#180: Sex and Power, with Meghan Daum

Disclaimer: as a white male, I recognize I am susceptible to Confirmation bias,to uncritically buying what Meghan has to say in her book, The Problem with Everything. That said, I think this was one of the more engaging conversations Sam has had lately. I feel like there was a lot discussed which made me stop and think critically about cultural phenomena that I'd been taking for granted, stuff which had been unnoticed by banality. It would be an excellent podcast to dive into for someone who'd never listened to Sam before.

So here are some of the observations that struck me in the course of listening to this podcast, presented in a more or less random fashion:

1. Meghan wonders about recent regression from a more gender-neutral period of the 70s and 80s…? Disney princess movies and pink v. blue toy store aisles are a worrying trend.

2. George Will wrote, way back in the 90s, about the phenomenon of the victim club, but since he was writing about women and he is an old white male, he had no credibility with Meghan. But she has since seen the truth in what he was saying.

3. Sam and Megan acknowledge the logical fallacy of claiming that people not within a population demographic have no right to talk about the experiences of that demographic. They don’t say it explicitly, but it strikes me that this is just reverse racism from the proponents of the fallacy.

4. Another surprise: Betsy DeVos corrected a federal guideline in which kangaroo courts decided biased and sometimes debunked university cases brought by women against men.

5. In the case of white boys listening to dangerously non-liberal podcasts, the real story was that misapplied intersection was demonizing innocent children; making them more curious about the only websites which did not falsely blame them. In other words, a reprise of the theme “if the smart, thoughtful people are not willing to tell the truth about an issue (such as the fake reporting of sexual assault on campuses) then only the stupid, thoughtless people will be doing so.“

6. “Glenn Loury and John McWhorter are the most intellectually honest brokers you’re going to find (on the internet)" according to Meghan and Sam, which makes me want to check out their podcast next.

7. We may be moving to a society where people no longer interact with each other face-to-face, and they only interact via multitasking platforms such as texting or social media, in which case there will be a flattening of context and tone losing the richness of a face-to-face conversation. Humanity may have to evolve to learn how to coexist in this mode. As of now, it seems to be tearing us apart.