Gender War Games Pt. 4: White Womanhood Activated with Material Girls

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Unladylike Media

Society & Culture, Body Politics, Media Analysis, Feminism, Beauty Standards, Cultural Commentary, Gender, Womens Rights, Internet Culture, Personal Journals, Patriarchy, Intersectionality, Philosophy, Comedy

4.8 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When womanhood is reduced to a capitalist identity, who gets erased—and who gets empowered to do the erasing? In the final episode of Gender War Games, host Cristen Conger joins Material Girls co-hosts Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman to unpack how white womanhood is activated—politically, culturally, algorithmically—to reinforce systems of power. From tradwife aesthetics to terf rhetoric, strategic essentialism to state violence, discover how white femininity gets mobilized as both soft power and backlash engine in the so-called gender wars.

(00:00) Gender Equality Survey Says...

(00:59) The Real Societal Tension: Wealth Inequality

(03:37) Strategic Essentialism and Gender Categories

(08:37) Scapegoating and Transphobia

(12:01) Gender as a Technology

(14:45) Capitalism, Social Reproduction and Gender Roles

(18:46) Masculinity Crisis By Design

(26:44) Racial Capitalism

(31:18) The Political Weaponization of Gender

(39:59) Community Building Beyond Individualism

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Transcript

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0:53.5	A 30 country survey from Ipsos and King's College of London that came out in March 2025
1:00.9	found that 68% of people say gender equality matters to them personally.
1:09.5	The majority thinks efforts to advance it are a positive.
1:14.6	And also get this, more Gen Z women identify as feminists than any generation before.
1:22.5	And yet, of course, we're in the midst of a gender war, allegedly.
1:28.0	There is certainly an attack on gender itself and gender nonconformity.
1:35.0	And yes, there are a lot of Gen Z men and millennial women, I will say, based off of this Ipsos poll,
1:43.5	who think that feminism just went too
1:46.5	far. But guess what else that 30 country survey found? The biggest tension that all of us feel,
1:57.0	biggest societal tension, it's not between men and women.
2:02.3	I was actually towards the bottom of the list.
	...

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