Know Your Enemy - Women vs. The System (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry)

Matt and Sam welcome back Dorothy Fortenberry to discuss gender, the 2024 election, and whether or not women can run "against The System."

Duration: 1h 7m
Broadcast on: 27 Dec 2024
Audio Format: other

Back in October, before the 2024 election, we had on our friend—and brilliant screenwriter and playwright—Dorothy Fortenberry to talk about gender and the presidential campaign. Amid all the postmortems and Democratic soul searching, we wanted to have Dorothy back on to revisit some of those questions, starting with the difficulties women face in running as "outsiders" or against "The System"—an especially relevant consideration given the prevailing anti-incumbent, burn-it-down sentiment among voters across Europe and the Americas. Along the way we discuss Sarah Palin, Trump's "bad sex" cabinet and administration, how "having fun" is coded in American culture, and more.

Sources:

Dorothy Fortenberry, "The J.D. Vance sperm cups were probably a troll. But they got me thinking," Slate, Aug 23, 2024

— "Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore," Commonweal, Nov 5, 2020

Martin Pengelly, "RFK Jr sexual assault accuser says she chose to speak out after Super Bowl ad," The Guardian, Nov 21, 2024.

Eric Lutz, "Matt Gaetz Accused of Sex With Minor in House Ethics Report," Vanity Fair, Dec 21, 2024.

Eric Tucker, "Trump’s Pentagon pick paid woman after sex assault allegation but denies wrongdoing, his lawyer says," AP, Nov 17, 2024.

Tony Tulathimutte, "Our Dope Future" in Rejection (Sept 2024)

Robert Hanley, "Donor Apologized to Sister for Seduction of Husband," NYTimes, Jan 13, 2005.

Damon Linker, "The Bestial Politics of Masculine Self-Assertion," Notes from the Middleground, Nov 22, 2024.

Sam Adler-Bell, "MAGA Misfits vs. Nationalists vs. Reaganites vs. Dorks: The battle of the Trump transition," NY Mag, Dec 14, 2024.

Listen again:

"Suburban Woman," Oct 29, 2019

"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell), Sept 2, 2021

"'Succession,' 'Extrapolations,' & TV Writing Today" (w/ Will Arbery), May 4, 2023

"Boys and Girls in America," Oct 3, 2024

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All right, welcome listeners to episode 107 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippen, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend Sam at the Bell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. If listeners detect a bounce in my step, extra vitality, vibrancy, I am in Rome and will be here until mid-February. So first of all, if you're a Know Your Enemy listener or a reader of mine who's passing through Rome, drop me a line. That happened last time and it was great, actually. I met a bunch of listeners. Well, Matt, you and I met a listener in Rome totally randomly. That was one of the craziest things that's ever happened to me. So profoundly unrepresentative of our level of well-knownness or faith, but he recognized us. It was incredible. So I am in Rome, but before I departed, Sam and I recorded this episode with our friend Dorothy Fortenberry. Dorothy doesn't really need an introduction, but for newer listeners, Dorothy is a screenwriter and playwright. She wrote on several of the first seasons of Handmaid's Tale. Yes, but Dorothy also wrote for me a common wheel and she's just a very good friend of ours. And we had her on not long before the election. And so we had the idea to kind of bring her back on not really for a post-mortem about the election, but sort of like, what is our interesting friend thinking? Because we do enjoy talking to her. And I do think you'll hear in this conversation a kind of unguardedness that I think makes it interesting. I thought it was interesting anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talk about the sorts of things we normally talk about with Dorothy, gender, sexism, the intersection between those things and our politics, electoral politics in particular. But I think this was a new fold to that conversation that people find very interesting, especially kind of in light of Trump's election. And especially the men, especially he's surrounding himself with. Not exactly a team of rivals, but a team of sexual demons. Right. Team of deviance. Yes. Well, you know, we're recording this intro after Christmas, but before New Year's. We do hope everyone's had a restful and safe holiday, you know, I was thinking it's not the most hopeful conversation to end the year with, since this will be our last episode of 2024, but maybe in some ways it's a fitting and appropriate way to end the year. Yeah. And so thank you listeners for pairing with us during this year for listening. We've been through a lot together and especially for our subscribers for supporting us. There's no ads on this podcast. There's no big money donor.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam welcome back Dorothy Fortenberry to discuss gender, the 2024 election, and whether or not women can run "against The System."