Stores about white women making a mess of things and how to clean up our act.
The Our Dirty Laundry podcast is a remarkable resource for individuals who are looking to educate themselves on the complex and often uncomfortable topic of race. As a privileged white woman who has hesitated to engage in conversations surrounding race out of fear of saying something inappropriate, I deeply appreciate that this podcast exists as a starting point for my education. Katie and Mandy do an exceptional job of delving into history and uncovering the truth about white women's complicity in slavery and white supremacy. By understanding this foundation, listeners can gain valuable insights into why we are where we are today when it comes to racial issues.
One of the best aspects of this podcast is the extensive research and work that Katie and Mandy have put into providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of historical events and their impact on present-day systems. The depth they go into history allows for a more nuanced perspective on oppressive systems that have shaped our country's legacy. This podcast is not just entertaining; it actively encourages self-reflection, challenging listeners to reevaluate their thoughts on important topics such as racism, xenophobia, and sexism.
Furthermore, The Our Dirty Laundry podcast succeeds in creating an environment that fosters honest discussions about race. Mandy and Katy's voices are bold and brave, ensuring that topics are explored candidly without shying away from difficult conversations. Their willingness to confront uncomfortable truths creates an atmosphere where growth and learning can occur.
While this podcast offers tremendous value in terms of education and insight, one potential drawback is its relatively narrow focus on white women's complicity in racial issues. While this specific issue is crucial to address, it would be beneficial to explore other facets of systemic racism as well. Broadening the scope could provide a more comprehensive understanding of how various groups contribute to perpetuating oppressive systems.
In conclusion, The Our Dirty Laundry podcast stands apart due to its commitment to unearthing hidden histories and challenging listeners' perspectives on race-related issues. It serves as a valuable tool for individuals seeking to educate themselves and become more anti-racist. Mandy and Katie's dedication to providing accessible education is commendable, and their podcast should be mandatory listening for all adults aiming to foster a more equitable society.
Send us a textNavigating the Mess: White Women's Role in Politics and MotherhoodHosts Mandy Griffin and Katie Swalwell delve into a discussion about the pervasive and historical role white women have played in upholding white supremacy through politics and motherhood. They reflect on the disorienting state of current events, the importance of local action, and the influence of female political figures like Krisit Noem, Pam Bondi, and Joni Ernst. The episode primarily focuses on the book 'Mothers of Massive Resistance' by Elizabeth Gillespie McCray, which explores how white women have consistently contributed to segregation and racism in America. The hosts highlight their disillusionment with the political system and express the need to understand historical patterns to effectively combat ongoing inequalities.00:00 Welcome to Dirty Laundry00:46 Life in a Dissociative State01:39 Trump's Women and Media Overload04:12 Commercials and Political Ads07:16 Trump's Surgeon General Nominee Controversy14:36 The Importance of Science and Research20:24 Influencers and Misinformation20:53 Marketing Manipulation and Grifters21:20 Political Commentary on Joni Ernst25:40 The Role of Motherhood in Politics27:26 Plant Research and Mutual Aid29:11 Introduction to 'Mothers of Massive Resistance'30:33 White Women's Role in White Supremacy43:42 Call to Action and Future Plans
Send us a textHosts Mandy Griffin and Katie Swalwell discuss the importance of white women recognizing their role in activism and learning from communities with long-standing vulnerabilities. They critique systemic issues and figures such as Pete Buttigieg's inadequate political responses, and dive into the problematic policies and actions of Trump's administration, focusing on the misguided efforts of officials in education and agriculture sectors. The episode concludes with a call to understand the historical context and influence of white Christian nationalism in shaping these systemic issues.00:43 Reflections on Marginalized Communities03:29 Toxic Positivity vs. Despair05:38 Frustration with Democratic Leadership12:01 The Role of the Department of Education23:42 Tariffs and Their Impact31:30 Economic Impact of Avian Flu on Poultry Farmers44:27 The Reality of Mass Deportations and Agriculture47:26 Trump's Nominee for Surgeon General: Jeanette Neshewat52:09 Upcoming Topics and Future Discussions
Send us a textIn this episode, we grapple with balancing staying informed without falling into despair from constant news consumption. We then delve into the roles of Trump's nominated cabinet members such as Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education and Brooke Rollins for Secretary of Agriculture, scrutinizing their qualifications, histories, and the potential impacts of their appointments on education and agriculture policies in the U.S. The discussion covers issues like tariff implications, agricultural labor reliance on undocumented workers, and the broader consequences on food supply and farming subsidies.00:00 Introduction and Catching Up00:28 Balancing News Consumption and Mental Health04:20 Impact of Cabinet Members on Daily Life05:53 Linda McMahon's Background and Role12:50 Brooke Rollins and Agricultural Policies18:13 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Send us a textFour years later...what did white women do this presidential election cycle? The unsurprising results are in.
Send us a textTrad wife run-down. Where does the movement come from, how has it evolved, does it have a political agenda, are we, as feminists, wrong to criticize it? Let's talk!
Send us a Text Message.Katy's Publishing Company!
Debbie Reese is a Nambé Pueblo scholar and educator. Dr. Reese founded American Indians in Children's Literature, which analyzes representations of Native and Indigenous peoples in children's literature. She co-edited a young adult adaptation of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States with Jean Mendoza in 2019.American Indians In Children's Literature Blog
Interview with Leah Slick-Driscoll. Leah is a member of the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa (Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa) and is also Winnebago from Nebraska. She received her B.A.s in History and Social Studies Education from the University of Iowa in 2009. She received her M.A. in Social Studies Education from the University of Iowa in 2014. She is honored to teach 9-12th grade social studies at the Meskwaki Settlement School since 2009. She has 7 children and two grandchildren. She has a passion for Native American history and Indigenous Studies. She loves to research and get involved in issues that affect Native American people today, and to give her students opportunities to research and be a part in solving these issues.
Weighing in on the Katie Britt response to the SOTU address and how she ties in to weaponized white motherhood
While we all realize the latest Alabama ruling on IVF is a reproductive rights issue, we may not have thought through the deeper issues of intersectional feminism that run through this controversy. Today we're discussing how white women are showing up in very white-womany ways for IVF.
We're back!!! Sorry we disappeared for a moment there. But don't worry, we're still here, we're still friends and we're still down for exposing white women and how we enforce and support white supremacy. We're discussing the weaponization of motherhood this season and starting with a group of modern day Daughter's of the Confederacy: Mom's for Liberty. It sounds nice, but as we well know, white-woman-nice has some dark undertones. Welcome back guys!
Discussion of the article "It's not White Fragility, it's White Flammability" by Sun Yung Shin on Medium. Also mentions: "Is 'Imposter Syndrome' Just for White Women". Find out more about Sun Yung Shin on her website. There's a t-shirt I always see advertised to me on Instagram that says "Not fragile like a flower, fragile like a bomb" with a half-face portrait of RBG in the background. We white women love to highlight our power when it makes us look good and strong, but are we as willing to acknowledge our ability, even our inevitability, to do harm with that power?
Chat with Ruby Hamad about her best selling book, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color. Ruby Hamad White Tears/Brown Scars
Whew....last time we said we were back, but now we're really back. For sure. Probably. :)Join us for Part 2 of our discussion of Ruby Hamad's amazing book, White Tears/Brown Scars.
Season 3 Book Club: White Tears/Brown Scars - How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color, by Ruby Hamad.Part one of Hamad's book covers "The Setup" of the white/brown binary and the creation of the "damsel in distress" from the colonial era to current times. Listen in and follow the links below to buy a copy of the book. Hamad's in depth research and inspiring writing is not to be missed! Links:The Guardian ArticleIndependent Book Store Link to buyAmazon Link to buyBarnes & Noble Link to buyAll The White Friends I Couldn't KeepThe Impossible Will Take a Little While
Katy tells us what we really want, what we really, really want...about girl power and what we can take away from pop culture activism.
Katy takes us through the history of the early 90s white feminist punk rockers known as the Riot Grrl Movement. Manifesto
It was going to be a minisode, but honestly there is just too much! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-courthttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/trump-ginni-thomas-meeting.htmlhttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomas/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/ginni-thomas-attended-stop-the-steal-rallyhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/24/virginia-thomas-mark-meadows-texts/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/24/ginni-thomas-donald-trump-mark-meadows-texts-election
This history of the fight for equal pay & the gender pay gap - what it encompasses and what it leaves out.
These women don't deserve much of our time, but the lesson that it always helps to be a white lady is reinforced in a hard core way with the stories of Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes. Yet, somehow, it's seldom mentioned that their whiteness was integral to their fraud.
The ERA finally got through Congress, with surprising ease, in 1972. It was then quickly ratified by 30 states...and then, about to cross the threshold into an adopted amendment, it died. Why? Well, that's where Phyllis comes in.
Kate Schatz is back to bring in some examples of positive white ladies deviating from the patriarchal, white supremacist norm and how we can learn from their lives and work. When we talked to Jessie Daniels a few episodes back we noted that many of the non-shitty white women we find in history happened to be queer women. We asked Kate to highlight a few of those women in this episode.
You're not going to be shocked, but you'll still be horrified, if you didn't know the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had some of the same background shenanigans going on from the early suffrage days (we're looking at you Susan B). White women always watching out for white women, even when it's not about them...NYT Article: How Women Got in on the Civil Rights Act
Everyone agrees that people shouldn't be discriminated against based on their sex, don't they? Maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe they shouldn't?? Turns out it's a bit complicated as we start discussing the ERA!
It's Women's History Month, but have you ever wondered what the history of WHM is itself? Safe bet: white women have something to do with it!
Interview with Jessie Daniels, Professor and author of Nice White Ladies: The Truth About White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It.Jessie Daniels is a professor at Hunter College in New York. She is an internationally recognized expert on Internet manifestatons of racism. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, Forbes, and Newsweek. Her previous books, White Lies and Cyber Racism about far right extremist groups. Nice White Ladies changes focus, and instead addresses the "Karen" phenomenon and role of white women in many of the political landscapes we know today. You will recognize many of the issues we address with Jessie from discussions on previous episodes and we hope to have her back to talk about more!From the episode: The NYT article on unequal work load in American familiesBuy Jessie's book!!!!AmazonBarnes & NobleBookshopPowell'sIndiebound
Current day NOW controversies - Katy brings us up to date on the female fuckery happening in NOW the past several years. White liberal women have a long way to go in dismantling their own white supremacy.
Inspired by NFL's greatest halftime (according to Mandy) - white (women) hysteria and music
From the "official" organization of NOW - starting where the WW picked up...and dropped the ball, again.
By all prominent historical accounts, the National Organization for Women was founded in 1966 by Betty Friedan and several other women who met together in a hotel room at a women's conference that June. But there's a whole lot more to what happened before that hotel meeting (because, of course there is) that involves many foundational events and women that are not white.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan is widely credited for initiating the "second wave" of feminism. Dissecting the problematic themes of this framework, and Friedan's writing itself, is an important beginning in tackling the overall issues with white feminism.
Season Three! Introducing the idea of feminist "waves" - where they came from and why they are problematic.
We sadly note the passing of bell hooks. We encourage you all to read her work and the many online tributes to her. We particularly resonated with this piece by Mikki Kendall. bell hooks will definitely be making more appearances in the next season about white feminism.
Forced sterilizations in the workplace and its ties to Robert Bork, failed Regan Supreme Court Justice nominee.
We didn't know the end of our book club would coincide with the (almost inevitable) roll back of Roe v Wade; but given the material we have covered this season, we should have seen this coming. Read this, now: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/the-betrayal-of-roe.html
A Thanksgiving minisode! Come learn about the Godmother of Thanksgiving, Sarah Hale. If you haven't heard about her before, you'll still recognize her immediately. Just remember what we've said in the past about white women commemorating things...
Continuing the discussion of Jennifer Nelson's book, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. Wrapping up Chapter 3 and moving on to the Young Lords in Chapter 4.
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement by Jennifer Nelson. We get deeper into the Redstockings radical feminist group.
Intro to "Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement" by Jennifer Nelson. We learn, again, that there is so much to history that we have no idea about and, once we learn it, we have the typical "ah, shit" response. It's not going out on a limb to say that abortion is a complex issue, but it get so much deeper when we add in race and eugenics and the medical industrial complex, and on and on....so join us again with your seatbelts tightly fastened!
The little known history of reproductive testing and experimentation on Puerto Rican women in the early to mid 1900s. So many thanks to the authors and researchers we shout out in this episode. We will get links to their work here soon!
An interview with the amazing Wayne Au, social justice and critical education theory expert, discussing eugenics in school testing. This conversation will make you rethink definitions of intelligence, success, educational standards and more! For more of Wayne's work, check out Rethinking Schools and his published books.
We are joined by Cara Page and Susan Raffo for a conversation about eugenics: where we fit into the deeply embedded and continuing history of eugenics in politics, reproductive rights, legal systems, education, settlement, climate change...truly, truly everything around us is so intricately connected with the ideas we've been discussing in this series. We are grateful to Cara and Susan for helping us process this and encourage you to look more into their work. Register for the Dismantling Eugenics Convening and head to the Healing Histories Project to dive deeper and do the work!
The best bright-colored-trash-clothes on TV since the Tiger King, with a main serving of white women bullshit. Binge it now!
This sterilization stuff ended, right? Right??? Well, no, of course it didn't. We cover:1. The case of Madrigal v Quilligan and the documentary No Mas Bebes (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nomasbebes)2. Sterilization in California's women's prisons and the documentary Belly of the Beast (https://hdpl.kanopy.com/video/belly-beast)3. Native American Sterilization in the 1970s (Compulsory Sterilization of Native Americans and Racist Motivations Behind Public Policies; D. Forbes available here: https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/)4. Hysterectomies in ICE detention facilities and whistleblower Dawn Wooten (https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913398383/whistleblower-alleges-medical-neglect-questionable-hysterectomies-of-ice-detaine)(https://projectsouth.org/enough-is-enough/)(https://vimeo.com/480034664)5. The Crack Program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention)(http://projectprevention.org)
We discuss lying-liar-pants Sherri Tenpenny and Mandy unloads her feelings about all of it.
We're taking a little break from awfulness to catch up with Kate Schatz and learn about the impressive Lucretia Mott! Born in the late 1700s, Lucretia is a reminder that there have always been individuals who didn't just go along with the status quo.
Eugenic proponents had to find a way to whittle down the "undesirable" population in the US. Enter: sterilization. Join us to weave together the histories of anti-immigration sentiments, racism, ableism, and more to see how state sanctioned sterilization became mainstream in the early 1900s and continued through the 80s and even today. US policies became an influence for Hitler and his racial sterilization programs in Germany leading up to WWII. Resources and Citations:https://www.npr.org/transcripts/695574984 (Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam)https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/07/469478098/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations (Interview with Adam Cohen)https://www.amazon.com/Imbeciles-Supreme-American-Eugenics-Sterilization/dp/0143109995/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2NZWLZGOFLS58&dchild=1&keywords=imbeciles+the+supreme+court%2C+american+eugenics&qid=1629140991&sprefix=imbeciles%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-1 (Adam Cohen's Book: Imbeciles) http://www.uvm.edu/%7Elkaelber/eugenics/ (Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States)https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/State-s-little-known-history-of-shameful-science-2663925.php (California's role in Nazis' goal of purification)https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/ (Unwanted Sterilizations and Eugenics Programs in the United States)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell (Buck v Bell Supreme Court Decision)
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