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Treena Orchard, "Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps" (Aevo, U Toronto Press, 2024)
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Marshall Po
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- [02:36]
Holly Gattery
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I am your host, Holly Gattery and I am joined today by Trina Orchard to talk about her book, Sticky Sexy Sad, Swipe Culture and the Darker side of Dating Apps. I am really looking forward to this conversation because I feel like I was denied so much of this because I met somebody in the most ridiculously cliche way possible at the gym. So I was really interested in reading this and figuring out what I was missing. And when I was on the book, I'm like, oh, I didn't really miss anything. But I'm glad that I could, like experience it through Trina. Trina, welcome to the show.
- [03:19]
Trina Orchard
It's great to be here.
- [03:21]
Holly Gattery
Yeah. So a little bit about Trina for people listening. Trina Orchard is an anthropologist and associate professor in the School of Health Studies at Western University University. She researches and engages in activist debates about sexuality, gender and health among diverse cultural and digital communities. Deeply committed to public scholarship, she regularly writes for and is featured in leading online publications including Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, and the Conversations. So, a little bit about this book. Lifelong Ludwig Traina Orchard was a newly sober woman coming off a much needed break from relationships, reluctantly taking the digital plunge by downloading a dating app. Instead of the fun, easy experiences advertised on swiping platforms, she discovered endless upkeep, ghosting fleeting moments of sexual connection and a steady flow of misogyny. In Sticky Sexy Sad, Trina uses her skills as both an anthropologist who studies sexuality and a sex positive feminist to explore what it feels like to want love, while also resisting the addictive pull of platforms designed to make us swipe dependent. My first question for you, Trina, and it's the one that, as someone who has written memoir and has written nonfiction, that I need to ask is what? You're an anthropologist maybe answering my own question. But what, what were you thinking writing this? Because it is so beautiful and vulnerable and I felt the first thing I thought when I was reading it was she must know that she's opening herself up to a lot of criticism for this and maybe you haven't. Maybe it's just me being a mirror for this book and seeing parts of myself or my experiences in it. But why did you feel it was important to write this book? And it's a two part question which I know is a cardinal sin of interviewing, but I'm doing it. And what made you write it anyway? If you even perceived it as something that was particularly, I'm putting this in quotes, Brave to do.
- [05:33]
Trina Orchard
Well, the reason for writing the book was initially to just make sense of the chaos that I was encountering with dating apps. When I joined dating apps, I had no intention of writing a book. I had never thought about writing a memoir ever really. But the experience was so strange and so fascinating as a sexuality scholar that I couldn't not write. And it just began by recording the amount of dates I had and then the amount of people that ghosted me. And then other things just began appearing the more I was on them that were so compelling and strange. And within three months of swiping, I had 60,000 words written. And that's when I knew that there was a book here and that it was not going to be an academic book in the traditional sense. I've done that before. I wanted a creative challenge. And so the second part of the.
- [06:34]
Holly Gattery
Question.
- [06:36]
Trina Orchard
In terms of the in quotations, Brave opening myself up piece, you know, I made the decision to write the book in the way that I did because I knew that I was working from a place of power. And by that I mean I have tenure at my job, I have a very well established research and teaching career. And so I knew that if it all went tits up, pardon my French, and there was a big furor and people were upset, well, you know, I'm not going to lose my job. I don't really think I'll lose my credibility because it's already intact. But I didn't think too, too much about the criticism that I might have because I was so committed to the project and listening to how other people had experienced these dating apps, I knew that I wasn't alone. And I wanted to take that risk, that creative risk, that risk of opening myself up as someone who carried around a lot of dark secrets about myself that are similar to what a lot of other people have experienced. It was also a political decision to write in the way that I did.
- [07:47]
Holly Gattery
I love that answer. And I want to thank you profusely for understanding the quotes around Brave because it people often tell, I don't know if they say this to men, but as a woman people, whenever I say something honest, they're like, you're so brave. And it's Like, I have to think of a better term for that because it's. It's not brave, it's necessary. And I don't think any of us feel that we're being brave by doing it. So thank you so much for understanding that. I next want to talk about the structure of the book. And I have, like, I have about 20 questions and we're not going to get through them all, but my hope is that I will somehow manage to get you to answer all of them and. And these questions that I do ask. So. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so far you've already answered one that I can knock off, so that's really good. So the structure of the book, I wanted to talk about that because it is loosely, thematically, and I mean loosely in the best possible way because it has a lot of movement and movement's a good thing. Organize. And I was wondering, from the beginning, you've already let us know that you were just taking notes and then you realized you had a book. So when you start to think this is a book, did you know what structure it was going to be in? Or is that something that emerged as you began writing?
- [09:03]
Trina Orchard
It really changed a lot. Initially it was four honkin chapters, and then it was like, I think that's too long for a more public facing book. And then it was actually monthly, only focused on five months, because my experience was going to initially focus just on the five months that I spent on Bumblebee, which is the first app that I used and the one I took the most copious amounts of notes on. But then I spent far more time actually using Tinder, and upon the advice of a few different editors I worked with over the course of this project. They're like, you don't want to be a one trick pony, only about one app. You know, you have broader experiences. And also what's going to set January apart from like, March, you know, there's going to be a lot of overlap. And so that's not the best way to structure this kind of book. And that particular editor, she said, academics can be challenging in terms of how they want to structure things and what they want to call things. They sometimes have long, flowery titles. I don't know what she's talking about, but she said, okay, your homework is to think of five or six chapters and have less than five words be the title of each chapter. And I was like, how could you? But then, you know, I closed my laptop, got, you know, literally a notebook and wrote the five titles. So I had been carrying them with me, I was just waiting for the more clear or sort of ideas to be released.
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Holly Gattery
I want to next ask about the. The really honest and in my opinion, wonderful conversations in this book about sex and sexuality. But like, just sex, just describing sex. And the reason I want to ask this is because I can remember with my memoir, a reviewer of it said that I speak honestly or something about being promiscuous. I was like, excuse me, you would never tell a man that he was promiscuous. So I. And it was a man who used that word and it's such an outdated and icky word. Like, it was like, screwed up my face. And I read that and the things I didn't really even talk about sex in the book. Like, it's one of those things that, you know, it was like, fade out. Like, you know, cut to the curtains during the Stephen scene. Like, but you like, just talk about it. And I love that. I was like, damn, like, this is good. And so I wanted to like, was it just like, yes, I. This is something. I just automatically feel completely comfortable talking about this kind of thing. Or was it something you had to work up to? Or did an editor maybe say, could you make this like a little bit more PG13? And I am 100 bringing myself into that question because an editor did recently ask me to make something less X rated and more PG13. So I'm wondering about the experience of writing it and then the editing process of perhaps what the editor, who I kind of take as somebody who is industry focused, like, what does the world want? What does the reader want? Focus. What input did they have, if any, about the, The. The depiction of sex in the book.
- [12:13]
Trina Orchard
Yeah, I think that sex was always going to be central to the book. And it was fun to think about how I wanted to write about it because during the pandemic advantage of a lot of online memoir writing workshops with writers whose work is very sex driven and they write about sex in very different ways. And so I needed to think about how I wanted to write about it. And along with taking these workshops and, you know, reading a Zilian memoirs, I sort of came to a way of writing about it that I refer to as what my style in general is, like, sort of ethnopoetic. So, you know, people have said many times, like, we're right in, like, we're at the edge of the bed with you. And that's kind of a combination of my ethnographic training, you know, in terms of recounting the detail of an environment in order for the reader to be able to place herself there as well. And then sort of the poetic part is just kind of how I like to think about it and write about it. I think there are so many different ways to write about sex, you know, Eileen Miles, you know, what an incredible writer they are. They're one of the people who I admire most, you know, Melissa Fabos, Lydia Yukonovich, many, many others. And in terms of the editing process, there were a few things that were taken out of the book, but it wasn't really the sex scenes. It was the odd sort of phrasing that I had thrown in that was a little bit, not even too graphic, but maybe didn't serve the purpose that I had thought that it might have served. But that only happened a couple of times. In general, my editor, who was very near and dear to the experience of using the apps and we were the same age, she didn't really have too many comments about those parts of the books, actually.
- [14:14]
Holly Gattery
That's refreshing to know. I love, I love hearing that because I, I really enjoyed the openness of it. And I'm not, I'm intentionally. One of the words that crossed my mind and I immediately swatted away like a WASP was vulnerable. I'm like, ugh, it's not vulnerable, it's just honest. Where did this word come into my head from? Another part that I like dog eared this page. I am very rough on books, especially if I let them. They're just like, I'm like, they're mine. You can't tell me what to do with them anymore. It's like my body, let me do what I want. Is the, the section you have about hashtag girlboss. And I, I really latched on to that because I absolutely hate that. And I was like, ah, yes, validation. And I. But I enjoyed the exploration of it and where, because I didn't know anything about this. I didn't really know about where it was coming from or anything like that. So for our listeners, I would love for you to talk about Girlboss and in the context of how you're discussing it in the book.
- [15:18]
Trina Orchard
Well, I guess in the book I talk a little bit about the relationship between Whitney Wolfe Heard and kind of how she was framing Bumble and also the relationship between her and Sophia Amoruso, who was, who made a lot of money with her sort of secondhand vintage, one of the first, like self made millionaire young women entrepreneurs selling secondhand merchandise. She shot to fame and she was the darling of kind of the business world. Sophia Amoruso was. But then it was revealed that behind the scenes, working for her was less than fun, less than feminist. It was actually very exploitative. And Amoruso, judging from some of the length language that Bumble uses, was a big influence for Whitney Wolf. Heard Amoruso published a book called Girlboss. And it seems that when I was doing my deep dive into Bumble, looking at how the website was constructed, looking at how some of the language that was used was very similar to Amoruso's, kind of like, girls are going to get it for themselves and, you know, there's no stopping us. But it's also, it's very sort of whitewashed language, very similar to a lot of like, sort of girl culture can be in sort of mainstream settings. And yeah, I think the term girl boss is kind of cringe now because while it used to stand sort of for women who, you know, would make things on their own, not take any kind of bullshit from other people, they're going to make it in the man's world. It turns out that a lot of that sort vernacular and those approaches are actually very similar to how men construct themselves in the business world. And so that's part of the reason why it's very, very cringe now.
- [17:21]
Holly Gattery
I mean, I always found it incredibly cringe. And maybe it's just the term girl, like the infantilizing of women and like, as someone who's had facial hair when I was seven years old, I don't think I've ever felt very, you know, whitewashed girlish. I mean, I'm also not white, so that helps too, but. Or at least not biracial, not fully white. So I really never understood that. And I always found that the girl boss thing was just. Even when people were using it all the time, I was like, oh, everybody stop. This is. Why are we doing this to ourselves? We're denigrating ourselves with this, this term. And so I really enjoyed that exploration. Next, I want to talk to you about the title. Not just because the poet in me loves a little bit of alliteration, but because there are so many things that I feel like this book could have been called, but none as perfectly encapsulated as these words. Sticky, sexy, sad. So how did this title come to be? Was it like a lightning in a bottle moment, or was it something that took you a little bit to get to?
- [18:31]
Trina Orchard
I think, you know, I love doing titles. I love doing titles. I had initially the title, it was going to be called something like hold the phone, which is so awful now by kind of Alluding to, you know, the fact that no one wants to talk on the phone. You know, also hold the phone has two meanings, like, hold the phone. Like, what do you mean? I'm glad I didn't stick with that title. It was the lightning in the in a bottle moment. I was on the bus on the way to work, and I know exactly where I was. At the intersection of Oxford and Wharncliffe, right across from a McDonald's at a Starbucks. And it came to me. Sticky, sexy, sad. And I wrote it down on my the phone that I had in 2017 or 2018, and it stuck the after. You know, the second part of the title changed a little bit. It initially had something much longer, like an anthropologist's of lust longing and blah, blah, blah on dating apps. And then once I got the book contract and worked with the editor, we shortened it. And we also wanted to make sure that swipe culture was in there because I am an anthropologist, but also because swipe culture is kind of a nice term unto itself. And so in some ways, the title was kind of doing double the work. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.
- [19:56]
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- [19:59]
Trina Orchard
Wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.
- [20:01]
Holly Gattery
I got to sit in the driver's seat.
- [20:03]
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I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.
- [20:08]
Trina Orchard
That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
- [20:11]
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- [20:13]
Holly Gattery
It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight.
- [20:17]
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- [20:50]
Holly Gattery
I also like that it says the darker side of dating apps because that automatically interested me. If it was like a a bright, bubbly account of dating apps, I don't think I would have been as interested. But I do want to say for listeners that it's not like Trina in this book is just tearing dating apps a new a hole. That's not it at all. There's genuine infection for some of the men that she meets on these apps. There's. There's some really darling scenes of who I consider the stars of the show, which is Trina's cats. I don't know why I latched on to that so much, but I did probably because when I was dating a lot of my 20s, my cats were absolutely my support system. And they still are in many, many ways. But I really, I love those little glimpses into your life. And I was wondering if you could talk about the. The really marvelous, I think, balancing of these anthropological insights you have with a more memoir approach. It felt like, you know, I was getting some really interesting, just facts and things I did not know about. About the science that I, you know, anthropolog. I mean, every time somebody says that, and I'm not even in the right field, I just hear, I just think Indiana Jones. Like, that's not even the same thing. Like I'm not even on the same page. I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I know more about anthropological work now after reading your book than anything. And so it's very present there, but it seems so deeply personal. So we have this science and then we have the deeply personal. And it's not like you're switching a light back and forth between the two. I mean, they are both present all the time. And how did you do that?
- [22:33]
Trina Orchard
Yeah, that's a good question. Just one more comment about the title. There's one. You know, initially some people had said the dark side of dating apps. And I really push for darker, you know, kind of like a dimmer light as opposed to just an off and on switch. Because there are dark moments, but they're not all darkest or only dark. That's, you know, another sort of comment about the title in terms of sort of balancing those things. I mean, it. I wrote the book a few different times, you know, and my first draft, you know, if I go back and look at those early times when there was four huge honkin chapters, it was very much more dense, more academic, with some really funny parts in there as well. I could see the memoirist wanting to come out and there was something interesting happening the moment I began writing those first 60,000 words, even though it was still a bit academic, there was someone else writing this book. And that was so evident to me and it was so cool that I really wanted to cultivate that in terms of balancing the academic, the cultural, the personal memoir. You know, I found it quite easy. You know, I didn't have to make a lot of structural decisions. Like, I've been writing for so long, I had a sense of, like, what each chapter was going to do, and I had blogs and things to pull from. So it really was a pastiche kind of experience. And that's how I often write and approach my academic research anyways. And so it was just kind of a rolling, fairly organic process, if I could say that. I hope that's not too much of a. Kind of a boring answer. But this was a project that really felt like it was just going to happen the way I wanted it to from the very beginning, even though it went through a lot of iterations and the poetic piece was always there.
- [24:37]
Holly Gattery
Well, I feel like. I feel like this. This is just my interpretation. I just felt like, oh, Trina really lives her vocation. What I mean is, like, being an anthropologist is so deeply who you are that there probably wasn't a separation between the two is. But, you know, the. For people listening, I thought, well, I want to ask this question because I'm interested in, you know, your responses. I'm just making assumptions. But I also want to make it clear that. But if, you know, our listeners are saying, I'm not really in the mood for an academic read, well, good news, you're not going to get one. I mean, it's in there. The science is in there, but so is the heart. So is the humanity. So is everything else. Which leads to my next question, which is you're talking about personal experiences with certain individuals. And I've read the book, so I know the answer to this question, or at least in part, or the. I'd say the most ethical, important, the most ethically important part of the answer to this question. But that is you're writing incredibly personal details about dates and about interactions with men, and they are your stories. You're not telling their stories for them. You're talking about your stories with these individuals and the way that you experience them, but you're still talking about other people. What did you. How did you consider this and weigh this in your mind about what to write, what not to write, and about permission issues?
- [26:07]
Trina Orchard
Yeah, excellent questions. And I get this one all the time when I do interviews, rightly so. I do talk about it a little tiny bit in the introduction to the book. But in terms of when did I tell these men that I met over the course of many years that I was writing a book? And to be honest, it wasn't at the very beginning because I didn't know I was writing a book? I knew I was writing something, I didn't know what it would be. And even in my notebook, I mean, I don't use people's real names. I use little descriptors that kind of only I would know. I don't have all details about their exact age, where they're from, etc. Because I dated people from all over the place, not just in London, where I happen to be situated now, but as I began to realize that this was going to be a book, that's when I began asking men about their experiences and telling them that I was writing something. And the response was quite interesting. More times than I would have thought initially they were like, oh, am I going to be in the book? And they were curious about that. And as someone who has done research for most of my career was small, often criminalized or certainly very marginalized communities where anonymity and confidentiality is essential to not only the survival of the people I work with and their well being, but also my reputation as a researcher who works with them. I've got a lot of practices fairly down pat in terms of how to present a story in a way where only the person who is the subject of the story can easily identify himself or herself, not anyone else. You know, names have been changed, you know, ages, you know, body compositions, you know, where they're from, where we met. Some of those have been finessed a bit as a way to make sure that the protection or that the identity of the people that I'm writing about is well taken care of.
- [28:06]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, thank you for that. And I, I think that, I mean, I love this conversation because every answer you give leads actually perfectly into my next question and that this is the question of gentleness. So this is an absolutely feminist book. There is no getting around that and obviously I'm here for that. But it's. You're very gentle with the men. And there's even a little section of your book which you know, for people following along, is on page 225 where you're talking about some key takeaways. And it says, let's invest more in each other, each one another, and ourselves. Part of this involves listening more closely and asking more welcoming, gentle questions about how we feel, naming and making friends with our fears and multi layered vulnerabilities essential to the process of grounding ourselves in ourselves. And I am invariably interested in concepts of grace and gentleness because I think online and you know, with. Let's talk about ghosting, I mean with ghosting, the idea of being gentle with Someone that's completely thrown out the window. It's an incredibly harsh and humiliating thing to do to someone. But throughout, you act with, write with, and live with gentleness. And I just be delighted if you talk a little bit about gentleness and your ethos.
- [29:28]
Trina Orchard
I really appreciate that question, Holly. Thank you. And, yeah, it's kind of the way I roll in my life. That doesn't mean I don't get mad, doesn't mean I sometimes act spiteful or, you know, I've said hurtful things. I've. I've not always been great on the dating apps, you know, but when I choose to write my story, I don't think it adds much to the book in terms of quality, interest, pace, if I'm kind of bitchy or mean. You know, there are other books out there that deal with dating and online dating in that way and, like, no shade to them. I guess I was more interested in the task of presenting people in a full way and presenting my reflections on them in a way that is generous. And as a person who's gone through a hell of a lot in my life and works with people usually who have gone through tremendous kinds of things, and most of us have, kindness is often like the thing, the light under the door that gets us through. And I think that it's more interesting to be. To be kind and to think about things in that way. And also, I didn't want to scare men away. I didn't want them to feel like I was just, like, gonna shit on them or anything like that. Quite the opposite. I want men to read the book, and men are the focus of my new book project. The Things Lead from One to the Other, and I care about what men are going through as well. And there's this idea that men don't read books like this, and I think that that's not true. In fact, I shared drafts of the book with former lovers and, you know, male friends, and they were so excited about it because they were like, you're going to teach men how women experience these things. And you're also going to be able to let men know that some of the behaviors that they think they've grown up with or have been told are sexy and powerful and desirable are actually not. And so it could be kind of instructive in that regard as well.
- [31:42]
Holly Gattery
Thank you for that. And I do want to. To ask you for my final question about what you're working on, because it would have been such a seamless tie in. Again, this great conversation we have where you're leading perfectly to my next questions. But I do want to intersect here and break that streak of completely seamless questions and answers to ask about ghosting. And the thing is, I find ghosting fascinating because it hurts me to read about when it happens to people. Now, now, again, I've only never been ghosted, not because, you know, great catch, but because I wasn't on apps, so I'm sure I absolutely would have been otherwise. And anytime I hear about it, anytime I read about it, having children now myself who are, for better or worse, dating, you know, I hear about it constantly. And I have been on the side where one of my children was like, I'm just not gonna answer this person anymore. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Is that unless there's, like, a reason for your safety, you're not going. You're just gonna cut all ties. Like, unless it's that. Unless they've done something unforgivable, like, you owe this person a. And if. If you're not mature, this is what I say. I have children who I consider too young to be dating, right? Like, teen. Like, what are you doing? But I. I'm not gonna say not to do something because I grew up in a framework where, like, I was told not to do everything, and it just made me super rebellious. So I'm not doing that. But I just say if you're not mature enough to recognize the humanity of this person, you're not mature enough to date. And so I. I think you're too young. And now you're proving you're too young. And I was. I would love for you to talk about ghosting. I'm pretty sure most people know what that is, but in case they don't. And about your handling of it in the book was, again, I thought you were very gracious about it, but you. You still let the hurt be known.
- [33:40]
Trina Orchard
Yeah, that's a very nice way to put it. So ghosting, which in the online dating context or dating apps, is when someone you could be talking to for weeks, for months, for hours, you have a connection of something that feels meaningful and exciting when they just vanish. Literally, they unmatch you, or they just, you know, block you, or they just refuse to answer your text messages or phone calls, and you have no recourse whatsoever, and you're left not knowing what happened. And, of course, the natural response, sadly, is that we often turn on ourselves and we blame ourselves. And I did this many, many, many, many times. I'm too old. I'm not attractive enough. I'M too fat. I don't know anything about online dating. I, you know, what have I done? You know, this is a familiar refrain for a lot of us, with or without dating apps. And I think we're hearing a about ghosting in offline settings, too, especially among midlife women and friendships. That's kind of a hot topic that a lot of us have lost friends and we don't really know why, and we're not on the dating apps. But in terms of writing about it and reflecting on it, yeah, it's certainly is in a few different parts of the book. And I too, have ghosted not, you know, once or twice in my life and feel super shitty about it. And it just really reflects how poorly we as a culture are willing to put ourselves on the line to talk about how do you engage with someone in a situation of conflict or lack of desire, or you've just simply changed your mind? We're not that good at that in North America, perhaps elsewhere as well. And so ghosting is really important. And one of the things I didn't like is that when I was writing the book, there were so many stories about ghosting, and people would often frame it as a humorous thing, like, oh, get back out there. Grow a thicker skin. It's just part of the game. Why are you taking it so seriously? Like, kind of, like shaming me and making me feel embarrassed of, like, having feelings. And so I had to resist that. And I wanted to write about it in a way that felt real vulnerable, but also acknowledging the messiness of it, like when you don't have answers as to why someone does something and you just kind of have to leave it there. And that's unsettling.
- [36:12]
Holly Gattery
Absolutely. But I. I think that leaving it there and having those loose ends is a authentic representation of what life actually is. And we don't always get tidy narratives, unfortunately. And I really appreciated just saying what it was you saying. I'm hurt. My friends are giving me terrible advice. And, you know, I really, really appreciate that. So for my last question, I'd love to hear more about what you're working on right now. You gave us a little teaser, but if you can talk about it more, I'd enjoy that. Sure.
- [36:47]
Trina Orchard
So what I'm working on right now is a book of some core, some sort about sort of the intersection between masculinity and vulnerability. And it really emerged from my experiences swiping and writing about men and then writing about men and D in other online publications. And just how many men reached out to me, based on those publications as well as the book, to share their experiences. You know, when you write about love, I'm sure you may have found this as well. It's a. It's a. It's a portal. And a lot of people want to crawl in and sort of tell you about their life, their love, their loss, what worked for them, different kinds of things that they might not tell other people. And the fact that so many men had reached out to me over the past several years tells me a few things. One of them is that they resonate with the way that I write. That was like a win. I was not expecting that, but that was something to honor. And also the fact when they're writing about their lives and their vulnerability and stuff, I feel like it's worth honoring, especially right now, given, you know, the flaming culture wars that are dividing us and how gender is being used by powerful people in very corrupt ways. And we're not going to get anywhere if we just continue to feed the manosphere and say silly things like men are broken and men are fired. It doesn't mean that I don't think that some of the behaviors of men are inexcusable and problematic and dangerous and scary. But I think there's another way through, and it is by learning more about where people are coming from and sort of, you know, listening to one another in. In more careful ways. And so I've been doing some online interviews. I've done 21 interviews with men, primarily in Canada, but also elsewhere. And I also have a Google form that has 10 questions. I've got about 50 of those surveys. And I'm going to be chatting with sort of thought leaders, kind of hate that term, but you know what I mean, People who are doing this kind of work, whether in research or activism or men's health, et cetera, sexuality counseling spaces, those are folks who also, when they read the book, especially the counseling folks, they said that they've been giving my book to them, to a lot of their male clients. And that also kind of solidified my decision. And I feel like focusing on men right now is strategically wise in terms of the many tentacled nature of power in the patriarchy, which is in flux. It's crumbling, it's repeating, being rebuilt, all of it. Men, for better or for worse, are quite centered in that. And if we understand where they're coming from, you might be in a better position to make a bigger impact.
- [39:45]
Holly Gattery
Yeah, thank you for that really interesting answer. I. When you're. When you're talking, I was thinking about Alex Manley's book the New Masculinity which is a really interesting. Yeah. As a mother of a, of a teenage son and then a younger son, he's seven. And been a partner to a dude who I'm largely unconcerned with. I mean I don't care about him. No. I mean I'm not concerned about his, you know, socio political opinions about such things. He's very well balanced. But my, especially my teenager, watching him grow up with, you know, in the world of incels and stuff, I, when, whenever anybody is really hard on men, I like you, I understand why, why and I, I can, I can absolutely understand why you'd be hard on men. And I, I feel hard on men. But then I look at my 15 year old and I'm like no, but not my baby. Like he's a good person. He's a good person. He's a wonderful person who cares about women deeply and would never like second and third and fourth guesses. Everything he says to girls and women. And so I, I, I, as much as I want to say burn them all down. I look at my kid and I'm like no, I, I have to hold out hope and I have to live with more hope and more grace and more compassion. If not for my partner, for, for, for these guys, for these, these people coming up in this nest. So I really do appreciate that answer and thank you so much for sharing it and thank you for joining me today on MBN to talk about your book Sticky Sexy Sad, which is really, really fascinating. And I hope to have you back again to talk about your new book when it's out.
- [41:28]
Trina Orchard
Thank you so much, it's been so fun.