Episode 220 (Transcript): The Women Are Not Okay | A Conversation About the Male Gaze

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Scout Comfort, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

---

CW: I will never forget when it finally dawned on me that like every descriptor we have of a righteous woman was a man describing what a woman is or should be, right? Or can be. And I was like realizing that men defined who I should be my entire faith life in this church was a real wake up call to me. It was like, oh, okay.

It's like writing a script for somebody else. Like that's why we love watching movies and TV shows because it's fake. You know what I mean? Someone wrote and made up these characters. And so, so often I feel like, oh, this is a made up character like you just said. That's the ideal, but I mean ideal for who?

SH: Hello, I'm Susan Hinkley. 

CW: And I'm Cynthia Winward. 

SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today's episode is “The Women Are Not Okay: A Conversation About The Male Gaze.” It's our season finale, Cynthia. I can't believe it. We made it. 

CW: We made it. You and I are already talking about what we're gonna do this summer—or not do this summer. 

SH: Correct. 

CW 'cause we're so excited to not do anything.

SH: Both talking about both.

CW: But before we get to doing nothing this summer, we wrote a book and so we have to go on a book tour. We just want all our listeners to know if you want to meet us at one of our, I don't know, book tour stops, go on to our website.

We have information in our newsletter, in our social media lots of places where you can see the different places that you can show up and have us sign your book. 

SH: And there will be a few more places coming in the fall. So if there's not a place listed near you in that list, then reach out to us, first of all, and tell us where you'd like us to come, but also know that we do have other destinations coming in the fall and more info will be forthcoming.

CW: Yes. So, we just mentioned our book tour, but we didn't mention the date. Our book is being released, and that's April 28th, and we're just tickled pink that we actually put something out there into the world that's a little more permanent than a podcast, Susan. 

SH: Right. 

CW: Something in writing. So you can get the audio, you can get the e-reader, or you can get the old fashioned paper.

And anyway, we're super excited that we wrote a book during two podcast seasons, like this is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm, I know you agree with that, Susan.

SH: Yeah, we're ready for a nap. 

CW: Yeah. How many times Susan did you have to record some chapters out loud? 

SH: A lot of times, Cynthia, and it's not because I can't read, there were other forces at play. There were hostile forces in the universe to me making that audiobook.

CW: Oh my goodness!

SH: Many thanks to the folks at Signature who are making all of this happen for us. They're doing their magic and we can't thank them enough for that. 

CW: So why are we talking about this for our season finale? We, this whole season was about zooming out. So we've zoomed out in lots of different ways, but talking about the women are not okay and putting a finer point on it about the male gaze, like how do you think this figures into a conversation about moving out? 

SH: I think it figures into it because it puts the church into a larger societal context, because the male gaze is obviously not a church term, right? This is talking about larger cultural influences and so it contextualizes the church. 

And then I also think it contextualizes women's experience within the church because of course we're going to talk about the male gaze from a Latter-day Saint perspective, right? We're going to put our church experiences through the lens of the male gaze and talk about that.

So it's this sort of like double layer of giving context. I think it's the perfect zooming out topic for the season finale. 

CW: As we were working on these notes, I almost thought this should have been our season opener for zooming out. But we got there listeners! We got there finally at the end of season nine.

Well, let's jump into this extra juicy topic. Why are the women not okay? Like, can we break down? We have eight pages of notes listeners. Sorry about that. So we will try to move quickly and try not to get bogged down in some of the details here. But, I mean, we have been talking about this topic probably for the last six months.