SMNTY Classics: The Ghost of Phyllis Schlafly

Conservative Phyllis Schlafly is best known as the anti-feminist who stopped the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, but her political legacy goes much deeper than championing housewifery. With the ERA back in the news, check on this classic where Cristen and Caroline discuss the rise of the woman who paved the way for Donald Trump and the alt-right political movement.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
Mom never told you a protection of I Heart Radio.
For today's classic. We are talking about someone that's come
up a lot in the news lately and in a
couple of our recent podcast and that is Phyllis shaff

(00:29):
Lee Laughlee, somebody I always struggle pronunciation of her name.
I feel like every time we talked about her, we do.
I look at you and I was like, I don't
think that's maybe maybe that's how yes, um, yeah, and
I think her name is it's suit sir. No offense
to any Slaughleys out there that are not like her, um,
but yeah. Because of the movement and continue debate around

(00:55):
the Equal Rights amendments, she has been coming up a lot.
And in this month of International Women's Day or National
Women's Month, I thought that it was appropriate to bring
her back in this very appropriately titled episode that Kristen
Caroline did a pass host um the ghost of Phyllis Laughley,
because it feels like we're still dealing with it in

(01:18):
her work is still haunting us. It very much is.
So Yes, I loved it. I loved it. Yeah, please enjoy,
learn learn in this In this classic episode. Welcome to

(01:39):
Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stupp works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we are talking about Phillis Laughley. This episode
has been a long time coming, but ever since she

(02:01):
died on September five, we've been talking amongst ourselves, Caroline
and I about how we should do an episode on Phyllis.
We've heard from a number of listeners asking whether we're
going to do with Phyllis Schlapley episode and how could
we not? How could we not? Especially after my Twitter

(02:25):
response to her passing, UM brought men out of the
woodwork to tell me that I was a monster. So
what what? What did you tweet? Um? I tweeted a
Zendia gift where Zendia was just going by and that
was it. And conservative gentleman did not appreciate that and

(02:51):
called me a fat feminist monster. Oh no, they called
you fat. Wasn't that the worst thing a woman can
be called? Totally? How did you even survive it? I
don't know. I don't know. Eating even more feminism, eating
eating all the feminists. Yea, Well, it's also apropos to
talk about Laughley because in a lot of ways, she

(03:14):
paved the way for Donald Trump being the Republican nominee
for president this year. Yeah, and and I would argue
that her star was definitely rising at the same time
that the Republican Party was veering more toward the regunification,
you know, aligning with the religious right, um than uh

(03:38):
it previously had been. Yeah, I mean that's how she
made her name was definitely by essentially ushering helping usher
what was this fringe right wing group of Republicans sort
of like we think of the Tea Party today into
the mainstream because for a long time they were just

(04:00):
sort of off in the corner, uh and not really
taken all that seriously. But then, as will talk about more,
Philish Laughley showed America that these right wing conservatives could
win in the polls. But I don't want to get
to ahead of ourselves. Let's talk a little bit more

(04:22):
about who this woman is, because for I feel like
you either absolutely know who she is because she's the
arch nemesis of second wave feminism, or you probably never
heard of her. So let's give a quick primer of
who this Slaughley. Who's this Slaughly lady is who's this dame? Well,
I mean, you're right, she's absolutely considered one of the

(04:45):
most polarizing figures in American public political life. And she's basically,
I don't know what would she's an author, she's a
politician to a degree, um, and she is best known
for her war against the Equal Rights Amendment in the

(05:05):
nineteen seventies. Yeah, I mean she is the grassroots conservative
political organizer who is now considered an icon among you know,
ultra right wing Republicans, Donald Trump included. And we read
her obituary in both The New York Times, obviously more liberal,

(05:29):
some might call it the lamestream media. They're Shlafley fans.
And then we read her oh bit in the National Review,
which is ultra conservative, of course, and The New York
Times described her as quote a self described housewife who
displayed a moral ferocity reminiscent of the axe wielding prohibitionist

(05:50):
Carrie Nation. So she's a tough cookie, real jeff cookie.
And then the National Review described her, meanwhile, as one
of the original all happy warriors, funny, gracious, and grittier
than one might expect. And it's astonishing to trace back
our political climate today and everything that we are now

(06:16):
witnessing in terms of Donald Trump's supporters and the types
of white dudes who came after you on Twitter, for instance,
And trace that all the way back to this woman
in the Midwest who in a lot of ways started
out almost like Hillary Clinton. She was from a relatively

(06:40):
like working class background, although Hillary Clinton came from a
well slightly wealthier middle class family. But she laughlely, you know,
it was scrappy, and she was smart, and she was ambitious,
and then you know, the any similarity she might have
too Hillary Clinton just ends right there. Well. Yeah, and

(07:01):
I mean they both initially supported very Goldwater too before
before Hills went the other direction. But yeah, and I
mean you can look at the fact that nowadays Catholics
and Evangelical Christians work together when they are on the right. Um,
you can trace that back to Philish Lafly as well.

(07:22):
She was Catholic, um, devoutly Catholic. But through and we'll
get to this more in a second, but like through
all of her grassroots efforts, she brought more women of
different faiths and different denominations into the political fold to
try to combat this sort of what she viewed as
you know, liberalization, the downfall of American society, and in

(07:47):
a lot of ways, she is a difficult woman, she summarized,
because she's kind of a basket of contradictions, because she
is this very ambitious, self so efficient woman in a
lot of ways, who said that from the get go
when she was growing up, she knew that she would
need to take care of herself. And in her political

(08:11):
career she was extremely visible. She wrote twenty books. I mean,
the woman never stopped, and yet publicly she always said
that she was a housewife first and that politics was
just a hobby because she has six children at home
and her husband, FREDS. Laughley, is king essentially, and she

(08:36):
does whatever he allows her to do, even though like
in the same breath she'll also say, you know, but
I can do whatever I want. Um And she relished
starting this organization called stop e r A, which was
um intended to stop the Equal Rights Amendment. Well yeah,

(08:59):
and stop UP was actually an acronym for stop taking
Our Privileges, which is when I when I learned about
that acronym was also my my brain exploded a little
bit about just how how blatant the intention is, right
there of privileges, stop taking our privileges, because I mean

(09:21):
Philish Laughly would be like, yeah, I mean I love
white privileges terrific. Yeah. I Um. When I was researching
her life and and activism and politics, my brain just
kept collapsing on itself because to me, as a liberal
feminist and one who cares about having equal rights for

(09:45):
people of all backgrounds, none of it made sense because
I'm like, why would you want to stop the e
r A when oh wait no, but you only want
the privileges for you and yours. Well, okay, so I
was I take back what I say that she would say.
She would be all about her white privilege because what

(10:07):
Philish Laughly did and Donald Trump does. She would deny
that privilege even exists in the same way that she
denies that denied that sexism even exists. Well, privilege in
the way that we talk about it now and on
our podcast. But I mean she actively talked about the
privileges afforded to women, right in the sense of chivalry.

(10:32):
Almost right. Yes. So, her latest book, A Conservative Case
for Trump, came out just after her death, and she
describes in it Trump as a quote old fashioned man
grounded in his two great priorities hard work and family,
and a man who in other respects has led a

(10:54):
remarkably clean LFE. Okay, So I mean this is this
is the the viewpoint that we're dealing with. This is
the kind of choose your own reality that Philish Laughly
was able to mold into a startlingly powerful career for herself.

(11:16):
And it makes sense that right before her death at
ninety two years old, she came out, uh, stumping for
Trump because she was all about populism, she was all
about demagoguery, and she was all about, you know, galvanizing
this hyper conservative evangelical religious right that has similarly flocked

(11:40):
to Trump. Well, and regardless of whether you, as the
politicians she was stumping for were hyper Republican or whatever,
she just hated the establishment. That's like some of the
same rhetoric you hear a lot right now, and and
she saw Trump as an answer to those establishment politics.

(12:02):
And she was really she harped for decades on kingmakers,
the idea of like a secret group of rich liberal
elite kingmakers who sat around appointing politicians around the world. Yeah,
I mean, because that right there is a core tenet

(12:24):
of populism, where the belief is that almost conspiratorially, that
it's just a group of powerful people who are making
all the decisions. So power to the people, let's overthrow them.
And she told Breitbart in January of this year sixteen

(12:45):
that quote Trump is the only hope to defeat the
kingmakers because everybody else will fall in line. So, I
mean she really believed in this kingmaker business to her death,
and I mean that's that's all all. So something to
keep in mind as we talk about Philish Laughley, and
something that was impressed upon me reading about her timeline

(13:08):
is how she has not changed in her political viewpoints
at all. She still tells the same anecdotes that she did,
you know in the sixties. So how did Phillis happen? Um, Well,
let's give a little bit of biographical background real quick.

(13:30):
She was born in August ninety four as Phillis McAlpin
Stewart in St. Louis. I did have a moment of
concern because a lot of my people are from St. Louis,
and I did wonder, like, oh, she came up in St.
Louis around the same time as my grandmother. I wonder
if they were friends. Um, she was the oldest of

(13:51):
two daughters to Odeal Dodge, who was her mother, and
John Bruce Stewart. And what's really interesting is that, I mean,
by all accounts, her mother was also a very hard worker.
She worked outside the home. She was a teacher with
two college degrees, and that's not shabby at all for

(14:12):
a woman who was born at the end of the
nineteenth century. Her mother, not phyllis right, I mean, and
and o'deal ended up being the breadwinner because her dad,
John Bruce Stewart, was a Westinghouse machinist and an industrial
equipment salesman, and after he lost his job in the
Great Depression, o'deal had to become the breadwinner. And she hustled.

(14:37):
She was a department store saleswoman. She was an elementary
school teacher and a librarian at that St. Louis Art Museum.
And in her spare time, how she had spare time,
I'm not sure, she wrote a book on the history
of St. Louis. Yeah. So like the constantly busy work
work work ethic of Philish Laughly could absolutely be seen

(14:59):
in her mother as well. Yeah. But and also her
politics though comes straight from her dad. Her dad was
seventeen years older than o'deal, which is going to be
a similar age gap that we'll see in Phillis Lafley's
own marriage. And her dad was a staunch Republican who,
even though they fell on such hard times during the

(15:20):
Great Depression, he hated FDR and hated the New Deal
and wanted nothing to do with that. And so from
a very young age, Phyllis was groomed, you know, to
be a very conservative Republican. Yeah, And I think that
there's also the emotional aspect of Yes, she had a

(15:42):
really smart, really hard working, really busy mother, but she
also grew up in addition to hearing her father rail
against the New Deal, heard her mother being filled with
regret at having to work those jobs, her mother wanted
to stay home with the kids in the house and
do the cooking and all of that stuff and be
the traditional housewife. And so she's being raised with these

(16:06):
ideas about traditional family and traditional politics. And because of
their financial situation at home, Phillis realized that she was
going to have to make her own way. It's not
like her parents could just pay for her to go
to college, and so she worked really hard. She was
always at the top of her class, and in four

(16:28):
she received her bachelor's degree from Washington University, and in
a maker's interview, she talks about how she paid her
way through college by working. She says forty eight hours
a week as a night shift gunner testing thirty and
fifty caliber ammunition at a St. Louis munitions plant. And
that is absolutely true. I mean she not only tested,

(16:52):
uh these guns, she would also um like document their
trajectories and do all of this stuff, which she was
like again very appropriate, uh resume item for someone who
ended up leading right wing Republicans. Well, I mean, but
also one thing we skipped over is that she graduated

(17:13):
at nineteen, right, she finished college in three years and
graduated at nineteen like some people don't even enter college
until nineteen like she was. I Mean, this woman was
so driven and was from the outset not going to
let anything stand in her way. But at this point

(17:35):
she doesn't necessarily want to go into politics. She ends
up in receiving her master's degree in political science from Radcliffe,
which was the sister university to Harvard at the time,
because while Harvard had started letting some women from Radcliffe

(17:57):
take colleges with the Harvard men. Uh, they wouldn't fully
allow women to the school. And apparently she ended up
in Polly Csy because it was one of the only
things that she could study and do it at Harvard,
so she could do it in those mixed gender classrooms,

(18:18):
because it meant a lot to her to go to
Harvard and not Radcliffe. And if you listen to any
interviews with her, whenever she talks about her master's scree,
she loves talking about, you know, her bootstrapping of her education.
And she always says she went to Harvard, but in
fact her degree is from Radcliffe. And I realized that

(18:39):
that's kind of a minor detail, but I think it
still says a lot about how she sort of just
her reality to fit this concept of a sexism free
world that needs no feminism, because, as she would tell,

(19:01):
you know, audiences usually of filled with women. Well, when
I went to school, there was no sexism. I had
no trouble getting into college. I was able to study
alongside the boys. I don't know what these feminists were
talking about. And it was my blood pressure. Um and yeah,
and and just as she didn't necessarily set out to

(19:22):
be a polysy major. She also did not set out
to be a hyper conservative right wing Republican either. She
was pretty moderate, but she quickly shifted more conservative after
she did face barriers, and she would not admit necessarily
that they were barriers, but used it more to illustrate

(19:45):
that she was able to sort of shift course as
needed and find her niche that allowed her to, I
don't know, gain power, to really become Phyllis. Oh yeah,
that definitely gain power for sure. And her post college
career path also hints as to why she has so

(20:09):
much animosity toward big government. Because after she graduates from
matriculates from Radcliffe, you know, the war is ending and
a lot of jobs are being reserved, specifically for veterans,
most of whom are men. So Phillis wants to get
a job in the federal government. She's like, I want

(20:32):
to work on policy. This is my thing. I got
really into this policy class work, and I'm good at it.
She graduated at the top of her class, but she
couldn't find a job in the federal government because they
were like, noopeh we got to save these for veterans.
So big Brother didn't allow Phillis to fulfill her dream,

(20:54):
so she ends up at the far more conservative think tank,
private think tank of the American Enterprise Institute. So, I mean,
it's it's incredible to see all of these signposts along
the way. Yeah, but like here's me, you know, ghost Caroline,
who's not alive yet. Like no, but Phyllis, look at

(21:15):
what you can fight. You can fight sexism that prevents
women from going to the schools and getting the jobs
they want. But she wouldn't blame not getting that federal
government job on sexism because they weren't telling her you
couldn't get it because you're a woman. You couldn't get
it because you're not a veteran. So her ire would

(21:37):
be pointed toward the government. Okay, Well, in she marries
Fred French Laughley, who is a devoutly Catholic and politically
active lawyer. And what I what made me stop in
my tracks is a line about her wedding vows. And

(21:59):
this is a line that would be very much at
home in an article about some uh you know, devout
feminist getting married, perhaps in the New York Times. Uh
they write in the New York Times, at the ceremony
Mrs s Laughley said she did not promise to obey,

(22:20):
only to cherish, and that does not sound much like
what she would say in her nineties seventies anti e
er A campaign. It was all about obeying Fred because
she was a good housewife. Yeah, and so this, this
this little bone that we keep picking at is the

(22:44):
same bone that feminists have picked for decades because they
say phillis Philly laugh laugh laugh, old girl laughs. You
you are so active and driven on behalf of yourself
basically and making sure that you get the opportunities that

(23:06):
you want. But what about all of the other women?
Who does that sound like? Though? Who has similarly intense hair?
You know? I mean Donald Trump does a very as
a very similar approach to this, where your your reality

(23:28):
is moves with the wind, whatever you know best serves
you at that time and will most elevate you. Then
then that's truth. That's your fact, whether it is actually
fact or not. And uh, she though peace laugh is
essentially coated in teflon. And it's kind of incredible to

(23:51):
see how she does just constantly deflect any criticism. And
it seems like she she enjoyed as receiving this criticism.
I mean she's a total troll. Oh yeah, just a
little like run off of her she once said, she
told the New York Times actually in two thousand six,

(24:12):
in the scale of liberal sins, hypocrisy is the greatest,
and they've always considered me a hypocrite. And I'm going
to say how she defends herself by saying, you know,
I never told women that they shouldn't or couldn't work
outside the home. Quote. I simply didn't believe we needed
a constitutional amendment to protect women's rights. But did did

(24:39):
she not advocate for housewives? Be that being the reality? Well,
she certainly advocated for housewives, but she would continually say, well,
I'm not telling you you have to be a housewife.
I'm just saying that we don't need to devalue housewives,
and that feminists are trying to undercut and destroy the

(25:04):
role of housewives. Even though, and this is a whole
other podcast unto itself, Caroline, even though, right before old
Phyllis sunk her claws into the Equal Rights Amendment, a
woman and I'm forgetting her name right now because I've
really worked up A woman from the National Organization for
Women started this like relatively successful outreach, feminist outreach. Two

(25:30):
housewives and divorced women who suddenly found themselves, you know,
not really knowing how to support themselves or not really
know how to how to grapple with their personal politics
and their domestic situation. So it's like, so that's another
myth you know, she just kind of makes up this

(25:51):
mythology as she goes. Well, mythology that's still repeated. Oh definitely, Yeah,
that feminists want to destroy the home and destroy a family. Hi,
I know, many a feminist who has her own family
and children even and washes the dishes. I mean, like
the idea, and you know, of course that's a silly
thing to say, but my point being the like the

(26:14):
idea that feminists are as like a monolithic army, are
trying to destroy the family and the home. I mean,
it's it's insane, but it's clearly an effective tactic. It's
clearly effective rhetoric. Oh yeah, because it's all about stoking fear,

(26:34):
you know, that is that's really the name of the
game with all of this. And in two, she's just
twenty seven years old when her political aspirations get a
kick in the pants because a group of Republicans. Local
Republicans come over to her in Fred's house to come

(26:55):
over to the chefts, and they encourage Fred to you
run for Congress, say there's an open seat in there,
like Fred, you're the guy, you should do it, and
Fred's like, listen, I'm not really interested. And as the
story goes, at one point, one of these gentlemen jokingly says, hey, Phillis,

(27:19):
you should run, and Phillis is like, okay, damn straight,
I should run. And she's off from there. I mean,
she really sees is this opportunity and she runs and
wins the primary, which was huge, but of course she
loses in the general election. Yeah, she was in a

(27:40):
really democratic area, way more liberal, and I think she
was against an incumbent too. Yeah she's yeah, she was,
And we read that by the end of that race,
her opponent, her Democratic opponent, was so livid with the
rhetoric she used about him being this liberal monster that

(28:02):
he would not even shake her hand. He was so
mad at the stuff that she had stirred up about him.
And she wasn't even yet thirty already stirring that political pot.
And one thing that's really interesting though, is we were
reading about how her rhetoric and the way that she

(28:22):
positioned herself as a woman in politics really sort of echoed,
uh the suffragists and women in the progressive era who
were in women's clubs, part of the women's club movement,
because you know, remember back then women didn't have the vote,
so if they wanted to agitate and be activists for

(28:46):
any causes and help women in any way each other,
they had to join these clubs and and banned together
for things like I don't know, like daycare, um or
other other causes that could potentially help emilies and their communities.
And so uh, one thing that she had in common
with those early women who were being political even if

(29:09):
they could not be in politics was that she positioned
herself as a woman who would clean up the dirty
mess of politics and it needed cleaning up because it
was run by men. And so here she is positioning
herself as I'm a woman, and therefore, with my natural
womanly abilities, um, I'll be a better candidate for you, right,

(29:34):
Because that was a suffragist argument of why we should
have um voting rights and political involvement because of the
domesticity Victorian era idea of woman as the moral center
of the home. So let's let the moral compasses and
their vaginas come into the political process, Fellows, so we

(29:57):
can clean up after you. Um. We also have to
remember too that she was fiercely anti communist and extremely
hawkish on foreign policy, to the point that she was
like Joe McCarthy level and maybe even more so anti communists.
And that's really where her focus, um resided for a

(30:23):
long time, well before she sets her sights on the
e r A. And even after that defeat though in
ninety two, she gets right up and keeps going. You
can tell that this kind of lit a fire for
her because she starts stumping around Illinois on behalf of
the Daughters of the American Revolution that she remained super

(30:43):
active in, and from ninety six to nineteen sixty four
she was president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women.
So you can see her starting to gradually rise through
these organizational ranks. But now we're also seeing her diverted off,
sort of to the women's auxiliary side of things. And

(31:04):
in the meantime, in nineteen fifty eight, she and Fred
started the Cardinal mind Zenti Foundation, which was named for
the Roman Catholic leader who had been tortured and imprisoned
by Hungarian communists in an effort to educate Catholics on
the dangers of communism, and she and Fred were hyper
focused on international communism, less so on the threat of

(31:27):
Red's in America like McCarthy was. And a lot of
that stems from the fact that she had been so
heavily focused on foreign policy and foreign politics in college.
And soon after that she gets a platform. In nineteen
sixty two, she hosted a fifteen minute radio show on

(31:47):
national security called America Wake Up, and it was carried
by twenty Illinois stations, so she was like a lady
Bill O'Reilly in the radio days on Post And the
same year her religious conservatism really ignites further following the

(32:09):
Supreme Court decision prohibiting state sponsored prayer in public schools,
which is still a massive lightning rod for religious conservatives obviously. Yeah,
I mean it's almost like she's just kind of gathering
up all of her platforms, you know, in the in
the fifties and sixties, and then in nineteen sixty four,

(32:29):
phillis Is Starr takes off. Yeah, she referred would refer
to this later as her most productive year of her
life period, and that's saying a lot considering, you know,
like we said, by the age of twenty seven, she
was already hyper political, so so what more could Phillis
be doing? Well? She was talking to the New York

(32:51):
Times is Gina Bellefonte about how in nineteen sixty four
she was, as we mentioned, president of Illinois Federation of
Republican Women. She went to the Republican Convention, and she
was also stumping on behalf of a Republican candidate for
presidential nomination, Barry Goldwater. And Goldwater made his name really

(33:19):
by voting against the Civil Rights Act because it was
desegregation at the time that was freaking all of the
conservative white people out. And finally here comes Barry Goldwater
who's like, you know what, folks, I'll take a stand
against this. And Phyllis was like, big old you, my dude,

(33:42):
And she wrote this book more of a pamphlet really.
She wrote this book though, called a Choice not an Echo,
about how Barry Goldwater is the dude that you gotta
put all of your Republicans support behind, and also how
he's the only person who can affectatively combat that international

(34:02):
communist threat. She self publishes this book, and as she
will brag for the rest of her life, she always
says that she sold three million copies out of her garage. Um.
And whether or not that number is accurate, it is.
It definitely galvanized this group of similarly white, religious conservative

(34:28):
Republicans and particularly Republican women. Yes, and it helped launch
Barry Goldwater into the presidential race. He got the Republican
nomination to run unsuccessfully against Democrat LBJ And Um, you know,
I was curious about what was in the book? Is

(34:48):
it a biography of him? Is it some sort of
inspirational tract of literature talking about Barry Goldwater's background. While
according to Elizabeth Culbert's uh not a Fan characterization from
two thousand five, she wrote that a choice not an
echo was a mixture of fact sensational accusations, common sensical truths,

(35:11):
and elaborate conspiracy theories that is brought together in a
compelling but evidently bogus narrative. But it's a narrative that
still uh still remains today because it poses these very
conspiratorial questions, um, that still stoke a lot of angst

(35:35):
um among a lot of people, you know, on either
side of the political spectrum, really um. At the beginning
of the book A Choice on an Echo, she bullets
out these questions for readers to think about of who
really picks the president, because, according to Beach Laugh, it's
a secret cabal of powerful white dudes. She also asks,

(35:57):
how are political conventions stolen? Who are the secret kingmakers?
And how do hidden persuaders and propaganda gimmicks influence politics.
I mean, if you think that the whole lamestream media, uh,
Fox News, hatred of the New York Times, etcetera is

(36:17):
a new thing, no, no, no, no. Peach Laugh in
A Choice not an Echo was calling out all of
those newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Yeah, as being
in on this group of kingmakers, Okay, and they would
selectively report on the party knowing full well, I guess

(36:43):
that you know who was really pulling the strings. And
that's kind of at the core of this right wing
populism of saying, you know what they're these they're these
secret meetings going on, and they just they're going to
turn our country into you assess pool pool of of
secular welfare nonsense. If they haven't already because of the

(37:07):
New Deal, you know, they're already terrified about the new Deal.
If you and I take the podcast on tour anytime soon,
it should just be called what did you say, secular nonsense?
Secular cesspool of nonsense. But I mean, in this in
this election cycle, we've heard similar refrains from the left,
you know, so like there are plenty of people who

(37:28):
are as fed up as as peache laugh about kingmakers
in the establishment right as fed up, and also as
borderline and slash full blown conspiratorial. Um. But something else
that jumped out to me in a choice on an
echo is how sh laughly describes herself. How she kind

(37:48):
of lays out her author credibility at the beginning of
the book, and she says that she's devoted thousands of
hours to the Republican Party, which is probably true, um.
And she talks about how she did this at a
great sacrifice to her family because she has six kids,
and although she's still at the point I don't think

(38:10):
she has six yet, she's still having babies, um, but
she's on her way to six. And this is in
direct contrast to what she'll be saying in the seventies,
where there is no sacrifice all of a sudden, it's
just what she did just as a hobby. Yeah, it's
just easy for me. I don't worry. I still managed

(38:32):
to be a fabulous housewife and mother. Did we employ
a full time housekeeper, Yes, but she always bragged that
they did not employ a nanny, right, and that she
him schooled each of her six children until they were seven,
and that she breast fed all of them, which I'm
surprised she even said the word breast Maybe she didn't.

(38:52):
Maybe she just pointed to her boobs and winked, pointed
at her kids these Yeah, it is uh. That was
something else that comes up in pretty much every profile
of her. And she breastfed her six children, like okay, okay,
what you know. But that's part of her whole perfect

(39:14):
housewife image that she cultivated. But even though a choice
on an echo was very successful in getting very Goldwater
to be that year's Donald Trump, essentially um and it
was very successful for spotlighting the potential influence of Philish

(39:35):
laughlely because Goldwater lost so starkly to lb J, the
GOP establishmant hashtag, dudes, we're like, you know what, uh,
your white right wing ultra conservative movement stuff like stay
in the corner, Like, obviously you're not going to help

(39:59):
the party as a whole, so we're gonna steer things
back more moderate and peach laugh like, we're not going
to give you like a position or anything because you're
a woman, So just keep doing your your woman ing thing.
So she did really get like the sexiest shaft from
the GOP, not surprisingly, So you're saying that ch Laugh

(40:21):
got the shaft. Yes, she laugh got the shaft, but
then she laugh would turn around and shaft us. Oh yeah,
in the seventies. But we're not even there. We're not
even there yet. Because that's the thing. Most people's recollection
of Philish laugh lely just starts with the E R A.
But you got to know all this stuff leading up
to it to make it all makes sense. So what's happened?

(40:47):
What has happened? So peace Laugh has gotten snubbed? Essentially,
she ran for presidency of the National Federation of Her
Looking Women, because you know, she had been running a
state level organization. She went for the national position and
they were like, na, girl, you wrote that book in

(41:10):
your garage. Good for you, but your candidate loss. So no,
and that was a huge burn for her. Oh yeah,
that was a huge burn. And she manages though to
pull a lot of the women in the National Federation
of Republican Women away to support her because she starts

(41:31):
publishing in nine seven this weekly newsletter, the Schlafley Report UM,
and it started out with just about three thousand subscribers,
and a lot of those were women that she had
met in this UM National Federation of Republican Women, as
well as women from her other organization that she had

(41:53):
been leading UM. But as we'll talk about in the
second half of the podcast, she does pull some amazing
political and religious based maneuvering to massively raise the number
of subscribers. Yeah, and just in the background politically, we
got to mention that in nineteen sixties six, even though

(42:15):
just two years earlier, hyper conservative racist Barry Goldwater, you know,
lost so famously to lb J, but that year you
start to see conservative Republicans winning some significant congressional and
gubernatorial races, including one Ronald Reagan becoming governor of California.

(42:41):
So Shlaughlee, you know, launching her newsletter the next year
is really banking on the rise of this conservative movement,
which up until then had had been this kind of
niche pocket of people. Um. But she's starting to see
it Maine stream because really just because like white people

(43:02):
were getting really scared about black people and feminists. Um.
And three years after Peace laugh launches this sh Laughley Report,
she runs for Congress again and fails again. But despite
her faltering start, Phyllis is about to bust out and

(43:23):
never look back. That's right, And we're going to talk
about that when we come right back from a quick break.
And now back to the show. So in the early seventies,
even though the Equal Rights Amendment had been around for

(43:47):
about fifty years, um, she really claims she wasn't aware
of it. Um, she didn't was not aware of any
massive movement behind it. And it wasn't until she says,
a friend says, hey, you should check out this whole
e r A thing. You might be interested in it.
That she reads it and like all of the light

(44:09):
bulbs go off above her head and she says, Aha,
here is the enemy. And for those of you not
familiar with the e r A as, I really wasn't
until doing research for stuff I've never told you. It
was first introduced in by Alice Paul at the Seneca

(44:30):
Falls Convention, and the e r A, which would have
been the amendment if it had gone through. It's very
simple in its language. It just states equality of rights
under the law shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any state on account of sex.
So essentially, it would render gender based discrimination illegal on

(44:54):
a federal or state level across the board. Um and
people today say it, if the e r A had
been passed and had been ratified, I should say that
all of the cobbling together that women have to do
today between Title nine and other state laws and stuff

(45:16):
like that, there would not be any of this maneuvering
around that we would have to do in light of
gender based or sexual discrimination because the e r A
would have just, in very simple language, accounted for all
of that. But pH laugh was not gonna let that happen.

(45:37):
Even though the ARRA was widely supported, like across the aisle, Yeah,
by Democrats and Republicans alike, women, men, everybody's like yeah,
sure of course. Even George Wallace from Alabama, who was
about as racist as they come, was chill with the
r A. Yeah, I know, well, because I think a

(45:59):
lot of people saw it as like, well, we already
have language in these other various laws and amendments that
you know, we shouldn't discriminate against women, Like sure, why
not throw this on the pile. I think it was
seen as as kind of not toothless, but just like acceptable,

(46:20):
give this to the ladies, Yeah, let them, let them
have it. Well, you know who was not having it
was Old P. Schlaugh And in nineteen seventy two she
writes about it in the Schlaughlely Report dedicates a whole
issue too, and in fact, and this is what starts
the anti feminist campaign against the e r A. And

(46:43):
boy did she have some ideas about what that simple
sentence really meant. Oh god, oh god. Yeah, she said
that the e r A was going to eliminate sex
segregated public restrooms. We still hear that panic today. It's
going to force women into the draft. Wasn't that just

(47:05):
in the news. It's going to dissolve sex crime laws.
I got nothing up. It's going to remove men's financial
responsibilities to be breadwinners or the payers of child support.
More women are becoming breadwinners. These days, and she basically

(47:27):
considered women as we as we touched on earlier in
the episode, she basically considered women to be this privileged,
protected class who would lose those privileges and protections if
the e r A went through. And that's why my
brain was just collapsing last night as I was researching
this stuff, because it's like, well, no, but if we

(47:49):
if we're protected under the law through the e r
A in the way that the e r A spells out,
we won't have to worry about these so called privileges
and protections and what I would call benevolent sexism. Oh yeah,
but if you aren't stoking worry and fear, how are
you going to start this movement? Al's peach laugh gonna,

(48:12):
you know, galvanize her gals and galvanize the gal she does,
because the subscriptions to her newsletter shoot up from about
three thousand to thirty five thousand thanks to all of
this fear stoking that she does not only among women
like herself, you know, good Catholic housewives, but also among
the Evangelical Christian housewives like ladies, ladies, ladies like we

(48:35):
have a lot to worry about in terms of losing
those cushy lives that we know. And this is something
that I read all the time in stuff I've never
told you, YouTube comments from men's rights activisty trolls who
claim a feminists are just victimizing themselves because in Peache laughs,

(49:01):
terms like your privileged class people take you out for dinner,
you get discounts, happy hours, and you know you have
an affirmative action, You get whatever you want. If you
paid me equally, then maybe I wouldn't need a discount
exactly for your happy hour. Um. And this the thing is,

(49:22):
though she's starting this, she kind of is starting it
out of her garage. She's writing her own newsletter, she's
sending it out. It's very grass rootsy, and that becomes
really the source of her political influence. And it's her brand. Yeah,
oh yeah, it's solely her brand. The peach Laught brand
is all about the grassroots. She has this newsletter base

(49:43):
largely comprised of fellow conservative housewives, and once she stirs
them up, they start fundraising, They start sending out mailers,
they start hosting anti e r A press conferences, end
importantly lobbying their state legislatures. They would go carrying loaves

(50:07):
of homemade banana bread and apple loaves and things like that,
little goodies and deliver them to all of the politicians
who are going to vote on the e r A
that day and say, oh, we don't we don't need
that good sir, have a little apricot. What was in
the bread? Did they put something in it? Drugging their legislators,

(50:33):
And then Phillis teams up with North Carolina Democratic Senator
Sam Irvin no relation in the past couple of generations
at least um who opposed the e r A. And
this allows her whole stop e r A movement to
cross party lines. Yeah um. And keep in mind too

(50:55):
that in three just a year after uh laughly starts
going after the e r A, Rovi Wade happens, and
so this is of course stirring up even more angst
among conservatives. So then in nineteen we see her take

(51:17):
her success with developing this stop r A group and
transitioning it into the Eagle Forum. And this is essentially
the women's auxiliary of the conservative right wing UH contingent
of the Republican Party at the time. UM and the

(51:41):
Eagle Forum, which was twenty thousand strong in lobbied politically
lobbied four Conservatism, alongside sister groups like how Happiness of
Women and Aware which stood for America and women are
richly endowed. Phyllis is beside herself, although I don't know

(52:06):
if you could describe someone who is as cool, calm
and collected as Phillis as ever beside herself because she's
very calculating. She knows what she's doing. Yeah, oh for sure.
And so her major beef, though, with the growing contingent
of feminists in the US, is all about how they
are messing with the natural order of things. That goes

(52:28):
back to her assertion that feminists are trying to destroy
the family. Yeah. Um, so she wrote one of many
columns in which she says feminism is incompatible with human nature.
The premise of the feminists is that God goofed in

(52:48):
making us two different sexes, and that our laws should
remedy his mistake. And I guess, okay, I'm gonna make
this a little personal for a second, Like, I guess
that's why so any of her arguments and similar arguments
don't make sense to me, because I am not a
person who is religious or uh has God as a

(53:10):
former very inappropriate boss of mindset um to me one time. Uh, so,
like things like that don't make sense to me, saying
that there is a natural order in the way that
the biological sexes have to be or the genders have
to be. Yeah, And I'm sitting here across from you

(53:31):
not surprised at all, because a large part of my
childhood was spent in evangelical churches, and while the pastors
weren't railing against feminism every Sunday, there was definitely concerned,
particularly over the homosexual agenda, because that definitely violated in

(53:55):
quotes nature. And so that's like a whole other aspect
of right wing activism and pushes behind their their politics
that that I simply, as a person on the left,
do not have because I just it's not part of
my worldview. But it was. It's so shaped hers. Oh definitely,

(54:18):
I mean, and and part of that too is attached
to her uh familiar distaste for East Coast elitists and
liberals and um. One thing that she really goes on
and on about in a choice on an Echo is
how Barry Goldwater is the person that you should vote

(54:38):
for because he has simple ideas, simple solutions, whereas LBJ
and all these liberal Democrats, they just have these convoluted
theories and bureaucratic structures and they just want to muck
everything up, whereas you know, it's just it's just nature,

(54:59):
it's just man and wife, it's this and that. You know,
it's a very black and white worldview. And that's It's
a similar thing that we see today where there is
this distaste among right wing, right wing conservatives for non
simplistic answers because that challenges their worldview in a terrifying way.

(55:25):
And I mean, I also say this from the perspective of,
you know, being very cognizant even at a young age,
of how a lot of the rhetoric, political rhetoric that
I heard in conservative churches, um, that my parents attended
was just so fear stoking. You could feel it in

(55:45):
the room, you know, and it was powerful enough to
get Slaughly where she wanted to go. And in addition
to her argument about feminism being incompatible with human nature,
she also kind of suggested that feminism was out to
replace husbands with government big brother right, So look at you,

(56:12):
dumb feminist, You're just trying to get rid of the home,
get rid of the family structure, get rid of the
husband who can provide for you. They can be the
breadwinners if you just let them. But instead you want
to get rid of all that and have the government
give to you. Have the government be your breadwinner and
your husband, and accept welfare and public assistance and things

(56:35):
like that. And it doesn't this sound like frustrated just
out of college Phillis who can't get a job in
the government because big brother has saved all the other
jobs for other brothers. Essentially um and and the way
she puts it, though in one column it might have
been the same that same column from she she go

(56:59):
she to sarcasm in rhetorical questions a lot, So she
sneers need a job, Big brother will get you an
affirmative action quota position. You don't meet the physical requirements,
Big brother will gender norm the test results and give
you a high score. Not satisfied with your salary, the
Comparable Worth Commission will order your employer to give you

(57:21):
a raise. And if you want a promotion, the Glass
Ceiling Commission will force your employer to give it to you.
So it's just this idea that we are making up.
These problems, and through this group of kingmakers, we you know,
the government then establishes these committees that just uh, you know,

(57:43):
give magically give women raises. Well, I mean, all of
her rhetorical questions there go back to her emphatic assertion
that there is no such thing as this patriarchy that
oppresses women, that women are not oppressed. And then her
asserts are directly tied to today's conversations around women are

(58:04):
making themselves victims. Well, and this next quote about how
she describes the relationship between feminism and the federal government
is so reminiscent of what you hear today among women
against feminism and or anti feminists, whichever way you want
to put it. Where she says, our societal policy should
be to let women make their own decisions about marriage

(58:26):
and career without the interference of taxpayer funded gender equity
federal busybodies. Well, so she's trying to have both at
the same time. You know, she's trying to to say
that we don't need feminism, but you know, not because
you know, we don't want the best for women, but

(58:49):
just because we don't think that anyone should be telling
women what to do. So isn't feminism telling women what
to do? And so that's why you know, women shouldn't
be for feminism. And yes it does make you, and
I do mean you, Caroline and myself want to slowly
bang our heads against the desk, and ditto Betty for

(59:11):
Dan and many other you know, second way feminists of
the day. Oh Betty, Yeah. Teflon Phyllis managed to infuriate
frequent debate opponent Betty for Dan to the point where
Betty told her that she should burn at the steak. Yeah.

(59:32):
And Phyllis, the troll loved it. Loved it, oh yeah,
because she was like, oh, I'm so glad you said that,
because it just goes to show how nasty you feminists are.
And of course laughly had her opinions about Betty for
Dan as well. She said, I reject all her ideology,

(59:54):
She said, I reject all her ideology, most of it
based on the absurd notion that the whole is a
comfortable concentration camp and that the suburban housewife is oppressed
by her husband and by society. And she loved calling
feminists fat, ugly and unlikable, which again I'm telling you,
like reading about Peache laugh is just kind of like

(01:00:18):
reading about Donald Trump in a lot of ways the
reality TV shows. Yeah, it goes back to my college
sociology class in which we were talking about feminism and
a fellow student of mine, and I've told the story
on the podcast before, but a fellow classmate um raised
her hand and basically said, but if we like men
and want to get married, shouldn't we not agree with

(01:00:41):
any of this stuff? And it's like that whooshing sound
is the point completely going over your head, Um, Because Yeah,
like the worst thing to some people is to be
considered or just called fat or ugly or unlikable. Oh
and definitely, you know, if we're talking about the seventies,

(01:01:02):
you know, our society is still I would not say
is woke, but it was certainly less woke in the seventies. Um.
But as much as I really hate to keep quoting
Philish laughly, because it's never a pleasant thing that you
will have to say, I do think it's worth highlighting

(01:01:23):
a few of her positions on feminist issues. Yeah, she
didn't think that marital rape was a thing. She said,
by getting married, the woman has consented to sex. And
I don't think you can call it rape. On sexual harassment, uh, no,
big surprise. She hated Anita Hill, and she just thought

(01:01:46):
that that woman was just ranking that honorable Clarence Thomas
over the coals unnecessarily because she's a feminist and was
just sad that he wouldn't take her out on a date.
So on sexual harassment, Shlaughley said, quote non criminal sexual
harassment on the job is not a problem for the
virtuous woman except in the rarest of cases. Yeah, so

(01:02:09):
insert victim blaming here. Well, if you're a virtuous woman,
you should have nothing to worry about. What were you wearing? Uh?
And uh domestic violence. Uh. She said that when marriages
are broken by false allegations of domestic violence, US taxpayers
fork up an estimated twenty billion a year to support

(01:02:31):
the resulting single parent welfare dependent families. And I'm like,
that's your concern, Like a woman who falsely accuses a
man of domestic violence and then is single as a result,
Because then who's going to have to pay for that,
big brother, the taxpayers. You know, we're we're having to

(01:02:54):
fund this welfare state. And really, I mean pointing out
her horrific stances on these kinds of issues is to
illustrate how she was not just responsible for stopping the
e r A and its tracks, which she and Stop
the r A and the Eagle Forum absolutely did, but

(01:03:17):
also in essentially building what is today the ultra right
wing policy platform. It's as if she wrote the script
for women to continue to be demeaned and not believed
when it comes to some of these awful issues. Right.

(01:03:39):
But I mean, these are but these are like political platforms. Now.
You know, if you turn on if you spend some
time on bright Bart News, Actually, don't spend some time
on Brightbart News, and you'll see all of these similar
things going on. Ps A Bright Bart guy was one
of the men who came after me on Twitter. Oh
really would bright Bart rep order? Oh I'm not surprised.

(01:04:02):
I'm not surprised. Um. But in we see another contradiction
to her career housewife claim because she goes to law school.
I mean and in a way like if she were
anyone else, you and I would be like good for
her mother of six After the kids grow up, she

(01:04:24):
goes back to law school, and that's what she argues, like, well,
I waited until my children were grown they could take
care of themselves. I had breastfed all of them. Did
I tell you I breastfed all of them? I really did.
UM And she completes her law degree at Washington University.
When she goes to take the bar, her public profile
was already like significant enough that she took it in

(01:04:46):
a disguise. She wore a black wig in order to
take her exam, and she passed it well. And her husband,
you know, and this is another anecdote that she would
tell over and over again over the years that her
husband at first did not want her to go to
law school and didn't understand why she felt the need
to UM, and then so she withdrew her application to
law school, and then a couple of weeks later he

(01:05:08):
changed his mind. And it's like, you know what, it
would actually having a law background would actually help with
a lot of the public policy work. And uh e
r a fights that you do well. And I mean,
her relationship with Fred is really fascinating and something that
I wish we knew more about, because I think that's
one of the most frustrating things about UM reading up

(01:05:31):
on phyllis is that you know that you're not learning
about the real phillis. You know that there's stuff going
on in the background, because this is an image that
she cultivated for political purposes, whereas before she has this
shift um against feminism in the nineteen seventies, she talks

(01:05:52):
about how during her early marriage with Fred, like they
would stay up and till all hours, just brainstorming and
talking politics, like they courted each other, but through through letters,
mailing each other, poetry, and essentially like many policy briefs,
there were like a couple of walks, but she played

(01:06:16):
it all down in order to conform to a more palatable, interesting,
submissive image that would fit into which also sounds very
house of cards, Yeah, which fit into this mold, you know,
that could then elevate her um to the platform that
she ended up having, which in nineteen eighty she used

(01:06:41):
her influence to successfully negotiate with the GOP to remove
its pro e r a platform plank. And this is
when we finally see the Republican Party, which previously had
a lot of the Area supporters in it. It wasn't
as conservative as it is today by long shot. We
finally see them turning that corner as Reagan is about

(01:07:05):
to take over. Exactly, yeah, exactly, and June two, Phillis
holds a party because the congressional deadline for states to
ratify the r A expires and they were what three
states short of ratification, and so from there she's like cool,

(01:07:27):
box checked, done. Now let's make sure that we hinder
the fight for lgbt Q rights, for welfare, and for
reproductive rights, which of course she had been harping on
throughout her anti e r A camp, even though she
has a gay son. Oh yeah, her gay son was outed.

(01:07:47):
I'm not a fan of people outing people at all. Um.
I understand the attraction to wanting to out Philish Lafley's son, um.
But yeah, one of her sons who lived at least
like at the time it was reported, he was still
living with Fred and Phillis and was still, you know,

(01:08:08):
dedicated to the conservative cause. And Phillis kind of had
to hedge her love for her child and her versus
her hatred for homosexuals and their agenda. Oh yes, the
homosexual agenda, Yeah, which I just imagined, like, you know,

(01:08:29):
you can buy it at office deepo. I think it smoothie. Yeah.
They now have an app they get agenda. You can
just have it on your phone's like a calendar perfect,
it's really colorful. And she would continue though throughout the
rest of her life to maintain that women were that
privileged class, and she offered advice on NPR in two Women, saying,

(01:08:55):
just remember American women are so fortunate. Oh yeah, and
I mean yeah, I mean, I guess relatively in the
grand scheme of global privileges. Well, her version of fortunate
is that she always praises men right after she says
that we're so fortunate because we have all these brilliant

(01:09:16):
men who invented all of this brilliant technology that allowed
us to easily wash our clothes, and we got disposable diapers,
and you have all these conveniences that I didn't have
growing up, and so comparatively, women are just so fortunate,
and you just need to remember that and don't victimize yourself.

(01:09:37):
And a few years earlier to The New York Times,
she had said, feminism has changed the way women think,
and it's changed the way men think. But the trouble
is it hasn't changed the attitude of babies at all.
And so that of course is hearkening to her whole
feminism violates the laws of nature. Like babies no better babies, boy,

(01:09:58):
babies know that they should be baby breadwinners, babies knowing
on some bread um. And the funny thing that you know,
if you haven't picked up on the theme of this
episode yet, the funny thing that former now president Karen
Dacrow pointed out in night one was that no matter

(01:10:22):
the words that came out of Philish Lapley's mouth, she
was a liberated woman. And as Dacrow says, she sets
out to do something and she does it. To me,
that's liberation. Oh yeah, And she also spotted the gender
inequalities that feminism still seeks to uproot. UM. At one point,

(01:10:48):
in response to that really harsh blow that she took
in nineteen sixty seven when she lost her bid for
the National Federation of her Publican Women presidency um, she said, quote,
the Republican Party is carried on the shoulders of the
women who do the work in the precincts, ringing doorbells,

(01:11:10):
distributing literature, and doing all the tiresome, repetitious campaign tasks.
Many men in the party frankly want to keep the
women doing the menial work, Like if that is not
something that that should then be followed via a statement
of feminist support. I don't know what is. And that's

(01:11:31):
the confounding thing about philish La. She she encountered sexism,
and you know she knew it was sexism because she's
calling it out right there, recognizing that here are the
women in the trenches doing all of this grassroots organizing
that ultimately has revolutionized American political culture. Look at Donald

(01:11:52):
Trump today. And yet she's saying, but you know, the
dudes don't want to acknowledge it. They just want to
keep this in the corner. Yeah, Phyllis is far from stupid.
This woman is not dumb. She's incredibly brilliant and incredibly driven,
and she is just driven down a different path. Yeah,

(01:12:14):
I mean. And and the moral of this story is
a remember that women are not a monolith. Smart women
are not a monolith, you know. And also, as she
always likes to say, they never took me seriously, Like
everyone always underestimated her when she was starting out in

(01:12:34):
her A Choice not an Echo era, when she was
just on the fringes with this, you know, this little
group of ultra conservatives, and she was like that, you know,
they didn't see what was coming. And she's she's proud
of that, you know, because she she kind of put
one over on us because we were we were so

(01:12:56):
quick too. I think liberals were so quick to ride
off all of a sudden this who's this housewife? And
look what she did? She was a wolf and housewife
clothing who, like you said, completely changed American politics. And
I think the final words we have to leave on

(01:13:17):
our Philish Laughley talking to makers saying I always thought
I could do whatever I wanted to do. What's the problem?
And the what's the problem? Essentially, she's asking that to
society of like, where where's the sexism? And that I
could do what I wanted to do? And she did.
And I think it behooves us to not underestimate the

(01:13:43):
ripple effect that this woman is still having and will
continue to have. So listeners, Caroline, by the way, is
I think it's going to have to recover from from
this episode? Um, because she's a lot to she's a
lot to fathom, UM, and she's a she's disappointing, really,

(01:14:04):
I mean she's she's a terribly disappointing woman to read about. Um.
If you're sitting where we are, so now, listeners, we
want to hear from you. What do you think about
Philish laughlely, her influence and her connection to Donald Trump today?
And can we ever undo the damage done by Philish Laughly. Honestly,

(01:14:27):
I think the answer is no. But listeners, perhaps you
are less cynical than I. Let us know your thoughts.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or message us on Facebook. And we've got a
couple of messages to share with you when we come
right back from a quick break. And now back to
the show. All right, Um well, I have a letter

(01:14:55):
here from Kim in response to our Minstrel Cup episode. Um.
She says, I started using the Keeper in two thousand
after hearing about it from a coworker in the United
States Coast Guard serving on ships. It was difficult to
use pads and tampons, as four hour watches did not
lend themselves to products lasting more than three or so hours,

(01:15:16):
and not being able to use the restroom in that time,
the Keeper was a lifesaver, no pun intended. I had
times when I would be on watch for up to
twelve hours and not having to worry about an accident
was beneficial. I made sure to talk with every woman
who was assigned about this wonderful product. It was easy
to get over the squick factor after a few times,

(01:15:37):
and not having to carry extra products That up to
twelve hours window is the selling point. I used the
latex brown version and mine lasted ten years. I replaced
it with a silicon version, which, ironically, again no pun intended,
turned a similar shade of brown from the blood staining. Anyway,
love the podcast, I've learned so much and lad of

(01:16:00):
even more. Keep up the awesome sauce work well thanks
Kim so is that why the keeper is brown? Maybe
I still maintain it to just be read Well. I
have a menstrual cup letter to read from Alison, who wrote,
I was so excited to hear your recent podcast on
menstrul cups and was fascinated to hear their long and
storied history. I was so disappointed, however, at the comments

(01:16:22):
you received when you posted an article on Facebook about
the reasons menstrual cups aren't more popular. There were countless comments,
many for men like gross you. I didn't need to
see that, and I can think of a lot more
than four reasons, and no thanks that made me realize
we haven't really come all that far from the days
of the red tents. Women's bodies are still seen as dirty,

(01:16:45):
which just makes me sad. And not to get too hyperbolic,
but my cup has changed my life. I initially chose
a cup for both environmental reasons and practical reasons. I'm
a swimmer and swim instructor, and tampons are just not
always the best choice for long sessions in the pool.
I have Endometrios's with severe cramping and was pleasantly surprised

(01:17:06):
to find the cup actually lessened my cramping pretty significantly.
I'm not sure why exactly, but my theory has something
to do with the way the cervix is positioned while
the cup is inserted. To anyone who has tried to
cup and not found them to be ideal, please don't
give up. The first cup I tried was too large
and too firm, causing painful pressure on both my bladder

(01:17:28):
and my cervix. I did some research before I bought
my second one, and it's now seriously a perfect solution
to an otherwise painful time of the month for me.
Well thanks for the info, Allison, and yeah, it is
always disappointing to see people on social media act like

(01:17:49):
children over something that is a natural bodily function. So listeners,
we'd love to hear from you. Mom. Stuff at how
stuffworks dot com is our email address and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so
you can learn even more. If you dare about Philish Lapley,
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot

(01:18:11):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
VI is it how stuff works dot com