95: On Some Kind of Bitch and Matriarchal Musings

A rich conversation with filmmaker & poetess Effie Spence about feminine wisdom and the power of recentering matriarchal values. Effie shares her period-stained poetry ‘A Bloody Mess’ and docuseries ‘Motherland’, which follows her journey to ancestral roots to rediscover herself through the women who came before. We talk tarot, menarche malarkey, cycle syncing, and more. Includes a question for all about how to turn this sadgap.podcast into a practical community of care. (Bonus toward the end, and a big topic: what if the antithesis of patriarchy isn’t the smashing we’ve heard about, but something softer and more intimate instead.)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, and welcome to Sad Girls. Nope, take two day too.
Hello and welcome to Sad Girls against the Patriarchy.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Alison and I'm Effie Spence, and we are your
sad Girls.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm gonna start with the reason everyone's here, which is
old can ASMR an old tradition? Have you listened to
the podcast Danne, Effie?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I have, indeed I listened to the episode with my
two wonderful friends, Stephanie and I.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yes, Effie's friends. With Stephanie and Anna, we did an
episode on women in comedy, women in male fields. It
was really good. You liked it?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
I did, indeed, I'm pretty biased though.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
They were super funny. Yeah, I felt like it wasn't
even needed. I was like, you guys are good, right,
I'm gonna go now, let's.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Go make yourself a couple of tw years old.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, Like they were just rolling. I had to interrupt
a bit and be like, okay, so hello, we're doing
a podcast. Send her back.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Those girls need a commercial break.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, but they were having so much fun, which was great,
and I think it really showed. I think it was
all really funny. But yeah, Effie introduced me to Stephanie
and Anna and how do you guys know each other?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So Stephanie and I have a very funny, like two
year long lore of just kind of catching each other
from a corner of a room type thing. It's very
romantic book comedy. I think when was the first time
we hung out. She's better at telling the story honestly,
but we just yeah, we during the pandemic, we started
getting together once a week at Stephanie and Anna's apartment

(01:50):
and started working on just writing together, just randomly. We
wanted to have something going on, and then we got
closer and closer, and then we became like collaborative what's
it called.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
I don't know if there's an UNI, I don't know,
collaborative soul sisters, I don't accountabil even It got even
deeper though, because we ended up coming up with a
brainchild of ours called EFNI SPA Productions.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, I saw kind of short film together we did,
yeah literally White Lily Yeah, I think White About Lily.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
White is an experimental short film based off of a
dream that I had, as well as a dream that
she had coincidentally, about a woman who discovers a white
hair on the night of her wedding and so it
explores inherited traumas we get a flashback sequence to a

(02:48):
woman from her past, whether it's a past life or
it's an ancestor or both. That woman is a witch
from Italy who tries to steal back youth so that
she's not prosecuted, prosecuted sorry for aging. So it's like
a modern twisted fairy tale, and Lily White is representative
of like women's innocence and the Maiden, and we did

(03:11):
a lot of research on the different archetypes that women have,
and so she ends up cutting the hair and therefore
cutting the cord and the fear of aging by the
end of the show.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So the white hair probably did give her that fear
that we all have, that burst of like, oh no,
I'm going to get older, I'm no longer going to
be the young girl anymore, and this is going to
change my identity. And then you personified that it sounded
like ye' turning it into this is actually a representation
of an ancestor.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, absolutely, And it ended up becoming almost like a
soft core horror film without.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Meaning it too.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
It was just we very much aging is horrific.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Aging is horrific, but it shouldn't be.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
No.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
When I got my first gray hair, I called my
mom and I was devastating. I was twenty seven and
really stressed out and it was a nanny and I
called my mom and she just nip that right in
the bud for me, because, first of all, my mom's
name is Aphrodite, So I feel very lucky.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
That that's my that's my mom. I trust what she said.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
I'm going to test her ideals.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
With the name alone.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, And I called her and I was lamenting over
this one fucking can I swear?

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Sorry?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Oh yeah, fucking fabulous.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
So when I called my mom to tell her about
my one first gray hair, she responded back immediately with
because her father lived to be a hundred with all
white hair, wow. But her mom died from Alzheimer's in
her early eighties. So she was like, would you rather
have your marbles or would you rather have your black hair?

Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
I mean I was like, oh, keep the marbles. Yeah,
it's pretty old though.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
No, Yeah, she was super old.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Good.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
She she was funny though at that time.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, got kooky.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Yeah, she was adorable.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah. It's really sad how aging is seen as something
that women especially are supposed to fear, and we do,
and it's with good reason, because the world is going
to treat us differently once we've been recast from maiden
to krone and all we see these beautiful women in

(05:11):
Hollywood and they're getting older, and then everyone's saying like, Wow,
she's so good for her, she looks so good for
her age. And you see how much effort they put
into not aging too. I feel bad even just naming.
But we all know these starlets who are now in
their forties, fifties, maybe sixties, who look so much younger,
but I know it's because they are shelling out. I

(05:32):
know so many girls in LA in their twenties getting botox.
So if they're getting botox, actually no, we've already said
this on the podcast. Alexis and I would go get
botox together. We would do botox and brunch. But we're
both botox and brunch. That's fun, mostly just because it
was so funny to say. I mean if, no, if
for no other reason. But we're both performers, and we
both make money off of our appearance in different ways,

(05:54):
and there's a lot of pressure to do that. And
if we're doing that. Can you imagine starlet with millions
of dollars at disposal in their fifties are doing.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
No absolutely, And I even recently, I don't know if
you saw like Emma Stone's mini.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Face lift that she got, Like she looks fabulous.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
And it's such a split feeling for me because on
the one token, I feel like, obviously, it's your body,
it's your choice. Women should do whatever the fuck they
want with their bodies and their faces. But it's also
because of the pressure.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
To lean in to that value of youth.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
And like when you see the actresses who don't touch
their face, they have a different beauty and almost like
a different sense of relief I see for them because
they don't have that pressure on their shoulders.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
They look more relaxed. Yeah, that's because those kind of
beauty treatments tighten your face exactly.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Like, yeah, I think there's something really beautiful to wrinkles too.
Like one of the things I think aging is hard,
but I think once you're old, un or a whole
other realm of freodo and like I feel like it's
really difficult between the forties and the sixties because kind
of starting even in my thirties, like I'm thirty three
now and I'm noticing certain things and I'm already.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Going, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Right, But I think once you kind of cross that
thresholder you accept like the aging process is happening, and
try to maintain your health and mental health, there's this
crossover that I think is really beautiful that happens. Like
when I did the documentary in Greece, one of my
favorite things to film was older women's weathered hands. They

(07:34):
just they look like sculptures themselves. They look like works
of art, and and they tell a story of a
woman who has used those hands to nurture, to feed
her family, to work in the mills, and try living
in America or whatever their personal stories were. I just
was obsessed with the two things that I asked my

(07:58):
DP to film all the time, which I think is
such a funny reflection of like what I think is
beautiful was flowers and older women's hands. Yeah, and tie
close ups of their faces. I was like, get closer, sir.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
And the women are like get away. Can you know?

Speaker 2 (08:16):
They were great subjects because again, like there's some sort
of freedom to getting to that age where at first
they were very resistant and very like no, I'm going
to embarrass a family. But then once they started rolling,
they were like, come here, I want to show you something,
and they would literally like point the DP to where
to film, and they became little directors themselves.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yes, I love that. It was so cute. Yeah, once
you can finally let it go, then there's a freedom
to that. It's the transition, Yeah, letting it go and
just just being perceived differently by the world. And I
am envious of this in men all the time, that
they don't have that kind of transformation and they were
never purely valued for their looks or primarily it's never

(09:00):
the first thing people say. It's about success and about
height and about status, which is also unfair. But I
don't see the same identity crisis. Also, men in their
forties and fifties are still a leading man with the
younger woman all the time. Oh, we have more collagen
in their skin, so they literally aged differently than we do.
Just very upsetting.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah. No, I was just watching a movie yesterday with
my husband called Poolman. Chris Pine directed and wrote it.
I don't know if you heard of it, no, but
I literally had a huge exhale of relief when they
revealed who his love interest was, because it went from
him being the pool man and he's got a salt
and pepper beard and he looks great, but he old,

(09:41):
you know I mean, And they cut to a blonde
in the back of her head and I was like,
I just expected it to be a twenty two year.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Old, of course, and it would. It wasn't nice. So
in a novelty a.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Novel, I really like my whole nervous system went. I
was like, oh my god, an age appropriate love interest.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Literally an item when we're like, oh, wow, Keanu Reeves
is dating someone who's his own age. What a big
deal was it? George Clooney, who was dating a lawyer
who's like a humanitarian lawyer.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah, I'm all I think, yeah, who.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Is also age appropriate but also very gorgeous. You know
these news items there, it's like, wow, he's just dating
a normal gal, Like she's not a celebrity, but there's
fucking stunning, Like she's not like a normal gal.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
No, she's not normal.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
She's with Keanu Reeves. Girls like okay, but well we
give them.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Their flowers when they didn't even plant a garden, you
know what I mean, Like when they're it's like the same.
I feel a conversation when they're like my blessed my mom.
But she is a boomer where she'll say things about
like my sister's husbands that do the bare minimum. Yeah,
and we're like, wow, what a great dad, And it's.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Like, no, that's the.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Least you can do is take your kid for a walk,
Like go on a walk with your child to get
ice cream.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh, anyway, what was your documentary in Greece about?

Speaker 3 (10:59):
It's Motherlands?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
We went over there, me and me, myself, an At
and I just kidding. I had an actual mini crew
this time. The first documentary was me, myself and I
that's fine. And this time around we found an investor,
we did crowdfunding, and my producer, Anna Angele, and a
DP that we found last minute, like she was coming

(11:22):
back from doing another shoot in Africa. And so the
documentary Motherlands is the tail and documentary journey of a
young woman who goes back to her mother's country to
rediscover herself through the women that came before her, so
through this sort of matriarchal lens. So we went to

(11:42):
Greece to do the pilot episode, which is me reconnecting
with the women in my village and understanding kind of
what we've lost along the way with the American dream.
As a first generation kid, I have been trying to
replicate that American dream that my parents lived out and
I am very proud to have sperienced. But things are
just not the same. And it's my firm belief that

(12:04):
a big missing peace to society and functioning in a
healthy way is that we have relegated the crone and
the wise woman to the outskirts of society when they
should absolutely be the ones leading us.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
So Motherlands was me trying to just discover what am
I doing with my life and trying to find that
wisdom through the women that came before me, and trying
to bridge the gap between the different generations. So we're
hoping to continue that journey in Greece with me continued
as hosts, but then after that we want to take

(12:41):
it globally and have a different host every season, go
back to her own mother's country, where we learn the
art of kinsugi from a grandma in Japan, you know,
like different different things that have been passed down through
the women that we've kind of forgotten about in modernity
and try to reconnect the generations through that lens.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah. I love that we did an episode on matriarchies
and found out that they're only a handful throughout history
and that may exist today in some very far off,
hard to reach places, but also in animal kingdoms there
are some examples more so than in humans. I'll cut
this if I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty sure it was

(13:24):
with whales where oh yeah, I know, okay, yeah, okay,
and they would treat their older female relatives with so
much respect, partially because they had knowledge of like good
hunting grounds, safe places to go, based on their life experience.
I'm like, yeah, obviously, Like that's how it works. You
get older, you learn, you share well even you.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Know, the the idea of hunter gatherer societies might not
be as true as we thought. The hunters may have
been more like lieon uses in humanity, where if you
think about it, women are tactical, we are quiet, and
we work together really well. So there's more evidence that's
pointing to the fact that we were the hunters and

(14:09):
the gatherers.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
But then how do we excuse the fact that so
many women go through a shoplifting phase. It's not for
their gathering in exactly, it's what I always attributed to.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
I'm like, we're just getting things for the house.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Kind of Walmart, and that lipstick is a little too
pricey for your thirteen year old allowance.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Listen, I won't not admit I haven't stolen chocolates from
from grocery store since a young age.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
You know, it probably is the I mean, I talk
about female privilege with kind of a tongue in cheek way,
but sometimes we can get away with certain things because
men do not think we're capable of committing crimes, like
women are underdiagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and are less
likely to be convicted of a violent crime even when

(14:56):
they're guilty. And this is sexist.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
I got to take away where we got to take.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's to my advantage, but I can still point out
the sexist roots there.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Oh for sure, even with like pretty privilege sometimes too
or assuming from something that I've been trying to play
with more, I'm like, you know, what if I am
going to be subjugated to pretty privilege in a base
of men like a mechanic that think I don't know
what I'm talking about? Which is true, but don't assume that.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Don't just take advantage of me.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Be nice because you're right. Does it mean you're right?

Speaker 3 (15:33):
It doesn't mean you're righteous.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
So there's a lovely mechanic shop next to my house,
and I got a blown tire and I was like,
I don't want to pay for a whole new tire.
So I went over there and I just I made
sure to wear a cute dress, and I did do
do eyes and I did play dumb, and I was like,
I think I got my tires here less than a

(15:57):
year ago. Oh, my name's not in this system. Oh
that's so weird. Could you just do it anyway? And
they did, And now I get so many preevies with
them because I established that I'm dumb and nice.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, I'm pretty and I'll smile at you. You're welcome.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
No.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
I mean I think that we have so many moments
turned to our disadvantage because of being feminine and their
perceptions of us, that.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
It feels great to flip it.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
It's exactly. I'm just evening the playing field a tiny
bit here, and I still don't come out ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
It was like, I don't know if you've seen that
woman on TikTok the call her Princess Collarbone.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Have you seen this?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
She's trying to flip like being ultra feminine with her
husband where she won't talk to weight staff and she
just waits for her husband. And she's getting railed online
right now because she's like, this is what being feminine
is like, and everyone's like, that's actually a kink, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Wait, Like he doesn't talk to weight staff.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
She doesn't talk to weight staff or the host because
her husband takes care of her. So she just apparently
waits there until her husband finishes parking. It sounds it
doesn't order for herself, and has him put her shoes
on for her.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Okay, I'm so really we're getting it. Yeah, Yeah, that's
an element we're I.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Think it's femininity, and like what it means to people
is definitely in the zeitgeist right now because people are
taking a lot of like Mormonist or Catholic tradwife perspectives
and then trying to flip it to feminine or or
feminist rather and then vice versa with like, I don't know,
it's just I think we're all very confused and what

(17:38):
ever makes you happy, but don't ful sit onto those periods.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Or just listen to this podcast. We're just listening to
this podcast. Tell you what to think now. Absolutely, there
was a gal who commented on I posted a meme
that it's I've seen this in a few different formats,
but it was I'm just a girl is a direct
response to society saying for eon and boys will be
boys and using excuse, oh he did that, he was

(18:04):
boys will be boys. Well, I'm just a girl. So
I didn't know. I'm just a baby girlma. And someone
said that's anti feminist to say I'm just a girl.
But I think that, well, for one thing, accusing someone
of being anti feminist is pretty anti feminist in itself.
Here he gets some recursive logic there. But yeah, anytime

(18:27):
you're telling a woman your version of feminism is not feminism,
you're judging a woman for making a choice, which isn't
what we're about. But also anything we can use to
our advantage after the world being designed to our disadvantage. Absolutely,
I think there's you could you can definitely make an
argument there that that is pro woman, which is I.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Definitely agree with that, And I also think that, like
I'm just a girl, or like kind of taking advantage
of the pretty privilege for mechanics stuff for what Like
I'm joking, but also very I'm not. Like I feel
like I've been so hurt by the world with how
women are treated that I'm on the other end of
feminism and that I don't one hundred percent know if

(19:13):
we're equal to men. We're better than you know, statistically,
so we should be supported. We shouldn't have to do everything. Again, Like,
I don't know if I'm wrong for believing in this,
but I've noticed that, like the more as the you know,
the childwives say like being your feminine and let your
man blah blah blah. I've noticed that the more that
I do let myself soften in certain things or say

(19:36):
I just don't know how to do this and I
need this as a support system, or I need my people,
I need my girls, I need my friends, I've noticed that,
like when I let myself be supported rather than pushing,
that actually feels more natural to me in my in
my feminism, you know what I mean, Like there's so
much expectation for women to be great. Why I was

(20:00):
great mothers, great business entrepreneurs, great at everything, and I
feel like a lot of women are just tired. Yes,
and it doesn't feel good to need to be super
to be on the same level as men. Yeah, I
truly believe society needs to be around what women need.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
M hm, well, we create life with our bodies. Literally,
I don't know. We're like so tired saying that as
someone who will never ever have kids, but I always
use it as I mean, and it's a good one.
I'm sorry, even the potential of it though, you know
what I mean, He's here baby like low.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Key and I don't maybe cut this, I don't know,
but like I got in that nice I got into
an argument with my husband recently and I was like,
I just felt this rageful power where this very deep guttural,
subconscious part of me was like I can end your bloodline.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
And I felt really strong, it really true.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I was like, I was like, I am always in
the right because I can end your bloodline. I was like,
I deserve this type of support, or you don't get
a legacy.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Anytime someone that I'm talking to says you might want
to cut this, or it's okay if you cut this,
I know I'm whatever. I'm gonna say when you're friendly
in it's like can I say something bad and you're like, yes, no,
I'll probably leave it in. But no, yeah, and we
don't have to get we can get as personal or
not personal as you want. But do you want kids

(21:35):
yourself or doing that?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
I do?

Speaker 1 (21:37):
And so this is actually on the table.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, this is for sure.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Wow, this is this is legit to carry on if
the kid would even take their last name, which shouldn't
be a given, just that in itself.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
No, we talked about that too, like he he had
always wanted like that family unit feeling, and it was
a very shocking conversation before we got married because he
was literally imigrading to the United States and we just
never had that conversation because in Greece, like I think,
for many decades, it's not traditional for women to take

(22:09):
their husband's last name, Like my mom never changed her name.
Her mom never changed her name. I think part of
it is probably that Greeks stuck at paperwork and there's.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Still just a lazy I ain't know that because it's
very much the tradition here.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
No, so it just I never grew up with that
idea of changing my last name and my last name
is really cool, it's actually Zagonis. And then unfortunate plot
twist for him, I realized it sounds his last name
sounded better for acting.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, I took it as a stage.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Name, but not my legal name. Well, it's a fortunate
plot twist for I mean, did he want you too?
Did he hear it?

Speaker 4 (22:47):
All?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
He did?

Speaker 2 (22:48):
And like he'll bring it up every now and then,
but it's not something that is serious enough to actually
have a deeper conversation, like you should go change your
last name. Like he at the end of the day
had something very nice to say about it, in that
my father, who was an amazing man who passed away
when I was twenties, said his name deserves to live on,

(23:10):
you know, and continue.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
I guess just so does yours. I mean maybe yeah,
other relatives. But also I don't know who for me,
my last name is going to die with me because
there are no male errors in my line. My sister
has kids, but she took her husband's name, and I
don't care. It's not we don't have a great family history.

(23:33):
I think it's fine I go by a different last name.
I'm kind of like, let's the curse ends. With me
as ought to be cool.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
If people, if couples came up with like their own,
you do that, or they'll merge their name.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, it's cool. This reminded me of a meme that
I just posted that was things I want in my man.
Must be a virgin, must be submissive, must birth a girl,
must not talk back, must cook and clean, mustress modest,
must take my surname during marriage. And it's laughable, but
then you realize this is what guys actually will demand.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Yeah, no, it's silly. Yeah, it's an erasure.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
It's not the kind of guys that I think are
in our community and in our peer group and in
our little echo chamber. Probably not, I would hope not
most of the guys these days. But like men's rights activists,
they're very real in cells, are very real men who's
male loneliness epidemic, very real pickup artists or entrenched in
this kind of sexist mindset, even though some of them

(24:29):
claim to just be using it to help understand women.
I've talked to pickup artists and they can get very
defensive and surprisingly, but they don't view women as people.
Once you view women as this monolus that you can
hack so that you can own one. Yeah, it's a
little tricky there. You wrote a book of poetry. I

(25:03):
had a bloody mass and this is something you wrote
in your period. And what inspired you to bleed onto
the book and not the floor?

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Well, I got tired of cleaning up.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Right, Ran, I was really inspired by that part in
Harry Potter where he uses blood to write.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Now just I'm just kidding.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
No.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
It started off as a personal practice for me because
I went on a very long journey with my relationship
to having a period, like starting from my first monarchy
when I was I think thirteen years old.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Forget about that word monarchy.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
That's such a good word.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
He's like malarchy.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Malarchy, Well it fit like my larchy. I get monarchy.
And so I was my first time that I ever
had my period.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I for some reason felt this sinking feeling that I
wasn't allowed to be like childlike anymore. I had this
predefinition that I don't know if it was from society
or what, because I grew up with all women like
I have two older sisters again. My mom's name's Aphrodity. Yeah,
we never hid things about what happens to a woman's body.
It was all over the place in my house. But

(26:11):
for some reason, when I got my first period, I thought,
oh no, I can't be I can't be like a
child anymore.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
I have to be a woman.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
And that felt terrifying.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
So I always had this sort of like arms distance
to having a period. And when I went on birth
control for the first time, I was studying abroad, and
I felt like that sort of freedom that I imagine
a man has, of like, oh, I don't have to
think about this. I don't have to think about this.

(26:40):
This is amazing. And then fast forward to moving to
Australia and that's when I started dating my husband and
we were getting serious and I thought, oh, okay, I
better do the correct feminist thing and go make sure
that I plug this girl up. And I got the

(27:01):
Marina IUD because I did not like what the pill
was did to me emotionally, and also I'm not consistent
enough for it. So I thought, okay, great, I'll do
this IUD and only had it in for two months
and I had gained a bunch of weight. I was
reclose and I am not a private person. I love

(27:21):
being out and about and I just thought Okay, this
is not me. I need to get this taken out.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
This was a hormonal IUD.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
It was a hormonal Yeah, it was the lowest hormonal dosage.
And then that sort of started the journey of connecting
to my period in a deeper way where I started
unpacking why did I keep it at like an arms length?
Why was I afraid of womanhood when I was a kid?
And because of that, IUD, I ended up not having
a period for the next nine months, and then I

(27:49):
had one.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Straight for three months.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
So that was my journey in Australia. And then when
I came back to the States, like, I kept going
to different oncologists and was like, I don't know what's happening.
I was exhausted. Obviously, I was losing like nine months
worth of fucking blood. And it was in Ave, it
was in a Yeah. It was in Australia that I
started learning about the kind of inner chambers of the
cycle and looking at the cycle from a more like

(28:16):
holistic point of view, not just like, oh, it's your
body and it sucks and it sucks to be a woman.
It was more like looking at how the different changes
of our mental cycle reflect nature and they are like spring, summer, fall,
and winter, and how to start looking at it from
a different perspective. And that was it was the first
time that I did a women's circle as well, and

(28:37):
it was the first time that I had this really
beautiful and awful realization that when all women are connected
by our traumas as well. It was the first time
that I was like, oh, I'm not alone in what
I've experienced. I am devastatingly common. So that started the

(28:59):
practice of me writing poetry while I was bleeding as
a way to start like communicating with myself and what
am I purging?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
What am I letting go of?

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Because that is a shedding season, you know, it is
the winter of our cycle, and so it's like, how
can I get quiet and go inward? And poetry is
a really beautiful avenue into that. So it was during
the pandemic and we were all very very inward, and
so I decided to publish it because anytime I told
people about that personal practice, I got either like, oh, Wow,

(29:30):
that's really cool or men and women are like really cringing.
So I felt like I had to shared that as
a practice, and I really wanted a bloody mess, and
obviously you still want a bloody mess to be a
place where when you're bleeding you can go read a
poem and you know, originally it's supposed to have Tarot
cards in it, so that's coming. So yeah, where you

(29:54):
can kind of like flip to a page and you
can kind of divine what it's reflecting in you, and
it's almost an interact active peace.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
It sounds like, also this is a way for women
to feel more connected to other women, and the way
that you realized I mean, I love devastatingly common as
a description of the experience, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
And having a bloody mess or having having it be
a place where I can encourage other people who bleed
to write during that time. It becomes a sacred practice
inevitably by just making it into a ritual.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
It does remind me. I had an insane clone posse
face as a teenager. Yeah, and there's a line where
he's describing murdering someone, but it's like, you know, it's
a predator who needs to be murdered kind of a thing.
It's very justifiablement for predators.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Song.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah, I mean it's like, yeah, it's a pedophile who
they describe all the different ways that they kill them,
and he talks about dragging home the body of bloody mess.
So I always hear like, oh Shaggy or like violent
Jay's voice or whoever singing it in my head. So
I'll send it to you so you can have a
sound bite for your TikTok or something you kind of great. Yeah,

(31:05):
I actually would be really funny while you like flip
through the book.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
I'll do a second edition where I have that's funny.
I actually I have another poetry book called Basic Bitch
Book of like poems.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
But the next one that I'm working on because I
think I want to make it a series like do
you know how kids do you like? The Magic Tree
House books? Where it's basically the same thing but different
the formula. I think I want to do a bitch series.
And the next one I'm pretty sure is called Raging Bitch.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah. Just it's always some kind of bit, some kind
of bitch. Yeah, we all some kind of bitch, yeh
at the end of the day. Maybe that'll be the
title of the episode.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Some kind of bitch.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
I love that be it. I don't have a period
now because I take the active birth control pills continuously.
Oh wow, that you skip your period. And I've gone
off the pill from time to time just to see
what happens, because I've been on it for so long,
literally like seventeen years now, and wow, maybe that's going
to bite me in the future. But for much of

(32:02):
that time, I don't have a period. And even how
a therapist say, this is almost like another way of
avoiding something negative, like in the same way substance abuse
can be the avoidance of something. But every time I
go off the phone and have a period again, I'm like,
this is just so time consuming, Like I have to
be buying tampons, I have to be bringing them with me,
and I have to be tracking my cycle or it's

(32:24):
just surprise here.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
She is like, love a surprise.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
It just takes mental energy. And I still don't have
a regular cycle, so it will still just be like hello,
I definitely don't.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, No, I have a lot of like I said,
I've gone on a really long journey with it, so
I think, of course, to each their own, yeah, but
I am definitely someone who is now kind of like
an advocate for women to experience their period because it
ends up being a really deeply emotional tracker as well.

(32:58):
I've noticed the times that I have cram are when
I'm not addressing something in my life, and it's happened
way too often for it to be a coincidence. And
basically what that shows is that because I used to
get PMDD, I definitely had endometriosis that when undiagnosed, because
I would be vomiting from pain. And since I've gone

(33:19):
on this track of like cycle sinking my food, acknowledging
when I need rest, it's actually really helped me affirm
boundaries nice around my schedule, around my partnerships, around my friendships.
So for me when it comes to taking the pill
or being on ied because and I try to not

(33:42):
paint in because I had a bad experience. Everybody should
get off of it again to each their own. But
I have experienced such a deeper level of joy than
I could have ever imagined by approaching my period with
the sensibility, and I actually really fucking look forward to
having it now because it is inconvenient and I'm like,
I'm taking the day off, I'm watching I'm watching Pride

(34:03):
and Prejudice. You can cook dinner tonight, husband, Yeah, so
it it ends up becoming this like nice little cocoon period.
I love that, and not everyone can do that, obviously,
Like I'm very privileged and blessed that I have been
able to navigate my life in that way. But I
find it oddly more liberating because same when I first

(34:24):
went on the pill for those few months, I was like,
oh my god, I don't have to think about the
tampons and blah.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Blah blah blah blah. But I got books for you
if you want, I got books.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I don't have any negative reaction to the pill. I'm
pretty good. Yeah, I'm not sensitive to medications at all.
Like I'll get on a prescription medication and They're like,
what side effects are you having? And I'm like, I'm
on the max Dos. I can't even tell him on it,
like good or bad. Yeah, So now everybody's different. Yeah,
And I've gone like I've gone off for a whole
year as an adult in the last maybe I say,

(34:52):
maybe it was like three years ago. I took them
a long time off because I wanted to see how
it would affect my mood. And it didn't have any
notice effect, which is yeah, but that's my experience, and
it's very unusual for a woman to take hormonal birth
control and not have any side effects. Everyone I know, yeah,
everybody in acne mood, sex drive. Definitely, that's lucky for you. Then,

(35:15):
I mean, it would be nice to be able to
feel the effects of prescription medication sometimes. Yeah, you knows
anee surgery and you're like, give me more, always more.
We're going to take a break, and then I actually
want to ask you about tarot car Oh.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yes, let's get witchy.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Are we back?

Speaker 4 (35:47):
Are we?

Speaker 1 (35:48):
I don't know, we could be. Effie was just telling
me that she likes to submit for projects when ovulating,
because that's when we are the hottest, or at least
feel the hottest.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
It really sticks less on you when you feel great,
as opposed to win, you're like.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
The good bad. Yeah. The last thing I was going
to say on periods is that I went through an
art exhibit with my dad that was on motherhood and
there was an area that had art that was not
explicit of like childbirth or period blood, but clearly reminiscent
of it, inspired by it, and I thought it was beautiful,
and I was taking pictures and he was so visibly uncomfortable,

(36:27):
But it wasn't graphic. It was just you know, like
splotches of things and like shapes that could be vaginally interpreted.
Vation you know what I mean that Georgia O'Keefe like,
is that a vade love that? She's like, it's a flower,
and you're like, George, honey, no, that's the hatter photo
on our Patreon is these very vaginal looking flowers. That

(36:50):
was fun, but he said like, oh, I just don't
like all this like graphic stuff, and I obviously had
to shoot back like, oh, I'm excuse me. In the
miracle of childbirth and the beauty of motherhood, it is
gross to you if women's bodies are repulsive. Excuse me, I'm.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Sorry, but I feel like every sky scraper is of
phallis like every if you look around any city that
you just see penis.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And everyone who uses these mics, if you did it
too coment on having a phallic object in their face,
it could.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Be another shape.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Everyone else everyone has said that. So Tarot cards, I
think probably we have listeners who are more spiritual than
I am. I had my cards read when I was
eighteen because it was something my mom wouldn't let me do.
Maybe I was sixteen, I just did it just that
rebel girly always always. I used to have earrings that
were like a guitar pick that said rebel on them.

(37:38):
I've never seen a guitar in my life. I got
them from Hot Topic or maybe Claire's or maybe Spencer's,
one of those mall stores. But where do you feel
that tarot cards get what they get their power from?
Where does it come from?

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Ooh, that's a really fascinating question. I think like anything
that humans touch, which we create that magic. I think
that we have a tendency to anthropomorphize things like I
feel like, I don't know, it's almost like Shintoists, the
way that I look at even just a car having personality.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
What Shintoism mean.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Shintoism is a religion in Japan.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
We're basically long story short, every everything has spirit, everything
has animus. So I think taro gets their power from
the person wielding them and how deeply they want to
self reflect. I also believe, like with young, there's the
collective unconscious, and I think kind of whatever starts to

(38:40):
hold power among the consciousness of humanity grows in power itself.
So I think especially now that there's been like witch
talk and people using taro very openly and on the daily,
I think it has more power now than it may
be used to because more people are witnessing and experiencing it.
But for me, divining from taro is more just about

(39:02):
using the pictures in those collective messages to kind of
excavate what you're really feeling in about a certain situation
or what you actually need to into it. And at
the end of the day, I think we all experience
the same thing, so they all always hold true.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
You know, isn't the card reader the one who is
providing the interpretation on someone else's behalf, by which I
mean if it's coming from intuition and self exploration, then
what about when you're reading the cards for someone who
you don't even know.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
It's still I think chalked up to intuition, because when
I read people's cards, even strangers, I very much think
like what I was saying before, where we all go
through the same thing. So therefore all interpretations could hold true,
which is where people might feel like, oh, it's charlatanism,
it's not real. But again, it's like going back into

(39:51):
that collective unconscious where It's like if I were to
read your cards right now, it would be a mixture
of intuition, projection, and bias the things that I already
know about you, right, but also what the cards do themselves.
And this is where like the cards themselves I think
have a little bit of power in the order that
they come from. And however, you take signs with the universe,

(40:14):
Like after my dad passed, I became much more aware
of spirit by going through something that traumatizing, and whether
it's a coping mechanism or not, it made itself very
like the world made itself very clear that we are
connected in some way. So I think the power of
the cards comes from a combination of the intuition pictures

(40:38):
have a thousand words, and that these cards have been
imbued with meaning themselves for hundreds of years now. So
I think it's a nicely accumbination of things. And you're
gonna have people who are better at reading them like
you are. You know, people are better at singing or whatever.
It depends on what you've practiced and what's been passed
down and how intuitive and how willing you are to

(41:01):
hear signs as well.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
I think you should do the rest of the episode.
Neither British or Scottish accent your voice maybe into one
again a little bit. No, it was good. I was
like even just those words.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
I don't know if it's some sort of stimming or what,
but I do accents all the time.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
How I think it's good Bad's character.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
I asked the woman who read my cards as a
teenager what she thought the power came from, and she
said the earths and nature. And I've heard this idea
before of mother nature and the university. Yeah, I think
it was a little more than that. Yeah, not just
the universe in an ephemeral sense, but when you walk

(41:47):
through a forest alone, you look around at trees towering
over you, it's pretty human. I think to feel like
these trees that help provide oxygen for us have a
certain power to them. Yeah, it's interesting though that And
I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Women
are more prone to self reflection and self evaluation, self awareness,

(42:10):
and are also the ones who are typically into horoscope,
tarot cards, personality tests. I think those are all examples
of wanting to be more in touch with yourself.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, I definitely agree with that, and I think that's
a proper placeholder for women in society as well. And
that's kind of touching back into motherlands and the crone
and matriarchy, is that I think that we are naturally
drawn to that because that's a natural place for us
in society, is to be not just leaders, but the
spiritual leaders, and that women do a lot more of

(42:44):
self reflection and looking into it is I do believe because.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
We are meant to be the leaders of those things.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
And if you look at the patriarchal leaders in Christianity
and in the new religions of the world, like it's
very much separated human from their internal divinity and literally
the teachings of Christ where we are the sons and
daughters of God and AKA meaning like he was trying

(43:13):
to as the prophet, remind us that divinity lives within us.
Whereas I feel like in patriarchal religious structures it's often
like come to me, I have the power, let me
feed you spoon by spoon based off what I think
will control you. It's very narcissistic and tithes to H
fifteen Church exactly. Oh, by the way, it costs money God,
whereas it's money, Yeah, exactly, he's so broke, whereas with

(43:37):
matriarchal or feminine religious sex like it's often a like.
For me, my religion is sweeping in my house and
being a house switch and being someone who uses their
art to express whatever internal divinity that I have so
that other people can be reminded of their own as well.
And that has nothing to do with giving money or

(44:01):
my power over to anything. It's literally reminding yourself, like
that moment being surrounded by the trees, where it's like
there's awe and dignity in nature. Yeah, and I think
women are naturally drawn to it, like you said, because
that is supposed to be our place in society.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
We've also been allowed to it's more encouraged. I think
when guys do that, it's like he's doing something girly.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
It's like, yeah, absolutely, he's.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Being a pussy by wanting to self reflect.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
I remember I did Taro for a very straight white
male comic, and there is an absolute deep fear that
women can.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
Be quite tapped into the unknown.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Right because he was mocking me doing it, because I
was just doing it casually in my friend's backyard, and
I was like, well, do you want me to read yours,
and I just like I nailed him. I just something
about my intuition. I was just on fire that day.
I was like, you will never be And I didn't
mean this in a mean way, but I was like,

(45:03):
you will never be a successful comic because you are
not capable of laughing at yourself. Ooh.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I was like, I'm sorry, it's this card, you know.
I was like, yeah, So I was like you he was.
He was shook and that changed a trajectory for him.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Apparently afterwards of changing people's studis. Yeah, he was. They
don't love it, they.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Don't love it, but he he It kind of humbled
him though, and I think that that's I think that's
part of it too, is that we see taro or
we see these astrology and we get made fun of
for it, or it gets diminutized because it is something
that's likened by the feminine.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Comedians can be so toxic. They're often so depressed, and
so there's a lot of addiction, a lot of suicideality. Yeah,
and this is an escape for them, which those things
in themselves are not toxic. It's how you respond to
those things and perhaps take it out on the people
around you. But it's isn't surprise me that that was
a straight white male comedian that had this reaction.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
No, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
And I like seeing my friend doing stand up now
and the things that she's experiencing. It's pretty shocking how
little the needle has moved with it. And some of
the jokes that I've seen are just like, they're not clever,
they're not unique, and they're not based off Again, it's
like the thing that I told him, and kind of
wrapping back into the self reflection, is like, you can't

(46:26):
make good art unless you're willing.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
To do like shadow work yeah, oh.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Absolutely, vulnerable, yes, and instead you're just gonna do surface
level shit on.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I think men also fear women being intuitive because then
we'll see them as they are, and that is scary
because so much of the time they are manipulating us
or trying to hide things from us. I mean, just
everyone knows that man who has the secret second family
or knows how.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Of he oh I know one, yeah, yeah, and it's
just insane.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
There's no I've never heard of a woman who did that.
And also there's no way that she could find the time.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
We're too tired I was, We're way too tired for that,
which really points to the fact that they have so
little responsibilities within the family home dynamic that they can
literally have a second family. Yes, no, I found I
found out this this girl that I grew up with,
very very wealthy. I won't drop names, but let's say
they know a famous person who's causing a lot of

(47:28):
grief right now in the world. And like the dad
I remember was flaunting that he was buddy buddy with
this millionaire, and even at that age, I was like,
that's horseshit. Yeah, and I just didn't buy into that
sort of machiesimo thing. And then fast forward, I found
out that he had a whole second family in the Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
So as he was quote unquote traveling for work, he
was tending to his other literal wife and children.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
Who I'm sure did not know. Nobody knew, just new
you travel a lot for work. Yep. Women are not crazy,
it is and it's normalized almost. I mean, when it's
that extreme, people look down on it. But the guy
cheating and his girlfriend, like just how common that is
and how women are expected to forgive it, And certainly
we can be deceptive and manipulative too, but you don't

(48:21):
see it as often in these romantic spheres. And I
think that's where part of the fear of women finding
things out comes through, because what if he wronged her
like that and doesn't want her to find out.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Well, I think the fear of women is as far
as that dynamic goes. Is also realizing and this is
something that I am coming into my own with more,
is that like, no, we're actually we can be a
lot more manipulative than you.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Well, we can, we just don't do it because we're
not evil men. We've found out in our episode on
empathy have no well yes, no, they had more Machiavelian
tendencies on like psychology studies, more like they were more
likely to exhibit that behavior.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
I think again, it always boils down to the fact
that they are not given the tools to be shown
that here's how you can be vulnerable and here's how
you can lose control but then also self regulate. Yes,
I feel like it's the combination of not knowing the
tools for self regulation as well as not feeling like
they have the okay to be vulnerable, because for them,

(49:26):
vulnerability cracks.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Into just rage, which then leads into abuse.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, and I feel like that's where, you know, I
feel like that's where we really need to work, where
it's like boys can cry.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and it's fine.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
I had it.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
The world goes round.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
I had a situationship who I thought would turn into
something more, which obviously is probably error number one.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Never starts with this situation.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
I know there was a meme that was this like
eight hundred year old man was like a cane. It
was like my situationship on his way to commit literally,
but he cried in front of me because I was
actually asking him for vulnerability, and I mean I kind
of went deep. I asked him about his mom, who
died when he was a kid, So I mean, you

(50:12):
gotta let it come out somewhere. I really like, yeah,
I kind of went for the juggular with that one.
But I was curious and I was an open like, hey, like,
I want to talk to you about more real things
because it's been all very surface level. He told me like, oh,
you know everything about me at this point because he'd
shared superficial things. I was like, no, I don't know
you at all.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
I know your baseball card facts.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Who are you yeah, and I don't think he knows
entirely or whatever he has found out he pushes aside,
which is why it was hard to talk to me about.
But he treated me differently from that time on, like
he distanced himself so much more. First he didn't want
to see me for a while, and then when he
started seeing me again, like it was even more superficial.
And I quickly ended it. I was like, okay, you're

(50:54):
just using me for sex at this point, this is
what I wanted. But it was a very the divide
was at I'm cry the next morning. It was a
different dynamic, and for me, I was like, this is
a good thing, Like we're actually having a genuine conversation
for the first time, you're actually sharing how you felt
about something deeply. And for him that was that was it.
And I don't think he consciously thought it through. Well,

(51:15):
I cried in front of her. Therefore, I can't see
her as a sexual, be as like a romantic Yeah,
it could be a little bit of that, yeah, but
also I don't think you really thought that through. I
think it just his is the way he felt, just
the knee jerk, like oh now I have to now
I need to shut out yea.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, yeah, And I think also too, if men are
studied to be more machiavellian, showing where you're vulnerable is
dangerous for them because if you think about the kind
of evolution of men and what they're Oh fuh, I'm
having such a big download with this right now because
I think about women in epigenetics all the time in
our inherita trauma, but I am finally having this realization

(51:53):
that men's inherited trauma is that they cannot be vulnerable
or they will die on a battlefield. You cannot let
your brother know who you really are or what your
weakness is, because then that weakness will become a target. Sure,
so that's a big realization.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Whereas, yeah, our first roles as mothers, which requires love
and tech, empathy and problem solving with the with the
vulnerability with another person.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah yeah, so they have a completely different set of
fire alarms that go off with their heads when they
get vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Then, and everyone's job, every single human's job, is to
look at yourself, look at how your how your actions
affect other people, try to resolve things. It's not appropriate
that only women take on that work. More women go
to therapy. More women have these kind of conversations. It
ain't fair. No, no, I strongly encourage all men to

(52:45):
do therapy.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Whether you think you need it or not, Like, just
do it. It's honestly, met yourself.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Go get a latte. It's just needs to get get alte.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Go get yourself a nice new pair of Nike dunks
or whatever you're into, and go to therapy. Treat yourself.
Treat yourself.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
You're doing like a positive reinforcement action here, Like if
you go to therapy, then you get to have the late,
you get to have a late. Yeah, yes, yeah, I
don't think any of this is inherent to anyone, but
I do think that we're all responsible for doing the work.
And I also think that some men have And oh,
the last guest I had on said, and you said

(53:20):
something about this in the car that she was like,
I'm a man hater first and I'm a man lover second.
I know them, I'll always be that way for me.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
But now the mantra I keep saying lately or like
the one that I want to break because I like,
I don't hate men, But then I feel like there's
so many things that happen in society that I'm just
like a hate bud, like that fucking shit with that
the woman in Georgia that they incubated a child.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
And to like, what are we doing?

Speaker 1 (53:47):
What happened?

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Hard?

Speaker 1 (53:50):
You don't have to talk about it if you don't
feel like, yeah, everyone look it up. Look up Georgia
incubated child. Do your research, because I close my eyes
just fully.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
It's literally actually an episode from the Handmaid's Tale. So yeah,
without going into it, it's just like there's so many
policies and things that go into place that like a
grandma would never a grandma would never. I that was
one of the things that I do love about my husband.

(54:22):
And again that's why I want to stop saying I
hate men, because I don't want to keep finding reasons
to hate them.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Right, Ye, give room for you'll find what you're looking
for exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
You will manifest it and manifest it.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
But one of the things that got me a fluttered
was he was like, man, we need to replace all
the politicians with grandmothers and single mother.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
He's like, what kind of indigenous.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Actually, he said specifically indigenous grandmas, because he's like, what
kind of indigenous grandmother is going to stand up there
on a podium.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
And be like, not we should abuse those people.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, more women in power would be a wonderful thing.
But the problem is that the people who want power
are not the people who should have power, straight up.
I mean that's that's always always yes. And I think
testosterone is a factor the drive for power, which I
don't have. I mean, I maybe this is just the
narcissism speaking. I think I'd be a good leader, but

(55:15):
I don't have the I don't have. Yeah, I like
I'd like to lead things and always try to be
very fair and good. I think a good leader never
has to force people to follow them. They just inspire
following because you feel taken care of by your leader,
and you want to support the whole system that they
have helped create and that they help maintain. The kind
of people who are like that, who don't just want power,

(55:38):
they don't run for office, and they also probably wouldn't win.
You don't win anything unless you have a super pack
behind you and massive funding, and you don't get funded
unless you're power hungry.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Well, there's one person who's finally broken that spell, and
the left and right his name's Aoran.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Oh yeah, yea yeah, Mom, Dannie. He just won the
Merrell Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Are you the left right like him?

Speaker 3 (56:01):
No, the left and right hate. Oh, they both hate
it because he didn't take a super pack. He did
run on inspiration.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Right, I've been here thirty three years old, has the
hottest wife, and he's a super I heard they met
on hinge Girls. There's hope for us, there's nope, girl,
maybe he's your next wife.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
No, he just he's running on a campaign. I think
of just being fucking sick of it.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Do you know what I mean? Like madis Alla exactly
bringing back the network.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
So the left end right hate him because he broke that.
And now I think there was a surge of like
some crazy percentage of like millennials that are now vining
to run for office.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
There's a twenty five percent in Arizona. I think, Yeah,
she's incredible. Yeah, I just don't know how far they're
going to get because they're not an establishment candidate.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
I think something very French revolutionary is kind of in
the maybe not in the same like Muskets in violence way,
but I think that there is going like this is
just the dynamic, and I'm not being radical by saying this.
This is just what happens throughout history always, is that
the the power dynamic shifts from the few who have

(57:18):
everything and have gotten there slowly over time, and then
taken swiftly and violently by the masses.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Wasn't it like Empires fall after two hundred and seventy
five years or something?

Speaker 3 (57:29):
Yeah, about two fifteen.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yeah, happy birthday America. Yeah, it fifty this year. Happy birthday.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
It's also, if we want to get back into the
witchy side of things, it's also when two fifty years
is when Pluto comes into a new sign.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
So that's like the shadow planet and so well listen, okay,
it was when the astrologi just start going off. Okay,
I'm a Pluto. What's it called a lever?

Speaker 2 (57:58):
A lever? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (58:00):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (58:00):
It's circular around us. It's not a meteor. I think that,
but there's like rules about it doesn't really fit the
I don't know what do I know? We just made
it up anyway, We make all of it up. Yeah,
it's all made up.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
There are no planets.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
It's a flatter heard, it's just a simulation. It's a
green screens.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
The ironies that you literally have a green screen.

Speaker 4 (58:23):
I do.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Oh my god, it's cream. I like talking. I don't know.
I need to keep the podcast in general. This isn't
specific today about patriarchy, but I'm so fucking tired of
talking about men and I repeat the same things. They're all.
I mean, I agree with what I'm saying, but like
we've done an episode on so many things that have
come up today that I even stop saying. But it's

(58:46):
just androcentric, and I think we're kind of forced to
focus on the things we don't want to focus on
when they directly impact us, like corrupt politicians. Who wants
to sit around and think about and talk about corrupt politicians?

Speaker 3 (58:59):
No, for sure, I have to.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
I think you always have to like lay out the
elephant in the room. And I feel like for me,
what I've been researching, especially doing the show Motherlands, like
that's that's my anti patriarchy motive, and it's through the
guise of art, and it's not it's not crazy radical,
like I'm not trying to upend anything. I'm not trying
to assassinate anybody for the time being, but not that

(59:23):
you wouldactly And yet no, I wouldn't obviously say that
it'd be way more, you know, no, But I feel
like what I've been seeing is that with like kind
of the influx of the tad wife thing and the
sort of swinging back of the pendulum where it's like
in the nineties and the eighties and everything, like feminism
was like you can do it, girls, boss bitch, and

(59:47):
we've been beaten to a pulp with the can do
attitude and we're like can we maybe literally all that,
And I am incredibly grateful to all the different waves
of feminism so that we can stretch and see our options.
But I think like the antithesis to patriarchy is matriarchy.
Like it's not dismantling, it's not. What I've been seeing

(01:00:09):
with studies and like other people who have been researching
this topic is that you don't try to take down
the patriarchy. It's not fuck the patriarchy. It's let's just
simply start building the matriarchy. I like that, you just
start within your own community.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
So that's kind of the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Mission of Motherlands too, which is like, here's this beautiful
Grandma wisdom, and one of the things is to grow
a garden. And that's just something that every single woman
in Greece would come back to is the joy of
having a garden. So for me, that's the antithesis of
patriarchy and decentering, you know, the sort of masculine values.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Of like we have to win, we have to do this,
and it's like, you know what, I am going to
vote locally.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Yeah, I'm going to try to support people that I
believe in that are going to represent me better. But
I'm not even gonna pressure myself in that there. I'm
just gonna start right now. Literally, the practical stuff I'm
taking is growing herbs in my kitchen window.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
We're going to start there. That's my matriarchy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Emphasis on nurturing rather than destroying.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Absolutely nurturing and self sufficiency too, creating networks, creating tribes. Yeah,
change doesn't have to be massive or swift m hm,
but it could be because imagine if we all decided
to not pay taxes. Yeah, imagine if we all decided
to not go to work.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
That something like that happened. I can't remember where, but
this has happened globally.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Oh yeah, this is the way women decided not to
go to work. They got equal pay, like overnight yeah,
and they have some of the best like paternity and maternity.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
I always look at Sweet Norway, Denmark, what it was
called the Nordic Countries.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
Yeah, we call them. Yeah, listen the startup there. They
got to win at something.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
It really is quinter a lot of the time. No,
there was a country that everyone stopped paying their utilities
bills because I think they were being extorted and this
was a revolutionary act where everyone agreed. I wonder what.
I wonder what I can organize through the podcast, which
I see as a project. And it's not like I
have a million followers. It would be nice to have
a million listeners to tell your friends. Yeah, but I know, yeah, No,

(01:02:20):
it's been years and I still like lose so much time.
I mean, we make a little bit of money also
Patreon if anyone wants to support that. But somebody that
would also make it feel more like a community is
if we had a project. The first thing I thought
of is like organizing abortion support for women who live
in states where it's illegal, but I don't think we
could talk about that very publicly. If we tried to

(01:02:42):
create a little underground railroad to bring women into California
or into your local state. Oh god, yeah, but I
wonder what and if anyone has an igs an, you
want to email me that. Just having at least a
baby platform, and more so through the mean page, miss
Andrews memes that would make us feel like, at least
in our own world, we are doing what we can

(01:03:04):
to build our patriarchal structures around us, even on a
smaller level, because that's great. People ask me all the time,
like what will it actually take to take down the patriarchy?
And I say bombs, and I say violence, and I
say war, and I say we don't do that because
that's not the way women solve problems.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Well, I think, well, no, honestly, the French Revolution began
from angry mothers. Good, like there is a there is
something to feminine rage that has also been stamped out
and violence, Like if you look at goddesses around history,
it's we. It's basically the narcissistic mother of like I
brought you into this world, that can kick you out. Yeah,

(01:03:43):
so it's like that's kind of I don't think you're wrong,
and I don't think that my you know, herb garden
is wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
I think there's honestly both. Oh yeah, I think to dismantle.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
The patriarchy is like there has to be there has
to be righteous punishment. The thing for the atrocities that
I've been done with P Diddy not being found guilty.
It's outrageous and kind of like when Harvey Weinstein was
about to there has to be karma, you know. And

(01:04:15):
when Harvey Weinstein was like let out of prison, everybody
in New York City literally slapped him in public good
like he was he was not welcome in public spaces anymore.
And I do think that there has to be that
level of righteous rage in order for change to happen.
But I think also where it's like if you look
at patriarchy like a petulant child, if it's whining and

(01:04:37):
complaining and just being a little shit. And I know
this as a nanny. The most effective thing for me
to deal with the temper tantrum was to walk away
and ignore it and go do me. And I was like,
you can talk to me when you're stable, and so
then the kids would be like, Okay, I feel better now,

(01:04:58):
But how do we ignore it when it's so and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
So prevalent ease?

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah, it's definitely hard, and it's a combination I think
of like mental stamina, activism and no and having patients
and knowing that it's probably not going to be something
we see within our own lives, but it could be.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
So it's hard.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
This just somehow reminded me. I told this during the podcast.
It was the episode that was called on being Neurosed
by the Navy and Not Your Girl, which was my
transfriend Kiss who was in the Navy, and Chris is
talking about how now that they are masked passing, they
have male privilege that they never had before, and how
much more seriously people take them and how they get

(01:05:41):
left alone when they're just walking down the street in
a way they never before. They had a great analogy
that being a woman is like having ten thousand dollars
a strap to your body that's all visible and people
just want to come and take it and interact with
you and feel entitled to that, which speaks to our
value too. Ooh, that's so, that is so true.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
They don't want us to know they're valuable because like, yeah,
we are ten thousand dollars dropped out, which is again
like why I'm on the opposite side of feminism where I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Like, nope, we are better. Yes, I support us clearly, Yes,
come to the party completely with you.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
And this is every woman, by the way, because I
think men will hear this and be like, well, yeah,
but you know she's like a hot girl who's dressed
such and such and important. No no, no, no, no
no no no no no no no, no human honestly, no, no,
no no. That's the plot to us, is that it's
actually every human every hum. I was talking about women
always being given that kind of attention in person and
walking around to the world that then when you reject it,

(01:06:34):
then they get angry. Okay, I did this last time
just because we're low in time, so I know it
goes so fast. Doesn't it down this room in twelve minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Too, hoad I was like, I'm just getting warmed two.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
More hours, people don't. I don't think they want to
listen before our podcast, otherwise I would absolutely remember.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
They could do it quietly and it could be a
bed time subconscious subliminal message.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
Yeah, okay. There was a listener letter that I forgot
to read in the beginning of the episode. This was
a gal where we read her email already she was
talking about she's I think she's fourteen years old.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
And at first I was like, where are you listening
to this content? But I'm like, oh no, because you
need to hear this content, perhaps the most. Yes, And
I'm sorry when we talk about like men licking assholes
or something like that, but.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
You know what, if you're on TikTok er minsteat, you're
gonna learn about it some day for me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
So she was just talking about being followed home from
the beach. Yeah, she was like on a vacation with
her parents and just had a couple blocks to walk.
She was wearing a towel, but she did have a
bikini on. And this was a guy who had been
watching her on the beach and her already made her uncomfortable.
And then as she was walking faster home, he started
walking faster, and then she literally started running and he

(01:07:52):
was like speed walking behind her, like clearly following her.
So she ran all the way to the apartment. And
it just breaks my heart to hear and this kind
of thing happened to me too, and I'm sure it
happened to you, and just that this is normal, This
is that ten thousand dollars strapped to your body. And
I know the guys listening are like, I know, oh no,
this happened when she was twelve. Since now I'm fourteen,

(01:08:13):
I was twelve, And if anyone's reading this like, well,
someone's like writing a crank letter, like no, no, no, no,
this was a very personal and also same kind of
thing happened to us. It's just devastating. And not every
guy listening, I'm sure many are saying like, well, that's insane.
I would never do that. Yeah, maybe you wouldn't, but
someone you know what. So I need all the guys
listening to make sure to watch out for these kind

(01:08:36):
of things. But she's also having a really hard time
with her parents, and she just then a follow up
asking about emancipation, and this is something I looked into
when I was a teenager. It's not easy. There's really
specific state by state laws, and you probably all the time,
certainly in the state I'm from, have to prove that
you're financially independent without your parents and that you're unsafe

(01:08:57):
at home. But it will likely destroy whatever remnants of
relationship you have with your parents. That's hard to come
back from. But if you're unsafe at home. Also, you
probably have to be sixteen. They don't if you're I
don't think they just let anyone just like figure it
out on their own, even if he would be safer
without your parents. Those are just the logistics. But yeah,

(01:09:19):
it's really hard. It's were you when you were under eighteen?
Did you have a solid enough relationship with your family
that you felt at least safe and secure with them?
I hope, Yeah, definitely, I am.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
I said earlier to in this podcast, devastatingly common. Was
really really saddened to find out that that's not a
common experience that I had, which is to feel safe
and loved in a home mm hm and seeing emancipation.
Like my husband left home when he was fifteen. He
never legally emancipated, but I can sympathize with that desire

(01:09:57):
to move on from toxic people, whether they're your parents
or your siblings or not.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Speaking to anyone who's going through something like that and
kind of looping thematically back in the matriarchy, it is
about discovering support systems. So no matter what situation you're in,
you can build a family, You can build.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
A safety debt and yeah, I trailed out from your
question because I'm so sad about that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
No, it's okay. It's all about the tangents here. Yeah,
chosen family becomes really important always, but especially when people
don't have you feel safe.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yeah, I mean there's so many versions of this of
just feeling disconnected from your parents from all the way
to being unsafe or like them not keeping you safe. Also,
even if your parents aren't the abusers, if you're in
situations where you need a parent, you need someone looking
out for It's a it's gonna be something to look

(01:11:05):
at in therapy for the rest of your life. I'm
not gonna lie. This isn't like you're gonna turn eighteen
and it's gonna get better for anyone young. Because I
thought everything would be resolved once I got away from
my family, and then I learned, like, no, the ghosts
follow you. Yeah, and you have to put in a
lot of work and it's worth it and it will
be better once you have control over your own life.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
Absolutely, that's really well put, Alison.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
I've had a lot of time yapping in a microphone
by now. Yeah, it's gotten easier because waws is hell
all right, We unfortunately have to wrap it up. But
I gotta ask, where can people find a Bloody Mess?
And Motherland?

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
Oh my gosh, So Motherlands is still in post production,
but you can follow the journey of it on Instagram
and on TikTok. It's at Motherland's Underscore docu series. And
then for a Bloody Mess, I have a link directly
in my bio on my Instagram F E. Spence It's
E F F I E S P E n c E.

(01:12:05):
It's also available for purchase on Amazon, but I need
to pay for the ads because it's hard to find.
So you have to search a Bloody Mess poetry and
then go into the side search bar and click poetry
and then.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
It will come up. But yeah, just follow along with
any of my pages and I'll lead you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
I am misandrist Memes on Instagram, and.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
I am F. E. Spence and we are Sad Gap
Dot Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Wow. That was a good one.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
So good.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
It's usually hard to locked in. That was really locked in.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
We're so I've taken a lot of acting classes where
we've had to do things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
She's a pro, you guys, I am trained. You can
email us at Sadgap dot podcast at gmail dot com.
Send me your horrific street harassment stories. Tell me about
your shitty boyfriend, a bad date, tell me about your day.
I don't care. We're here. Oh, give me a suggestion
for how to harness a community, to build the matriarchy
on our community level. Or write a review on Apple. Actually,

(01:13:02):
and please write me a review on Apple. You can
write on Spotify. You should do this to FI. It
really helps with you reach. There's a discord. I don't
know shit ton of stuff. Thank you so much for
being here, a f you. This is really fun. We'd
love to have you back, and I'd love to be back.
I love these also different perspectives and different sort of
approaches with Taro, with understanding your cycle like that's very valued.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
Thank you very much for having me. This is wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
This is brilliant, and we're stronger together. We'll see you
next time. Yeah. Nice