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Welcome to the Double-Ex Gap Fest for Thursday, September 15th, The Real Women Edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen, writer and editor at Slate. I'm in the D.C. studio, and I'm joined to New York by Noreen Malone of New York Magazine. Hi, Noreen. Hi, Hannah. And today we are excited to be podcasting with Amanda Hess, who is a writer for Slate. Hi, Amanda. Thanks for having me. Sure. June is away doing big Juneish-like projects that no doubt involve teeth, which she will tell us about when she comes back because June's all about the teeth. Before we begin, I want to, as usual, read a letter from one of our listeners. I did say that we were going to compile a playlist for Noreen, and in fact, many of you sent in fabulous music to work by.

I just haven't had the time to compile the playlist yet, but I absolutely will. It was wonderful.

There's a lot of great music in there, so Noreen will be happy and be able to work for one million more years once I get that going. But in the meantime, I'm going to read from Joy Meads. It's relevant to one of our subject together. She writes, I enjoy the podcast, but with troubling regularity, I become aware of the awkward clash between the slate counterintuitive take and a woman-centered podcast. Sometimes it feels like you guys are spending so much

time not saying the thing you think is expected women's take that you actually wind up waxing expansive

about points that reflect the regressive male point of view. That's harsh, right? Wait, like what?

Like what? Okay, Gillibrand. And we will get into this in our family. I chose this letter because for the first time we're having like a broad feminist discussion, which really we have avoided all of these years. So Kirsten Gillibrand, our discussion about whether the word harassment even applies here. She writes, according to the EEOC, harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. And yet we refused to accept that and had a lot of dismissive language about how it's like a cute story for her to tell and it's grandpa stuff. So can you really take it that seriously? She was, that she's, you know, parroting our point of

view here, that we were so dismissive of the idea that Kirsten Gillibrand was harassed, which

is what a lot of people in the culture thought. So, Noreen, do you feel chided or do you

feel defensive right now? I don't think I said that Kirsten Gillibrand, I guess I'm defensive

since I'm retreating into my position. But I don't think I said that Kirsten Gillibrand, I guess I'm defensive since I'm retreating into my position.

But I don't think I said that she wasn't harassed, but I can't remember.

I have a terrible memory.

I remember.

What did I say?

Well, Hanna and June, I think, were arguing that it wasn't a big deal, and you thought that it was.

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