March 30, 2024 • 48 mins
Reddit is a huge collection of online communities that house everything from toxic misogyny to beautiful feminism and the most niche things in between. We break down some of the popular site’s issues, and how one particular subreddit is shining a light on gender inequality in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
I never told you a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And welcome. I'm up to another classic today. I thought
we would bring back the one we did that I mistitled.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Sometimes I look back at these and I'm like, oh, no,
I was not having a day.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I was having a good day when I did that
on women and Reddit. I just I just put like
a weird and unnecessary Sminty before it. So it's like
sminty women and Reddit. Oh just not Yeah again, I
don't have spell check. This is another issue I've had
in my life for a long time, and I need
to fix.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Our jab ba tech.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I know, I know you. It's okay, thank you. I
appreciate that, Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But we've been talking a lot because our social media
landscape here in the US and such flux and such
turmoil in a lot of instances, and that because of that,
Reddit is kind of seeing an up an upswing more
people going back to it. I have friends who love Reddit,
although I did find out recently one of my best
(01:17):
friends uses read it all the time, and she's like
really active on the last of us two Subreddit, and
she's basically just yells at dudes are being doxic one there,
and I have more strength than I do. Yeah, yeah,
so you know, there's definitely still issues with it. I
(01:38):
saw an interesting headline about how somebody I think the
DOJ is assuming Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter because they're saying
they radicalized a shooter. So that'll be interesting how that comes,
how that plays out. Also, Reddit became public for a
first for the first time, which is not something that
(02:00):
I am very confident talking about. I know what it is,
but like, but people were talking about it because it's interesting.
Reddit doesn't really make a lot of money from what
I understand, it does have ads, and after we did
this episode, people wrote in and told us about the
ad structure. Because we weren't sure when we did this episode.
(02:22):
I guess there were speculation about why they were doing it,
because it's not like they suddenly were making a lot
of money. They do make money. But anyway, we were
going to come back to this on a larger scale later,
but I thought we'd bring this episode back in the meantime,
so please enjoy. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and
(02:45):
welcome to Stephan Never told You. A production of iHeartRadio
and today. I don't think we really have a content warning,
but there is some grossness that happens that we're talking about,
(03:05):
and it's Internet grossness that you probably know exists if
you've been someone on the Internet who's from any intersectionality
and martialized community. We are going to be talking about that,
including some quotes that I find very infuriating, but nothing
to to in depth because today we're talking about Reddit.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh Reddit, Yes, and we're doing kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It wasn't planned, but we have a lot of technology
based episodes coming.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's kind of how our minds go from we should
talk about this to this and this and all these
subjects need an episode in itself because it's too big.
They are very different platforms, but they affect women and
marginalized communities pretty deeply. So yeah, we had to yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, And one thing I've found in researching this is
you know that there are those problems that you wouldn't
surprise you that exist on all of them, but they
are distinct, which is interesting, right, So I wanted to
ask you, Samantha, what is your experience with Reddit.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It is so if I had to put a percentage,
I probably mess with it about ten percent of its utilities,
I guess you can say. And I say this in
that I never had a Reddit account. I don't even
know how to work Reddit, and I say this as yes,
it sounds like I am an aged boomer. But the
(04:26):
problem about Reddit for me is I don't understand the
way it stacks. So you get the original post and
in the comments, and you can't just search from what
I gather, So it's very very foreign concept to me.
I do enjoy the concept of it because I can
(04:47):
learn about Reddit posts through other platforms. So typically how
I read Reddit posts is through Twitter someone that brings
it about and be like, hey, look at this Reddit
post and I'm like, okay, cool, and or from my partner,
who was an enthusiast when it to Reddit, has probably
known more about it than anything, has a lot of
things that they love about it and will show me posts,
(05:07):
will save post for me. When it comes to a dog,
videos that are cute, fun laugh so that there's a
thing about like contagious laughter. There's a whole channel like
he loves that, so he'll send me things like that.
But I've also heard so many horror stories and I'm like, no,
I don't I'm not gonna mess with that. I don't
want to know. There are a few that I will
like I have subscribed to and then we're going to
(05:29):
talk about it. But I do follow that. Am I
the ass reddit twitter feed so that I can read
that way? But yeah, that is that is the depth
of my Reddit experience. What about you?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, I'm similar.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've always had a hesitance around Reddit, even though I
have friends who are women who love it, and it's
kind of a running joke that they're always like, I
saw this on Reddit, I saw this on Reddit, or
today I checked this the read on Reddit. But I've
always been hesitant about it because of some of the
things we're going to talk about, some of which has
been overblown and some of which has not. And I
remember when I first was working on this stuff, Mom,
(06:04):
I've never told you YouTube channel. They asked me, like,
you should go post in Reddit, and I was like,
I don't know anything about Reddit, but I can tell
you as someone who doesn't have a Reddit account, if
I just come in as a company, you can't even
post it unless you have enough karma points. By the way,
it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna look good
for me. It's not gonna look good for us, so
(06:25):
we're not gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And we did.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
That means you're posing as a Reddit person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you know there is a Reddit thread about stuff
I've never told you? Yeah? So I found it a
while ago when I was researching everything. It just kind
of the one I found so genuinely like, not mean.
It was just about the changing of hosts and it
(06:46):
just updates. Oh okay, as that it changes it seems.
I did see a few people comment about why what's happening?
So that people trying to answer questions, I'd just linger
for long because I was scared.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Oh wow, listeners, let us know we should check that out.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
We're speaking of I uh again. Forever ago, when Bridget
and I did those episodes on fan fiction, a bunch
of you wrote in and said there are fan fiction
communities on Reddit, which surprised me, but actually pretty thriving
fan fiction communities.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I did. I have read fan fiction.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
On Reddit when I was younger, in my early fan
fiction days, and I read.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
The scary post it on.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah and people can.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I think there's collections there and people post but I
read one that was a Silent Hill too fan fiction,
and it's legitimately one of the scariest things I ever read,
and I never went back.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
No, scared so badly.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Okay, author though, I know, I know, And kudos is
the thing you give to authors that you like.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
On answer, I'm so hipps, you are so hip.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I feel like I just completely decimated that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I do also know because of one of said friends
that she'll always update me on her there's a last
of us to hate Reddit.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
She'll update me on that.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And she also I've told you this, Samantha, she hates
onions and she's on like a I Hate onions reddit
sub reddit. One time it was infiltrated by people who
love onions, and that's one of my very favorite things.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
There's a lot of battles, it seems on Reddit.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, And from what I gather, a
lot of it is kind of done in fun. Ecolectic
was a word I saw a lot spirits, so I
believe these pro onion people it was in good fun,
I hope. And then also fan fiction again, there's a
popular trope and fan fiction where like your favorite fictional
(08:55):
characters will use modern day technologies and so I've a
few that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Are am I the ass but with Star Wars characters.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So one is like Darth Vader being my son was
being particularly annoying, so I cut off his hand.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Am I. They asked something like that.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Okay, I know that they have a huge following us.
In fact, they're podcasts that are made up just to
read off, oh verticts to post off of am I
the app. So whoever started that is a genius.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yes, and we are, as you said, going to be
talking about a lot of that. We have some examples
because there's interesting things and this was one of the
reasons it was just your idea to talk about this
is it's kind of spotlighted a lot of our still
latent sexism and especially heterosexual relationships.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So get ready for that.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Be pumped about that.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yes, but before we get into that, let's break down
some of the basics here. So a brief explainer on Reddit,
which is called the front page of the Internet. And
it's called that because you read it on Reddit, which
I never never knew that never.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Wow, that makes me feel better and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
No, I just knew it never. It's kind of one
of those games that you play when you have that
you know, they don't actually spell it out, but the
sounds and you're supposed to figure out the sentence. That's
this level. I would have never thought that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yep, same read.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It was founded by three University of Virginia students in
two thousand and five, Steve Huffman, Alexis o'hannian with Aaron Schwartz,
and I put with because his role is disputed and
there's a lot of drama. If we were a different podcast,
we could break down, but we are not that podcast.
But if you want to look it up, so much
drama in the leadership of Reddit, Oh my goodness. A
(10:42):
year later it was acquired by conte Nast, although I
did read that they used a lot of fake accounts
to make it look like it was more used than.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It actually interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But yeah, its value has skyrocketed since then, And if
you are unaware, it's essentially a hue, huge depository of
forums where people can post content and comment and vote
on other people's post upvoter, down vote. It's divided into
over a million specific communities or forums called subreddits, which
are labeled as our slash whatever topic, and these subreddits
(11:18):
can cover pretty much anything, and we're talking like niche
stuff like this onion thing, I like, very very niche,
but also, as discussed in the past episodes, things like
men's rights activists, users and content the red pills. So
we've talked about Reddit quite a bit on here, just
never specifically. Certain criteria must be met in order to
(11:41):
create a subreddit. Basically, you have to have a fairly
active account that's over thirty days old, and a certain
number of Karma points determined by upvotes and down votes.
But apparently the exact number is a Reddit secret, which I'm.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Like, how, what's that? Okay, it's bias, I know, I'm like, hmmm.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
These subreddits are managed by volunteer moderators also called mods. Uh.
They can control various appearance aspects of a subreddit and
the content that is allowed, even removing some are banning users.
The whole thing is managed by Reddit employees called admins,
that can ban users, demote mods, and even get rid
(12:21):
of whole subreddits. A lot of Reddit terminology comes in abbreviations,
and some of the ones, some of the big ones
you may have heard, and some of them that we're
going to dig into more are Ama asked me anything
and A I T A, R AM, I the ass.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
But it's just like so many and.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I don't understand them, and I have to sit there
and stare at them, going okay, what Yeah, so they
asked me anything I didn't know. I knew the aum
A part, you know, That's what I was just so,
you know, uh huh, because I don't know Reddit. And
the only time I oversee this are when celebrities get
on people are super excited or like authors and that
(13:03):
which sounds like a great idea. It seems like a
really smart thing, but I know there's been a lot
of trouble where they've had to shut things down. Yeah,
that's a whole different conversation. But you know what, It's
often used for philanthropic fundraisers and a lot of the
users love it, calling it fun, eccentric place to share content,
and I've heard that. But like everything, Reddit is not
without its issues, and we've talked about it before. One
(13:24):
that we're not going to really get into today but
we've discussed in brief before is internet vigilantism data collection.
Have been once said Reddit knows the dark secrets of
its users, and it was later discovered he'd tend't Russian
ConTroll activity on the site, which is a concern right
now for a lot of these platforms. During the twenty
twenty George Floyd protest, eight hundred moderators called for the
(13:48):
banning of the sexist and racist subreddits and hate speech,
and in June of that year they banned somewhere around
two thousand subreddits, including the subreddit are slash gender critical
are just a urf subreddit. Some of the bands drew
complaints around censorship, especially politically. Just this year, the company
(14:08):
banned the word groomer when used as a slur against
LGBTQ plus folks. They also introduced AI tools to find
hate speech, but posters have found ways around it, which
is hard to keep up with. In twenty twenty one, Ultraviolet,
which friend of the show Bridget Todd works with, closely,
found Reddit had a C on this sexism report card
(14:32):
and this was the highest grade of the social media
platforms they surveyed, which makes me sad.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, it was. It was not pretty. It was not
pretty a.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Ce yay passing. But to be fair, and again I
say this with like because this is also part of
the conversation we were having and talking about doing this episode.
Reddit seems like a fairly better space for women to
get sound advice because we talked about them during the
the rebels of the abortion movement, more so than some
(15:04):
of the other platforms. But yeah, see.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Damn yeah, And you should look it up listeners if
you haven't seen it, because it breaks down by category
and then averaged out, so C was the average and
it got an F in other like any specific categories,
but like right, see overall, and this gets kind of
(15:37):
complicated because there's been a lot of phases of this,
so we're we're going to jump around a little bit.
But beginning in twenty fourteen, read It enacted policies banning
harassment involuntary sexualization and banned several forums focused on bigotry
or harassment, including subreddits targeting gay, fat, and black people. Notably,
(15:59):
this happened under the extremely controversial and short lived leadership
of Ellen Powe and whoa is there a lot of
drama around that. Depending on what you read, she is
either an absolute dictator or a scapegoat who did her best,
but it cannot be denied there was a lot of
sexist talk around her, and she received rape and death threats.
(16:20):
While she was serving this position, a lot of discussion
around free speech and censorship happened under her. Basically, the
guy she was serving for as interim he.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Went on Reddit and like, let loose and you can.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Read all of these comments about it, but he was
basically like, like, she was in a bad position.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
She wasn't the one to blame for all of these problems.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Everyone had, and leadership who was to blame should have
come forward and said that, and they didn't. And I
know people are still mad about it, but essentially that's
the vibe I got. That's definitely what he said, because
a lot of this happened around the alleged no. I mean,
somebody was a very popular Reddit employee was fired and
she was a woman, and people blamed Ellen Powell.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
But according to what I've read, it was not her decision.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
But that didn't stop the higher ups from letting her
take the blame.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So that's a bigger thing.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But I did find that interesting because so many things
popped up about it when I was researching this, and
after hashtag me too our slash in cells was taken
down in late twenty seventeen. At the time, people on
this subreddit were arguing that rape is just sex, but
also that reverse rate men who wanted sex but weren't
(17:42):
having it should be a part of the discussion around
me too. A member posed as a woman in a
legal advice subreddit to try to get advice for getting
away with rape. And this whole thing spawned our slash
in cell tears, which tracks in cell extremist and I
think we've talked about that before, but I know from
my friends read that one. In twenty eighteen, the company
(18:05):
introduced new policies to minimize harassment, including hiding post messages
and comments from selected users, as well as new guidelines
around banning content that called for violence.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
All right, didn't fourtune come off of Reddit? Essentially they
were banned from that, so they started their own that's.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I believe, So I believe.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So yeah, yeah, I know we talked about it before
when we talked about in cells, So you know, kind
of good. I guess not that fortane exists, but they're
not all Reddit, but yeah, that's a whole different conversation again.
According to some resources, Reddit was the seventh most popular
website in twenty twenty one, and the nineteenth most popular globally.
In twenty eighteen, they were giving about one hundred and
(18:48):
ten million one hundred and ten million users monthly, so
it's inspired other sites like imager Imager, I don't know
how to say this, however, an estimated seventy four percent
of the Reddit users are actually men, though it's predominantly
left leaning and young, which surprises me. Less than nineteen
percent are right leaning and only one percent are over
(19:08):
sixty five, which, again, yeah, as a forty seven year old,
I don't touch that.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
This is one of those things that makes sense when
I thought about it, but when I again, I think
it's because bad actors get so much news media and
they're so bad that I'm afraid to use Reddit because
of them, even if they're small, even if they're a
small subset. That I just had this assumption that there
(19:36):
was going to be a lot more right leaning people.
But it does make sense because, well, some things we're
going to talk about, So we did want to focus
specifically on some of the issues that women and other
intersectionalities and marginalized communities face on Reddit, starting with moderators.
So in the wake of Me Too, some moderators and
(19:58):
subs like are slash band female Hate really tackled banning
sexist content on Reddit, including first time mods, so maybe
they were joining because of this. Subreddits like r slash
abused sluts, r slash Raping Women, Our slash against Women's Rights,
and our slash deadly Erotica were things that they found
(20:20):
and raised their hand about. There's our slash Mother Daughter,
which is a subreddit dedicated to posting pictures of mothers
and daughters and describing what the poster would like to
do to them sexually. There's another where men create ai
girlfriends are mean to them and then post about it
on Reddit. There's Tributes Delivered, which is basically messaging women
(20:44):
in underage girls with unsolicited pictures they'd masturbated and ejaculated.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
On, and then posting pictures of that.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, many of these have had hundreds of thousands of followers,
but these mods, who again are volunteers, report being overwhelmed
by the emotional toll, and a lot of the mods
fighting this sexism are women, and a lot of them
end up leaving. Mods have also reported feeling ignored and
(21:10):
unsupported by the company when they do raise concerns are
flag material, so it feels kind of hopeless almost and
on top of that, they don't have a great record
outside of the Anglo sphere or English speaking world of
controlling hate speech, to say the least. The company says
(21:31):
it's aiming to combat this by hiring more non English speakers,
amongst other things. Many have spoken out about how the
unpaid moderator model has its limits, leading to further extremism,
and it is worth noting that when a subreddit is banned,
the redditors often migrate to another subreddit or maybe even
another website. But there is a really big vibe of
(21:55):
you know, you don't like it, you can leave and
oo here we're getting into some of the comments.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So just that's not your thing today, I understand.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
So here's an example of the comments some women mods
reported receiving. I want you to get cancer because I
want to see your own body killing you. I want
you to get cancer, your mother, sister, brother, father, grandparents.
I want them all to get cancer, and when they
open their mouths, I want to piss in them.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I hate you, you nasty, disgusting slut.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
The in Gadget article that included this quote disclosed that
every mod they interviewed for this piece had received a
death threat every one of.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Them, right right, And I don't know any I guess
we could even look about it, but like, read it
in itself, how does it make money me?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You know, I think they make it verse so they
read it as tears. They have one tier where you pay,
they have advertising.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, because I'm wondering about for the moderators, like for
TikTok creators and Instagram creators who have followings, they make money.
Do the Reddit renators make money like that?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I would love if somebody wrote in and let us know.
I don't think so, yeah, let us know.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
If you're a big Reddit poster, Katie, Katie, let us know.
Is it possible to get money like that? I don't know.
I know, like you were saying that that you can
make ads, you can pay for the ads that are
on the side, which I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. But I'm wondering how it works for those
who have a viral content or a get because I
(23:28):
know people follow each other on Reddit too, right, Like
you're like, you may not know their name, but you
follow this one person because you like what they're doing
or something, and links to their other social media sites,
which I've never seen people put reddits the Reddit handles
when they're advertising that I'm on other platforms. Yeah, I
don't have to think about it. But yeah, here's another
disgusting thing. Y'all ready for it. One of the biggest
(23:50):
things that you'll come across when researching women's sexism and
Reddit is something called creep shots. Sexual images take it
of women and post it without their knowledge, and similarly,
nude photos. Yeah, some of these images are uploaded and
sold again without consent. There have been some high profile
cases too. In twenty fourteen, there was a large leak
(24:13):
of nude pictures of women's celebrities posted non consensually. A
couple of years later, Reddit shut down on subreddit posting
deep fakes, which is a horrifying thought because, oh my god,
of women in porn. Some revenge videos have been posted
and monetized without the women's consent, which still is a
conversation because it's still not been a fully addressed. This
(24:33):
trade in nudes is called collector culture. There's a horror
movie about that, folks. Yeah, and many of these pictures
often come with personal information like social media handles and addresses.
Holy crap.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, it's gross. And scary. Okay, so this brings us
to am I the Ass. Reddit is kind of famous
for hosting a lot of so called nice guys. And
you know that's the guy who claims he's so nice,
he does everything right. Why are women denying me in
a romantic relationship?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And then everyone's like, the way you're terrible.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, because you're demanding someone like you because you're seemingly nice.
But if you have to say you're nice, yeah, probably
not true.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah exactly. And I feel like this is that's part
of what I had. And again I have friends who
are women who love read it. This is just like
my outsider. I don't know what for some reason I
thought this, but I was like, oh, that's where the
nice guys go.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I feel like, am I the Ass has.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Become a lot of calling that out right, and we
have a lot of examples for it. Okay, So from
a Guardian article about a man in his thirties who
frequented the red pill. So we're going to go through
some of these am i ass posts and oh my goodness,
oh my goodness. All right, so here's the quote Morpheus Manfred,
(25:55):
having spent my twenties looking for female companionship. I noticed
that the dating game wasn't what I was taught, what
my parents prepared me for, and what I learned from movies.
It was stacked against guys, and it was a very
unpleasant experience. Over the past ten years, the flickiness of
women has gotten worse. You'd meet a girl, hit it off,
get her number, and agree to date, and either she'd
no show or cancel right before I found myself putting
(26:18):
in all this effort for nothing. It was very defeating.
It's not the way courting worked when my parents met.
What I saw in movies. We're having a good heart
and being yourself as all you need. That's not what
happens now. Good and nice guys aren't attractive anymore. The
manosphere fundamentally became a surrogate father for the life lessons
I never got. So this man this actually was not
(26:43):
from am I the asso. They were interviewing people about
why did you get involved in this manosphere space? And
so this was a quote from this user about it.
And it was an interesting article because some people made
the point like maybe you know a lot of these
dudes just need the sounding board to get it off
their chests.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And move on. But a lot of them don't.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
And that's something that we've talked about before, and this
whole like overall mindset like maybe, yeah, you just say
that and get it off your chest and move on.
But I feel like what we're talking about here is
a bigger problem of how we think society should function
and where women the roles women should play.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Right, and then also the ones that will play those
roles don't meet your expectations because of A, B and
C that you have placed upon that that's all different conversation,
but yes.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yes, yes, And so like this whole idea has gotten
intertwined with am I the Ass And that is one
of the reasons, as we said, we want to talk
about this because that supreddit is so popular and it
has taken off, and as you said, it's got podcasts
and Twitter handles and all the time I'm hearing like
did you see this am I the Ass? And as
I said, it's really highlighted a lot of sexism going
(27:54):
on and perhaps particularly in hetero relationships. And basically, yeah,
if you haven't heard of it, it's a forum where
people post problems or disagreements they've had with others and
ask if they're the villain in the story, like am
I being unreasonable? Or is the other person or party
being unreasonable?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Again, this is one of the only things that I
look at when I'm looking at read it, and typically
i'll look at it through Twitter and or again a
podcast that pops up from TikTok, my God, Everything's Inner
splices it. But then I will go and check it
out and see what the comments are saying. Typically if
they have comments coming back, like there's some that's like
really entertaining. That's where George's the Cat came from. If
(28:32):
you follow them on Twitter, who is a union loving
a radical cat? Fantastic? But it started off with the
fact that the coworker wanted to butter the cat. And again,
if you haven't read it, you should. I remember when
it first came out and everybody was on Twitter just
losing their mind because they're like, this has to be fake,
this has to be fake. And to that point, like
(28:54):
George has now like thousands and thousands of followers and
it's getting one to fights with people, and they also
had a problematic issue just recently. But hey, that's a
whole different conversation. It has all of these aspects to that.
But then you have the ones that are super serious,
to the point that people were like, oh, yo, you're
gonna get murdered. Leave. How these posts go is literally
goes me. And then they give the age and their gender,
(29:17):
my husband or my partner age gender, explains the story.
You can write assole, not the ass. You're both asked
kind of the ass kind of thing, or these other
person is the ass. Like they give you these options,
which is nice, and then you explain things. But this
one woman that I read through was like really horrifying
the fact that her husband's younger brother was very co
(29:40):
dependent on them, very needy, and there's something kind of off.
Turned out he was peeing on her stuff. We're pretty
sure he abused the cat, all these things, and then
they found him, like he got kicked out, and everybody
felt sorry for him. The mother felt sorry for him,
like the mother was enabling this younger brother, and everybody's like,
you don't need to worries, not a big deal. Then
(30:00):
later on they find her picture posted in his room
with like all these marks on it and like he
had collected and stolen things from her with intent that
he was going to hurt her, and then somewhere along
the lines, a niece came in, a young niece, like
preteen niece came in the picture and he was like.
Everybody was like, Okay, yeah, there's something wrong with this guy.
And this woman would come back with follow ups and
(30:21):
updates about it, and then the last thing we find
out is that he has been given a restraining order.
That was a huge fight and he is now under
supervision because people were seriously scared, and I think the
cat didn't make it like it was this whole thing.
I was very upset. I think the people were so upset.
But you have serious things like this, and a majority
(30:42):
of the am I asked posts are about relationships, as
you said, and a lot of it has like in
law relationships, sister relationships. One of those was like talking
about the fact that a sister in law, god, there
was a lot of in laws, was making fun of
the husband who that was the in law who is
a chef and she is a chef and he's an
(31:03):
Asian chef, and she went in with making racist comments
about him being an Asian chef, to the point that
she got fired because like she worked at a training
like I think she worked at an Asian fusion restaurant
and she was making fun of Asian cooks, so it
was like, oh damn, and she was not Asian. I
think she was white from the post and it divided
the entire family. And apparently the parents got divorced because
(31:24):
the mother was enabling like it was or the father
was enabling the child. And that's where the racist like
came from, where racism was learned from. I guess, like
it was a whole thing and it just killed their relationship.
But you have advice in the columns like that, But
a lot of these are women coming and asking about
advice about their relationships and whether or not oftentimes am
(31:44):
I being cheated on? Was? Is kind of the conversation
and about emotional affairs. It's the whole thing. But what
I've repeatedly seen is like the fact that they will
write these posts and people thought about like, you're not
the ass, but you need to leave because he is awful.
These are red flags. This is not going to change.
These are things blah blahlah blah, to the point like, yeah,
(32:05):
all of the answers are typically yeah, you're not to
ask to get a divorce, get a divorce, get a divorce.
But some of these have been really empowering because a
lot of the women come back with thank you so
much for your advice. This really helped me see some
things I didn't really you know, think about this, and
you're right, this is going to be a bad thing,
and I need to lead like it was just a
whole thing. And the reason you and I were talking
about Reddit to begin with this because I've been seeing
(32:26):
more and more where women are coming to find a
crew of people to tell them what they can't see
for themselves in the middle of the situation, and it's
seemingly fairly empowering, especially the way they're c having this
conversation and really hopefully rectifying the situation. Of course, there's
others where like the partners have seen it and they
respond and that's a whole drama, and so.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I'm heartened to know that it's mostly people being like, hey,
you should get out instead of you know, a lot
of the victim blamings if we see yeah all the time,
and I'm not saying, you know, every post is the same,
but you know, because I would hate for somebody to
be in a vulnerable situation, and you're getting all these
Internet people making it worse.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So I'm happy to hear.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Typically I have not seen that as of yet.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
We do have some examples that we want to go over.
Oh my goodness. Okay, so here's a quote from medium
about this whole thing. It being am I the ass
is a microcosm of gendered entitlement, the story of American sexism,
told post by post. There's the guy furious with his
girlfriend for dressing up for a work soon, because how
(33:49):
dare she look nice for anyone but him? The husband
who wants to forbid his wife from breastfeeding in public,
The man who is mad that his wife, who has
just given birth, doesn't dress sexy anymore, and of course,
the one who feels betrayed that his wife keeps her
own savings account. There's the man who needs complete silence
from his stay at home wife and two toddlers while
(34:10):
he works from home because quote, it's her job to
be silent and shut the kids up. The husband who
refuses to do any domestic work at all because his
wife isn't asking nicely enough. He also seems to think
his wife has a natural predilection for thankless activity. She
doesn't really rest, he wrote, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Not her thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
The guy who wants his girlfriend to sell her house
because she bought it with money she earned while stripping.
And the man who walked out literally on his wife
when she got an ovarian cancer diagnosis. I had begged
her to have kids since we were twenty six, but
she refused for her career, he wrote, as a justification
for storming out of the doctor's office. It's not just
the stories themselves and how obviously awful they are that
(34:49):
stand out. What makes am I the Ass such a
special look into gender dynamics is that the men who
describe awful scenarios truly don't believe they've done anything wrong.
Sexism has fully lulled them into a sense of moral
superiority that blinds them to their own explicitly terrible behavior.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yes, and a lot of these. When you read it
or like this has to be made up, please told
me this is made up, because you really that blind
to see it this way. We had one where the
woman was getting married picked out a dress his mother
because I love and law stuff. His mother didn't like
it and picked out another one and asked her to
get that one, and his excuses she doesn't have a daughter. Ohoes, oh,
(35:31):
and then she said, no, this is my dress. I
love it, and behind her back he took it and
exchanged it for the one that his mother picked out. Oh,
and couldn't figure out why she thought it was a
big deal. Wow wow, Yes. So here's another example outside
of that one from Selon could a poster named Away,
performer on the popular am I the ass Ai Ta subreddit,
(35:55):
complained that his neighbor wouldn't cook dinner for him, which,
by the way, I did read this. After explaining that
he's a thirty one year old single guy who doesn't
know how to cook, Away went on to write that
he has noticed that his neighbor, a woman named Katie,
cooks frequently and quote, it always smells amazing. So I
got the idea this is him, that I'd offer to
give her some money each week to cook a little
(36:16):
extra and bring it over to me, he continues. Unsurprisingly,
Katie said no, but Away was undeterred, asking quote if
she was sure, and upping the amount I was offering
until Katie realized the polite deferrals weren't getting the job. Done,
she said, I should get a housekeeper if that's what
I want. I remember seeing this and it was hilarious
(36:37):
that he kept defending this.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What a thing to ask somebody.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Asking once maybe'd be like, hey, can I pay you?
Because this was awesome, but then to continue as if
like that one no should have made it awkward and
you should never want to see her again and you
should hide. Yeah, exactly, like never, like try to avoid
it at all cost, never leave the house again.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And the interesting thing about this one, this whole article
from Salon was about specifically cooking and ideas men seem
to have around women and cooking, and it included quotes
from women on other subreddits about how their boyfriends expect
them to cook or gave up cooking after they got married,
like perhaps they have cooked before marriage and then stopped
(37:25):
after they got married. One redditor told his girlfriend, I
honestly wouldn't mind having a housewife, and that she should
do that because while because she is quote certainly not stupid,
but isn't quite on my level. On top of that,
many of these posts showcase that men expect women to
cook from a young age, but to their standards and desires,
(37:46):
so like not what the woman who is cooking wants.
They want you to cook, they want the men want
you to cook what the men want, which I have
witnessed before in my life. The article also cited a
study that that married women do more domestic work than
single women, despite the fact that they have a partner who,
in theory, should be shouldering half the weight. And yes,
(38:09):
even women with jobs, and even women who are the
only ones in the relationship with jobs.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Yep. Another quote from the article quote perhaps the most
boneheaded was the redditor who up top denies that he
is a quote sexist asshole, but is mad because his wife,
a stay at home mother of two who did not
think it romantic that he enrolled her in quote into
a couple's cooking course with me as an anniversary present
(38:35):
so she could quote learn to cook properly. No. Oh,
there was also one about like bringing up them again,
the mother bringing up his mother into like like comparing
in her nagging. Oh it was the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh yeah, here's another quote. One dditor who wrote in
who was clearly excited to be engaged to a woman
who loves too and cares a lot about health, so
she makes a lot of stuff from scratch that we
both eat and quote. Her place is super nice while
his is a mess. But when he swung by her
place one day quote to take some leftovers from home
(39:14):
for lunches, he discovered, to his outrage, my girlfriend has
a cleaning lady she never told me about. He unleashed
in her, saying I felt betrayed because I always thought
it was great that I was marrying someone super tidy
to balance it out by which he means to clean
up after him. And even though she tried to placate
him by saying it frees up more time to cook
stuff from scratch, he was furious that she hired someone
(39:37):
to do something she could do herself. Luckily, the other
editors called him out, saying, this sounds like you were
getting married to get yourself a maid.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Noo, no, wow, yep, wow wow wow wow.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And yeah, as you said, from these articles, I read
about it, and all these instances were highlighting that hadling
and you could follow many of the comments.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Do rightly call out these things?
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, I will say, like, I don't know if it's
just the way it's set up or what. But the
majority of the people who are voting and are commenting
are those who are in support of typically the right,
meaning whoever's obviously the ass you can kind of see it.
There's sundays like hmm, they could both be the asshole here,
(40:25):
like communication issues or whatever whatnot. But for the most part,
and again like the things that are posted on Twitter
are not always the things that are posted because they
have tons of injuries, by the way, tons and tons
and tons. So it's good to see that though, I'm like, oh, yes,
because a lot of these like the minute you read it,
your blood boils and you're ready to fight, fight somebody.
Oh and all the means that come out of these
(40:47):
and gifts okay, just kiss okay.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And then, in a similar vein to all of this,
here's a quote from a She Knows article. One writitor
opened up about this process, sharing that her extremely hygienic
more on that later partner was horrified by the period
underwear she keeps on deck for when she's bleeding each
month and insisted she throw them out.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
He came across one of my pairs of panties that
I specifically only wear during that time of the month.
Certain ladies will understand that we keep panties separate for
periods than we do for when we aren't. AKA, I
have my ugly or maybe bloodstained pairs for my period
a my cute and well kempt ones for when I'm
not on my period. Anyways, upon seeing these, he told
me that I need to throw that pair away and
(41:30):
that it's disgusting and unhygienic. He made quite a few
comments about how gross they are, despite them being clean
but just bloodstained from a previous period spotting situation. She
went on to say that when she tried to explain
that these are cleaned if a little stained pears that
exist for the express reason of getting stained, think a
T shirt you wear for painting the house or doing yardwork,
(41:50):
he responded poorly and made her feel terrible. He also
tried to claim that he was pretty sure other girls
people with periods don't do that.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Oh, he needs to be single forever, just to be
single if you especially you know, if you're dating women.
I found it funny because there was another post similar
to this, not exactly where she had gone on first
or second date new dates. She'd gotten on her period,
so she needed a tampon. Uh, so she used, you know,
her applicator, she put it in. I believe she put
(42:19):
it in her and wrapped it up. You know, if
you've used a tampon, you know what I'm talking about.
You can get back in the wrapper and if you're embarrassed,
you hide it because you try to do all the things.
And then you know, in the trash can. Apparently the
dude dug in his trash found it and told her
that she was not welcome and that she should not
have put that in her in his trash can.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And she was like what she was upset that she
threw away in the trash gear, Oh my gosh, properly. Also,
he wouldn't dug through It's yeah, whole thing.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I feel like a lot of these are showcasing.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
The stupidity of men.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Well yeah, but also how much generalized statement men women
are expected to hide, Like everything we're expected to hide,
how much work it takes to do something. We're expected
to hide These totally normal body functions were expected to
put up with your the dude's mom wanting this dress,
(43:16):
and that means that you don't matter in this equation
even though it's your dress. Like, I feel like there's
so much stuff where it's like what you want doesn't matter,
and hide from me anything that I don't want to see.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Right, I mean there's a lot that you were like, wow,
you really thought this was real life? Who really thinks
that this is what happens? Like you really want the
Disney version of a princess from the nineteen sixties?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Mm hmm, they want it's I mean it's like a
mom or a maid or exactly based on these popes.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
That's just the vibe I'm.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Getting, right, And I will say, like, it's not all
like that. We've talked about many things. I just read
one about a man who wanted to make his own
birthday came she got upset and there was this whole
like in between line and she was absolutely in the wrong.
But like, there are other conversations that are had that
you're like, okay, huge red flags. At least human decency
(44:11):
seems to be central in many of the followers and commenters.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, that's good. I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And just some brief like wrapping up comments because you know,
we focused on a lot of the grim stuff, but
you know, there's a lot of really great stuff about Reddit.
It really is, and this misogyny that we have been
talking about harms everyone, and Reddit has in cases like this,
perhaps shone a light on it. And it impacts how
women in non binary folks interactor don't on this platform.
(44:44):
It influences other offline behavior. But yeah, it is not
all bad at all.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Right, And as in fact, when you read through some
of the statistics, again the sea is not great higher
than other platforms. That's really disconcerting in itself, but a
lot of it also has found homes for communities that
are really, really genuinely great. We talked about the aunties
helping people in the anti abortion things that are happening
in the US, and we've talked about that this is
(45:10):
such a great idea. Again, a lot of these good
intentions can be harmful, so you have to be careful
with that. But a lot of these also come together,
like with the voting things, they've had conversations about trying
to link people in order to get the right access,
the right communications. So Reddit is can be an amazing
thing again, great dog videos, great contagious laughter videos, other
(45:31):
things that I'm like, oh god, I'd never want to
see that again. And why yeah, yes, I feel like
it does really well. Maybe I'm wrong again, I'm not
very good into I'm not very into Reddit in the
platform in itself. I'm hovering around all around it, apparently
at least outside of it. But you do see that
(45:52):
the moderators who are there seem to do a good
job in making sure the community stays with it in
its boundaries, so they will quickly take things off and
or pause things or lock things down. I feel like
they have better access to that than I've seen other
social media platforms.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, yeah, which has its pluses and minuses, but I
think when it works, it's great. And also just there's
some hilarious stuff that you could find very eccentric, eclectic
stuff on Reddit. And I know, like we talked about
in our being raised by a parent with narcissism, there's
like a great Reddit source for that, and a lot
of you have written in about that and how it
helped you and you found community that way. And there
(46:30):
are some great feminist subreddits. Our slash Feminism, our slash
two Chromosomes, which forbids, transphobic or torque, R slash All Women,
our slash Black Ladies, r slash Asian two x R
slash dose xtatinas, R slash sex Positive, R slash ask feminists,
and our slash radical queers. And I probably didn't have
(46:51):
to say all the R slashes before those, but here
here I went. Often are suggested, and thanks to bitch
Media for that list, and it can be a great
place to learn and connect and grow when it comes
to intersectional feminism. And it's important because a lot of
people get their news from the site, which we have
to keep in mind, and it shapes Internet conversations and
understanding the world, especially for younger folks. So there are
(47:12):
these bad things, but there are these good things too,
And I would love for anybody who uses Reddit if
you have any insights you would like to offer. If
you're a mod, let us know if you have any
favorite subreddits that we should check out or that you
recommend that'ld be great. I do really love Like when
my friend Katie told me there was one about hating onions,
(47:32):
I was.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Just like, of course there is I love it question
of course.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You can send us to us at our email, which
is steffaniea moom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram at stuff whe Never Told You. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christia, Hey you, and thanks to
you for listening.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Stuff One Ever Told You. Dis direction of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
For more podcasts or my Heart Radio, you can check
out the Ihart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
The
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
I never told you a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And welcome. I'm up to another classic today. I thought
we would bring back the one we did that I mistitled.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Sometimes I look back at these and I'm like, oh, no,
I was not having a day.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I was having a good day when I did that
on women and Reddit. I just I just put like
a weird and unnecessary Sminty before it. So it's like
sminty women and Reddit. Oh just not Yeah again, I
don't have spell check. This is another issue I've had
in my life for a long time, and I need
to fix.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Our jab ba tech.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I know, I know you. It's okay, thank you. I
appreciate that, Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But we've been talking a lot because our social media
landscape here in the US and such flux and such
turmoil in a lot of instances, and that because of that,
Reddit is kind of seeing an up an upswing more
people going back to it. I have friends who love Reddit,
although I did find out recently one of my best
(01:17):
friends uses read it all the time, and she's like
really active on the last of us two Subreddit, and
she's basically just yells at dudes are being doxic one there,
and I have more strength than I do. Yeah, yeah,
so you know, there's definitely still issues with it. I
(01:38):
saw an interesting headline about how somebody I think the
DOJ is assuming Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter because they're saying
they radicalized a shooter. So that'll be interesting how that comes,
how that plays out. Also, Reddit became public for a
first for the first time, which is not something that
(02:00):
I am very confident talking about. I know what it is,
but like, but people were talking about it because it's interesting.
Reddit doesn't really make a lot of money from what
I understand, it does have ads, and after we did
this episode, people wrote in and told us about the
ad structure. Because we weren't sure when we did this episode.
(02:22):
I guess there were speculation about why they were doing it,
because it's not like they suddenly were making a lot
of money. They do make money. But anyway, we were
going to come back to this on a larger scale later,
but I thought we'd bring this episode back in the meantime,
so please enjoy. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and
(02:45):
welcome to Stephan Never told You. A production of iHeartRadio
and today. I don't think we really have a content warning,
but there is some grossness that happens that we're talking about,
(03:05):
and it's Internet grossness that you probably know exists if
you've been someone on the Internet who's from any intersectionality
and martialized community. We are going to be talking about that,
including some quotes that I find very infuriating, but nothing
to to in depth because today we're talking about Reddit.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Oh Reddit, Yes, and we're doing kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It wasn't planned, but we have a lot of technology
based episodes coming.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's kind of how our minds go from we should
talk about this to this and this and all these
subjects need an episode in itself because it's too big.
They are very different platforms, but they affect women and
marginalized communities pretty deeply. So yeah, we had to yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, And one thing I've found in researching this is
you know that there are those problems that you wouldn't
surprise you that exist on all of them, but they
are distinct, which is interesting, right, So I wanted to
ask you, Samantha, what is your experience with Reddit.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It is so if I had to put a percentage,
I probably mess with it about ten percent of its utilities,
I guess you can say. And I say this in
that I never had a Reddit account. I don't even
know how to work Reddit, and I say this as yes,
it sounds like I am an aged boomer. But the
(04:26):
problem about Reddit for me is I don't understand the
way it stacks. So you get the original post and
in the comments, and you can't just search from what
I gather, So it's very very foreign concept to me.
I do enjoy the concept of it because I can
(04:47):
learn about Reddit posts through other platforms. So typically how
I read Reddit posts is through Twitter someone that brings
it about and be like, hey, look at this Reddit
post and I'm like, okay, cool, and or from my partner,
who was an enthusiast when it to Reddit, has probably
known more about it than anything, has a lot of
things that they love about it and will show me posts,
(05:07):
will save post for me. When it comes to a dog,
videos that are cute, fun laugh so that there's a
thing about like contagious laughter. There's a whole channel like
he loves that, so he'll send me things like that.
But I've also heard so many horror stories and I'm like, no,
I don't I'm not gonna mess with that. I don't
want to know. There are a few that I will
like I have subscribed to and then we're going to
(05:29):
talk about it. But I do follow that. Am I
the ass reddit twitter feed so that I can read
that way? But yeah, that is that is the depth
of my Reddit experience. What about you?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, I'm similar.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I've always had a hesitance around Reddit, even though I
have friends who are women who love it, and it's
kind of a running joke that they're always like, I
saw this on Reddit, I saw this on Reddit, or
today I checked this the read on Reddit. But I've
always been hesitant about it because of some of the
things we're going to talk about, some of which has
been overblown and some of which has not. And I
remember when I first was working on this stuff, Mom,
(06:04):
I've never told you YouTube channel. They asked me, like,
you should go post in Reddit, and I was like,
I don't know anything about Reddit, but I can tell
you as someone who doesn't have a Reddit account, if
I just come in as a company, you can't even
post it unless you have enough karma points. By the way,
it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna look good
for me. It's not gonna look good for us, so
(06:25):
we're not gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And we did.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
That means you're posing as a Reddit person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you know there is a Reddit thread about stuff
I've never told you? Yeah? So I found it a
while ago when I was researching everything. It just kind
of the one I found so genuinely like, not mean.
It was just about the changing of hosts and it
(06:46):
just updates. Oh okay, as that it changes it seems.
I did see a few people comment about why what's happening?
So that people trying to answer questions, I'd just linger
for long because I was scared.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Oh wow, listeners, let us know we should check that out.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
We're speaking of I uh again. Forever ago, when Bridget
and I did those episodes on fan fiction, a bunch
of you wrote in and said there are fan fiction
communities on Reddit, which surprised me, but actually pretty thriving
fan fiction communities.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I did. I have read fan fiction.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
On Reddit when I was younger, in my early fan
fiction days, and I read.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
The scary post it on.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah and people can.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I think there's collections there and people post but I
read one that was a Silent Hill too fan fiction,
and it's legitimately one of the scariest things I ever read,
and I never went back.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
No, scared so badly.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Okay, author though, I know, I know, And kudos is
the thing you give to authors that you like.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
On answer, I'm so hipps, you are so hip.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I feel like I just completely decimated that.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I do also know because of one of said friends
that she'll always update me on her there's a last
of us to hate Reddit.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
She'll update me on that.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And she also I've told you this, Samantha, she hates
onions and she's on like a I Hate onions reddit
sub reddit. One time it was infiltrated by people who
love onions, and that's one of my very favorite things.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
There's a lot of battles, it seems on Reddit.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, And from what I gather, a
lot of it is kind of done in fun. Ecolectic
was a word I saw a lot spirits, so I
believe these pro onion people it was in good fun,
I hope. And then also fan fiction again, there's a
popular trope and fan fiction where like your favorite fictional
(08:55):
characters will use modern day technologies and so I've a
few that.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Are am I the ass but with Star Wars characters.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So one is like Darth Vader being my son was
being particularly annoying, so I cut off his hand.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Am I. They asked something like that.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Okay, I know that they have a huge following us.
In fact, they're podcasts that are made up just to
read off, oh verticts to post off of am I
the app. So whoever started that is a genius.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yes, and we are, as you said, going to be
talking about a lot of that. We have some examples
because there's interesting things and this was one of the
reasons it was just your idea to talk about this
is it's kind of spotlighted a lot of our still
latent sexism and especially heterosexual relationships.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So get ready for that.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Be pumped about that.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yes, but before we get into that, let's break down
some of the basics here. So a brief explainer on Reddit,
which is called the front page of the Internet. And
it's called that because you read it on Reddit, which
I never never knew that never.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Wow, that makes me feel better and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
No, I just knew it never. It's kind of one
of those games that you play when you have that
you know, they don't actually spell it out, but the
sounds and you're supposed to figure out the sentence. That's
this level. I would have never thought that.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yep, same read.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It was founded by three University of Virginia students in
two thousand and five, Steve Huffman, Alexis o'hannian with Aaron Schwartz,
and I put with because his role is disputed and
there's a lot of drama. If we were a different podcast,
we could break down, but we are not that podcast.
But if you want to look it up, so much
drama in the leadership of Reddit, Oh my goodness. A
(10:42):
year later it was acquired by conte Nast, although I
did read that they used a lot of fake accounts
to make it look like it was more used than.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
It actually interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
But yeah, its value has skyrocketed since then, And if
you are unaware, it's essentially a hue, huge depository of
forums where people can post content and comment and vote
on other people's post upvoter, down vote. It's divided into
over a million specific communities or forums called subreddits, which
are labeled as our slash whatever topic, and these subreddits
(11:18):
can cover pretty much anything, and we're talking like niche
stuff like this onion thing, I like, very very niche,
but also, as discussed in the past episodes, things like
men's rights activists, users and content the red pills. So
we've talked about Reddit quite a bit on here, just
never specifically. Certain criteria must be met in order to
(11:41):
create a subreddit. Basically, you have to have a fairly
active account that's over thirty days old, and a certain
number of Karma points determined by upvotes and down votes.
But apparently the exact number is a Reddit secret, which I'm.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Like, how, what's that? Okay, it's bias, I know, I'm like, hmmm.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
These subreddits are managed by volunteer moderators also called mods. Uh.
They can control various appearance aspects of a subreddit and
the content that is allowed, even removing some are banning users.
The whole thing is managed by Reddit employees called admins,
that can ban users, demote mods, and even get rid
(12:21):
of whole subreddits. A lot of Reddit terminology comes in abbreviations,
and some of the ones, some of the big ones
you may have heard, and some of them that we're
going to dig into more are Ama asked me anything
and A I T A, R AM, I the ass.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
But it's just like so many and.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I don't understand them, and I have to sit there
and stare at them, going okay, what Yeah, so they
asked me anything I didn't know. I knew the aum
A part, you know, That's what I was just so,
you know, uh huh, because I don't know Reddit. And
the only time I oversee this are when celebrities get
on people are super excited or like authors and that
(13:03):
which sounds like a great idea. It seems like a
really smart thing, but I know there's been a lot
of trouble where they've had to shut things down. Yeah,
that's a whole different conversation. But you know what, It's
often used for philanthropic fundraisers and a lot of the
users love it, calling it fun, eccentric place to share content,
and I've heard that. But like everything, Reddit is not
without its issues, and we've talked about it before. One
(13:24):
that we're not going to really get into today but
we've discussed in brief before is internet vigilantism data collection.
Have been once said Reddit knows the dark secrets of
its users, and it was later discovered he'd tend't Russian
ConTroll activity on the site, which is a concern right
now for a lot of these platforms. During the twenty
twenty George Floyd protest, eight hundred moderators called for the
(13:48):
banning of the sexist and racist subreddits and hate speech,
and in June of that year they banned somewhere around
two thousand subreddits, including the subreddit are slash gender critical
are just a urf subreddit. Some of the bands drew
complaints around censorship, especially politically. Just this year, the company
(14:08):
banned the word groomer when used as a slur against
LGBTQ plus folks. They also introduced AI tools to find
hate speech, but posters have found ways around it, which
is hard to keep up with. In twenty twenty one, Ultraviolet,
which friend of the show Bridget Todd works with, closely,
found Reddit had a C on this sexism report card
(14:32):
and this was the highest grade of the social media
platforms they surveyed, which makes me sad.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, it was. It was not pretty. It was not
pretty a.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Ce yay passing. But to be fair, and again I
say this with like because this is also part of
the conversation we were having and talking about doing this episode.
Reddit seems like a fairly better space for women to
get sound advice because we talked about them during the
the rebels of the abortion movement, more so than some
(15:04):
of the other platforms. But yeah, see.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Damn yeah, And you should look it up listeners if
you haven't seen it, because it breaks down by category
and then averaged out, so C was the average and
it got an F in other like any specific categories,
but like right, see overall, and this gets kind of
(15:37):
complicated because there's been a lot of phases of this,
so we're we're going to jump around a little bit.
But beginning in twenty fourteen, read It enacted policies banning
harassment involuntary sexualization and banned several forums focused on bigotry
or harassment, including subreddits targeting gay, fat, and black people. Notably,
(15:59):
this happened under the extremely controversial and short lived leadership
of Ellen Powe and whoa is there a lot of
drama around that. Depending on what you read, she is
either an absolute dictator or a scapegoat who did her best,
but it cannot be denied there was a lot of
sexist talk around her, and she received rape and death threats.
(16:20):
While she was serving this position, a lot of discussion
around free speech and censorship happened under her. Basically, the
guy she was serving for as interim he.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Went on Reddit and like, let loose and you can.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Read all of these comments about it, but he was
basically like, like, she was in a bad position.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
She wasn't the one to blame for all of these problems.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Everyone had, and leadership who was to blame should have
come forward and said that, and they didn't. And I
know people are still mad about it, but essentially that's
the vibe I got. That's definitely what he said, because
a lot of this happened around the alleged no. I mean,
somebody was a very popular Reddit employee was fired and
she was a woman, and people blamed Ellen Powell.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
But according to what I've read, it was not her decision.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
But that didn't stop the higher ups from letting her
take the blame.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So that's a bigger thing.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But I did find that interesting because so many things
popped up about it when I was researching this, and
after hashtag me too our slash in cells was taken
down in late twenty seventeen. At the time, people on
this subreddit were arguing that rape is just sex, but
also that reverse rate men who wanted sex but weren't
(17:42):
having it should be a part of the discussion around
me too. A member posed as a woman in a
legal advice subreddit to try to get advice for getting
away with rape. And this whole thing spawned our slash
in cell tears, which tracks in cell extremist and I
think we've talked about that before, but I know from
my friends read that one. In twenty eighteen, the company
(18:05):
introduced new policies to minimize harassment, including hiding post messages
and comments from selected users, as well as new guidelines
around banning content that called for violence.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
All right, didn't fourtune come off of Reddit? Essentially they
were banned from that, so they started their own that's.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I believe, So I believe.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So yeah, yeah, I know we talked about it before
when we talked about in cells, So you know, kind
of good. I guess not that fortane exists, but they're
not all Reddit, but yeah, that's a whole different conversation again.
According to some resources, Reddit was the seventh most popular
website in twenty twenty one, and the nineteenth most popular globally.
In twenty eighteen, they were giving about one hundred and
(18:48):
ten million one hundred and ten million users monthly, so
it's inspired other sites like imager Imager, I don't know
how to say this, however, an estimated seventy four percent
of the Reddit users are actually men, though it's predominantly
left leaning and young, which surprises me. Less than nineteen
percent are right leaning and only one percent are over
(19:08):
sixty five, which, again, yeah, as a forty seven year old,
I don't touch that.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
This is one of those things that makes sense when
I thought about it, but when I again, I think
it's because bad actors get so much news media and
they're so bad that I'm afraid to use Reddit because
of them, even if they're small, even if they're a
small subset. That I just had this assumption that there
(19:36):
was going to be a lot more right leaning people.
But it does make sense because, well, some things we're
going to talk about, So we did want to focus
specifically on some of the issues that women and other
intersectionalities and marginalized communities face on Reddit, starting with moderators.
So in the wake of Me Too, some moderators and
(19:58):
subs like are slash band female Hate really tackled banning
sexist content on Reddit, including first time mods, so maybe
they were joining because of this. Subreddits like r slash
abused sluts, r slash Raping Women, Our slash against Women's Rights,
and our slash deadly Erotica were things that they found
(20:20):
and raised their hand about. There's our slash Mother Daughter,
which is a subreddit dedicated to posting pictures of mothers
and daughters and describing what the poster would like to
do to them sexually. There's another where men create ai
girlfriends are mean to them and then post about it
on Reddit. There's Tributes Delivered, which is basically messaging women
(20:44):
in underage girls with unsolicited pictures they'd masturbated and ejaculated.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
On, and then posting pictures of that.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, many of these have had hundreds of thousands of followers,
but these mods, who again are volunteers, report being overwhelmed
by the emotional toll, and a lot of the mods
fighting this sexism are women, and a lot of them
end up leaving. Mods have also reported feeling ignored and
(21:10):
unsupported by the company when they do raise concerns are
flag material, so it feels kind of hopeless almost and
on top of that, they don't have a great record
outside of the Anglo sphere or English speaking world of
controlling hate speech, to say the least. The company says
(21:31):
it's aiming to combat this by hiring more non English speakers,
amongst other things. Many have spoken out about how the
unpaid moderator model has its limits, leading to further extremism,
and it is worth noting that when a subreddit is banned,
the redditors often migrate to another subreddit or maybe even
another website. But there is a really big vibe of
(21:55):
you know, you don't like it, you can leave and
oo here we're getting into some of the comments.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So just that's not your thing today, I understand.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
So here's an example of the comments some women mods
reported receiving. I want you to get cancer because I
want to see your own body killing you. I want
you to get cancer, your mother, sister, brother, father, grandparents.
I want them all to get cancer, and when they
open their mouths, I want to piss in them.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I hate you, you nasty, disgusting slut.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
The in Gadget article that included this quote disclosed that
every mod they interviewed for this piece had received a
death threat every one of.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Them, right right, And I don't know any I guess
we could even look about it, but like, read it
in itself, how does it make money me?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You know, I think they make it verse so they
read it as tears. They have one tier where you pay,
they have advertising.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, because I'm wondering about for the moderators, like for
TikTok creators and Instagram creators who have followings, they make money.
Do the Reddit renators make money like that?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I would love if somebody wrote in and let us know.
I don't think so, yeah, let us know.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
If you're a big Reddit poster, Katie, Katie, let us know.
Is it possible to get money like that? I don't know.
I know, like you were saying that that you can
make ads, you can pay for the ads that are
on the side, which I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. But I'm wondering how it works for those
who have a viral content or a get because I
(23:28):
know people follow each other on Reddit too, right, Like
you're like, you may not know their name, but you
follow this one person because you like what they're doing
or something, and links to their other social media sites,
which I've never seen people put reddits the Reddit handles
when they're advertising that I'm on other platforms. Yeah, I
don't have to think about it. But yeah, here's another
disgusting thing. Y'all ready for it. One of the biggest
(23:50):
things that you'll come across when researching women's sexism and
Reddit is something called creep shots. Sexual images take it
of women and post it without their knowledge, and similarly,
nude photos. Yeah, some of these images are uploaded and
sold again without consent. There have been some high profile
cases too. In twenty fourteen, there was a large leak
(24:13):
of nude pictures of women's celebrities posted non consensually. A
couple of years later, Reddit shut down on subreddit posting
deep fakes, which is a horrifying thought because, oh my god,
of women in porn. Some revenge videos have been posted
and monetized without the women's consent, which still is a
conversation because it's still not been a fully addressed. This
(24:33):
trade in nudes is called collector culture. There's a horror
movie about that, folks. Yeah, and many of these pictures
often come with personal information like social media handles and addresses.
Holy crap.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, it's gross. And scary. Okay, so this brings us
to am I the Ass. Reddit is kind of famous
for hosting a lot of so called nice guys. And
you know that's the guy who claims he's so nice,
he does everything right. Why are women denying me in
a romantic relationship?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
And then everyone's like, the way you're terrible.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, because you're demanding someone like you because you're seemingly nice.
But if you have to say you're nice, yeah, probably
not true.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah exactly. And I feel like this is that's part
of what I had. And again I have friends who
are women who love read it. This is just like
my outsider. I don't know what for some reason I
thought this, but I was like, oh, that's where the
nice guys go.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And I feel like, am I the Ass has.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Become a lot of calling that out right, and we
have a lot of examples for it. Okay, So from
a Guardian article about a man in his thirties who
frequented the red pill. So we're going to go through
some of these am i ass posts and oh my goodness,
oh my goodness. All right, so here's the quote Morpheus Manfred,
(25:55):
having spent my twenties looking for female companionship. I noticed
that the dating game wasn't what I was taught, what
my parents prepared me for, and what I learned from movies.
It was stacked against guys, and it was a very
unpleasant experience. Over the past ten years, the flickiness of
women has gotten worse. You'd meet a girl, hit it off,
get her number, and agree to date, and either she'd
no show or cancel right before I found myself putting
(26:18):
in all this effort for nothing. It was very defeating.
It's not the way courting worked when my parents met.
What I saw in movies. We're having a good heart
and being yourself as all you need. That's not what
happens now. Good and nice guys aren't attractive anymore. The
manosphere fundamentally became a surrogate father for the life lessons
I never got. So this man this actually was not
(26:43):
from am I the asso. They were interviewing people about
why did you get involved in this manosphere space? And
so this was a quote from this user about it.
And it was an interesting article because some people made
the point like maybe you know a lot of these
dudes just need the sounding board to get it off
their chests.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And move on. But a lot of them don't.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
And that's something that we've talked about before, and this
whole like overall mindset like maybe, yeah, you just say
that and get it off your chest and move on.
But I feel like what we're talking about here is
a bigger problem of how we think society should function
and where women the roles women should play.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Right, and then also the ones that will play those
roles don't meet your expectations because of A, B and
C that you have placed upon that that's all different conversation,
but yes.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yes, yes, And so like this whole idea has gotten
intertwined with am I the Ass And that is one
of the reasons, as we said, we want to talk
about this because that supreddit is so popular and it
has taken off, and as you said, it's got podcasts
and Twitter handles and all the time I'm hearing like
did you see this am I the Ass? And as
I said, it's really highlighted a lot of sexism going
(27:54):
on and perhaps particularly in hetero relationships. And basically, yeah,
if you haven't heard of it, it's a forum where
people post problems or disagreements they've had with others and
ask if they're the villain in the story, like am
I being unreasonable? Or is the other person or party
being unreasonable?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Again, this is one of the only things that I
look at when I'm looking at read it, and typically
i'll look at it through Twitter and or again a
podcast that pops up from TikTok, my God, Everything's Inner
splices it. But then I will go and check it
out and see what the comments are saying. Typically if
they have comments coming back, like there's some that's like
really entertaining. That's where George's the Cat came from. If
(28:32):
you follow them on Twitter, who is a union loving
a radical cat? Fantastic? But it started off with the
fact that the coworker wanted to butter the cat. And again,
if you haven't read it, you should. I remember when
it first came out and everybody was on Twitter just
losing their mind because they're like, this has to be fake,
this has to be fake. And to that point, like
(28:54):
George has now like thousands and thousands of followers and
it's getting one to fights with people, and they also
had a problematic issue just recently. But hey, that's a
whole different conversation. It has all of these aspects to that.
But then you have the ones that are super serious,
to the point that people were like, oh, yo, you're
gonna get murdered. Leave. How these posts go is literally
goes me. And then they give the age and their gender,
(29:17):
my husband or my partner age gender, explains the story.
You can write assole, not the ass. You're both asked
kind of the ass kind of thing, or these other
person is the ass. Like they give you these options,
which is nice, and then you explain things. But this
one woman that I read through was like really horrifying
the fact that her husband's younger brother was very co
(29:40):
dependent on them, very needy, and there's something kind of off.
Turned out he was peeing on her stuff. We're pretty
sure he abused the cat, all these things, and then
they found him, like he got kicked out, and everybody
felt sorry for him. The mother felt sorry for him,
like the mother was enabling this younger brother, and everybody's like,
you don't need to worries, not a big deal. Then
(30:00):
later on they find her picture posted in his room
with like all these marks on it and like he
had collected and stolen things from her with intent that
he was going to hurt her, and then somewhere along
the lines, a niece came in, a young niece, like
preteen niece came in the picture and he was like.
Everybody was like, Okay, yeah, there's something wrong with this guy.
And this woman would come back with follow ups and
(30:21):
updates about it, and then the last thing we find
out is that he has been given a restraining order.
That was a huge fight and he is now under
supervision because people were seriously scared, and I think the
cat didn't make it like it was this whole thing.
I was very upset. I think the people were so upset.
But you have serious things like this, and a majority
(30:42):
of the am I asked posts are about relationships, as
you said, and a lot of it has like in
law relationships, sister relationships. One of those was like talking
about the fact that a sister in law, god, there
was a lot of in laws, was making fun of
the husband who that was the in law who is
a chef and she is a chef and he's an
(31:03):
Asian chef, and she went in with making racist comments
about him being an Asian chef, to the point that
she got fired because like she worked at a training
like I think she worked at an Asian fusion restaurant
and she was making fun of Asian cooks, so it
was like, oh damn, and she was not Asian. I
think she was white from the post and it divided
the entire family. And apparently the parents got divorced because
(31:24):
the mother was enabling like it was or the father
was enabling the child. And that's where the racist like
came from, where racism was learned from. I guess, like
it was a whole thing and it just killed their relationship.
But you have advice in the columns like that, But
a lot of these are women coming and asking about
advice about their relationships and whether or not oftentimes am
(31:44):
I being cheated on? Was? Is kind of the conversation
and about emotional affairs. It's the whole thing. But what
I've repeatedly seen is like the fact that they will
write these posts and people thought about like, you're not
the ass, but you need to leave because he is awful.
These are red flags. This is not going to change.
These are things blah blahlah blah, to the point like, yeah,
(32:05):
all of the answers are typically yeah, you're not to
ask to get a divorce, get a divorce, get a divorce.
But some of these have been really empowering because a
lot of the women come back with thank you so
much for your advice. This really helped me see some
things I didn't really you know, think about this, and
you're right, this is going to be a bad thing,
and I need to lead like it was just a
whole thing. And the reason you and I were talking
about Reddit to begin with this because I've been seeing
(32:26):
more and more where women are coming to find a
crew of people to tell them what they can't see
for themselves in the middle of the situation, and it's
seemingly fairly empowering, especially the way they're c having this
conversation and really hopefully rectifying the situation. Of course, there's
others where like the partners have seen it and they
respond and that's a whole drama, and so.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I'm heartened to know that it's mostly people being like, hey,
you should get out instead of you know, a lot
of the victim blamings if we see yeah all the time,
and I'm not saying, you know, every post is the same,
but you know, because I would hate for somebody to
be in a vulnerable situation, and you're getting all these
Internet people making it worse.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So I'm happy to hear.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Typically I have not seen that as of yet.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
We do have some examples that we want to go over.
Oh my goodness. Okay, so here's a quote from medium
about this whole thing. It being am I the ass
is a microcosm of gendered entitlement, the story of American sexism,
told post by post. There's the guy furious with his
girlfriend for dressing up for a work soon, because how
(33:49):
dare she look nice for anyone but him? The husband
who wants to forbid his wife from breastfeeding in public,
The man who is mad that his wife, who has
just given birth, doesn't dress sexy anymore, and of course,
the one who feels betrayed that his wife keeps her
own savings account. There's the man who needs complete silence
from his stay at home wife and two toddlers while
(34:10):
he works from home because quote, it's her job to
be silent and shut the kids up. The husband who
refuses to do any domestic work at all because his
wife isn't asking nicely enough. He also seems to think
his wife has a natural predilection for thankless activity. She
doesn't really rest, he wrote, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Not her thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
The guy who wants his girlfriend to sell her house
because she bought it with money she earned while stripping.
And the man who walked out literally on his wife
when she got an ovarian cancer diagnosis. I had begged
her to have kids since we were twenty six, but
she refused for her career, he wrote, as a justification
for storming out of the doctor's office. It's not just
the stories themselves and how obviously awful they are that
(34:49):
stand out. What makes am I the Ass such a
special look into gender dynamics is that the men who
describe awful scenarios truly don't believe they've done anything wrong.
Sexism has fully lulled them into a sense of moral
superiority that blinds them to their own explicitly terrible behavior.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yes, and a lot of these. When you read it
or like this has to be made up, please told
me this is made up, because you really that blind
to see it this way. We had one where the
woman was getting married picked out a dress his mother
because I love and law stuff. His mother didn't like
it and picked out another one and asked her to
get that one, and his excuses she doesn't have a daughter. Ohoes, oh,
(35:31):
and then she said, no, this is my dress. I
love it, and behind her back he took it and
exchanged it for the one that his mother picked out. Oh,
and couldn't figure out why she thought it was a
big deal. Wow wow, Yes. So here's another example outside
of that one from Selon could a poster named Away,
performer on the popular am I the ass Ai Ta subreddit,
(35:55):
complained that his neighbor wouldn't cook dinner for him, which,
by the way, I did read this. After explaining that
he's a thirty one year old single guy who doesn't
know how to cook, Away went on to write that
he has noticed that his neighbor, a woman named Katie,
cooks frequently and quote, it always smells amazing. So I
got the idea this is him, that I'd offer to
give her some money each week to cook a little
(36:16):
extra and bring it over to me, he continues. Unsurprisingly,
Katie said no, but Away was undeterred, asking quote if
she was sure, and upping the amount I was offering
until Katie realized the polite deferrals weren't getting the job. Done,
she said, I should get a housekeeper if that's what
I want. I remember seeing this and it was hilarious
(36:37):
that he kept defending this.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
What a thing to ask somebody.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Asking once maybe'd be like, hey, can I pay you?
Because this was awesome, but then to continue as if
like that one no should have made it awkward and
you should never want to see her again and you
should hide. Yeah, exactly, like never, like try to avoid
it at all cost, never leave the house again.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And the interesting thing about this one, this whole article
from Salon was about specifically cooking and ideas men seem
to have around women and cooking, and it included quotes
from women on other subreddits about how their boyfriends expect
them to cook or gave up cooking after they got married,
like perhaps they have cooked before marriage and then stopped
(37:25):
after they got married. One redditor told his girlfriend, I
honestly wouldn't mind having a housewife, and that she should
do that because while because she is quote certainly not stupid,
but isn't quite on my level. On top of that,
many of these posts showcase that men expect women to
cook from a young age, but to their standards and desires,
(37:46):
so like not what the woman who is cooking wants.
They want you to cook, they want the men want
you to cook what the men want, which I have
witnessed before in my life. The article also cited a
study that that married women do more domestic work than
single women, despite the fact that they have a partner who,
in theory, should be shouldering half the weight. And yes,
(38:09):
even women with jobs, and even women who are the
only ones in the relationship with jobs.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Yep. Another quote from the article quote perhaps the most
boneheaded was the redditor who up top denies that he
is a quote sexist asshole, but is mad because his wife,
a stay at home mother of two who did not
think it romantic that he enrolled her in quote into
a couple's cooking course with me as an anniversary present
(38:35):
so she could quote learn to cook properly. No. Oh,
there was also one about like bringing up them again,
the mother bringing up his mother into like like comparing
in her nagging. Oh it was the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh yeah, here's another quote. One dditor who wrote in
who was clearly excited to be engaged to a woman
who loves too and cares a lot about health, so
she makes a lot of stuff from scratch that we
both eat and quote. Her place is super nice while
his is a mess. But when he swung by her
place one day quote to take some leftovers from home
(39:14):
for lunches, he discovered, to his outrage, my girlfriend has
a cleaning lady she never told me about. He unleashed
in her, saying I felt betrayed because I always thought
it was great that I was marrying someone super tidy
to balance it out by which he means to clean
up after him. And even though she tried to placate
him by saying it frees up more time to cook
stuff from scratch, he was furious that she hired someone
(39:37):
to do something she could do herself. Luckily, the other
editors called him out, saying, this sounds like you were
getting married to get yourself a maid.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Noo, no, wow, yep, wow wow wow wow.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And yeah, as you said, from these articles, I read
about it, and all these instances were highlighting that hadling
and you could follow many of the comments.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Do rightly call out these things?
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, I will say, like, I don't know if it's
just the way it's set up or what. But the
majority of the people who are voting and are commenting
are those who are in support of typically the right,
meaning whoever's obviously the ass you can kind of see it.
There's sundays like hmm, they could both be the asshole here,
(40:25):
like communication issues or whatever whatnot. But for the most part,
and again like the things that are posted on Twitter
are not always the things that are posted because they
have tons of injuries, by the way, tons and tons
and tons. So it's good to see that though, I'm like, oh, yes,
because a lot of these like the minute you read it,
your blood boils and you're ready to fight, fight somebody.
Oh and all the means that come out of these
(40:47):
and gifts okay, just kiss okay.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
And then, in a similar vein to all of this,
here's a quote from a She Knows article. One writitor
opened up about this process, sharing that her extremely hygienic
more on that later partner was horrified by the period
underwear she keeps on deck for when she's bleeding each
month and insisted she throw them out.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
He came across one of my pairs of panties that
I specifically only wear during that time of the month.
Certain ladies will understand that we keep panties separate for
periods than we do for when we aren't. AKA, I
have my ugly or maybe bloodstained pairs for my period
a my cute and well kempt ones for when I'm
not on my period. Anyways, upon seeing these, he told
me that I need to throw that pair away and
(41:30):
that it's disgusting and unhygienic. He made quite a few
comments about how gross they are, despite them being clean
but just bloodstained from a previous period spotting situation. She
went on to say that when she tried to explain
that these are cleaned if a little stained pears that
exist for the express reason of getting stained, think a
T shirt you wear for painting the house or doing yardwork,
(41:50):
he responded poorly and made her feel terrible. He also
tried to claim that he was pretty sure other girls
people with periods don't do that.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Oh, he needs to be single forever, just to be
single if you especially you know, if you're dating women.
I found it funny because there was another post similar
to this, not exactly where she had gone on first
or second date new dates. She'd gotten on her period,
so she needed a tampon. Uh, so she used, you know,
her applicator, she put it in. I believe she put
(42:19):
it in her and wrapped it up. You know, if
you've used a tampon, you know what I'm talking about.
You can get back in the wrapper and if you're embarrassed,
you hide it because you try to do all the things.
And then you know, in the trash can. Apparently the
dude dug in his trash found it and told her
that she was not welcome and that she should not
have put that in her in his trash can.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And she was like what she was upset that she
threw away in the trash gear, Oh my gosh, properly. Also,
he wouldn't dug through It's yeah, whole thing.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
I feel like a lot of these are showcasing.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
The stupidity of men.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Well yeah, but also how much generalized statement men women
are expected to hide, Like everything we're expected to hide,
how much work it takes to do something. We're expected
to hide These totally normal body functions were expected to
put up with your the dude's mom wanting this dress,
(43:16):
and that means that you don't matter in this equation
even though it's your dress. Like, I feel like there's
so much stuff where it's like what you want doesn't matter,
and hide from me anything that I don't want to see.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Right, I mean there's a lot that you were like, wow,
you really thought this was real life? Who really thinks
that this is what happens? Like you really want the
Disney version of a princess from the nineteen sixties?
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Mm hmm, they want it's I mean it's like a
mom or a maid or exactly based on these popes.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
That's just the vibe I'm.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Getting, right, And I will say, like, it's not all
like that. We've talked about many things. I just read
one about a man who wanted to make his own
birthday came she got upset and there was this whole
like in between line and she was absolutely in the wrong.
But like, there are other conversations that are had that
you're like, okay, huge red flags. At least human decency
(44:11):
seems to be central in many of the followers and commenters.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, that's good. I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And just some brief like wrapping up comments because you know,
we focused on a lot of the grim stuff, but
you know, there's a lot of really great stuff about Reddit.
It really is, and this misogyny that we have been
talking about harms everyone, and Reddit has in cases like this,
perhaps shone a light on it. And it impacts how
women in non binary folks interactor don't on this platform.
(44:44):
It influences other offline behavior. But yeah, it is not
all bad at all.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Right, And as in fact, when you read through some
of the statistics, again the sea is not great higher
than other platforms. That's really disconcerting in itself, but a
lot of it also has found homes for communities that
are really, really genuinely great. We talked about the aunties
helping people in the anti abortion things that are happening
in the US, and we've talked about that this is
(45:10):
such a great idea. Again, a lot of these good
intentions can be harmful, so you have to be careful
with that. But a lot of these also come together,
like with the voting things, they've had conversations about trying
to link people in order to get the right access,
the right communications. So Reddit is can be an amazing
thing again, great dog videos, great contagious laughter videos, other
(45:31):
things that I'm like, oh god, I'd never want to
see that again. And why yeah, yes, I feel like
it does really well. Maybe I'm wrong again, I'm not
very good into I'm not very into Reddit in the
platform in itself. I'm hovering around all around it, apparently
at least outside of it. But you do see that
(45:52):
the moderators who are there seem to do a good
job in making sure the community stays with it in
its boundaries, so they will quickly take things off and
or pause things or lock things down. I feel like
they have better access to that than I've seen other
social media platforms.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, yeah, which has its pluses and minuses, but I
think when it works, it's great. And also just there's
some hilarious stuff that you could find very eccentric, eclectic
stuff on Reddit. And I know, like we talked about
in our being raised by a parent with narcissism, there's
like a great Reddit source for that, and a lot
of you have written in about that and how it
helped you and you found community that way. And there
(46:30):
are some great feminist subreddits. Our slash Feminism, our slash
two Chromosomes, which forbids, transphobic or torque, R slash All Women,
our slash Black Ladies, r slash Asian two x R
slash dose xtatinas, R slash sex Positive, R slash ask feminists,
and our slash radical queers. And I probably didn't have
(46:51):
to say all the R slashes before those, but here
here I went. Often are suggested, and thanks to bitch
Media for that list, and it can be a great
place to learn and connect and grow when it comes
to intersectional feminism. And it's important because a lot of
people get their news from the site, which we have
to keep in mind, and it shapes Internet conversations and
understanding the world, especially for younger folks. So there are
(47:12):
these bad things, but there are these good things too,
And I would love for anybody who uses Reddit if
you have any insights you would like to offer. If
you're a mod, let us know if you have any
favorite subreddits that we should check out or that you
recommend that'ld be great. I do really love Like when
my friend Katie told me there was one about hating onions,
(47:32):
I was.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Just like, of course there is I love it question
of course.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You can send us to us at our email, which
is steffaniea moom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram at stuff whe Never Told You. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christia, Hey you, and thanks to
you for listening.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Stuff One Ever Told You. Dis direction of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
For more podcasts or my Heart Radio, you can check
out the Ihart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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