Show 407: The End of Men and The Rise of Women

The End of Men and The Rise of Women

Audio here!

Everything that begins must end.  Last month on ETFF, author Tim Wise warned us of the looming demographic shift which will soon make White Americans the minority in the United States.  This month, journalist Hanna Rosin tells us the end is near for another group: men.

In The End of Men and The Rise of Women, Rosin lays out how a shift in dynamics on several fronts have allowed – or in some cases forced – men out of their traditional roles and responsibilities, including moving from roles associated with brawn. Women, on the other hand, are “on the rise” according to Rosin – making measurable gains in various areas and undergoing their own shape shifting: adopting characteristics typically found in “male territory.” This movement is not contained to the United States; Rosin presents evidence that traditional gender roles around the world are blurring and bending.

Rosin writes that though she began the book “thinking that we were heading into a woman’s world” that “would reflect some set of ‘womanly values,’ ” she found that assumption to be a “story we tell ourselves to make the current massive upheavals in gender roles seem tamer and more predictable.”

In this interview, she elaborates on the changes in the middle class, economy, education, relationships, and even violence and how we must continue to adapt as we move into this new world.

Show 391: Women & the End of War? w/ Kathleen Barry & Judith Hand

Women & the End of War? w/ Kathleen Barry & Judith Hand

Audio here!

What affect does militarism have on men? Are men – or humans in general – naturally warlike, aggressive, and violent? What role should woman play in modern society when it comes to leadership roles, and can women’s impact on power structures reduce violence and war in any way?

Sunsara Taylor will speak with sociologist Kathleen Barry and evolutionary biologist Judith Hand on these questions on the next Equal Time for Freethought – part one of an (unofficial) two part series on human nature, what we can expect from humanity in the future, and how we can secure a progressive, humanistic future society.

Show 314: Dispatches from the Abortion Wars

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars w/ Carole Joffe

Audio here!

Sunsara Taylor will talk with Carole Joffe about the parallels between today’s stigma and restricted access to abortion with the period before it was made legal and explore some of the most chilling recent assaults on women’s access to abortion, from the assassination of Dr. George Tiller to the criminalization of miscarriages in Utah to the recent passage of health care to the billboards campaign in Atlanta to (dishonestly) portray abortion as genocide of Black children.

Carole Joffe is a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.  She is the author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us.  She is also the author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade.  She has closely followed the abortion wars from before abortion was legal through the passage of Roe V. Wade in 1973 to the rise of anti-abortion fanaticism and then the escalation of terror and assassination of abortion doctors down to today with the passage of parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, threats to providers, medical lies which doctors are mandated by law to tell their patients, fake clinics, and numerous other assaults on abortion access.

Show 259: Dagmar Herzog – Sex in Crisis

Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics

Audio Here!

From the Publisher:

“The Religious Right has fractured, the pundits tell us, and its power is waning. Is it true – have evangelical Christians lost their political clout? When the subject is sex, the answer is definitively no. Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, Americans appear to be doing the time warp again. It’s 1950s redux. Politicians – including many Democrats – insist that abstinence is the only acceptable form of birth control. Fully fifty percent of American high schools teach a “sex education” curriculum that includes deceptive information about the prevalence of STDs and the failure rates of condoms. Students are taught that homosexuality is curable, and that premarital sex ruins future marital happiness. Afraid of sounding godless, American liberals have failed to challenge these retrograde orthodoxies.

“The truth is Americans have not become anti-sex, but they have become increasingly anxious about sex – not least due to the stratagems of the Religious Right. There has been a war on sex in America – a war conservative evangelicals have in large part already won. How did the Religious Right score so many successes? Historian Dagmar Herzog argues that conservative evangelicals appropriated the lessons of the first sexual revolution far more effectively than liberals. With the support of a multimillion-dollar Christian sex industry, evangelicals crafted an astonishingly graphic and effective pitch for the pleasures of “hot monogamy” – for married, heterosexual couples only. This potent message enabled them to win elections and seduce souls, with disastrous political consequences.”

Continue reading “Show 259: Dagmar Herzog – Sex in Crisis”

Show 230a: Cristina Page – “Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away”

“Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away.”

Part 1 of a two-week special hosted by Sunsara Taylor!

Audio here!

As the 35th anniversary of Roe V. Wade approaches, it is appropriate to take stock at the degree to which the rise of Christian fundamentalism in American politics and culture has brought with it an unprecedented assault on the most fundamental rights of women.

Access to abortion is out of reach for many poor and rural women, abortion providers are still under constant physical – and increasingly, legal – threat, and the Supreme Court – with their decision to uphold the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” – has begun the process of criminalizing abortion. A growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, the life-endangering “abstinence-only” programs are being pushed onto our school children by Democrats and Republicans alike, and “Purity Balls” where young girls pledge their virginity (and receive a ring) to their fathers until they get married, are spreading like wildfire across the country.
Continue reading “Show 230a: Cristina Page – “Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away””