← The Focus Group Podcast
The Focus Group Podcast
S6 Ep34: Why Women Don’t Need Men Anymore—In Their Own Words (w/ Sami Sage)
00:45:45
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
Focus Group Participant 1
car online on Autotrader right now?
- [01:03]
Sammy Sage
Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget. You can really have it delivered or pick it up.
- [01:10]
Rachel Janvaza
Mommy's walking.
- [01:10]
Focus Group Participant 1
I think kid is walking up the slide.
- [01:12]
Rachel Janvaza
Really? Autotrader? Buy your car online?
- [01:14]
Sammy Sage
Really? You're letting me know that we're cool again? Because I just assume that Gen Z thinks Millennial is cringe.
- [01:25]
Rachel Janvaza
Hey guys, it's Rachel Janvaza here at the Bull Work, welcoming you to another epis of the Focus group podcast. You all know by now how much I love talking about the Gen Z gender gap, how young women keep moving to the political left and young men to the right. Today we're going to focus on young women, which we haven't done in a while. There's a ton of discourse about why young men and women are drifting so far apart, at least when it comes to their politics. I've emphasized a lot of it, and so has today's guest. My guest today is Sammy Sage, co founder of Betches Media and host of the podcast Morning Announcement, and co author of Democracy in How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our country and Our Lives, which is coming out on paperback on April 28th. Sami, thanks so much for joining me.
- [02:14]
Sammy Sage
Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to get into our chat today.
- [02:19]
Rachel Janvaza
Me too. And Sami and I both love to talk about, both on and offline, the forces shaping young people's politics And I'm psyched that she's making her focus group debut and bulwark debut here with us today.
- [02:31]
Sammy Sage
I am so thrilled to be here, and I'm excited to take our offline conversations and give the audience a little. A little taste of what we chat about.
- [02:40]
Rachel Janvaza
Totally.
- [02:40]
Sammy Sage
Me too.
- [02:41]
Rachel Janvaza
So just off the bat, batches has historically been what I'd say, a distinctly millennial product. It's been around since 2011, and you're obviously a millennial. Has the product and your audience evolved as Gen Z has become more of the marketplace? And if.
- [03:00]
Sammy Sage
Well, we never really wanted to lose our core audience, but we understood that obviously we want, you know, to have a Gen Z audience. We feel like our mission, which is really to make people laugh and kind of make sense of the world and not take themselves so seriously is something that can benefit every generation. And what we did was really not try to change what we were doing as much as add. And our approach was essentially to hire people who are Gen Z and let them really take control of our Gen Z content. It wasn't thought about so much as like, oh, our Gen Z content as much as, okay, we're going to make additional content that is from the betch's voice and sensibility, from people who are Gen Z and are fans of batches. And, you know, those are usually the people we tend to hire for content, people who are, you know, engaged with batches. So we've really, you know, had a lot of success expanding the size of our Gen Z audience. In terms of the actual, you know, company stats, there's definitely a lot of differences, I would say, and for good reason, between our generations. And I am like the most millennial millennial, like 1989, born just like Taylor Swift. And I think in a lot of ways, some of Gen Z has functioned like almost in a reaction to millennial culture. But, you know, there's other forces pulling on Gen Z. Like Covid is the huge one. And just how, at least I would say when some people graduated college who were millennials, like, you could scrape out like a decent job in the economy, even with the recession, like, you could maybe get there. And I just feel for Gen Z, it's like action. I don't see any structural possibilities in. In your guys favor. It's tough to watch and to have no real ability to change it kind
- [05:08]
Rachel Janvaza
of going off of that. In the different relationship between millennials and Gen Z, I'm recently obsessed with the fact that that Gen Z, especially the younger cohort of Gen Z, which I call Gen Z 2.0. The people who graduated high school after the start of the pandemic is actually starting to recycle millennial trends from hanging out in person. What a revolutionary concept. To the revival of the mall, or to even millennial politicians like Zoram Hamdani and James Tallarico. There's been a resurgence in sort of this millennial identity. How have you seen the millennial reputation itself evolve amongst zoomers over time? Because I feel like it's getting to be very cool again.
- [05:52]
Sammy Sage
You're letting me know that we're cool again. Because I just assume that Gen Z thinks millennial is cringe. Not, like, across the board. Like, I think the elder Gen Z and, you know, maybe the middle Gen Z. Like, you know, no one's a monolith. No generation is a monolith. But, like, the meme is that Gen Z thinks millennials are cringe and annoying and, like, too earnest. And there's a reason for that. Like, we grew up with reasons to be earnest that I think especially the younger Gen Z did not have. Like, it would be gaslighting at that point for you guys to believe the things that, like, we were raised to believe were true. So, yeah. And we got Obama. Like, that was when I was a sophomore in college. Like, could you imagine a more hopeful situation?
- [06:39]
Rachel Janvaza
So you're getting to a theme that I've been thinking a lot about recently, which I have a piece about millennial optimism and Gen Z recyc Tackling it and Gen Z leaning into optimism.
- [06:50]
Sammy Sage
I'm excited to read that because, like, since when? Great, we're here. Take our trends and our skinny jeans and our pauses.
- [06:59]
Rachel Janvaza
But the thing is, I think Gen Z 2.0 doesn't realize that they're actually recycling millennial trends and thinks that they're coming to this, coming at this for the first time and, like, going to the mall. I mean, have you read any of these stories about Gen Z mall rats? It's literally the go to a mall on a weekend, and it's infiltrated with Gen Z and even Gen Alpha. But because they didn't like.
- [07:23]
Sammy Sage
I know. Gen Alpha loves them all.
- [07:25]
Rachel Janvaza
No, But Gen Z 2.0 is part of this too, because that's If Gen Z 2.0 right now is anyone who's a teenager. And that. That's. Gen Alpha really starts at, like, 13 and younger. So any high schoolers who are in the mall these days are Gen Z 2.0. And it's not just the mall, though. I think it's the idea of these third spaces, these places that are, are not social media. We're seeing a complete pullback Amongst Gen Z 2.0 from social media because they see the way that it plagued people like me and Gen Z 1.0 and they don't want anything to do with that. And so it, there's, you know, when you, when you look at something example as the mall, there's a real reason why that is and it's that they're craving these in person experiences that for millennials, obviously that was just normal. And now post Covid For Gen Z 2.0 and Gen Alpha, that's what they want to be normal again. And so they're making that revival.
- [08:18]
Sammy Sage
I mean the, the mall is amazing. Like it's formative. It's like having friends is just the greatest thing. Having a place where you can like relate to people and form experiences and like go have a snack and you know, just talk about stuff and meet people and like make sense of stuff. And it's so necessary to have these things. And that's honestly what we write about in democracy in retrograde that having community in real life, having people to tether you and like real experiences, meeting people who don't look like you. All these things like are so necessary. It's just a shame that most places we have to go do involve like, does involve spending money. So it's kind of fun. But you could just window shop forever.
- [09:05]
Rachel Janvaza
Okay, so shifting back a little bit into the politics of this all, we asked the moderate young women that we spoke to in recent focus groups about why young and young women have gotten so politically polarized. Let's listen to how they talked about that.
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Focus Group Participant 1
I feel like the boys, like, they like it needs to be pushed more
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Sammy Sage
to vote and to learn more about politics because I feel like since we're
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Focus Group Participant 2
so young, we're not too much caring
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Sammy Sage
about politics and all that. At least the areas that I am
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Focus Group Participant 1
and the friends that I'm surrounded with.
- [09:36]
Focus Group Participant 2
Women generationally have been especially black women for that matter have generationally been had to excel to a certain point. I think that we've kind of hit the benchmark. And those numbers also match up with like homeownership, economic opportunity, jobs, etc. And the data is the same. Like men are going down and women are going up. And I also think it has to do a lot with social media, in my personal opinion, especially with Elon Musk buying Twitter and like the podcast bros and just like, like a man wants to be like respected in the house and like, treated a certain way. But I think that since a lot of women are in the workplace now, there isn't really a need to have someone to be with. Someone to be with a man that wants to control you in a way. And I think that's kind of the issue. But I also think that there's certain things that come with the way in which women and men vote that differ concerning the patriarchy. Because for us, we are kind of implicated by Trump's policies in a way, especially when it comes to abortion access.
- [10:48]
Focus Group Participant 1
I also think women just tend to be more empathetic in general. So when it comes to like socialist issues and types, things like that, it's just typically more women. And I, I definitely do see some women that are Republican, but I feel like I, if you, if I ever meet a man that is left leaning, it's a really rare occurrence.
- [11:16]
Focus Group Participant 2
Even if some people don't, like, I
- [11:17]
Podcast Host Alex Lovett
do not support abortion, but that doesn't mean I don't believe that people, I mean, that's.
- [11:22]
Sammy Sage
A man should decide what a woman
- [11:24]
Podcast Host Alex Lovett
does with her body.
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Sammy Sage
You know, I feel like they should
- [11:27]
Podcast Host Alex Lovett
have their own opinions on, like they have. You should have their own decisions.
- [11:31]
Sammy Sage
Because the others it was, if someone
- [11:32]
Podcast Host Alex Lovett
gets raped and wants to get an abortion or something like that, the person should have the choice to do that.
- [11:39]
Rachel Janvaza
Okay, so abortion was one of the top themes that came up in those answers. But I do think that oftentimes women's prior political priorities get flattened a little bit, especially young women, into just being about reproductive rights. Are there any other important undercover priorities that jump out to you?
- [11:57]
Sammy Sage
I think probably the ability to be financially stable. And a lot of times this gets reflected in the wrong ways. Like it becomes about wanting to rely on a man or getting like a sugar daddy. Because there's this sense of, in this really precarious economy that does provide some sense of transactional stability. I think maybe the reason that that reproduction comes up is because it's sort of a. It's like sort of the end of all these other control mechanisms, like being able to have a credit card and your bank account. You know, that's sort of out of people's purview at this point. But an abortion, like many people have had them. They know people who have. They know their friend has had one, you know, their friend, you know, has had one that wasn't even an abortion to end. You know, it could have been just as medical treatment. I think the more you actually know about it as a woman, you're Forced to learn about these things. You realize how intrusive it is and how debilitating it actually is that this is under the control of the government. It is such a complicated thing. But, you know, if you had asked me, I would have said probably, like, a solid combination of all the things that the sound bites you played like, seem to be the reason for this chasm. And then the men are just, like, fed. I'm sure you watch the Manosphere documentary. They're just fed this. Like, they're like man babies. And it's. It's frankly embarrassing that they're being, like, scammed in this way. It's really concerning. And I. I see why women wouldn't want to be with men like that and why men would need to then control women to force them to be. Yeah.
- [14:02]
Rachel Janvaza
And we're going to talk a little more about those dynamics between men and women and how these conversations are being had in relationships. But when you talk about, you know, the financial issue as a priority political issue for young women, I think it's often lost on people the fact that reproductive health care access for many people is an economic issue. And for so many young women, these topics are actually intricately linked and woven together. And so it's all related at the end of the day in a way that I think is hard to understand unless you're actually part of the demographic yourself. Another dynamic that I noticed surfaced in those clips was for how many young women, their gender intersects with their race or their ethnicity. And in my recent conversations with young people, I've been hearing more and more and noticing a distinction that when talking about their politics, women tend to lean into the minority communities that they're a part of and talk about that as a part of their political identity than young men, who oftentimes talk more about their hobbies or things they like to do with their friends. I'm wondering why you think that might be that women are leaning into these aspects of their identity more so than young men, especially now, honestly, because in
- [15:23]
Sammy Sage
legislative terms, we will end up in their boat, rather than, you know, the boat with all the people who like the sport we do or like to knit, like, we, you know, those are interests, hobbies, you know, And I think. I mean, this is, like, more psychological, but I think men, because of the way men are socialized, like, they seek identity, so they get their identity from these things, and they don't need to worry about. And, you know, I. There's also, like, an intersectional piece to this, but men being the physically stronger gender don't need to. On the aggregate, don't need to worry about their physical safety. And so they don't. You know, I think the fact that women can reproduce is an amazing miracle. But you have men who. It's dangerous, too. You know, when women are pregnant, they're in a vulnerable state, and it's been used to manipulate and trap women for centuries. And I think that, like, we inherently understand that, like, it's just innately, you know, you get your period every month. It's just sort of like this innate reminder of what your body does that men don't experience. And so they're not prioritizing those things as much as they're prioritizing, like, hunting or cars or like whatever other bullshit like they do. You know, it's not bullshit, but.
- [16:54]
Rachel Janvaza
No, no, but I mean, that's that strength piece. I think it gets debated. But I've noticed that in a recent listening session that I did, there was a young woman who's a college student who talked about. And this isn't one of the clips we played, but who talked about this. The fact that growing up, she always had this conversation from her parents before she would go out where she would be told, you know, you need to be really careful, make sure that you're carrying something with you in the event that something were God forbid to happen so that you could protect yourself and defend yourself. And her brother never had that same conversation, even though he was going to all the same places. And so this is something that is internalized very early on for young women in a way that isn't necessarily for young men. So I think that's a good point there.
- [17:38]
Sammy Sage
Let's just be honest about what actually is more likely to happen. But it's like that old saying, like, I'm going to butcher it, but women are afraid that men will kill them, and men are afraid that women will laugh at them. And if you think about it, that is sort of the fundamental. That is a fundamental dynamic driving, you know, the safety question. And, you know, I think a lot of also like the reaction you have in comedy.
- [18:06]
Rachel Janvaza
Yeah, I mean, that's also. It plays out in the content you mentioned manosphere. It plays out in the content that we're fed, that different genders are fed via their algorithm. And if you look at a young woman's phone and you look at a young man's phone, there's just two totally different streams of information. It's almost like they're living in different worlds. And I think that's a huge part of the gender gap too. And it certainly is something young people notice driving the gap between them.
- [18:29]
Podcast Host Alex Lovett
If you're listening to the focus group podcast, it's safe to say that you care about where American democracy stands and where it's headed. So there's another podcast you should know about. It's called the Context from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. The Context is a podcast about how to make democracy work for everyone and why that's so hard to do. I've been a guest on this podcast and I'm a senior fellow at the Kettering foundation. So I can tell you from experience, these folks bring the goods, you know that democracy is in crisis. I talk about it all the time. You know that many Americans feel alienated from their government. If you listen to the folks group podcast, you hear it over and again. Trust in institutions is falling. Corruption and polarization dominate the headlines, and a lot of people are being left behind. But that is not the whole story on the Context. Host Alex Lovett speaks with folks on the front lines of democratic practice. Together they examine the challenges and strengths of a system where in an ideal world, everyone gets their say. This isn't partisan spin. These are careful, clear eyed, nonpartisan conversations on how democracy works and how you can help make it work better. Find the Context Wherever you get your podcasts, same place as you get all
- [19:42]
Rachel Janvaza
the Bulwark podcasts, there's a more politics adjacent facet to the gender gap as well that these young women talked about. And that was how gender roles factor into their perception of traditional life milestones, priorities, and also politics. So let's listen to how they talked about that.
- [20:01]
Focus Group Participant 1
I do see kind of like a lot of women, today's society are moving
- [20:06]
Rachel Janvaza
in an opposite direction than men. And for a long time that kind
- [20:11]
Sammy Sage
of traditional or like right wing ideology
- [20:15]
Focus Group Participant 1
has kind of always been kind of like the standard or the status quo. And for women it's been like over like decades and decades we've been moving to a place where we want more autonomy and more freedom.
- [20:29]
Sammy Sage
And I do think in a way
- [20:31]
Focus Group Participant 1
that's kind of scary to a lot of men. And I think that's not something they
- [20:35]
Sammy Sage
want to move towards because a lot of men are used to having like
- [20:40]
Rachel Janvaza
the say so and they're used to
- [20:42]
Focus Group Participant 1
seeing their fathers have to say so. I know that I've heard a little bit about a study that, you know, more men are still wanting children, but young women are more so prioritizing careers, not necessarily having children and, you know, more focused on careers. And like marriage and kids and. Yeah, I mean, I think that I don't. Yeah, I don't really necessarily fit in with a lot of, like, the left ideologies as other, you know, women my age.
- [21:12]
Focus Group Participant 3
I'm definitely more liberal lenient because I grew up in an environment that was like, very conservative and like, gender roles were like, very much assigned and very traditional. And so I've kind of learned that if I don't want to end up, you know, feeling that stress and just that tiredness in a relationship, then it's much better to have a relationship where it's about partnership instead of about, you know, someone taken on this role, someone taking on that role. I think somebody put in the chat that it was Andrew Tate. I used to watch his videos and laugh about it because I just found them to be so ridiculous. But yeah, I've actually had this conversation with quite a lot of people who have come up to me and asked if I wanted to be in a relationship, that if it was going to be long term, then I want a partnership. I didn't want a relationship where I'm supposed to be serving him. If I'm going to be, you know, putting in effort and work into the relationship, he also has to put in effort and work. It shouldn't be like just a thing where I'm the only one putting in the effort because that's when people start getting tired. You know, I've seen my parents marriage and it's kind of like one person keeps on putting in so much and then they get tired. And it's just a whole lot of issues. You know, this one burst and it's like, oh, wow, you've always been this aggressive of a person. But no, it's just that you. A lot of work wears you down and then the love that you have for a person just kind of goes away.
- [22:43]
Rachel Janvaza
So something I've been saying ad nauseam is that for young women, there are more opportunities that have opened to them than any prior generation of women before them when it comes to work, when it comes to higher education, et cetera. Whereas for young men, the opportunities have pretty much stayed the same, except now they're actually starting to dwindle with early career job openings. And I think that this is all part of why these priorities are shifting too, and why young men might actually be leaning more into those traditional milestones than young women. I know that that was one of the points that a young woman we just heard from made in terms of how she saw this study about young women leaning more into their careers or financial freedom rather than those traditional milestones. And this comes up all the time in my conversations with young people. I've also noticed that there are differences in how millennial and Gen Z women talk about these traditional life milestones, even just within those generations, like marriage and having kids and also their careers and the relationship between the 2. And the 2018 peak girlboss era just feels like a different lifetime, even though it was just eight years ago. Can you walk us through from your eyes how that shift evolved and why you think it did?
- [24:04]
Sammy Sage
Oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack here. Especially because batches was always like, it's obviously like part of the girl boss era, but we hated the term girl boss because we're like, what are you calling me? Like a little girl boss? Like, we didn't, we never wanted to identify with that whole like, thing, but obviously we were just by nature of who we were. So I, I think what you're saying is kind of encapsulating the whole problem. And I'm wondering if you are also seeing young men get more into religion and Christianity and just drawn into like church communities, because I think that it provides a pipeline and a way to meet women and people who are also of this mindset. And I think in some way it creates a functionality escape, like a pro social escape in, you know, in theory, depending on what kind of things the church is trying to do. But like, it presents a way to sort of process this young life, you know, your early 20s or, you know, your late 20s, at which point you're sort of like searching for purpose in a way or just searching for a path. And I think there were, there's a few things here that go back to like even precede the girl boss era, which is like you said, there's this sense, especially when I was young, middle millennial, that I could be anything. I could be the president when I grow up. You know, I could do anything I want. I could go to space. Some someone is in space and a woman is in space. You know, there was just this sense of like limitlessness and like be really good in school. And I think there are some traits that make women of our generation who were, you know, sort of like parents really poured into their, you know, kids sort of equally. And girls are more conscientious, they are a little bit more mature quicker. So when you're in school with boys, there's this sort of self fulfilling prophecy of like the good, the girl who's like so good at school and that's like a positive social identity. Whereas like a guy who does really well in school is like nerdy. You want to be like the jock and you want to be cool and like, you know, get all the, like that's less performance in school oriented. You know, I'm speaking in broad generalizations, of course. You get into the workforce and then you have like the girl boss era that kind of becomes into this like DEI woke thing. And then at the same time you have the manosphere at the same time as you have the oligarchy, like consolidating, cutting jobs, making it much harder to actually sustain yourself and to live in like any anywhere affordably. Especially not New York or California or you know, one of these big cities. What people are running into is like this sense of like hopelessness, of like, you know, oh, the girl's just gonna get the promotion because like, you know, we have all these, you know, gender affinity things and they're not meant to be like anti male. It's just watch Mad Men and you see how even in like the 90s, it was very different than it is now. And I think people who are like, you know, pro DEI and obviously like I'm pro di, like in pro diversity, like all of these things, it's like that other, that other saying, you know, when you've had all the privilege, equality feels like oppression. And I think there's, you know, it's, it's a scarce, harsh country we have created for ourselves. And what that ultimately has led to is scarcity for everyone except for those at the top. And that leads to people pitting each other against each other. And then you end up with like culture wars. That's really what culture wars are always about. That's what like demagoguery is always about. It's about financial inequality or financial dissatisfaction that then people use to turn on each other. So it's like that, I think is what happened with, you know, the high achieving millennial woman who made it to those heights. And then like by nature of the conditions around us, like it's just so easy for men too or people to like tear that person down. And it's, you know, it's not like women, I think have even achieved equality yet. It's more just like in the public eye it feels like, oh, there are so many women around running things. And like, let's be clear, there's not.
- [29:03]
Rachel Janvaza
I think also though, there hasn't been while there's been a paradigm shift where women are celebrated when they achieve those roles or those positions of power if they get there. Young men have not been celebrated for filling gaps at home or for leaning into more of the, you know, the, the roles that were traditionally held for women. And so it's an uneven, there's, there's a, it's imbalanced because, and I think this is part of the problem too is that as more young women excel in STEM fields, it's not like more young men are entering sort of the traditional care economy field jobs like nursing or teaching or. And my big thing that I've been saying for a little while now is like we should be pushing young men into those jobs, into those opportunities. Like they, we need teachers, we need nurses, we need people to, you know, fill those roles. And yet young men aren't championed or celebrated when they do pursue those roles. I think that's also a big part of the problem here is like the way that that shift in expectations hasn't kept up with where the open jobs actually are.
- [30:19]
Sammy Sage
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- [30:49]
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- [31:49]
Sammy Sage
Well, the thing is those jobs were undervalued historically because they were women's jobs. So now we don't value them. They're underpaid, like seriously underpaid compared to the work. And men don't want to do them because they're underpaid because they were undervalued and they're associated with women. And to be honest, there's no reason why a woman or a man can inherently, for the like on an individual level, do one job or another better. Like, you know, aggregate. You might end up with different things, but like, if a man or a woman can do this, they can do it. End of the story. It's how it really should be. And that's, I think like the idea behind, you know, discrimination laws. But exactly what you're talking about is the problem. This speaks to, I think like more of the oligarchy problem. It's like when you juice profits for everything, you don't value the things that actually matter for people. Health care, education, you know, basic needs being met and child care. And then I don't think you have like the manosphere that's helping this because it's like, oh, I don't even want to like entertain that. Whereas like, my belief is that it is so much more Matt, like, if you have to say it ain't so. And a real man can do any sort of feminine coded thing without, you know, a whole to do about it because they're a boy and like you're doing a girl thing. Like, grow up, do the thing. And that's what real masculinity is like not being so hung up on your own masculinity is real masculinity.
- [33:20]
Rachel Janvaza
Yeah, it's a good point. The other piece of this too that I think about a lot is that there's been a whole conversation around mental health that has changed in Gen Z culture than it was for millennial culture at the time. And a lot of young women. You know, we've spoken on previous episodes about trad wife, trad life culture. And this is something you and I have obviously spoken a lot about offline too. It's, I think overblown on social media. But there is a cohort of young women who are leaning into more of those traditional values and talking about it somewhat politically and in, in sort of a over sexualized way about how beneficial this is for their lives and how they're rejecting this sort of lean in era of feminism and of women in the workplace, et cetera. But I think a part of this is that Gen Z women, on the whole, look at that, you can have it all ideal that was pushed, I think, on a lot of millennial women and sort of cuspy Gen Z millennial women who did try to do that or did achieve it. But also there's a lot of burnout and there's a lot of Gen Z women who I think look at those dynamics and say, I don't have to have it all, I don't want to have it all. I want a specific part of it. I'm either going to fully lean into my career and I don't want to have kids, or I'm going to go full in on kids. And I. Some of it's ironic because a lot of the most prominent social media creators in this sort of trad wife world are actually running huge businesses where they're making a ton of money.
- [35:01]
Sammy Sage
A public trad wife is a girl boss with two jobs and a full time staff.
- [35:06]
Rachel Janvaza
Yeah, but, but there is merit to the fact that a lot of Gen Z women looked at this idea of you can have it all, saw burnout and said, you know what, I'm prioritizing work, life, balance and I don't want it all. And I'm wondering how you think that instigma around that has shifted over time.
- [35:22]
Sammy Sage
I think that that's like a very healthy approach to things. Personally, I think the first of all, this you can have it all thing is highly, I think, overblown because millennials, you probably were too young for this. But like millennials were the original, like probably not the original, but like when I was in college, before the, like in 2011 when we started batches, millennials were like on constantly. It was like, you're so selfish, you're so lazy. You guys don't want to work hard at all. You think you deserve everything. You're the participation trophy generation. So all the things that everyone says about Gen Z they said about us, but like turned out to be not true. Like they were saying these things before we were like even in the workforce fully. Because millennials then became all about hustle culture. And the thing with hustle culture is that like you there was this belief that you could hustle and get somewhere and you could like many millennials became really successful like the two, like early 2000s. Not really, that's not millennials, but like 2000s. It was like you could hustle to get somewhere. You could hustle and have a cool job. You could hustle and like, there was sort of this like performance element to it of like, you know, like the Gary Vee of it all. This is the thing, like, if you want that life, great, go do that. But I, I the same way masculinity is like about not insisting on your masculinity, I think being a feminist is about not insisting that like your way is better. And like, if someone wants to be a trad wife, personally, like, I would say that what you see online is not for the most part, if they're monetizing, they're not a trad wife. Like, they're seriously monetizing. And I know real trad wives, I get it. Like, I get why that's appealing. Some people are just naturally, they really want to have kids, they want to like make their homes and they should do that. That's the thing. It's like, do that. If that works for you, like, try to pursue that life. I do think one thing that every young woman should examine and young man is the financial, like situation you're putting yourself in and why. And like there's a lot of danger, I think, in surrendering your financial well being and your like stability to another person, man or woman, to be honest. So that's one thing that I would caution people against when you're. Because it's not just about like, are you baking bread or are you going commuting to the office. It's like, how does that then play into like your income and what you can afford and the lifestyle you're living and like your skills and how does that person treat you emotionally, physically, everything. And these are complicated life questions. Life's hard. That's the one thing I'll say.
- [38:30]
Rachel Janvaza
Yeah, yeah. And you know that hustle culture piece of this too, you talk about. There's a woman named Amy Schoenthal who wrote a book called the Setback Cycle. And I talk with her a lot about this all the time, about the fact that millennials were talked about the exact same way that Gen Z is talked about. And maybe before it was like avocado toast, but now the complaints are over, like, work from home, whatever. And the other piece of this too, I mean, I know you're talking about that financial aspect and obviously, like, I think just what gets overlooked so often is that all of these issues are financial issues at the end of the day. And I think Gen Z oftentimes feels like this is coming back full circle to what we started with in the Beginning and sort of this earnestness. And I think, you know, Gen Z just wants, they want to be told like it is. They see through the myths, they see through the bullshit. Like, they don't want. There's no time because they've grown up amid so much chaos, right?
- [39:21]
Sammy Sage
The climate's gonna kill us, blah, blah,
- [39:23]
Rachel Janvaza
blah, or school shootings, whatever. There's just a million and one political violence and Covid and war and, and, and, and, and, and they just feel like they're constantly being gaslit about something they're supposed to achieve in some specific way that just hasn't kept up with the speed of our current reality. And they're tired of it. And so they're rewriting those norms on many different levels. And I think it all plays into this.
- [39:45]
Sammy Sage
I think that Gen z is absolutely 100% fucking right. And I am sick also of being, you know, it's limiting to be a millennial because you don't actually get to make any decisions. Like, unless you're J.D. vance somehow. Like, you don't actually. Although he's also bought by Peter Thiel, whatever. You don't actually get to like, implement any of the ideas in your idealistic head. It's like they, you know, growing up you were told, oh, you can change the world. Like, this is how it's supposed to be. Like, we also felt that we were sold this, like, lie. The difference is we were. We had some of our adulthood in a place where it was, it felt achievable for a period and it was achievable for a period. And like, I personally feel like I caught the last train, last plane out of Vietnam with my career and the, it, the problem ultimately is just that we live in this hyper capitalist, unregulated capitalist system where money owns the political system. And it has become so consolidated that it's impossible. The fact that you can't get anything done in Congress about school shootings and, you know, assault weapons because Congress is bought. It's like there's these just so many issues that if I were Gen Z, I would feel exactly the fucking same.
- [41:17]
Focus Group Participant 3
That's it.
- [41:18]
Rachel Janvaza
Yeah. And oftentimes it can lead to disengagement too, because you feel like, what's the point of engaging on the issue if nothing's going to change? The final thing that I want to touch on here was how these young women talked about friendships or romantic relationships across the political divide. This is all going on around them at all times, but it's also affecting their intimate relationships. And I think that Their take on it is a little more nuanced than some of the discourse can oftentimes be. So let's listen to what they had to say.
- [41:48]
Focus Group Participant 1
If someone's, like, gonna be super, super one way or another and isn't open minded and can't have a civil, calm conversation with me and gonna be pushy and it's gonna be rude to people for no reason, then it's like, yeah, no. But some people can have a stance that differs from mine. And I can still be your friend. Like, I have friends who don't agree with me who are, like, super on the other side. But if you can get past that, I think that is super important. And I'm a firm believer of you can learn so much from people who have different walks and have different beliefs in you by having a civil conversation.
- [42:17]
Rachel Janvaza
I'm.
- [42:17]
Focus Group Participant 1
I'm born and raised in Texas. All my friends grew up in Texas. I feel like the switch for us is we were a lot more liberal when we were younger, but as we grew up, we try. Kind of saw the craziness on both sides. And a lot of my personal situations, like my friendships, my. My partner too, he is conservative leaning, but honestly, he's more moderate too. We have. One of our best friends is transgender. One of our best friends, they just got engaged and they're a lesbian couple. One of my. My best friend growing up, he was gay. I mean, I've never. I've always had friends of all sorts of colors. And I. I think where I'm going, this is just like, I think people are starting to. Not so much. It's just very divided. I don't think a lot of women, at least my friends, want to be like, oh, I'm a liberal. Oh, I'm a conservative. Because of the shock that can bring
- [43:15]
Focus Group Participant 3
up if I'm trying to build a family with somebody and be in a long term relationship, I kind of want to be in a relationship where we're able to agree on core values that are very, very important to me. And so if we're not able to, like, agree politically in some sense, then I would definitely not be in a long term relationship with such a person.
- [43:37]
Focus Group Participant 2
I actually had a recent boyfriend who was very Republican, Very, like MAGA Republican. Unfortunately, didn't work out. But I would say for us, like, that was like, I feel like women emulate Republicanism different than men do in my personal opinion, because, like, my best friend, she's Republican, and she's never made me feel inferior for not voting that same way. She's never made me feel like we have. She never made me feel like she was racist or like, didn't like gay people or any of that, but the boyfriend did. And that is why our relationship wasn't able to work out. Which I think is interesting because they both voted for Trump, but they had very. They're both, I guess I wouldn't say they're different ends of the spectrum, but I don't know, I guess he was more. He was more like solidified. His opinions were like, my friend, like, she's like, like, like, like Riley, Riley, like, Riley says that she, like, she, her friends are getting married, they're lesbian. And she wasn't like. And she didn't. She doesn't feel type of way about that. Like, it's like, whatever, like, do what you want. But I think when men vote red, I don't know why he was very like, well, if you do that, then we can't. Like, like, I'm not down with that. You know what I mean? Like, my Republican friends that are woman, they're like, you know, I don't really care what you want. Like, I'm still gonna vote how I weigh. But you think it's interesting.
- [44:49]
Rachel Janvaza
Okay, so one thing that runs through a lot of the analysis of Gen Z is that they're less willing to date or befriend people with vastly different politics. And it depends. But what do you think is the healthy limit on that and how do you think about that limit for yourself?
- [45:08]
Sammy Sage
Well, my question is that you're saying that that's like what people say, but, like, that's not what I'm hearing in these responses. And this is why I find, I find focus groups and talking to people so much more interesting than polling data. Because, like, a poll is so limiting. You're within that person's like, realm of understanding of what the words mean. Like, who's this hypothetical person you wouldn't date? You know, because the way that I hear these responses is so much more reminiscent of how pretty much other than everyone, other than like hyper engaged voters and even people who are hyper engaged voters sometimes think about things. I think that people's political views, partially because most people just aren't that informed and these are all really complicated issues. You could spend your lifetime studying Medicare for all and you could be really up to date on that and still have no clue what you're talking about when it comes to foreign policy. So it's like for someone to be engaged, like, what does that even mean? People don't have fixed views. It's so different asking someone hypothetically, would you date XYZ person Than meeting a person. You know, you get to know them and their personality and they happen to have some view that you thought, I'd never date that person. And I think that this gets at like, like, so much complexity that often shows up in voting results that gets explained by, like, the economy or immigration, but is so much more like, intuitive or latent than those big issues. And maybe people are reasoning them along the lines of the economy or immigration, but, like, it's so much more about, like, the vibes and the feeling. And yeah, I think that what I just heard is much more representative of how people go about their lives. And what you hear in that also is that it's so, like, personality based. It's so, like, how does a person handle themselves around someone with these opposite political views? I think that if you take what you see online or in polling as like, the way people are, you end up with, you know, you can make broad generalizations, but that's very different than, like, talking to a person and hearing the way they feel about something or even encountering a real world example.
- [47:33]
Rachel Janvaza
Sammy Sage, diagnosing the problems with political partisanship and polarization today. But this is why I love listening to voters, because it surfaces so much more than you can get than just a headline or a singular data point. And this is why I've long admired what Sarah does with her focus groups and with this podcast, because it goes a level deeper and allows you to actually listen and analyze and hear the humanity. Like that is what this comes down to. It's about humanity. And you can disagree on something as simple as is a hot dog, a sandwich, and you can disagree on something as complex as the war in Iran, and yet at the end of the day, people are going to disagree and they know how to do that. And our political conversation oftentimes assumes that they don't know how to do that, which is really frustrating. Sammy Sage, thank you so much for joining us, everyone. Go check out morning announcements wherever you get your podcasts, and democracy in retrograde wherever you get your books, and we'll see you guys back here soon.
- [48:30]
Sammy Sage
Thanks, Rachel.