To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my

name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe

that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.

Hello, and happy Halloween. This is Halloween. Or Happy Halloween. Or I put a spell on you. I'm thinking of all of the Halloween songs I know.

That was quite an adventure. And now you're mine. Did I hurt you? A little bit. I put a spell on And that was 15, probably.

Isn't that

the rule? Okay. Any of you out there that have a YouTube channel or something, I feel like that's the rule. It's ten to fifteen seconds that you can play a song without it being copyrighted. I don't know.

I think that's

a thing. Is that why TikTok works? Probably. I don't know. Happy Halloween, everybody.

Are you feeling festive?

For you guys, Halloween is tomorrow. For us, it's in, like, five days. Something like that. Mhmm. We've got a little ways yet.

But we are decking out the house. Oh, yeah. We're having a

good time. I mean, we're not the type of people we've driven past some houses lately that they went all out. Oh, insane. They have 75 skeletons doing weird tasks in their front yard and, like, also many inflatables. Mhmm.

We're not them. No. But we're festive.

And we were talking today about this. There are some people that are into Halloween specifically. They just really love spooky season and Halloween and whatever. Mhmm. And don't get me wrong, love Halloween.

But we just like an excuse to be festive. Honestly,

I found in my adulthood, any excuse for any amount of joy, I will take. And it's holidays. Even stupid holidays like Valentine's Day. Mhmm. I love it.

I want chocolates.

Many chocolates.

And I wanna watch a rom com and a drink a whole bottle of wine with a straw. That's fun for you.

You'd have to have long straw, though.

Oh, yeah. Like a crazy straw.

And then you loop it out the top.

Mhmm.

Very mature. Very adult. Yeah. I actually tasked Brie with painting our front windows like a fun Halloween scene. Right?

Because Mhmm. Brie is an artist. And I thought, this is this is the thing for her. This is the project to keep her busy for the

next couple of days. Obviously. So I started it today. It's turning out good. The ghosts are looking a little suspicious, but I'm I don't care.

They're very cute. They're cute.

They're shaped like sperm. Stop. But they're very

Sorry, mom.

Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. But, yeah, we're very excited. We're having a great time. Currently, I've got Brie not painting.

I told her to come upstairs and record a podcast.

Yeah. Take a break. Yeah. And also bad news is, so I've been using like chalk markers to use as quote unquote paint on the windows. And that chalk marker got all over my hand and then all over my face.

And I didn't quite realize it when I went into Target.

She kind of looked like a chimney sweep. I I didn't really realize it until about halfway through Target. And then I was like, nah.

Let her be. It's fine.

So we left Target, and here we are. Having a great time, feeling festive,

feeling ready for Halloween. Yes. So in preparation.

Have spent the last week or so creating a haunted house for you guys. And Brie has more rooms than I do because she's an overachiever.

Or I just thought of them today. That too. And

so we're gonna walk you through our haunted house and talk about the different rooms and what would be in them. And I don't know why they're spooky. I think you'll get why they're spooky. I don't think we have to overexplain that.

Mhmm. This is like a customized haunted house to us and our personalities. And I'll be honest with you. I did put it into my chat GPT, and I was like, based on what you know about me, figure out some x y z. And it was like, oh my gosh, girl.

Yes. I love this prompt. Let me help you out with that. Based on what I know about you, you love gothic fantasy and, like, feminism and chaos. Here we go.

That sounds exactly right.

Mhmm.

It's actually super spooky. If you go on chattybt and you ask it, like, what do you know about me? It'll tell you. Mhmm. And it knew my age.

It knew my kids and my kids' ages and my husband and our likes and dislikes. And it was spooky. Our likes. Our dislikes. Our interests.

Maybe chat GPT should be a room in the house. Someone's on chat GPT in one of the rooms in the house.

Oh, yeah. And it's just, like, scaring you.

Yeah. Kid knows too much.

Here's your deepest, darker secret. I know.

It probably does. Yeah.

Are you listening, Chad GPT? I'm so sorry.

Don't hate me.

Mm-mm. But, I mean, you're a useful tool.

Quite a useful tool. Yes.

Anyways, so picture a spooky haunted house. Mhmm. Classic. Alyssa and Brianna are standing outside waving you in. Hello.

Maybe it's a cardboard cutout and our heads are bobbling with thumbs like

this way. That's much worse.

I know. I'm I'm building a haunted house

right now. Gotcha. Break by brick. Break by brick.

You stumble through the door because, obviously,

you've been pushed in by cardboard cutouts with

a swift kick to the pants. It's dark. You're stumbling through the hallway because we've only lit one candle because we're like, oh, this is the vibe. You open door number one. Brianna's door number one.

Here we go. Prepare yourself. You're a conservative Christian girl in the early two thousands. You're sitting in junior church. You're huddled up in a circle, folding chairs.

They're uncomfortable. Maybe you have a wobbly one. And that's what you've been focusing on for the past thirty minutes, is the wobble on your chair. You're looking up at the ceiling. You're counting the ceiling tiles.

Everybody is wearing above the ankle dresses.

Makes

sense. Uncomfortable. Your hair's been pulled too tight. And it's hairsprayed. Oh.

And you're really hungry. And you're not allowed to have communion yet because you're too young. You're the girl. You're huddled up, and it's popcorn prayer. Ugh.

And if you don't know, popcorn prayer is kinda like popcorn reading when you're in school, where everybody's eyes are closed.

Not when you're reading. But when you're in prayer.

And someone starts the prayer, they say popcorn to Alyssa, and then you say your piece of the prayer. And then popcorn, Alyssa says to someone else, and they say they're part of the prayer. But if you're like me, that gives you anxiety. So much anxiety. I'm thinking, what if I stumble over my words?

What if in my prayer, I say, Dear Jesus, but a lot of people say, Heavenly Father, or Dear Lord. But I've always said, Dear Jesus, does that make me sound childish? Your And hands are kind of sweaty, and you're anxious. You're not good at public speaking. This isn't really public speaking, but you feel like it is.

And it's that constant anxious feeling of, Am I next? Am I next? Are they gonna call on me next? What am I gonna say? I have nothing to say.

What am I thankful for? Nothing. I can't think of one single thing that I'm thankful for. Do I have a prayer request? I don't want to get too open with these people.

I don't want them to know my anxieties and my fears. What's going on in what? Current events. Current events. I don't know.

I don't know. And it's never ending. Wow. That was horrifying. That's horrifying.

Now people are having nightmares.

And then you make your way out of there. You stumble. You stumble back into the hallway with one lit candle, and you ow, ow. I ran into another door. And it's Alyssa's next room.

I'm gonna be fully honest with you. I didn't think this was gonna be such a journey. Don't don't expect my rooms to be such a journey.

Alyssa, I'm building a world.

Okay. Brie's building a world. I she I don't know. Alright. You've stumbled into my room.

And of course, my room's a library. Are we shocked? We're not shocked. You walk in, there's still only one candle. Because why?

You know, you don't need the electricity. It's a haunted house. No one's paying

for that. Alyssa loves scented candles. I do love

a scented candle. Maybe it's one of the three for $10 ones from Michael's.

But maybe it's a bad smelling one. It is. It's the one that smells like

Joanne's. Like those horrible pine cones right as you walk in. It's a bad time.

Yeah. See, we're world building.

We're world building. And you see to the sides, there's all these tall think Beauty and the Beast. Okay? Beauty and the Beast style bookshelves, but they're dusty. And all of the books are, like, old and they're crumpled.

They're falling apart. But there's a table in front of you. Oh. And you stumble up to the table.

Because there's only one candle.

There's only so you can't you can't see anything. But the candle's on this table. You can you can at least see what's on the table. Vaguely illuminated. Yeah.

And on the table are all these open bibles. Just tons and tons of open bibles. Right? Filling the whole table. And you've got each Bible has, like, one page open, and there's just one sentence highlighted or one verse circled.

And it's you're flipping through,

and you're like, oh, but but what about this?

But what about this? But there's just one verse circled. And in your head, all you can hear is that one verse. You can't read the rest of it. The rest of it's just blurry.

And this is the library of misquoted scripture. Now my world building is not gonna be quite as elaborate as Breeze.

Maybe they were confused and they could only read that one verse because there was just the one candle. And they couldn't see the rest. That's a possibility.

Maybe we should invest in some more candles. But you know what? They're entirely $3.33 at Michael's. And that's a little too expensive to light a whole haunted house.

That's a metaphor for you. Get lit. Illuminate the other verses. There Let's you shed some light on this.

This little light of mine, baby. And I decided on this one as we're I'm gonna jump out of world building because frankly, you've overwhelmed me.

Oh, I was really in it.

Don't worry. They'll stumble out of my room in a minute, and you can jump back. So the reason I built this particular room is because so much of the bible that's used to put down women is misquoted, is misunderstood, and is pulled totally out of context. So you've got things like people saying, well, Paul said women can't preach and teach. And then on the flip side, you've got Paul sending Phoebe out with the book of Romans to preach the book of Romans.

You've got Prisca, who is teaching Apollos to preach to other people. And you've got Deborah, who's leading the entire Israelite community. Mary Magdalene, who spread the first news of the gospel. Jesus is back to life. Exactly.

So you can only get to this place of women being subservient and submissive and secondary if you fully misread the Bible.

Mhmm.

If you willfully say, I'm only gonna read this verse and not the others and take it all the way out of context.

Or let's say the book of Ephesians. Mhmm. It was a letter to the Mhmm. Or one specific church that was having a problem wrote to Paul, Hey, help us. And Paul wrote back.

Mhmm. This isn't rules for everybody. Mhmm.

So if only we had bought you another candle. But we didn't, because this is a haunted house. It's really horrifying. Uh-huh. So you're standing there.

You're like, if only I had another candle. You're trying to pick up this candle. You think maybe if I light one of the books on fire, Although I'll

we did just have a whole episode on idolatry of the Bible.

Yeah. So there you go. You think maybe I could light some of the other books on fire? But no, you can't. And a large wind blows through the the library.

It's a spooky wind. You know, spooky winds. And it shoves you back out into the hallway. Where you stumble out of my room and into another breeze.

Yes. Ow. Oh. Rob, what did they do with these doors? Why do I keep falling through them?

Oh, it's just the vibe. We've kept, like, a rug that constantly is just oh, I stepped over that and tripped.

That's a really intense haunted house. Yeah.

Two girls who never go to haunted houses. Not once in my life. I've been to one, and I think I, like, kept my eyes closed the whole time and just held on

to the person in front of me. That's probably wise. I don't like scary.

Well, this is terrifying. Alright. Well, let me go. Like a rug that I could possibly lose my balance over?

You could you could break a tooth.

No. The title of this room is called God Bless America. You walk in, let me set the vibe for you. Is that

not what you've been doing this whole time?

It is World War II propaganda style everywhere. We want you and traditional family values. And we need to get back to where we started. And there's people over the megaphone blasting at you. Women belong in the home.

Make me a sandwich. You make me

a sandwich, woman. Smile more. And as you're walking through this room, you see depicted scenes of reality of traditional family values, what that does to people, and how it starts to tear them apart. Now we've done many an episode on this. What?

No. But use your imagination here. Like, traditional family values, meaning they want the woman to be silent, subservient, making a sandwich. But all of her potential, too, where does that go? Or for the husband, too, he feels like he has all the weight of the world on his shoulders as head of the family when he has a perfectly capable partner right next to him able to take on half that load, but he doesn't want to give it up because he thinks that's what God wants of him.

And because it would be emasculating. Mhmm. Mhmm. Or people being shipped out of the country against their will and separated from their families. That, to me, is horrifying.

Mhmm. And deserves to be in a haunted house.

Yeah.

It should be terrifying for everybody. Mhmm.

Are they stumbling now?

They've stumbled. You're you're hearing all of these blastings on the megaphone. You're like, ow, ow. I need a Tylenol and a water. And you ow.

There's the door. There's been so many red, white, and blue flashing lights. I feel blinded. Good thing I'm going into a dark hallway. And there's another door.

And this one's purple?

Sure. And it's all that sus. Not sure why it's purple, but why not?

Mhmm.

Alright. You stumble into my room because you're doing a lot of stumbling. It's a really rough day for you. You wore heels. It was a bad choice.

You stumble into my room, and it's fluorescent lights everywhere. Okay?

Oh, again, hurting your eyes

and You're your struggling. You need a Motrin and a Tylenol now. Bad times. And you walk in, and it looks like a salon, like a hair salon. Okay?

You've got mirrors everywhere. You've got makeup on the little makeup y places. There's spa like chairs, and there's a a clothing rack with nineteen fifties style women's dresses, things like that. And you walk up to the mirror, and instead of seeing your own face, you see a face full of the perfect Christian woman makeup. And so you sit down and you're looking at yourself and you're like, oh.

Ugh. And so then you look up and there's a sign and it says, welcome to the modesty makeover room. And you look and you remember the dresses that you saw in the back. And they've got a nice high neckline and they hit like mid calf, you know? And they've got a sensible heel.

You're not in a sensible heel. You've been stumbling all day. Actually, you might wanna switch to the sensible heel, if I'm

Maybe being keep that part.

And you just see all of this, like, very subtle makeup. But you have to have the makeup on. You have to put the makeup on. And so without even deciding to, your hand starts to put on the makeup. Oh.

You don't want it there. Possession? Possession in the makeup room. That sounds like something off the Clue board game. Cover girl possessed me.

But none of the colors are too bright or vibrant because heaven knows you can't have a purple eyeshadow. Maybe that's why the door was purple. You can't have a bright lipstick. So you've got, like, a pale pink lipstick. A mauve.

Oh, a mauve. No highlighter to be seen.

No. That's not for you.

No fake lashes. And the reason that I created this particular room is because modesty is such a thing in Christian culture. And I think we said last week how one of our most violent posts on TikTok was about modesty. Mhmm.

People got real mad. It created such a fight.

It did. And if you read the bible, and we've talked about modesty many times in the past. If you read the bible, modesty biblically is very specifically about not showing off. Mhmm. In fact, it's mostly about not wearing your best things to church, which heaven knows we're doing.

To not exploit your wealth. So at the in biblical times, was like braiding your hair and wearing your finest jewelry and not wearing purple in the church specifically. And having self control. Mhmm. Again, controlling yourself.

Right. Your own thoughts, your own actions. Not someone else's.

Mhmm. And part of why that was said was so that other people would feel comfortable in the church. Mhmm. Because there was a specific church, and they were having trouble with people wearing their nicest stuff to church. They were wearing their jewels.

They were wearing their fancy clothes. So when poorer people came into the church space, now suddenly they felt like, oh, I don't have a space here.

Well, it's actually reflected in a lot of churches today. I would say the bigger megachurches, there's not as much of a thing like, you can show up in whatever. But those smaller, more fundamental Christian churches, there's such a thing about wear your Sunday best. So you should look your best for church. But what that does is, you're right, isolate the people who are just coming in because they desperately need Jesus.

And you don't know what their situation is. You don't know their financial status. You don't know their mental status for that matter. And thank goodness that they're seeking the love of God. Right.

And they're hoping that maybe God's gonna show his love through you.

Mhmm.

But instead, you've judged them Yep. For what their outward appearance is, where you should really just be looking at their heart.

So that's what biblical modesty actually means. But what the church today has made modesty mean is essentially cover a woman's body. Because a woman's body is tempting to a man, and men can't control themselves.

Mhmm.

So that's the message. Men have no self control, even though modesty says self control.

Mhmm.

But the church says men have no self control. Therefore, women need to cover up their bodies, need to look a certain way in order to not tempt men, in order to not cause problems, cause a stir, you know? Mhmm. Sit in the back, be quiet, be humble, look down, and don't draw attention to yourself. That's kind of the message.

And a statistic that I found is that in a 2021 Pew Research study, sixty eight percent of Christian women 30 said that they felt guilt or shame tied to how they dressed at church specifically.

Mhmm.

And I remember this probably for most of the time I've been in church up until the last few years maybe, where well, is this okay to wear to church? Is this appropriate to wear to church? Are people gonna judge me if I wear this to church? And sometimes that was about, is this too low cut? You know, whatever.

And sometimes it was about Is it too casual? Yeah. Exactly. So there's this whole sense of a woman has to look a certain way, and yet a man can so often show up in a t shirt and jeans and nobody's gonna judge. Mhmm.

A quote that I also found, and this is a great quote that we can refute. Isn't that so fun? Mhmm. It's by Jason Everett, who I'm not super familiar with who he is, but this is his quote. He says, modesty isn't about covering up your body.

It's about revealing your dignity. That makes me uncomfortable. How sad is it if your dignity is about how you dress?

Your dignity is wrapped up in I was gonna say elder Beerman. Why am I so What? Sick of Your dignity is wrapped up in literally your fashion choices. Mhmm. And something I like so much about your room is the idea of removing the individual uniqueness of yourself.

You

have to put on makeup a certain way. You have to wear your hair a certain way. And no one will straight out tell you this in the conservative Christian world, but it's implied. There's a message Absolutely. Yeah.

Like, you want you're right. Your makeup should look a way that it almost looks natural to confuse the men. To make them think that you don't even have makeup on.

But you can't not have makeup on. Because then you're not put together. You're not showing your best.

Exactly. It's about being put together. Mhmm. I can be put together without my makeup on. Mhmm.

My brain is still the same.

Your dignity has nothing to do with the way that you dress. Mhmm.

Dignity. Always dignity. And on

that note, with that blaring through

the speakerphone All of a sudden, you're blonde, and you go back out into the hallway. You stumbled. I can't forget that. They took your glasses off, so now you can't see. Oh.

It's

a rough time. You did change into the sensible heels, though, so you might you might be able to walk a little better.

Yes. Less stumbling, perhaps. Although there is still that rug. But you're feeling night quite yourself. And then you go into this room, and it's Brianna's room.

And for some reason, she chose to call it the science fair. Because I know so much about science.

And houses. And houses.

Why are there so many rooms in just one straight hallway?

You're never going up a set of stairs. Just one hallway. Scary.

So this room, I envision being like a classic science fair for kids. Like, school. Do they have science fairs in elementary school? Yeah.

I believe they do.

Maybe you could go so far as to say this was middle school. And so there's a slight stink in there. Some body odor and some Axe body spray. Oof. Hard to say.

But there's, like, trifold boards, and you're walking through, and all of these women have put together these projects. They are women like the lady who made Monopoly, perhaps, or Marie Curie, or any other woman that you can think of. Oh, Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley. And they have their whole board displayed.

They put all the work into it. They put the pictures on the board. They added all the stickers. And they what other things do you put to a poster board? Every time

I made a poster board, I tried to do bubble letters, and it never went well. They were never centered.

It was bad. Bought the precut bubble letters. They're rich

and fancy.

They're looking good. Gotcha. They put in the work. Okay. But instead of them presenting it, they're kind of, like, sat back, and there's a man taking credit for everything that they did and presenting.

And as you walk through the room, these women start to fade away, and they become ghosts of themselves. Bespooky. The men's voice get louder and louder and louder. And I think there's a theme for all of my rooms. It's just like, I wanna get out of here.

Why is someone yelling in my ears?

Isn't that the point of a haunted house? I don't think you're supposed to wanna stay.

Yes. I'm really good at designing haunted houses, aren't Yes.

I think you should become an architect.

I've actually what inspired this specific room is something very stupid. I have been rewatching Sue Thomas FBI.

That is such a for me, obviously, like, it's a huge throwback. We watched it together. But I wanna know if any of you out there are with us and remember this show.

It was on Pax, I believe Mhmm. Was the station. And it was like a show that was available. We didn't have cable. Mhmm.

So it was just whatever channels were available, I think. Right? And it is about a real woman named Sue Thomas, and she worked for the FBI and she was deaf. The storyline of the show does not follow her actual real life. But in this show, there's a woman who is part of the team, and she does kind of all of the grunt work.

She does a lot of the, Oh, look this up for me, or, File this for me, or, Fill out this report. And one of the guys goes up to her and is like, Here, can you look at this? And she's like, Oh, but here's actually a really important important part of your case, and this is gonna break through to your case, and here you go. And he's like, Awesome. Takes it over to the rest of the team, takes all of the credit for it.

And she gets so upset that she's like, You know what? Nobody appreciates me. I'm just gonna leave. I'm gonna go to a different department. And I was like, Maybe that started my feminist journey.

Back when we were, like, 10.

Sue Thomas, FBI. You know,

that happens constantly to women. And last week, we talked about how important it is for women to shout their achievements. Mhmm. Because we're taught not to. Mhmm.

We are taught to fade into the background. That, yes, our contributions are important, but you don't wanna step on anyone's toes. You don't wanna make anyone feel uncomfortable. You don't want to seem like you are cocky or the other thing. Mhmm.

I don't know at what point we get flagged if we start swearing. So I do know at what point our mom gets uncomfortable. Yeah. Sorry, mom. And so you're taught that your whole life.

This is ingrained in at least most American women. I can't say worldwide, but I think probably most women globally, this is taught to us. Be quiet. Be neat. Be mild.

Even if you are in a business setting.

Mhmm.

And so you don't take credit. And when you don't take credit, someone else will.

Yep. In my personal experience, my employer told me one time when I was speaking out against something that I knew was incorrect and wrong, and he goes, don't make waves. Don't make waves. So rather than correct the situation from the beginning and you don't have to be aggressive about it. You can just correct the situation.

But don't make waves. Because you're just a girl. Mhmm. And that's the message to a lot of women is, you're right. Just don't make waves.

Stand in the background. And as women, we should support each other just like Sue Thomas. Just like She spoke up and she was like, yeah. Wasn't that great that Lucy thought of that? But all the guys went and apologized to her at the end of the episode.

And their reasoning was, you have to forgive us, Lucy. We're just guys. We don't know any better. How many times have we heard that? That's the excuse for men all the time is, they don't know any better.

How can you not know any better but then expect to run the world?

But also you know better when it's another man. True. Like, the respect is there. And that's why that excuse really doesn't hold any weight for me. Because if it's another man

Mhmm.

There's always that level of respect. Whether it's in business, whether it's in church, wherever it happens to be, there's always this level of respect between men. And you see it in how men interact with each other so much differently than how they interact with women. Mhmm. And yet you can tell me, well, we don't know any better of how to respect women, but we do know better in how to respect men.

Mhmm.

That doesn't make sense.

We're people. You should know how to respect people Mhmm. Regardless of their gender. Mhmm.

We love to make things gendered.

Mhmm.

As a society, we're like, oh, well, we've gotta divide this in half. And this is for men and this is for women and whatever all the time. I actually really wanna do a TikTok where we walk through a store. I just saw this on TikTok the other day. Where you walk through a store and you compare, like, this product for women and this product for men and the way that they are gender like, the silliest things.

Shampoo is gendered.

Know? They call it the pink techs too, where they hike up the price for something that's, like, gender towards women. Mhmm. I saw a TikTok the other day that was like, hey, women. I'm a dermatologist, and these are things that I know to be true, but no one believes me when I say.

And one of the examples was women who are experiencing hair loss, if you want like a thicker head of hair Mhmm. Use Rogaine for men. Mhmm. It's not as expensive. It works fantastically.

And you don't have to pay the pink tax. Mhmm.

Or like razors. Yeah. Men's razors are so much better than women's razors and often are a lot cheaper. Mhmm. It's a better product.

Yeah. But they're not marketed towards women, and you feel kinda weird when you walk through the store and you're buying something that's marketed towards men for yourself. Like, Mhmm. It shouldn't. But you do feel a little strange.

It feels, oh, I'm I'm doing something I'm not supposed to.

Mhmm. Or women will buy men's deodorant Mhmm. Because it's stronger. Mhmm. Give us some freaking deodorant that works.

We sweat. Women sweat. Not me. And they grow hair, and sometimes they wanna remove it easily.

Yeah. But it takes forever and it's gigantic pain. So true. And frankly, wish we didn't have to, but that's not one of our rooms today.

So you're wearing your sensible heels now. You're having a lot of men shout at you. And finally, you find a door And you're back in this freaking hallway. That it's like purgatory.

We're not Catholic, though, so we don't really know what that is.

And there's yet another door. You think, is the exit here by chance? And then someone kicks you in, and it's

Alyssa's room. Fortunately for you, it was an exit.

Oh, sort of. But we still have, like,

two more rooms. But it exits into just the outside. You're just trapped in the outside. Oh, It's a The beyond. Yeah.

The beyond. So you stumble outside. And you're like, oh, what? What's going on? There's mist.

It's chilly. But it's not like cold cold. It's like that that damp cold. Do you know

what Cold but I'm hot. I'm warm but I'm not.

Do you know when you walk outside and it's it is. It's, like, late. And it's damp. And it's chilly. And your hair gets stringy and gross.

All the makeup makeup ants. All the makeup you just put on starts melting off

your face. So you're in Florida.

Yeah.

Okay.

But it's sort of like, it's nighttime. So it's dark out. There's only one candle. And you're outside, so it's really not effective at all.

Weird theme in this haunted house. I need my money back.

We didn't wanna invest in another candle, guys.

It's the same Joanne scented candle. And you all know what

I'm talking about. They do. They know what you're talking about.

Like those pine cones.

Yep. Those freaking pine cones. And so you start to walk. You're like, where am I going? How do I get out of here?

Maybe this is the escape. You're excited. You're like, time to leave. A bit of thrill. But no.

You are still trapped. You're just trapped outside. And as you're stumbling, you see an archway. And you see beyond it, and you start to see gravestones. And you're like, woah.

This is not good. This is not where I ought to be here in this haunted house. And over the archway, says the graveyard of forgotten women. Oh, death. Yeah.

And as you look out onto all of the gravestones, you see specters floating amongst them. They're all women.

Dead women. They came from my science fair.

They float. They escaped.

Got tired. All of me here.

They got tired of that room. Men were shouting at them and stuff. It's quiet out here, at least. And on the gravestones, you start to see things like preacher, deacon, inventor

Mhmm. Historian Author. Author. Hand model. Sure.

And you start to realize that these are the women who have been forgotten by society.

Mhmm.

And they're ignoring you for now. Thank goodness. But I can't promise anything in the near future.

Oh my gosh. They made a whole project, walked out, and got buried.

It's a tough day. Purgatory is not for the weak. And so as you're exploring through, you start to also see names on these gravestones of the forgotten women.

Mhmm. And I have a couple for you.

The first one is gonna be Junia. Now Junia, we've talked about, but it's been a minute. So if you haven't heard that episode, I'm sure it's back in our it's somewhere. Find it. So Junia in the Bible was an apostle.

She was a named apostle. She was a coworker to Paul, and she was named throughout the Bible. Now, Junia's not mentioned like a lot. Mhmm. We don't know a ton about her story other than that she was called an apostle, which was what Jesus called his disciples.

They were the apostles. Right? Junia is named as an apostle. But throughout history, men didn't like that because women are put down in the church. Because women are told we do not have leadership roles within the church.

And that would directly conflict with them trying to tell us that you can't have leadership roles in the church.

So instead of calling her Junia, and in every early text that you saw, it was Junia. And Junia was always, always, always a feminine name. So it was always gonna be a woman historically. And yet they decided to make her a man. So they changed her name into Junius.

Mhmm. So it wasn't really creative. Okay? Like, we didn't we didn't do a lot of work here.

We just did a whole episode on the Bible and how the different translations have been affected based on people's agendas. Mhmm. And that's a great example Mhmm.

Of that. So Junia was a forgotten woman.

Who is she? So you

go up to another gravestone. And this one says Mary Magdalene on it. And you're like, I don't think people forgot her. She's a pretty big deal. I hear about her, like, once.

I I heard about her once in church. But what we don't know, what we don't often hear about Mary Magdalene is that she, in fact, wrote a book that could have been included in the Bible, in the canon of 66 books that the Protestant Christian church uses. She wrote this book. And when they originally found all the scrolls that were used to translate the Bible from, her whole book was there, a complete book. So they had the whole thing.

But a large group of men sat down and said, this book is should be included, and this book shouldn't be included. And this book should be included, and this book shouldn't be included. And they decided not to include the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Are we shocked? We're so shocked.

I'm so surprised. Because women can't have anything important to say. No. What are you thinking?

They can barely turn their head to breathe. They need to be in the home making a sandwich. Oh, we're back in World War two.

No. We have to stay. We we're not we're not jumping from room to room.

She got confused. She was having flashbacks.

And so throughout time, because the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was not included in the main scriptures, parts of it got lost because they weren't being translated over and over again, you know, whatever. And so now we only have a portion of that book. I have it in my room right now. We don't have the entire book. Because even though, yes, Mary Magdalene is a major figure in the Bible, she was one of Jesus' closest friends.

She was the first person to preach about his resurrection. The first person he told. Yeah. Major figure. We didn't think she was important enough to include her story in the Bible.

And then we lost it. Her words were forgotten.

Words that could have changed the world. It's not

an accident that the words and contributions of women are forgotten in the church. And the graveyard of forgotten women could include it goes on for miles. Okay? Like, countless women, not just religiously, but in society, all over the place. Women that just get forgotten.

And it's all because of power. And we say this over and over again, and that is something that belongs in a haunted house, is that our religion is so tied up in power and patriarchy. And how can I desperately hold on to this power, even though the Bible proves it wrong? God chose Mary to bring his son into the world. He could have just sent him down there, but he went through a woman.

Or how Jesus went up to Mary Magdalene after he rose from the dead. And was like, hey, you, come here. I want you to go tell everybody else that I'm alive. Mhmm.

Or the first person that Jesus told who he was Mhmm. Spoke of who he was, was the woman at the well. Mhmm. All of these are women's stories. Mhmm.

The value of women in the church, and yet we erase them.

At a time where women did not have a voice. Mhmm. They did not have power. And the Bible is saying, I don't want you to be like this. Mhmm.

I want you to be separate. Here's how you be separate. Men and women are equal.

And work together and lead the church together. Women are quite literally keeping the church alive today. You know, you might not see a lot of female lead pastors, and I actually have a number for you on that. 61% of churchgoers in The United States are women. And yet less than 15% of pastors.

And frankly, that's a larger number than I expected. But less than 15% of pastors are women. Mhmm. That's wild. But women are keeping the church going because women are teaching the Sunday school classes.

Women are leading the small groups. Women are organizing the potlucks. We're funding the church. Right. Just how women funded Jesus's ministry.

Women are the heart and soul of the church. And yet we're not given any of the leadership roles. And I think a lot of times people will, like they'll dismiss that statement. They'll be like, oh, you're just after power too. You're just after power too because all you're looking for is leadership, blah blah blah.

I don't need to be in power. I don't wanna be a pastor. I'm good. What I want is to hear women's voices.

Mhmm.

What I want is to see a woman given the same level of respect as a man. Mhmm. And that does mean seeing women in those positions of leadership Mhmm. At the same rate that you're seeing men. I'm not saying take every male pastor and throw them out.

I'm saying I wanna see half women pastors. If 61% of the church is women, I wanna see 61% of the leadership be women. Mhmm. Because that would be a true representation of the church body.

Mhmm.

And without that, we have the graveyard of forgotten women. Now you thought you could escape. You thought maybe, like, you you combed the outside and the fences to see if there was somewhere you could jump over or, like, a door, like, a secret garden kind of situation, but there wasn't. There's just lots and lots of gravestones and a lot of ghosts. And frankly, those ghosts are starting to look at you and be a little scary.

So you're like, oh, gotta get out of here. Thankfully, you're in sensible heels. So you start running. You trip over a gravestone, though. It's a bad time.

That ghost got kinda mad at you. You get up. You start running again. The only way out is to get back into the house. And you think, well, at least probably there are no ghosts in the house because all the ghosts from the science fair escaped.

So you run back in, you slam the door shut, and you run into Breeze Room.

It's not a hallway anymore. My gosh, we're in a ballroom. It's massive. I think Bridgerton Level. There's chandeliers.

There's opulence. You're in a gown now. Wow. How'd you get there? Magic.

And it's so full of people that you have to try to weave your way in and out. It's like Disney World during Christmas time. Oof. Just wall to wall people. And every time you turn around, someone says, Hey, did you get your MRS degree yet?

And you're like, Ugh. And then you turn around, and then you're trying to weave through this kind of person, and they're like, Hey. Why are you still single? You're so pretty. How can you still be single?

You go, and then you wiggle your way somewhere else.

This is so physical. She's like wiggling all over the place.

And yet another middle aged woman comes up to you and says, Hey, can I introduce you to my neighbor's cousin's friend's mailman? And this is called the MRS Ballroom. This is a single woman's life. Because And hell. And hell.

So often, women are defined by their relationship to men. Mhmm. Specifically, their, like, romantic relationship to men. And as a single woman out there, it's really difficult because you feel like you're disappointing, and we've done a whole episode on this. But you feel like you're disappointing so many people because your whole worth is tied up to, are you married or not?

And then once you're married, why don't you have kids? Why don't you have kids? Get get to getting. Have some more kids. And it's frustrating because people don't know what else to say to you other than, are you dating anyone?

Are you seeing anyone? Tell me about your dates. I don't know. And then you do go out on a date, and then that's all people talk to you about. And say that date doesn't go very well.

And then you feel so much shame towards yourself because you've let not even that, like, that dating relationship didn't work out, but you've disappointed the family. Mhmm. Specifically the family. So that is a very personal room to me. And I wanted to make it Bridgerton themed because that's near and dear to my heart too.

Hey, new season. They just announced. I know. It's coming out in January. Quite excited.

But I think Bridgerton era because there's something called the marriage mart. Mhmm. And that was the whole point in that time of those grand balls was during the springtime, this new crop of ladies came out, and you're shopping for a spouse. Mhmm.

We've been having some fun with Brie's dating apps over the last week or so. It's been an exciting time. I never got to do the dating apps because I got married in college. And they weren't even a thing. Like, I'm aging myself, but they weren't even a thing yet.

And so I never got to do them. So it is hilarious and horrifying. Haunted housey to watch her deal with this.

Mhmm. I mean, dating has been a thing for a long time. But it was more like eHarmony, the websites that you had to create a profile and you had to pay for. Right. When I was in college, Tinder came out.

Mhmm. And it was like this whole new thing of like, oh my gosh, this is easily accessible to me. It's free. Mhmm. And I can just scroll through and say hot or not.

And it was just kinda like a game when we were in college, but then all of a sudden these girls started actually meeting up with these guys. We were scandalized by it. Like, what? You can't go out with him. You don't know him.

What do you mean? And then we all started doing it. But that as, like, a single person in the year 2025 Mhmm. That's often how you meet people now. Because I'm not gonna go out with someone that approaches me at a grocery store.

Ew. No. Why are you coming up to me? Go away. I mean, yeah.

That's threatening and scary. At least when you're on the app, you both have the understanding of I'm in search for something. Mhmm. Rather than approaching me out in the wild when I just wanna get my sushi. I'm just here for $6 sushi.

Please leave me be. And don't look at me.

You know, you said the family doesn't know what to talk to you about.

Mhmm.

I think that's and we've done an episode on singleness. Two episodes, I think, on singleness I

think so.

Yeah. So if this is interesting to you, head back into our library. There's some good stuff in there. But we've talked also about how the church also doesn't know what to do with you Mhmm. When you're single.

So it's not just a family thing. You know, maybe you come from a family that's not pushy about it. Yeah. The church itself is pushy about it. I went to a Christian college and I remember well, we both went to Christian colleges, but I went to a more conservative Christian college.

And I remember sitting in chapel and our president got up there, like the college's president, got up on the stage and said, boys, look at all these single girls here. These single beautiful Christian girls. How are any of you single? You guys all need to get married. How is anybody here not married?

Blah blah blah. Now remember, you're talking to college students here. So some of them are 17, 18 years old.

Mhmm.

But that's the expectation is you're all gonna pair off. And that way, when you head into your churches, now you are married and creating young families, and we know how to deal with you.

It's so horrifying to say that. But that is, like, the ideal candidate for a church because that keeps the church alive. They wanna keep the family there. They wanna have that family have children. They And want you to grow old there because then when you're older, have more money.

You can donate it to the So, yes, you finally made it out of the ballroom. And yeah. Oh, where? Who- ah! You've forgotten what your name is?

Who am I? That was the most horrifying experience that I could ever imagine. And I've been to all of the haunted houses. Alyssa and Brianna cardboard cutouts are at the back door, and they're, like, waving at you, like, be a better person.

And then you trip again, just for fun.

We have a trip a trip wire right at the end, and like a a rickety old stare. You that back of

your sensible heel gets stuck. And because it's a thicker heel, you can't get it back out. Mhmm. You're toast.

And we're still waving and I'm like, be better.

And that's the end of our

haunted house. Are you horrified? We are. Oh. Do you have nightmares?

I hope that launched you into a very spooky Halloween tomorrow. Were you thinking chainsaws? And did you know that chainsaws were originally invented for birthing? Excuse me? Delivering babies, like C section and stuff?

What? Yeah. Did you know that? That was the original intention for chainsaws. That might have been the scariest part of the episode.

Well,

I hope that your Halloween doesn't get any spookier than this, because this was the scariest thing that I've ever thought of. Honestly, I'm gonna have nightmares. Today and tomorrow.

I had a hard time thinking of these things. They were so scary. So scary. But that's the life we're living. We're living in a haunted house.

A haunted country, perhaps. A haunted earth.

So tomorrow's Halloween for you all.

For you.

Yeah. Happy Halloween. Get lots of candy. Eat it all. Don't feel bad about it.

Enjoy yourself.

Mhmm. Trick or treat.

Trick or treat if you want to. I don't care. Look at my slice.

I saw a TikTok the other day that was like, how to trick or treat as a full blown adult. And this guy, it looks like he's holding, like, a sleeping toddler. Mhmm. But really, his arm is through this child's outfit. It's there's nothing in the outfit.

It's an empty outfit. And it's like the kid is holding a Halloween bucket, but it's his hand, and it looks like the kid's asleep. And he's just like, oh, don't mind me.

Trick or treat. There's easier way to do this. Carry around a Stroller? Stroller. Yeah.

With your dog in it.

It doesn't even have to have anything in it. Or here's an alternative. I'm five feet tall, so I can just put on a mask and go.

That's true.

I am the size of a child. That's true. So here's some options for you tomorrow if you really want some candy.

Alternatively, just go to the store.

I mean, maybe, but what's the fun in that? Sometimes if you go trick or treating, strangers give you jello shots.

And that is the spirit of Halloween. That's the meaning of

Christmas. Anyway, so next week, we're gonna launch into a series for November about women who fell from grace. We are specifically gonna be talking about Beth Moore, who if you are in The US, you'd be very familiar with her. Well, in the church in The US, you'd be very familiar with her. She wrote, like, all of the women's bible studies.

Mhmm. All of them. All of them.

Every single one. And then said something that the church didn't like, and they basically kicked her out.

Yeah. They were like, she's a horrible person. She's always been a horrible person.

Even though she taught us most of the Bible. Mhmm. But it's fine. We are also gonna be talking about Amy Grant, who is very relevant for us. If you're younger than us, she might not be as familiar to you.

But she was a Christian singer back when we were young. Mhmm. And there was a whole scandal where she had an affair, and the church, again, kicked her right out. There was no grace. There was no nothing.

She she was done. See you. Bye. Yep. And then we are also gonna be doing now, this is less of a real person.

What do you mean?

But very relevant, especially for us who just bought tickets to go see Wicked one and two in succession.

Yeah. It's like a six hour event. I'm taking the day off work, you guys. I came into work the other day, and I was like, I gotta talk to you guys about something. I am gonna need to take a

day off. To see Wicked. My new breed does not take days off. No. Anyway, so we're gonna be doing an episode on Elphaba, who, yes, is a fictional character, but also had that very intense fall from grace despite, in her case, trying to do the right thing.

She was trying to do good. Mhmm. And she spoke to the wrong person Mhmm. Who was not trying to do good. Mhmm.

And he was like, you know what? I'm gonna make you seem crazy. Because

what do men do when they want to take away women's power? They call them crazy.

Mhmm.

So we're gonna be talking about her. We may do one more in this series. We're not a 100% sure. If you have any ideas and would like to have us do an episode on a woman that you feel like was a significant part of the church or society or anything like that and then did something that society didn't like and she got kicked out? She poo pooed on?

Us know. Princess Diana.

That'd be a good one. Let us know on our social media. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok. We are also on Facebook, but I don't post there that much. No.

So you can find us on TikTok. If you just search the hashtag we are more, you'll find us there. So head over there. Let us know what you think. Follow us.

We would love to see you. We're a fun community.

Yeah. We post very sassy things. And sometimes our faces,

which are equally sassy. Occasionally our faces. Alright. Well, we will talk to you guys about that next week. Have a wonderful and safe Halloween, and eat a lot of candy.

Love

you. Bye. Love you. Bye.