force of the angry white man right now as well as the many ways he is positioned as the last defense of patriarchy and white supremacy. Show Notes The following texts have been mentioned in this episode as well as earlier episodes in the series on masculinities: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Angry White Men: Masculinity at the End of an Era (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Angry-White-Men-American-Masculinity/dp/1568585136 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483 The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks): https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

In this episode, we are rejoined by Dr. Suzanne Ashworth for a conversation about the rise and rules of ‘bro culture.’ She will discuss the shaping force of ‘guyland’ for white, college bound or college educated young men as well as the ways in which the extended adolescence offered to men generates entitlement, requires silence, and affords protection. She will also discuss the ‘killing paradox’ that defines dominant masculinity and the use of ‘fag discourse’ as a form of social control for young men. Together we will think about the elevation of ‘bro culture’ in modern political life and the forms of complicity it encourages from the larger public. Show Notes Dr. Ashworth mentions the following texts in her discussion: Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe): https://www.amazon.com/Dude-Youre-Fag-Masculinity-Sexuality/dp/0520271483

In this episode, we will launch the first of three conversations on masculinities with Dr. Suzanne Ashworth. We will discuss why masculinities should be understood as plural even though our culture seems to ignore all but the most dominant and idealized version of it. We will also discuss boyhood and the ways in which mainstream culture begins to ‘boy’ our boys in the direction of emotional indifference and cruelty. Throughout the three-part series, we will constantly return to the questions: what does masculinity feel? And what more might masculinity feel? SHOW NOTES The following texts were cited in this episode: Masculinities (R.W. Connell): https://www.ucpress.edu/books/masculinities/paper Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (Michael Kimmel): https://www.amazon.com/Guyland-Perilous-World-Where-Become/dp/0060831359 Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Niobe Way): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674072428 Perverse Feelings: Poe and American Masculinity (Suzanne Ashworth): https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/perverse-feelings-9781978798533/

DESCRIPTION In this episode, we will complete our discussion of selected policy objectives in Project 2025. This week, the focus is on LGBTQ equity and personhood. Project 2025 is consistently invested in diminishing or denying the personhood of LGBTQ individuals, and it details the legal, political, and economic levers that will help normalize this. We discuss the loss of legal protections as well as the right to non-discrimination, the assumption that gay marriage and family are defective versions of what is biologically and morally desirable, the effort to relabel the trans person as potential political extremist and terrorist, and the conflation of LGBTQ-supportive materials with pornography.

In this episode, we will continue our close look at the key objectives of Project 2025. This time, we will focus on the plan to restrict and deny access to both contraception and emergency contraception. More contraceptive forms (i.e. hormonal birth control, IUDs) have been reframed as abortifacients, or drugs and devices designed to terminate pregnancy. They do not terminate pregnancy; they prevent pregnancy. But Project 2025 is intent on erroneously redefining them so that they can be folded into larger efforts to regulate and ban abortion. Listen to hear more about how this is—and will—happen.

As the second season of Feminist Professor launches, we begin a multi-episode and closer examination of Project 2025. In this first episode, we focus on the larger plan to regulate, obstruct, and ultimately end the provision of abortion services in the United States.

DESCRIPTION As the second season of Feminist Professor launches, we begin a multi-episode and closer examination of Project 2025. In this first episode, we focus on the larger plan to regulate, obstruct, and ultimately end the provision of abortion services in the United States. SHOW NOTES You can find a PDF of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership at https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf You can find the Project 2025 Tracker at https://www.project2025.observer/en The mentioned article, ‘Education Policy Reforms Are Key Strategies for Increasing the Married Birth Rate’ (Jay Greene and Lindsey Burke) can be found here: https://www.heritage.org/education/report/education-policy-reforms-are-key-strategies-increasing-the-married-birth-rate

In this episode, we discuss the important political and personal necessity of rest. Because we live in a grind culture that insists on incessant productivity and normalizes exhaustion, we have lost the capacity to define and defend rest. Thanks to Tricia Hersey’s work in Rest is Resistance, this episode describes how we are damaged by the ‘cult of urgency and busyness’ and how we might begin to reimagine the radical potential of learning how to rest.

Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Show Notes: In this episode, we are going to examine the shortcomings and liabilities of resilience. We will discuss the ways in which resilience—as a social expectation and psychological ideal—can obscure the need for structural change and block larger forms of resistance. Resilience can easily become […]

In this week’s episode, I was fortunate to sit down for a longer discussion about trans athletes and gender in sport with Dr. Kristy McCray, a sports sociologist and Professor in Otterbein’s Health and Sport Sciences Department. This episode is twice as long as my solo episodes, but it is well worth the time (even […]

This week’s episode looks more closely at the increasingly normalized ‘fear of gender’ and the many ways that it is leveraged to reinforce the ‘biological reality of sex.’ The fear of gender, in many ways, is the fear of gender self-determination, or the right of a person to decide their own gender identity rather than […]

We will continue exploring the assumptions that underlie ‘woke gender ideology.’ This particular episode will focus on the purported ‘biological reality of sex’ as defined by the Trump administration’s Executive Order ‘Defending Women from Gender Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’ More specifically, we will explore how a scientifically inaccurate understanding of biological sex is leveraged in anti-gender and anti-trans political efforts.

In this episode, we begin to discuss the new rhetoric of ‘woke gender ideology’ and the way that it is weaponized in the current political climate. We pay special attention to the concepts of ‘wokeness’ and ‘ideology’ this week; next week, we will focus entirely on the vilification of gender.  This episode also discusses how to allow for despair without falling into paralysis and what active hope might make possible.

This episode continues the conversation of last week, Preparing for Trump 2.0.  In it, eighteen speakers from the larger podcast community share brief and powerful insights into what they are doing differently or refusing to do in this volatile political climate.

In this episode, we consider how we might differently approach the second presidency of Donald Trump. How can we guard against overwhelm and dysregulation? How can we direct our energy and attention to meaningful projects rather than fall into another extended outrage cycle?

In this episode, we discuss the rise in trans panic, or the cultivation of widespread anxiety and fear at the very fact of trans existence. We talk about the ways in which trans panic serves particular political ends as well as underscores the phantasmatic nature of gender. Using gender affirming care as an example, we consider how much trans panic relies on fictitious stories about gender and ignores the lived realities of trans youth specifically.

In this episode, we discuss the shifting gender and sexual identities and practices of Generation Z. At least one in five members of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ, so they are the largest demographic of LGBTQ persons in the United States. We hear from various Gen Z voices in this episode and consider what their […]

In this episode, we will discuss different ways of understanding the motives of misogyny, or what is more commonly understood as the hatred of women, as well as examine the upsurge in misogynist rhetoric in the 2024 Presidential election.

In this week’s episode, we will approach patriarchy as a social system that overvalues maleness and masculinity at the same time it devalues femaleness and femininity. We will talk about the ‘logics’ of patriarchy that not only attempt to justify the system as inevitable and good but also encourage men to fear the judgment and reprisal of other men. In the last part of the episode, we will consider a handful of examples from the 2024 Presidential campaign that demonstrate the ways in which men police the masculinity of other men to defend patriarchal power.

In this episode, we turn to the work of Sara Ahmed to better understand how we become a problem for others when we expose or name a problem. Podcast Available On: Apple Spotify Featuring: Dr. Tammy Birk Show Notes: In this episode, I relied on the critical work of Sara Ahmed and cited three of […]