Episode 80: Sports and Politics, a preview of the women’s bball season, and an interview w/ Janet O’Shea
On this week’s show, Lindsay, Brenda, and Jessica are joined by guest co-host Erica Ayala. After laughing about a new statue of Mo Salah (5:41), the gang talks about the many overlaps of Sports and Politics (22:36). Then Brenda interview Dr. Janet O’Shea about what play can offer today’s society and O’Shea’s experiences as a martial arts practitioner (39:39). Then we get into the brand new women’s collegiate basketball season (48:44).
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile (58:05), our Bad Ass Woman of the Week, starring Alexa Moreno (1:01:19), and what is good in our worlds (1:05:14).
For links and a transcript…
Links
“Mohamed Salah Is Officially A Great Player Now That He Has A Creepy Statue In His Likeness” https://deadspin.com/mohamed-salah-is-officially-a-great-player-now-that-he-1830227221
“Marine Veteran Protests Blazers’ Military Contractor Sponsorship During ‘Hometown Heros’ Tribute” https://www.si.com/nba/2018/11/08/marine-veteran-protests-sponsor-portland-trail-blazers
“Polémica en Arsenal: la Policía le impide al público de la platea mostrar los pañuelos verdes” https://www.clarin.com/deportes/futbol/polemica-arsenal-policia-impide-publico-platea-mostrar-panuelos-verdes_0_eulRq_nzx.html
“Election 2018: How ex-NFL players Anthony Gonzalez, Colin Allred and other former athletes did at polls” https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/election-2018-how-ex-nfl-players-anthony-gonzalez-colin-allred-and-other-former-athletes-did-at-polls/
“No, Athletes Will Not ‘Shut Up And Dribble’ — And They Never Have” https://www.npr.org/2018/11/05/664232524/no-athletes-will-not-shut-up-and-dribble-and-they-never-have
“AP Women’s College Basketball Poll 2018: Notre Dame Unanimous No. 1 over UConn” https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2803758-ap-womens-college-basketball-poll-2018-notre-dame-unanimous-no-1-over-uconn
“The 25 best players in women’s college basketball: Sabrina Ionescu leads the way” http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/25178719/women-college-basketball-2018-19-preseason-player-rankings-sabrina-ionescu-leads-way
“Women’s Hoops Preview: Notre Dame’s View From the Top, UConn’s Redemption Tour and More” https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2018/11/01/womens-college-hoops-preview-notre-dame-uconn-top-10
“Rep. Jim Jordan wins Ohio’s 4th Congressional District seat” https://www.washingtonpost.com/election-results/ohio-4th-congressional-district/?utm_term=.75e16e9b4373
“A Recent Sports Bra Suspension At Rowan University Has Gotten Female Athletes Outraged” https://www.theodysseyonline.com/sports-bra-suspension
“Discovery of Missing Documents Spurred U.S.O.C. to Act Against Gymnastics Federation” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/sports/olympics/usa-gymnastics-documents.html
“Cheerleader who knelt during anthem IDd as Antioch woman” https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/49ers-Cheerleader-kneeling-protest-kayla-morris-13360477.php
“Mary Keitany Earns 4th New York Marathon Title, 3 Minutes Ahead of Pack” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/sports/nyc-marathon-womens-winners.html
“Life Without Basketball: The Journey Of Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir’ https://theshadowleague.com/life-without-basketball-the-journey-of-bilqis-abdul-qaadir/
“Airman mom of 2 pumps breast milk while completing Ironman 70.3” https://www.foxnews.com/health/airman-mom-of-2-pumps-breast-milk-while-completing-ironman-70-3
“Paralyzed woman completes NYC Marathon on crutches for others ‘who aren’t able to take steps’” http://sandhillsexpress.com/abc_health/paralyzed-woman-completes-nyc-marathon-on-crutches-for-others-who-arent-able-to-take-steps-abcid36127077/
“Former MMA fighter Sharice Davids elected to US Congress” https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2018/11/7/18070992/former-mma-fighter-sharice-davids-elected-to-us-congress-2018-elections
“Talking With Deb Haaland, the Organizer Poised to Become the First Native American Woman in Congress” https://splinternews.com/talking-with-deb-haaland-the-organizer-poised-to-becom-1828133245
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down. The feminist sports podcast you need. We’re so happy you’re here. I’m Jessica Luther, freelance journalist and author in Austin, Texas. On today’s show I’m joined by Brenda Elsey an associate professor of history at Hofstra on Long Island. Lindsay Gibbs, a reporter at ThinkProgress in Washington DC. And today a special co-host Erica Ayala, a New York based sports writer, who covers WNBA and NWHL, who listeners might recognize from a recent Episode, Episode 75 where she and Lindsay talked about the NWHL season, and the news that Lisa Borders was stepping down as the WNBA president. We’re so thrilled to have Erica with us today. Welcome, Erica.
Erica: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jessica: First things first. As always, thank you to our patrons whose support of this podcast through our ongoing Patreon campaign make Burn It All Down possible. We are forever and always grateful. If you would like to become a patron it’s easy, go to patreon.com/burnitalldown. You can pledge as little as $1 per month but if you donate a little bit more, you can access exclusives like an extra Patreon only segment or a monthly newsletter. On today’s show, we’re going to talk about sports and politics, that’s Politics, with a capital P because this was election week. It’s on the forefront of our brains.
Then Brenda will talk with Janet O’Shea, a professor of dance and studies in the Department of World Arts and Cultures Dance at UCLA and author of Risk, Failure, Play, what dance reveals about martial arts training. They discuss what play can offer today’s society and O’Shea’s experiences as a martial arts practitioner.
And since we have to women’s basketball experts co-hosting today, we’re going to preview the women’s college basketball season that just got started. A quick side note and or a heads up I guess on our bonus Patreon segment this month, which we’re going to release this week. We’ll be talking about the ongoing World Cup qualifiers and the women’s hockey season that is in full swing. If you want more on women’s sport, sign up for our Patreon.
And then we’re going to cap off today’s show by burning things that deserve to be burned doing shout outs to women who deserve shout outs and telling you what is good in our world.
But first, perhaps you all remember in episode 56 — I went and looked it up — we opened the show by talking about let’s say an unfortunate rendering of soccer legend Brandi Chastain on a plaque, when she was inducted into the Bay Area Hall of Fame. It was so bad that they ended up replacing it and not that I really want to mention him here the reported rapist but there was this famous burst of Cristiano Ronaldo at a Portuguese airport that let’s say missed its mark. It was also replaced and so now we have a new statue I hope you all saw it of Egyptian and Liverpool forward Mo Salah which was unveiled last weekend at the World Youth Forum and let me describe it really quick just in case. It’s his entire body but it gets bigger as it goes up. He has really small feet and a huge head and his arms are outstretched, he’s looking up at the sky smiling which is nice.
The problem is it doesn’t actually really look like him. Deadspin compared it to Richard Simmons at the 45-minute mark of one of his workout routines. I learned about the statue because my friend Melissa McEwan texted me a tweet that she had written that said quote, “This is not a statue of Mo Salah, this is clearly a statue of Pawnee city councilman Jeremy Jam. You just got jammed. Jam is a character, he’s the worst character on the delightful show Parks and Recreation and it really, really looks like him. It really, really does. Why does this keep happening? I mean, sculpting like this is difficult but what is happening in the world of sport and arts.
Brenda: I always wanted to think that the Cristiano Ronaldo one was on purpose.
Jessica: I know. It’s ruining it, though. These good people.
Brenda: Because, there’s another statue of Cristiano Ronaldo in Madeira that he commissioned.
Jessica: We talked about it, everyone should go back and listen to us laugh our asses off about it.
Brenda: Because it’s the one wear his genitalia looks disproportionate, larger than his head. It’s huge. And he wasn’t really happy with that one. But nothing has changed in terms of that one.
Jessica: There are pictures of him posing really happily with next to his giant dick. It’s disgusting.
Brenda: Well his absolutely crafted genitalia but the one you’re referring to is just the head, which was destroyed. It was destroyed and they redid it. This one the artist apparently said, the problem came because there’s only certain ways that you can pour and cast bronze in Egypt. He couldn’t evidently do it to the way that she wanted it, I have no idea about this bronze issue. But this is supposedly why it’s being blamed.
Jessica: There’s some laughs for us to get this kicked off and now on to the show. Brenda? Do you want to get started?
Brenda: Sure. We don’t probably need to tell our dear listeners about the thorny relationship between sports and politics. In fact, this show is almost always preoccupied with the meaning of sports and its political implications. But given that this past week was a big week in politics in the US anyway, with the elections. It seemed to especially overshadow or at least permeate sports more intensely than usual. I think there’s three different ways I was thinking about the show, and how we treat sports and politics. I just think we could reflect on the week a little bit. I thought there were three different ways to think about the relationship between sports and politics. One is, sports as a lens, we look at the world through it. It’s like a special microscope. Another is sports as a platform, sports used as a way to change society making political statements, and then the third way that we tend to talk about it, is sports policies like building stadiums, physical education programs, things like that.
Over the past few years, there’s been this generalized idea that politics is ruining sports, that it’s responsible for the decline in viewership. People just want to escape during sports, surprise, it’s all been correlated with women, LGBTQ, and people of color, especially African American communities, using sport as their platform. Somehow, the Department of Defense using the NFL to promote itself and its trillion dollar, it wasn’t political. You could tell there’s definitely a particular angle here, and instead of shying away from all that, because we never do anyway. I just thought we could talk a little bit about the political stories that were shaping our sports viewing this week.
Jessica: Thank you, Professor Elsey. I was like, you should be drawing this up on your chalkboard with lines and stuff. No, that’s really great. And I think, I mean, one of the things that I kept thinking about this week, especially here in Texas, there was a huge election, it was basically pretty good. But one of the things was interesting to me, and this is kind of not going off on-air through things but that I wanted to mention today is, how wild was to me that political coverage was so sports like. I was just like watching the returns, and just the way that sports has actually permeated political coverage as well that there’s this other way that it’s working, on top of all of the sports stories around politics, but that was something that was also on the forefront of my brain this week. Erica?
Erica: Yeah, I think first of all, I just think it’s ridiculous that we still have a conversation that sports in anything or politics in anything are separate. If you think about how athletes are treated. I mean, we talked about the lens, the platform and sports policies. I think that athletes are continually impacted by policies that don’t allow them, whether it’s amateurism or just how funding is relegated to really have to make sacrifices beyond the sacrifices they make for their bodies. I’m thinking of Sharice Davids. There was the … What was it, NowThis I think the video where she talks about being underemployed or unemployed and I think that that’s something that athletes in general, male, female, any sport across the world can relate to, and that impact them. We want athletes to kind of silo themselves as these great people who can do amazing things with their bodies when it’s convenient for us as society. I think that compartmentalizes certainly the athletes but also ourselves and I’m really not here for it.
Jessica: Yeah, and it’s so interesting, because one of the things that we actually saw this week, and of course we did was that most of our former athletes became politicians. We were elected office, including Sharice Davids because they’re part of the community and they have things to say. Of course, sports is always looking for angles, sports media, so we got lots of articles about it. But on some level, it makes total sense that athletes are really tapped into their communities. Brenda
Brenda: Well, yeah. There were a few really interesting when you talk about athletes tapping into the communities. They also have a public profile that allows them to tap into donations. There were a couple interesting races. There were a couple interesting races they’re obviously seen by political parties as being potential, having potential communities either. It’s because Colin Allred, the Texas Congress person that was just-
Jessica: That was great.
Brenda: Yeah. And he went to Baylor and that alum community too really supported him. And then in Ohio in the 16th Congressional District is Anthony Gonzalez. Who is a Republican and not … Some people are sort of like, “Oh, Latino, Republican.” I don’t know when people are going to get over that thing. He’s also Cuban Americans, absolutely not shocking, but he got donations from Peyton Manning for example and Brown owners, Jimmy Haslam. That’s part of it. That’s part of it, too. That they’re seen as being able to really use their profile and get some serious donations.
Jessica: I hadn’t even thought about that. Lindsay.
Lindsay: Yeah. One of the things obviously, the number of women in Congress is above or in the House, is above 100 for the first time which sounds like a lot until you realize there are more than 400 seats do you know what I mean? We’re quarter. Anyways, people are talking about it is a big deal. I thought that Christine Brennan had a very interesting tweet. She’s the USA today columnist. She said, “This is the Title Nine generation now, that’s running for these offices and that these women had been given kind of a different level of belief in themselves, and a different level of opportunities.” Look, on one hand, I saw a lot of people in her mentions, being offended and saying, cause people are all … And saying things like, “Well, my grandmother was independent, and she didn’t have Title Nine and she was forward thinking.”
There are certainly caveats to be heard, but I think that it is interesting to look. I mean, studies do show that women in the C suite, women executives, most of them have been athletes in college. The participation in sports, and the high school and collegian level really does translate to successes in life. It gives women this confidence and this drive and this work ethic. Not that women didn’t have that before, but it helps fulfill that. I think, all the time we talk about the benefits that sports have for men, but they have the exact same benefits for women in those skills translate on the court and off the court. I was looking at both of the two Native American women who are now in Congress, which it is just absurd that this is the first time but take that way. The other one other than Sharice Davids, she’s a marathon runner. It’s quite an impressive group and so many of them have ties to sports. I do think that there’s something there, what do you guys think?
Jessica: Brenda.
Brenda: I think there’s something there too. But I think, when you talk about Title Nine too it’s like, it did just get them also to go to college. Christine Brennan’s take is, well taken. When you read the article that she cited, it’s a 1% to 2%, maybe difference in playing sports or not playing sports. Part of it is also just Title Nine, they’re getting more resources and having less harassing sort of situations period because of quid pro quo than they ever had before, so they’re staying in college and stuff. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s super interesting and I tend to agree with you and Christine on a gut level, but I shy away a little bit from the studies, because they weren’t really super convincing.
Jessica: Interesting. Erica.
Erica: Yeah, I think that the studies, I kind of agree that maybe there’s more to look into there, but I also think that it’s not just a matter of confidence. As I was listening to the conversation and looking up some of the information I was like, Okay, well, I was an athlete, and I grew up relatively, in the time where Title Nine was really impacting girls and women in sport. I played in college, and I’m trying to think what did sports offer me that maybe I didn’t have elsewhere that my female peers didn’t have? I really think it’s an exposure and not … I wouldn’t say a total comfort but an exposure to boys and men that I was on the playing fields with them. I was teammates with them. I played against them, because there weren’t always options for me to play sports with just girls, and I think that is a part of it too that women literally cannot be ignored.
We’re not just at home or in women’s clubs playing against each other, in a very light forms of sport. We’re competing against boys and some men like a Shannon Szabados who plays for the Canadian women’s hockey team and played in men’s leagues before playing professionally now in the NWHL. I think that all of the things about confidence for those who play more recreationally, I think that’s definitely something, but it’s also kind of the change in culture, and a culture shift of having women be around sports, which I don’t know was really the case before.
Jessica: That’s so interesting, and it makes me think about the way that women sports are so threatening all the time. And so much of that has to do with the fact that women are, the ideas that they’re invading these male spaces, whatever we think about that.” Lindsay
Lindsay: Yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out. There are two women actually are going to be joining now the Michigan State Board of Trustees, and these are women who ran a campaign in Michigan, on listening to Nassar survivors, and on really changing the culture at Michigan State University. It’s really exciting and that’s just kind of another way that women are influencing the sphere of the world, the political world and the politics, sports overlap. It’s exciting right now, the Michigan State Board of Trustees is now tipped, it used to be four for Republican Democrat, it’s now six, two democrat to Republican. Of course, we know that doesn’t change everything automatically and that there are tons of Democrats who’ve been enabling horrible, horrible abuse at Michigan State as well. I don’t want to sound like partisanship is a cure all, but I was extremely encouraged after all the horrific things we’ve seen happen and enabled by the Michigan State Board of Trustees. I was incredibly excited to see two women running and winning these seats.
Jessica: That’s a great story that I had totally missed. Thank you, Brenda.
Brenda: Yeah, there’s been some really interesting fan actions too. This week during the hometown heroes segment in the trailblazers game, there was usually that’s a segment where they recognize that the game all member of the military. I know we’ve talked about the relationship between the trailblazers and Leopold and Stevens.
Jessica: Lindsay, burned that at one point.
Brenda: Lindsay, burned that and this particular US Marine Corps Sergeant Jose Hernandez at the moment unzipped his hoodie or sweat shirt or whatever that said, “End This sponsorship, no Leopold.” It was live and it was powerful because he is a member of the military and it was sort of fascinating. Leopold has supplied sniper rifle scopes to the Israeli Defense Forces. For people that don’t remember Lindsay’s burn that was kind of fascinating and it’s something that really isn’t just exclusive to the US either. We’ve seen a lot of fan actions and we should just mention that Iranian women, there was about a hundred that were allowed into a game this past week for the first time in many years.
Jessica: That’s awesome. Erica.
Erica: Yeah, I wanted to stick with basketball a little bit in just a reminder that the WNBA when we talk about players and using their platform, and also kind of politics and sports. The WNBA impressed me, I guess it was about three seasons ago now. When instead of having their post-game interviews, both teams it was the New York Liberty and Indiana fever, and it was Tamika Catchings’ last game at Madison Square Garden. It was the year that she was retiring. They opted to both teams to not talk about anything related to the game, and only to talk about the shows of support and awareness for police brutality in the United States that had been going on. Teams like the Minnesota Lynx, the New York Liberty had been wearing shirts to demonstrate the issue and the challenge of police brutality.
And also the police officers that have been killed by gun violence when the WNBA started cracking down and giving fines to the teams and to individuals, the players did a media lockout. They only talked about the issue of gun violence and then also Tina Charles, who I think she won, it was either Player of the Week or Player of the Month after the fines had been announced. She actually turned her shirt inside out, her warm up shirt inside out. It was a noble black shirt as a sign of defiance. She knew that, “Hey, this is my opportunity, I’m here getting an award but I still have something to say on this issue and I won’t be silenced.”
I thought that was a really great show of strength and kind of also goes back to the conversation about women being in spaces and being able to elevate and amplify messages that often times can get lost. I think in kind of just the media scuffle of oh, these are NBA players, or these are NHL players doing certain things and these are women who took their voices and used it on the court and also throughout and to this day, in the WNBA you will see players and teams being very active in the community when it comes to gun violence.
Jessica: I was prepping for this segment and the WNBAPA was partner with Rock the Vote. This day, they cover all, they cross the spectrum on capital P politics. It’s very inspiring, especially because we often talk on the show about … I mean, they’re risking a lot because they don’t have much. The risk is huge for them and they just refuse to be silent about the things that are important to them and to the league, I think that’s just constantly amazing. On the basketball note, I did want to mention when we’re talking about platform.
First, we have, Shut Up and Dribble, is finally airing on Showtime. I don’t have Showtime. I may have to get it because I’ve heard it’s spectacular but I just think that is so cool that LeBron James took that terrible thing that Laura Ingraham said about him and named his fucking documentary after it. Shove it on the face but then that kind of activism that I’m sure is brought up repeatedly and Shut Up and Dribble we saw it again this weekend, the LA Clippers host … I actually didn’t look it up. Which team were they hosting? Does anyone know? But both teams wore shirts that said enough and the names…
Brenda: It was the Bucks.
Jessica: The Bucks, thank you. Had the names of the 12 people who were killed in the Thousand Oaks shooting this week. We get these basketball players in particular using what Erica was just talking about what they’re wearing and what they’re wearing when they’re physically taking a basketball space with a platform to put out these political messages that are very, very powerful. Okay, well, this is something that we constantly talk about on the show and we will be talking about it again. But for now. We’re going to move on.
Up next Brenda’s interview with Professor Janet O’Shea about what play can offer today’s society and O’Shea’s experiences as a martial arts practitioner.
Brenda: I’m so excited today that we have with us Janet O’Shea, martial artist professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures, Dance at UCLA and author of a brand-new spectacular book that we’re going to be talking about today from Oxford University Press. It was just released November 1st, and it’s called Risk, Failure, Play. What dance reveals about martial arts training. Janet, thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down.
Janet: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Brenda: Just for the readers who haven’t gotten their hands on the book yet. Could you give us a little description of it?
Janet: Sure. I’d be glad to. The book comes out of my experience training in martial arts. I should say up front when I talk about martial arts and primarily talking about sport fighting. Martial arts would involve a lot of element of sparring or grappling. I think sometimes because I’m a woman and a person of a certain age, when I talk about martial arts, there’s a tendency to assume that I’m speaking of the more esoteric, refined internal practices. When I speak about things like play and recognizing vulnerability, it might seem like oh, yeah, that’s fine, if it’s something kind of soft and gentle, but I’m talking about finding those elements in a very confrontational, physically intense practice.
Brenda: The book to some extent, is an anthropological sociological journey and then it’s also part memoir. One of the things that I have to compliment you on, is it’s really not self-indulgent. How did you do that? How did you reach that good balance?
Janet: Once when I was living in London, I went to see this film, it was a documentary, and sadly, I can’t remember the name of it. I can’t remember the director. But it was this woman who had made this documentary that was kind of primarily about herself, and one of the people who is commenting on it said a lot of people make documentaries about other people, but it’s really about themselves. You’ve made a documentary about yourself, but it’s really about other people. I kept coming back to that idea as I was writing this, because I felt particularly when it was about perhaps something that meant so much to me and about a practice that was so immediate, I couldn’t really speak for anyone’s experience, but my own. Yet, I realized very early on in the process, there’s not that much that’s terribly interesting about me within martial arts. I’m not a competition level fighter.
At the same time, I’m not somebody who is timid and fearful, and went through this major transformation and turns into this, black belt wielding tough person just by virtue of doing martial arts. It wasn’t one or the other kind of narratives that we usually get with martial arts writing instead, it was just this sort of, in between experience of “hey I’m just a normal person doing this, because I love it.” I think that position automatically opens out so that it might start with me, but it can’t really remain with me for that long and really get into the kinds of questions that I wanted to ask.
Brenda: I love that it’s about you but it’s about other people. A question I had was about play, you’re very strong advocate for a particular complex sense of the term play, of the practice of play. Can you explain to the listeners why it’s so important now? A little bit about how you understand the kind play, you think it’s important, and then why now it’s important?
Janet: Sure. There’s a tendency to think about play as trivial, as insubstantial and as avoiding consequence is being really peripheral to our lives, particularly as we move into adulthood. I’m making a case one for just the necessity of play in our daily lives and in that sense, what I’m doing is not so different from people who have been writing about creativity and psychologists and social psychologists who have written about the benefits of play, but I’ve tried to push it a little bit further in two ways. One is to say that it’s not just, oh, we should play, let’s make some time to go play some non-competitive rounds of tennis on the weekend, or a spend some time with your kids, kicking a soccer ball around. Instead of trying to delve into what kinds of play we participate in and how we play, and what that says about where we are, as a society and recognizing that it’s not enough to simply play. We have to be reflective about what values we’re reinforcing, what kinds of social realities we’re living out when we play.
Then the other point is kind of a larger but more specific, in a sense political point, which is that in American society right now has a disagreement problem among other things. Politically speaking, we have this real tendency to see opposition as inherently invalid and when you think about that, in terms of political theory, that’s a really frightening concept, because it’s very anti-democratic. If we look toward agnostic sport, we can find models for disagreeing with respect, and more importantly, respecting opposition as actually inherently valid. A lot of our competitive sports really reinforce this idea that there’s something shameful about losing, but also that the opponent has to be almost eradicated.
When you look at someone like that, really high-profile sports, and even what happens events with kids, sports teams, there’s kind of this idea about this run roughshod over the other team, instead of recognizing that there needs to be a really profound level of respect that this other person or this other team has put in all this training. They put in all this work, they’re ready to meet you in this encounter, in which you get to discover your strengths and weaknesses, and you get to vie for an outcome that you want. If we map that onto the political terrain, I think it would be really healthy to think seriously about that idea that when opponents come together, why are they not coming together with a profound respect for all the work that it’s taken to get to that moment? Why is there not that moment of “Hey, you know what, even if I fail my presence occasions your victory and I just backed and likewise if I win your presence occasions my victory and you deserve my respect.”
Brenda: Yeah, I know. I think it’s a beautiful point and I think there’s something there too about resisting dehumanization that way. That dehumanization of an opponent if you want to extract that to a political culture, quotidian, political culture is really important to not do.
Janet: Absolutely.
Brenda: The same is true of why do certain sports seem to have a particularly misogynist culture. I think that is very related to a lot of what you found wrong in other types of in particular instances. But mostly your book is focused on what might get right in this. It’s a bit more constructive in that sense. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the sparring in your book and the opponent as a woman in particular, to just describe to listeners who haven’t read the book yet a little bit about how your personal experience sort of related to your intellectual point about that.
Janet: Sure. I mean, it was really interesting for me. Kind of coming into martial arts. As a woman, but also as somebody who was well into adult life, and I started training … I had dabbled in martial arts for a while, and it was something I really enjoyed, but for various practical reasons like being in grad school and moving to different countries and that kind of thing. It didn’t really pan out as kind of a sustained interest until about five years ago. I began training in martial arts at UCLA taking once a week class, and that class just blew my mind. It was a Jeet Kune Do class, it was a martial art developed by Bruce Lee and I fell in love with it and so I joined the Jeet Kune Do club where we started sparring a few days a week. I was sparring not just people with people who are differently from me, because they were men, but because they were about 20 years younger than me and they were also a lot of them were so [inaudible].
Brenda: You brave ass woman can I just also tell you as a middle aged woman reading it I’m just in awe of some of that. Just an awesome have some of that but please, sorry to interrupt.
Janet: But I have to say, I mean, so much as people often talk about the woman aspect of it. And I’m like, gender was kind of one of my lower concerns when a 30-year-old’s coming at you, just like, wow these people are so young.
Brenda: So fresh, so rested.
Janet: I mean, exactly. Yes, my daughter was two or three, when I started training as well. I was just like, well are these people seem well rested to me? I mean, so many things like that. It’s really fascinating to me, I think that’s why in the book, I focus on interest subjectivity so much, because there was something fascinating to me in that moment, where and be there like, a weekend, like, a Saturday afternoon, sparring with these science major guys, and there’d be those moments, of like, Oh, my God! This person is so young and fresh and energetic and then that would just go away. It would be like, the person becomes reduced to their habits, and their strategies and their tactics and their decisions, and that to me was so fascinating. How time after time, I would watch that happen and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just happening for me.
Janet: I’m pretty sure it went the other way around too but to these people I was training with, I was no longer like this older woman, professor, parent, but I was this set of decisions and actions. To me that was just super interesting how sparring kind of reduces people to this level that is so relatable, but also such a place of radical difference that it can’t even be reduced anymore to gender, age, or training background or size or fitness level. It becomes so specific and that to me, was fascinating.
Brenda: Yeah, it’s fascinating to read about too. And I realized that you don’t actually separate out gender as a point of analysis in the book, it runs throughout. There’s a particular chapter called What’s There To Lose. That it has a very fascinating and difficult chapter to get through, in the sense that it brings up so many things and examples for one’s own life. I just want to give you a little quote and see if you could talk about it a little bit but I found it just fascinating. It says, you write I should say, “Such cultural constructions of the body and of behavior set the stage for men’s violence against women.” Here, you have a very long preamble. I should just say to people, I’m taking this out of context, but I love this particular quote. But men who attack women don’t simply rely on cultural codes of behavior to avoid confronting women’s physical force directly. Instead, men who attack, women manage their crimes, socially and physically, to shield their own physical limitations.
Brenda: They render their targets vulnerable by manipulating circumstances, choosing as victims, those who are very young, very old, disabled, exhausted, sick, drunk, unconscious, or in a situation of emotional, institutional, or financial dependence. Men who attack women reduce the risk of exposing themselves to a woman’s power by how they initiate violence. I thought that was just a fascinating way to think about it. I don’t know, do you have anything you want to say about that particular part of the book?
Janet: Sure. Yeah, I’d be glad to. I mean, I think you’re right, in saying that, I don’t separate gender out as a term of analysis and instead, gender kind of runs through and kind of asserts itself at particular points in the process. I think one of the things as a woman doing martial arts that I continually come up against is, this question of like do you do this for self-defense? My initial position was kind of defensive in relation to that. Why can’t I just do this for fun? Men do martial arts for fun, I can, but then, as I sort of delve more into these questions, I was like, Okay, well, what people are responding to is a very complex set of social circumstances in which men’s violence against women is a tool of social control.
It’s one that is both invisibilized and sensationalized. It’s a very complex set of circumstances and then alongside training in martial arts, I began training as an empowerment self-defense instructor and empowerment self-defense is quite different from martial arts, because it’s not a sport, and it’s not oriented towards an aesthetic. Instead, it looks at violence as a tool of social control, and looks at self-defense as a social justice intervention. It also unlike a lot of martial arts, really looks at the context in which violence occurs, and look at the conditions at a person is likely to be if they aren’t facing violence. One of the things I realized through that training, is specifically through my training with impact to self-defense, was something I had kind of known all along, but hadn’t been able to put my finger on, which is that we get really strange messages in society, about women and men’s violence.
Specifically, there’s a lot of essentialist ideas that men attack women, because women are inherently vulnerable, and men are inherently invulnerable and that men attack women, because women are presumably weaker, and women are presumably weaker because women are statistically smaller. These are a bunch of really weird conflations, because it’s not only large men are running around attacking small women, it’s not that we’re inherently weak, I mean, there’s so many weird conflations that happen there, but then the thing that really drives me crazy, in that discourse is that when you look at the actual ways … If you look at how men’s violence against women has been researched, which it has, and it’s been very well documented that it’s incredibly rare for a man to attack a woman by going face to face, toe to toe and standing off against her.
People often talk about that and they say, Oh, well, that’s because, if a man’s looking for a fight, he’s going to start a fight with a man and that’s typically true. What it doesn’t really acknowledge is that, that’s because these men are on some level really afraid of women’s power, they’re not exposing themselves. I’m talking about that at a very basic level of biomechanics as you read from the quote, that it’s often women who are compromised in some way and that’s always used to victim blame. But it’s never used where somebody steps back from it goes like, Yeah, why? Why are those men who were targeting women always targeting women who are in some way compromise.
It’s not that woman’s fault for being tired or drunk. Then if you look at also the mechanics of men who attack women sneak up behind them, or come from their side, so they’re not facing the weapons that the woman has on her body, is not facing her palms, her knees, her elbows, and that to me, that really needs to be acknowledged in this conversation, both so that we don’t continue to disempower women. We acknowledge how incredibly cowardly men’s violence against women is.
Brenda: I just love that point. I love that whole section of the book. I mean, it was just so powerful because it’s really complicated, because you cannot deny that women are disproportionally victimized by men and yet, there’s a way in which we talk about that assumes the victim has to do with some inherent physical weakness. It’s just a very important point, I think, to kind of meditate on and then to put it into practice in the way that we write about women and write about women in sport in particular, is really important. It cause me to think, how have I written about violence against women in sport, let me rethink again. I just don’t think that point can be made enough. Anyway, it was just fascinating for me with Janet O’Shea. Thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down.
Janet: Thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Jessica: Okay. Basketball time. Lindsay, please start us off.
Lindsay: Yes, it is finally NCAA women’s basketball time. I’m so excited. Of course, we left off last year and with Notre Dame winning and beating UConn to final second shots game clinchers Arike Ogunbowale our hero. It’s very fitting that this season starts with Notre Dame as the number one team in the rankings. It’s very weird not to see Uconn at that top spot, but it’s pretty exciting. And look, I think Notre Dame deserves it. You know Ogunbowale is back. She’s got Marina Mabrey just the shepherd. Brianna Turner is back. We’ve got Jackie Young this team is low dead and I’m really excited to see if they can, defend their crown. Additionally, UConn is just right there at number two. Of course Gabby Williams is key and Azura Stevens or as we like to call it – Shireen’s Best Friends — are all in the WNBA now.
Jessica: She going to love you for that.
Lindsay: I know I feel like I got to make up some ground with Shireen. I’ve been pretty hard on her lately. So I’m trying to …
Jessica: That will do it.
Lindsay: So, we get to see this year though, Katie Lou Samuelson really take over in Napheesa Collier, Crystal Dangerfield. I mean, UConn is never low on talent and this year is certainly no different. They’ve now been two straight years without winning the national title which is a drought for them. It’s going to be real it is. I mean, I’m laughing cause that’s so absurd to say but it’s completely true. Rounding out the top 10, this is the preseason rankings. because we are not yet one weekend to the season but we’ve got Oregon at number three, Baylor at number four, Louisville at number five, Mississippi State at number six, Stanford at number seven, Oregon State at eight, Maryland at nine and South Carolina at ten and even though I was just going to the top 10 I feel like I do have to mention because this is women’s basketball Tennessee is at number 11.
I think that gives you a pretty good sense of where all of the big names lie. Personally, I felt like the season really kicked off on Saturday night which is last night for us while we’re recording this with Oregon barely surviving a game against Syracuse. It was of course Sabrina Ionescu who leading the way and she’s going to be Player of the Year. I don’t know her … There’s going to be so many great candidates or player the year. I do have to mention that one of the most exciting things for me, this basketball season is that we have Destiny Slocum back in action. She’s in Oregon State.
This is the point guard who really really stole the show her freshman season at Maryland. This was two years ago. Then she decided to transfer to Oregon State so she had to sit out a year, but she is back, I’m very depressed that she’s on the West Coast because that is not good for my bedtime. But I’m just so excited to have her back. She is one of those players that to me it just makes the sport even more fun than it already is. I can’t wait. What about you guys?
Jessica: Erica
Erica: Yeah, Lindsay hit on so much. I’ll start with Oregon State, OSU and Destiny Slocum edging out her former team the Terrapins in the standings. We’ll see their eight and nine. I did want to go back though to the AP Poll and there were some things that surprised me personally. I thought that Mississippi State was a little lower than I expected considering that for two years in a row they made it to the final. I mean every team you’ve got players that either transfer out or graduate but I think Mississippi State is a team that we should still be keeping our eye out on. You mentioned that Tennessee is at 11 actually tied with Texas. Texas is trying to make a comeback in a big way excited to see what they will do there. Also South Carolina won a championship and then have kind of a lot of people at least at the national level seem to have flown under the radar.
Dawn Staley of course the head coach there is also the head coach of the USA Basketball team. As far as Player of the Year. I think Arike Ogunbowale. You got to have her on that radar. You mentioned Sabrina Ionescu is able to get the Ducks that win over CUs just the last night but I really think people should be watching out for Katie Lou at Uconn. I don’t think that Uconn will have as much bite as they have in the last several years.
I think they have some transitioning to do but someone who I do not doubt for one second is Katie Lou Samuelson, you want to talk about Michael Jordan flu game. I mean, she’s had one of those herself, throwing up on the sideline and then just dropping buckets. I think she’s got a nice little edge and I think of all Uconn players, there’s kind of UConn move that we’re used to in the modern era, the last several years I’d say the last five or so years. I think she’s got more bite than any player coming out of UConn. I think that she can kind of do that consistently. I think it’s a bold prediction, but I don’t know. Watch out for Katie Lou.
Jessica: Do you guys do you see Uconn doing it again? Taking it in the end or do you think that Notre Dame can really put up a fight this year and possibly repeat. What are you thinking when you look long term down the season?
Erica: I think that I don’t see UConn winning the title. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but I don’t see UConn as the number two team right now in the country. I think that there again there’s some other teams that have gained a lot of ground and have done a lot of really good things for their program in the last two years in particular where I think that the conversation with UConn really comes from their conference. There’s a lot of conversation at the national level whether the AAC the conference that they’re in now really prepares them for the national stage as compared to a South Carolina who’s in the ACC as compared to an order Notre Dame or Oregon in the PAC 12. I don’t know, I’m not giving them the edge. I think Notre Dame will be in the mix but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a new champ.
Jessica: That’s exciting and I look forward to all of the hot takes about all the good that Uconn has done for women’s basketball that we know are coming. Lindsay, what are you thinking?
Lindsay: Yeah, I just want to give a shout out to, I’d mentioned Destiny is one of my favorite players to watch but also at Mississippi State. Let’s see Teaira McCowan just take over.
Jessica: Yes. Eyebrows.
Lindsay: I think we all remember eyebrows from last year. This year now, this is really her world, her team and I’m just so excited to see them of course. They’ve lost heart breakers in the finals this past two years, they keep getting to that doorstep. Could this be the year that they finally put it all together and win the title? What do you think about Mississippi State’s team? Erica?
Erica: Yeah, again, I think that they were ranked a little bit lower than I would have had them. I think that, folks need to put a little respect on their name in what they’ve been able to do. They were an underdog two years ago, made it all the way to the final. They get there again, and if not, for that buzzer beater that we talked about earlier, might have gotten away with one there or one straight out but I agree. I think Mississippi State really has some things to add particularly with McCowan and having a versatile big is women’s basketball right now.
Jessica: That’s a great point. Lindsay.
Lindsay: Yeah, I just want to say that I’m excited that the big 10 looks like it’s going to be better than it has been in recent years this season. I’m excited for that because I live 30 minutes away from the University of Maryland. I can easily get to those games, it’s been a little sad the past few years when there hadn’t been as many marquee games coming to town. I’m really excited to see especially I mean, you’ve got Minnesota you can’t forget, Coach Whalen.
Erica: That’s right, the Whalen era.
Lindsay: That’s right. There in the house. It’s going to be interesting to see what she does. I think they’re just so many fun storylines. I do think that there is more parity than ever, at the top of the game. I mean, look we haven’t really talked about South Carolina here on Dawn Staley. There’s so many fun things, and I think it’s going to be really great season.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment. We like to call it The Burn Pile, where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week and set them a flame. I’m going to go first since I get to set the order.
10 episodes ago on episode 70, we discussed the policing of girls and women’s clothing and sports and Amira specifically said, “The fear of a sports bra is something that lingers very high in my mind.” And talked about her high school cross country team saying, We all took our shirts off and when we’re running in a sports bra, because it was hot as hell and there was all of this uproar over it.” Well, as always, Amira was right and the fear of the sports bra on cross country runners lingers.
This week, Gina Capone a student and a former Rowan University cross country runner wrote an article on Odyssey, which is a self-publishing platform about how the university recently banned the team from running only in sports bras. Let me just quote Capone here. This is kind of a long quote, “Women running around the track in sports bras at their own practice were claimed to be distracting to the football players on the field during the same time. As if the women no longer being able to run in sports bras wasn’t enough. Now they’re no longer allowed to run on the track period. The girls are now mandated to run on the local high school track on workout days. In 2015, Rowan University officially finished their $4.6 million athletic practice facility.” This is a D3 school, by the way guys.
“The practice facility includes two fields for football, soccer, field hockey and lacrosse athletes. There’s a dedicated practice area for each team. The men and women cross country teams have their track, they no longer have that privilege.” According to the New York Times, a university officials said the track ban was the athletic department merely enforcing a long standing policy that only one team can use the facility at a time and the president of the university claims the school has a long standing, verbal protocol that all athletes must wear shirts even during practices.
Sure, sure. As of history, and lots of girls and women’s experiences over decades, so on and explained this better than any school administrator could. For all the schools blustering and response to the uproar the president did also say that a new written policy would explicitly allow female athletes to wear sports bra tops without shirts during practice. That PR thing tends to work, it seems. But as the New York Times piece points out with its kicker, “Hannah Vendetta, a second-year transfer student in cross country at Rowan, said she appreciated the statement which was posted online less than 24 hours after Capone’s article was published.” “But there’s still an issue at hand,” Vendetta said. It’s the fact that we aren’t able to practice on the track.” Burn all of that.
Everyone: Burn.
Jessica: All right, Brenda, what’s on your burn pile?
Brenda: Jim Jordan.
Jessica: He lives there.
Brenda: One of the people to be reelected this week was Ohio representative Jim Jordan. I guess I don’t want to burn him literally but I want to burn the fact. I’m on the fence there. But I actually don’t. I’m really not a violent person, usually but I would like to burn his ability to bury his involvement in the sex abuse cases at Ohio State. Jordan was for people that I don’t remember Assistant Wrestling Coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994. And seven former wrestlers back in the summer accused Jordan specifically of being among the university members who ignored the sexual abuse of team Dr. Richard Strauss. Strauss died in 2005. During this campaign for whatever reason, Jim Jordan, it’s just like he’s Teflon.
It just bounces off of him, despite the fact that these wrestlers, many of them have come forward and discussed his knowledge, and his communicating with them about Dr. Strauss, Sir Richard Strauss. I don’t even like calling him a doctor and his abuse of these young men. I would like to burn the fact that he gets around that and that somehow I just feel that they should be something that he’s forced to reckon with after a Michigan State after we’ve seen these horrific cases to elect someone to public office without him fully having answered these charges, seems ridiculous to me. I want to burn his bearing of this.
Everyone: Burn.
Jessica: Erica, what are you torching this week?
Erica: All right. Well, I’m going to stick to politics here and head down to Mississippi. And there was … Yeah, yeah, so …
Jessica: How all good burn piles start.
Erica: Well, no lie detected. Anyway, so there was an image that I saw on Twitter of a man wearing a white shirt and it read Mississippi justice. Okay, sure. I don’t know what that means. But until you see the images also on the shirt of the good old confederate flag in a news and so on. Yes, so this was a man that was voting on November 6. I haven’t been able to follow this up. Someone had reported that maybe he was even working at the polling station, but anyway, wearing a white shirt, Mississippi justice with a confederate flag in the news. Clinton’s Hicklin has since been fired from his job for wearing the shirt, his employer released a statement. But wait, there’s more. So Hicklin was also fired from his previous job as a police officer. So good old law enforcement.
He was fired for being found in his vehicle with a 17-year old teenager in a parking lot with open containers of alcohol. I don’t even know where to begin with the outrage here. This is 2018 and this is what people wear to the polls. And I just want to take this time to, just the conversations that we have around voting and the danger that voting has been historically to people of color to women. That is still a thing not only here in the United States, but across the world. And so I am burning this with every fiber of my being.
Everyone: Burn.
Jessica: Lindsay, what are you burning this week?
Lindsay: You guys are going to be surprised: USA Gymnastics. I know. I know. I know. Calm down, calm down. Deep breaths everyone. I like to keep you on your toes. So this week, it’s been a big week in the world of USA Gymnastics. On Monday, last Monday, the US Olympic Committee announced that it was going to take steps to decertify USA Gymnastics, which is something that we along with a lot of Nassar survivors, along with anyone with a brain has been calling for quite some time. So that’s good news. Of course, the big question is why now? Well, we might have gotten a clue thanks to a New York Times report later in the week.
It seems that last week a bunch of documents just appeared at us the USA Gymnastics headquarters in Indianapolis. These are documents that people are saying might have come from the Karoyli Ranch and might possibly pertain to Larry Nassar. These are documents that people have been publicly searching for, for two years now maybe three years now. These are documents that have been discussed in under oath in Congress these are documents that because they are missing partially led to the arrest of Steve Penny former USA Gymnastics president we talked about that a few episodes ago. These are documents that have been central to this investigation. Well here’s what happened they just literally just showed up at USA Gymnastics.
USA Gymnastics was just like, “Oh, we have them.” So here’s what I love. Okay, so this is from the New York Times article it says, according to the Gymnastic Federation statement, someone at the organization read news reports late last month that the prosecutors in Texas were still looking for documents with Nassar’s name on them and realized that USA Gymnastics might have that paperwork. You guys this is unbelievable. A lot of us who’ve been covering this USA Gymnastics stuff. You waver back and forth between how much of this is pure evil, and how much of this is pure incompetence. And the truth is, it’s a whole lot of both. And this is throw one probably on the either on the incompetence or the evil side. I think there’s probably both here, but it’s just absurd. And apparently this is one of the things that led the US Olympic Committee to be like, “Yeah, we have to step in, and we have to step in now.” Of course, it would have been nice if the sexual abuse of hundreds of girls had been the impetus. But you know, missing documents showing up works too. Burn.
Everyone: Burn.
Jessica: After all that burning. It’s time to celebrate some remarkable women in sports this week with our Bad Ass woman of the week segment. First, our honorable mentions.
Kayla Morris, a San Francisco 49ers cheerleader who knelt during the national anthem on Thursday, November 1 when the 49ers hosted the Raiders. She’s believed to be the first NFL cheerleader to kneel during the anthem.
Mary Keitany who won the New York City Marathon last weekend by more than three minutes ahead of her closest competitor and a time of two hours, 22 minutes 48 seconds. It was her fourth victory at New York and the second fastest race any woman has run on that course.
Hannah Gavios who finished the New York City Marathon in 11 hours on hand crutches, two years after fracturing her spine. After falling 150 feet as she attempted to escape from an attacker. She spent hours waiting for rescue during which her attacker found her and groped her. Gavios used her participation in the marathon to raise money for Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to fund spinal cord injury research and she completed the race alongside Amanda Sullivan who had finished in 2017 New York City Marathon on crutches and is Gavios’ hero.
Bilqis Abdul Qaadir, a former guest on the show whose film life without basketball, which chronicles the story of how this Muslim African American Basketball Player was not allowed to play beyond college because she chose to wear a headscarf and so was banned by FIBA premiered at doc NYC this weekend. Our Shireen Ahmed wrote about the film for the Shadow League and we’ll link to that piece in the show notes at our website.
Jamie Sloan, a 34-year old active duty Air Force airman who set a personal record at an Ironman 70.3 last month after giving birth seven months before. We want to shout her out because while that’s awesome. She did this by like fucking pumping breast milk while she was running in the Iron man which is just wow.
Congratulations to the US Women’s Hockey Team for winning the Four Nations Cup which was played this week between the women’s hockey teams from Finland, Sweden, Canada and the United States.
The women of Open Stadiums who in their continued fights remove the ban on women attending football matches and Iran went to FIFA headquarters this week, handed over more than 200,000 signed petitions and met with FIFA Secretary General.
And a drumroll please.
Sure. Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland. The first two Native Americans ever elected to Congress are badass women of the week David’s was elected to Kansas third congressional district. She’s a 38 year old democrat lawyer and former MMA fighter, she unseat incumbent GOP representative Kevin Yoder, who served four terms in Congress She is a member of the Whole Chunk nation and is the first openly LGBT person to represent the state of Kansas. And then New Mexico’s Deb Haaland. She is a marathon runner She also won on Tuesday in New Mexico’s first district She’s a member of the Laguna Pueblo nation she’s also a lawyer while she was chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico for two years the New Mexico democrats regain control the New Mexico House of Representatives and now they both are going to serve in Congress. Congratulations we are so thrilled that you all will be helping shape laws and policies in the United States.
Okay. What is good you all? Brenda, what’s good with you?
Brenda: Messi getting well. I really I have been waiting for so long for him … I mean he’s always imported to his credit he’s always supported the grandmothers of the disappeared during the dirty war and actually when he does those ads like their traffic on their website goes up by something like two million views so they always think him and credit him with helping to find the missing grip they’re missing grandchildren but finally he actually tweeted out a message of support … No. He didn’t tweet because he’s done with that. But he Instagramed a message of support for the Argentine women’s national team and so because I love his soccer so much I’m just really happy to see him finally doing something to be a good ally so that’s what’s been good in my week.
Jessica: Lindsay, what’s good with you?
Lindsay: Something…I actually wrote it down this week everyone who always yells at me for not being able to remember him that’s good I wrote it down last week and it is Ariana Grande on social media. First of all Thank U, Next is the jam. It is a very good. So I am really enjoying it and honestly we might need to talk to you about you know, some burn it all down loaning it to burn it all down a little bit. But I also loved this tweet earlier in the week I’ve been thinking about a lot so someone tweeted Ariana Grande is like one song away from making girls never talk to guys ever again and Ariana Grande quote tweeted this and wrote “Thank God.” And so if that’s not a that’s not a burn it all down mood, I don’t know what is.
Jessica: Oh, man. Erica, what is good with you?
Erica: Yeah, well, I am here in Toronto. So that’s pretty good. I my first trip to Canada. Sadly I missed Shireen, so that that’s not so good. But I am here covering the Hockey Hall of Fame. So congrats to Jayna Hefford, the CWHL Commissioner, as well as Willie O’Reed, the first black player in the National Hockey League, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally enters the Hockey Hall of Fame. I’m slightly salty that he entered with Gary Bettman, but maybe that’s just me. I don’t think it is just me. So that’s what’s good here. I was able to speak to both of them. Will O’Reed told me this amazing story about the first time he met Jackie Robinson when he was like 12 years old. And then when he met him again, and Jackie was like, “Hey, didn’t meet you in New York?” And I just love that story. When my worlds collide, my heart melted. It was amazing.
Jessica: That sounds so cool. Are you going to write about it somewhere?
Erica: Yes. So I did write a piece over at victory press and I’m working on getting the O’Reed story out as well.
Jessica: Awesome. Great. I can’t wait to read it.
Okay, so my what’s good is that I’ve been watching a lot of really amazing women on TV shows and that’s very nice right now. I did, we did watch Sharp Objects which Amy Adams is spectacular in. I will say it’s super heavy. And you can’t like binge watch it, and you might not want to watch it at all. Like, it is a rough story. But the acting is just beautiful. And then last night, Aaron and I finished watching Forever, which is this amazon prime show with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, but really, it’s Maya Rudolph show. And she is so good. And I don’t understand why Maya Rudolph is not literally in everything all the time. Because she’s also this phenomenal judge on The Good Place which is one of the best shows on TV. So that’s what’s been good in my world.
That’s it for this week’s episode. Thank you to Erica, a yellow for joining us this week. You can find her on Twitter at E Lindsay, with an A, 08. Go follow her right now. And thank you all for joining us.
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