Brett Kavanaugh is Ruining People’s Sex Lives

Gaslit Nation

Trump, Politics, Left, Democracy, Resistance, News, Society & Culture, Progressive, Liberal, Kendzior, Chalupa, Resist

4.8 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on Gaslit Nation, we’re joined by the fearless, brilliant Carter Sherman, an award-winning journalist at The Guardian and one of the sharpest voices covering reproductive rights and sexual politics. Her new book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future, is a battle cry for Gen Z, a generation navigating the fallout of a stolen Supreme Court, Me Too, incel culture, and a pornified internet.

We dive into how young people are rewriting the rules of intimacy in the face of political oppression. Carter’s reporting brings us inside the bedrooms and minds of Gen Zers who are coming of age in a country where Roe v. Wade was overturned exactly as we knew it would be. A generation told they’re free is now wrestling with the reality that their rights are under siege, and for many, that anxiety has become physical. As one woman told Carter, she couldn’t even have sex without being hounded by Kavanaugh’s voice in her head.

This isn’t just a story of fear; it’s one of resistance. Carter shares how young people are pushing back, from Kansas voters defending abortion rights to college students canvassing in swing states. But she also warns of the growing threat: the rise of the Manosphere, where boys are radicalized by algorithm and learn to hate women before they can legally drink. What can young women and young men agree on? That the Democratic Party brand is toxic, because it's Republican Lite.

The Second Coming is a deeply reported, fiercely human portrait of a generation caught between tech, trauma, and tyranny. This week’s bonus show will look at the horror of Trump’s Big Evil Bill passing through Congress, and our discussion of Lillian Faderman’s landbook book The Gay Revolution–a resistance blueprint for us today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gaslit Nation.
0:12.0	I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer
0:17.7	of the journalistic thriller, Mr.. Jones about Stalin's genocide family Ukraine.
0:23.0	This week's guest, Carter Sherman, has her finger on the pulse of a generation coming of age
0:28.4	in the aftermath of the Trump-packed Supreme Court striking down Roe versus Wade.
0:36.5	Carter is an award-winning journalist and one of the nation's
0:39.2	sharpest voices on reproductive rights and sexual politics. In her bold new book, The Second
0:46.0	Coming, Sex and the Next Generation's Fight over its future, Carter investigates why young
0:52.1	Americans are having less sex and why that actually kind of matters.
0:57.9	Carter brings us into a world where dating is shaped by political battles, sexual education is under siege, and Gen Z is reimagining desire on their own terms.
1:09.4	Welcome Carter to Gaslit Nation. Thank you so much for
1:13.1	having me. Now, what gave you the inspiration to write this book? Well, I have been reporting on
1:21.3	gender and sexuality for eight, nine years now. So I've gotten very used to talking to people
1:27.1	about their sex lives, particularly young people about their sex lives. So I've gotten very used to talking to people about their sex lives,
1:28.7	particularly young people about their sex lives. And I often did it in the context of news events.
1:35.0	So there would be some kind of new restriction on abortion or contraception, and I would call people
1:40.2	up and ask them what that meant for their sex life, or there would be a study on porn, and I would call people up and ask them what that meant for their sex life or there would be a study on porn.
1:44.5	And I would call people up and ask them if they felt like that aligned with their experience
1:49.9	of porn. But I think the actual idea of the book came to fruition in 2021. So at this point,
1:59.3	the Supreme Court had already taken up Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which is the case that in 2022, the Supreme Court would use to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I don't think the book actually came together as an idea until 2021, which is when the Supreme Court took up the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health,
2:17.7	which is, of course, the case that ended up being used to overturn Roby Wade.
2:21.5	Just like we all saw coming.
	...

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