The Ghost of Phyllis Schlafly

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From house Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristin
and I'm Caroline, and today we are talking about Phillis
she Laughley. This episode has been a long time coming,

(00:25):
but ever since she died on September five, we've been
talking amongst ourselves, Caroline and I about how we should
do an episode on phillis. We've heard from a number
of listeners asking whether we're going to do with Phyllis
sh Laughley episode and how could we not? How could

(00:48):
we not? Especially after my Twitter response to her passing,
UM brought men out of the woodwork to tell me
that I was a monster. So what what? What did
you tweet? Um? I tweeted a Zendia gift where Zendia
was just going by and that was it. And conservative

(01:12):
gentleman did not appreciate that and called me a fat
feminist monster. Oh no, I called you fat. Wasn't that
the worst thing a woman can be called? Totally? How
did you even survive it? I don't know. I don't know.
Eating even more feminism, eating eating all the feminists. Well,
it's also apropos to talk about laughlely because in a

(01:37):
lot of ways. She paved the way for Donald Trump
being the Republican nominee for president this year. And and
I would argue that her star was definitely rising at
the same time that the Republican Party was veering more
toward the regunification, you know, aligning with the religious right,

(02:01):
um than uh it previously had been. Yeah, I mean
that's how she made her name was definitely by essentially
ushering helping usher what was this fringe right wing group
of Republicans sort of like we think of the Tea
Party today into the mainstream because for a long time

(02:25):
they were just sort of off in the corner, uh
and not really taken all that seriously. But then, as
will talk about more, Philish Laughlely showed America that these
right wing conservatives could win in the polls. But I
don't want to get to ahead of ourselves. Let's talk

(02:46):
a little bit more about who this woman is, because
for I feel like you either absolutely know who she
is because she's the arch nemesis of second wave feminism,
or you probably never heard of her. Let's give a
quick primer of who this Shlafley, who's this Slaughly lady is?
Who's this dame. Well, I mean, you're right, she's absolutely

(03:09):
considered one of the most polarizing figures in American public
political life. And she's basically, I don't know what would
she's an author, she's a politician to a degree, um,
and she is best known for her war against the

(03:29):
Equal Rights Amendment in the nineteen seventies. Yeah, I mean,
she's a grassroots conservative political organizer who is now considered
an icon among you know, ultra right wing Republicans, Donald
Trump included. And we read her obituary in both The

(03:51):
New York Times, obviously more liberal, some might call it
the lamestream media. They're Shlapley fans. And then we read
her oh bit in the National Review, which is ultra conservative,
of course, and The New York Times described her as
quote a self described housewife who displayed a moral ferocity

(04:12):
reminiscent of the axe wielding prohibitionist Carrie Nation. So she's
a tough cookie, real tough cookie. And then the National
Review described her, meanwhile, as one of the original happy warriors, funny, gracious,
and grittier than one might expect. And it's astonishing to

(04:33):
trace back our political climate today and everything that we
are now witnessing in terms of Donald Trump's supporters and
the types of white dudes who came after you on Twitter,
for instance, And trace that all the way back to

(04:54):
this woman in the Midwest who in a lot of
ways started out almost like Hillary Clinton. She was from
a relatively like working class background, although Hillary Clinton came
from a well slightly wealthier middle class family. But laughly,
you know, it was scrappy, and she was smart, and

(05:17):
she was ambitious, and then you know, the any similarity
she might have to Hillary Clinton just ends right there. Well, yeah,
and I mean they both initially supported very Goldwater too
before before Hills went the other direction. But yeah, and
I mean you can look at the fact that nowadays

(05:38):
Catholics and Evangelical Christians work together when they are on
the right. Um, you can trace that back to Philish
laughly as well. She was Catholic, um, devoutly Catholic. But
through and we'll get to this more in a second,
but like through all of her grassroots efforts, she brought
more women of different faiths and different denominations into the

(06:02):
political fold to try to combat this sort of what
she viewed as you know, liberalization, the downfall of American society.
And in a lot of ways, she is a difficult woman,
she summarized, because she's kind of a basket of contradictions,
because she is this very ambitious, self sufficient woman in

(06:26):
a lot of ways who said that from the get
go when she was growing up, she knew that she
would need to take care of herself. And in her
political career she was extremely visible. She wrote twenty books.
I mean, the woman never stopped, and yet publicly she
always said that she was a housewife first and that

(06:49):
politics was just a hobby because she has six children
at home and her husband, Fred Schlasley, is king aventually
and she does whatever he allows her to do, even
though like in the same breath she'll also say, you know,
but I can do whatever I want. Um. And she

(07:13):
relished starting this organization called stop e r A, which
was intended to stop the Equal Rights Amendment. Well yeah,
and stop was actually an acronym for stop taking our Privileges,
which is when I when I learned about that acronym

(07:35):
was also my brain exploded a little bit about just
how how blatant the intention is right there of privileges,
Stop taking our privileges? Because I mean Philish Laughly would
be like, yeah, I mean I love white privileges terrific. Yeah.
I Um. When I was researching her life and and

(07:56):
activism and politics, my brain just kept collapse thing on
itself because to me, as a liberal feminist and one
who cares about having equal rights for people of all backgrounds,
none of it made sense because I'm like, why would
you want to stop the e r A when oh

(08:20):
wait no, but you only want the privileges for you
and yours. Well, okay, so I was I take back
what I say that she would say. She would be
all about her white privilege because what Philish Laughly did
and Donald Trump does. She would deny that privilege even exists.
Oh well, sure, in the same way that she denies

(08:42):
that denied that sexism even exists. Well, privilege in the
way that we talk about it now and on our podcast.
But I mean she actively talked about the privileges afforded
to women, right in the sense of chivalry. Almost right. Yes. So,
her latest book, A Conservative Case for Trump, came out

(09:04):
just after her death, and she describes in it Trump
as a quote old fashioned man grounded in his two
great priorities hard work and family and a man who
in other respects has led a remarkably clean life. Okay,
So I mean this is this is the the viewpoint

(09:26):
that we're dealing with. This is the kind of choose
your own reality that Phillish Lavely was able to mold
into a startling, lee powerful career for herself. And it
makes sense that right before her death at ninety two
years old, she came out, uh, stumping for Trump because

(09:51):
she was all about populism. She was all about demagoguery,
and she was all about, you know, galvanizing this hyper
conservative evangelical religious right that has similarly flocked to Trump. Well,
and regardless of whether you as the politicians she was
stumping for, were hyper Republican or whatever, she just hated

(10:17):
the establishment. That's like some of the same rhetoric you
hear a lot right now, and and she saw Trump
as an answer to those establishment politics. And she was
really she harped for decades on kingmakers, the idea of
like a secret group of rich liberal elite kingmakers who

(10:41):
sat around appointing politicians around the world. Yeah, I mean,
because that right there is a core tenant of populism
where the belief is that almost conspiratorially, that it's just
a group of power full people who are making all
the decisions. So power to the people, let's overthrow them.

(11:05):
And she told Breitbart in January of this year that quote,
Trump is the only hope to defeat the kingmakers because
everybody else will fall in line. So I mean she
really believed in this kingmaker business to her death. And
I mean that's that's also something to keep in mind

(11:26):
as we talk about Phillish Laughley. And something that was
impressed upon me reading about her timeline is how she
has not changed in her political viewpoints at all. She
still tells the same anecdotes that she did, you know
in the sixties. So how did Phillis happen? Um, Well,

(11:52):
let's give a little bit of biographical background real quick.
She was born in August nine as phyllis McAlpin's Stewart
in St. Louis. I did have a moment of concern
because a lot of my people are from St. Louis,
and I did wonder, like, oh, she came up in St.
Louis around the same time as my grandmother. I wonder

(12:13):
if they were friends. Um. She was the oldest of
two daughters to o'deal Dodge, who was her mother, and
John Bruce Stewart. And what's really interesting is that, I mean,
by all accounts, her mother was also a very hard worker.
She worked outside the home. She was a teacher with
two college degrees, and that's not shabby at all for

(12:38):
a woman who was born at the end of the
nineteenth century. Her mother not Phillips, right, I mean, and
and o'deal ended up being the breadwinner because her dad,
John Bruce Stewart, was a Westinghouse machinist and an industrial
equipment salesman, and after he lost his job in the
Great Depression, O'Dell had to become the breadwinner. And she hustled.

(13:02):
She was a department store saleswoman. She was an elementary
school teacher and a librarian of a St. Louis art museum.
And in her spare time, how she had spare time,
I'm not sure, she wrote a book on the history
of St. Louis. Yeah. So like the constantly busy work
work work ethic of Philish Laughley could absolutely be seen

(13:25):
in her mother as well. Yeah. But and also her
politics though comes straight from her dad. Her dad was
seventeen years older than o'deal, which is going to be
a similar age gap that we'll see in Phillis s
Laughley's own marriage. And her dad was a staunch Republican who,
even though they fell on such hard times during the

(13:45):
Great Depression, he hated FDR and hated the New Deal
and wanted nothing to do with that. And so from
a very young age, Phyllis was groomed, you know, to
be a very conservative or Paul looking Yeah, And I
think that there's also the emotional aspect of Yes, she

(14:06):
had a really smart, really hard working, really busy mother,
but she also grew up in addition to hearing her
father rail against the New Deal, heard her mother being
filled with regret at having to work those jobs. Her
mother wanted to stay home with the kids and the
house and do the cooking and all of that stuff

(14:27):
and be the traditional housewife. And so she's being raised
with these ideas about traditional family and traditional politics. And
because of their financial situation at home, Phillis realized that
she was going to have to make her own way.
It's not like her parents could just pay for her
to go to college, and so she worked really hard.

(14:49):
She was always at the top of her class, and
in she received her bachelor's degree from Washington University, and
in a maker's interview, she talks about how she paid
her way through college by working. She says forty eight
hours a week as a night shift gunner testing thirty
and fifty caliber ammunition at a St. Louis munitions plant.

(15:13):
And that is absolutely true. I mean, she not only tested,
uh these guns, she would also um like document their
trajectories and do all of this stuff, which seems like
again very appropriate, uh resume item for someone who ended
up leading right wing Republicans. Well, I mean, but also

(15:36):
one thing we skipped over is that she graduated at nineteen, right,
she finished college in three years and graduated at nineteen
like some people don't even enter college until nineteen like
she was. I mean, this woman was so driven and
was from the outset not going to let anything stand

(15:57):
in her way. But at this point she doesn't necessarily
want to go into politics. She ends up in receiving
her master's degree in political science from Radcliffe, which was
the sister university to Harvard at the time, because while

(16:18):
Harvard had started letting some women from Radcliffe take colleges
with the Harvard men. Uh, they wouldn't fully allow women
to the school. And apparently she ended up in policy
because it was one of the only things that she
could study and do it at Harvard, so she could

(16:41):
do it in those mixed gender classrooms, because it meant
a lot to her to go to Harvard not Radcliffe.
And if you listen to any interviews with her, whenever
she talks about her master's scree, she loves talking about,
you know, her bootstrapping of her education. And she always
says she went to Harvard, but in act her degrees

(17:01):
from Radcliffe. And I realized that that's kind of a
minor detail, but I think it still says a lot
about how she sort of just her reality to fit
this concept of a sexism free world that needs no feminism, because,

(17:24):
as she would tell, you know, audiences usually of filled
with women. Well, when I went to school, there was
no sexism. I had no trouble getting into college. I
was able to study alongside the boys. I want to
know what these feminists were talking about, and it was
my blood pressure. Um and yeah, and and just as

(17:45):
she didn't necessarily set out to be a Polysi major,
she also did not set out to be a hyper
conservative right wing Republican either. She was pretty moderate, but
she quickly shifted more conservative after her She did face barriers,
and she would not admit necessarily that they were barriers,

(18:09):
but used it more to illustrate that she was able
to sort of shift course as needed and find her
niche that allowed her to, I don't know, gain power,
to really become Phillis. Well, yeah, that definitely gain power
for sure. And her post college career path also hints

(18:32):
as to why she has so much animosity toward big government.
Because after she graduates from matriculates from Radcliffe, you know,
the war is ending and a lot of jobs are
being reserved, specifically for veterans, most of whom are men.

(18:52):
So Phillis wants to get a job in the federal government.
She's like, I want to work on policy. This is
my thing, and I got really into this POLSI class
work and I'm good at it. She graduated at the
top of her class, but she couldn't find a job
in the federal government because they were like, noop, oh,
we got to save these for veterans. So big Brother

(19:16):
didn't allow Phillis to fulfill her dream, so she ends
up at the far more conservative think tank, private think
tank of the American Enterprise Institute. So I mean, it's
it's incredible to see all of these signposts along the way. Yeah,
but like here's me, you know, ghost Caroline, who's not

(19:37):
alive yet. Like no, but Phillis, look at what you
can fight. You can fight sexism that prevents women from
going to the schools and getting the jobs they want.
But she wouldn't blame not getting that federal government job
on sexism because they weren't telling her you couldn't get
it because you're a woman. You couldn't get it because

(19:58):
you're not a veteran. So her ire would be pointed
toward the government. Okay, Well, in she marries fred Fred Laughlely,
who is a devoutly Catholic and politically active lawyer. And
what I what made me stop in my tracks is

(20:21):
a line about her wedding vows. And this is a
line that would be very much at home in an
article about some uh you know, devout feminist getting married,
perhaps in the New York Times. Uh they write in
the New York Times. At the ceremony, Mrs Laughley said

(20:43):
she did not promise to obey only to cherish. And
that does not sound much like what she would say
in her nineteen seventies anti e er A campaign. It
was all about obeying Fred because she was a good housewife.

(21:03):
And so this, this this little bone that we keep
picking at is the same bone that feminists have picked
for decades because they say phyllis philly laugh she laugh laugh,
Oh girl like piece laughs. You you are so active

(21:23):
and driven on behalf of yourself basically and making sure
that you get the opportunities that you want. But what
about all of the other women who does that sound like? Though?
Who has similarly intense hair? You know? I mean Donald

(21:45):
Trump does a very as a very similar approach to this,
where your your reality is moves with the wind, whatever
you know best serves you at that time and will
most elevate you than than that's truth. That's your fact,
whether it is actually fact or not. And uh, she

(22:10):
though peace laugh is essentially coated in teflon. And it's
kind of incredible to see how she does just constantly
deflect any criticism, and it seems like she she enjoys
receiving this criticism. I mean she's a total troll. Oh yeah,

(22:30):
just a let it like run off of her. She
once said, she told the New York Times, actually in
two thousand six, in the scale of liberal sins, hypocrisy
is the greatest. And they've always considered me a hypocrite.
And I'm going to say how she defends herself by saying,
you know, I never told women that they shouldn't or

(22:51):
couldn't work outside the home. Quote. I simply didn't believe
we needed a constitutional amendment to protect to women's rights.
But did did she not advocate for housewives? Being that
being the reality, Well, she certainly advocated for housewives, but

(23:15):
she would continually say, well, I'm not telling you you
have to be a housewive. I'm just saying that we
don't need to devalue housewives, and that feminists are trying
to undercut and destroy the role of housewives. Even though,
and this is a whole other podcast unto itself, Caroline,
even though right before old Phyllis sunk her clause into

(23:39):
the Equal Rights Amendment, a woman and I'm forgetting her
name right now because I've really worked up A woman
from the National Organization for Women started this like relatively
successful outreach, feminist outreach two housewives and divorced women who
suddenly found themselves, you know, not really knowing how to

(24:05):
support themselves or not really know how to how to
grapple with their personal politics and their domestic situation. So
it's like, so that's another myth you know, she just
kind of makes up this mythology as she goes Well,
mythology that's still repeated. Definitely. Yeah, that feminists want to
destroy the home and destroy the family. Hi, I know

(24:27):
many a feminist who has her own family and children
even and washes the dishes. I mean, like the idea,
and you know, of course that's a silly thing to say,
but my point being that, like the idea that feminists
are as like a monolithic army, are trying to destroy

(24:47):
the family and the home. I mean, it's it's insane,
but it's clearly an effective tactic. It's clearly effective rhetoric.
Oh yeah, because it's all about stoking fear, you know,
that is that's really the name of the game with
all of this. And in she's just twenty seven years

(25:08):
old when her political aspirations get a kick in the
pants because a group of Republicans, local Republicans come over
to her in Fred's house to come over to the chefts,
and they encourage Fred to run for Congress. Say there's
an open seat, and they're like Fred, you're the guy,

(25:30):
you should do it. And Fred's like, listen, I'm not
really interested. And as the story goes, at one point,
one of these gentlemen jokingly says, hey, Phillis, you should run,
and Phillis is like, okay, damn straight, I should run.

(25:50):
And she's off from there. I mean, she really sees
is this opportunity and she runs and wins the primary,
which was huge, but of course she loses in the
general election. Yeah, she was in a really democratic area,
way more liberal, and I think she was against an

(26:12):
incumbent too. Yeah she's yeah, she was, And we read
that by the end of that race, her opponent, her
Democratic opponent, was so livid with the rhetoric she used
about him being this liberal monster that he would not
even shake her hand. He was so mad at the

(26:33):
stuff that she had stirred up about him. And she
wasn't even yet thirty already stirring that political pot. And
one thing that's really interesting though, is we were reading
about how her rhetoric and the way that she positioned
herself as a woman in politics really sort of echoed, uh,

(26:53):
the suffragists and women in the progressive era who were
in women's club lubs, part of the women's club movement,
because you know, remember back then women didn't have the vote,
so if they wanted to agitate and be activists for
any causes and help women in any way each other,

(27:15):
they had to join these clubs and and banned together
for things like I don't know, like daycare, um or
other other causes that could potentially help families in their communities.
And so uh, one thing that she had in common
with those early women who were being political even if
they could not be in politics, was that she positioned

(27:37):
herself as a woman who would clean up the dirty
mess of politics, and it needed cleaning up because it
was run by men. And so here she is positioning
herself as I'm a woman, and therefore, with my natural
womanly abilities, um, I'll be a better candidate for you, right,

(27:59):
Because that was a suffragist argument of why we should
have um voting rights and political involvement because of the
domesticity Victorian era idea of woman as the moral center
of the home, so let's let the moral compasses and
their vaginas come into the political process, fellas, so we

(28:22):
can clean up after you. Um. We also have to
remember too that she was fiercely anti communist and extremely
hawkish on foreign policy, to the point that she was
like Joe McCarthy level and maybe even more so anti communists.
And that's really where her focus, um resided for a

(28:48):
long time, well before she sets her sights on the
e r A. And even after that defeat though in
n she gets right up and keeps going. You can
tell that this kind of lit a fire for her
because she starts stumping around Illinois on behalf of the
Daughters of the American Revolution that she remained super active in,

(29:09):
and from nineteen fifty six to nineteen sixty four she
was president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. So
you can see her starting to gradually rise through these
organizational ranks. But now we're also seeing her diverted off
sort of to the women's auxiliary side of things. And

(29:29):
in the meantime, in nineteen fifty eight, she and Fred
started the Cardinal Minds Venti Foundation, which was named for
the Roman Catholic leader who had been tortured and imprisoned
by Hungarian communists in an effort to educate Catholics on
the dangers of communism, and she and Fred were hyper
focused on international communism, less so on the threat of

(29:52):
Red's in America like McCarthy was. And a lot of
that stems from the fact that she had been so
heavily focused on foreign policy and foreign politics in college.
And soon after that she gets a platform. In nineteen
sixty two, she hosted a fifteen minute radio show on

(30:12):
national security called America Wake Up, and it was carried
by Illinois stations, so she was like a lady Bill
O'Reilly in the radio days almost And the same year,
her religious conservatism really ignites further following the Supreme Court

(30:35):
decision prohibiting state sponsored prayer in public schools, which is
still a massive lightning rod for religious conservatives obviously. Yeah,
I mean it's almost like she's just kind of gathering
up all of her platforms, you know, in the in
the fifties and sixties, and then in nineteen sixty four,
Phillis Is star takes off. Yeah. She referred would refer

(30:58):
to this later as her most productive year of her
life period and that's saying a lot considering you know,
like we said, by the age of twenty seven, she
was already hyper political, so so what more could Phillis
be doing? Well. She was talking to The New York
Times is Gina Bellefonte about how in nineteen sixty four

(31:22):
she was, as we mentioned, president of the Illinois Federation
of Republican Women. She went to the Republican Convention, and
she was also stumping on behalf of a Republican candidate
for presidential nomination, Barry Goldwater. And Goldwater made his name

(31:44):
really by voting against the Civil Rights Act because it
was desegregation at the time that was freaking all the
conservative white people out. And finally here comes Barry Goldwater,
who's like, you know what, folks, I'll take a stand
against this. And Phillis was like, big old you, my dude.

(32:07):
And she wrote this book more of a pamphlet really.
She wrote this book, though, called a Choice not an Echo,
about how Barry Goldwater is the dude that you gotta
put all of your Republicans support behind, and also how
he's the only person who can effectively combat that international

(32:27):
communist threat. She self publishes this book and as she
will brag for the rest of her life. She always
says that she sold three million copies out of her garage. Um.
And whether or not that number is accurate, it is.
It definitely galvanized this group of similarly white, religious conservative

(32:53):
Republicans and particularly Republican women. Yes, and it helped launch
Barry Goldwater into the presidential race. He got the Republican
nomination to run unsuccessfully against Democrat LBJ And Um, you know,
I was curious about what was in the book. Is

(33:13):
it a biography of him? Is it some sort of
inspirational tract of literature talking about Barry Goldwater's background? While
according to Elizabeth Culbert's uh not a Fan characterization from
two thousand five, she wrote that a choice not an
echo was a mixture of fact sensational accusations, common sensical truths,

(33:37):
and elaborate conspiracy theories that is brought together in a
compelling but evidently bogus narrative. But it's a narrative that
still uh still remains today because it poses these very
conspiratorial questions. Um, that still stoked a lot of angst

(34:00):
um among a lot of people, you know, on either
side of the political spectrum really um. At the beginning
of the book, A Choice on an Echo, she bullets
out these questions for readers to think about of who
really picks the president, because, according to Peach Laugh, it's
a secret cabal of powerful white dudes. She also asks,

(34:22):
how are political conventions stolen? Who are the secret kingmakers?
And how do hidden persuaders and propaganda gimmicks influence politics.
I mean, if you think that the whole lamestream media, uh,
Fox News, hatred of the New York Times, etcetera is

(34:42):
a new thing, no, no, no, no. Peach Laugh in
A Choice not an Echo was calling out all of
those newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Yeah, as being
in on this group of kingmakers, Okay, and they would
selectively report on the party knowing full well, I guess

(35:08):
that you know who was really pulling the strings. And
that's kind of at the core of this right wing
populism of saying, you know what, they are these thirty
secret meetings going on, and they just they're going to
turn our country into assess pool pool of of secular

(35:28):
welfare nonsense. If they haven't already because of a new deal,
you know, they're already terrified about the new deal. If
you and I take the podcast on tour anytime soon,
it should just be called what did you say, se
secular nonsense, secular cesspool of nonsense. But I mean, in
this in this election cycle, we've heard similar refrains from

(35:49):
the left, you know, so like there are plenty of
people who are as fed up as as Peach laugh
about kingmakers in the establishment right as fed up, and
also as borderline and slash full blown conspiratorial. Um. But
something else that jumped out to me in a choice

(36:10):
on an Echo is how she laughly describes herself, how
she kind of lays out her author credibility at the
beginning of the book, and she says that she's devoted
thousands of hours to the Republican Party, which is probably true, um.
And she talks about how she did this at a
great sacrifice to her family because she has six kids,

(36:33):
and although she's still at the point I don't think
she has six yet, she's still having babies, um, but
she's on her way to six. And this is in
direct contrast to what she'll be saying in the seventies,
where there is no sacrifice all of a sudden It's
just what she did just as a hobby. It was

(36:54):
just easy for me. I don't worry. I still managed
to be a fabulous housewife and mother. Did we am
ploy of full time housekeeper? Yes, but she always bragged
that they did not employ a nanny, right, and that
she him schooled each of her six children until they
were seven, and that she breastfed all of them. Yeah,
which I'm surprised she even said the word breast She didn't.

(37:17):
Maybe she just pointed to her boobs and winked at
her kids. These Yeah, it is Uh. That was something
else that comes up in pretty much every profile of her.
And she breastfed her six children, like okay, okay, what
you know, But that's part of her whole perfect housewife

(37:39):
image that she cultivated. But even though a choice on
an echo was very successful in getting very Goldwater to
be that year's Donald Trump essentially um and it was
very successful for spotlighting the potential influence of Philish laugh

(38:01):
lely because Goldwater lost so starkly to lb J the
GOP establishment hashtag dudes, we're like, you know what, uh,
your white right wing ultra conservative movement stuff like stay
in the corner, like obviously you're not going to help

(38:24):
the party as a whole, so we're gonna steer things
back more moderate and peace Laugh like, we're not going
to give you like a position or anything because you're
a woman, So just keep doing your your woman ing thing.
So she did really get like the sexiest shaft from
the GOP, not surprisingly, So you're saying that schlaugh got

(38:47):
the shaft. Yes, she laugh got the shaft, but then
Slap would turn around and shaft us. Oh yeah, in
the seventies. But we're not even there. We're not even
there yet, because that's the thing. Most people recollection of
Philish laughly just starts with the E R A. But
you got to know all this stuff leading up to
it to make it all makes sense. So what's happened?

(39:12):
What what has happened? So peace Laugh has gotten snubbed? Essentially,
she ran for presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women,
because you know, she had been running a state level organization.
She went for the national position and they were like,

(39:33):
nau girl, you wrote that book in your garage, good
for you, but your candidate loss. So no, and that
was a huge burn for her. Oh yeah, that was
a huge burn. And she manages though to pull a
lot of the women in the National Federation of Republican
Women away to support her because she starts publishing in

(39:57):
nineteen seven this weekly news letter, the Shlafley Report UM,
and it started out with just about three thousand subscribers,
and a lot of those were women that she had
met in this UM National Federation of Republican Women UM,
as well as women from her other organization that she

(40:18):
had been leading UM. But as we'll talk about in
the second half of the podcast, she does pull some
amazing political and religious based maneuvering to massively raise the
number of subscribers. Yeah, and just in the background politically,
we got to mention that in nineteen sixties six, even

(40:40):
though just two years earlier, hyper conservative racist Barry Goldwater,
you know, lost so famously to lb J, but that
year you start to see conservative Republicans winning some significant
congressional and gubernatorial races, include outing one Ronald Reagan becoming

(41:03):
governor of California. So sh Laughley, you know, launching her
newsletter the next year is really banking on the rise
of this conservative movement, which up until then had had
been this kind of niche pocket of people. Um, but
she's starting to see it mainstream because really just because

(41:27):
like white people were getting really scared about black people
and feminists. Um. And three years after Peace laugh launches
this Shlaughley Report, she runs for Congress again and fails again.
But despite her faltering start, Phyllis is about to bust
out and never look back. That's right, and we're going

(41:50):
to talk about that when we come right back from
a quick break. So in the early seventies, even though
the Equal Rights Amendment had been around for about fifty years, um,

(42:13):
she really claims she wasn't aware of it. Um, she
didn't was not aware of any massive movement behind it.
And it wasn't until she says, a friend says, hey,
you should check out this whole e r A thing.
You might be interested in it. That she reads it
and like all of the light bulbs go off above

(42:34):
her head and she says, uh ha, here is the enemy.
And for those of you not familiar with the e
r A as, I really wasn't until doing research for
stuff I've never told you. It was first introduced in
by Alice Paul at the Seneca Falls Convention, and the

(42:54):
e R A which would have been the seven Amendment
if it had gone through. It's very simple in its language.
It just states equality of rights under the law shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any state on account of sex. So essentially, it
would render gender based discrimination illegal on a federal or

(43:17):
state level across the board. Um and people today say
that if the r A had been passed and had
been ratified, I should say that all of the cobbling
together that women have to do today between Title nine

(43:37):
and other state laws and stuff like that, there would
not be any of this maneuvering around that we would
have to do in light of gender based or sexual
discrimination because the e r A would have just, in
very simple language, accounted for all of that. But pH

(43:57):
laugh was not gonna let that happen, even though the
area was widely supported, like across the aisle by Democrats
and Republicans alike, Yeah, women, men, everybody's like yeah, sure
of course. Even George Wallace from Alabama, who was about
as racist as they come, was chill with the r A. Yeah.

(44:20):
I know, well, because I think a lot of people
saw it as like, well, we already have language in
these other various laws and amendments that you know, we
shouldn't discriminate against women, Like sure, why not throw this
on the pile. I think it was seen as as
kind of not toothless, but just like acceptable, give this

(44:43):
to the lady. Yeah, let them, let them have it. Well,
you know who was not having it was all p
schlaugh And in nineteen seventy two she writes about it
in the Schlaughly Report dedicates a whole issue too, and
in fact, and this is what star the anti feminist
campaign against the e r A. And boy did she

(45:06):
have some ideas about what that simple sentence really meant.
Oh god, oh god. Yeah, she said that the e
r A was going to eliminate sex segregated public restrooms.
We still hear that panic today, don't. It's going to
force women into the draft. Wasn't that just in the news.

(45:29):
It's going to dissolve sex crime laws. Yeah, I got
nothing up. It's going to remove men's financial responsibilities to
be breadwinners or the payers of child support. More women
are becoming breadwinners these days. And she basically considered women

(45:51):
as we as we touched on earlier in the episode,
she basically considered women to be this privileged, protected class
who would lose those privileges and protections if the e
r A went through. And that's why my brain was
just collapsing last night as I was researching this stuff,
because it's like, well, no, but if we if we're

(46:13):
protected under the law through the e r A in
the way that the e r A spells out, we
won't have to worry about these so called privileges and
protections and what I would call benevolent sexism. Oh yeah,
but if you aren't stoking worry and fear, how are
you going to start this movement? How's peach laugh gonna

(46:35):
galvanize her gals and galvanized the gals she does, because
the subscriptions to her newsletter shoot up from about three
thousand to thirty five thousand thanks to all of this
fear stoking that she does not only among women like herself,
you know, good Catholic housewives, but also among the evangelical
Christian housewives like ladies, ladies, ladies like we have a

(46:59):
lot to worry about in terms of losing those cushy
lives that we know. And this is something that I
read all the time and stuff I've never told you.
YouTube comments from men's rights activisty trolls who claim a
feminists are just victimizing themselves because in peace laughs terms

(47:24):
like your privileged class, people check you out for dinner,
you get discounts, happy hours, and you know you have
an affirmative action, You get whatever you want. If you
paid me equally, then maybe I wouldn't need a discount
exactly for your happy hour. Um. And this the thing is,

(47:45):
though she's starting this, she kind of is starting it
out of her garage. She's writing her own newsletter. She's
sending it out. It's very grass rootsy, and that becomes
really the source of her political influence and that's her brain.
And yeah, oh yeah, it's totally her brand. The peace
Laft brand is all about the grassroots. She has this
newsletter base largely comprised of fellow conservative housewives, and once

(48:11):
she stirs them up, they start fundraising, They start sending
out mailers, they start hosting anti e r A press conferences,
and importantly lobbying their state legislatures. They would go carrying
loaves of homemade banana bread and apple loaves and things

(48:34):
like that, little goodies and deliver them to all of
the politicians who are going to vote on the e
r A that day and say, oh, we don't, we
don't need that. Good, So have a little apricot. What
was in the bread? Did they put something in it?
Drugging their legislators. And then Phillis teams up with North

(48:58):
Carolina Democratic Senator Sam Irvin no relation in the past
couple of generations at least um who opposed the e
r A. And this allows her whole stop e r
A movement to cross party lines. Yeah. Um. And keep
in mind too that in three, just a year after

(49:22):
she Lafley starts going after the e r A, Roe v.
Wade happens, and so this is of course stirring up
even more angst among conservatives. So then in nineteen we
see her take her success with developing this stop r

(49:43):
A group and transitioning it into the Eagle Forum. And
this is essentially the women's auxiliary of the conservative right
wing UH contingent of the Republican Party at the time.
UM and the Ego Forum, which was twenty thousand strong

(50:07):
in nineteen lobbied politically lobbied four Conservatism alongside sister groups
like how Happiness of women and aware, which stood for
American women, are richly endowed. Phyllis is beside herself, although

(50:28):
I don't know if you could describe someone who is
as cool, calm and collected as Phillis as ever beside
herself because she's very calculating. She knows what she's doing. Yeah,
oh for sure. And so her major beef, though, with
the growing contingent of feminists in the US, is all
about how they are messing with the natural order of things.

(50:50):
It goes back to her assertion that feminists are trying
to destroy the family. Yeah. So she wrote one of
many columns in which she says feminism is incompatible with
human nature. The premise of the feminists is that God
goofed in making us two different sexes, and that our

(51:14):
laws should remedy his mistake mistake. And I guess, okay,
I'm gonna make this a little personal for a second. Like,
I guess that's why so many of her arguments and
similar arguments don't make sense to me, because I am
not a person who is religious or uh has God
as a former very inappropriate boss of mind set um

(51:36):
to me one time. Uh So, like things like that
don't make sense to me saying that there is a
natural order in the way that the biological sexes have
to be or the genders have to be. Yeah, and
I'm sitting here across from you not surprised at all,
because a large part of my childhood was spent in

(52:00):
evangelical churches, and while the pastors weren't railing against feminism
every Sunday, there was definitely concerned, particularly over the homosexual agenda,
because that definitely violated in quotes nature. And so that's

(52:21):
like a whole other aspect of right wing activism and
pushes behind their their politics that that I simply, as
a person on the left, do not have because I
just it's not part of my worldview, but it was.
It's so shaped hers. Oh, definitely, I mean, and and

(52:42):
part of that too is attached to her uh familiar
distaste for East Coast elitists and liberals and um. One
thing that she really goes on and on about in
a choice on an Echo is how Barry Goldwater or
is the person that you should vote for because he

(53:02):
has simple ideas, simple solutions, whereas LBJ and all these
liberal democrats, they just have these convoluted theories and bureaucratic structures,
and they just want to muck everything up, whereas you know,
it's just it's just nature, it's just man and wife,

(53:24):
it's this and that. You know, it's a very black
and white worldview. And that's it's a similar thing that
we see today where there is this distaste among right wing,
right wing conservatives for non simplistic answers because that challenges

(53:45):
their worldview in a terrifying way. And I mean, I
also say this from the perspective of, you know, being
very cognizant even at a young age, of how a
lot of the rhetoric, political rhetoric that I heard in
conservative churches, um that my parents attended was just so

(54:06):
fear stoking. You could feel it in the room, you know,
and it was powerful enough to get Slaughly where she
wanted to go. And in addition to her argument about
feminism being incompatible with human nature, she also kind of
suggested that feminism was out to replace husbands with government

(54:31):
big brother. Right, So look at you, dumb feminist. You're
just trying to get rid of the home, get rid
of the family structure, get rid of the husband who
can provide for you. They can be the breadwinners if
you just let them. But instead you want to get
rid of all that and have the government give to you,

(54:51):
have the government be your breadwinner and your husband and
accept welfare and public assistance and things like that. And
it doesn't this sound like frustrated just out of college
Phillis who can't get a job in the government because
big brother has saved all the other jobs for other brothers.

(55:12):
Essentially um and and the way she puts it, though
in one column it might have been the same that
same column from she she got. She uses sarcasm in
rhetorical questions a lot, so she sneers need a job,
Big brother will get you an affirmative action quota position.

(55:33):
You don't meet the physical requirements, big brother will gender
norm the test results and give you a high score.
Not satisfied with your salary, the Comparable Worth Commission will
order your employer to give you a raise. And if
you want a promotion, the Glass Ceiling Commission will force
your employer to give it to you. So it's just
this idea that we are making up these problems. And

(55:56):
through this group of kingmakers, we you know, the government
the establishes these committees that just uh, you know, give magically,
give women raises. Well, I mean, all of her rhetorical
questions there go back to her emphatic assertion that there
is no such thing as this patriarchy that oppresses women,

(56:19):
that women are not oppressed, And then her assertions are
directly tied to today's conversations around women are making themselves victims. Well,
and this next quote about how she describes the relationship
between feminism and the federal government is so reminiscent of
what you hear today among women against feminism and or

(56:41):
anti feminists, whichever way you want to put it. Where
she says, our societal policy should be to let women
make their own decisions about marriage and career without the
interference of taxpayer funded gender equity federal busybodies. Well, so
she's trying to have both at the same time. You know,
she's trying to to say that we don't need feminism,

(57:07):
but you know, not because you know, we don't want
the best for women, but just because we don't think
that anyone should be telling women what to do. So
isn't feminism telling women what to do? And so that's
why you know, women shouldn't be for feminism, and yes
it does make you, and I do mean you and

(57:28):
myself want to slowly bang our heads against the desk.
And ditto Betty for Dan and many other you know,
sec away feminists of the day. Oh Betty, Yeah. Teflon
Phillis managed to infuriate frequent debate opponent Betty for Dan
to the point where Betty told her that she should

(57:52):
burn at the steak. Yeah. And Phillis, the troll, loved it.
Loved it, oh yeah, because she was like, oh, I'm
so glad you said that, because it just goes to
show how nasty you feminists are. And of course Laughly
had her opinions about Betty for Dan as well. She said,

(58:14):
I reject all her ideology. She said, I reject all
her ideology, most of it based on the absurd notion
that the home is a comfortable concentration camp and that
the suburban housewife is oppressed by her husband and by society.
And she loved calling feminists fat, ugly and unlikable, which

(58:35):
again I'm telling you, like reading about peace, laugh is
just kind of like reading about Donald Trump in a
lot of ways. The reality TV shows. Yeah, it goes
back to my college sociology class in which we were
talking about feminism, and a fellow student of mine, and
I've told this stur on the podcast before, but a
fellow classmate UM raised her hand and basically said, but

(58:59):
if we like men and want to get married, shouldn't
we not agree with any of this stuff? And it's
like that wooshing sound is the point completely going over
your head, Um, Because yeah, like the worst thing to
some people is to be considered or just called fat

(59:19):
or ugly or unlikable. Oh and definitely, you know, if
we're talking about the seventies, you know, our society is
still I would not say is woke, but it was
certainly less woke in the seventies. Um. But as much
as I really hate to keep quoting Philish laughly, because
it's never a pleasant thing that you will have to say,

(59:44):
I do think it's worth highlighting a few of her
positions on feminist issues. Yeah, she didn't think that marital
rape was a thing. She said, by getting married, the
woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you
can call it rape. On sexual harassment, Uh, no, big surprise.

(01:00:06):
She hated Anita Hill, and she just thought that that
woman was just ranking that honorable Clarence Thomas over the
calls unnecessarily because she's a feminist and was just sad
that he wouldn't take her out on a date. So,
on sexual harassment, Shlapley said, quote, non criminal sexual harassment
on the job is not a problem for the virtuous

(01:00:28):
woman except in the rarest of cases. Yeah, so insert
victim blaming here. Well, if you're a virtuous woman, you
should have nothing to worry about. What were you wearing exactly? Uh?
And uh domestic violence. Uh. She said that when marriages
are broken by false allegations of domestic violence, US taxpayers

(01:00:50):
fork up and estimated twenty billion a year to support
the resulting single parent, welfare dependent families. And I'm like,
that's your concern, Like a woman who falsely accuses a
man of domestic violence and then is single as a result,
Because then who's going to have to pay for that,

(01:01:12):
big brother, the taxpayers. You know, we're we're having to
fund this welfare state. And really, I mean pointing out
her horrific stances on these kinds of issues is to
illustrate how she was not just responsible for stopping the
r A and its tracks, which she and stop the

(01:01:35):
r A and the Eagle Forum absolutely did, but also
in essentially building what is today the ultra right wing
policy platform. It's as if she wrote the script for
women to continue to be demeaned and not believed when

(01:01:59):
it comes to some of these awful issues. Right. But
I mean these are but these are like political platforms. Now.
You know if you turn on if you spend some
time on Brightbart News, Actually, don't spend some time on
Brightbart News, and you'll see all of these similar things
going on. Ps. A bright Bart guy was one of
the men who came after me on Twitter. Oh really,

(01:02:22):
a bright Bart reporter. Oh, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. Um.
But in we see another contradiction to her career housewife
claim because she goes to law school. I mean and
in a way like if she were anyone else, you

(01:02:43):
and I would be like good for her mother of six.
After the kids grow up, she goes back to law school.
And that's what she argues, like, well, I waited until
my children were grown they could take care of themselves.
I had breastfed all of them. Did I tell you
I breastfed all of them? I really did? Um? And
she completely sir law degree at Washington University. When she
goes to take the bar, her public profile was already

(01:03:05):
like significant enough that she took it in a disguise.
She wore a black wig in order to take her
exam and she passed it well. And her husband, you know,
and this is another anecdote that she would tell over
and over again over the years that her husband at
first did not want her to go to law school
and didn't understand why she felt the need to UM,
and then so she withdrew her application to law school,

(01:03:30):
and then a couple of weeks later he changed his mind.
And it's like, you know what, it would actually having
a law background would actually help with a lot of
the public policy work. And uh e r a fights
that you do well. And I mean, her relationship with
Fred is really fascinating and something that I wish we
knew more about, because I think that's one of the

(01:03:50):
most frustrating things about UM reading up on Phyllis is
that you know that you're not learning about the real Phyllis.
You know that their stuff going on in the background.
Because this is an image that she cultivated for political purposes,
whereas before she has this shift um against feminism in

(01:04:13):
the nineteen seventies. She talks about how during her early
marriage with Fred, like they would stay up until all
hours just brainstorming and talking politics, like they courted each other,
but through through letters, mailing each other, poetry, and essentially
like many policy briefs, there were like a couple of walks,

(01:04:38):
but she played it all down in order to conform
to a more palatable, interesting, submissive image that would fit
into which also sounds very house of cards, yeah, which
fit into this mold, you know, that could then elevate
her um to the platform that she ended up having,

(01:05:00):
which in nineteen eighty she used her influence to successfully
negotiate with the GOP to remove its pro e r
A platform plank. And this is when we finally see
the Republican Party, which previously had a lot of the
r A supporters in it, It wasn't as conservative as

(01:05:20):
it is today by long shot. We finally see them
turning that corner as Reagan is about to take over. Exactly, yeah, exactly.
And June two, Phillis holds a party because the congressional

(01:05:41):
deadline for states to ratify the e r A expires
and they were what three states short of ratification, and
so from there she's like cool, box checked. Done. Now
let's make sure that we hinder the fight for lgbt
Q rights, for welfare, and for reproductive rights, which of
course she had been harping on throughout her anti e

(01:06:04):
r A camp, even as she has a gay son.
Oh yeah, her gay son was outed. I'm not a
fan of people outing people at all. Um. I understand
the attraction to wanting to out Philish Lafley's son, um.
But yeah, one of her sons who lived at least
like at the time it was reported he was still

(01:06:25):
living with Fred and Phillis and was still, you know,
dedicated to the conservative cause. And Phillis kind of had
to hedge her love for her child and her versus
her hatred for homosexuals and their agenda. Oh yes, the
homosexual agenda, Yeah, which I just imagined, like, you know,

(01:06:52):
you can buy it at off a steep and I
think it smoothie. Yeah, they now have an app agenda.
You can just have it on your phone like a calendar. Perfect.
It's really colorful. And she would continue though throughout the
rest of her life to maintain that women were that
privileged class, and she offered advice on NPR in two women, saying,

(01:07:18):
just remember American women are so fortunate, Oh yeah, and
I mean yeah, I mean, I guess relatively in the
grand scheme of global privileges. Well, her version of fortunate
is that she always praises men right after she says
that we're so fortunate because we have all these brilliant

(01:07:38):
men who invented all of this brilliant technology that allowed
us to easily wash our clothes, and we got disposable diapers,
and you have all these conveniences that I didn't have
growing up, and so comparatively, women are just so fortunate
and you just need to remember them and don't victimize yourself.

(01:08:00):
And a few years earlier, to The New York Times,
she had said, feminism has changed the way women think,
and it's changed the way men think. But the trouble
is it hasn't changed the attitude of babies at all.
And so that, of course is hearkening to her whole
feminism violates the laws of nature, like babies no better babies, boy,

(01:08:21):
babies know that they should be little baby breadwinners, babies
knowing on some bread um and the funny thing that
you know, if you haven't picked up on the theme
of this episode yet, The funny thing that former now
president Karen Dacrowe pointed out in nine one was that

(01:08:45):
no matter the words that came out of Philish Lapley's mouth,
she was a liberated woman. And as dacrow says, she
sets out to do something and she does it. To me,
that's liberation. Oh yeah, and she also spotted the gender
inequalities that feminism still seeks to uproot. UM. At one point,

(01:09:11):
in response to that really harsh blow that she took
in nine seven when she lost her bid for the
National Federation of Republican Women presidency UM, she said, quote,
the Republican Party is carried on the shoulders of the
women who do the work in the precincts, ringing doorbells,

(01:09:33):
distributing literature, and doing all the tiresome, repetitious campaign tasks.
Many men in the party frankly want to keep the
women doing the menial work. Like, if that is not
something that should then be followed via a statement of
feminist support, I don't know what is. And that's the

(01:09:54):
confounding thing about Phillip. She she encountered sexism. And you no,
she knew it was sexism because she's calling it out
right there, recognizing that here are the women in the
trenches doing all of us grassroots organizing that ultimately has
revolutionized American political culture. Look at Donald Trump today. And

(01:10:18):
yet she's saying, but you know, the dudes don't want
to acknowledge it. They just want to keep us in
the corner. Yeah. Phyllis is far from stupid. Woman is
not dumb. She's incredibly brilliant and incredibly driven, and she
is just driven down a different path. Yeah, I mean,
And and the moral of the story is a remember

(01:10:41):
that women are not a monolith, right, Smart women are
not a monolith, you know. And also, as she always
likes to say, they never took me seriously, Like everyone
always underestimated her when she was starting out in her
A Choice not an Echo era, when she was just
on the fringes with this, you know, this little group

(01:11:04):
of ultra conservative and she was like, you know, they
didn't see what was coming. And she's she's proud of that,
you know, because she she kind of put one over
on us because we were we were so quick too.
I think liberals were so quick to write off all
of a sudden this who's this housewife? And look what

(01:11:28):
she did. She was a wolf and housewife clothing who,
like you said, completely changed American politics. And I think
the final words we have to leave on our Philish
Laughley talking to Maker saying I always thought I could
do whatever I wanted to do. What's the problem? And

(01:11:51):
the what's the problem? Essentially she's asking that to society
of like, where where's the sexism? And that I could
do what I wanted to do? And she did. And
I think it behooves us to not underestimate the ripple
effect that this woman is still having and we'll continue
to have so listeners, Caroline, by the way, is I

(01:12:17):
think it's going to have to recover from from this episode? Um?
Because she's a lot to she's a lot to fathom, UM,
and she's a she's disappointing, really, I mean she's she's
a terribly disappointing woman to read about. UM. If you're
sitting where we are, so now, listeners, we want to
hear from you. What do you think about Philish Laughley,

(01:12:37):
her influence and her connection to Donald Trump today? And
can we ever undo the damage done by Philish Laughley. Honestly,
I think the answer is no. But listeners, perhaps you
are less cynical than I. Let us know your thoughts. Mom.
Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com is our email address.

(01:12:58):
You can also tweet us at stuff podcast or messages
on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages to
share with you when we come right back from a
quick break and now back to the show. All right,
Um well, I have a letter here from Kim in

(01:13:19):
response to our Minstrel Cup episode. Um. She says, I
started using the Keeper in two thousand after hearing about
it from a coworker in the United States Coast Guard
serving on ships. It was difficult to use pads and tampons,
as four hour watches did not lend themselves to products
lasting more than three or so hours and not being

(01:13:39):
able to use the restroom in that time. The Keeper
was a lifesaver, no pun intended. I had times when
I would be on watch for up to twelve hours,
and not having to worry about an accident was beneficial.
I made sure to talk with every woman who was
assigned about this wonderful product. It was easy to get
over the quick factor after a few times and not

(01:14:00):
having to carry extra products that up to twelve hours
window is the selling point. I used the latex brown
version and mine lasted ten years. I replaced it with
a silicon version, which, ironically, again no pun intended, turned
a similar shade of brown from the blood staining. Anyway,
I love the podcast. I've learned so much and laughed

(01:14:22):
even more. Keep up the awesome staffs work well. Thanks
Kim so is that why the keeper is brown? Maybe
I still maintained it should just be read well. I
have a menstrual cup letter to read from Allison, who
wrote I was so excited to hear your recent podcast
on menstrul cups and was fascinated to hear their long
and storied history. I was so disappointed, however, at the

(01:14:45):
comments you received when you posted an article on Facebook
about the reasons menstrual cups aren't more popular. There were
countless comments, many for men like gross you. I didn't
need to see that, and I can think of a
lot more than four reasons. No thanks. That made me
realize we haven't really come all that far from the
days of the red tents. Women's bodies are still seen

(01:15:07):
as dirty, which just makes me sad, and not to
get too hyperbolic, but my cup has changed my life.
I initially chose a cup for both environmental reasons and
practical reasons. I'm a swimmer and swim instructor, and tampons
are just not always the best choice for long sessions
in the pool. I have Endometrios's with severe cramping and

(01:15:27):
was pleasantly surprised to find the cup actually lessened my
cramping pretty significantly. I'm not sure why exactly, but my
theory has something to do with the way the cervix
is positioned while the cup is inserted. To anyone who
has tried to cup and not found them to be ideal,
please don't give up. The first cup I tried was
too large and too firm, causing painful pressure on both

(01:15:50):
my bladder and my cervix. I did some research before
I bought my second one, and it's now seriously a
perfect solution to another is painful time of the month
for me. Well thanks for the info, Allison, and yeah,
it is always disappointing to see people on social media

(01:16:11):
act like children over something that is a natural bodily function.
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dare about Philish Lapley, head on over to stuff Mom

(01:16:32):
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
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