Why Do Men Expose Themselves?

Louis CK. Harvey Weinstein. Why do men non consensually expose themselves? 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're listening
to stuff I've never told you. And today we're going
to try to answer a question, which is why do

(00:28):
dudes show you their dicks? Oh? Do be showing there?
Does that ever happen to you? Twice? I mean twice
where it's been like, not just some guy on the train,
like where it's been with just me. Oh god. So first,
before we get into this, we should say quick trigger warning.
This is about non consensual showings. So that's what we're

(00:52):
talking about today. It's pretty gross. Let's get into it.
So not it didn't happen to you on a train,
or it happened it was like that you and another
person in a room together. Yeah. Um, well, it has
happened in a public space like on a train before,
but I've had two instances where it was more like

(01:12):
private than that, And one the first time I was eight.
I was eight years old, and I am just really
glad that at that age I wasn't sure what was wrong,
but I knew something was wrong and I went and
got help. I'm very glad that I did. Yeah, did

(01:32):
did they find the guy? They did find the guy.
He was a friend of the family. He's someone I knew,
and it often is. And that's one thing that really
bothers me when the argument comes up about why didn't
you report something earlier when we're talking about sexual assault
or things like this is because it's it's almost always
someone that you know, and there's kind of this pressure

(01:57):
to like not make waves that is so much stronger
than you might think it is. And also just like
you know this person and you know that not only
will you might you might not be believed. It will
be difficult to prove if you succeed potentially ruin this
person's life, this person that you know. So it does
it really bothers Well, he ruined his own life, sure,

(02:19):
but that's how you feel exactly Like. It really upsets
me when people are like, yeah, why didn't you report earlier?
There's so many things that go into it. It is
such a complex situation. Um, And when you're a kid
like I was a kid, and they were just like,
this is not gonna happen again. You move on, right,
I don't know. If you do move on, I would
imagine maybe it could stick with you forever. Yeah, it does,

(02:42):
clearly because I do remember it very well, but as
a kid, I guess I sort of thought it was
just this weird thing and uh, I'm going to go
about my my kid business. Yeah, I can't even imagine.
I mean, it's bad enough when it happens as an adult,
grown woman, I can't even imagine how confusing and disorienting
and destabilizing that is to be a little kid and

(03:04):
to have that happened. You know, maybe it's even before
you have your birds and the bees talk. You don't
even really understand what is going on, but you know
it doesn't feel right, and Jesus, I mean I I
just really can't just so hard. It's scary and confusing. Yeah,
I yeah, I was very I remember being very scared

(03:25):
and it it is. It is interesting, and we're going
to talk more into this because we are trying to
get to why this is a thing at all. But
I do remember kind of the sense from the person
that I would be excited or happy, and we were
going to talk about that because there is kind of
a psychology going on there. How about you have you

(03:45):
ever had Yeah, it's happened a few times. I lived
in New York for a while and something about living
in Brooklyn it was the hotbed of indecent exposure. I
don't know what what the deal was. It happened once
in a really traumatic way on the subway. I actually
didn't even live in New York at the time. I
was just visiting New York and I was standing on
the train and a woman next to me was being

(04:07):
really weird, right, and I was standing holding on as
a bar, and she was making eye contact with me
and sort of tugging at me, and I thought, this
woman is out of her mind, and I couldn't quite
figure out what was going on. And then I realized
the guy behind me had exposed himself and was actually
going off in the back of my winter coat, and
she was trying to get my attention. But of course

(04:29):
it is New York's a your you know, and somebody
tries to make eye contact with you on the subway,
You're like, let me not make eye contact back. That
was the time. That was pretty bad. Yeah, this memory
just reminds me of this woman who kind of became
a New York City folk hero. On the subway, she
a man exposed himself to her, and when she realized

(04:50):
what was happening, she was not having it. She really
called him out in a way that I imagine. I mean,
I wish I had the courage to do that, but
she made such a scene that it got other people
on the subway invested in getting this guy off the subway.
Here's a little bit of how it sounded. Are done

(05:16):
for tonight I was starting. You can kind of see
why she became a bit of a New York City
lady folk hero in that situation. Oh. Absolutely. It happened
when I was in high school. I went to an
all girls Catholic school, and so sometimes there would be
perverts and creeps who would do things to, you know,
my classmates and I when we were out and about

(05:37):
after school. Probably found it titilated or something. But there
was a guy who would be to drove around and
he would roll down his window and ask, do you
know where broad Street is? You know where Main Street is?
And he would have a map and when he would
go to his car window, he would remove the map
and it would be his junk. When it happened when
when I was with friends, I did not internalize it

(05:57):
as a sexually threatening experience. It was just so out
of the norm for how people behaved that we laughed
and like pointed, and my friend was like, oh, it's
so small, like we and he drove away and we
and I just thought like, Oh, what a weird, funny
thing that happened. I told the story several times in

(06:18):
a way that was humorous, like a joke. And then
I remember hearing a classmate it happened to her the
same guy, but while she was alone, and that was
the first time I realized, Oh, that's actually scary and threatening,
and it's so interesting how that dynamic changed it. When
it was me with a group of my classmates, we
laughed and pointed us at his small, weird looking dick.

(06:39):
But when I heard about that that same situation with
my friend being alone, I was like, she could have
been her, Like it was just so different. So that
was the time. It has happened a couple of times,
but that was the time that sticks out at me
the most, hearing about it secondhand from a friend when
she was alone. It's happened a whole host of times
on the subway, on the street, that kind of thing,
but that's the time that release too. Yeah, And there

(07:03):
have been a lot of high profile cases of powerful
men exposing themselves to women. Lately, you've got Harvey Weinstein,
Luis k Charlie Rose, Matt Lower. There is a laundry
list of people doing this. Um. I did read somewhere
that this is not new behavior. It's centuries old and
it's not confined to the entertainment industry obviously, but we

(07:26):
have been hearing a lot more about it, and we
were curious a science to why this would happen. A
study conducted by the Barner Group and Seen found that
out of one thousand respondents, one in four men did
not consider exposing themselves are masturbating in front of people
sexual harassment? What yeah for the same study found that

(07:49):
women are ten to twenty more likely to consider something
sexual harassment. So we have a disconnect. I feel like,
if your dick is out and it's not was not
an agreed upon a thing, it's sexual harassment. You're not
at a nude beach and someone was not like, oh,
let's see what in those pants? If it's out, faults up?

(08:10):
If it's out up, oh, you're probably right. Not like that,
you know what I mean? Who are these men who
don't think it's sexual harassment to take out your genitals?
And pleasure yourself in front of someone who didn't ask
for that. Well, you're like, I know who it is.

(08:31):
It's Louis c. K, it's Matt Lowerd, it's Charlie Rose,
it's Harvey Weinstein. Yeah, it's more men than I would
have guessed, apparently, and we are, Yeah, we're gonna look
more into that. And if you're wondering here in the US,
most states do have indecent exposure laws that make exposing
your genitals to someone else without their consent for the

(08:51):
purposes of sexual gratification illegal. If touching the other person
is involved at the same time, it could be escalated
to a sexual assault charge. The typical punishment for indecent
exposure is a misdemeanor charge, possibly a fine, maybe even
jail time, and or requirement to register as a sex offender.
So the law does not agree with these one in

(09:13):
four men, yeah, one in four men, homies, homies, homies
get it together. Yeah. One time president of the American
psycho Analytic Association suspects it has to do with deniability. Quote.
It could also be a kind of strange plausible deniability.
It's a kind of disavowal, a kind of pernicious defense
mechanism that allows a man to know that if that

(09:36):
he did something on one level, but they are essentially
telling themselves a story that they are not doing anything
so bad. He could think to himself, well, I didn't
rape anyone, which is true in a broader sense, but
it is a twisted defense. So this wine of thinking
I thought was so prevalent in the Lewis k situation.
Like when I read that report, it really sounded like

(09:58):
he was able to jud deify his behavior by saying
it's not rape. And I actually saw a lot of people, frankly,
people that I respected, say things like, oh, well, it's
not like he attacked them, or it's not like he
abused them, or it's not like he forced himself on them,
and they sort of discount the fact that that kind
of act wrapped up at it is the ability to

(10:22):
make people say exactly that because you aren't necessarily touching them.
It's the kind of thing that people who choose that
as their mode of unacceptable non consensual sexual behavior, they
are doing so because of that, because it has plausible
deniability baked right into it. And again, when I actually
sat down and read the report of what happened at

(10:43):
the Louis p K situation. Two of the women he
did this too. One of the things that stuck out
to me in their stories was that he invited them
back to his hotel room and it was the winter times.
They were all bundled up, and he was already had
his pants down and was masturbating before they took off
their winter codes. That means they just gotten into the room.
And if you think that's acceptable sexual behavior, like, there's

(11:04):
a real pathology on display there. Yeah, it kind of
almost feels like a calculation that maybe some people are
making subconsciously. But this is as far as like I
can get away with before something that I cannot even
begin to convince myself as correct. Like I can get
away with this behavior, but I can't get away with
this one. It's messed up thinking and it's wrong. But

(11:26):
I wonder if there is an element of that to it. Oh,
I'm sure there was. When I was in college, there
was a guy who was a complete sexual predator. And
the way that he would sort of get around it,
the way that he avoided being ostracized by our entire
you know, seen, was that he basically quote unquote would
only quote unquote his words, have sex with women while

(11:48):
they were passed out drunk. And so for him, the
way that he was able to sort of say like, oh,
I'm not clocking them over the head and like dragging
them back to my apartment, it would be like, oh,
I'm just having sex with women who are too drunk
to say no. And that was his m o to
avoid being seen as a quote rapist rapist, which of

(12:09):
course he was, but that he operated within he was
he was such a good sexual predator that he operated
within this area where he knew enough people will be like, well,
if she was drunk and I saw them dancing earlier
to the night, maybe it wasn't actually raped. He specifically
trafficked in that kind of sexual abuse because he knew

(12:29):
that people like these defendors, like the supporters, would be like, oh,
it's not that bad. Yeah, that is the mark of
a good predator. Absolutely, this is a lot of women
have been impacted by this. Jennifer Wright over at Bizarre
wrote um about this time. She tweeted, quote, hey women,
retweet if you've ever been shown a penis you did
not want or expect to see. And it has over

(12:51):
two hundred and five thousand retweets. A lot of the
story shared were about this happening at a young age.
Some male commenters, of course, responded with variations of you're
a part of the problem, ladies. Butter boobs though are
the always popular slitt Wait, how are you the slot
if someone if someone is showing you there? Petis I know, right,
doesn't make sense, doesn't make sense. Your argument is flawed.

(13:13):
Sexist Twitter responder right said of the whole situation. What
surprises me, if anything can surprise me anymore about this,
is that not taking your genitals out in front of
a colleague doesn't strike me as a high bar on
being a decent person. It strikes me as honestly a
really low bar. However, I suppose it is exponentially higher

(13:35):
than no bar whatsoever, which until very recently was the
world some privileged men were operating in. Yeah, that's just
so depressing. That's so depressing, it really is. What's even
more depressing to me is the fact that from I'm
D women reported men masturating in front of them to

(13:56):
the Everyday Sexism Project in Lauren Bates wrote over at
The guard It about this quote, girls are growing up
in a world where this is such a widespread experience
that some don't even see it as something that is unusual.
It's just part of being a woman. I want to
pull my hair out. That is awful. Yeah. The fact
that women are internalizing this as something that is not

(14:17):
out of the ordinary is really infuriating. Yeah, and that's
why I like, I had two separate categories when you
asked me, right, Like, there are these two that stand
out to me, and then there's all these other times
where it just happened and I sort of went about
my day because it is just part of being a
woman and it should not be at all. So we've

(14:37):
established that this is a problem, but the question still
remains why Why exactly? And we'll delve more into that
after a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. The there hasn't been

(15:01):
a lot of science looking into why this specifically, maybe,
but there has been research into exhibitionism and exhibition disorder,
which is a paraphilic disorder defined scientifically as recurrent, intense,
sexually arousing fantasies urges, our behaviors that are distressing, our disabling,
and that involved inanimate objects. Children are non consenting. Adults

(15:23):
are suffering our humulation of oneself or the partner with
the potential to cause harm from their Exhibitionism is categorized
based on whether the exhibition is prefers to expose themselves
to children adults are both. The behavior that we're talking
about here, According to some, but not all, does fall
under the exhibitionism umbrella. And yes, some exhibitionists are turned

(15:44):
on by their own shame, perhaps even addicted to it.
It's a cycle of feeling the shame. Yeah, going back
to that experience in high school with my friends and
we saw that guy of a car, I almost thought
that he was into the fact that we were sort
of laughing and pointing at him and belittling him, and
that we we weren't bursting into tears. The fact that
we were pointing and laughing. It seemed to be part

(16:07):
of it. You're glad to say. Another thing that people
who engage in this behavior often come with is narcissistic traits,
a lack of both empathy and inhibition. According to the
executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Ginus Garamela,
this type of exhibitionist behavior falls into the same spectrum

(16:27):
of a delusional entitlement to do whatever you want no
matter what everyone else thinks, and then some level of
embarrassing or shaming the person that you're doing it in
front of. And she goes on to say for people
who have been victimized in this way, things that people
tend to express is that they feel stupid for feeling
anything because they know that people are physically assaulted and raped,

(16:48):
and they feel like, why am I having such a
reaction when they didn't touch me. So we really talk
about how the feelings are very similar whether or not
you were touched. It's the same thing with people who
were forced to watch pornography or listen to things. It
doesn't always have to be physical to have the harmful
psychological impact. Yeah, but that another way, I bet a
lot of people can understand why having a sexually explicit

(17:10):
conversation with a minor on the internet is not okay.
Even though that minor is not touched, it's still impactful.
It still has a impact on them even though you
never touched them or see them whatever. Yeah, exactly. And
a doctor or Darryl Turner, who is a forensic psychologist
with a focus on sexual offenses. Thinks that quote for
a lot of guys who are exposing themselves, as ridiculous

(17:32):
as it seems, is about the act of exposing yourself
to someone who isn't expecting it. That is sexually arousing.
It's power play, it's control. The high profile cases we mentioned,
they are acting out on impulses and not in voluntary compulsions,
which is an important distinction, and California's sex therapist Alexandra
Kada Hawk has told Slate something similar. Exhibitionists purposefully looked

(17:52):
to shock their victims because they are angry. They are
not looking to make friends or go on a date.
These are acts of revenge against women. These men are
in saying the body part that is most threatening to
a female, and in doing so, they're acting out what
is called sexualized hostility or eroticized rage against their prey.
That look of fear or humiliation on women is arousing
to them. We see clinically that these men feel wildly inadequate,

(18:15):
and going back to Luis k, he said as much.
In his statement, he said, what I learned later in
life is that when you have power over another person,
asking them to look at your dick, isn't a question.
It's a predicament for them. The power I had over
these women is that they admired me, and I wielded
that power irresponsibly. Yeah, the c K situation, Emily and
I did an episode on it. I was really conflicted.

(18:36):
His statement seemed to illustrate a wider understanding of why
what he did was so faked up and how he,
you know, really kind of stuffed the trajectory of these
women's lives, like some of some of them were budding
comedians and just left the industry altogether. On the other hand,
it almost felt kind of designed to make me pity him,

(18:57):
And it's sort of like what you're getting at, right,
idea that he kind of realized that this was about
some up, dark, sad, gross thing inside of him, and
by writing about it in his statement, it almost on
the one hand, I was like, Oh, he really gets it,
But then it's like, is he just using that as
a shield, Like, Oh, I'm pathetic and up and you know,

(19:19):
I need to work it out. So I felt so
conflicted and bothered by by his statement. And I also
think because on his show and in his stand up
he talks about feelings of like how shame and sex
or sort of connected. And I think when I found
out that he was doing this to women and have
been doing it for a long time, and had been
very hostile to people who brought it up and interviews

(19:40):
journalists this and that, a fellow comedian, Tig Nataro, you
know how how he went to great lengths to cover
this up about himself but then was open about it
on stage. It just was a really confusing, conflicting situation.
I think that we know. I think I don't want
to put words in anybody else's mouth. I think that
I gave him too much credit because he seemed like

(20:02):
someone who understood his dark impulses, and I don't think
that excuses his behavior, right, Like, I guess what I'm saying.
I'm sort of working at how how I'm feeling in
the moment, But I guess what I'm saying is that
I think that he perhaps expected a level of forgiveness
because he is someone who both is open about his

(20:25):
deep dark and talked about his deep dark in his statement.
But if you're an adult man and you don't know
that inviting women back to your hotel room, women who
are your colleagues, women who you work with, women who
admire you, taking out your dick and non consensually ding
off at them and then using your power and your
money and your status to swish them and anybody else

(20:46):
who asked you about at anybody else who questions you about,
at anybody else, even a journalist who's doing her job
to question that. There are so many stories of him
getting people blacklisted, journalists getting blacklisted from the red carpet,
people not talking to journalists, him using his agent to
shake people down. Like if you get to be an
adult who is rich and powerful and famous and you
don't know that's wrong, like golf forever, Like I like

(21:09):
part of me wants to be sympathetic to Oh he's
dark and twisted, but it's seems so deliberate. Yeah, that
was a tangent. I loved Luisy K for a while,
and that situation really held up a mirror both to
me to like what I'm willing to sort of excuse
and be okay with. Yeah, it just really made me think, well,
predators are good, Like predators know how to do something

(21:31):
horrible to someone else and in the end have you
feel sorry for them? Yeah, absolutely agree. And going back
to sort of what we were talking about earlier of
the whole it's not rape, but it's not there wasn't
touching involved. Conscious Suffers, who is a therapist with a
specialty and problematic sexual behavior, has this to say. I

(21:52):
like to use the metaphor that if you're attacker, it
hit you over the head with a frying pan, you
wouldn't call it cooking. Just because the invent event evolved
genitals doesn't make it sexual. The person used masturbation as
a weapon no different than a gun. It is violence,
so it is an attack. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure
there's someone listening right now who is thinking he just

(22:14):
showed me as penis he just off near me, he
just touched my boobs, or like there's someone out there
thinking that something that happened to them wasn't that bad
and it was that bad. Like if you feel like
it was that bad, it was that bad. And I
think as women, we are whether it's our pain, whether
it's our physical pain, or whether it's something traumatic would

(22:35):
happen to us. I think we are conditioned to it's
not that bad and to put it in a little
category of I don't need to deal with it. I
don't want to make a fuss. I don't wanna make
a bother. But yeah, we don't want to make waves.
But then you can't lock something away and not deal
with because it always comes up. And so the same
way that fifteen year old bridget maybe laugh when that

(22:56):
guy showed her and her friends his dick, I still
think it at it like it didn't go It didn't
go anywhere. It didn't. It's still with me. We lie
to ourselves and tell ourselves that it's not that bad
because we don't want to make waves, and we're just
sort of increasing the burden on ourselves and we shouldn't.
We shouldn't have to do that. No, we shouldn't. We're
gonna take one more quick break for a word from

(23:17):
our sponsor. We're gonna keep digging into this. You know,
I'm pissed, we're getting worked up. Let's find Louis c K.
We've got something to say. We knock on the door.
You don't know who we are, but you know who
you are, and we're back. Thank you sponsor. During that break,

(23:46):
we did not go track down Louis c K and
bang on his door. In case you were curious. Yeah,
we're gonna have to take a really long break, do
some digging. Yes, this seems like the beginning of like
a vigilante group of women who like go get justice
on men who are harassers and abusers. Like this is
how those things start. Well, if something happens, So Louis

(24:06):
s k, I'm afraid they're going to suspect for suspects,
We've got it on records. They're not very good a criminals.
They made a whole podcast about what the bands first,
We've got to find him. Oh boy, okay. So researchers
who were looking into this affirmed that many men who
are exhibitionists do have sex dist views of women, are

(24:28):
probably looking to reaffirm their masculinity, and or may have
experienced abuse in the past. There are treatments available to exhibitionists,
namely medication and or psychotherapy, perhaps cognitive behavioral therapy to
identify triggers and alternate ways of coping, but most don't
seek these out until they are caught. A blog post
on Psychology Today suggests that men who masturbate in front

(24:51):
of women do it out of quote intolerable anxiety and
a need to reassure themselves that their penis ak their
manhood is acceptable, and their heads. Although perhaps on an
unconscious level, they have a fantasy that women will be
excited to witness such a thing. The actress sues the
anxiety around their masculinity, at least for a little bit,

(25:11):
and that is the man's primary goal in this scenario.
This blog post argues not to humiliate the woman. She
is being used to reflect back with the man desires
to see. So she's just like a vessel or like
a mirror. Yeah, and so in a kind of way,
it's not even really about her. It is because she's
there and it's part of it. It is taking something
away from that situation herself. But it seems like what

(25:32):
they're saying there is that it's just she is a
tool to work out something inside of himself. Men are
complex creatures. I'll tell you that they're Rand's making a
lot of like ringing hand trying. I'm just trying to
like get my like wrap my head around that, because
oh boy, yeah, there certainly is a lot at play here.

(25:57):
And like I said at the beginning, when this happened
to me when I was young, I definitely got the
sense from that guy that he thought this was going
to be a great experience for all involved. So I
think there is a level of yeah, you're you're not
a person. Whatever woman they're doing this in front of
is no longer a person. It is a tool or
something to use to make something easier or better inside yourself.

(26:19):
Something that you mentioned that struck with me is this
idea that men who do this don't usually get help
until it's too late. I would have had so much
more respect for people like Louisy k if he had said,
you know, this is gonna come out sooner or later.
Because he waited until it was already out. Sure, I
feel like people give him credit for getting ahead of it.
He didn't. It was like a thing for a very
long time. I would have so much more respect for

(26:40):
these people if they said, I have this thing I
need to work out. Why wait until it gets worse.
I need to be honest with myself and the people
are aunt me and get help. I want someone to
not wait until there's a blind item on jezz Ball
about who was this famous comedian masturbating in front of people.
I want someone to think to themselves, I'm not on

(27:01):
the right path, and I need to put a stop
to it before it gets worse. Yeah, I would have
so much more respect for them if they did that
and they didn't wait until they had to deal with it, right,
And that's I think that's part of the problem when
you were talking about like Lucy Kay's statement is that
it was if he had known these things, he did
wait until he was caught to do something about it.

(27:23):
And I have a relationship in my life with someone
who uses pity very much so that you cannot judge them.
You have to pity them, and it's just so that
they don't have to face the consequences for their actions.
Weaponized pity. That was basically having a sputtering and ability
to express myself. That was what I was trying to

(27:44):
get at. It's weaponized pity. It's this idea that because
I have expressed and I'm in a vulnerable situation, I'm
going through this tough time, I'm dealing with this hard thing.
I had a bad childhood. I grew up a fat
nerd and nobody wanted to do whatever it is. It's
this way of using people's pity as a way of
getting out of taking responsibility for your own stuff and

(28:06):
I think that I was trying. I couldn't express it earlier,
but that exactly what it is. It's it's weaponized pity. Yeah,
I think we see that play out a lot, probably
a lot more than we realize. I think there's a
lot going on here, and we could use more more
research because this is a problem, clearly, and we've just
been dealing with it and we need to find some solutions. Well,

(28:29):
I have one pretty easy solution. Don't show your dick
to anybody who doesn't want to see your dick. That
is classic. Just assume they don't want to see your
dick in a workplace setting. They probably don't want to
see your dick on the subway. They probably don't want
to see your dick. And I would say, unless they've
asked to see it, they probably don't want to see it.
Just just a you know, if you if you have
to ask, here's my advice, speaking of like stuff your

(28:50):
mom ever told you if you have to ask, air
on the side, if she doesn't want to see it,
it's my advice. That's good advice. Yeah, we didn't even
get into um dick picks. I could I could do
an art installation. I could wall paper the walls in
my apartment with dick picks unsolicited. I've gotten so many

(29:10):
do want be tm I but your girls on the market. Uh,
I just don't understand it. Like I can show you
conversations where it goes from, Hey, oh, I see you
like to surf? Where where? What beach was that? That
looks like a nice beach to penis in so so quickly,
so quickly? What do they do? Here's my theory. I

(29:33):
think a guy suspects I said my penis picture unslictened
to a hundred girls, one might be into it. I
think it's I think it's a numbers game. That's what
I think that I could see that it's wild to
think that this is just another thing that, oh, what
we learned to do with because I remember it's kind
of like that fear and snapchat that you'll just get
a dick pick one day or I can't remember what

(29:53):
was that other kind of like I used to call
it Russian roulette chat roulette chat roulette, Yeah, and was
all it was all like disembodied dicks masturbating. That was
what it was like. Basically that masturbating dot com was
basically what it was yeah, and it was just a
thing we all knew. Yeah, So I think perhaps that

(30:16):
plays together with what we've been talking about today. I
didn't really even think about, Yeah, how many unsolicited dick pics? Girl,
I'll show you some off off my because I have
some stories and it's ridiculous and I don't get it.
There's something about getting sent an unsolicited dick pick that,
at least for me, it just kind of makes me wonder,
what is it about me or our interaction that made

(30:37):
you think that this was okay? Yeah? Well, I wonder
if it is sort of the same thing where it's
like you're they're just using you for whatever pleasure, gratification
or whatever reassurance they need that their penis is okay.
I don't know. I'll say that it does feel very
hostile to me when I just get one and I'm like,

(30:57):
I didn't at least ask. Yeah, Like, I personally have
never been in a situation where it even made since
like you were saying, like, conversationally, there's nothing in there.
Almost see if we're having a flirtatious conversation and you're
like ian hew, Mary flat this into what she thinks,
I could maybe see that maybe I wouldn't recommend it,

(31:18):
and I appreciate it, but I understand it the times
when you're talking about where it's like there's not even
a logical you can't even follow what like why it's happening. Yeah. Yeah,
and it's in the context of I find when this happens,
it's almost always somebody you barely know. Um, Like it's
one thing if you're in a relationship and maybe you've

(31:38):
been talking about sexty ng or whatever. But if it
is just some random dude that you don't know, that, well, no,
thank you, keep it in your pants. Yeah. The end,
that's it? Is that so much to ask? I mean,
it's really I'm not showing my genital to anybody right now.

(31:59):
That's how it is. Yeah, you almost have to work
harder to do it. Yes, So yeah, I hope we've
gotten through to some people. We probably haven't because that
most of our listeners are already pretty pretty rad. But
speaking of listeners, we do have listener mail, and both
of these listener mails are kind of on the longer side.

(32:21):
Their responses to the episode we did about the vote
in Ireland, and I wrote as a double and listener
and a journalist myself, who has been marching for choice
since I was a teenager in the early nineties, and
spent April and May campaigning for a yes vote in
the recent Irish referendum. I really enjoyed and appreciated your
latest episode. Like thousands of others all over Ireland, I
went out canvassing with my local group Shout Out to

(32:43):
the Dublin Bay North Yeah Shout Out, knocking on doors
all over Dublin and encouraging people to vote yes. It
was an incredibly stressful and grueling campaign, not least because
the thought of what a no vote would say about
our country was basically unbearable. But it was also incredibly rewarding.
Not only was their enormous camaraderie among the campaigners, who
all really supported each other, but we got to have

(33:05):
really good, thoughtful conversations with all sorts of people on
the doors, including many who were undecided about which way
to vote. These conversations always left me hopeful that compassion
and empathy would win the day, as indeed it did.
People really opened up to us, telling us the most
personal stories, which were often incredibly moving. I was too
scared to let myself get too hopeful, But the day

(33:27):
before the vote, members of my campassing group gathered on
a local footbridge at the evening rush hour, asking commuters
to beat for Yes. We had a constant stream of
beeps and thumbs up and even applause, and it really
made me feel that my country, or at least my city,
was on the right side. The same thing happened the
next day when we gathered on Traffic Island after the
anti choice crowd took over our bridge to deafening silence

(33:48):
from drivers. I'm pleased to say Repeal Island as it
quickly became known, became a hub of joyful support. I
knew then that whatever the result was, my city was
full of what we in Dublin would call sound people.
When the exit poles came in that night showing all
landside for Yes, my group gathered in a nearby pub,
hugging and laughing, unable to believe it. The next day,
after finding out our constituency had returned to seventy yes

(34:12):
vote with seventy one voter turnout, we gathered in a
sunny Dublin castle for the result, where we toasted our
neighbors and ourselves with prosecco. Working on the campaign is
one of the best things I've ever done, and I'm
so glad I did it. After the campaign, many of
my friends and I felt a huge calm down. It
was like being jet lagged. We were so used to
being stressed and constantly working, we didn't know how to

(34:32):
relax anymore. But we're all gradually getting back to normal.
My canvassing group had a reunion meeting last week where
we about that abortion is accessible to everyone who needs it,
including migrants and people from marginalized communities of all kinds.
The fight continues, but we're still feeling pretty good about
what we achieved, as you should. Yea yeah, and that

(34:54):
first of all, I have that kiddo gave me flashbacks
to what I wrote on campaigns, because that feeling is
completely normal, that sort of whiplash feelings of you know,
balls to the wall, high octane campaign life where you're
sort of stressed, having good time, kind of stressed a lot,
and then it's over and you're like, wait, I can
sleep now, you know what? Um, but that's so awesome

(35:16):
and you say like warm with my heart, Yeah me too,
me too. I'm so glad that there are sound people
out there and then your city, and thank you for
working on the campaign and making your voice heard. Our
next letter is from Kaylie. Katie wrote, I Abason mindedly
puts Minty on today while I was Brau shopping as
I want to do, and let me tell you, I
can now tick crying surrounded by ugly beige braws off

(35:37):
of my list of reactions I've had to the podcast,
so thanks for that. I was involved in canvassing for
a yes vote in the referendum, out on the streets,
talking to people, knocking on doors, manning informations, dolls, writing letters, etcetera.
The referendum campaign was an all encompassing emotional experience for
those of us involved. I'm going to attribute crying and
the double D plus braw aisle to that. I just
wanted to thank you for covering the topic at all.

(35:58):
Your episode was so well researched, balance and its delivery.
I've seen and about a lot of international takes on
the Wrath in the last few weeks, but I'm a
fan of the show, so I was great to hear
something so dear to make at the Spinty stamp. The
way you talked about Sevito was especially moving and completely
in line with how we as pro choice activists felt
about her preventable death and what it meant about our
places women in Ireland. The Eighth Amendment came in three

(36:20):
I wasn't due to be born for another decade and
my mother wasn't even old enough to vote at the time,
yet it essentially reduced our entire beings to nothing more
than walking wombs as far as the law was concerned.
Growing up, abortion wasn't talked about except in hushed tones,
normally after seeing the graphic image posted by anti choices
outside public landmarks on Saturday mornings, or if you heard
a rumor about a girl in the area who had

(36:42):
quote gone to England. It's also worth bearing in mind
that contraception wasn't freely available here until and the morning after.
Pill didn't become available without prescription and with a very
judgy consultation from your local GP until terrible. They have
been activists fighting the Eighth since the eighties, of course,
but as you mentioned, it wasn't until Sevida's death that
the issue truly got the attention in mainstream support it deserved,

(37:05):
and that's why I personally started to become invested in
the issue too. It's worth noting that our victory in
this referendum is a testament to people power and specifically
the power of women. Since the result, I've noticed a
lot of politicians from traditionally right leading parties like the
one that has become the current majority in our government,
have crept in to try to claim our victory. As
the story is being retold, decades of work by activists

(37:25):
are being rebranded by politicians to try and earn them
voters in the next election, when as recently as last
year they were not behind the issue. Our tea shock.
The Irish Prime Minister called the win quote a quiet revolution,
when in truth there was nothing quiet about it. The
win for the Yes side was because of us, the
women of Ireland who were sick of being treated like
second class citizens, and the men who supported us instead

(37:47):
of trying to keep us down. It belongs to the
normal people who marched health strikes, lobbied and fault with
everything they had in them. It belongs to the activist
groups like ARC, the Abortion Rights Campaign ROSA for Reproductive
Rights Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity, the m E r J,
Migrants and Ethnic Minorities, for reproductive justice to name a few.
We definitely had the support of some amazing politicians whose

(38:10):
work can't be discounted, but that came towards the end
of that fight. At its core, the movement was just
normal women taking to the streets and making their voices heard.
It was only a quiet revolution to those who weren't
willing to listen to it. I'm so proud to count
myself as one of those women, and to be someone
who stood shoulder to shoulder with women and some men
like that. Change has been a long time coming in Ireland,

(38:31):
and over the last few years it really seems to
be snowballing. Our next step is to fight for those
same rights for our Northern Irish sisters. On May I
was in the public courtyard of Dublin Castle but the
announcement of the referendum results, surrounded by hundreds of others
who had fought for our Yes vote. We pretty much
knew from the exit polls that it was going to
go our way, but I needed to hear the official
announcement before I could be relieved after what happened to

(38:52):
our neighbors with Brexit and the U S election. Sorry
to even bring it up girl, me too. I was
worried that it would be a no. There was a
good feeling in the air, but only the day before
the day of the vote, I had Amanda stall and
received the most openly hostile reaction I have ever experienced
while camvtcing to date. When we finally got the news,
the place exploded. We only got to hear the words
in Irish Gaelic before we started screaming and hugging, so

(39:14):
the English announcement got drowned out. Once the initial celebration ended,
a chance started and together hundreds of us who fought
to change things changed the name of the woman who
really changed it all, Sevita. She won't be forgotten. Wow.
I have chills. I feel like I was there. It's
inspiring stuff. It's been so wonderful hearing from so many

(39:34):
of our Irish listeners who have stories like this and
who made this change happen. Definitely. Yeah, I'm so thankful
that they worked on the campaign and volunteered and just
really did the work. Yeah. Thank you to both of
them for writing in, and all of the other listeners
who have written in. If you would like to write
to IS, you can Our email is mom Stuff at

(39:56):
hosts dot com and find us on Instagram at Stuff
I've Ever Told to You and on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast. And thanks as always to our producers, Dylan
Fagan and Catheine Killian's h