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Join us, feminist coaches Taina Brown and Becky Mollenkamp, for casual (and often deep) conversations about business, current events, politics, pop culture, and more. We’re not perfect activists or allies! These are our real-time, messy thoughts as we make sense of the world around us. If you also want to create a more just and equitable world, please join us on the journey to Messy Liberation.
Becky Mollenkamp: Hello, today we have a guest. This is our first time venturing into having guests join us, so this is exciting. We'll see how it goes. Today we have Dee Frayne with us. Introduce yourself, Dee.
Dee Frayne: I'm a coach, a strategist, a futurist. I love working with change-making leaders who want to make the world a better place for more people.
Becky Mollenkamp: And you're a white lady. And I'm a white lady. And we're going to talk about white ladies. Sorry, Taina, to leave you out. we want to hear your thoughts.
Taina Brown: That's okay. I'm here to provide an alternative perspective.
Becky Mollenkamp: I love that and I want you to check us. We're gonna talk about white ladies and Trump. Because we're the problem. As Taylor Swift said, hi, it's me, I'm the problem, it's me. So we white ladies are the problem because we keep getting Trump elected. Well, we've gotten him elected. The polls don't look good yet again. So Dee, you want to talk about this, and we wanna hear what you have to say and how we can all like fix white ladies.
Dee Frayne: I just think even, and this is a no dig at you, Becky, but like the way that you presented it is the problem that I wanted to talk about of a saying that like white women are the problem and it's our fault. And this isn't like white women tears, this isn't like an apology for the way that white women have been voting. But the problem is patriarchy. The problem is racism. The problem are these systems of oppression and the conditioning that these women have in their brains. And like the reason why I really want to talk about this is because I feel like when we center white women as the problem, we're calling out rather than calling in. And it's not going to be the tactic that gets us the result that we want. And so that's the thing where I've been really scared to talk about this, to write about it, to put it out there on the interwebs for fear of being canceled or dragged down the street for even saying that white women aren't the problem because that's the framing that keeps being put out there when we talk about the election and Trump being elected, reelected, all the things and so many white women voting for him. So please don't come for me. I agree that it's horrifying that such a high percentage of white women have voted against their own interests, but I think that pointing to them as the end all be all of the problem is making enemies where we need to be making friends if we want to change the way they are voting. We are voting.
Becky Mollenkamp: Really quickly, just for people who don't know the numbers, about 55 % of white women voted for Trump in 2016, 2020. And right now the polls show basically about the same number. So there was a big wave when Kamala stepped in and Biden stepped down of these white women talking about, understand the assignment. There was white women for Kamala, you know, Zoom calls and all sorts of things, but a poll just came out like last week that shows the numbers have not changed at all for white women voting for Kamala. So it's a consistent issue. And I hear what you're saying, that it is an issue that goes beyond just a simplification of, hey, white women are just voting for the shitty person. They're doing so because they exist inside of a system that has conditioned them to side with the part of their identity that gives them the most power versus the part of their identity that has less privilege. And that is that voting against their own interests. My proximity to power by voting in a way that represents my white identity is strategically more advantageous than voting in a way that actually protects the marginalized part of my identity as a woman. So like, I get all of that. I think we need people who show up the way you're talking about and are able to speak to those women in a way that they can hear it. And now here comes my and not a but, but and, and that ain't me, babe. Like I can't do it. More power to those who can in the same way I'm done trying to like, be gentle with men to get them to understand why I deserve rights. I think that's important. It's not the lane that I am able to sit in because I don't have that level of compassion, I have the capacity, the emotional capacity to do that work. And I'm not sure it works. I hope you're right. I hope it does work. But nothing's fucking changing.
Dee Frayne: I didn’t come here and want to talk about this because I feel like I have all the fucking answers. So just going to put that out there.
Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, I know you don't.
Dee Frayne: The thing is, how are we going to create this change? Probably one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one level unit of consciousness raising at a time. I get that too, the level of frustration of being like, what the actual fuck are you doing? And if all of us are coming from this, I don't have the bandwidth to have these conversations. I am done talking to my fellow white women about voting against their interests and their internalized misogyny, their internalized racism, all of this stuff, how are we ever going to invite them in, call them in, get a change of perspective? As I was thinking about this conversation we're going to have, it made me think of my old neighbor. I used to live in Utah for four years because of my ex's career. I moved around and got to live in a lot of red states, even though I am very much a hardcore lefty. And it was very eye-opening. My neighbor in Utah, one day I was outside with the dogs and we lived in town homes, so our front porches touched each other. And she's like, hey, can I ask you a question? And I'm like, how is this going to go? And said yes. And she asked me about the fact that I didn't have children. And she asked me if I wanted children and I couldn't have them or if I just decided not to have children. And I said to her no, I've never wanted to have children. I have never changed my mind. I gladly chose, made this decision and stuck with it and have never regretted it. And she was literally looking at me like I had like four arms growing out of my head. Like she didn't understand. She thought in her worldview, the way that she was raised, a woman of my age who didn't have children clearly couldn't have children. Like there was some sort of biological reason why I was unable to have children. And the level of sideways dog head that she had when I said I chose intentionally to not have children, to never have children, she was like, you're the first person I've ever met who's like that, who's made that decision. And she started crying. She had two young boys and both of them had all sorts of like different learning disabilities and other things, behavioral issues. She had a very tall order and the shittiest husband on the planet. And she was crying because she's like, everyone in our family is asking me when I'm gonna have another kid. Everyone in our community thinks that I should be having more children. And she's like, I feel like I'm like drowning right now. I don't have any support. These kids are like, I love them with my all of my heart, but they're so hard. And I can't even imagine bringing one more baby, let alone multiple babies into the world. I was just like, you don't have to have more babies. And she started like crying even harder. She'd never heard that before. She'd never had someone give her permission to see the world differently, to do things differently. She was so embedded in that culture and that conditioning that her primary role and responsibility and reason for being was to have babies. Encountering someone like me was so earth shattering for her and so foreign. Everything in their community and that religious community that she is a part of, encompasses their entire life. And so in that experience, it gave me this like other perspective to see like when you're so deep in the world and the conditioning that you're in that and like there is no alternative like that you've even been exposed to that like all of your safety and community and everything is wrapped up in that identity and in that conditioning. We need to be aware of that. To us on the outside, it’s so fucking obvious that like voting for Trump is like voting against everything, every bit of our, our femininity and our safety as women but there are people that are so in, they don't even see it. And did she change her whole worldview from me talking to her? No. But did I tilt it maybe on its access just a little bit? Did I help her see that maybe I have different alternatives? I have a different path I could take? Yeah. I don't know, if I just would have been like, my God, you're awful because you're part of that religion and made her the enemy, it would have lost the opportunity to have that conversation with her. I think the other thing we need to think about is safety. People aren't going to take actions if they don't feel safe. And us demonizing these white women who are different than us that are voting against their interests, that we're not helping make them feel safe to consider other possibilities or doing things differently, stepping out against their identity, stepping out against their community, stepping out against their husbands. I think another angle on safety we need to think about is they're literally in the bed with their oppressor. They're the closest to, often, the most violent white men. They're married to cops. They're married to military. know that, look at the statistics, the amount of DV that happens in amongst, you know, the military, amongst police officers, conservative households, and we're asking them to vote in a way that could potentially put them in violence, harm’s way. I think that these are angles that when we take the nuance out of it, and frame women as the problem or not thinking from their perspective, why might they be voting that way? I think that a healthy dose of curiosity can actually help us on the left to call more white women in.
Taina Brown: I have some thoughts and I think you bring up some good points. I want to say, first of all, this is not a conversation for women who are not white. This is a conversation, I feel for how white women can engage with other white women on the other side of the aisle. It is not a safe place for someone like me to engage with a conservative white woman who is set on voting for Trump regardless of whether or not her safety is at stake. And so I appreciate you bringing this conversation to the podcast today because I think a lot of our listeners are probably white women. And this is important for them to hear in order to understand how to engage with someone who has a different value system than they do. And even within the white women circle, it's not a conversation for every white woman to have. Like Becky pointed out earlier, she is not the person to be having that conversation. You might be the person to have that conversation, Dee, or someone else. And I think there's some contextualizing that needs to happen here. And so there's a difference between someone who is, well, my husband is a cop or a military member my safety might be in jeopardy. This was the bubble that I grew up in. And I'm very familiar with religious bubbles. I lived almost my entire life in a religious bubble. I, my work, my relationships, my hobbies were all within a religious bubble up until I was about 30, 31 years old. And the idea of queerness, that I had no frame of reference for what, how to even identify as that how to even approach that. I had no frame of reference for anything other than the bubble that I was in. So I fully understand being in a bubble that is very ideologically harmful, and you just cannot comprehend anything outside of that. So your example about your neighbor, I totally get that. There's a difference between someone who is like my safety. I'm curious about these other things, but my safety is at stake versus someone who is like, my man or my son. There are people who are at different points in this journey. And someone who is committed to their ignorance, committed to their point of view, and has absolutely no curiosity whatsoever about the potential of thinking about things in a different way, they do not deserve your attention. They do not deserve your energy because they have made it clear that they don't want it. So why would we engage with people who are just dead set on misunderstanding you? And I think when it comes to this conversation and this issue about white women who might say one thing and vote another or might just be completely out there about why they love Trump. So I think it's really important to understand that, to lay out, which white women are we talking about? Who should be having these conversations? And how long should these conversations be happening? It's okay for you to make mistakes. It's okay for you to say, hey, I for hi in 2016. I now realize that that was a mistake and I'm trying to do better. But when there is a inherent pattern that someone is unwilling to break, at what point do you decide, okay, that's enough? Because at the end of the day, I want to bring people into this movement. This movement towards equity and justice. But I don't agree that there's a place for everybody in this movement because not everybody is going to come into this movement with the best of intentions, willing to do the messy work of unlearning harmful ideologies. And so we have to be very careful about, yes, generalizations, but for people in my community, white women aren't the problem. And so again, that context is different. In your community, saying something like that might not really capture the entire picture. But for my people, for my ancestors, white women have always been part of the problem, white women have always been the problem. So I think my question for you would be where do you draw the line between who you have those conversations with and when the time for talking is over.
Dee Frayne: I mean, I think it, like you said, it's that, is there an openness, a curiosity there, a willingness to hear and to listen? Because like you said, there are people who are very much this is my opinion, and there's nothing you're going to say that will ever change my mind. And obviously, that is not worth our time or energy. But someone who you know, maybe just hasn't been exposed or has been spoon fed talking points their entire fucking life and like never really had that challenged. There's maybe more possibility there. The reason why I wanted to talk about it is just that flattening that happens. I agree with you. Whiteness has always been the problem. And also, I worry that in flattening it in that way, it's going to perpetuate that causing white women to side with white men versus opening up to the possibility of divesting from whiteness so that we can actually have change.
Becky Mollenkamp: I feel so conflicted. This is not an attack on you or anything or this idea because I think it's more of a conflict within myself of, I hear you. These conversations need to happen with white women who maybe are more inclined to participate in the conversation. And the conflict for me is, there's this other part of me, iit just makes my blood fucking boil ultimately because I'm just, how much more time do you need to figure this out? I immediately thought of this book which I think everyone should read which is called, “They Were Her Property, White Women as Slave Owners in the American South” by Stephanie E. Jones Rogers. So I'll link to that in the show notes because this is not a new problem. White women didn't just become the problem. We're talking about it a lot now lately because of Trump. But white women have always been a problem. The problem when you are a person of color. White women really are the problem. Because of our positionality, we can lean on our marginalized identity when it behooves us, white lady tears, and rely on our privileged identity of whiteness as a way to protect ourselves. So we are uniquely positioned to be a greater threat than even white men. While white men obviously hold the greater power, you see them coming. There's no surprise there, we know who they are. It is white women who have this unique capacity to lean into both spaces that makes us particularly dangerous. And we have always been. It's 200, 300 years of white men being dangerous. That's where I get frustrated. I'm just like I can't, I can't feel sorry. I can't feel sympathy. I can't feel empathy for people who are still like, oh I didn't really know. You know what I mean? And I'm not saying that's what you're saying to you. I'm just telling you my internal battle with why I know I'm not the person to show up and have these conversations because there's plenty of information out there. I don't care how sheltered you are, you can find it. But when people ask me genuinely, where can I go to learn more? I definitely share resources and I'm not somebody who's like, fuck you, you idiot. I'm never that person. If somebody is genuinely interested in learning more, I always point them towards “White Feminism” by Koa Beck right away for people to understand a little more about what intersectionality means and how white women have been historically problematic in the ways that we show up, even those who have been well-meaning and, you the good ones, quote unquote. I'm not a person who's opposed to having conversations with people who are well-intentioned. My problem is more the people who I don't believe are, and I think you are maybe able to see more in them than I am. But I do think somebody probably does need to have those conversations. Again, I see white women in the same way that I really see men as a group. These kinds of white women we're talking about, white Republican women, the same way I see white men. If somebody can get through to them, more power to them, it doesn't feel safe and-or I just don't have the, I don't have the skill it must take to do that.
Dee Frayne: No, I mean, I'm not trying to be an apologist for white women.
Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I know.
Dee Frayne: it's horrifying. I don't have the answers, When we're like, we can't and won't have a conversation with them, and we're done with them not understanding that there is a problem. But then also being like they are the problem. They are the reason why we're not gonna lose this, win this election. Okay, so then what? Then what?
Becky Mollenkamp: My and then what right now is they eventually die off. Sounds horrible, but kind of true.
Dee Frayne: But they're having children and conditioning them into the same belief system.
Becky Mollenkamp: But I have seen many of this kind of white woman who's pretty privileged, who's had daughters who right now they're teenage young adult daughters are like, my mom's fucking crazy. I don't believe what she believes. I would never vote for Trump. I'm definitely voting for Harris. I don't know that it's obviously not all of them, but I do feel like there are shifts happening because I think so much of what we see from some of these white Republican women are people who are being afraid of all of the bullshit that the Republicans are putting out there around, afraid of immigration, afraid of trans people, things that younger people don't seem to share those ideologies. And I think a lot of it's about exposure, younger people are exposed to more of that.
Dee Frayne: I've got to protect mine because the world is scary, there are so many threats, I have to protect mine. And so that's where it's leaning into whiteness rather than divesting from. And I think that this is part of a larger messaging issue on the left as well. And maybe, I don't know, if we had better candidates, would they be willing to risk safety in their marriages and their families and their communities to vote differently? Even a lot of people on the left aren't happy with the candidates that were the options that were being given. Is it kind of hypocritical to be like, hey, risk your safety, risk this part of your identity, risk this community, risk this positionality that you have when we're not giving them a viable, attractive alternative.
Becky Mollenkamp: I agree with that. I think that what has been happening over decades now is the so-called left, I would argue they're nowhere near left anymore, has been moving so centrist with the idea that the way to court these white women is to be more conservative because that's what will appeal to them. Here's where I'm finding some commonality in what we're saying here, Dee, because I do agree that I think these women, for them to risk that level of safety, it needs to represent real change. The truth is, these two, mean, Trump, get around democracy issues 100%, very different. But the truth is on the whole, between generally Democrats and generally Republicans, they represent very little difference. And the Democrats of today represent the Republicans of my youth, which is scary. And I don't think that's the way to appeal to these women, because most of the women we're talking about are Gen X or Boomers, right? That's primarily who we're talking about. They remember those people. They know that what this left looks like doesn't really look, in their mind, it's like they're just basically Republicans, too. So for it to really represent change, I think it does need to be something a little more radical. I think some of those women, if you were speaking to them about, universal pre-K, universal child care, universal health care. Talking about some of those things that would actually make a meaningful difference in their life that might allow them more of that security and safety to exit a bad marriage or whatever. I do agree with you completely there. I think that the answer is not to keep courting them by going more center, but to actually be more radical.
Dee Frayne: 10 million percent, I agree with you. Because so many of them are kind of in that trad wife, where they don't even maybe would leave. With the left being like, well, we just have to burn it down. This isn't a viable candidate. But there's no other plan. There hasn't been enough, lot of the people who are very loud about it, no actual effort into coalition building or organizing a viable option on the left. I'm not saying that there aren't people who aren't doing it, but there's a lot of people who are very loud that are very clearly just like clickety clackety on their keyboards and saying that they want to vote for Jill Stein because fuck it all. Because the Dems, are too center, Republicans in red and blue clothing. We have some fucking work to do. We can talk about it until we're blue in the face, but like, what are we actually willing to do to affect the change? We're going to keep perpetuating the same fucking thing every four years if all we do is talk about it every four years, if we don't get up off our asses and like be uncomfortable and put effort and energy in to organizing. So much in-fighting on the left, policing one another to be perfect. And like, some of that like internalized bullshit still creeping up into our efforts that are really defeating our ability to create any sort of traction or, or real legitimate change.
Taina Brown: I agree and I disagree on certain things. There does need to be more than just conversation every four years. My pushback on that is that people of color and black people have been doing more than just talking about it every four years. I think about the Working Families Party that's been around for almost 30 years now. And they've been working tirelessly with little to no visibility, little to no funding, because they believe in something more than just a two-party system that we are currently operating in. I challenge the use of the word left. Like at this point, I'm just fucking tired of people calling Democrats leftist. Can we just call them center left? Because they are not liberals. They're not leftists.
Dee Frayne: No, they’re neolibs. And that's not what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about the left. I am definitely not talking about liberal Democrats.
Taina Brown: They're neoliberalist, which is completely different from being a liberal. I know that people have a lot of critique over a candidate like Jill Stein with the Green Party. But here's the fucking reality. We complain about a two-party system, but no one ever wants to show up for the third-party candidate. So at the end of the day, whose fucking fault is that? It's ours. We have no one to blame but ourselves. And so sure, Jill Stein is not perfect. No third-party candidate is ever going to be perfect because they're still operating within the means of our political system that was designed imperfectly from the get go. But there are options out there. But people, I think, are so afraid of change, so afraid of being branded dis-loyalists, so afraid of being branded extremists or radicalists that they will not put their money or their work, their legs into supporting like someone who is not a Democrat or a Republican. And again, I think this goes back to, this is a white women conversation because Black people and people of color have been organizing for decades, for generations, for something different, but without the support of the white community behind us, there is only so much that we can do. So when it comes to these conversations, like we talked about earlier about how do you contextualize this conversation? Who should you be having this conversation with I think it boils down to relationships. When you gave the example of your neighbor, you had some type of relationship with your neighbor where she felt comfortable to ask you that. Where she felt comfortable enough to act on the curiosity that she had about you and your lifestyle. And you were able to engage in that conversation. Some random person walking down the street who happens to be a white woman and it's like, hey, where are your kids? How come you don't have kids? I highly doubt that the conversation would have gone the same way. And I said that's not a conversation for me to have with white women. However, I do have white women in my life who, none of them are super conservative, but you know, in their own journey of like trying to unlearn something or trying to be more equity and justice centered, if they had questions for me, I would be more than happy to have those conversations with them. But don't expect, and this goes for everybody. This isn't just for me. This is for you. This is for Becky. This is for anybody listening. Don't expect someone that you don't know to put in that emotional labor, Because it goes back to relationships. And I think so much of what most of us are conditioned or how most of us are conditioned to live in this country, in this society that has been built up is this idea of just toxic individualism where it's me and my little family and my white picket fence or my whatever, wherever you live. And that's it. And that seeps into political ideology. That's why people are afraid of immigrants. That's why people are afraid of people who are different from them. That's why people are afraid of people who are trans because it's different. They're like, well, you're threatening my lifestyle. No, we're not. Nobody's threatening your lifestyle. You just don't want to make room for somebody else's lifestyle when the truth is that there is room enough for all of us to exist.
Becky Mollenkamp: My only pushback is that I am so I'm sort of tired of hearing lifestyle being abused because I feel like that's their language. And I just want to say there's no room for your humanity in their lives, which is different than your lifestyle.
Dee Frayne: Yeah, flatten it to lifestyle when it's really just respect for humanity.
Becky Mollenkamp: And that is ultimately part of my problem with all of it. Because I hear what you're saying, Taina. And I think that's sort of where I'm at. I agree. If somebody has earned my conversation, my discussion about these issues by being in relationship with me and right relationship with me, of course, I would have those conversations. And I don't have relationships with people who don't honor the full humanity of myself and of those I love, which includes many Black people. So if there's someone who can't honor the full humanity of someone simply because of the color of their skin or because of who they love, they're not in my life. So I'm not in right relationship with those kinds of people to have those conversations, which I think is ultimately why I guess I'm not the person to have those conversations. Should they happen? Perhaps. It's not gonna be me, but maybe it needs to happen. But honestly, the place where I have arrived as far as forward-focused solution Dee is, think for me, the answer is burn it all down, but not in the way of like, fuck it, let's just end this country. But as in if the answer to fixing things is I have to strip my own humanity or others' humanities or convince others of my humanity or of others' humanities in order to get somebody in office who's going to be marginally better than the other person, if this is the best that this system that we have can do, then I say fuck that system. I don't think that me having to beg and plead or have really extremely patient conversations with white women who haven't fucking figured it out by now is the only answer. Like that's not a good enough answer to me. The answer then is this system doesn't work, which I think we all know. And so the system has to change. And I think what I would love to see happen is viable third-party candidates, which means we have to get rid the Electoral College, which means we have to get rid of campaign financing and the way it's done. The socialist candidates for president aren't even on the ballot in most of the states. I would vote for Claudia and Karina, who are the candidates for the Socialist party. I would vote for the Socialists, but I can't. I can sit here and spin my wheels trying to get white women who I frankly believe should know better by now whether they're clinging to safety or not. And I honestly want to know what is that safety because your vote is confidential. You don't have to tell your partner. You can tell your partner you voted for Trump and guess what? You can still vote for Harris. I have a lack of empathy and that is something I can work on.I would rather put that same amount of energy I could spend on trying to educate those white women into saying, how do we change the system so we don't need those white women anymore.
Dee Frayne: Ultimately, we don't need them if we get rid of the Electoral College. The problem is that the Electoral College is giving way too much weight on these specific white women's vote. I think that that's it. Maybe it's more just pushing that your vote is private. You can vote for whoever you want. Just that little bit of education maybe is a little lifeline maybe. But it's also less about these white women every four years and more of like, are we doing in the in-between to build, to mobilize, to organize, to make these changes that will help us change the system.
Taina Brown: And I think too many people rely on the every four years and not the in between. All these issues come to the surface in a very public way at every presidential election. There are so many elections that happen in between those four years that are on the local level. The city, county, state level. What are you doing during that time? How are you educating yourself during that time? And I think we're reaching the point, maybe 10 years ago, we could have more easily excused people who were in a bubble and didn't know any better, but with social media, with how much of private and public life is online these days, we're reaching the point where that kind of behavior, that kind of ideology is less excusable because people are running out of excuses for not knowing. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you could have said, I didn't know, right?
Becky Mollenkamp: You're being generous, but yes. White women have had the right to vote for 100 years. So we've had a lot of time to understand what that means. The civil rights movement and we burned our bras and white women were all about power 50 years ago.
Dee Frayne: The thing that I am trying to teach people and like be like part of like my messaging and like the work that I am doing is just like helping people realize just how fucking powerful we are as individuals. And we're so much stronger together. And if you're mad about something, if you're fired up about something, get your body into action. This feeling of helplessness and hopelessness and apathy because almost 50% of white women are voting for Trump is not serving us. And leaning into that and feeling defeated by it is not going to create change. every four years whipping on white women for voting to protect whatever bit of protection and power and privilege that they think they have in the system isn't going to change it for us either. It's a symptom of the problem, but it's not the end all be all of the problem. You brought us the Social Change Ecosystem, Taina. We don't all have to be the person out on the street, being an activist with the signs and putting our body in the way of fire. There's so many different roles that we can take, but if this is something that's important to you and you want to see this change, the only way we're going to do this is if we mobilize and organize and gain power together and work together to bring down these parts of the system that aren't working. I think that ultimately the framework of our democracy isn't bad. There's obstructionists that are cock blocking power and making it so that it's not working for all of the people. But could it? Could it work a lot better for all the people? If we allowed it to be a living document, if we allowed it to be a living constitution, if we allowed it to change as in theory it was created, hell yeah. But we got some fucking work to do.
Taina Brown: It is. We talk about, you know, let this radicalize you or let this organize you. And that can look as simple as just having those hard conversations with the people in your life. Every white woman, I guarantee you, has someone in their life who leans conservative, even if they're not 100% conservative, they might lean a little bit conservative. Have conversations with those people. You don't have to go out and stand on your street corner and put up a, like, hold up a sign and have a bullhorn and yell at people. Just have the fucking conversation that you don't want to have because it's maybe making you a little bit uncomfortable.
Dee Frayne: I'm not like saying go to those wackadoos that are standing in front of an abortion clinic telling people that they're committing murder. No, their brains are so far gone. That's not worth your time and energy, but it is. It's as simple as calling out the misogyny, calling out the white privilege, like for the people in the relationships where it is a little bit safe to challenge and push back. Do know your girl boss feminism is kind of cringe.
Becky Mollenkamp: Or think about the solutions that you want to see happen in the world and fight for those things. For someone like me, where those conversations are probably not going to ultimately be productive or healthy for either person, so it's not a useful way to spend my time and energy. What are the things I can do? One is I share my stories. I've been incredibly open with my abortion stories as a way to put a face to something that sometimes people have a belief about, But also finding people or organizations that are doing the work to abolish the electoral college as an example. Or to get involved running for your school board. If that's the way you show up. I love what you said, because I'm very much into the Social Change Map and the different ways that we show up, but finding the way you're wired to show up and then using that to create the change you want to see.
Dee Frayne: Yeah, your unique skills, abilities, knowledge, experience, and things that you're interested in matter. That's a huge thing that I teach people is you don't have to do all the things. There's so many fucking problems. Well, the thing is that they're all connected. They're all the same problem. But pick the thing that you're most interested in, the thing that makes your blood boil the most, and then go find the people who are already doing the work there. I think another part of the problem is people are like there's no one doing anything about this just because you're unaware or uneducated about it. And then like, I'm going to start a new nonprofit. No, don't fucking start another organization. Go research who's doing what out there. Who's got traction in other places. And maybe if they don't exist in your specific community, there's an opportunity to open up a chapter or part of their movement in your local area, but start in your backyard. I'm postcarding for a couple of different friends’ re-election campaigns to school board right now because they have Moms of Liberty candidates who are up against them. And we don't want those crazy women on the school board choosing what books and, and, and whatnot children are going to be reading. That is in my backyard. And that does fucking matter. Because we're talking about what kids are learning in the next generations to come.
Becky Mollenkamp: And if you are a white woman whisperer, then do that. And that's great. But by the way, there's also already The White Woman Whisperer. So be careful. It might be trademarked. She's on TikTok and she's awesome. So follow her. But hey, if you are the person who's really great at having these conversations with these folks, then start a podcast and do that and maybe you can be the educator. I think it's important just to know that we have to figure out what's our lane.
Taina Brown: Absolutely. I think it's exactly like Dee said. Based on your experience, your interests, your expertise, your values, find a way to plug in because it's not going to be one person that saves us. We each have a role to play and I'm of the belief that electoral politics is not going to save us. Politicians are not going to save us. It's up to us in our own communities to fulfill the needs that we have. And if you do not feel like you are a part of a community that is doing that, that is the first thing you need to do. You need to find a community that is moving towards change, moving towards equity and justice, that can hold you up on your own learning journey, that can be there to call you in to have those conversations that can be there to provide safety if you feel like your current situation is not safe, if you choose to challenge an ideology. And there's no way to really see change without moving individually together. Each piece coming together as a collective.
Becky Mollenkamp: And thank you for bringing this topic Dee, because I will tell you Taina and I were both like white ladies, fuck them. And I think it's really valuable to have other perspectives, other voices. That's why we want to have guests from time to time to talk about the things that maybe for us feels like, and for other people though, it's meaningful, it's important. And it is an important conversation to have because got to figure this out whatever it looks like, whatever the solution ends up being, we gotta figure it out.
Dee FrayneI think that this is a really messy topic. I'm not trying to be contrarian just to be an asshole. And I'm not disagreeing with anything that you guys said. In fact, I agree with everything that you've said about white women. I just see so much out there of like, really centering women, white women as the end all be all of the problem, in a flattened way. If we shame these women, we're not going to call them in.
Becky Mollenkamp: I do think there is actually a place for shame sometimes. A public shaming has historically sometimes led to some change that needs to happen. So it can be a both-and. And in fact, I think that's what the messiness is, right? It's the both-and of it. So thank you for bringing this to us. Thank you, Dee. It was nice to have you here. And thanks, Tanya, and I'll see you again next week.