SIO204: Sexual Ethics, and More Listener Questions with Jamie

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 204 and coming at you a little early, it's a bonus episode with Jamie. How's going, Jamie?

0:00:37 Jamie: It's going pretty well. How's it going for you? I'm

0:00:40 Thomas: Great, I am just so excited to catch up on a little email and a little voice messages because I've had a lot and I first just really need to thank people because I went back, once again, I was on a hiatus for a little bit, I went and checked the voicemail, I had a ton, they're really good, there's a lot that I'm not going to be able to get to so I just wanted to tell everybody especially people, you know, left a lot of heartfelt ones.

Um, I just, thank you so much. Really. I listened to those and I, um, I thought about them and, you know, I can't cover everything. I can't play everything obviously, but I wanted to give a firm and hearty, uh, thank you to those who left voice messages and encourage you to keep doing so because we, especially with Jamie here, we've got, uh. More time than ever to take on your questions and it'll be fun if they're also directed to Jamie as well.

So the backlog was kind of more just it didn't really make sense to do with Jamie. So thank you. And with that said, we've got an email that is actually quite old, but I saved it because I knew I wanted to talk about it sometime. And I knew that it also might be good to have a guest on who could lend a better perspective to it. But why don't we take on our first email? What do you think?

0:01:52 Jamie: Ready.

0:01:52 Thomas: Okay. I'm not sure I am, but we'll try. All right. An emailer who I think they... I'm going to be careful. I'll just say this is Michael. I don't want to reveal anything about them because it's a very, I think, open email. "Thomas, I've been wanting to write this email for a while and have put it off perhaps because it is uncomfortable, but I think it may be a useful perspective.

I think this viewpoint may be part of the Me Too discussion that I haven't heard hit on much at all. I strongly suspect that much of the pushback from men is from men who don't want to admit that they did some things they aren't proud of in their past or would rather not admit to having done.

It is easier to say this whole Me Too thing has gone too far than to admit that perhaps some of the behavior in our own past was never acceptable and we fear what accountability would mean. My wife and I are high school sweethearts and for the most part explored all things sexually together. However, I'm more than willing to admit today as a 27-year-old man that I acted in ways that I now recognize were absolutely inappropriate.

Much of my memories around being 16 to 18 revolve around my nonstop quest to have sexual contact, and I know I put pressure on my now wife to do so. Luckily, I am married to that same woman, and we've had open discussions about, you know, hey, in hindsight, it was messed up that I did X or Y, and and we've been able to grow through that. I've been able to say, yes, that was terrible. I'm sorry that I ever thought that was okay, etc. Part of what has made that possible is that my wife is amazing and accepting of me today. And we have grown together as people. Oh, sorry. We've thought those issues through. And have a positive relationship and sex life today. The part that maybe isn't addressed as much in the Me Too discussion reaction is that many men are probably more comfortable saying these women are getting out of hand rather than coming to grips that maybe, just maybe, they are a part of the problem.

I'm lucky in a way that I can speak to the person with whom I acted inappropriately, and I'm more lucky that she's accepting and understanding. But I could easily see another world where my wife and I hadn't gotten married and we were no longer together. I'd still have memories of being too pushy in my pursuit of sex in high school, and it may have been easier to pass the blame rather than to admit I was a part of the problem.

Ultimately, the only way to get past this has been to be humble, for men, myself included, to realize that we weren't perfect then, we aren't perfect now, but we have to admit our mistakes rather than blame others in order to move on as a society. I'd rather admit that I acted inappropriately at times than live with the constant denial and blaming the victim with my actions.

I the end, takeaway for a man who knows he acted inappropriately, it's best to admit to yourself and to those affected that you were wrong, know that you've grown and are a different person now, and move on, not in some bullshit religious I'm forgiven way, but legitimately have grown and aren't the same person who all that I know that was." As long. Thanks, listeners, though, for bearing with me there, because I think it was a really good and important email. So Jamie, what say you? It's

0:04:52 Thomas: A lot there.

0:04:52 Jamie: So I kind of love Michael a little bit for writing this question. I think this is exactly right and a big piece of what's been missing from the Me Too movement. I think about this a lot and apologies because I'm going to butcher this name. But when the comedian Aziz Ansari, and Sorry for how I've butchered the pronunciation of his name, I thought about this a lot when that story broke. And I don't think men generally have a good sense of how much sex or sexually adjacent activities women have participated in that they didn't really want to because they were pressured or because they felt like they had to, that wasn't quite rape or sexual assault, but nonetheless was unwanted sexual activity that they just didn't know how to get out of. And I think this conversation brings up some really important points about just how lacking our sexual discourse is and how desperately it, it needs to be updated. So.

0:05:18 Thomas: Oh, Aziz Ansari. Yeah.

0:06:17 Thomas: Yeah, I agree. I, you know, and it's so funny. I talked about the Aziz Ansari thing. I think I had a guest or two on as well, if I'm remembering right. And when you and I started working together and talking about stuff, I was actually curious to get your opinion on that. That's, I know it's dated. And it's, you know, it's it's a little bit old news. But I also think that those issues aren't going anywhere. And it's not as though the Aziz Ansari thing happened and society all came to one conclusion and was like, we're moving on. Like, that's the thing about these things that keep blowing up is it doesn't really get solved. Like, there's dialogue among certain people. And then among other people, there's this vicious disagreement. And it doesn't feel like does it feel like we learn anything from situations like that as a society, because I'm worried we're not.

0:07:07 Jamie: I'm a little bit more optimistic than that. I think it's happening slowly, but I think we are learning a little bit. But I think what we really need to do is have more open conversations about this. This may be shocking to some of our guests, but women actually do enjoy sex and actually want to have it sometimes. But what's been lacking is a framework for them to be able to articulate that without being shamed as sluts or whores.

And that's really prevented women from being able to manipulate their desires or even that they have them at all without having to struggle to overcome a lot of shame. You know, when, and you think about men talking to their friends about having sex, right? It's high fives and it's locker room talk. But if a woman or, God forbid, a girl does the exact same thing, she's liable to be shamed.

And this is a disparity in our sexual relations that I think grounds a lot of this sort of pushing for sex and this resistance for sex, because that's how both genders have been been told how to kind of approach these dynamics. And it's not really working for any of us.

0:08:33 Thomas: Yeah, the double standards are just absolutely incredible. Like when you when you really start to notice it and look for it the way you can, it's you can find it everywhere. Um, and I wonder, you know, this email resonated with me because I, I really can relate, especially in, in, in that kind of age range where it's, it really did. It really was a question of like, okay, how can, you know, I get sexual things to happen with my girlfriend as much as possible.

Like they're really, as a young boy, like that is kind of what it felt like. Like, I certainly hope I didn't cross any lines, but I also don't know for certain. Like, you know, I'm still friends with someone I was involved with and nothing's ever come up, but like, I don't, maybe it was inappropriate. You know, it's like, it's that same kind of stress where it does feel really scary to think like, oh no, I hope it wasn't inappropriate.

And like, if it was, do I need to do something? Do I need to, you know, like somehow call it out or is it like bygones by now? I don't know. What do you, what do you think?

0:09:41 Jamie: So this is interesting. Not too long ago, I had a conversation with someone that I had been intimate with. This was, you know, a complicated relationship for a lot of reasons. But I had mentioned, you know, early that when we were dating that the way that he had pushed for sex had made me really uncomfortable. In fact, before we had even crossed that line when he had wanted to the first time, he's, you know, much bigger than me.

He had literally kind of lifted me up and thrown me on a couch. And this was very early on. I wasn't ready to do it. And I remember the sense of relief that I felt when in being thrown, my knee came up and hit him in the chin and he ended up biting his tongue and, you know, the whole mood was Thrown off and nothing went further. And years later when I had said to him, you know, that was really forceful and it made me uncomfortable, he got really upset that I was basically accusing him of being a rapist. And, you know, if that was true, then he was a rapist, and, you know, there was no point in having the conversation. And it was clearly false because he was clearly not a rapist.

And it was a real missed opportunity, I thought, on his part to take stock of the way that he was pushing for these things in ways that weren't always warranted and prevented him from seeing that, like, oh, actually, you know, what wasn't ready to cross that line at that time. And it gets to this idea that it, it's difficult for women to articulate both their sexual desires and to say no, because the stakes for women can be really high.

There was a saying once that I saw that I really liked when navigating these sexual dynamics. You know, when men get rejected, they have to worry about being embarrassed. But when you're a woman doing the rejecting, you have to worry about being hurt. And there's a serious power differential there that often goes ignored.

0:10:31 Thomas: Wow.

0:11:45 Thomas: Absolutely. I've seen that quote and it's terrifying to think of because it, yeah, like domestic violence or even just violence of men who are, um, who are like rejected, is an enormous problem, and it must be a really terrifying thing to have to deal with. Like, that's, that especially in the situation you're describing, like, who knows, you know, like how I could imagine a bunch of situations similar to that, if not that very situation, where it's like, do you know that this person isn't just a rapist? Like, are you 100% sure? Like, just that uncertainty, even though, sure, not all men, but like enough men to where, how do you, you know? It must be very terrifying to be in that situation. I can only imagine, imagine.

0:12:30 Jamie: It very much is and especially you know, I have a rather small frame. So most people are bigger than me. And you have to be really careful when you weigh these things. Also, you know, when you're dating and you're a woman, like you want the other person to still like you and you don't want to Be perceived as cold and shrewd. And so there's a lot of gray area in navigating these early dynamics that I don't think men generally tend to have a good sense of, because, because in a large part, they don't have to deal with a lot of the inequities in how we talk or treat men who have sex versus how women who are having sex, as well as they never, I don't want to say never, but they don't have to worry about their safety to the same extent, I Would say, as women do. You. And so, Michael, I'm just so grateful that there's at least one dude in the world being introspective in the aftermath of Me Too and trying to think deeply about how his past behavior may have been inappropriate.

0:12:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:42 Thomas: How did you, because around the, um, around that Aziz Ansari time, and back when I was, you know, able to like still kind of listen to Sam Harris's podcast, the the line from all those types that I think you still see every single time there's an issue like this is, look, we, this is, we need to keep in mind the difference between Bill Cosby and, uh, you know, Weinstein, and just awkward flirting. And like this idea that if there's an article like that written, does it automatically, you know, put Aziz Ansari into the category of rapist? And then all this stuff, how did you, you know, think about those kind of concerns, uh, or even still to this day, how those kinds of complaints.

0:14:30 Jamie: So forgive me. But I think a lot of those complaints are completely full of shit. Obviously, not all sexual transgressions are, you know, Brock Turner behind a dumpster raping a stranger. The problem with those kinds of framings, though, is that it reinforces the idea that that's the only kind of sexual transgression that's worthy of being recognized as sexual transgression. And that's really troubling because that's actually not how most sexual assaults take place. Most people who are sexually assaulted know the person doing it to them.

It just isn't the case that most rapes are, you know, a Ted Bundy sort of climbing into your bedroom window. And they tend to happen in these gray areas. And so when we say what, you know, I still can't pronounce his name, I'm so sorry, Aziz did, doesn't rise to the level.

What we're really doing is helping to obscure all of those uncomfortable cases where women don't really want to have sex, but are doing it because they've been pressured and they don't know how to extradite themselves from those circumstances. And now, of course, what Aziz Ansari had done is not Brock Turner. That's absolutely true. But it's also true that he behaved in ways that the person on the receiving end of them did not want.

And it was precisely because of the way we have these these sexist scripts of how we relate to one another, that he felt totally justified in behaving the way that he did. And that he fell aggrieved afterwards to find out that actually, it wasn't received as an enjoyable experience. So

0:16:35 Thomas: Yeah. How do you, um, you know, it's interesting because with Aziz Ansari, like I was a pretty big fan of him and his show. Um, and then this, this article came out and I was just like, I don't know. I just, it's kind of gross now. Like, I dunno, what do w what is your reaction? I mean, I don't know. Apparently you're not the biggest Aziz Ansari fan in the world since you can't pronounce his name, but But if it's somebody who you were previously a fan of, like, what do you do you think people should, you know, are you are you advocating people like boycott these these someone like Aziz Ansari? Are you is it just an individual decision? How do you thinking about consuming the, you know, creative work of of people like like Aziz Ansari today?

0:17:17 Jamie: This is a question I don't have the answers to. You. I'm not advocating a boycott him. That doesn't seem quite right to me, in part because I think in many ways his behavior is the result of what has been passed down to him as how you, you relate to the opposite sex. And so my concern primarily would be to try to foster a more pro-sex world. And I think this needs to start as early as our sex education, right? I think.

0:17:22 Thomas: Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:17:58 Jamie: Back to when I had sex as a kid, and I think about even the way that it's taught to my current sixth grader. And there are two inevitabilities of sex that we're taught, and it's still primarily done this way, right? And so for boys, the inevitability of sex is climax. It's enjoyment. It's fun. It feels good. And for women, it's you're going to get pregnant. You might get an STD and all of this sort of fire and brimstone.

And I think that's the beginning of the disparity. And I think we need to talk to girls and we need to talk to women about it being okay to enjoy sex and it being okay to like sex and to want to also have an orgasm when you have sex and to have the expectation when you go into a sexual relationship that you're going to enjoy it just as much as the person you're sharing that experience with, irrespective of the parts that are attached to you.

And I think that would go a really long way. I think ultimately, that would be more productive than punishing people who are continuing to behave in ways that society has sort of passed down as saying this is how you ought to behave. Safe.

0:19:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we probably should try to move on to other questions. Um, I also think, and this will, I'm sure, be something that comes up again, but I also think that in my opinion, almost no one involved in these situations, either because they are incompetent or because they're not genuinely sorry, almost nobody gives a good apology. Like, and that's part of, the part of what ruins it for me, like just in, in terms of my opinion on, like, you know, Aziz Ansari's show or something, like just when I'm thinking about it for myself, himself, part of the, like, if he had given a really good heartfelt apology, maybe he had tried to, I don't know, reach out or do something that would signify that he really cared about it, it would have done a lot for me personally, but it just seems like so often these people issue half-assed kind of non-apologies that, and then everyone's really pre-mad when you don't instantly forgive them. That's.

0:20:16 Jamie: Right.

0:20:16 Thomas: Been My experience. But I'm sure that will come up again in the next however many episodes we do together where someone else does something awful and issues a terrible apology and we can discuss it then.

0:20:29 Jamie: You. Know, yeah, real quickly.

0:20:30 Thomas: Go ahead.

0:20:31 Jamie: If. It's all right. And of the things that victims of sexual assault self-report as wanting the most in the aftermath of something like this happening, that to them is just recognition that this has happened to. Them, and so if you find yourself on on the receiving end of one of these conversations, rather than be primarily invested in, you know, maintaining your sense of self as being in the right, invest in actually listening to the person talking to you and learning from this experience. I think too often, you know, we sort of resort into defensiveness when someone tells us that we've wronged them, right? Right? Because nobody wants to think of themselves as a bad actor. Everybody in their own story is the good guy. And sometimes the most morally upstanding thing that you can do is to accept that at least in maybe one part of somebody else's story, you were not the hero. And that had an impact on them.

0:20:31 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:21:37 Thomas: That is a great point. I think we can play a voicemail here that is sort of related to this first email but also is a bridge to another topic which is a follow-up on Al Franken. So I think it'll serve nicely to, uh, to do both those things.

0:21:52 Clip: Hi Thomas, this is Karine from Tucson, and I just wanted to call in and say that I love the show and that Jamie is really impressive and a great addition. I just want to comment on the latest episode that you guys had. I have not read the article that you referenced, but I did listen to an interview with the author of the piece on Al Franken.

And I was wondering if Jamie could elaborate on the parts of the article that she thought were really awful and that seemed to make her very upset. The main takeaway that I had gotten from the Fresh Air interview with the author of the of the article on Al Franken was that Al Franken's accusations stopped at a certain point in time after like an aide pointed out that the inappropriate touching was not something he should be doing. So I guess I would like your take on this.

I, I'm not the type of person who thinks that Me Too has gone too far, um, and I'm all for women being treated equally as men and not having rapists in the office, but there are many or a few things that I have done in the past, not as far as sexual harassment goes, but but certain behaviors that I exhibited as a teenager or things that I wish I hadn't said to people that I wish I could take back.

And I think maybe sometimes the same goes for the way that someone used to behave. And it's just that there isn't really a social mechanism for forgiveness on these fronts right now. And I can see why it can feel kind of threatening to people if they feel as though past behaviors from people who they don't even, you know, who they aren't anymore, are being brought up and used against them. I can see why people would get really upset with this.

So I just, I guess I would really like for you guys to address this subject because it's a complicated issue and I think you guys would have something interesting to say about it. All right. Thank you. Bye.

0:24:02 Thomas: Okay.So thanks so much for that, uh, message. And Jamie, what are your thoughts?

0:24:08 Jamie: Have a couple of thoughts. First, I want to respond to what upset me so much. And there were two things that really stood out to me. First, one of the ways that it seemed to me the author of this piece attempted to invalidate the claims against Al Franken was by appealing to other people that he had not sexually assaulted.

And this seemed to me to be a sort of testimonial injustice, that it couldn't possibly be the case that what Leanne was saying was true, because here are all of these other women who he didn't sexually harass, as though someone couldn't both be good to person A and bad to person B. Um, so that really struck me, um, and it, and it reminded me of the way that Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation for the Supreme Court was able to pull out a list of women to try to discredit Dr. Ford, and so I didn't really care for that.

Um, the other thing that actually made me put this piece down and like physically lift my jaw back up to the rest of my face, um, was when she dismissed her as just being a Fredericks of Hollywood model, and she kept pulling up the fact that not, she wasn't just a model, she was a lingerie model, and there was a line that was more egregious than any other, um, where she had said something along the lines of, you know, given her history as a Fredericks of Hollywood model, maybe she just didn't know what rehearsal was, um, because she wasn't, you know, like a real actor, and I was just struck by this.

I am also not a real actor, um, I have never been on stage in like a reel way, and I know what a rehearsal is just by virtue of being a member of the world and having existed in it for some time and knowing that rehearsals are a thing that actors do.

And I just found it galling the way that she invoked what seemed to me this sexist sort of trope that because she was attractive in this very stereotypical way and leveraged her traditional attractiveness, that this was somehow incompatible with the intelligence required to understand the definition of the word rehearsal. So

0:26:48 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Now that you say that, I kind of remember that, too. So that's what bothered you about the article. As for the rest of the message, what do you think about this, the idea of being able to forgive people? What thoughts did you have on that aspect of the the message? Mm

0:27:08 Jamie: I think this is the piece that as a society, we really need to figure out what that means. And the difficulty here is that's going to be very different depending on the harm that's been done and what the respective victims feel like they need. And I don't think there's going to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this. That's going to be hard to do.

0:27:38 Thomas: Hmm.

0:27:39 Jamie: Start, people need to think seriously about what it means to be forgiven and who that is for. I think we have to be careful when we talk about, you know, the social mechanisms for forgiving, that we're putting that pressure for the right reasons. And I worry that because we haven't done such a good job unpacking all of this and taking stock of the different ways these types of harms impact their victims, that this is just going to be another avenue for what Kate Mann calls empathy, right? And we're going to overly identify and sympathize with the male perpetrators at the expense of their victims. And that the push for forgiveness is going to be for the good of the people who have done the harming, rather than the benefit of the people who have experienced a harm. And so I think rather than ask what the social mechanisms for forgiveness are, we need to talk about, you know, what are the social mechanisms for enabling men to sit with their, their shame? And to say, yeah, I've made these mistakes, I've done this, I'm harmed people, and how to demonstrate growth from that.

0:29:07 Thomas: Yeah, it's interesting. I, because it's sort of along the lines of the apology thing from earlier, where it's like, I guess oftentimes, depending on what you're talking about, the kind of person who would have the wherewithal to issue a very sincere and empathetic apology likely isn't the kind of person who's also serially sexually assaulting people. I mean, it's not impossible, but that maybe is part of it, where to be able to see that you've done something wrong is a reason why that very same person often isn't going to be like a serial sex pest. So maybe it's just that these people who we see are guilty of this stuff are just, they just aren't going be the kind of person who can apologize in a way. I don't know. Maybe that's part of what's going on. Yeah, go ahead.

0:29:58 Jamie: So yeah, no, know, I think that's gonna vary. You know, I'm not holding out hope that Brett Kavanaugh is going to seriously reflect about his history. I'm also not holding out hope for Brock Turner. I think there are a lot of cases, though, in the gray, in between, where perhaps there is some potential. And, you know, maybe these conversations can do some good there. There.

0:30:22 Thomas: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Weinstein isn't gonna say, there's nothing he could say. Um, really, uh, once you get to a certain level, um, the words are kind of meaningless at that point. Um. But yeah. And I also think that, uh, it really depends, as you said, it just depends on the circumstances, depends on the harms.

And it also, I think we have this thing, and maybe it is part of empathy, it probably is, where we see, like, a lot of people around the Franken thing, and especially around around the Kavanaugh thing, as I think we've already mentioned, but this is something I said a million times during that time, he already had a lifetime appointment on a federal bench.

He already was like, if the nine Supreme Court justices are the top nine justices in our country, he was like number 10 or 11. The idea that not allowing him to be in the top nine of people, like in our entire hierarchy of our country, in that job, was like this great insult and this this career death for him, I I think is just ludicrous. Like, he still would have had a lifetime appointment to the bench.

And similarly with Franken, I think that, like, it's a privilege to be a U.S. senator. I mean, it's one thing, it it's kind of the nature of of our media, too, we aren't - we're reading a lot of news stories or seeing a lot of investigations about the manager at the Chevys who has a Me Too problem, and what are we going to do about that person, or what are we going to do about the I, whoever else it is, where this is their job, they make a modest living, it's kind of their livelihood.

We're usually looking at men who are in incredible positions of wealth and privilege, usually. And the idea that Franken, the only acceptable outcome for Al Franken was to still be one of the senators 50 for our country, it just, that's a, there's really high like expectations, I guess

0:32:33 Jamie: Yeah, yeah, no, so forgive me, I'm gonna Kate Mann fangirl a little bit here, but this is exactly what she says in the book, that men who dominate women in this way tend to not only be privileged, but are unusually well insulated from losing that privilege, and that this type of of behavior is consistent with their sense of entitlement and being at the top of the hierarchy. So whether it's Brett Kavanaugh or Al Franken, you're exactly right. I

0:32:37 Thomas: For me. Sure.

0:33:11 Thomas: Yeah. So just to, I guess to, to close off my thoughts on that voicemail and let me know if you have any closing thoughts either. I think you could even have forgiveness that still involves Al Franken stepping down, you know, like you can forgive someone, buddy, and be like, well, you've made amends and maybe resigning is part of making the amends. Now it's hard once he's now gone on the offensive a little bit and kind of taking back some of that stuff, you know, but like if that could be part of forgiveness, I guess what I'm saying, where if it's somebody in a high position and they say, you know what? I did this wrong thing. I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm stepping down. They, they can, you can forgive them, but also they should have stepped down. You know what I mean? Like we, we need to adjust our expectations for what it means. Like, I don't even think it would be right for somebody like Franken to suffer zero consequences other than having to apologize.

0:34:05 Jamie: Completely agree. And one thing that stood out to me and that I kept thinking about when we got, you know, pushback in some of the comments about the Franken episode is that one thing that was just kind of glossed over in that article is that all of the skits that they did and that they discussed in that article are predicated on the idea that women being on the receiving end of unwanted sexual attention is funny and not horrific.

And one of the ways I think Franken could have maybe gotten forgiveness, if that were a thing that he were interested in, is actually sat down and been and introspective, that even if this skit wasn't written for her, which it looks like it wasn't, right, at the end of the day, the whole premise was that women being exposed to unwanted sexual advances is hilarious instead of horrific, and given his connections either through the United States Senate or his work through Saturday Night Live, actually endeavored to elevate women comedians and to put forth a comedy that wasn't predicated on women being violated as though that was funny. That could have been a really meaningful step forward that was just completely ignored.

0:35:35 Thomas: Yeah. I got, I got to push back a little. 'Cause I, I don't think he completely ignored it. I think in his apology, he did make mention that like, okay, clearly in in retrospect, those skits were inappropriate. But for me, it's like I, and let me know if you thought you agreed to this at the time. But let me know if you, if I'm wrong, if it were just that first accusation, like I honestly, I don't think he would have had to necessarily step down.

It's it's all the other ones that the article is ignoring that, you know, are briefly, very briefly mentioning that it seemed to me to be a far more serious problem. Problem. It seems like he could have made amends for those skits when he wasn't a senator at that time. He was an entertainer. He was performing a body thing and it was wrong, but I think he could have moved past maybe.

Whereas there were a ton of accusations, two of which, and you know, it's funny, I doubt since you're not a podcast listener, I'm guessing you didn't catch The Daily with uh with Gillibrand the other the other week, she went on and and it was it was actually great, and I would suggest anybody who, I don't know, maybe, well, I guess even if you agreed or disagreed with our episode, it's worth listening to uh to Gillibrand on The Daily, I think it was from last week sometime, because she did, they did an episode where they were trying to ask her like, oh, do you regret what happened now that you know this article and the New Yorker's come out, and she's like, no, I don't, you know, I don't, because two of the accusations, you know, many of the accusations were recent and two of them were even after he was a senator. So like, no, he should have resigned.

0:37:15 Jamie: So no, you're right, and I agree. And I didn't mean to suggest that That Franken didn't take stock of the nature of the skits themselves and his original apology. I meant the author of the piece didn't really take that seriously. I thought she was kind of hand-wavy with the significance of, you know, how much of the humor was predicated on sexual assault being funny.

0:37:29 Thomas: Oh, OK. OK, gotcha. I see. While we're on the topic, why don't I read? We do have an email to read on this very topic. So maybe I should read that now and we can you can keep going. What do you think? So James sends an email that says, "I have to tell you, I found your most recent episode about Al Franken's resignation to be frustrating to listen to, pretty much for the same reason the original controversy in 2017 was maddening to live through: the near total absence from the national conversation of the importance and agency of Minnesota voters.

Here's where I'm coming from. I've been in Minnesota in all my life. I voted for Franken in 2008 and 2014. I'm also strongly, strongly self-identified feminist, and reaching the age of reason. When Leanne Tweeden's allegations first broke, I was horrified. We should always, in the absence of contrary evidence, take accusers of sexual misconduct at their word, and I believed her story, even though I could not square it with the man I thought Franken to be. Then further accusations surfaced. As one of his constituents, I felt some responsibility to act, but I wasn't sure how. Should I write him a letter?

Should I stop donating to his campaign? Would I withhold my vote in 2020, or maybe support a primary opponent? Should I insist on his resigning immediately? I really felt like I needed more information before I could decide. I needn't have worried. It turned out the decision would be made for me. It would be made in Washington, behind closed doors, by senators who do not represent our state state and probably have never even been here. That kind of irritated me.

When we voted for Franken in 2014, it was for six years, and as the voters, we had some right to expect that he would serve the full term. If it turned out he was a monster, then the decision over whether or not to cut his term short should have rested with us and our own elected representatives. Al Franken was our representative in the Senate, duly elected to serve our interests. It should have been our our choice, not anybody else's.

Let In your episode on Franken, neither you nor your guest said very much at all about the importance of Minnesota voters in this discussion. The one reference I can remember was Jamie saying, rather dismissively, that Minnesotans were no worse off now since Tina Smith is also a Democrat." Side note, I think I also said that, or maybe said that even more than you did, so I don't know that he should, you know, focus in on you for that. Anyway, back to the email.

"I would argue that, unless she's Minnesotan herself, that's not really her call to make. Does she actually think that all candidates are equal as long as they're Democrats? That replacing our senator with a different one is no more significant than changing an oil filter? I agree with much of your conversation, but it seemed to assume that a senator accused of sexual misconduct shouldn't be thought of any differently than any other powerful man.

And not enough respect was paid to the rights of the citizens of a state to choose themselves, uh, for themselves, who represents them. Whew." All right, what do you think?

0:37:50 Jamie: Yeah.

0:40:28 Jamie: So there is a lot going on in that question. Um, know, I, I will say that, um, he, he raises a point that I hadn't really thought of before reading this question, that, um, and he's right, that I really hadn't given, um, much thought to the individual voters in Minnesota and what it was like to be them, um, in the aftermath of this. And I definitely did sort of take it for granted, not being in Minnesota, that it didn't change the makeup of the Senate.

But to be clear, you know, that is not to say that I think all Democrats are equal. In fact, there are many Democrats I think are absolutely worthless and should be primaried, precisely because their votes are not all equal. Um, and so I didn't mean to suggest that. However, I wonder if he would feel the same way about a southern senator accused of egregious racism, if he would be as confident in his assessment that, say, you know, the voters of Texas should get to decide whether or not to replace an egregiously racist senator, rather than push him out of the Senate because Right. And so my question is, you know, if there had been, what if there had been some Democratic senator in, you know, a different state who was revealed to be, you know, a member of the KKK or something, but maybe it was in like a purple state where he was, you know, well-liked and could maybe even win re-election, because this is the nightmare timeline, would it be wrong for Democrats to say, hey, you know what, as a party, we don't stand for this.

And given this historical moment, we feel a moral obligation to say, hey, this is against our values, and we don't think you should belong in the Senate, or should they have refrained from interfering. And I'm not sure that, and I don't know, I'd be interested to see if the person who asked us this question responds.

But I wonder if his intuition would be the same in a case of egregious racism, or even, you know, more moderate racism, if it would be same as it is in the instance of sexual assault.

0:41:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:55 Thomas: I I think I have a great example for you. Uh, remember in way back in the olden times of 2017, uh, about two years ago, roughly June 2017, when a certain, um, would-be member of the House of Representatives body slammed a reporter and then still won office. He is currently sitting in the House of Representatives. He is in good standing, a member of the House of Representatives. Now, should, here's what, here's what I think should have happened, and my point about Franken would be this: part of being a representative or senator is that you work with people, and if we're talking about the Senate, You you work with around roughly 99 other people. And it matters if they don't want to work with you.

Like, if, you know, yes, you can describe it as like, oh, a closed back door, like, thing where these people are undemocratically, but like another way to describe it is the caucus said, "We just, I literally don't want to work with this person." And the way that Kirsten Gillibrand said it was like, "Sure, he didn't, I guess he didn't have to resign, but I also didn't have an obligation to not speak my opinion," was what she said.

Like, "I wasn't going to sit there and not say stuff." Like, "That's my job as a representative of the people." So like, you can look at it from that angle.

And if Greg Gianforte, who once again is still just sitting in, you you know, in the House of Representatives for Montana, if Republicans had any conscience and had said, "No, dude, you body slammed a reporter, like, you can't be a representative, like, obviously, obviously you shouldn't be a representative," and it kind of iced him out, I think, you know, that would unambiguously be a good thing.

And Montana would then get to have another special election, or, you You know, maybe whoever the governor would appoint somebody or something. But like, I think that is how it should work, actually. I don't think it's the case that because Montana voters decided it was OK that he can assault people, journalists, that therefore it's cool. What

0:42:58 Jamie: Yes.

0:43:20 Jamie: So Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of inclined to that view myself, um, you know, I think there's a question here of, of moral leadership, and I think it would have, especially in light of our current political moment, right, where the president of the United States has has proudly boasted of grabbing women by the pussy, where actual pedophiles have run for Senate under the Republican banner, I think there's something to be said for the consistency in holding our own to the same standards. I think we run the danger of it sounding really hollow and insincere when we complain about, you know, the sexual indiscretions of our political opponents, and then want to say, "Well, oh, you know, I guess it's fine, wouldn't like our guys do, like, less bad versions of that." I think it really undermines our credibility. And I think it's really important that we have credibility when we discuss these issues, particularly when, when the President of the United States and our most recent Supreme Court Justice don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to respecting women.

0:46:35 Thomas: Do you think about like, what if Al Franken just ran again in Minnesota and was like, all right, I done messed up, but like, I'm really sorry here. I'll try again. If voters will have me, you know, I'll run again. Again, then the voters get to decide. I don't know. And I, I don't know that he would get elected, but like, there's nothing stopping him from trying that, I guess. Right.

0:46:59 Jamie: There's nothing stopping them from trying it, I guess. Roy Moore is going to run again, isn't he? So, I mean, sure.

0:47:03 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, he's such a Sterling candidate. Uh, you can't keep him away. Um, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, maybe we can, uh, I, we did have a lot of Franken pushback and, you know, I kind of was all the same thing, to be honest. I know you saw a lot of it. Let me know if there's anything you wanted to respond to before we move on to another topic.

For my part, it was mainly just every answer was going to be, "But what about all the other accusations that weren't in the article?" Like, that was pretty much it. I mean, we had a caller, I did have a caller that talked about, you know, and they made some good points about, like, "Hey, this author, Jane Meyer, or sorry, Jane Mayer, I think it is, Uh, she's, you know, has a good history of, um, being good on me too issues.

And even when it was a Democrat at stake." Um, so it's not as though she's like this super biased anti me too person. And I just want to say, like, I didn't mean to imply that she was that, like, I didn't, I didn't take this to mean she was like the Bari Weiss of the New Yorker or anything. I

0:48:09 Thomas: Just thought for my part, maybe I didn't say it, and maybe that's my fault. My impression is just that, like, I feel like she maybe has a bit of a personal affinity for Franken in this, like, a personal loyalty to Franken for some reason. Um, maybe not, but like, that's what it seemed like to me, not that she's like anti-woman in everything she does. What did you think of, of that? You'd

0:48:09 Jamie: I read on it as well. You know, we're all sort of liable to our own biases, biases, and you know, I'm sure, and I've seen it, right, like, people generally are anti-rape, right? People generally self-identify as being against abuse. Um, but once they find out it's somebody that they like, or god forbid are friends with, um, you know, our sort of cognitive biases kind of go into overdrive, and we want to uphold the good opinions we have of people, people we like. And unfortunately, you know, cognitive dissonance sometimes can be the most powerful force on earth, despite our best intentions. And it's possible that that's what happened here, that she might have really liked Franken. She might really have believed that his was a good voice to go up against Trump. And I definitely think there was legitimacy to that. And it's possible that this feels like a sucker punch given how much we're up against right now. And even the most well-meaning, intelligent people can have blind spots and can not get it right sometimes.

0:48:51 Thomas: Hope. Yeah. Yeah totally Agree. I even heard her on a, I think I heard her on a podcast, like, the next week, talking about a different article. I was like, okay, well, that's a good article. Like, I'm not, like, personally, I'm not trying to, like, cancel Jane Mayer or anything. Like, I just think that that article wasn't, it wasn't good in my opinion. Um, but it doesn't mean, like, I was trying to indict her entire character or anything. Um, all right.

Well, we're going to sign, sign off here for the main show. I'm so glad you were able to do this, Jamie, because there's a lot. I have great listeners. They have awesome questions. There's a ton, and there will be more where that came from. Please keep the emails coming. And especially if you want to, now that you've gotten, what, now three episodes with Jamie, so that'll be a lot of stuff to be able to direct questions toward her if you wants.

And we can do this again very soon. So, and, okay, this is actually future Thomas coming at you, time travel switch, time heist thing, so here's what happened. We recorded, and we were going to do just a bonus question for patrons, but we had so much to talk about and so much fun that we actually tackled two questions, and we got to talking about politics, and Jamie and I kind of disagree on some stuff. It was really interesting. We charted a, a course for future episodes.

All this is to say, we recorded an entire bonus episode, and we are going to still do that for patrons only. So please hop on over to patreon.com/seriouspod and get an entire minus episode to listen to at your leisure with Jamie and I talking politics. We talk healthcare, we talk, uh, electability, all kinds of good stuff, whether or not, you know, moderate it. Democrats are a good idea in purple states. Lots of contentious stuff.

I am so happy to have Jamie here to be able to have these great conversations and also to finally be giving patrons the perks that they deserve. I know in years past, I haven't been as good at that as I should be. So I'm hoping to make it up for you fine patrons and accept this bonus episode as a, a token of my gratitude. So hop on over and listen to it. If not, no hard feelings. I understand not everyone can be a patron.

That's totally cool. We are hoping to be right back at you on Thursday with another episode. So thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you whenever next you are listening.