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We're doing a mailbag episode! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-04 19:54:01
Imported:
2026-09

Content

Hi all,

we're having a busy summer over here at IBWTR. The next 1933 episode (sigh ... the July one, sorry about that) should be out tonight. We're also finally tackling Phyllis Schlafly, IQ fetishism and doing an episode on anti-intellectualism. On the Patreon, we're hoping to finally do our long-gestating episode on Natural Law and an episode on [shouts] NEEEERDS.

But we've also decided that after 87 episodes, it's time for a mailbag episode. And we felt that, since the Patreon has been doing quite well, and because we love you guys, it would make sense to collect questions from you all! So it's a Patreon-only mailbag, though we're planning to release on the main feed.

Feel free to use the message function on Patreon to write to us (maybe preface your message with FOR MAILBAG EPISODE, or something like that -- just in case someone has like a question about the RSS feed, we don't want that to get lost in the mailbag shuffle). Or, you know, just comment on this post.

We're planning to record in two weeks, so if you get your question/comment/observation to us by August 13, that'll give us enough time to plan and research!

We're so excited to hear from you!

Moira & Adrian

Files

Comments

C. D. Tavenor

Unless I'm missing it, I don't think you have an episode yet on the confusion from the Right regarding folks with nonbinary identities. I'm one such person who is AMAB and is nonbinary. I'm a lawyer, and I appear in conservative spaces sometimes. Fortunately haven't received any weird comments yet (other than my parents generally not understanding the concept) But during the 2024 election cycle, there were a few pro-trump campaign ads that stood out to me, where the ended the ads with "Harris is for they/them, not for us." Which rhetorically is very clever but also some very explicit anti-trans/anti-nonbinary rhetoric. And now we have the Trump admin attempting to ban the X identifier on passports (which I have on my valid for many more years, fingers crossed, passport) So all of this is to say--i would love an episode diving into conservative confusion and moral panics about nonbinary genders, the origins of it, etc.

Gwen

This topic would be great as an episode!

Andu Z

First, I love you both more than words can describe. I've unfortunately run out of IBWTR podcast to listen to so I'm slowly relistening to faves, and patiently awaiting for these exciting new ones. As for the mailbag episode, I had a question for you as a fellow academic: I'm curious if either of you has felt any immediate and personal repercussions from the current administration's federal funding freeze to select universities. Alternatively, if that's not information you can discuss on air, do you have any thoughts on where this attack on higher ed might be headed from here?

Lydia Z

Hi Moira and Adrian, I'm not usually in Patreon comments, but I just want to say, Project 1933 is everything to me. It feels like it's made for me as someone who is not in a good headspace to trudge through heavy-hitting history books (though I am trying!), but is really craving nuanced historical context to make sense of what is happening in the world/the US at the moment. As a descendant of holocaust survivors, I was steeped in genocide history as a kid, and my understanding of WWII was really limited to the Jewish lens. The Holocaust feels extreeemely relevant + important to understand right now with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, but it's also only part of the picture of 20thC fascism. So thank you for bringing me that broader, deeper perspective! For the mailbag episode, I know the point of this podcast is usually to talk about the right, but I would love to hear from you about what is bringing you hope at the moment.

Syerra

This isn’t necessarily a mailbag topic, but I just wanted to say it was pretty profound to understand the difference between why conservatives think rape is immoral versus why we think rape is immoral. To be overly simplified, rape being viewed by conservatives as being destruction of men’s property. Any further dive into this is always horrifically fascinating to me, if that speaks as a mailbag topic.

Julia

I third this!

Cool Bag

Just curious about your own personal Journeys to the Left: Were either of you raised religious, how progressive/conservative were your upbringings, etc?

Syerra

SPOILERS FOR FANTASTIC FOUR! If either of you have seen the new F4 movie, I have to ask; Were either of you creeped out by the space birthing scene? It felt like a Musk-esque self insert fantasy scene. Come on, a white woman giving birth to a genius man’s sci-fi baby in a space ship during a near-death blackhole scenario, while naked on a table in front of my brother and guy friend? As a woman that scene was possibly one of my worst nightmares, I almost left the theater after.

Syerra

Honestly, just that whole movie made me cringe. That would be a great episode topic to discuss, like the SVU episode.

Thomas Wiehe

Love you guys and love the idea! My question would be about thoughts you might have on the whole discussion about historical figures and their potential queerness. Because first and foremost I think it‘s completely necessary and overdue to break the heteronormativity of history. But especially with men I sometimes feel like some people see no possibility for an intimate relationship without it being romantic and/or sexual. Which I think also doesn’t help break the system down the line. Like I said I would love to hear your thoughts, which I‘m pretty sure are much more interesting and qualified 🤭

Maggie McAdam

I would love to hear your not-safe-for-main-feed takes on San Francisco mayor, Daniel Lurie. I'm a SF resident and I'm dying for more episodes about San Francisco conservatives generally but I'm curious about hot takes on Lurie's tenure so far.

Kevin

Hey y'all! Love the podcast and very happy to be a supporter. I live in a very conservative part of the country and I have two daughters, ten and eight, who are fairly regularly barraged by school, family, and general culture with gender normative messaging and a whole lot of essentialism. My wife and I do our best to push back in various age-appropriate ways but it can be difficult to know how in the weeds to get. I don't think either of you have direct parenting experience with older children, but are there any resources that you might know of or recommend? Thanks!

Nick

Generally: thoughts on the anti-trans backlash playing out in the UK, aka Rainy TERF Island? Specifically: why is “middle-class white woman in her 40s/50s” the most prominently transphobic demographic over there?

MicheleB

So this one is for Adrian. I really appreciate the way you use the analytic lens of "moral panic" to talk about "cancel culture". I also think it is interesting that many of the people you critique would likely accuse us and "the cancellers" as ourselves engaged in a "moral panic". Having done my MA research on the epistemological politics of a fake diagnosis used to discredit incest survivors, I am unfortunately also aware of how often accusations of "moral panic" are used to minimize the prevalence of sexual violence, particularly that committed against children. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the slipperiness of "moral panic" as a concept, how to adjudicate between conflicting claims of "moral panic", and how we can use the concept in ways that highlight real dynamics (like the cancel culture moral panic) without obscuring real social problems (the way it can be used to minimize sexual violence). Also, thanks for the podcast and all you guys do! I look forward to it every week :-D P.S. You should definitely do a Bonhoeffer episode!

Ali Clawson

Hey there! Some silly QQs for the mailbag episode: - I don’t know if Patreon screens profanity in comments, so “f*ck, marry, kill:” Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bill Mahor (alt: Bari Wiess, JK Rowling, Joe Rogan) - Dream blunt rotation (podcast guests), living or dead. And the topic you’d want to do with them! - What’s your Roman Empire/Library of Alexandria? Love the show, have devoured every single episode since you were put on my radar via the YWA expanded universe. Thank you for helping me stay sane!

deelivers

(Sorry if I missed an episode about this already!) but curious about the gender dynamics behind the bizarre and growing world of AI companionship

Betti Steam

What books did you read during the podcast research/prep you havent had a chance to gush about?

Karen Cox

This is so wonderful!! My question is how to address the Evo Psych arguments? I know they’re bad, but I sometimes can’t muster the correct logic against those bad arguments?

running-with-toast

Question for the mailbag: one thing that I've always struggled to understand with the right is the "every accusation is a confession" of it all. To me it feels distinct from "rules for thee not for me"-style hypocrisy, as it has more to do with how figures on the right imagine and frame their enemies. I'm thinking specifically of closeted homophobic politicians, which I'm sure you could do a whole episode on by itself, but it shows up in other areas of reactionary discourse. Perverts accusing their enemies of perversion, racists accusing their enemies of racism, authoritarians accusing their enemies of authoritarianism. It's certainly a rhetorical tactic, but sometimes it almost seems like they're doing it subconsciously, like they don't realize that they are what they claim to hate. Do you think there's anything to this? And if so, what do you think causes it?

Paul Crider

Not to mention Galactus's creepy invasiveness. I liked the movie, but it did have a big woman-as-vessel feel to it.

Paul Crider

Not Mailbag (unless): I'm definitely looking forward to the natural law episode! I hope you will comment on the possibility of non-rightwing versions of natural law. I've always been attracted to liberal Aristotelianism, for example. Though maybe that's not "natural law".

Paul Crider

Mailbag: I'd love to hear you two discuss the ethics and politics of sex work. I know it's a contentious issue within feminism, with smart feminists coming down on different sides of the issue, and in ways that aren't particularly obvious.

BOB DOLE BEAM OF PURE ENERGY

Mailbag: any thoughts on the Casey Anthony circus? I’m too young to really remember it, but I’m sure it was absolutely psychotic (I know Nancy Grace was involved).

Brian

Mailbag: do y’all have any thoughts on the gender/sexual politics of true crime media and the evolution over time? It seems to me that when I was a kid (geriatric Zoomer here) there was an obvious, if quiet, sort of middle-to-low brow conservatism to the dateline-esque shows that aired after the nightly news. Then all the sudden I was in my teen/college years and it felt like these podcasts were everywhere, being consumed by younger, more educated, more liberal women, and cloaked in a certain more liberal “vibe” in terms of language and milieu. But the substance was usually still “look at a scary crime”, so what does that mean/do to politics? I don’t want to lead too much by giving any more of my own idea but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

panoptigoth

Not a question—I hope everyone you all work with at Stanford is okay, I know there’s a bloodbath of layoffs going around.

Katie

Is there anything that is keeping your spirits up amid the, uh you know, unending and worsening horrors?

Laura

Mailbag (maybe for a lightning round): what are some feminist/queer theory books you recommend? (This question brought to you by Moira offhandedly mentioning "Down Girl" on bluesky and me not even getting halfway through the introduction without highlighting multiple passages)

Sarah

Mailbag: kind of old news at this point and maybe a little specific but I am curious what your thoughts are on the online backlash to the Sabrina Carpenter album cover lol. Thanks for all your great work both of you!!!

Sally

Niche topic you're obsessed with that doesn't fit into the show?

Alice Kron

Mailbag: favorite story about your partner OR a story from your childhood/youth that illustrates who you have always been as a person OR a joke that always makes you laugh OR who was your gay awakening?

Gideon Gordon

Mailbag: Book recs! Reading list! Seconding Laura here.

Robin Teal

Mailbag - This question has a bit of exposition. When I joined as a subscriber, Patreon recommended a podcast called RedFem to me. So I listened to a few episodes, and I was bewildered that these purported communists were anti-trans and also pretty convinced that most men are abusers who should not be around children or in women’s spaces. I guess that’s the radical feminist part? Or what they would deem radfem? (Apologies if I am disparaging rad fems with this statement.) Although focused on class, I thought that communist/socialists were interested in eliminating hierarchy and oppression. Any thoughts on these antitrans alleged leftists and/or any book recommendations that dive into this intersection?

Robin Teal

Thanks so much for this show! I have listened to many episodes repeatedly and have learned so much!

mrakobesiye

Mailbag question combining the Project 1933 and Republican Makeup topics: what was the Nazi equivalent of "blue hair" as far as a discrediting grooming choice among their ideological enemies on the left? (Leaving aside questions of racial physiognomy.) Did they obsess about communist hairstyles?

OhLordyAmina

I would actually really enjoy an episode or any observations on right-wing sexual politics and the Black community and the Black church. I live in the South and because it basically impossible to find any community outside the church...I find the alt-right movement within Black spaces even more troubling. I would love your thoughts on things like the hypergymy movement online and the Black male podcast o' sphere with regards to giving horrible advice to Black women and shaming Black women of a certain age that they're unmarried. A video podcast that encapsulated the really disturbing attitude within many Black churches and gender polities is this episode of the shoe, Dear Future Wifey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6xsRWFG3WA

Karen Wernke

Mailbag Question what are your thoughts about the results from other elections around the world - Canada, Australia etc where it appeared there has been a rejection of the right wing.

Ilona

Mailbag: It is very niche and a wild shot but since Adrian speaks German and knows his way around German and Austrian discourse on gender and trans rights/attacks on trans rights and Moira knows a bunch on the topic in general (especially with the right wing grifters - I am not accusing people but I see parallels….): can you share thoughts on discussions and discourse shifting and derailing in the whole Gertraud Klemm causa (would love especially thoughts on how the media reported on this- surprisingly mostly male journalists who often describe themselves as somewhat left, but the right left)

Ilona

Have you read Laura Bates “New Age of Sexism”? I enjoyed it a lot. Considering the topic. - informative but read in small portions. It focuses on AI and new technologies (sex robots/dolls with AI, chat bots, companions, VR spaces,…) and sexism/gender roles/availability of women/new forms of unregulated/ignored forms of sexual violence (also including race and trans - small notes here and there)

Kai

For mailbag - A bit of context for my question - I am a trans man, one of the extremely lucky ones who figured it out pretty early and whose parents are accepting. As such, (much to the horror of conservatives and even some liberals who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about) I began my physical transition 8 years ago at the age of 14, and that along with 4 years of being a powerlifter has allowed me the privilege of being someone who passes really well. The only issue with this is that a lot of cisgender people have big feelings about not being able to tell when someone is trans. I don't often come out to people if I can help it, for safety reasons at this point honestly, but ever since I started passing really well, whenever I have come out I pretty regularly get some really weird responses from cis people. They come in 3 forms: people who straight up refuse to believe it, people who become immediately visibly uncomfortable (and often seem a bit angry and confused), and people who start grasping for reasons they "should have known." There is typically some combination and/or progression through these responses. They're not necessarily uncomfortable with the fact that I am trans - I wouldn't have told them if I thought they would be - but rather they are upset and surprised that they couldn't tell. It seems to stem from some kind of belief for a lot of cis people that tells them they should be be able to clock us on sight, and they become genuinely upset when it is revealed to them that they in fact cannot. In my mind, this has to somewhat come from the idea that there is some definite difference that will make a person's sex obvious if you just look hard enough, and the dissonance that results when the belief in that innate difference is disproven. Do y'all have some deeper insight into this or generally what these kinds of reactions are stemming from? It does occur more regularly with gay men who are clearly sexually attracted to me, and I can recognize that is partially related to complicated feelings about sexuality, but why do so many people who don't see me as a potential sexual partner still have such strong reactions? Cis people's weirdness about gender is genuinely baffling to me sometimes so I appreciate input from people who specialize in cis/conservative weirdness about gender. Sorry this was a bit of a long one!

pixlaw

Once again, I’m asking you guys to talk, at least a little bit, about Camille Paglia, who somehow was viewed as a feminist while spouting really essentialist positions about gender roles, and who both called herself trans and said that this whole 'trans thing’ was going too far. In many ways, I see her as one of the first post-feminist reactionary centrists, who was publishing when Bari Weiss was still 10 years old, and receiving loads of acclaim for her work.

Sari Sakse

I'm a trans woman who transitioned a bit later in life than you, so my experience is probably a bit different, but for some reason I still manage to pass in a lot of contexts that I never thought possible. I don't know if it's a gender, age or just cultural thing (I'm from Denmark), but I have actually never gotten either of the three reactions you mention. Most of the time, if I just drop it casually into a conversation and people haven't clocked me, they either just don't say anything and keep the conversation going - and then at a later point bring up "by the way, I didn't know" - or they react in a way more like "oh, was I supposed to have known? I'm sorry!" The latter is typically the reaction I get from older women, or if my coming out was in response to questions related to my period, etc.

Kai

This is interesting! Seems like maybe it's cultural? I'm from the U.S. so attitudes about gender here are definitely a lot different

Kai

I will also say, I am mainly coming out to other men (friends, gym buddies, or potential partners) and have rarely gotten similar responses from women. So that is another likely factor.

Sari Sakse

From my understanding, we are much more casual about it here in Denmark, so I think that's part of it. But for some reason, I also just mentally excluded all the reactions I got while I was actively dating. There were some wild ones from some guys who were definitely confused about their sexuality as a result 😅

Olivia

Mailbag question!: As a UK listener I would love to know if you have any thoughts on the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal which has been going on for at least a decade over here but has resurfaced and I think gained quite a lot of attention on the American right in the last year, particularly following some deeply unhelpful interventions from Elon Musk. It’s an absolute mess of sexual, racial and class politics as well as being just a horrendous story for the young women who were the victims and who too often fall out of the focus when the issue is so horribly weaponised by the right. I also think it’s a very interesting mirror for the discussion about Epstein which you had such a great episode on recently, so I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on that. Thanks so much for all your great work, the podcast is such a valuable resource and I’m always excited to hear your perspectives!

deelivers

I have not! Thanks for the recommendation will look into it :)

Helen D

I would love to know how you discovered your passion for this area of study / line of work? Is it something you've always done or moved into it?

A Shade In Shades

How has doing Project 1933 effected how you think/feel/act about the present moment? Bonus question for bonus nerds: favourite new thing in the TTRPG space, especially as it pertains to the subject of your podcast?

Don Olmstead

I swore Moira mentioned something about the origin of HR being due to some reactionary culture war issue in one episode. If that’s an episode please do that but if it’s bite sized can she expand upon it in the mailbag?

S White

Hello! This is for the mailbag. Lately I’ve been a casual student of postmodern Marxism (e.g. Gilles and Deleuze, Mbembe, Preciado) as I try to understand fascism and the libidinal economy - however, the way it talks about “untrammeled flows”, “the right to be invaded”, and its aesthetic critiques of epidemiology to me seem to sort of recapitulate masculinist vitalist thinking and don’t sufficiently set up moral arguments against forms of travel, pleasure, immediacy, and use that, say, take the form of rape or extraction. Thoughts on the possibility of setting up an anti-rape politics that can make a home in this postmodern Marxism, or on how, given the current refusal of the Left to stand with “privileged” women as moral agents in their own right, to stand one’s ground on the liberal concepts of bodily sovereignty as a Leftist?

OhLordyAmina

That would be an interesting topic as well, something for a full episode. Gender politics within Rad Fem spaces especially in the UK are so odd to me. I noticed Julie Bindel talk a lot about the "grooming gangs" in the UK as well when she's not obsessed with Trans women.

Meowca

Low-stakes question for Adrian: what’s your favorite part about being a Dad? :) High stakes question for Moira: how do I become as cool as you? ;-; (If you’re attributing, please just refer to me as M!)

treemugger

Hi, not for mailbag, but an episode request. Please do Dworkins Right Wing Women. So many feminist titles atm are left and intersectional feminist critiques of white liberal feminis. Dworkins radical feminist look at right wing anti feminists feels just as relevant to the growth in women supporting facism, but less covered.

D

Please do an episode on the movie Tar.

Momo F. Black

If it isn't too late for a mailbag comment, here's a lightweight topic that doesn't feel full-episode worthy: what do you think of the idea of "girl code"/"being a girl's girl"? I see this in the zeitgeist a lot lately and I'm curious how it could be unpacked in a gender-politics sense. It seems, to me, that it's still the same centuries-old policing of women's behavior but I find it interesting that it's framed in a faux solidarity type of way.

elishevaaaa

if you’re interested on a deep dive about aryanization attempts of hair/makeup/clothing i remember enjoying the book “nazi chic? fashioning women in the third reich”

Vivian Cirilano

I’m really interested in your read on the anime Attack on Titan

雯倩 王

This might really date the episode but with all the talk on the Internet right now regarding Sydney Sweeney being a republican I was reminded of a point Adrien hinted at on a cursties ep with Mike Hobbes, something about how ‘we’ often presume the liberal-ness of someone/celebrities based on certain codes even though they haven’t ever really give us anything to actually support this … Funny that I think that’s the same episode where you guys discussed the cursed ‘woke us dead because Sydney Sweeney is hot’ discourse … That people have been expressing outsized surprise at the Sydney Sweeney thing, that the White House has been using this as a ‘win’ in the culture war as if it’s important at all or a notable revelation is so interesting to me. I’m curious what you guys have to say about the liberal-coding of celebrities in particular.

Olivia Walker

Struggling to formulate this question about project 1933... Why did you choose to deep dive into this example of historical authoritarianism as opposed to any other? And do you think learning so much about one historical example over another narrows how we think about the future, even if we know rationally that things won't turn out the same way? To be clear I'm a huge fan and find it incredibly valuable, but I have this thought sometimes when I listen.

Jan Frohn

When analyzing the rise of the far right, lots of people coming from (or adjacent to) the Marxist tradition explain its resurgence in merely economic terms. The post-2008 economic insecurity of the (often masculinized) working class explains a Trump or the Afd. Gender-based explanations of the far right’s popularity, on the other hand, are dismissed as only capturing the “ideological superstructure”, a mere afterthought of an already exhaustive economic theory. On the practical side, it is seen to follow that any kind of “identity politics” is empty and only a far-reaching economic reform (or depending on the radicalism, a revolution) can provide a lasting remedy. How would you address such leftist critiques of gender research and politics? And how can “class” and “gender” be reconciled as being both virtuous analytical categories - and logics of oppression that both need some emancipation work?

Maral

Thoughts on Amia Srinivasan’s work The Right To Sex?

Becca A

Very late comment but - it's my understanding that British TERFdom was born in no small part from New Atheism. Our TERFs and the Silicon Valley tech bros haven't connected overmuch, I think, but it still feels to me like there's a potentially interesting connection to be made in terms of their intellectual & political trajectories, and I'd love to know if you have any thoughts about it. This evolution of people who self-define as being about SCIENCE!, and being rebels against superstition, into people who are buying into conspiracy theories (because they decided they were the ultimate source of epistemic authority? Idk) and insisting that it's us blue-haired queers who're all emotional and don't understand science - idk, I don't have fully-formed thoughts about it, but I wonder if there's something there.

Rae LeGrone

late question: can you talk about how to deal with experiences with crime and various other right/center wedge issues that does not buy into or feed right wing narratives?

JanaKat

Another late question... Have you considered doing an episode on Robert Bly, "Iron John", and the Mythopoetic Men's Movement? I used to have that book pushed at me constantly by a certain toxic man in my life, and from what I've read about it, it's very much a precursor to the current ideologies of backlash. Particularly the Jordan Peterson crowd, but I'd bet there are ties elsewhere - fascists do seem to like Jungian psychology.