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- [00:00]
Monty Mader
The trad wife, anti birth control rhetoric is just red pill for women. It's just red pill for women. It's been rebranded, it's softened. I even hate the. The New Agey rhetoric of, well, when you're with the right man, you'll submit because you're in your feminine energy. Excuse me. First of all, first of all, like, aggression is feminine. Protection is feminine. Rage is feminine. Again, it narrows the window of where women can exist that you're not truly in your feminine un. You're submissive. Okay, you can go do that in your corner.
- [00:45]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. I'm so excited for today's podcast because our guest is someone I really admire and I have loved learning from over the past years. Monty Mader. Monty is a cultural critic, a musician, a podcaster who was raised deeply steeped in Christian fundamentalism and conservative politics. She pursued theological studies in Israel and spent her life immersed in environments that emphasized obedience and traditional gender roles. However, over time, she began to question and eventually deconstruct her belief systems. She has now become a powerful voice for cultural change and offers everything from Bible study classes to people who are also deconstructing their faith to a podcast called Flipping Tables, which is a religious deconstruction of alt right fundamentalism, American history, and our political climate. Monty uses her experiences in Christian fundamentalism, Christian nationalism, and theocratic politics to help others understand religious dogma and our whitewashed version of American history. And as we watch, these Christian fundamentalists associated with this administration use religion to degrade women, to justify war, to reverse progress. I wanted to have Monty on to discuss women's rights, our vote, our place in the world, and our place in this country, and what it would look like for both men and women if these extremists get their way. So, without further ado, please welcome my guest, podcast host, musician, and writer, Monte Mater.
- [02:09]
Welcome, Monty.
- [02:10]
Monty Mader
Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.
- [02:12]
Lee McGowan
Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for joining me. I've been such a fan of yours for years, and you're just an absolute badass. And in my mind, you are this intellectual and theological superstar. So I wanted to have you on for many, many reasons, but particular, particularly as we watch America's growing contempt and maybe, dare I say, hatred for women right now. You were raised in this particularly fundamentalist society with very traditional gender roles. When you look around at what's going on right now with this administration, and its enablers, from the Heritage foundation all the way to the Griper movement. What do you think that they have planned for women?
- [02:47]
Monty Mader
Thankfully, they're becoming much more clear about it. There's a lot less pretense than it used to be. But what's happening right now was exactly the movement I was trained to be a part of. I was, I was also trained, because of intelligence, to be one of the emissaries of their bidding, if you will, because they always use a few women to help keep the other women in line. But the ultimate goal is to restrict women to the home, to strip them of their civil rights, their right to vote, to re. Establish headship voting, create a society where women have no recourse, where a woman's only means of survival is marriage, family, husband, that she can't leave regardless of how terrible he is, because it's an institution built on hierarchy where the male headship is absolute and God given. So therefore. Therefore you cannot rebuff that headship. And that's eventually the goal.
- [03:32]
Lee McGowan
Wow. Okay, so what if you don't believe in American Christianity? You're just supposed to go along with that. It's sort of like American Taliban kind of situation.
- [03:40]
Monty Mader
It's exactly the American Taliban. It's why so many far right groups are actually very supportive of how the Taliban treats women. They would like to do the same thing just under a different brand. Ultimately, it is about Christian nationalism, unlike Christianity, because there's a big difference between the two things. Christianity is about Christ and the world and everybody's place in it. Christian nationalism is about country and power. Is, is really a primary distinction. But within Christian nationalism there is no space for religious plurality. They believe that you have the right to worship how they think you should worship, in alignment with their doctrine, in alignment with their faith. They do not believe that you have the right to practice, live in love as you see fit. Because if this wasn't about power, they would simply be, oh, well, this is what I believe. I'm going to go over here to this corner and this is how we're going to live. And this is what we think is right. And in our FAI families, we're not going to have the women vote because these women are still voting in these conservative movements as of right now because they need the votes. But we, you know, if it was really about just them believing that that's how it is supposed to be, that's how they would live instead of trying to legislate it on other people. But they don't believe in religious Plurality.
- [04:44]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. So the whole concept of the separation of church and state, or there being no national religion or everything our country was kind of based on is not what they believe. And it's a total sort of usurping of those ideas, which is why they seem so easily able to adjust any constitutional rights as it fits to them.
- [05:03]
Monty Mader
Yes. And that's also why they peddle the idea, the lie so hard, that we're a Christian nation, we were founded on Christian principles versus being founded. So very clearly in our founding documents, in the writings of the founding fathers on the separation of church and state. Even, even Roger Williams, who founded the Baptist denomination, understood the security and the safety that the church gets from the separation of church and state. But the reason they pedal that lie so hard is to be able to make an excuse to institute their religion as law.
- [05:32]
Lee McGowan
So we're seeing this huge rise in Christian nationalism, which, as you define, is completely different than Christianity itself. And I think about everyone from Pete Hegseth and his opinions on women, women in combat, women who are abused in the armed forces. Don't bother coming to tell us that because you're just ruining some guy's career, to the spiritual and thought leaders like Joel Webbin and Wesley Todd saying that women should just shut up and stop competing with men. And like you're saying, promoting this family vote idea where women don't get to call the shots anymore. I mean, clearly these men have a very clear sense of what women's place is in society, and they're part of a growing movement to not only put us back in that place, but make sure we can't get ourselves out of it again by taking our vote. I think of everything from the SAVE act, which is clearly a way to disenfranch women, even though they say it's a voter ID bill, to this ever growing conversation to repeal the 19th Amendment completely. And this is no longer a fringe idea. Right? Like, this is really where they're functioning from.
- [06:34]
Monty Mader
Yes. And then this has been. I mean, I grew up in the 90s, and this is. This has been since I was a kid. It was never fringe. It was just quiet. So in the church I grew up in, it was very much played as like, well, ideally, you know, the father of the household would vote for everyone in the family. Ideally, your dad would take care of you until your husband can take care of you. So the belief system was the same, the proposition was different. Because if they came out and said, we're going to take away women's right to vote, if they came out and said, we're going to attack birth control, which is also part of this movement. Then they would lose the vote, they would lose people, it would derail. So they had to play subtle long enough to get enough power, and now they believe they have enough power, which is why what are the great things about what's happening? Which is a terrible sentence to say, but one of the great things that's happening is there's no pretense anymore. There's no pretense. There's no hiding it. They're being very clear about what it is they want to do. But that has always been the goal. This, the quiverful movement, which is the foundation of this headship voting, this idea of pushing women back in the home. That feminism is the true great enemy, has really been building since the 70s. The rise of the new moral majority that that showed up after Nixon is really where all of this came from. And it became this political movement that. To hijack American systems and create it in their own image.
- [07:55]
Lee McGowan
Yeah.
- [07:55]
And they've been very, very effective at doing it. It's sort of where the abortion, you know, came from. It's how Reagan got elected. It's how the Heritage foundation first found themselves, you know, basically dictating Republican policy. I think about Scott Yanner, who is part of the Heritage foundation, and how he recently did a speech saying that every effort has to be made to not recruit women into engineering or med school or law school or the trades, that we should be celebrating male excellence in all facets of life because successful men mean happier citizens in a stronger nation. And I'm like, yeah, maybe because unhappy men kill people, right? They kill people from their spouse to school, children to themselves. They rape and torture children. We've seen this now that we're in this position now, where unhappy men act out on society. So in some ways you could argue his. His argument that if men had all the power and men had all the jobs and women were subjugated to them, they would be happier. And you're like, but society would not be happier. The men would be happier. He went on to say that medicated, quarrelsome, meddlesome women gain their meaning through the participation in the global market, but it makes them agents of the new world and not new life. And those kind of women are the ones that are the backbone of every left wing cosmopolitan party. And he's talking about everything from Britain to the Democratic Party here in America. But if women have fewer options, they're going to have to have more children, then they will be bound more tightly to the men in their life. And it's this idea that we have to drag women back to when they only had the choice to submit. And that's going to make the country a better place. And I have to tell you, as women who also grew up in the 90s and did not grow up in a Christian fundamentalist environment, this seems antithetical to everything I was taught, which was, you can be anything you want to be. You know, you can do anything you want to do. Women are just as good as boys. And now I'm going, oh, that was never how a lot of these men ever believed.
- [09:56]
Monty Mader
I caught the tail end of it because I was, I was a little, a little in 90s, but it was still happening. And I remember those conversations occurring and it just has grown in steam and, and been rebranded going throughout all of this. But it's really about dependency because there, and there's a, there's a couple gaping, enormous flaws in this logic that they refuse to address. And the first is these repeated claims that the, that the natural state of woman is in submission, having children. If it was natural, it wouldn't require violence, force indoctrination or a legal system to enforce it. It's not natural. It's natural for some women. But the only way that you can believe that all women are meant to be in the home with kids, this is all of their natural state, is if you do not believe that women are unique people. They're just vessels. And in their belief system, the womb is a weapon of this ongoing Christian war. That's the first problem. And then the second problem is that you have 51% of the population who is now a major player in the workforce in small businesses. You are talking about crushing your own economy for the sake of your own greed and your own selfishness. And you're right that when, when men are unhappy, the response is violence in. And we do have this kind of ongoing question of, you know, quote, the male loneliness epidemic. I call it male accountability. There's a, there's a series of flaws within this argument that they won't address because ultimately it's just about getting as much power as they can and entrapping women, which is this, this huge push to have as many kids as you can get married young because when you're barefoot, pregnant, no work history, and they don't want to vote for a livable wage because as pro life as they claim to be, they sure don't care about you. Once you get here, once you're here and you're actually born, they don't give a shit about you. The goal is to keep women so dependent they can't leave ultimately, because if you can't, if you're in an abusive marriage or, God forbid, your husband dies and you have no work history, you can only get minimum wage. Our minimum wage isn't enough to raise children on. Then you. What's your option? Well, your option is to get married again as quickly as you can.
- [12:02]
Lee McGowan
Absolutely. I mean, the Heritage foundation, who we should remind people are the people that wrote Project 2025, which we are systematically checking off during the Trump administration. They're laying this out now, as you're saying, without apology. They're not trying to soften the delivery anymore. They literally believe in a world where women are not fully human beings who are not moving through the world or society with autonomy. But there's sort of pieces that can be placed inside this structure just, you know, designed by men to serve men, and they can decide what we are and are not allowed to do. I mean, there is very clearly an active movement to remove women from the workplace, to remove women from higher education. And just so people understand, when this government defunded the Women's Bureau of Department of labor, they basically said that helping women in the workforce is a relic of the past. We no longer need to do that. Many ways. The same way they argued that we no longer needed the Civil Rights act because racism was over. Women's apprenticeships are being cut. Women are not being elevated in the military when they deserve it. Military committees in general to advance when in the armed services have been shut down. Private companies have stopped reporting on women in leadership. The New York Times just reported that 212,000 women have left the American workforce since January, while 44,000 men have entered it. The gender pay gap is actually widening, not shrinking. And 45% of American women are their family's primary breadwinner, with that number going up to 70% when it comes to black women. So it seems like, like you said, they're actually rid of their own tax base. If you take these opportunities from people who are such a huge part of the workforce and you put them back in the home, what really happens is more kids go hungry, less rent is paid, and your tax revenue for your country just dips. What do you think about that?
- [13:56]
Monty Mader
I think ultimately they don't care and they really believe that they can replace the entire system with men. It's one of those. What was Trump's quote? Don't buy your. Don't buy your child, 17 dolls or whatever he says. Yeah, just less. Yeah, just get by with that one. Yeah, give two dolls, whatever it was. But the, the whole point of it is, is like, we'll just buckle up and it'll work out. It'll work out. And that's the same thing. They. I don't know if you saw Isabel Brown at cpac. She was the girl that got on stage and was like, if you're not teaching your kids to have. Is have kids before they're ready and more than they can afford, this plays into this ideology of your God's gonna help you figure it out. But then when you have more kids that you than you can afford and you're neglecting them and can't feed them and abuse them, then they're like, well, why did you have so many kids? And what's your problem? Why were you so irresponsible? But it's ultimately this idea of we're just going to get power into the hands of men and then everything's going to be fine and then it's all going to work out and you just need to shut up and deal with it. Because here's the other thing. They have this, this rhetoric going, and this has especially been popularized in the manosphere and red pill and the gripers. This idea that women's right to vote is what's ruined the country, Right? Yep. That women, leftist, me, childless, leftist, liberal women are the problem. But here's the thing. We have never. We have never had a female president. We have never had a female led Congress. Only recently did we have a female state legislature that even had an equal amount of women. Men have had their hands on the reins of power this entire time. There has not been a moment of time in the history of this nation where women have led. So if you have a problem with the results, blame the men in power. You want to walk around claiming that men built everything, you have a problem with it, then blame the men. You don't get to give them credit for building everything and then be mad about what's been built. Yes, women have had the right to vote, but women have had no leadership, no power, no control. We have not spearheaded the country at any point, and they still want to create this dialogue as if we're to blame, as if we're the ones leading the charge. And we have never led the charge ever. I happen to be of the opinion that if women were leading, we would be in a much better position. But there, the whole rhetoric that women have somehow been able to take the vote and skew everything so far that we're the reason everything's falling. No, the reason everything's falling is because since Ronald Reagan in particular, you have allowed them to give tax breaks to the wealthy while they claim they're standing for you and they're telling you it's going to trickle down on your head and what they're doing is pissing on your head and you're allowing them to do it over and over and over and over even though they have shown you they don't give a about you and now you're blaming everyone who's around you suffering the same instead of the people at the top that are emptying your wallet. But the indoctrination is so smart, the conservative movement is so organized and they obviously lack moral scruples to hold their leadership to account. And it makes them very effective.
- [16:48]
Lee McGowan
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- [19:34]
Monty Mader
Quince.com politicsgirl but the indoctrination is so smart. The conservative movement is so organized and they obviously lack moral scruples to hold their leadership to account. And it makes them very effective.
- [19:47]
Lee McGowan
No, they're incredibly effective. I say all the time that we are living through a 40 year plan come to fruition. Just think about like abortion and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They were like we don't like this. And they weren't like well I guess progress happened. They were like well let's set up a plan to reverse this at some point. They do much better long term planning. They are much better at strategy. I'm looking at these turning Point USA conferences that are run by women who all have jobs who are making bank to convince young women to find a husband, not work and as you said have more babies than they can afford are ready for. Which is like you said, it's a direct quote. Like let's talk about the glamorized way this trad wife culture, like what we're left with if these people get their way because there's a reason. Like I think it's really funny that they said that medicated women were the problem because I was like, do you know how many women had to be medicated back when my mother was young just to keep them sane in their Household. The concept of mother's little helper was to keep women who were trapped in houses and lives that they hated with spouses they couldn't leave because they had nowhere to go. They, I mean, Valley of the Dolls was written all about women that just had to take medication just to like stay alive.
- [20:54]
Monty Mader
Outrageously drug addicted to amphetamines, barbiturates heavily prescribed. And the suicide rate was through the roof. The way that the women's suicide rate plummeted when no fault divorce was passed. Like we have this illusion and again, it was a propaganda campaign to get women who had joined the workforce during the war back in the home because they, again, it's this whole, well, this is the way it's always been. This is traditional. No it's not. Prior to World War families, you were in multifamily situations. It was too expensive to build a new home. Every time someone got married, women were, had their parents with them or his parents with them. She was never in this situation of having to care for the whole home, all the children and work at the same time. And, and as far as work goes, they're like, oh, women didn't work. Yes they did. Wealthy women didn't. But poor women have always worked. They were always seamstresses, maids, they were always outside of the home working. They just got paid much less for it and got a lot more abuse from it. And so this idea of this being the norm, no, it wasn't the norm. Until the 50s, through a propaganda campaign, heavily medicated women that started to fracture because women were so miserable that they started telling their daughters, don't do this. Like the reason that jewelry is a gift, a wedding gift from a mom is it's meant to be an emergency fund in case you have to run. That's what it's for. And so this, this illusion, and that's again like marriage and partnership can be
- [22:19]
Lee McGowan
so, so, so, so beautiful.
- [22:21]
Monty Mader
So beautiful when you're with the right person. But the reality is, is that life happens sometimes you meet somebody who you don't actually meet the real them until 24 business months in. Sometimes you get with someone who falls prey to addiction and in that addiction because becomes someone that you're not safe with. And there's all these, we all know this, right? They're, they're painting this fairy tale that very rarely exists, unfortunately, because humans are fallible and we're not perfect. And they, they always pitch it from this perspective of we're protecting women, right? It's the same thing. The way that they're attacking birth control right now. They're going from the side effects side of things. When birth control is as safe as Viagra, like, it's as safe as Viagra. But what the, what the underlying assumption is is that, well, we're protecting women because she's not smart enough and capable enough to be in the doctor's office with her doctor and make that decision. We need to make it for her, to protect her. This language around protection is infantilization. It's this idea that a woman isn't smart enough or capable enough to be able to make that decision knowing those side effects or a decision about abortion on her own. And again, the goal is to take power away. That's ultimately what it is. But the rhetoric, even if you just sit with it for a little bit of time, collapses on itself pretty quickly. I really worry about young women because I know when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I was so impressionable, I was so naive, and I was really. I was part of Christian nationalism. I didn't start deconstructing until I was 23, when I really started to see the rest of the world. And I was realizing things didn't add up. But there's so many young women that are falling prey to this, and they think, they think they're serving God. They think they're going to have this blissful life, they're going to meet the perfect man, everything's going to be great. And what's going to end up happening is they're not going to have an education. They're going to start having kids at 21. And if something does happen, happen, they're stuck. And that makes me very, very afraid because I mentor a girl right now. She's 23, she has two kids, she's married. And we recently had a great conversation where she was like, I'm so glad I'm married and I love my husband, but if this doesn't work out, like, I realized I didn't have to do this. I thought I did. I thought I had to do this to be correct in society and to be loved as a woman. And I'm so glad she's learning that. But she already has two kids now, so if something does happen, she's in a tough position. I worry about a lot of, especially the, the late teen girls that are kind of falling into this movement because red pill, the trad wife, anti birth control rhetoric is just red pill for women. It's just red pill for women. It's been rebranded, it's softened. I Even hate the, the New Agey rhetoric of, well, when you're with the right man, you'll submit because you're in your feminine energy. Excuse me, first of all, first of all, like, aggression is feminine, protection is feminine, rage is feminine. Again, it narrows the window of where women can exist, that you're not truly in your feminine unless you're submissive. Okay, you can go do that in your corner.
- [25:26]
Lee McGowan
Take a look at the animal kingdom. That ain't it. You know what I mean? Like, exactly. Lions, the male lion lies around, the male gorilla lies around. They don't like to have a competitor. The, any other alpha of that group is, is drawn away, and it's the women who hunt, the women who fight, the women who protect. And I think that that is ridiculous that we would assume that that was natural when everyone knows that we've known for years that a woman can like lift a car if her baby's stuck under it. Like, women are all power. And I think the thing is, is that these Christian thought leaders are telling us that society fell apart when women got power, when women got the vote, when women left the home, that liberal women are the bane of society. It all feels very original sin to me that women are to blame. And I'm sure that must feel very normal to you if you grew up in that kind of society.
- [26:11]
Monty Mader
You're used to it. I mean, that is kind of a core teaching. So the, the foundation of especially fundamentalism and Christian nationalism is, you know, the first thing they teach you is that when you're born, you're sinful, you're going to hell, you're broken, you can't do anything good. Only God can do that for you. So they lay a foundation, you not being good enough, you're sinful, you can't trust your own intuition, right? Trust not your own understanding. So you grow up with this, this self questioning and you never really learn to trust your own intuition. They train that out of you very, very young. Then there's an added layer for women based around original sin. Now, Genesis 1 and 2 are actually two different creation stories. They come from two different manuscripts, but they also contradict each other. The order of creation is different. In Genesis 1, male and female are created at the same time. And they are representation of God's image, the spectrum of God's image. And in Genesis 2, Eve comes from the rib. That's the reason that the legend of Lilith originated in the first place. The Alphabet of Ben Sora was trying to explain the contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.
- [27:13]
Lee McGowan
Explain to people who don't know Lilith.
- [27:16]
Monty Mader
Lilith is, according to legend and myth, she is Adam's first wife. So if you believe the legend of Lilith, she is the woman mentioned in Genesis 1. And so what happens is man and woman are created at the same time. Lilith refuses to submit specifically in the text, she specifically refuses to submit sexually. She will not take the sexually subservient position. And so then she ends up leaving the garden because of refusing to submit and she becomes essentially a demon. Is, is, you know, and now she's associated with nothing.
- [27:46]
Lee McGowan
Associated with Satan. Yeah.
- [27:48]
Monty Mader
Yes. When really.
- [27:50]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, yes.
- [27:51]
Monty Mader
And a succubus, all of those kind of things. And then Eve is chapter two. But the legend of Lilith was, was created to try to explain the contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And the contradiction is, well, they were written in different time periods and they're different manuscripts. But one of the things that happens so you have that first layer of fundamentalism where they teach you that you're worthless. You can't trust your intuition, only trust your male leaders because God ordained their authority. But then they add on that layer of well, women are. When you as a young girl are like, well, why do I have have to submit? Well, why don't I get to lead? Why don't. And they say, well, it's because Eve sinned first. And it is not lost on me that Eve's first sin was eating and gaining knowledge. That's Eve's sin. Right. You will become like the gods. And so that becomes a justification. And, and it's the reason that the story was written that way. It was a justification in the society at a time of how do we justify the subjugation of women? They did it then. It's still being used now, you know, thousands of years later. And in its selective literalism, we can look at other parts of the Bible that they decide we're not keeping anymore. Like, we can all eat bacon now, we can wear mixed linen. But whenever it comes to conveniency of power and hierarchy, well, we're going to keep those parts literal. And while we ignore all of the verses about adultery, we're going to keep the ones about gay sex because we don't like those people. But we're going to follow the serial adulterer, which is the most condemned sexual sin in the Bible. And it's also, it's the reason that abuse is so rampant in the church. I mean with Robert Morris just got out of prison for a six month stint abusing a 12 year old for five years.
- [29:26]
Lee McGowan
We should tell people that Robert Morris is deeply connected to this administration. He's not just a random theologian.
- [29:32]
Monty Mader
Yeah, he was. He was Donald Trump's spiritual advisor his first term. And. And we see this over and over and over and over because you've established you have created an excuse for unbridled hierarchy, which just means power without accountability. And it becomes more about protecting image than it does people. I. I live in Nashville, and the Southern Baptist Convention had to sell their headquarters here to pay for the cost of all of these sexual abuse cases and allegations. They had kept a list of over 700 credibly accused church leaders that they didn't disclose. They just reshuffled people. But it's the same thing. They would rather protect image than protect people. And we. We've seen it with the documentary about the victims of Doug Wilson's teachings. And it's always. It's always women and children that take the heat every time.
- [30:21]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. And of course, we can't forget that all of this is taking place in a culture and society where absolutely no one is being held responsible for anything in the Epstein files, which is, of course, rape, subjugation, torture of girls and women, some boys, and allegedly murder, too. Yeah, murder, murder. And if you have enough power, you get away with it. We should probably also remind people that the only people in Trump's cabinet that have been held responsible for anything yet are the women. Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi. Recently, Trump's been raging about Carolyn Levitt not being good enough. These are all the women who have betrayed other women to serve the patriarchy, to serve Christianity. I think you were saying that there's always a few women out there that are meant to keep other women in line, but they're also the first ones
- [31:02]
thrown to the wolves.
- [31:04]
Monty Mader
Yeah, In. In when the nominations were coming through after the election, I specifically told people, and I wish I could find the video, because I posted a video about it. I said, they're going to nominate these women. It's going to convince white women specifically that, oh, this movement isn't sexist. They have women leadership. They, you know, the liberals are just raging. But I told people, I said, they will be the first to go, and they will be scapegoated. And also, I think Caroline Levitt has an out. She's created an out by getting pregnant. And I think that that was intentional, because as much as I dislike her, she's not stupid. And she knew what was going to happen. She knew that hammer was going to come down and walking away because she's pregnant and wants to be with her family and take care of her kids is the best way for her to make an escape without being embarrassed the way Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem have been. But Tulsi Gabbard's gonna go to and they're going to replace them with loyalist men, the yes Men. And the same thing with I mean, the reason they're not promoting women in the military, the reason they're getting rid of women in leadership is they want to establish yes men in every facet of authority, top to bottom to do their bidding.
- [32:05]
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- [35:30]
Monty Mader
politics girl they want to establish yes men in every facet of authority, top to bottom, to do their bidding.
- [35:39]
Lee McGowan
Which is interesting because people often say, I mean, you said earlier in this, if submission was really our natural instinct, you wouldn't need so many laws, so many rules, so much violence to do it. In many ways, men are better at submitting to other men.
- [35:52]
Monty Mader
They're so much better at submitting than women are.
- [35:54]
Lee McGowan
They, they like authority figures. They, they submit to it. They'll, they'll go in full force. I find it interesting that they spend so much time saying it's our natural state when we're the hardest group to control.
- [36:03]
Monty Mader
Because here's if again, if it was a natural state, women would not keep getting up over and over and fighting back over and over and over. It would be much easier to just submit. And we don't. And throughout history, we don't. We get up and we fight again. And there is no one who is more submissive than a conservative man. Man. They want a more masculine man to tell them how to be a man to tell them what to do. But think about it. Even in marriages, you know, when a woman's talking about she wants help at the home because she's also working outside the home, what does the husband say? Well, just make me a list. Tell me what you want me to do. They want to show up, check the boxes. Someone tells them exactly what to do, where to be, how to get it done, and then they want to go home. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if we're going to talk about natural states for the bulk of a certain population, that's the natural state. Women are much more free, much more harder to control. But again, the. The whole. That doesn't fit in line with the rhetoric, and it certainly doesn't give them access to power.
- [37:01]
Lee McGowan
People love your work online because you have this ability to explain things that are very complicated and often very cerebral in a very clear way. And I was listening to you recently talk about the difference between misogyny and misandry. Do you want to talk to us about what, what you were saying? Because I think that people don't understand. They think that misogyny is just a hatred of. Of women and, and missandry is a hatred of men. And they're exactly the same. And you're like, no, that's not actually the case.
- [37:26]
Monty Mader
Very, very different. So misandry is the very logical response to misogyny. And it also, there's what you have to think about when you're addressing things like this is proximity to power. So misandry is a. A woman's not born with misandry the way that a man's not born with misogyny. Misandry develops after repeated assaults, harassment, mistreatment. Misandry causes a woman to maybe hurt a man's feelings, feelings she'll withdraw from men. She doesn't want to engage with them. She might be a little mean. Misogyny gets women killed. Misogyny causes a man to stab a woman to death because she ignored his cat call. Misogyny leads to domestic violence. Misogyny leads to the removal of civil rights. Because when we're looking at a proximity to power, Missandry holds no proximity to power. Again, what we're doing, when we equate misandry with misogyny, we are equating the value of a woman's life with the value of a man's feelings. Those carry very, very different weight. And if you treat and you cure the disease known as misogyny, misandry disappears because it's a symptom. It's not the problem. But again, when we look at that proximity to power and the weight of the outcome, we don't hear about women, women attacking a man because he declined their advances. Like, women aren't doing that. But we are seeing Gisele Pillakot's case. We're seeing the 70,000 men signal chat about how to rape their wives and sisters and mothers. And. And we women are not responding that way. So Missandry is kind of. It's the same thing that they say when they're like, oh, well, women have false allegations about sexual assault, which sec. False allegations range about 2 to 10%, which matches every other violent crime, false allegations, car theft, abuse, murder, all those things, all those false. All. It's the same. It is no different than any other crime. And what that means is that at minimum, nine times out of 10, a woman's telling the truth. But what it is is it's a scapegoat to say, you have to be perfect before I'll acknowledge problems. And as long as you're not perfect, I refuse accountability. And if. And I tell men that I speak with, I'm like, if you are more bothered about 10% at the most false allegations than you are the 90% of the time that it's true. You are the problem. And this is not a conversation I can have have with you. But they do the same thing with misandry. Oh, these women hate men. No, women are talking about your bad behavior. Women are addressing it. Women are refusing to put up with it. Oh, my God, she said something that hurts your feelings. When the inverse. The other direction with misogyny is women are texting their friends to go on a date, sending a picture where they're meeting. I'm going to check in with you so that I'm safe. I'm making sure I don't. I don't let him pick me up because I don't want him to know where I live. There's a very, very different weight of power and outcome that is. That's causing that. And misandry is the result of misogyny.
- [40:15]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. Misogyny is.
- [40:16]
Is almost a system of beliefs and
- [40:18]
a power structure that devalues women that puts them in jeopardy. I remember watching a TED Talk once where a guy wheeled out an entire huge blackboard, and he put a line down the middle of the blackboard, and on one side he put men, and on one side, he put women. And he's asked the audience, he said, okay, men, what do you do in your daily life to make sure you don't get raped? And some guy was like, don't go to prison. And he was like, okay, don't go to prison.
- [40:41]
Monty Mader
He wrote, don't go to jail.
- [40:43]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. He was like, what else? And they were all like. And he's like, okay, you guys think about that. Let's go to the women. And it literally never stopped. They were like, don't wear a ponytail while running. You know, don't walk to your car at night. Make sure you don't park by the. This. Do this.
- [40:55]
Like it was.
- [40:56]
And it went on until he just kept writing and writing and writing until the women's entire side of the blackboard was filled with things they have to think of and. And do to not be attacked in their society. And then he came back to the men and he said, have you thought of something else other than not going to prison? And, like, every man in the room was, like, silent. They couldn't believe what had just happened. And I was like, I think that's the thing. Like, it's. It goes back to that old quote from Margaret Atwood that said that men are afraid women will laugh at them, and women are afraid men will kill them. And I think that we need to remember that misandry can hurt men's feelings. Like, if you say, I don't like men, men are awful. Misogyny kills women. Like you said, 60% of women are killed or murdered by someone they know. Male homicides are typically a stranger. But violence against women is overwhelmingly done in private spaces by people close to them. So we can't pretend that misogyny, misandry have the same weight or consequence. And we also can't pretend that if we trap women back in homes with private partners, we're not asking for many of them to die.
- [41:56]
Monty Mader
Well, we saw that during Covenant when women couldn't leave the house. You know, like cities everywhere, bodies started turning up because these women couldn't escape. And now the man is also stressed because of the pandemic or because he's drinking, because he's home all day. We already saw what happened when you lock women back in the home and they can't leave. We have so much data. And I do think. I think that the prison analogy is a really good picture because I am actually grateful that men don't have to walk around worried about being raped all the time. I'm so glad. I'm. I'm really glad that you don't have that problem. But when you don't have that problem, you don't necessarily understand. Prison becomes helpful because then they get it. Like, the weight of misogyny doesn't sink into a man until you force him to analyze what would you do if you were put in prison? Because when there's no women to treat this way, men will treat other men this way. And now you become the prey, you become the target. That's when we can actually have a meaningful conversation about the impact of misogyny and the danger that women face. Because when men are left to their own devices and in a place of just all men, they will find a man to do it, too.
- [42:57]
Lee McGowan
Listen, I think this is why I've been saying for a really long time that I'm absolutely ready for the matriarchy. I think people get really confused when I say that because they think, oh, you just want women to be in charge of everything. And I'm like, no, I. Here's the thing. That's not what matriarchy is. And like, matriarchy, at the end of the day, it's like, it's not women on top instead of men on top. It's children on top, the weakest on children on top. Who are we holding up? Right? Like, who are we?
- [43:22]
Monty Mader
The future on top.
- [43:23]
Lee McGowan
The poor, the. Yes. And like, if we can make sure that the children have everything they need, clean water, good education, safe place to live, safe society. Everyone in that society benefits. A matriarchy takes the collective as a whole, and it's a lot more working together and holding the weakest up so that everyone else can thrive. Whereas patriarchy is literally man on top, everyone else below. And it's a completely different thought. What are your thoughts on the matriarchy?
- [43:51]
Monty Mader
Oh, I'm so here for it. I'm so here for it. And I think what we're seeing again, and one of the things that keeps me hopeful, because I know a lot of people are like, oh, my God, everything's burning. What do we do? I love that there's no pretense now with all These different movements, but especially we see the patriarchy struggling for breath. It's dying. We're in a transition period and it's going to be messy and it's going to be rough, but we are in this huge transition period. And I think what we're seeing is a lot of ancient wisdom kind of come to the front. There is a Lakota proverb that says, we don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children. And I think as we start to shift our view towards that, I mean, that one, that's naturally matriarchy, but it's also better for everyone. The people who need the most protection, the most, love the most support. The people that guarantee the future of all society and of people are the ones who are the focal point, not a few stragglers at the top that are still in office at 118 just to grab that last little handful of power. And so I think it's a really positive shift. And I do think that it's really important to teach people what matriarchy means. Right? Because we saw how hurt men got over the Barbie movie and it's like, that's not. That's not we. It's proving a point. It's letting you see the shoe on the other foot. It's art. That's not matriarchy, though. Matriarchy holds the children up first.
- [45:11]
Lee McGowan
I mean, that's brilliant. Before you go, knowing what you know now, what do you think of those of us who don't want to go down this patriarchal Christian nationalist route should be doing in this country to counter this road that we are clearly on? There's a reason people are nervous, because they can see we're actually on this road now. It's a real fear because I think it's a real possibility. What do you think we should be doing right now?
- [45:36]
Monty Mader
Now? So the first thing I would say is, if you're someone who didn't grow up in this movement, you need to learn about it. You. You need to be knowledgeable enough that you can have this conversation. I call it speaking Christianese, because ultimately we're in a position where you have to know. I would recommend Katherine Stewart's books, Money Lies in God and Power Worshipers for sure. But you have to know enough that you can hold your ground with it. For women, if you get married right now, which I love that for you, don't change your name. Name. Don't change your name right now. If you want to change and take your husband's name later. By all means do that. Do not do it right now. It is too dangerous. I, I'm, I would be too nervous to get married. Like me personally, because of the way that they're trying to change the laws. You have got to fight with everything you have because they have been so clear about what they want to take away. And they mean it the same way they meant it. You remember they said we're not coming after Roe. That's crazy. It's a bad about states rights. They have lied their whole way. They have that and now they're being clear. So we have to believe them. And that means running for school boards, showing up to school board meetings, that means city council, town halls, making sure you are there, you are present. Because the phrase that I use is you can't take your fist to a gunfight. Understand that these people do not believe in the rights of other people to determine their own destiny, determine their own faith. They believe in force and coercion. And I understand that people have a lot of fear around protesting, around pushing back around, being vocal. Use your voice now before you don't have one. And I understand that fear. But if we don't push back now, these people have no issue running over anyone that gets in their way. They have no issue subjugating people. I mean, we're watching red pill creators now justify slavery. We're watching people with theological backgrounds use the Bible to justify human trafficking. And so we are in a moment, and I understand that this is the hardest for parents. Parents, right, because you have a, you have a little person who's dependent on you. And also we have created a, especially a healthcare system where your ability to take your child to the doctor is tied to your job. So you speak out, you lose your job, you're in a bind. I don't want to be unsympathetic to those concerns and which is why I take such a hard stance as a single person with no kids, because I feel like that's my role because I don't have a child depending on me, but we also all have to show up, up and we have to fight like your life depends on it. Because it does. Because we are dealing with an absolutely ruthless movement that not only do I believe we can win, I believe we will, but we also have to be very serious about who, and I'm going to use a strong word, who our enemy is. I grew up with this idea of American exceptionalism, that America was the greatest, freest, most Christian nation. And I obviously learned a lot of that's not true. But it doesn't mean that we can't be exceptional in the future. Future. It doesn't mean that we can't look at our future and say, this is what I want to build. But it means that we, we have beaten them back before. This is not the first time in history that this type of fundamentalism has reared its ugly head. We've beaten them back before, we can beat them back now, but we have to take it seriously. And that means showing up to vote. That means protesting. That means being at every local meeting. This started locally. They started locally by taking over school boards. You have to get out. And I know that it's terrifying for people, but we have to use our voices now before we lose the opportunity to do that. Especially as women.
- [48:55]
Lee McGowan
Especially as women.
- [48:57]
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Like, I just appreciate you joining me so much. I hope you will come back again. I love talking to you.
- [49:03]
Monty Mader
Love to. Anytime.
- [49:04]
Lee McGowan
Tell people how they can follow your work though, and they can follow your work moving forward because you're doing a lot of really great things.
- [49:09]
Monty Mader
So you can find me at Monty Mater everywhere and it's M o n T e M a D E R on all socials and then montemater.com and
- [49:17]
Lee McGowan
then they can follow your music there too. And you do a Bible study, which I think is so cool for people who like, really, truly are Christian and feel like that. But this isn't the Christianity that I grew up in or that I want to support. I love that you're doing that work. It's just such important work and I'm so, so grateful you came to talk to us today.
- [49:34]
Monty Mader
Thank you so much for having me.
- [49:37]
Lee McGowan
So that was Monty Mader reminding us that the Christian nationalists are now saying the quiet part out loud that they don't believe women should have a role in public facing society. That for them it is all about dependency creating an excuse for unbridled hierarchy and deciding who has worth and who does not. So if that's not something you agree with, now is the time to fight with everything you have before the levers of power are removed from our grasp. These people aren't pretending anymore, so neither can we. I want to thank Monty for joining us today and you for caring enough about a just and and fair world to be here. Remember, we don't inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children. So let's make sure we're doing what's best for them. Until next week. Pga, before you go, I just want to remind you that this administration is silencing every voice that doesn't toe the party line. They don't care about the truth. They want state run propaganda for a controlled society. Which is why we need to fund independent media as much as possible. If you learn something from the work that I do if you would like to get this podcast ad free delivered directly to your inbox along with my kitchen rants and TV appearances, please consider becoming a member of Politics Girl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up. If you are already a premium member of this podcast, thank you for your support. And if you're not a member, please consider becoming a patron of my work. If you want real knowledge in a world of lies, it is essential to support those of us out here still trying to bring them to you. There's a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but also@PoliticsGirl.com, and as always, please like and share these podcasts so we can grow our audience. Because the more people who have access to this kind of information, the better. As always, thank you for your time and support. The Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.