Illuminati Influencer Queens 👁🗨
the podcast is BACK and off to an appropriately bizarre start...
ep. 158: Illuminati Influencer Queens, pt. 1
Unladylike has officially returned to the main feed (new episodes every Tuesday🎉 ) with a two-parter on the overlooked role of women and gender in America’s conspiracy culture. And just in time for Christian girl autumn!
Whether we’re talking about anti-abortionists, anti-vaxxers, TERFs or tradwives, they all root back to the same spiderweb of conspiracy theories about evil government forces and wealthy elites out to control our brains, bodies and pronouns. But beyond Pastel QAnon (more on that next week in part two), women are rarely mentioned in conspiracy theory reporting or research, which Unladylike guest Dr. Erin M. Kempker finds curious:
I suspect because of the hypermasculinity of people like Alex Jones and that sort of performative masculinity—you know, they're talking about and trying to market survivalist merchandise and different things like that—I do think that there continues to be this association with men and conspiracy.
But women's historians like myself—I'm not the only one by any means—but [we] have, for some time now, been looking at this, and we can definitely say women are in this world. They’re participants in this, coming up with their own conspiracy beliefs. And that's certainly true of the 20th century.
Erin is a women’s historian and professor at Mississippi University for Women and author of Big Sister: Feminism, Conservatism and Conspiracy in the Heartland, which I can’t recommend enough.
Big Sister focuses on right-wing women’s conspiracy-laden organizing against the Equal Rights Amendment in late 1970s Indiana, i.e. it’s specific. Yet its larger themes of gender panic, feminist backlash and weaponized white womanhood ring eerily familiar, down to their Satanic conspiracy theories, public school paranoia and overlap with wellness culture! 👀
patreon: inTOXICated
Everything is toxic these days—people, places, positivity. As of this writing, #toxic has 32.4 billion-with-a-b views on TikTok, followed by #toxicfamily (1.3B views), #ToxicMasculinity (1.3B views) and ironically, #toxictiktok (551.4M views).
On the latest Extra Unladylike bonus episode, I take inspiration from Kaitlyn Tiffany's recent piece our cultural intoxication with toxicity, consider my own "toxic" labeling and come away with a less pessimistic personal take on the toxic discourse of it all than I honestly expected. Unless, of course, I’m just gaslighting myself with toxic positivity.
PS: Here’s the Patreon episode I mention at the end of this week’s main feed episode on conspiracy vibes and transphobia within the second-wave feminist movement post-ERA loss.
💛 THANK YOU, THANK YOU to this week’s newest dearest patron, Megan! 💛
need to know:
Annnnnd the waiting game to find out if/when the Supreme Court will codify “fetal personhood” has officially begun. (Jezebel) Not that I don’t already live in a place where fetuses now count as legal dependents under the tax code...
Why Rae Lorenzo founded Indigenous Women Rising, the nation’s only abortion fund for Indigenous folks. (Elle)
Wanna know how LGBTQ+ kids in your community are faring? Go to a local school board meeting—and pack a snack since you might be there til the wee hours. (them)
“In my 28 years of analyzing elections, I had never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women* are registering to vote in numbers I never witnessed before.” (NYT)
OK, but did Harry spit on Chris, or what?? (Texas Tribune) Jkjkjk. Nope, more Christian nationalism stripping away LGBTQ+ rights and dignity, this time in the form of employee-sponsored healthcare coverage for PrEP. WWJD, indeed.
*grain of 🧂 alert that “WOMEN” aren’t a political monolith………
til next week . . . ASKING FOR 5-STAR UNLADYLIKE REVIEWS! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ IF YOU’D LIKE TO GIVE UNLADYLIKE A COMEBACK BOOST, LEAVE UNLADYLIKE 5 STARS ON APPLE PODCASTS AND/OR SPOTIFY. GLOWING REVIEW OPTIONAL.
It really, really helps!!
Thank y’all forever for your encouragement and support, especially over the past five months. Really, I’m the one who should be leaving the ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐s for all you unladies!