This was somewhat painful to listen to (not because of Sarah and Beth), but memory really is fuzzy and unreliable, so I am grateful for the retrospective
I can’t recall if I started listening in late 2015 or early 2016, but I’ve barely missed an episode since then.
My boyfriend (now husband) listened to Joe Rogan and was early to the podcast scene, so I listened to an occasional Rogan episode when he had an interesting guest (that’s fewer and father between these days). I wish I could remember how I found PP, because I’m pretty sure it’s not Rogan 😂. Did y’all do anything with Gretchen Rubin and the Happier podcast in the early days? That was another podcast I started listening to very early because I loved all of Gretchen’s books. I’m a Questioner. IYKYK 😂
I started listening occasionally in 2015, and after the election of 2016 I have never missed an episode. Like you my life has changed dramatically. In 9 years I lost 80lbs, ended a very long relationship, met, dated got engaged and married my husband. I went back to school have had great and awful jobs ending now with the best one. We are going to buy a house this year and start trying to have a baby’s this fall. I was heartbroken over and over again by how much people hated each other because of cultural differences and political differences.
I’m only a few minutes in, but I remember that photo of the child lying on the beach like it was yesterday. The confusing response of some of my fellow Christians to immigration out of situations like Syria that year was kind of the moment where I started saying “wait a minute.” And exploring politics and my faith more deeply.
The Obergefell ruling happened ON my 30th birthday. I remember it so well…not sure what goodies our current Supreme Court might deliver as I head into the next decade of my life but one thing is for sure - my life is better with this community to help process it all!! 🥰
I have had so many questions about Caitlyn Jenner lately… it feels bananas to see her as a huge Trump/Musk supporter when Trump is putting out anti-trans executive orders and it just doesn’t make any sense.
In 2015 I was 23 and just starting to deconstruct what I had been taught about LGBT and become an ally (because of Jen Hatmaker!). But I was just talking to my husband the other night about my struggles with going from “love is love” to “LGBTQQIAAPPO2S”. A lot has changed in 10 years and I don’t always know what to do with it.
I'm so glad you are doing these flashback episodes! I didn't start listening until 2021, so hearing these is like looking at old photos or hearing childhood stories about a friend that you didn't meet until adulthood. ❤️
Awwwww....I'm so flattered you chose my message! It's all sooooooo true! I wish I could make it to Cincinnati in person, but I'll be there online to celebrate. 🎉
I really love that you mentioned Obergefell and "love is love" in this conversation because Sarah is exactly right: the promise of the LGB movement WAS to have equal constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage was the center hallmark of that movement BECAUSE the lack of legal access to a same-sex partner has been so devastating over the years--times 1000 during the AIDS crisis that so many are too young to remember--and it also a real hindrance to economic stability for many members of the community.
It's an astute observation of the transgender backlash via sports. I, too, downplay the importance of sports--and its gendered spaces--daily and I grew up swimming in the waters of it. (I come from a family of athletes.) But the U.S. HAS NOT COME TO TERMS WITH GENDER IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. If we cannot reach consensus on the rights of women, we will not reach consensus on the rights of anyone who is not a man born a man.
Now, do I think we're NEVER going to reach consensus? Of course not. But I do think it's going to get worse before it gets better and that's because of anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-education, lack of attention span, lack of critical thinking skills, lack of media literacy, lack of understanding that words and concepts have multiple meanings, lack of civic education, etc. Basically the same things that are preventing us from diving in and having hard conversations about a hundred things, which is why we are all here right now. (I assume.)
I have a memory from 2015 of being at a strawberry farm and hearing a couple teenage workers talking about Donald Trump and thinking, this is really silly and isn’t going anywhere. Sigh….
I give my husband a hard time occasionally because I remember multiple times saying to him, "I'm getting really worried about Donald Trump. It seems like he's gaining traction." And would always say how I didn't need to worry because there was no way he was going to win ANYTHING...
Love this work, it’s interesting even (especially?) as a listener who was not on board from the beginning. Imagine our political landscape if the media at large reflected like this and it broke through to voters.
Wow… I had forgotten about San Bernardino. That’s so emotional for me because both my dad and my best friend’s mom were supposed to be in the building that day but were not. Feeling very grateful that I was able to forget.
I've worked in higher ed off and on for a long time, and of course was a student at two different universities, and it seems like criticism bubbles up at pretty consistent intervals. It's like every so often, someone remembers campuses exist and they decide they don't like what's happening there. Even staunch supporters don't always understand why we do what we do, nor do the students who are looking to administration for support and not always finding what they want.
re: Halloween...I like to think of that period of time as an onboarding exercise, even if it was an imperfect one. If you are someone inside a community or inside an activist space--or on a campus, as Beth pointed out--there are ongoing conversations about all sorts of things that outsiders simply aren't privy to and often have no context for. For example, if I ask someone outside the LGBTQ+ community not to use "queer" as a blanket term, to me that's a low bar for allyship. To someone outside who can't or doesn't understand the nuance of using that word and when it's okay and not okay, they may see it as an attack because they've been using it in good faith.
If someone is new to the conversation around anti-racism, to include cultural appropriation, they may not see the connection or nuance surrounding a Halloween costume or use of certain words, etc. [To be clear: I personally have concerns with the conversations regarding cultural appropriation, but in terms of finding even MORE nuance, not less.] When you project these more "advanced" topics out into the wider world among people who could care less about any of it and have no interest in being told anything they do could potentially be harmful to someone else, you're just throwing a match onto gasoline. The cultural appropriation protests just happened to coincide with the groundswell of white and Christian nationalism finally finding a public foothold after being underground for a long time.
This is so true, Norma! I was a grad student at IUPUI (now IU-Indy) working with fraternities and sororities in 2015 and we actually did quite a bit of programming about party themes and Halloween costumes, primarily because we had seen some shit (the worst example was a Kappa Delta “homeless” party that had happened 2 years earlier in Bloomington: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/sorority-homeless-theme-party/2107723/). 2015 was also the year an Oklahoma fraternity sang a song about lynching on a bus to formal (https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/us/oklahoma-fraternity-chant?cid=ios_app). I then joined a sorority HQ as staff member and we were trying to eradicate the vestiges of an old philanthropy event that involved mustaches and sombreros (*cringe*). So there was a lot of very good faith conversation happening with our students in predominantly and historically white orgs, but I think this is such an astute observation that when the public catches wind of something without having been involved in the convo from the beginning, the match in gasoline metaphor definitely resonates with me as something worth continuing to dissect as we move forward 10 years later.
This was somewhat painful to listen to (not because of Sarah and Beth), but memory really is fuzzy and unreliable, so I am grateful for the retrospective
I can’t recall if I started listening in late 2015 or early 2016, but I’ve barely missed an episode since then.
My boyfriend (now husband) listened to Joe Rogan and was early to the podcast scene, so I listened to an occasional Rogan episode when he had an interesting guest (that’s fewer and father between these days). I wish I could remember how I found PP, because I’m pretty sure it’s not Rogan 😂. Did y’all do anything with Gretchen Rubin and the Happier podcast in the early days? That was another podcast I started listening to very early because I loved all of Gretchen’s books. I’m a Questioner. IYKYK 😂
I just got home from vacation so listening late, but I wanted to pop on here to tell you how much I loved this episode.
I started listening occasionally in 2015, and after the election of 2016 I have never missed an episode. Like you my life has changed dramatically. In 9 years I lost 80lbs, ended a very long relationship, met, dated got engaged and married my husband. I went back to school have had great and awful jobs ending now with the best one. We are going to buy a house this year and start trying to have a baby’s this fall. I was heartbroken over and over again by how much people hated each other because of cultural differences and political differences.
PP team, how are you keeping records differently now that we know you’ll be doing these reflection episodes in another ten years???
I’m only a few minutes in, but I remember that photo of the child lying on the beach like it was yesterday. The confusing response of some of my fellow Christians to immigration out of situations like Syria that year was kind of the moment where I started saying “wait a minute.” And exploring politics and my faith more deeply.
The Obergefell ruling happened ON my 30th birthday. I remember it so well…not sure what goodies our current Supreme Court might deliver as I head into the next decade of my life but one thing is for sure - my life is better with this community to help process it all!! 🥰
I have had so many questions about Caitlyn Jenner lately… it feels bananas to see her as a huge Trump/Musk supporter when Trump is putting out anti-trans executive orders and it just doesn’t make any sense.
In 2015 I was 23 and just starting to deconstruct what I had been taught about LGBT and become an ally (because of Jen Hatmaker!). But I was just talking to my husband the other night about my struggles with going from “love is love” to “LGBTQQIAAPPO2S”. A lot has changed in 10 years and I don’t always know what to do with it.
I love that you're doing these!
I'm so glad you are doing these flashback episodes! I didn't start listening until 2021, so hearing these is like looking at old photos or hearing childhood stories about a friend that you didn't meet until adulthood. ❤️
Awwwww....I'm so flattered you chose my message! It's all sooooooo true! I wish I could make it to Cincinnati in person, but I'll be there online to celebrate. 🎉
I really love that you mentioned Obergefell and "love is love" in this conversation because Sarah is exactly right: the promise of the LGB movement WAS to have equal constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage was the center hallmark of that movement BECAUSE the lack of legal access to a same-sex partner has been so devastating over the years--times 1000 during the AIDS crisis that so many are too young to remember--and it also a real hindrance to economic stability for many members of the community.
It's an astute observation of the transgender backlash via sports. I, too, downplay the importance of sports--and its gendered spaces--daily and I grew up swimming in the waters of it. (I come from a family of athletes.) But the U.S. HAS NOT COME TO TERMS WITH GENDER IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. If we cannot reach consensus on the rights of women, we will not reach consensus on the rights of anyone who is not a man born a man.
Now, do I think we're NEVER going to reach consensus? Of course not. But I do think it's going to get worse before it gets better and that's because of anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-education, lack of attention span, lack of critical thinking skills, lack of media literacy, lack of understanding that words and concepts have multiple meanings, lack of civic education, etc. Basically the same things that are preventing us from diving in and having hard conversations about a hundred things, which is why we are all here right now. (I assume.)
I have a memory from 2015 of being at a strawberry farm and hearing a couple teenage workers talking about Donald Trump and thinking, this is really silly and isn’t going anywhere. Sigh….
I give my husband a hard time occasionally because I remember multiple times saying to him, "I'm getting really worried about Donald Trump. It seems like he's gaining traction." And would always say how I didn't need to worry because there was no way he was going to win ANYTHING...
Love this work, it’s interesting even (especially?) as a listener who was not on board from the beginning. Imagine our political landscape if the media at large reflected like this and it broke through to voters.
Wow… I had forgotten about San Bernardino. That’s so emotional for me because both my dad and my best friend’s mom were supposed to be in the building that day but were not. Feeling very grateful that I was able to forget.
I've worked in higher ed off and on for a long time, and of course was a student at two different universities, and it seems like criticism bubbles up at pretty consistent intervals. It's like every so often, someone remembers campuses exist and they decide they don't like what's happening there. Even staunch supporters don't always understand why we do what we do, nor do the students who are looking to administration for support and not always finding what they want.
re: Halloween...I like to think of that period of time as an onboarding exercise, even if it was an imperfect one. If you are someone inside a community or inside an activist space--or on a campus, as Beth pointed out--there are ongoing conversations about all sorts of things that outsiders simply aren't privy to and often have no context for. For example, if I ask someone outside the LGBTQ+ community not to use "queer" as a blanket term, to me that's a low bar for allyship. To someone outside who can't or doesn't understand the nuance of using that word and when it's okay and not okay, they may see it as an attack because they've been using it in good faith.
If someone is new to the conversation around anti-racism, to include cultural appropriation, they may not see the connection or nuance surrounding a Halloween costume or use of certain words, etc. [To be clear: I personally have concerns with the conversations regarding cultural appropriation, but in terms of finding even MORE nuance, not less.] When you project these more "advanced" topics out into the wider world among people who could care less about any of it and have no interest in being told anything they do could potentially be harmful to someone else, you're just throwing a match onto gasoline. The cultural appropriation protests just happened to coincide with the groundswell of white and Christian nationalism finally finding a public foothold after being underground for a long time.
This is so true, Norma! I was a grad student at IUPUI (now IU-Indy) working with fraternities and sororities in 2015 and we actually did quite a bit of programming about party themes and Halloween costumes, primarily because we had seen some shit (the worst example was a Kappa Delta “homeless” party that had happened 2 years earlier in Bloomington: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/sorority-homeless-theme-party/2107723/). 2015 was also the year an Oklahoma fraternity sang a song about lynching on a bus to formal (https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/us/oklahoma-fraternity-chant?cid=ios_app). I then joined a sorority HQ as staff member and we were trying to eradicate the vestiges of an old philanthropy event that involved mustaches and sombreros (*cringe*). So there was a lot of very good faith conversation happening with our students in predominantly and historically white orgs, but I think this is such an astute observation that when the public catches wind of something without having been involved in the convo from the beginning, the match in gasoline metaphor definitely resonates with me as something worth continuing to dissect as we move forward 10 years later.