Misogyny Has Gone Mainstream. What Can be Done?

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The president calling female reporters “piggy”, “stupid” and “ugly.” Claims that liberal feminism has ruined the workplace. The manosphere. Despite the #MeToo movement, protests featuring pussy hats, and political and cultural efforts to call the patriarchy to account, misogyny feels like it’s going strong in 2025. But why? We gather a panel of thinkers and leaders to talk about how misogyny has become mainstream and what can be done about it. Guests: Roxane Gay, scholar and author; her books include "Difficult Women," "Hunger" and "Bad Feminist" Irin Carmon, senior correspondent, New York magazine, She is the author of "Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America" She is also the co-author of "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" Savala Nolan, executive director, Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Berkeley Law; author, "Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body." Her forthcoming book is titled, "Good Woman: A Reckoning" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from the Exploratorium. Discover the Art of Light this winter with glow.
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0:38.0	From KQED.
0:41.6	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:44.6	I have, for better or worse, been a man my whole life, and I've spent a lot of time with other men in literal locker rooms, on teams and sports bars just around.
0:55.2	That's to say, I've been places where men are talking to other men. And yet these days, the misogyny in the public sphere
1:01.9	shocks and horrifies me. I've never heard any man in my life say in real life anything like
1:07.8	the things we're hearing out of the manosphere or even the president
1:11.9	and the people around him. And that's translating into policies and legal rulings that were
1:16.9	unthinkable in my young adulthood. This is not to say that things have been good for women before
1:22.8	this or that the gender roles and scripts in society have been working for women. But holy hell, it feels
1:28.0	like some dark things have been unleashed in our culture and in our politics. And here to discuss
1:33.7	what's going on and where it came from, we have an all-star panel. We're joined by Roxanne Gay,
1:39.2	scholar and author. Her books include difficult women, hunger and Bad Feminist. Thanks for joining us.
1:44.8	Thank you so much for having me, Alexis.
1:47.0	We're also joined by Erin Carmon, who's a senior correspondent at New York Magazine,
1:51.9	also the author of Unbearable Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America.
1:57.0	Welcome.
1:57.6	Hi, Alexis.
	...

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