Episode 312: The Last Straight Woman (with Phoebe Maltz Bovy)

Summary

Blocked and Reported Episode 312: "The Last Straight Woman" (with Phoebe Maltz Bovy)

Date: June 13, 2026
Hosts: Katie Herzog & guest Phoebe Maltz Bovy

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Overview

In this episode, Katie Herzog interviews journalist and author Phoebe Maltz Bovy about her new book, The Last Straight Woman: On Desiring Men. The discussion covers the book’s central themes about straight female sexuality, challenges prevailing assumptions about female sexual fluidity, and dives into contemporary feminist and anti-feminist debates. The episode also unpacks drama around a recent New York Times article that seemed to echo Bovy’s book without acknowledging it. Lastly, Katie and Phoebe dissect two dueling essays by Helen Andrews and Helen Lewis on the current state of gender, cancellation culture, and the shifting pendulum of social backlash.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Phoebe’s “Problematization” and Move to Canada

• Phoebe’s Origin Story:
  • Phoebe explains she never experienced a major public “cancellation,” unlike some of her peers, though she was “micro-canceled” several times on early blogs. Her willingness to express opinions outside ideological boundaries kept her "unbothered" and pushed her into opinion journalism.
    • "I've just always been a little bit, I don't know, like unbothered by what people think of my opinions, which is how I ended up in opinion journalism..." (02:15, Phoebe)
• Moving to Canada:
  • Phoebe followed her husband (a Belgian) to Canada before Trump’s election, earning citizenship and reflecting humorously on typical assumptions about Americans fleeing Trump.
  • Comments on Canadian life vs. US life—life in Toronto is expensive, healthcare pros and cons, paid leave, and a uniquely Canadian dermatologist bottleneck.
    • "It's super nice to have a baby and not get a bill to pay afterwards..." (07:48, Phoebe)
    • "You can't get a dermatologist." (09:49, Phoebe)

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Introducing "The Last Straight Woman"

• Elevator Pitch for the Book:

  • Phoebe argues straight women are misunderstood. Calls for a new, “feminist heterosexuality” that celebrates straight women’s desire for men rather than viewing it as a problem or as something to transcend.
    • "What should happen is there should be a feminist heterosexuality, that we should reframe what it means to be a straight woman in terms of female desire for men..." (10:40, Phoebe)

• Responding to 'Heteropessimism':

  • Tackles the trend that sees straight women’s attraction to men as regrettable or shameful (coined by Asa Seresin).
    • "You know, women just really, really either hate the fact that they're straight or you know, hate, hate men. All this sort of like the male tears, all of that." (14:00, Phoebe)

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Sexual Fluidity & Female Desire: Debunking the Myths

• The Studies and Their Flaws:

  • Critiques Lisa Diamond’s influential research on female sexual fluidity. Argues the sample was likely unrepresentative (“taken from a gender studies class”), and that evidence for universal female fluidity is weak.
    • "She seems to really... Her argument is that female sexuality is inherently fluid... Things like they could have intense relationships with their female friends. Okay, I have had intense relationships with female friends. It's called having friends." (26:34, Phoebe)

• Identity vs. Behavior:

  • Both recount how cultural context, social circles, and timing can profoundly affect coming-out stories and identity claims.
    • "I think it's better for everybody if there's more of an understanding about women's desire for men. Because then the women who don't experience that desire might think about who it is they are actually interested in." (26:05, Phoebe)
  • Discusses physiological arousal research showing women's bodies respond broadly to sexual stimuli, but dismisses this as evidence of true sexual fluidity and highlights the mechanism’s protective evolutionary basis.
    • "Basically the female body prepares itself for the possibility effectively... it's a protective mechanism." (32:15, Phoebe & Katie)

• Mutuality of Horniness:

  • Both agree women are capable of robust sexual desire, but, as a rule, do not manifest sexuality in ways commonly associated with men (e.g., bathhouses, anonymous sex). Both evolutionary and social drivers are proposed.
  • Phoebe suggests women’s “would or wouldn’t” binary is as clear as men’s, but with fewer “woulds.”
    • "We all divide the world into would or wouldn't to some degree..." (39:35, Phoebe)

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Book Launch "Drama": NYT Overlap and Overt Snub

• The Incident:
  • Days after her book’s publication, the New York Times runs a column, “There’s Nothing Wrong with Wanting Men,” closely echoing her theme but never mentioning her or her book.
  • Phoebe details how the author had requested her galleys in advance and asserts even if accidental, the omission was highly suspect.
    • "What I knew was that Magdalene Taylor had... asked for a galley in January... she maintains that she hasn’t read it." (46:55, Phoebe)
  • Discusses the added challenge of discerning whether the snub was garden-variety professional politics or something more calculated due to “problematization” (e.g., her opinions on Israel or feminism).
    • "You never know if you're being ignored or snubbed and if it's because of your public reputation or if it's completely unrelated." (49:08, Katie)
    • "It only occurred to me... it could be that I'm perceived of... as being pro Israel, insufficiently anti Israel, whatever..." (51:20, Phoebe)

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Two Helens: Feminization vs. Masculinism (Helen Andrews vs. Helen Lewis)

[1: Dueling Essays—Gender and Cancellation Culture]

• Helen Andrews’ "The Great Feminization" (Compact):

  • Argues modern American culture and its institutions have “sissified” due to women dominating white-collar fields, resulting in phenomena like cancel culture, loss of old-school “dueling” masculinity, and feminization’s existential threat to the West.
    • "I get the sort of, like, there's an impressionistic sense in which it feels true, but I don't think it actually holds up... the participants in the woke, it's not as gendered as all that..." (55:33, Phoebe)
  • Katie and Phoebe point out the flaws in Helen Andrews' reasoning, particularly the blurring of “feminine” vs. “female” and lack of engagement with social progress born of feminization (decline in violence, improvements in family life, etc.).
    • "She doesn't ever contend with the upsides of having a feminized culture..." (60:33, Katie)
    • "I think that the fighting for scraps is why cancel culture came from..." (59:37, Phoebe)

• Helen Lewis’ "The Men who Want Women to Be Quiet":

  • Argues that a new masculinist ideology—more than just old-fashioned sexism—is now the glue of the American right, jumping from online influencers (Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes) into mainstream politics. Profiles figures who openly wish for disenfranchisement or radical subjugation of women.
    • "A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right." (67:17, Katie paraphrasing)
  • Both hosts highlight the deep homoerotic/homosocial undertones within some masculinist spaces, and the performative aspect of this backlash.
    • "How extremely homoerotic, homo social. How extremely men going their own way..." (68:49, Phoebe)

[2: Social Backlash and the Pendulum Theory]

• Both hosts (and Helen Lewis, via quoted text) emphasize that masculinist backlash is a reaction to the “kill all men,” “male tears,” and exclusionary “tumblr feminism” of the previous decade.
  • "The reductive view of the world. Women Things Bad, Men Things Good is the mirror image of the worst excesses of 2010's Tumblr feminism." (75:46, Katie quoting Helen Lewis)
• Katie proposes “owning your enemies” is now the main driver of American politics—pendulum swings of backlash, not ideology per se, accounting for much of recent reactionary upsurges.
  • "My unifying theory of American politics, such as there is one, is that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction..." (74:21, Katie)
• Phoebe notes the lesson of the Harper’s Letter: The “excesses” on the left directly fuel the rise and resonance of reaction on the right, even if the left's “victory” was only performative.
  • "It gives... a backlash as if it had won..." (77:30, Phoebe)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cancel Culture and Identity:

  • "I think I've just always been a little bit... unbothered by what people think of my opinions, which is how I ended up in opinion journalism..." (02:15, Phoebe)
  • "There was never any moment that I personally was canceled..." (02:05, Phoebe)

• On Straight Female Desire:

  • "Straight women have been misunderstood... we should reframe what it means to be a straight woman in terms of female desire for men..." (10:40, Phoebe)
  • "I do not think all women are literally bisexual. Again, Lindy West, very straight. You clearly very straight..." (18:58, Katie)

• On Feminization vs. Masculinism:

  • "Women are half the population, and unless there's a really, really huge change, I don't think that you can really win in a democracy by screwing over women..." (70:26, Phoebe)
  • "This idea that you can annoy people into becoming a fascist. You literally can..." (75:46, Katie)

• On Snubs, Drama, and Industry Dysfunction:

  • "What I knew was that Magdalene Taylor had... asked for a galley in January... she maintains that she hasn’t read it." (46:55, Phoebe)
  • "Did or didn't open the book? In the book, in one place, I mention something that Magellan Taylor wrote for the cut that I think she got wrong... If I read a book and it said something that I got wrong, would I find a way to not mention that book? ...I would do that, yes." (50:13, Phoebe)
  • "It only occurred to me, even though this is literally my beat... it could be that I'm perceived of... as being pro Israel, insufficiently anti Israel, whatever." (51:20, Phoebe)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00-05:04] — Phoebe’s background, move to Canada, and origin story
• [10:19-11:44] — Elevator pitch for The Last Straight Woman, introduction of feminist heterosexuality
• [13:52-15:23] — The “heteropessimism” trend and its manifestations
• [18:58-23:18] — Challenging the "all women are a little bi" trope; fluidity critiques
• [26:34-29:57] — The Lisa Diamond studies dissected; why “intense friendships” are not sexual fluidity
• [32:15-34:49] — Debunking sexual arousal studies as evidence for orientation
• [45:41-54:24] — The New York Times snub, the drama, and industry woes
• [55:33-63:48] — Helen Andrews’ “feminization” thesis critiqued; contrasts with masculinity culture
• [67:16-73:30] — Helen Lewis’ masculinist backlash theory; discussion of online "chuds," backlash dynamics
• [73:30-77:34] — Pendulum swings, political backlash, and why “owning your enemies” trumps ideology today
• [77:34-end] — Outro, book plug, invitation to the premium show for Q&A

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Tone & Style

• The conversation is wry, sardonic, and deeply informed, featuring both personal anecdotes and sharp cultural critique.
• Embeds plenty of topical references to social media, gender discourse, and the inside baseball of journalism/publishing.

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For Further Listening / Premium Content

Phoebe stays on after the free show for listener Q&A.
BlockedandReported.org for full access.

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Note: Non-content portions (ads/intros/outros) have been omitted for clarity and flow.

Transcript

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Foreign.

[Katie Herzog]

Welcome to Blocked and Reported. I'm Katie Herzog. And joining me today, while Jesse is shoving all the other water boys out of the way in his desperation to touch Jalen Brunson, we have Phoebe Malt Bovey. Phoebe is a columnist and editor at the Canadian Jewish News. She is the co host, along with Kat Rosenfield of the Feminine Chaos Podcast. And. And she is the author of two books, the Perils of Privilege and now the Last Straight Women on Desiring Men, which just came out last month. Phoebe, welcome back.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Thanks, Katie. Great to be back.

[Katie Herzog]

Great to have you here. This is a special show. We have the last lesbian speaking to the last straight woman. Someone put us in a museum and we have a lot to talk about today. We are of course going to be discussing your book and the controversy around your launch. So even if people don't care about straight women, so stay tuned because there is drama on tap. We're also going to be discussing the two Helens, Helen Andrews versus Helen Lewis and their dueling visions of the world. That will make sense, I promise. And Phoebe has also agreed to stay on after the free show ends to take questions from our primo listeners. So if you would like to hear that, join [e-mail] okay, Phoebe, before we get to any of that, let's get personal. So we have been Internet friends for a while now, I think probably almost 10 years. And in fact, this podcast exists in part because of you. We were in a group chat, Jesse, Kat, you and I. You and Kat were doing your show with, which at the time was on Blogging Heads, and Jesse and I felt left out and we were like, okay, you're doing a podcast. We'll do a podcast too. So this is really your fault and yet I don't really know your origin story. Like, I know why Kat is considered problematic because of the YA stuff, which she just wrote about recently. I'll link to that in the show notes. I know why Jesse is. He's a tranny chaser. But you don't have a distinct cancellation story like the rest of us. So, Phoebe, how did you get problematized to steal a term from Megan Dian?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Oh, absolutely. So I should say that people sometimes have wanted me to have an origin story.

[Katie Herzog]

And yes, we can cancel you right now if you'd like. Do you want to use some slurs?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I, I'm, I've got a whole list of them. I'm going to do all of them. But yeah, once we can rank the races, the only time I think I've ever been on a podcast where the podcast never ran. It was that the interviewer kept asking me about the time I was canceled. And I was like, it never happened. There was no such time. And they just kept kind of pressing on this. And I was like, do you want me to make something up there? Just like, I think I've just always been a little bit, I don't know, like unbothered by what people think of my opinions, which is how I ended up in opinion journalism to begin with. So I was always just writing things that were, you know, not quite lining up with any particular ideology or whatever. So there was never any moment that I personally was canceled. I did write a lot about cancellations early on, like about all these pylons when it was called call out culture still. So I wrote a book. Yeah, the Perils of Privilege came out in 2017. I'd already been writing about that topic for a few years. So I was writing about these things happening to other people. I was writing about this as a topic.

[Katie Herzog]

And you were really ahead of your time.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I probably hopped on it too early in retrospect for like marketing purposes or whatever. But yeah, it just interested me. But it wasn't that. So I did nevertheless have a few like very micro instances. I was micro canceled many times over. And the really big one, this was like on a blog. I want to say I'm picturing it way further back than could have been, but maybe it would have been like 2007. I have no idea where somebody willfully misread something I had posted and decided that I had a full designer wardrobe and that I thought that people who wore J. Crew weren't fancy enough. Because I had said was that I had said that there existed clothing in the world that's fancier than J. Crew in a very specific context.

[Katie Herzog]

True.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It led to some blog I didn't know. All these people were extremely mad at me and were making me out to be something that bore no relation to who I actually was or anything. I did know that one of these people was a real life friend of a real life ex boyfriend. So I thought like there may have been a sort of non online bit, but from. It wasn't a big deal though. But it did give me kind of an early clue into the way these kinds of dynamics play out and. Right, yeah, so things like that would happen, but never like a big but. It's also that I have no origin story where I was like really, really, really on the left and then suddenly something happened like, if anything, I'm probably further to the left than I was when I was like 20.

[Katie Herzog]

Interesting. It is this because you've moved to Canada, it's turned you into a socialist?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I just keep passing these hyper woke bookstores and it just kind of, you

[Katie Herzog]

know, you have become anti racist, baby.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Absolutely.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. So you also have something that I'm very jealous of, which is Canadian citizenship. How did you end up in Canada?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So that is very on brand for being the last straight woman. I followed my husband to another country.

[Katie Herzog]

And he's not Canadian, right?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

No, he's Belgian. Well, he's Canadian now as well. Like we both also got Canadian citizenship.

[Katie Herzog]

But does he have three passports?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

No, he's not American. Oh, he's just a Belgian and Canadian. Our kids though are, are all three.

[Katie Herzog]

But could you like, considering current politics, could you move him to the United States?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I mean, I'm not keen on even like visiting.

[Katie Herzog]

Right, right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Obviously we, we can visit. But like, yeah, it's weird, but a lot of the time people will assume, you know, that it had something to do with Trump, that I'm. And we actually moved here in 2015.

[Katie Herzog]

You should just tell people that you and what, Natalie Portman's parents were the only people who actually said they were going to move to Canada.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Jason. Jason Stanley.

[Katie Herzog]

Oh. Oh, that's true. Jason Stanley, yes. Do you hang out with him? You must.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Definitely. All the time. All the time. No, I've never met him, but yeah,

[Katie Herzog]

he's one of these people who sort of, I think disappeared from the discourse after he left Twitter. Actually, I guess I sort of did too. But his. I don't know if he is on Blue sky, but you just. He was one of these people who was just such a character of the day so often and he really just removed himself not just from the country, but from even more importantly the platform.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Even if he's not on Blue Sky. It feels very family ish on Blue Sky. So he's there in spirit regardless.

[Katie Herzog]

Totally. Okay. So what is it like to be an American in Canada? I mean, is it hard to be in a place where you don't do cage matches on the lawn of the Prime Minister's house?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I'm happy to be here now in light of all that's going on in the States. I also don't think day to day it's as different as all that. And I think, yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

Do you have like mass inflation there? Are you seeing the same economic fallout from Trump's various hobbies as we are here?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I think what I'm seeing is that stuff already was very expensive and.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. And Toronto's just a very expensive.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, but like, groceries aren't much. It's not as dramatic, I think, as it's been in the States probably. But like, I buy the. I could tell you like, what the three things I buy the most, but it's not gonna. I'm not like a. An expert on the overall.

[Katie Herzog]

What about. You know, we hear a lot in the US about how the Canadian healthcare system is so much better than ours. You have paid parental leave. This is socialist paradise. We're living in a capitalist hellhole. I mean, how does that align with your quote, lived experience.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Oh, well, that I have a lot of lived experience of. So it's super nice to have a baby and not get a bill to pay afterwards. That is really special because if nothing else, you're just like too tired to deal with something like that. And whenever I see anybody post about that. Yeah. The paperwork alone, even if you have good insurance, it's just like, that sounds really horrifying.

[Katie Herzog]

You gotta log in to the portal.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly, exactly.

[Katie Herzog]

Put in your credit card information.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So I do have it. Yeah. I have experience with both systems and definitely, like whenever I take my kids to the doctor, it's just like, great that you can just do that. However, I had like some kind of middle aged thing where I guess if you get an ear infection. So we're the same age as each other, right? Like, I, I'm 42, 43.

[Katie Herzog]

You, Jessie, Kat and I are all in. Helen, we're all like, yeah, we're all the same age, basically.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. But yeah, like I couldn't hear out of one ear for like six months, which is kind of annoying in the podcasting realm and just in general. And by the time the referral was like, accepted and they were gonna let me have an appointment with the doctor, I was like, yeah, this went away on its own.

[Katie Herzog]

Although that is my philosophy of healthcare. It will go away.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I mean, it might work. It probably.

[Katie Herzog]

It often does.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I don't think it's as sort of like I had imagined that you get to Canada and it's just like there's some kind of ramshackle thing. You know, they like do an IV using just like a sewing needle that's nearby or whatever.

[Katie Herzog]

But it's actually, it's like offer you made.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. But like a big hospital in downtown Toronto looks indistinguishable from a big hospital in New York City. Like, it doesn't, you know, And a lot of Just like stories I know from family in both places. It doesn't go that differently in both places. But here you don't also have all these bills. The taxes are not as high as you might think. It's not like I actually do on the whole prefer this system with one really important caveat. You can't get a dermatologist.

[Katie Herzog]

Oh really?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

You basically can't. Unless you sort of pay into some private way of doing it that I don't quite understand. So basically, like I went to my family doctor and I was like, I would like a dermatologist. And they said no.

[Katie Herzog]

Really? They can just do that?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. If you want to see an actual dermatologist, you have to apparently go at like one in the morning to some one this one place kind of on the outskirts of the city and get in a big line.

[Katie Herzog]

That's socialized medicine folks.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So that. That's why all Canadians have terrible skin.

[Katie Herzog]

You've heard it for me. All right, let's talk straight women. So I have to tell you this. When I was chatting with Helen Lewis this morning, she said, I love that Phoebe's two main entrants appear to be 80s Britcoms and Dick. It seemed like, put that on the book. So first off, Phoebe, give us the elevator pitch for this book. What's your. What argument are you making here?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So I'm arguing that straight women have been misunderstood. And I'm arguing that rather than responding to this decade plus of people saying that women should be over men, that women should not be with men, that straight women should just kind of transcend their heterosexuality. What should happen is there should be a feminist heterosexuality, that we should reframe what it means to be a straight woman in terms of female desire for men and think a little bit less about women as these desired objects. And I have. It's extremely not self help. So like, yes, Helen Lewis is correct. It is about old Britcoms. And one suggestion I have is to watch these and to look at these episodes where like a plain looking woman is lusting after not always a very attractive man. But yeah, so basically to just rethink straight womanhood.

[Katie Herzog]

And yeah, you're bringing horny back.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes, I've brought it back.

[Katie Herzog]

And would you say that this is a response to 2010s, 2020 eras Heteropessimism?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. So I actually am annoyed that I didn't come up with the term. Why don't you?

[Katie Herzog]

Why don't you? Sorry, why don't you? Yeah, why don't you define that Term.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. So I was actually writing about this before that term was coined. It's Assa or Assa Saracen's term writing as a different name. This when he was still lesbian identified. So it's like if you go read this original essay from the new inquiry from 2019, it's about being a lesbian, which, when you see the he, him. But I think we can all cut this together, that this is the same person anyway.

[Katie Herzog]

It's a pipeline.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes. So basically, straight women, even before me too, even before Trump, this, there was a certain sort of, like, thinking straight woman who saw herself as not like the other girls. And it started with stuff like women saying that they don't have a white wedding dress. They have like an off white wedding dress. They're not taking their husband's name. Their wedding ring has, you know, an emerald and not a diamond. It's all very, very different. Then it started to be this mix of women, either, you know, having the male partner, but saying they're not straight would be it some of the time. Other times, yeah. There would be the spicy straights. There was also sort of, unfortunately, I'm straight as kind of a way of practicing things.

[Katie Herzog]

I have a husband, but I hate him.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. It would either be, I have a husband, but I hate him, or I married the only good one, but men suck. But I just got lucky, which is very smug and unpleasant, but true in my personal life. But, yeah, so there were all these different kind of strains, and then they kind of fused with both old and new ideas about female sexuality that I don't think are quite accurate. Both this myth that any woman could either go off sex or go off sex with men. This just a. People seem to think that this was just who women were and it's not who I am. Right. So I. That's the whole thing with the title. Like, I don't obviously, literally think I'm the last straight woman.

[Katie Herzog]

No, Lindy west does exist.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

There's. It's me and Lindsay and. And we're all that's left.

[Katie Herzog]

And ever since only one of you

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

has a girlfriend, ever since he accepted alongside he. She can't really anyway. But, yeah, so basically this had frustrated me for a long time, but it did all really ramp up with me, too, and with this general sort of revulsion. Understandable, I think, at Trump. So this was like in 2016 into 2017 and around then. And that's where you get this heteropessimism, this thing where women just really, really either hate the fact that they're straight or you know, hate, hate men. All this sort of like the male tears, all of that.

[Katie Herzog]

I bought a, a woman I like at one. I. I hate to admit this, but I'm going to in like 2016, maybe 2015, I was seeing a woman who was bisexual and was bisexual, like partnered with a man, like lived with a man. But was one of these, like hate men, kill men, bisexual feminists in relationships with men. And I bought her a male tears mug. She of course immediately stopped talking to me when I wrote my detransition article. But I still cringe when I think about the fact that I like went to fucking Etsy and bought a male tears mug and had it shipped to somebody.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

While we're on this topic, can I ask you a question as the last lesbian?

[Katie Herzog]

Of course.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

How do you feel about. So some of the thing, one thing I talk about in the book is is these women who know themselves to be straight but for a variety of different reasons decide they're gonna give it a go with women. They want to think of themselves as either sexually adventurous or so not homophobic

[Katie Herzog]

that they will, you know, so open minded. Their pussy falls out.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, exactly. Whatever it is different things and. But then what I wonder about when I read these stories is the women they're involving in this who have earnest, you know, attraction to women. What is the lesbian perspective on this? Speaking for all lesbians, you know, I

[Katie Herzog]

think my perspective is probably really skewed by just sort of my position in the queer community, which is on the outs. But if I go back to my younger years, you know, for women, and I was one of them who were like seven on the Kinsey scale, very gay women who dated, who slept with who sort of converted straight women. There was a lot of sort of social cachet in that position. Does that make sense?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It does. And it also gets at like some negative feedback I've gotten from that. Yeah, I guess you are not the last lesbian because.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, there's a few others.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. Where it's like, I think there is this kind of existing investment in the idea that women are sexually fluid and that this is always kind of possible.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes. And you get like it, it's almost as though it speaks to your like particular charm or prowess that like I can be the woman who, who gets other. Who gets straight women. There was a term for it in the Ellen years, like a toaster or something like that. I don't remember the context at all.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, I mean, I think this exists for straight women a little bit in terms Of. I mean, there's even a Seinfeld about this.

[Katie Herzog]

Like, you can convert a gay man.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

I think, like, I'm so. I'm so hot that I turn this man gay or turn him straight.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Excuse me. Yeah, I've probably turned a few gay, but I don't know.

[Katie Herzog]

You know, at the same time, though, it's like, so that I remember that distinctly as being an element of my earlier life that existed. I was a part of that scene, for sure.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

But.

[Katie Herzog]

And it was also. And I should say there's also like, a gender dynamic there. Like, I think it's more like butchers who would. Or studs, which is like the black equivalent of a butch that, you know, sort of had this sense of, like, yes, I'm like, I'm so powerful. I can. I can turn straight women gay. Clap me on the back. But also, at the same time, a sort of aversion to and discussed by bisexuality, which is completely incoherent.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Interesting.

[Katie Herzog]

It makes no sense.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I mean, I've read Julie Bindle on these topics. So, like, I. Even though I don't entirely understand this perspective, I can kind of wrap my head around it.

[Katie Herzog]

I will never be surprised that there are inconsistencies and contradictions within queer ideology, if that's even what this can be called. People are very inconsistent.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, straight people can be inconsistent, too. I can. I'm well capable of it.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. Okay, so let's dive into the book. I love your chapter titles, which now, having written a book, much harder than to do than one might imagine to come up with good chapter titles. I especially enjoyed the chapter. The title of chapter one, Mrs. Slocum's pussy.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Thank you.

[Katie Herzog]

Let's start with chapter four, are straight women Real? So your central argument here is. I read it. Is that straight women want men the way that straight men want women or gay women want women. Gay men want men. Female desire is real. Straight female desire is real. It's robust. It's not just responsive to male desire or socially constructed. No argument there. For me, this seems correct. Observably correct. You also take issue with the idea that. This idea that has taken root in some circles and among some sexologists, that they're. That female sexual orientation basically doesn't exist. That female sexuality is inherently dynamic. It's fluid, much more so than male sexuality. Basically, the idea is that all women are a little bit bi. And this is something I've sort of changed my mind about over the years. Like, as a. As a younger lesbian, I was almost offended by the idea that all women are a little bisexual. It seemed like. Like they were posers. It seemed threatening to my own identity. It seemed as a hardcore dyke, but by my own experience and surveys tell me that women are in fact, much more likely to identify as bisexual than men, even if they don't actually act on it. And when I think about it, you know, like in a hypothetical scenario where I'm very gay, but if I were forced in this hypothetical scenario to have sex with either, like, an incredibly attractive man or a disgusting woman, I'm choosing the man. I'm gay, but I'm still choosing, I don't know, Fabio or, like, the twig from Aladdin over some woman who smells like cat piss. And, you know, I don't think that all women are literally bisexual. Again, Lindy west, very straight. You clearly very straight. But just anecdotally, I do know a lot of women who live. Live their lives thinking that they are straight. They spend their lives in relationships with men, and then in their 30s or 40s or 50s, they have this come to Jesus moment, and all of a sudden they're with women. There's some famous examples of that right now. People like Sophia Bush and Glennon Doyle, you don't see that as much with men. You also, I don't think, see this in places where homosexuality is still taboo or illegal. Like, I doubt that this happens as much in Saudi Arabia. It seems very much based on time and place. But I think in the book, you make a fairly compelling case that the data proving, and I'm using that in scare quotes, that all women are bisexual is just complete trash, particularly the work of Lisa Diamond. So explain that.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes. So this is something that I first wrote about, actually, for the Dish for Andrew Sullivan's then blog in 2014. So this is a beat I've been on for a while, basically because I was always hearing about how all women were sexually fluid. This is just what female sexuality is. And reckoning with the fact that I'm ending if I have the two people to sleep with, if I have Emily Ratajkowski and the man who smells of cat piss.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. Who are you going with?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It's gonna smell like cat.

[Katie Herzog]

Really? Really?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It's Mr. It's. It's Cat Person. It's Mr. Cat Person.

[Katie Herzog]

And really. So really, you would you. I'm like that. That's so shocking to me. Like, that you would genuinely like, like, male body at all costs, even if the male body is objectively disgusting?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, I think. I think in that case, I would Go with no. Like, I mean, that is another. Okay. But in this case, you can choose, right? And it would have to be male.

[Katie Herzog]

Interesting.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

So you're really straight, you're that straight?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes. And I don't think that that's everybody. I don't think that that's what every woman who would tick straight on a form is experiencing. So that is like just to sort of really zoom out. One thing that I'm trying to figure out in the Last Straight Woman is, am I like everybody else? Am I not like everybody else? And I'm not really invested in there being one answer to this. You know what I mean? Because I think they're bits and pieces of both. I don't want to claim that I'm a snowflake, but I also don't want to claim that everybody's exactly like me and that if I have some extreme, like, peculiarity that it's actually true of everybody, if they would only admit it about themselves, you know, I don't really want to do that. Like, yeah, I'm odd. I'm also not odd in some respects, whatever. But yeah, this is something where I just. I grew up in New York City. My high school, a large public magnet high school in Manhattan, had like a gay straight alliance. You know what I mean?

[Katie Herzog]

Like, no, even. Even in the, even in 1800 school, even in the 90s, this was.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I graduated in 2001. And yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I had openly gay or bi classmates as early as middle school. Like this. Wow.

[Katie Herzog]

Very different upbringings. Very different.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I mean, like my high school friends and I would go to Pride or just sort of gay stuff, because that's where we were. We were in lower Manhattan. Right. Like, this wasn't that we were trying to be the bachelorettes at the gay bar. We just like, we're going outside and doing things and that's, you know, who's there. Right. So. And obviously some were gay. Right. So it wasn't appropriation on all fronts, whatever. But the point is, I knew that this was not my experience, so I did have that bias. But I also thought, okay, maybe I'm just really strange, you know? And I looked into the sort of so called science on female sexual fluidity. And what I found was basically that you get, yes, a lot of stories from women who either are sort of wired, bisexual is how I'll put it themselves, who transcended whatever interest they had in men because they were also interested in women. Right. So it's not that they switched from straight to gay. It's that they've always been kind of interested in both. And they met a nice woman, they became a radical feminist, whatever it is, and now they're not with men, but they have that option because they're interested in women. Right.

[Katie Herzog]

It's so hard to tell though. So much of it is contextual. I mean, I, I honestly, like, as gay as I look, I did not actually realize that I was gay until I went to college and I met other gay people. Or actually the people I met were not actually gay. They were like going through a lug phase. But I met women in college who I was attracted to. And my conception before then, this is, you know, not pre Internet, but pre Internet everywhere. This was like not that long after, after the Ellen years, but also, but like I grew up in rural North Carolina, so obviously a very different setting than you. And it took it like, I think that, you know, this sort of slogan like visibility matters is kind of cringe. But also it really took meeting other, other women who I was like, oh, all, all lesbians don't look like Rosie o' Donnell to actually understand that about myself.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And I am happy for that for you because what a world that would be. But yeah, so this is actually another thing that I mention, I think briefly in the book, which is that because of this myth that women just aren't that sexual, you sometimes get women who, they don't want to have sex with men. They find the penises revolting. They find the people the penises are attracted to revolting. But that's just women, right?

[Katie Herzog]

That's the option.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

You know, that's how it is to be a woman. And then you, they get the late in life lesbianism when they realize that it's not that they just are, it's a realization. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's one reason why I think it's better for everybody if there's more of an understanding about women's desire for men. Because then the women who don't experience that desire might think about who it is they are actually interested in. Often that'll be women. Right. You know.

[Katie Herzog]

Right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And I think everybody else, it, yeah, everybody's happier, everybody's better off if that's understood. But yeah. So yeah, the Lisa diamond thing is that basically she studied, it was something like a hundred women taken from a gender studies class or something like this and decided kind of last minute that she was going to include in the sample 10 straight women, 10 women who call themselves straight. And she uses other sources as well. I don't want to like overly, you know, it's not all complete bunk, but it is a bit inherently biased because she's mainly studying the change in identity or relationships of women who are already not straight identified at the start of this. Right. So then what happens with these. I think it was 10 straight women is that she seems to really, she. Her argument is that female sexuality is inherently fluid. That's how she talks about it inherently. And how does she arrive there? Well, one place she does is that she says that these women, all of the ones in her study, had elements of fluidity. And. Well, how do you get there? Things like they could have intense relationships with their female friends. Okay, I have had intense relationships with female friends. It's called having friends. And I don't know that that's. And so I guess what I'm saying is at the end of the day, you can argue for the. Some kind of like one drop fluidity, wherein, you know, everything's a little fluid. But like, I think it matters. Like, I guess I think a more pragmatic definition of sexual orientation is have you ever felt that it would be a real problem for you if you couldn't be with somebody? If there's a particular person you just want desperately and it's upsetting to you that you can't have them, then your sexual orientation includes that category.

[Katie Herzog]

Having a crush.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, a crush. Exactly, A crush. And I think if you and a crush where you would actually want like sex with that person. Not like a romantic crush, not exactly. And I think the fact that somebody, you could say, like, okay, you can have a really expansive definition, you even get with bisexuality for women at this point, although it does seem to be reversing with sort of a new social conservatism that's kind of rising. But whatever, bracketing that you get women who, I think this is my theory, maybe I'm way off, will say that because they'd be okay if they woke up tomorrow feeling bisexual. They're basically already bisexual because they'd be okay with it. And that's a definition of bisexuality that I could include myself in. I would be okay with it if I woke up tomorrow and wanted to be with women. The fact that I'm 42 years old and this hasn't happened yet feels like a relevant piece of information. But if fluidity just means like not being a raving homophobe. But I just don't think that's fluidity. I think that's not the end. So like there used to be this whole Category of the ally. And that's just kind of, I mean that's its own whole rabbit hole of why that isn't really a thing anymore. I don't know if you want to go down that or not, but like it's considered kind of appropriative. Right. Like straight women in a gay bar, all of this. So like if you're a queer woman in a gay bar, that's okay. Even if what you mean is that you like wouldn't actually vomit if there were a vulva. Right. Somewhere.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. You know. Yeah. I think it's also complicated. Complicated by the fact that like if I think about my, my own history, like I absolutely had crushes on boys when I was little. Like Jonathan Taylor Thomas, honestly, still so cute. Especially as Simba in the Lion King. Like that is a fuckable cartoon lion. But these were, these were pre, pre puberty and so having a sort of chase crush on someone might give you the impression that your sexuality is going to manifest in one particular way. But it just during puberty. I mean for like some people, you have people like Andrew Sullivan who are like born, I don't know if Andrew's a dancer but like born with, with, with ballet slippers on his feet like that gay or like a, like Julie Bindle born with a fucking softball glove or whatever. People who are from birth very clearly gender non conforming. And I don't mean that in like the trans sense, but very clearly gay from birth. But I think for a lot of people it really, that realization doesn't come until much later in life. Particularly during sort of, you know, when the horn, when the balls drop.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, I think, I think it's interesting what you say about crushes because I definitely think that in addition to knowing from a young age that I liked guys, there would be times when there was like the boy in class you were supposed to say you had a crush on and I would say that I bit even if I didn't. You know what I mean? Like I also experienced that.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

Okay. So I. It sounds like the diamond study which is often held up as like proof that all women are bisexual. It sounds that it just falls apart among closer inspection. There's real issues with selection bias there. You cannot learn much about generalized sexuality when you're, when your subjects are from a gender studies class. It's just, it's. The sample is biased. There are also these famous studies where researchers hooked electrodes up to participants genitals and then measured physiological response and blood flow. And they found that straight Men were turned on by. They showed them sexual images or videos. Straight men were turned on by straight porn, gay men by gay porn, and women by basically anything, including like two monkeys humping in a coconut. And people have argued that this finding also demonstrates that female sexual orientation basically doesn't exist. What's your critique here?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So here my critique is actually a critique that the scholars themselves, or at least one of them has raised about it, which is that basically the female body prepares itself for the possibility effectively. Yes. You know, and I think this isn't obvious to people when they're talking about fluidity, because you're not imagining that a woman is going to be raped by another woman or by a monkey. So you say, oh, well, fluidity wouldn't really apply, but I think it is just like a physiological thing happens.

[Katie Herzog]

Right. It's a protective mechanism.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly.

[Katie Herzog]

Your body is basically lubricating itself so that you're not. So you're not as harmed when you're raping the woods, when someone jumps out, clubs you over the head.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

When the, when the lesbian, when the lesbian bonobos come for you, it'll be all right. Yeah, but I think what I'm saying is that you don't actually have to have a position on, and I don't, I should say, on whether sexual orientation is inborn or not. I don't know and I don't really care. You just have to believe people. This is my believe women moment. Just like if a woman tells you that she's only attracted to men, only attracted to women, believe this. And what I really don't like is this idea that women in particular need to interrogate their sexuality. You think you know what you like, but you have to interrogate it. And, or this whole thing of like, well, why do you like men? There is no why. Because, like, if I. There is no. I could not explain it. I could retrofit an explanation. I could make something up, but it wouldn't explain why a woman who is like tall, broad shouldered and has a bit of stubble, you know, isn't doing it for me. You know what I mean? Like, it wouldn't, it wouldn't arrive there. So I'm just saying, like, accept what people say is their orientation and don't. Yeah, that's basically it. Don't look for reasons why. In theory, they might change. And their thing is. And Lisa diamond actually what she's really guarding against. So she's gotten in trouble more recently with people who say it's transphobic to talk in this essentialist way. And she's also written more since 2008 that talks about, I think, male sexual fluidity a bit more, which is its own thing. And also, like, a further sort of side note here is that people have probably underestimated how fluid men can be and therefore assume that it's all this specific thing to do with women. Anyway, once you start saying that all women are a little bit bi, you're saying something that sounds very progressive. If you're saying it about straight women, if you're saying it about lesbians, you're doing conversion therapy.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes, it's, that's, it's interesting. Yeah, all this makes sense to me. I. I just. I do think that male and female sexuality is inherently different in some ways, both as a result of social pressures and straight up biology, just hormones. I mean, women are obviously more vulnerable than men when it comes to physical violence. And you talk to any trans man on testosterone and he will tell you that taking tea does make you horny. It makes you. It's harder to cry. It makes you do riskier things. And gay male hookup culture is obviously very different than any hookup culture that requires a female participant, whether that's lesbian or straight. Like, women do not go to bath houses and fuck strangers. They don't blow their Uber drivers. Jesse Knight, the other day we were talking about gay bars playing porn on tv. That does not happen in women's spaces. There's no lesbian grinder. You write about this in the book. You know, of course, I'm not saying that women aren't horny. They obviously are. Like, the popularity of Minotaur Milking farm and romance novels and literary smut shows that women are obviously horny, especially on booktok.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

That's what's shown. All bars in Canada are showing this mentor, Mel Gain. Yeah, absolutely.

[Katie Herzog]

But I do think that, on average, women are less sexual, less horny than men. And I don't think that's just sexism or socialization. I think it's biology, even, dare I say it, evolutionary biology. Although I don't want to sound like Brett Weinstein here. Where do you land on that?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So, one more thing I just wanted to say about fluidity. If I could just pop that in, which is just that. I think that a further bias is that you get a lot of people who just for happenstance, life reasons, have met a lot of late in life lesbians, and therefore assume that all women have that potential. It's real, it's out there. It's just not all women. As to the point about Men and women being different. So I once, tongue in Cheek, did a blog post called Men and Women are exactly the Same. That is not actually my position. And I think that's pretty clear from the book and from other things I've written. Basically, I think what happened is there was this period of time that I talk about, like sort of the 90s, early 2000s of gender neutral sex positivity, where there was this idea that basically all that mattered was consenting adults, where if you said anything negative about the hookup culture, that meant that you were a conservative. And yes, where it was considered very reactionary, very. It wouldn't have been called this then, but problematic, whatever. To say that there are any differences between men and women, that was ridiculous. People picked up on this. A lot of people picked up on this for a lot of different reasons. So you had the whole Me too era right. Of that. At its most extreme would be things like claiming that women are afraid to step outside because of all the men who. Whatever, they're.

[Katie Herzog]

Every time I step outside, I'm constantly being sexually harassed. I'm so hot.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. So, yeah. So basically there was this backlash to that very sort of multifaceted backlash from a lot of different political positions. What I find strangest about some of these positions is that like you get people saying, as if they're really radical, like, actually men and women are somewhat different.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And it's like, yeah, everybody's been saying that since at least 2017, non stop. Everybody. Of all politics.

[Katie Herzog]

Women are from Mars, men are from Venus.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. So then you get like.

[Katie Herzog]

Or men from Mars, women are from Venus.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. One of those. But like the substack sort of gender slop type content, all this, like.

[Katie Herzog]

But it is in response to an actual feminist position.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So it was. It's all these things. Backlash to backlash to backlash kind of things.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

My position is, yes. That men and women are different and that there's a certain type of sort of sordid sexuality that is less found among women. And that the man who basically, like sees, you know, a piece of ripe fruit and, you know, wants to like, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you know, fine. There are certain things. I mean, yes, this is something that I talk about in the book. Like certain specific situations men get themselves into that women just don't.

[Katie Herzog]

There's only so many aylas. And it's.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. And where I think people overestimate the differences or overstate the differences is first of all, this. I think there's a myth that women, because we don't experience These things cannot understand this. So like, like literally cannot wrap our heads around things that men think or get up to. You said you get this sometimes with like certain gay men will say like that women just have no idea. As if the body doesn't have like only so many holes, you know what I mean? Like as if women couldn't imagine. Like we can imagine. We're just not, we don't care, you know, we're just not as moved by it.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

But also just the really important thing that I think is the same in men and women is just that I think we all divide the world into would or wouldn't to some degree, some malleability.

[Katie Herzog]

It's very binary, one or zero, effectively.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And I think that like, I think people imagine that women are kind of a maybe about everybody. And I just don't think that that's true. And I think that women try to persuade themselves it's true. I think I'm much like with the opinion writing that I do. Like I just don't really care so much what people think. I've just never had this gene that I guess many other straight women seem to have a feeling like we have to sort of force ourselves to like somebody. We don't. I've. For the same reason that I've never felt that I needed to convince myself that I liked women just to be interesting or open minded. I've never felt that I needed to like, you know, be involved with a man I didn't find attractive in that way. And so this is why I actually do also have a chapter where I ask if straight women are gay men. Which spoiler, we're not. But because I do wonder like I am maybe a little bit more like a stereotypical gay man in certain respects to do with this. But like, but I do think that this is just people also. Like I think we are all dividing the world into would or wouldn't and we should feel free to be making, to be drawing these boundaries, you know, and. Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

Do you think that has this changed at all as you've aged?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Has it changed? For me? No, I think I still, I think the world has the woods and the woodens. It's the. The woods are few and far between. And I don't. By wood I don't mean like need to. Like I'm monogamously married. I'm not, you know, cavorting around whatever. But like I think there is. I still, but I'm still a person. I'm, you know, the whole married but not dead continues to Be a thing. And this is something that I've really appreciated, actually, that your former colleague Dan Savage talks about. Like, I'm not with him on the whole. Like, everybody would be happier. Polyamorous. I know he doesn't quite say this, but I have.

[Katie Herzog]

I have, Dan, do not spread that message to my household.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

But not that he says quite that, but I'm saying. But I do think he's right, though, that, like, people, particularly straight people, need to be just kind of, like, honest about the fact that you are still a person in the world and that. Yeah. And I think I still, you know, I know who on the bus is. Falls where. You know what I mean?

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. Okay. So the book comes out in mid May. Let's get to the drama.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Okay.

[Katie Herzog]

And a couple weeks later, the New York Times very rudely publishes a call, a column by Madeline Taylor called There's Nothing Wrong with Wanting Men. No mention of your book. Very rude. And something somewhat similar happened to me, by the way. So when my book was coming out, I pitched an opinion column to the Times. It got pretty far, but was ultimately rejected. And then right afterwards, a. A regular columnist published a column very similar to the one that I had pitched, but that one was pegged to Trump, which was smart. So the next time I pitch them, I'm going to get, you know, get a few jabs in at that guy. Maybe that'll work. But it's a. It's a terrible, maddening feeling. And this happened. This happened to you with someone? Yeah, yeah. Explain, explain.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, I want to first ask you. You're not me, so I'm me. I will only have the experience of being me and encountering this. What did you make of it?

[Katie Herzog]

Oh, yeah. When I saw the headline, like. Like Kat posted, I think, a screenshot of the headline. And what. So the first thing I saw was the headline. I thought that you had written it.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Okay, so.

[Katie Herzog]

And I was. And honestly, I was jealous that you had gotten a New York Times column for your launch when I didn't.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, you can rest assured. So I should say, like, the backstory to this is, is I do not. I'm very offline, very touching of grass on weekends because I have young children. And I just. Even if I want to be following the drama, and I want to be following the drama, I'm, you know, or just reading the newspaper. Like that happens sometimes. Monday morning or whatever.

[Katie Herzog]

And you're in Canada.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I'm in Canada. You know, the horse and buggy is bringing the newspaper, and that happens. Whatever. But a Journalist friend emailed and with a heading that was like. The subject heading was something like, you should have at least gotten a mention.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And I saw this on Sunday morning and didn't really have time. It was like, I want to say, like, maybe like that night or something that I actually could properly read it because then I was like at the. My kids swim class, which doesn't actually really have Internet. So, you know, I was fortunately, or not thinking about it all day, but kind of like unable to really delve into it immediately. But I skimmed it. I saw that I was not mentioned. My book had come out May 19, this was May 31, and I knew various things, or suspected various things sort of behind the scenes that I couldn't really talk about, or at least not yet. And just kind of had to sit on this and think, well, that's weird. You know what I mean? All the while hearing one after the next, often very much unprompted from people privately and publicly. So thank you, Matthew Iglesias, for posting to this effect. Thank you, Jonathan Chait, for posting to this effect. Thank you on a more minor scale to the people who privately messaged me to this effect, some of whom are of similar stature, regardless. And also like a lot of people who are not even like, in media at all, whatever, basically all variants of. I saw that, thought it would be by you or a review of your book, and then it doesn't even mention you. That's weird.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Obviously there's a certain bias here of like, anybody who's contacting me knows I exist. You know what I mean? So when I posted this to Twitter, most people were like, oh, that's horrible. And also, like, that happens all the time at the New York Times, you know, as you certainly know. But I got a couple of things where people were like. It was like, I think two people, whatever, who pointed out, and I don't know who they are, could be a bot, whatever, who were like, look how low you're ranked on Amazon. Look how few Amazon reviews you have. Why would you think that this writer or the New York Times would even know you exist, would even know this book exists?

[Katie Herzog]

You're Canadian, Phoebe.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly, exactly. That I'm some obscure, you know, person in Canada making some kind of zine, you know, And I'm like, diluted. And I imagine that people know that this is a thing. Right? And I had just had a book launch and it was like, well attended, you know, but it was in Canada, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, okay, but the thing is that what I knew was that Magdalene Taylor had of her. I didn't even know this yet. I later found out from my publisher, and I'm allowed to say it, that she had asked for a galley in January. Okay, so we're in May. This was in January.

[Katie Herzog]

And she had said. She said on Twitter that she didn't. Hadn't read your book.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

What she said on Twitter was very. Leaving possibilities open. She basically said, I haven't read it. And that's what she maintains. She maintains that she hasn't read it.

[Katie Herzog]

Why?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I. I don't know if that's true or not, because. And we'll get to. So basically, fine. She had the book. Definitely says she hasn't read it. Definitely fine. These are things we can point to. The next issue is that basically like, the Times opinion section also had the book. Like.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Whether it was the same editors or not, I don't know. It's complicated. There is stuff that I can't piece together. Right. This was. I never personally was interacting with them, so I can't say that I pitched something because this was all, like, through the publicity team. You know what I mean? So I have no idea whether this is like sitting in their pile, going out to the recycling or whether they were seriously considering it. I can't know that. You know what I mean? But basically what I can know and what's relevant, I think, to the story is just basically that this theory that the reason that my book wasn't mentioned is that it's just nobody knew about it and it was so obscure is not. It can't be that. So what's happened is I've just felt in this weird state of, like, confusion, frankly, about what to make of this, because so then. And this is all before I even get to what's in the article, because that kind of complicates things. I don't know whether I was ripped off or not. My sense of the timing is that this. That this was another one of these things where the Times basically learned that something's in the air, decided to cover it in a way that makes them seem like they own the topic and sort of not mention other things for that purpose.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, there's this. There's the complicating factor, I think here, and this is something I'm continually, continually dealing with, is that when you've been problematized to once again, go back to Megan Dom's term, which describes me for sure, I think you. To a slightly lesser extent, because you

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

have, well, Maybe not. And I'll get to why. But. Yeah, go on.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, there's this qu. You never know if you're being ignored or snubbed and if it's because of your public reputation or if it's completely unrelated. But there's this question, like, why am I. Like, why am I not getting published? Why am I not being included? Is it because of the bullshit? And you just never know the answer to that. And it could always be completely normal. Like, there are. There are plenty of reasons to not mention your book. Like, it just didn't fit into the argument. She's been on this beat for a while, whatever. But you just never know if it's like a result of all of this dumb Internet bullshit or if it's like a completely. A completely pedestrian explanation. Like, I didn't open the book, it didn't seem relevant, whatever.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes. So a few different things here. First of all, one final thing about the did or didn't open the book? In the book, in one place, I mention something that Magellan Taylor wrote for the cut that I think she got wrong. Like a sort of detail shit.

[Katie Herzog]

I wouldn't cite you either.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. But that's what I thought. I thought if I read a book and it said something that I got wrong, would I find a way to not mention that book in my Big Splash article? I would do that, yes. So that I think is relevant. And it doesn't mean that she read the book. It means that she. If she has a digital copy that she could have scanned for it. You know what I mean? Like, there are any number of ways somebody could have told her whatever. I think that's very possible.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And probably knowing how human beings are the likeliest explanation. Right. So, okay, regardless. But the whole problematized thing, my day job is that I'm the opinion editor at the Canadian Jewish News.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes. Inherently a problematized position to have at this moment.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yes. But more to the point, one of the things that I cover, one of my beats there is really like this whole thing of literary and artistic, but mainly literary cancellations, things where a writer is either pro Israel, perceived of as being pro Israel, insufficiently anti Israel, whatever.

[Katie Herzog]

And

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

you know, and they're not getting whatever it is they want to get, whether it's a book deal, publicity, whatever. Now this is a really, really tricky thing to cover because everybody wants more press than they're getting. Everybody wants to write a book most of the time. Like, it's not anti Semitism most of the time, because it couldn't Be because most things are not, you know.

[Katie Herzog]

Right. And no and no. Like Leigh Stein has written about this book reviews barely exist anymore. Nobody is getting. Nobody's like PR people. I'm sorry. PR are people. They're all dog shit. It's not, not through, I think any fault of like lack of effort. It just doesn't work.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It's just the whole industry is a mess. Like my first book, I wouldn't say objectively that it went like great and there were a lot of things that didn't go great about it. But like I appeared on so many things and like did so many things that just the things don't exist anymore. You know what I mean? Like the things that reviewed me don't. They're not around. Like, so I don't even know how. Like there's like the remaining thing. So that's another reason that this New York Times thing felt so high stakes because there's just so little left. Right. So I did get a positive review in the Wall Street Journal. There are some other things out there that exist. So. But like whatever. It puts a lot more pressure on the one.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, but.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, so what I was going to say though is it only occurred to me, even though this is literally my beat as the cjn, it could be that I'm perceived of despite not being on a Middle east beat, despite having like pretty like common for a Democrat at least until recently. I think there should be two states. I think there should be peace. I don't know how to bring about Mid east peace. Not to shock anybody. You know, like given that, you know, 80s Britcoms and Dick doesn't leave much time for figuring out where borders should go in places that don't even live. So. Yeah, but I think that in this climate, yeah, I guess it's possible I could claim that it's an anti Semitic conspiracy. I don't actually think it is. I think it probably is the petty explanation. I think it's the probability. You know, that would be my hunch. Yeah, for that. But it's fine. Look, there are. I think that also like I tried at least for my book to be funny. At least some people claim they find it to be. I don't think that she has this. She's not going for that. We're going for very different things. So I think it's actually we can both exist in this world.

[Katie Herzog]

Well, I feel for you. It's annoying. There's a, a National Geographic article about now Trekzone came out right after my book and people kept Sending it to me. Like I saw this and thought of you and I'm like, you know, you don't understand. This does not make me feel good.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Oh, God, that's awesome.

[Katie Herzog]

I'm not happy about this.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I mean, I can't ever tell, like when people say, oh, it's good that the topic's in the air. It's like, it's good if you figure out what to do with it. You know, if you have some kind of thin and. Yeah, exactly.

[Katie Herzog]

Good for who? Okay, Phoebe, let's talk about the Helens. So we're gonna continue this theme of sex and gender and discuss two dueling articles. The first is by Helen Andrews. This came out last October. This inspired much discussion on the Internet. The second is something. Not really, but something of a response to that piece. That one's by Helen Lewis. That one came out more recently, just last month. I guess it's this month, actually. This month by print time, last month by online publication time. But let's start with the first Helen piece. This is called the Great Feminization was published in compact. And Helen Andrews is arguing this based on an argument I believe a man made. First, she says that modern American culture has become sissified and it's because women now dominate so much of white collar professions that we get things like, for instance, cancel culture. If not for women, men would work out their disagreements the old fashioned way with fists of cuffs and duels at high noon. And Helen Andrews sees this trend as an existential threat. Threat. One that's not organic but has been artificially imposed on the public through anti discrimination law and HR departments. So let's start there. Phoebe, what did you think of this piece?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I mean, I get the sort of, like, there's an impressionistic sense in which it feels true, but I don't think it actually holds up. So the idea that people who do an Internet pylon are similar in spirit to middle school girls, excluding one from their clique. I get it. I see why it feels similar. I think when you look at the participants in the woke, it's not particular, it's not as gendered as all that. I think you kind of get people of different persuasions there.

[Katie Herzog]

But do you think, okay, so I think she doesn't make this distinction, but when I read the piece, I'm making a distinction between female and feminine.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

And I do think, like the men who are involved in this are kind of femme like. And you know, I'm talking about men basically in our milieu, men with email jobs, men who spend all time. And like gamers would fit into that. You know, people who spend all of their time online rather than out in the fields or hewing logs or whatever. It's kind of femme, even if it's not female.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Sure. I mean, but I think you end up like, you can call it whatever if it isn't actually gendered. I mean like a woman whose job is like a caregiver for elderly people is probably not participating in the cancel culture discourse online either. You know what I mean? Like, it depends. Like a lot of different jobs are. Like there are the types of jobs that lend themselves to this and the ones that don't and. Right.

[Katie Herzog]

It's very, it's very classed.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

Like she talks about how women are taking over the legal discipline. This in particular to her seems like an existential threat. She completely ignores the fact that in America and most of the world, many jobs are still very segregated by gender work. Like, like trades jobs are very gendered, maybe less so there are still, there are, you know, more female firefighters than there probably were 30 years. But if you want a, an environment without women, just go get on a roofing crew. Like that still exists. You know, women are not stopping you from, from joining a logging crew. There are other factors at play here that are, that are, that are diminishing those jobs.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I mean there were a few things basically. One is that I think the supposed takeover by women of, you know, all these different spheres. What you actually look at is that there are a lot of women in the low rungs of whichever sphere. But the men, it's still men at the top. Right. So yeah, that's one piece.

[Katie Herzog]

And yeah, I mean if you look at a field like tech, like there are obviously more women in tech now. They're mostly in, they're mostly in project management positions. Like there aren't that many women in engineering roles, but there are a lot of women in sort of the people centered. The people centered discipline. The word cells rather than the shape rotator jobs. And those do have those positions are the sort referee kind of jobs.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I mean I think there's also though and I want to talk about. Because I think hierarchy is really important for this in a way where gender, like I think gender relates to it and in a kind of more complicated way. And the way I'll be able to unpack this as I found that I blogged about it at the time, which helps me organize my thoughts. Yeah. Which is that basically. So like to give an example, I did a PhD in French a typical seminar would be, I'm in a room with a bunch of women. We're all in our 20s, maybe a couple are in their 30s, but mostly in their 20s, and the professors are men in their 50s or thereabouts. Right. That would be kind of the dynamic. I think there are two things she kind of misses. One is the 2008 recession and just what things have been in media, in academia, in publishing, and anything that is considered even adjacent to these, where there are all these people fighting for scraps. Right?

[Katie Herzog]

Yes.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I think that the fighting for scraps is why there's this whole where cancel culture came from. Right, right.

[Katie Herzog]

We're crabs in a bucket.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. So I think, yeah, this relates probably in some convoluted way to the thing where a field is kind of valued less monetarily when there are more women in it. Right. So I think it relates.

[Katie Herzog]

Right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

But I don't think that it's as simple as women. Women be catty.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. I found parts of her argument convincing. It is undoubtedly true that even surprising fields have become more sissified. Like, look at. I mean, look at. Look at professional sports. Like, you have hockey teams and football players, like, wearing, like, gay pride shits. I don't think that's coming from straight men. I think that's coming from, like, the women in marketing and like, the gay men.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It's woke capitalism.

[Katie Herzog]

It's woke capitalism. Yes. But one of my objections to the. To the piece is that she doesn't ever contend with the upsides of having a feminized culture. And I'm not just talking about upsides for women, women who don't want to be housewives in particular. But there are all sorts of things that have improved as the culture has pussified. So for one, violence, like homicide rates or something like half of what they were in 1990, although less so. And, you know, more traditional machismo cultures, like, I think M13 could use a little feminizing influence. Sexual assault is more rare, although the definition has crept. We. We have all sorts of laws that protect. Protect people against labor exploitation. You know, dog fighting is illegal. You don't see peeping Toms as much anymore. Domestic violence is illegal. Family planning exists. Dads are more present. They have better relationships with their kids. And she doesn't contend with what the world today would look like if it reverted back to 1950s style patriarchy. And it's not as though the feminization of institutions happened in a vacuum. It happened as a response to the way the world actually was and look, I've got plenty of gripes with, with some aspects of feminism, particularly blank slate feminism. I do think men and women are inherently different. I do think men and women in general resolve conflicts differently. Although Jesse accepted like he's not going to do well in a cage match. But I, I think, and I think something is lost when people have to fear the wrath of the HR department for benign offenses. But it's not like we don't have models of what the world looks like without women participating in civic like we do. It's called Afghanistan. And not only do I not want to live there as a woman, I wouldn't want to live there as a man either.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I'm thinking again, just about these sort of like all things equal differences versus individuals. Right. Because what's sort of ironic in a lot of these things, and this is something that comes up in the other Helen's article, is that the women making these types of arguments are sort of by definition women with jobs and women.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Who argue in a type of way that is not classically feminine. Right.

[Katie Herzog]

No, totally.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I think totally. You and I right here.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

You know, I may be like off the Kinsey charts, whatever, for sexual orientation, but in terms of gender conformity, I

[Katie Herzog]

have a literal housewife. A lot of the men in sort of the masculinist manosphere, they wish they could have the trad wife that I actually have.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

From what I understand from listening to your podcast, that is correct. And it's amazing. They want to make out of AI and it doesn't work.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, I have, I have. I completely understand. And especially having a housewife without having children is like actually really perfect. Although she does all the man jobs too. Not just the woman jobs, but also the man jobs.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

I mean, it seems obvious to me that the argument that Helen Andrews is making, you know, that this is an existential threat and it must be stopped, that this would be bad for women like us and it would be bad for women like Helen Andrews. Do you think that this sort of anti feminism on the march, do you think that this is on the march both and, you know, in federal government and in the culture? Do you think that this is a real threat or do you think this is just like online chirping?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I think it's hard to know when a pendulum is swinging how far it will swing, you know what I mean? And I feel like I'm bad at predicting that, but it certainly is swinging. And that gets to the other thing that I think was wrong in Helen Andrews's argument, which is that it. And I think similarly, the Jacob Savage piece that Compact published not that long after about.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, they're really on a. They're on a beat.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Yeah. About the straight white millennial men being screwed over. Both of these articles have this way where they take place in some alternate universe where history stopped in, like, September 2024.

[Katie Herzog]

Right. Where Trump doesn't exist.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Well, where he exists, but not his. Not his second term and.

[Katie Herzog]

Right, right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I think the people who are saying that there's an existential threat from WOKE and they pretend and, like, they just haven't, you know, logged on or opened a newspaper in, like, three years. Well, yeah, it felt like that maybe at another time.

[Katie Herzog]

Right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And I could understand, again, like, if it's a book, because I know about, like, the nonfiction, whatever the lag, but if it's a magazine article, if it's something that's going online, like, you have to know what's been going on in the last few months. You know what I mean? And if it, like, what are the stakes? This is something that one of my professors, One of the 40ish, 50ish men in my grad school, was always asking whenever somebody wanted to write a paper. He'd be like, okay, but what are the stakes? And I think it's a really good question. And, like, I read this and I think, okay, well, like, we're talking about what the stakes were at some other time, but in the time we actually live in.

[Katie Herzog]

Right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

No. And I do think this shift is absolutely underway. For what it's worth, I kind of put that Magdalene Taylor article as part of this shift a little bit. I may expand more on this later elsewhere. But the point is basically, like, yes, things went. They go too far in one direction, then they go too far in the other direction.

[Katie Herzog]

Right. I mean, this seems so inevitable to me. The same way that I see a lot of, like, you open up. You open up X today, and X is not. It's. It is representative of a part of real life. It is not entirely real life. This is. It's important to make that clear. I realize that there is much life beyond the Internet, but you open it up and it's, you know, it's the funhouse mirror image of what Twitter was or what Tumblr was. It is really racist. It's really sexist. It's a real. I think it's a. Like, at least my algorithm. And maybe this is because of what I'm interacting with, but I just.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

It's those things. But it's also extremely dumb.

[Katie Herzog]

It's extremely dumb. It's so dumb. And this and this. To me it seems like this is part of the backlash to sort of ban men or kill men or male tiers feminism of the last 10 years. The same way that I see this, a lot of the overt racism as a backlash to not BLM as much specifically, but that is part of it. But this idea that sort of racism is everywhere anti wokeness is a response to wokeness. And I think it is becoming. Is just as vile as what the backlash as what it is in backlash too. And that to me is very, is very troubling. So let's get to Helen's piece, Helen Lewis's piece. So she published this, her article. I asked her. This was not a direct rebuttal to Helen Andrews's piece. But, but they're both named Helen. So we're going to say it is

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

and she mentions it.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah, yeah. So Helen Lewis's piece is called the Men who Want Women to Be Quiet. A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right. And she's arguing that masculinism, which is, it's separate from sexism, in that it's more affirmative, I'd say, like it's. It's not a guy telling you to smile on the street. It's about explicitly restoring male dominance and politics, business, family life. Some of the guys she, she profiles, they want women barefoot and pregnant. They don't want women to be able to vote. They don't want them working. And if I'm reading this correctly, Helen Lewis is arguing that this ideology has jumped from fringe online influencers, people like Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, Nick Fuentes, to the mainstream. And now this is the primary glue holding together the American right. So it's basically a profile of chuds who unfortunately do seem to have some influence. And like there's this great scene in the piece where she's interviewing this dude who goes by the handle Raw Ignationalist. He's a big salmonella guy. He's lying in bed. They're like zooming. He's lying in bed with his jammies on. And then after Helen's piece came out, he wrote a rebuttal to included this, this line. She is. I'm meaning. Helen even complimented my striped dressing gown. It was early and I was still in bed, although she described it as a set of pajamas in the final piece. If you've been following my work you'll know I'm not a fan of pajamas or any item of clothing that risks overheating the testes, compromising human production and fertility.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

This is making me think of something specific I had that was kind of like a side note I wanted to bring up about Helen's article, which is just how extremely homoerotic, homo social. How extremely men going their own way in the euphemistic sense. A lot of this is without women in the. But, like, in the cause of machismo. Like, they're going to be so, so sexist that it's gay to marry. The whole, like, it's gay to have a girlfriend type of thing.

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. It's like, there's this idea that let women dress for other women, not for men. The corollary is like, men lift for other men, not for women. These dudes are faggoty.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

They are. Are sort of the inverse of the man who says he's a male feminist to get women.

[Katie Herzog]

Yes, yes, yes. But. So what do you think of Helen's argument that the uniting force of the American right is. Is masculinism?

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

So I think her article's really funny. Like, I laughed a lot while reading it, and I really enjoyed that because that's always unexpected with this type of topic, although not unexpected at all from that byline. Yeah, I guess I think there's something to it in terms of their. Like this. All this derision that you get these days about email jobs. Right. What does this even mean? What is an email job like? A lot of this, I think, is some kind of way of saying that there is, like, an email.

[Katie Herzog]

Sorry to interrupt you. An email job is like what our ancestors dreamed of.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly.

[Katie Herzog]

This is the pinnacle of American achievement, is that you can have soft fingertips.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

Exactly. So this idea that, like, you don't have purpose if you're sending emails during the day, I mean, I. I don't really buy that. However, women are half the population, and unless there's a really, really huge change, I don't think that you can really win in a democracy by screwing over women. Conversely, there are not very many Jews. People have really strong opinions about Jews that can be galvanized in a way that does not lose, that can unite people with otherwise very different politics. If I were going to pick something to spiral about that wasn't my own petty professional, you know, rivalries, which is what I'm actually ever always going to, you know, I'll always choose that first, of course.

[Katie Herzog]

Sure.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

But if I was going to pick something sort of in the world. I think that that's a bigger threat just because there are very few Jews. People have a lot of notions of who Jews are and what Jews are like, people who have never seen a Jew before, you know, and you can go anywhere with that because they're just like. Even if Jews are overrepresented in whichever upper rungs of whichever industries, at the end of the day, as is proven time again in history, Jews are not actually, like, in charge of everything. It's like they're just. It's like we're a small minority, really small minority. As small and at this point, not at all united minority with, like, a lot of different views. And when I see this kind of like far right, far left, horseshoe thing, that kind of ex. That has this way of. It's not just the extremes. And you guys have, like, done podcasts about this. Like, this isn't, you know, gonna be new to your listeners, but like, that to me seems like more where this kind of unexpected, uniting is happening. Whereas you just. At the end of the day, if you need women's votes, this can only go so far. So, like, yes, you are going to get women who are. Who believe that life begins at conception. That some women think this. Right. That's not, you know, whatever that that is true that there are women who think this. Okay. There are women who are really fed up with feeling just like sort of too much to do at home, too much to do at work and, you know, like the audience for Ballerina Farm. Right. Yeah. I don't really get it. I mean, I'm kept plenty busy with two children. I do not, like, fantasize about having, like, 20 more. Yeah, no, but there is an audience for this. This kind of escapist, pastoral tribe thing to a point. But I think you're not really going to get the. Who are the women voting to get rid of women voting, you know what I mean? So you would have to, like, who's enacting this? Yeah, you're only going to get a few men who want this. I don't think that it can reach such extremes, you know?

[Katie Herzog]

Yeah. So, okay, so Helen says misogyny is the uniting force. You say anti Semitism. I think you're both wrong. I think the uniting force on the right, in some degree, to some degree on the left as well, but most obviously now on the right, just because the right is in. Is who is in power. Federal power, for sure. Cultural power, increasingly so is owning your political enemies. And I think that this continual politics at this point is just a pendulum swinging back and forth. And it's this continual game of one upmanship where the central goal is to hurt your perceived enemies, even if it hurts you too. So I think that's why Trump still has so much support among his base. Yes, gas is $5 a gallon. 650 where I live. Yes, we're at war in the Middle east. Once.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I don't have a. I don't have a car. So this, these figures, it's. Yes, I think I have vague recollections from when I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Katie Herzog]

And, but like, yeah, so we're all being fucked. But hey, there's no trunes in combat. We win. You know, rank sexism and anti Semitism is an offshoot of that. Libs are feminized, therefore feminization is bad. Sexism is based, anti Semitism is based. But my, my unifying theory of American politics, such as there is one, is that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. I came up with that. And so this is just the pendulum swinging back and forth from ban men feminism or Killman feminism into. Into something really ugly. And, and this is part of my frustration with online libs from the. Which I've been complaining about for over 10 years at this point is just like, you cannot, you do not exist in a vacuum. And the things that you say online and in person do have a reaction to them. You can literally annoy people. This is, you know, something Marc Maron said in his standup special. You can annoy people into becoming a fascist. You literally can that. And, and I think that, you know, for, for, for like Twitter era libs, this seemed like such an impossibility. You know, do you know anything about human nature works? Negative polarization is such a force in American politics.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

I'm so glad you bring this up. We are Harper's letter signatories, obviously, what will go, you know, on our gravestones or whatever. But this was the whole fucking point of that. You know, it wasn't that actually like it gets misinterpreted all the time as that actually left excesses or left illiberalism is worse than the right wing version. Right? In the text of it itself, it is about the right wing version is dangerous. That is why we need to crack down on the left wing version. That's the whole point. It continues to be the point. And there is a quote that I want to read just from Helen Lewis's piece that I think really gets at this. Well, she writes the reductive view of the world. Women Things Bad, Men Things Good is the mirror image of the worst excesses of 2010's Tumblr feminism. When introverted teenage girls posted hashtags like Kill all men and drank from mugs that read male Male tears. Yeah, yeah, I read that and I was like, yes, this is it. I may have texted to. But yeah, I mean, I think that that's absolutely it. That aside from it being like annoying to the people on the same side, roughly, it just absolutely. It gives. And this is what I tried to argue in my first book. And yet we still got Trump. Whatever. I tried, sorry, it didn't work. But like, just. Even if there isn't a huge win for the most extreme of progressivism, once that place on the spectrum declares victory, once it hangs that mission accomplished flag, it gets a backlash as if it had won. Right?

[Katie Herzog]

Right.

[Phoebe Malt Bovey]

And then it just everything gets worse. Absolutely.

[Katie Herzog]

Okay, Phoebe, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on to speak with me and the book is very enjoyable. We will put a link to purchase it in the show. Notes please everyone go ahead and do that. We are going to say goodbye to our free listeners now. You are going to stay on and answer some some questions. So free listeners, if you want to listen to the whole thing, join us blocks and reported.org this has been blocked and reported. We are produced as always with Help from Jessica the 80s Baby Phoebe, thanks for coming on the show and everyone else, thanks for listening. Bye bye.