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Episode 113 -- The 2025 Daytime Cursties (with Michael Hobbes) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-12-16 14:51:21
Edited:
2025-12-16 15:13:18
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

It's cold outside, the Holidays are here, and you know what that means: It's Cursed-Discourse Awards-Season, motherfuckers! Not-even-close-to-live from a bunch of living rooms miles away from the Dolby Theater, it's the Third Annual Cursties!!! For the third year in a row, Moira, Adrian and special guest Michael Hobbes give out awards for the most cursed discourses around sex and gender for 2025. Problem is: we've dealt with so many cursed discourses around sex and gender in 2025, and pretty much all cursed discourses seem to have with gender panic these days. And In Bed with the Right has covered so so so so many of them!

So we decided to narrow our noms to one particular genre of cursedness this year, and to present awards for ... drumroll ... achievements in anti-wokeness.! From queer tieflings to kids getting coddled in the 4th dimension, from socialist mayors (and not the one you're thinking of!) to French people teaching Americans how to islamophobia, to the world's creepiest Blue Man Group, this one has something for everybody!

Some links to articles we mention:

-- Matt Bernstein's in-depth episode on the long dark road of Debra Messing can be found here

-- Adrian's New Republic article about a row over "islamogauchisme" in France can be found here

-- Michele Goodwin's interview with Jess Michaels as part of her series Surviving Epstein can be found here

Comments

In Bed With the Right

Sorry this one's so late, you guys! Between the deranged length of tape we sent to our producer Mark and me (Adrian) being in a totally different timezone, we just couldn't entirely get it together...

jacq

this is my multiverse of madness

Ella L

Ummm...that's a Beholder - 🤣🤣🤣 I am laughing my ass off here

Rebecca

My favourite people all in one episode!!! 🫶🏼

Beth N

The real awards season has begun.

Heidi Vee

Lol at that definition of romantasy. I think if the genre were just the imaginative smut books it would be less controversial, actually! The word is a portmanteau for romance + fantasy, and most of the trends are driven by BookTok. So some of the disdain is that classic disdain against things written (largely) by and for women; but also because the trends are driven by BookTok, even some of the most popular books lack some of the nuances of writing style and world-building that fantasy readers have historically prized, but also lack some of the genre conventions of romance (especially the guaranteed happy ending). There are lots of interesting aspects of this discourse, including the relationship to fan fiction, the dominance of white writers in the subgenre, etc. As a long-time reader of both fantasy and romance books, I still feel that the romantasy genre isn’t usually for me! But I have a few favourites, of course. If there are any romantasy readers here I would love to discuss!

kathleen

So on the one hand ADHD is just lazy kids cheating to compensate for their mediocrity so no accommodation. On the other hand geniuses are difficult sometimes (read mental health stuff going on? possibly!) but in a socially valuable way so we'll accommodate by which we mean saying "well they're just like that ha ha." Neurodivergence being real can't be true, so let's make life hard for people instead. I'm fully mid with ADHD and it's a lot of exhausting work, and I'm related to impressively smart people with ADHD and it's a lot of exhausting work for them too.

Maud McInerney

I miss AD&D for all kinds of technical reasons… but my group from the 80s was queer af. Even the straight people played queer half the time. It was how many of us figured out our bisexuality.

panoptigoth

The way I just thought “But a flying eye IS a beholder!” lol

Nevrosiel

Best awards show with all the best categories 💚

Nina V~

almost 30 minutes in, and i have to say that this i what i come here for: deep dives into the minutiae of exceedingly merdy shit, topped off by adrian casually saying "recherche." 🤌🏻

Theo

As a 22yo pink-haired they/them liberal arts undergrad with ADHD (who has been getting into D&D), I felt VERY seen by this episode 😂 But seriously- every time someone says people are gaming the system to get undeserved accommodations in college, I lose a year off my life. It’s so fucking hard. I have multiple disabilities and it has been so hard to get accommodations that I just never got everything that I actually needed. It cost me over $1k to get diagnosed with ADHD, and I didn’t get that diagnosis until three years ago because awareness of how symptoms present in AFAB people was so low in the 2000s and 2010s. You guys touched on what I think are very important points about how the right talks about disability and mental health and how it seeks to destroy what progress we have made over my lifetime. As always, great episode, thank you for doing what you do! 🫡

Ruth Robertson

Chuck Tingle as a guest would actually be amazing though. Bury Your Gays was one of my top reads of 2024.

Karen Cox

Also, I’m old enough to be your mother and I play D&D with my kids. I was, in fact, thé heartthrob of thé D&D club in 1981. (I wasn’t a member. I was a senior and everyone in the club was a freshman. Believe me when I say none of you are as much of a nérd as I am!)

Carl

Finally joined SPECIFICALLY for the "it's called a Beholder" moment.

sonorasgirl

The idea that “haven’t we punished them enough” for the people who ran an actual child sex trafficking ring…it’s so interesting to me how no one in that group is anti-incarceration until it comes to their friends doing such abominable things that they should be locked away from women and girls forever. I’m not generally for incarceration, but SA and murder are my exceptions, and these men deserve to never be allowed around other people again.

Karen Cox

Yeah, 20 to life is fine for some schmuck in thé projects with 3 ounces of crack but raping a dozen teenagers is just sômething rich men néed to do, okay? What are you, some kind of commie??

Kai

As an autistic person who technically qualifies for accommodations that include "extra time on tests" AND someone with 2 educational psychology courses and a special needs teaching course under their belt, just wanted to drop here that that accommodation is basically just one of the things they suggest when you go in to discuss IEP/504 stuff (not legally called that in college, but still), it is bog standard accommodation for MI/ID accommodation because there isn't much else the school can reasonably *guarantee* you receive and therefore is legally enforceable. I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of students with disability plans did not ask for that accommodation specifically, but that it was suggested to them when they met with the disability office/advisor/whatever it is called for their college as one of the accommodations that could be provided. I never use any of the accommodations outlined in my plan for college, but I do actually use having one as an in when I need professors to give me further clarification on assignment criteria, because I am sometimes more likely to get an actual response and the level of clarification I require when I point out the school's legal acknowledgement of my disability. As discussed here, the real questions should be about how many students are actually *using* the accommodation regularly (I'm willing to bet it is very few), and then if it provides any sort of unfair advantage (it almost certainly does not).

Nina V~

also, i can't help but laugh anytime y'all say, "WOW, we've been recording for so long!" bc i'm like, i would take hours more of this 💜

andrew devney

I’m glad that the Washington Post came up in this episode. Every piece I’ve seen from the Post’s “Editorial Board” reads like libertarian slop that may or may not have been rejected by the Washington Examiner or the Western Journal.

Kai

Hi Heidi! Not a romantasy-specific reader, but an avid queer romance reader - I think the discussion is a little different over on the gay side (haha) but I agree that a lot of the more good-faith discussion of the topic has to do with the lack of nuance and, more importantly, the reinforcement of norms within these books. Like you said, with a lot of these stories that get popular being written by white/cishet authors, they (along with a lot of "dark" romance) sometimes reinforce a truly ridiculous number of often-harmful stereotypes written into rather shallow characters, while failing to examine the dynamics they depict. Suspension of disbelief and a good understanding of the separation between what is realistically healthy and what we enjoy reading are of course important to reading, but sometimes we *do* have to take that step back and examine how fiction influences real-life understandings of what is healthy or desirable in relationships. Fantasy has unfortunately kind of always been a place where authors display prejudices (sometimes unknowingly) in ways that people find palatable when reading these fantasy worlds because of the larger distance from the "real world" they have (J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Roald Dahl come to mind) and mixed with romance I think some of these books are at times insidiously misogynistic/stereotype-reinforcing even if that is unintended or unnoticed by author and reader, and that is part of what I think gets lost in all the bad-faith takes on romantasy. From my perspective, it seems like a lot of people reading these books are less willing to accept that their contents and the dynamics they depict and reinforcement (conscious or unconscious) of stereotype might have real-life impacts on their thought processes because "it's just fantasy." And maybe it is! Maybe it just isn't that deep for some people and it has zero impact on them! Like any genre, it is for some people and not for others, and while it isn't a requirement for someone who reads romantasy or any other genre to do deeper examination of how what they read impacts them and how they see the world, I think it is something we should all do with everything we consume.

Heidi Vee

Thank you for the thoughtful reply! I also read a lot of queer romance and fantasy, and I thought (but did not include in my original comment since it was getting long), that most of my favourites in any of these genres are either by queer authors or authors of colour. I think you’ve articulated well why that is—they tend to use these genres and their conventions to question and address the stereotypes and assumptions, rather than to reinforce them. I think romance especially is such an interesting example of this, because the arc of most romance novels is from loneliness/alienation to belonging. I find that arc much more meaningful when the final belonging is not just fitting into hegemonic social norms, but a more examined and thoughtful relationship/community—whether that’s in queer romance or m/f.

James Talley

Adrian is now on my organ donor list for "It's called a beholder."

Nina

You guys could make a ton of money by having a Patreon tier where you get to play D&D with Adrian, I'm just saying

A Shade In Shades

Somehow hilarious to me to write an article picking out Hasbro-owned D&D for wokeness in roleplaying games. Let's hope the Telegraph never discovers Thirsty Sword Lesbians....

mina

I’m fresh out of Columbia undergrad and the elite conservative student journalist to reactionary, left-punching pundit pipeline is insane to watch in real time. Like watching someone who everyone on campus hated and disagreed with work for The Free Press like they’re some arbiter of truth for regurgitating the lies that Columbia and other elite college students are somehow a hotbed of antisemitism and anti intellectual pluralism when you can throw a stone on campus and hit someone’s who know that none of that is fucking true makes me foam at the mouth 😫

Karen Cox

I went to college in the 1980’s, a decade before the ADA. I remember when wheelchair ramps were controversial. The same people who thought someone could just get over being a paraplegic if they worked hard enough are still around, complaining about having to see disabled people 40 years later, even as they themselves need those accommodations. I shudder to think what time will do to the people who think cognitive differences shouldn’t be accommodated. (Answer: they’ll get so much worse.) Anyway, good for you and best of luck!

Betti Tristan

i fear Kimmel is a bit of a reverse Debra Messing

Gwen

I know it is hard for some people to accept accommodations and at the same time those accommodations might not be exactly what they need. I teach at a uni (not in the US) and I try to organise my courses in a way that makes individual accommodations unnecessary as far as possible by giving everyone enough time to work on tests (like a week to work on from home) and accepting late hand ins without penalties. This makes it easier for me than working with individual accomodations while making the course less stressful for all students. Win-win! ☺️

Oceanna

As a French person, I can't stop reacting about the "the French are so racists" before remembering how racist my country is XD I hope that islamo-gauchisme discourse never darken any other country, frankly, it's just so absurd (and empty). Anyway, I'm a great fan of your definition of romantasy and the choice of monsters in it XD

Michael Pezzulo

Having heard this ep, & then dug around in the You're Wrong About archives & found Adrian's episode there about D&D within the same 24 hours I really hope to someday hear Adrian react to Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Han's comic DIE (as in both, it's not dice, the singular is "die" & in the sense of it might kill you.) It's premised on a group of 6 kids who disappear while role-playing at a 16th birthday party, 5 of whom reappear two years later, one now missing an arm. All they can say is, "I can't talk about it." The story starts when the game, & the party member who didn't make it back come back to haunt them 25 years after the original game.

Michael Pezzulo

The romantasy discussion made me think of this cartoon I saw circulating on social media a few years ago about writing a fiction where Theseus & the Minotaur fall in love, then you change the setting, then the monster, etc. Only place I could find the comic now: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/41368545/

Christine

Every time I see these episode titles, I read them as the “curtsies”. Like they’re giving out awards for the best manners.

Jennifer Moran

Hello my wonderful podcasts hosts!! This is a long shot and not related to this year’s crusties (loved the ep btw!) Moira has mentioned a few times in past episodes an interesting and problematic history of the HR department, and I’m wondering if there is a quick source on this yall could share? It will go a long way in helping explain to my coworkers why HR sucks! Thanks for everything yall do!!

Rootintootin

the they/them show as a portlandia spinoff

Bridget Tannian

OK, I've now heard two podcasts (IBWTR and Kara Swisher) express surprise that the Kimmel thing generated such a big response. But it seems like there might have been just as big a response to just about anything else this administration has done, there's just not a way to measure it. For this one, there were immediate, concrete, easy steps to take to express your outrage that were quantifiable and clearly tied to the one incident. My family, for example, canceled our Disney+ subscription the day after Kimmel got pulled off the air. We don't care about Kimmel in particular, but there isn't any obvious action to take about people being sent to offshore prisons or any of the other things. We can vote, and we will do so when the time comes, but that's not immediate. We can boycott retailers or join protests, but those are hard to measure and not directly tied to one thing. Maybe there are people out there who just love Jimmy Kimmel, but my bet is there are a lot more people just looking for meaningful (but not very difficult or risky) actions to take, and consumerism is what we have available.

Alice Kron

The way I said "aww not true!!" out loud to myself when Adrian said he has a face for podcasting 😭

Rae LeGrone

I'd love to hear yall discuss/debate "wokeness" with Vivek Chibber.

Leo Paniagua

Why are these people so upset about my 33% extra time on exams. It just gives me time to have my customary and inevitable panic attack and then lock my autistic ass back in. These people have no real enemies, scared of 33% extra time