S3 Ep13: Inimai Chettiar: Fighting for Women's Legal Rights

S3 Ep16: (Rerun) Loretta Ross: Calling In, Building Sustainable Activism, and Changing Minds

Rather than taking the summer entirely off, I’m reducing my podcasting frequency to every other week, and posting reruns of some of my favorite episodes during the off weeks. I’ll be back to full-time in the fall. In the meantime, I’ve made no secret that this one of my all-time favorite episodes, and that interviewing Loretta Ross is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. I hope you love this episode; it’s so important for us to cultivate the skills Loretta teaches.  Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me.  How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological brutality, and worst of all, fractured and less powerful movements.  Lasting change requires us to build solidarity across difference. At the very least, we must be able to resolve small disagreements. Ideally, though, we have to bring more people into the fold—including people we really don’t like, including people with whom we have very significant moral disagreements.  I’ve often noted that the anti-choice movement succeeded by standing in lockstep with one another, no matter how much they hated each other. They built a movement for 50 years, and they succeeded. We can learn a lot from them. But leftist coalitions are diverse and highly principled. These are good things, but they can make it challenging to work together.  So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can do this. And then I found Loretta Ross’s book, Calling In. It has helped me to consider my own role in toxic call-out culture, and to seize opportunities to build consensus and coalitions rather than elevating myself and my ego. This, I think, is the only way we move forward.  There’s lots of advice about how to be a better activist, what this moment means, and how to deal with people who disagree with us. I think the most useful advice comes from people who have actually succeeded at sustaining a lifetime of activism. Loretta has changed hearts and minds over and over, working with people many of us would never even want to talk to. She has done the work that progress demands, and now she’s here to teach us how to do it, too.  You’ll recognize some of what we discuss from my earlier episode about sustaining hope as an activist. I cannot over-emphasize how much Loretta’s work has shifted my consciousness and influenced my own work, and I hope you find her wisdom as valuable as I do.  Some of the topics we cover in this conversation include:  * Toxic call-out culture, and how it is destroying individual well-being as well as activist movements.  * How childhood wounds create toxic shame that we then foist onto our activist colleagues.  * How we build resilience and capacity to work across difference.  * Calling out vs. calling in, and how we know when to do each.  * Loretta’s experiences working with rapists and deprogramming white supremacist.  * How our egos can undermine our activism, and how we resist that temptation.  * The components of an effective call-in, and how to know when a call-in is likely to work.  * “When you ask people to give up hate, you must be prepared to be there for them when they do.”  * The concept of the victimized violator—the person who feels entitled to violate others because of their own victimization.  * How to respond to a call-out or call-in.  * Can we use calling in with ICE officers?  * How we can acknowledge the humanity of those doing harm without losing sight of their victims.  * How we sustain hope and avoid despair.  About Loretta Ross  Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives [https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/pwv/pwv-ross.html]. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022 [https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2022/loretta-j-ross#searchresults], for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights, and an inductee into the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame. Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994. Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video [https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1286476171460704]. Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Calling-In/Loretta-J-Ross/9781982190798] is available now! Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color. Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. You can find all of Loretta’s books, as well as all books recommended on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page [https://bookshop.org/shop/liberatingmotherhood].

S3 Ep15: Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno: Surviving Family Court and the Normalization of Abuse

“There is always a reason for people to hate on women.” — Elizabeth Dalgarno Why is it so hard for victims of coercive control, domestic violence, and other forms of abuse to be believed? This is the subject Elizabeth Dalgarno has devoted much of her work to. A leading researcher on coercive control, Dr. Dalgarno has written extensively on abusive relationships, including on how they affect children and why family court norms are so harmful for victims.  No matter where you live, the court system was never set up to protect women and children. So what do we do? How can we survive? Survival begins with understanding the severity of the problem.  In this podcast episode, Dr. Dalgarno and I talk about abuse as the normal state of heterosexual relationships, and how family court systems reinforce the abuse. Some of the topics we cover include:  * The myth of high-conflict divorce, and the reality of victims and perpetrators. * How family courts victimize women, and why so many women enter family court systems totally unprepared.  * How patriarchy has weaponized the notion of false memories. For decades, therapists of dubious skill and integrity induced false memories in their clients. This caused real harm that has continued for decades. But real abusers have weaponized the notion of false memories to silence people with very real, very true memories. This has even occurred in documented, proven cases of abuse, such as with Jeffrey Epstein.  * The false notion of parental alienation syndrome. The creator of this concept asserted that children “seduce” their fathers, and implied that pedophilia is “natural.”  * How trauma undermines the believeability of victim-survivors, and why victims rarely act the way we expect them to. * How gender norms create impossible mothering standards that then harm victims in family court.  * Why sexual abuse of children is so common.  * Why outcomes in family court are not women’s faults, and why the bad outcomes are the system working as intended.  * Strategies that may help in family court.  A quick note: Dr. Dalgarno’s discussion of the family court system addresses norms that pervade across legal systems, but the specific family court system she speaks about is the British system. Not all countries have private and public courts, but the general principles Dr. Dalgarno speaks to will apply everywhere.  About Elizabeth Dalgarno Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno [https://www.drdalgarno.com/] is a world-leading coercive control researcher and advocate. She is the Director and Founder of SHERA Research Group [https://www.shera-research.com/team/dr-elizabeth-dalgarno], a global collective researching the harms to health and human rights violations against women and children in the family courts and other institutions. She is also a Lecturer at the University of Manchester, England. Elizabeth has worked in public and private health and social care for over 20 years specialising in challenging violence against women and children and systemic inequalities for all people in law, health and social care. You can read her incredible Substack here.  [https://substack.com/@drdalgarno]

S3 Ep14: Rerun: Kate Manne: Understanding the Logic of Misogyny

Exciting news: I’m writing a book. Less exciting news: This means I have a little less time right now. It’s also summer break, which means things are in a chronic state of chaos. Lots of podcasts take breaks over the summer, but I didn’t want to do that, especially since I have SO MANY amazing guests lined up for the summer. So instead, I’ll be mixing in some rerun podcasts this summer, to give myself a little more editing time and breathing room. You can expect a new podcast episode at least every other week, with reruns sprinkled in between. This chat with Kate Manne was one of my favorites, and I hope you love it too. Misogyny isn’t really about hating women. After all, if pure hate explained everything, wouldn’t that mean that only mean men abuse women, and that misogynists never seek relationships with women? Men are able to mistreat women they claim to love because of the internal logic of misogyny. They’re not irrational or unhinged; they’re following a set of rules rooted in entitlement. Kate Manne is a philosopher who focuses on understanding what’s behind the misogynistic behavior patriarchy creates and enables. She envisions misogyny as a sort of disciplinary tool for reinforcing gendered norms, and preserving men’s access to resources—especially the highly valuable resource of women’s labor. We cover a lot of ground in this podcast, including: * The reflexive denial in the media of misogyny. * Misogyny as a system for enforcing men’s entitlement to women’s labor. * Why misogyny is not random and not mental illness, but instead a set of corrupt moral values that reflect the values of the wider culture. * Misogyny as more than mere hatred of women, and why certain women may be more impacted by misogyny than others. * How not to hate your husband after children…or maybe you should just hate him. * The normalization of all forms of violence. * The parallels between misogyny and fascism. * Fatphobia [https://zawn.substack.com/p/my-parents-make-fatphobic-comments] as an inevitable byproduct of misogyny. About Kate Manne Kate Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social, and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny [https://academic.oup.com/book/27451] (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608442/entitled-by-kate-manne/] (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/722318/unshrinking-by-kate-manne/] (Crown, 2024), a National Book Award finalist in non-fiction. In addition to academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Time. She writes a substack newsletter, More to Hate [https://katemanne.substack.com/], exploring misogyny, fatphobia, and their intersection. If you like this podcast or find my work valuable, I hope you’ll consider supporting it! Your paid support ensures I never have to take advertiser dollars, and am beholden only to my readership. You’ll also get access to one more podcast episode each month, eight additional pieces of written work, and membership in the Liberating Motherhood Community [https://www.liberatingmotherhood.org/community]. You can also support this podcast for free! Heart-reacting makes a huge difference, as does commenting and sharing on social media. If you listen to this podcast on a podcast platform, please leave a positive review; it makes a huge difference. Oh, and tell the people you love about this podcast too!

S3 Ep13: Inimai Chettiar: Fighting for Women's Legal Rights

I’ve often said that there’s a concerted effort to get people to hate lawyers, and it’s because when people hate lawyers, they won’t assert or even learn about their own rights. Lawyers have helped lead every movement for social justice, and in the United States, are behind every imaginable civil rights gain.  Inimai Chettiar, an American attorney and President of A Better Balance, has used the legal system to fight for a more just world for two decades. She began her career working to end mass incarceration, and is now fighting for the rights of working mothers.  This diversity of experience lends her unique insight into the American legal system. In our conversation, we cover a wide range of topics, including:  * How to make the legal system work for women, instead of always against us.  * Inimai’s work at A Better Balance, including a lawsuit against Amazon for abuse of pregnant workers.  * The fight for paid leave at work, and the role it plays in the broader fight for women’s equality.  * How mass incarceration affects women.  * What people get wrong about the legal system, and how it affects their ability to fight for their own rights.  * IVF and its shortcomings. Inimai has had two children via IVF, and has researched and written extensively about IVF, infertility and older women, and the specific issues women of color undergoing fertility treatments face. This is a must listen if you struggle with infertility or hope to have children in your forties.  About Inimai Chettiar Inimai Chettiar is President of A Better Balance. She leads the organization’s pioneering efforts to advance fair and supportive work-family policies like paid family and medical leave, paid sick time, and fair and flexible scheduling, and to combat discrimination against pregnant people and family caregivers in the workplace. She is a leading civil rights attorney and justice advocate with more than two decades of experience leveraging the law to advance transformative reforms. With deep experience in litigation, advocacy, coalition building, and communications, Chettiar’s approach to serving as A Better Balance’s President is framed around the intersectionality between social justice, racial justice, and workplace policies that advance meaningful change for women and families. Her personal experiences also drive her passion for A Better Balance’s mission to build a future where all workers can care for themselves and their loved ones, without risking their economic security. Chettier was appointed as President of A Better Balance in 2024. Previously, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the Justice Action Network, the nation’s largest bipartisan criminal justice reform organization. Her leadership and coalition building helped secure the passage of the First Step Act, which released over 30,000 people from prison, the Fair Chance Act, and other key federal legislation. Chettiar also served as the Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she established the Center as a national leader in ending mass incarceration, authored groundbreaking reports on crime and incarceration, positioned criminal justice as an issue central to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the national narrative, worked to transform law enforcement. Through Chettiar’s leadership, mass incarceration became recognized as more than an issue of criminal justice reform and was successfully framed around the deep and generational impact it has on families. She also served as Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, and Litigation Associate at Debevosie & Plimpton LLP. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Law School, is widely published in numerous journals, reports, and books, and is quoted extensively across top tier national media outlets.

S3 Ep12: Stefanie O'Connell: The Ambition Penalty

Mainstream career advice for women loves to pretend we can’t possibly know even the most basic facts about having a career.  We tell women to ask for a raise, as if they don’t know they work for money.  We tell them to “lean in,” as if the problem is just that no one ever bothered telling them to try.  We tell them to communicate better at work, as if women have never learned to talk, and as if men are known for their exceptional communication. It’s very similar to how we talk about domestic labor. We insist on locating the problem in individual women rather than acknowledging the political reality. The truth is that women are outpacing men on almost every imaginable metric: college graduation, law and medical school admissions, and more. Yet our hard work and competence never seem to translate into fair pay, equal respect, or even an acknowledgment that most women work.  Stefanie O’Connell’s The Ambition Penalty takes a hard look at the double binds and misogyny women face at work. She’s a brilliant speaker and writer, and I learned so much talking to her. Her book will be out in two weeks, but pre-orders are live now (and very important for publisher numbers).  You can find her book, as well as all books I talk about on the podcast, and a list of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop [https://bookshop.org/shop/liberatingmotherhood].  If you are in New York City, I hope you’ll consider attending Stefanie’s book launch event. [https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062207983-0] About Stefanie O’Connell Stefanie O’Connell is an award-winning journalist and author of “The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up– and Then Pushes Them Down [https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stefanie-oconnell/the-ambition-penalty/9781541705210/].” Her work dismantles the myths keeping women from equitable pay, leadership and power — one data point at a time. With bylines in Slate, Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today and Business Insider, Stefanie exposes how power and gender collide to keep women “in their place.” She also wrote, hosted and co-produced the WEBBY winning podcast, “Money Confidential” for REAL SIMPLE magazine. Stefanie has appeared on ABC World News, CBSN, Fox Business, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, The Doctors and local news stations across the US. An honors graduate of New York University, Stefanie lives in New York City with her daughter. Follow Stefanie on Instagram here. [https://www.instagram.com/stefanieoconnell/] Follow Stefanie on Threads here.  [https://www.threads.com/@stefanieoconnell] Follow Stefanie on TikTok here.  [https://www.tiktok.com/@stefaniemoconnell] Follow Stefanie on LinkedIn here.  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanieoconnell/]