Live on air discussing feminism, abortion, women in the military and other fun stuff. Listen now — or check out the archives later.
UPDATE: Listening to it now and… hmm. The section where we talk about the law is not good. I repeatedly adopted his use of the words “liable” and “duty” to talk about criminal law, which were just… wrong. So cut me some slack on that — I wasn’t prepared for those questions (and I was a few glasses of wine into the night).
I disagreed with the host pretty vigorously, but he had some interesting points and was a respectful and thoughtful moderator, so it’s an interesting conversation (although I promise a lot of his arguments are going to make y’all irritable — I was taking lots of deep breaths throughout it). I really did enjoy talking to them, though, and Clayton and Jamie were great hosts. I appreciate them having me on.
But the highlight is when an MRA comes on and calls me “Silver Spoon” for the entire conversation. Apparently I got a Mercedes for my 16th birthday. I wish someone would have told me!
Anyway, the whole thing is like 2 hours long so I don’t expect anyone to actually listen to it all, but at least check out a few minutes.
You did well. I would be too frustrated to effectively deal with naive and cliched questions and misunderstandings that come from people without a good grounding in all areas of social justice.
I love how the host made all kinds of snide comments at the start because you were late. Otherwise, it was a good discussion, given the difference of the opinions of everyone involved.
So far, four minutes in, I want to throttle the host.
“This is kind of that feminist attitude that really starts to get under my skin. And any kind of opinion is alright with me…”
Wait, really? Any opinion is alright with you? What’s your working definition of “alright”? Because I think it differs from… everyone’s.
“…Aren’t they doing—do you see what I’m seeing—that their mindset is no different than they’re accusing men of having?”
“I don’t really see it, I guess…”
“You don’t think that feminists are sexist? As they accuse men of being… I dunno, controlling, or whatever they’re accusing men of doing to women, —”
So, wait, you… don’t know? Like, you’re trying to either provide a substantive critique of feminist thought or just outright take them dames down a peg (determining which is an exercise for the listener), and you… don’t know what they’re saying? That’s… a novel approach.
“…don’t you think, or do you think, that they’re having some kind of the same attitude, going back the other way?”
Screaming, now.
wow. i am currently listening to this and am at about minute 25…this guy is a trip. he really is. “your feminist bullshit” ? it must extremely, EXTREMELY frustrating to argue with someone who has no respect for your argument…or for you.
by the way, jill…how’s that mercedes benz you got for your 16th birthday doing? all shiny and new still? nice.
it must *be*
oops.
Can I just ask how Jamie can stand to co-hosting this show with him? She’s just so much smarter, and so much more tuned into what everyone is actually saying…
Geekily, she reminds me of Betty.
(Slash, she just said her, “I think women are choosing to not be in high-ranking positions in society,” bit. But she still seems open to changing her views.)
“You don’t think that the way we grow up doesn’t affect who we are or what we do?” Yes, there we go.
Oh my god. This guy is just literally refusing to believe that there can exist miscarriages of justice when an occupying army hires mercenaries to run roughshod over a country.
Jill, I’m listening right now and when I just heard your voice, I was incredibly relieved. Those two people starting off were just killing my braincells.
Listening… Why should society rally around women who are pregnant? Wtf. Condoms are cheap? Um, some fucking men refuse to use them. He is constantly blaming women with every sentence he says. And that Jaime person isn’t any better. I can’t… There you go with a great, eloquent explanation… Ow. He just spoke again. Ow, ow, ow. I can’t listen to him. I want to yell at him. BAH stop talking you asshole! I need to stop listening. I’m sorry. I just can’t listen to him. But your rebuttals, from what I heard, were great. I don’t know how you kept your cool. I would have lost it in the first few sentences that he uttered.
Thing is, I honestly believe that people blind to male privilege have NO CLUE how offensive they sound when they say things that WE know are totally rooted in sexist thought. They honestly think they’re being logical, and don’t get why a feminist blows up when they say something so infuriating. That’s why they go on and on about how we’re so ‘angry’ and they don’t know why. They are genuinely clueless.
Someone should point him to the Feminism 101 Blog, since he sounds like he may be the kind who would actually read and try to understand the discussions there.
All told, I listened to the entire show, and think Jill did a fantastic job.
I’m at the part where you are talking about the KBR rapes and he is like “uh, I didn’t read the article, explain it to me” and you are like “fact” and he is like “um, without knowing anything, I refuse to believe you.” It’s just incredible! For him to acknowledge that he doesn’t know anything, ask you for the facts, and then refuse to believe the facts is just astonishing.
Wow, that silver spoon guy was a total d*ck. Way to go fighting the good fight… but wow.
Why do most of these conversations start off with feminists being characterized as man haters? Right there, the whole thing starts off wrong…
Way to go dealing with the host and caller. I totally wouldn’t have been able to hold my temper.
I was only able to listen for a few minutes, so take my impressions with a large grain of salt…BUT…I do think the host was rude and dismissive. His whole attitude seemed to be, “How can you possibly disagree with anything I say, no matter how outrageous?” Isn’t that just a tad arrogant? I thought you were well spoken and very patient. I also noticed he had to be reminded to thank you for being on the show–he didn’t thank you until the woman (Jamie?) did. It’s a little thing, but important, IMHO.
I really enjoyed the part around 90:00 – 100:00. You made a great point about women being generally sexualized and how that relates to men complaining about women as the gatekeepers of sex.
my head = exploding. so many stupid things they said; i’m amazed at your patience and your statements like “you make a really good point.” i couldn’t have been as generous.
highlights:
(57:00ish) clay wanting a cookie for not punching a pregnant prostitute who he could “tell” was a “methhead.” and jill’s incredulous reaction. heehee!
(1:43:00ish) you said “women’s bodies are sexualized.” and his initial response was, “well, women’s bodies are much more . . .” and then he trailed off! this of course, immediately following his statement that the ceo of ebay “isn’t terribly attractive.”
(1:56:30ish) did jamie seriously compare, in terms of difficulty, *typing documents* with being a housewife? if not, i don’t understand what she was trying to say.
I really don’t know how you didn’t hang up when the guy started calling you “silver spoon”
You have much more patience and grace than I.
Which is probably (read: most definitely) for the best, b/c I would’ve have been screaming or very condescending to them.
Yo, Jill, even doing one of these shows badly is hard and it sounds like you did a great job, especially when you are being not only criticized (which is fair) but heckled by a loud-mouthed loser. Licensed attorneys with ten years in practice sometimes make the swap between “liable” and “guilty”; declare victory and enjoy it!
Oh, this guy is priceless. I love how, after he expects heaps of congratulations for not punching a pregnant prostitute (who really had it coming, anyway), he sputters “and I COULD have defended myself!” Gotta defend your macho pride, now…
Jill, you did a great job. You were ridiculously patient and explained your points very well.
44:00 “all the injustice has been removed”
44:30 when I read your website I see a lot of anger, but I don’t see the injustice.
YOUR WORDS ARE WHY YOU SEE A LOT OF ANGER! Because if he can’t see the injustice, it must not exist! SIMPLE! Why can’t you silly feminists get with that???? *choke*
Wow. I can’t believe this guy. I have to wonder if he believes what he is saying. He doesn’t believe in socialization??? He “refuses to believe”. Which means he won’t even consider anything that doesn’t align with his viewpoint, b/c it just CANNOT be! WOW.
Is he completely incapable of understanding the SYSTEM that is called “patriarchy”? That this is not just a collection of like minded individuals whose bias is self contained?
God, I wish I could’ve called in.
“That’s perfect reasoning”
Can he not see he’s judging a few women and making it apply to ALL women and how this is wrong???
I wish Jamie would talk more.
Regarding the abortion issue, is it really the business of the US government to dictate to its citizens what they could do to their bodies? Couldn’t this possibly provide the state with a troubling opening that totalitarian/authoritarian fascist and communist regimes used to regiment the lives of their citizenry. Is this really how Americans want the US government to treat them?
As for staying at home vs career….yeesh! One of the things many discussions of women/men’s choice to stay-at-home vs. working fail to take into account in the US is that this is really a choice that is only viable for upper-middle/upper-class families. That is one issue that seems to attempt to universalize the upper/upper-middle class lifestyle for everyone else and to deem those who do not conform as “abnormal” when both parents working out of economic necessity are the norm. I never met a classmate or family who had a stay-at-home parent until I started meeting some upper-class east siders in high school. Everyone else had no choice…both parents had to work or else they won’t be able to make ends meet.
As for the dude calling you a “silver spoon”, he sounds like a working-class dude who is controlling because he probably has no other way to exercise power in his life. His tone reminded me a bit of one working class classmate and his family embittered at being screwed by their landlord and the housing court. They felt deep resentment at being evicted from their rent-controlled lower east side apartment in favor of the “rich NYU students” and young professionals who were moving in during the mid-late 1990s.
Who’s that blustery dick blister that starts chiming in at about 25:00? I can hear that vein popping out of his beet-red MRA forehead.
I’ve just started listening, but so far I can already tell that there really wasn’t any effort made on his part to know what the hell he’s talking about.
I mean, he thinks you’re using the term mercenaries as a pejorative for male soldiers…rather than as a reference to actual mercenaries…
It’s pretty egregious that the host is conflating feminists with women who openly admit to using their sexuality to get ahead (good luck with that, btw, and brace yourselves for some huge disappointments, ladies, if you’re out there).
I’m sure some women who consider themselves feminists may attempt to flirt their way out of speeding tickets on occasion. But no matter how individual women perceive themselves in relation to feminism, women who try to use their sexuality as a crutch aren’t the same women who are dedicated to feminism and are learned in feminist theory. Obviously.
But feminists on your feminist board have expressed resentment about being sexually objectified, so that means all women think the same way, including that one woman that one guy met in the army that one time who batted her lashes to get out of latrine detail. Conclusion: all women are hypocrites.
Not only are feminists a monolith, women in general are. That’s some broad-ass-brush generalizing.
exholt,
theres already quite a long list of things that the gov’t says you can and cant do with your body, is abortion on a higher plane than using drugs to alleviate symptoms of a disease, selling a kidney, prostituting yourself or any number of other things?
wiggles,
women are of course not a monolith but people often dont realize they remember best the smallest fraction of events. In my 10 years in the military did I see several dozen perhaps 100 females who have batted their eyelashes to get out of a shitty duty or sexually cozied up to someone to avoid things they dont want to do? yep, just as I have seen self-identified feminist women use their sexuality to avoid a ticket, get something for free and so on. the issue is that those situations are probably less than .01% of my life experience with women but some people only remember what they want to make their arguments for them, frustrating but it happens all the time, even to the best and most noble of us, let alone that dude. If I were to be an asshat and generalize one aspect of women it would be that most do not self-identify themselves as feminists yet they know enough about it or how laws have changed in the last few decades to take advantage of all the benefits feminism has achieved for women and in their next breath disavow feminist idealogy and go about their merry way. Cant say I fault them for that though as its only logical. This does not represent a majority of my life experience with women but it does happen a lot, quite interesting to watch really.
JamesPi,
Whether government says whether one can or cannot do something has no bearing on whether that given law/regulation is necessarily right morally, ethically, or will result in the greater benefit of the larger public. Slavery, Jim Crow Laws, Japanese-American internment, Poll Taxes are all examples of past government policies that are now considered by most to not only be legally sketchy, but also morally abominable and of questionable benefit to the larger society.
One current example is the absurd extension of IP copyrights to life of author plus 70 years or for corporate authorship, 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication.
I recall that the idea of government protection of IP was meant to encourage inventors and authors to create and publish works to benefit the public by providing a temporary government sanctioned monopoly for their economic benefit that will expire after a period so that the information/knowledge would enter the public domain for the benefit of the entire society. By extending the copyrights to such absurdly high limits, not only would that substantially delay the possibility of such information/knowledge entering the public domain for society’s benefit….the extended economic benefit may actually substantially reduce the incentive of the author, inventor, or corporate entity to continue inventing or publishing…an effect completely at odds with what the drafters of the original IP laws had in mind and the greater public good.
Jill: I didn’t click the link, because I do hate listening to ignorant talk radio show hosts, but were you on for the whole two hours? If so, did you ever consider saying “Good luck filling up the next 97 minutes with your useless blather, you pricks” and hanging up?
Omg, I can’t believe that caller just accused you of saying condoms don’t work. I’m sorry, but are these people just not LISTENING to you?
Once some folks hear the word ‘feminist’ it’s like something in their brain snaps, and they start talking to the strawfeminist in their heads, not the actual person anymore. You can even say something totally opposite from what their stereotyped ‘imaginary feminist’ in their head believes, and they won’t even process it.