Deliciously Filthy
11/13/15 - This week we discuss Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, the protests at the University of Missouri, the Irish abortion rights campaign #repealthe8th, why Jackée Harry is so wonderful and Aminatou’s ridiculous love for DJ Khaled.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Alex Fitch - In the Dust
Scott Holmes - Rainbow Street
Lately Kind of Yeah - uc
TV Girl - Her and Her Friend
DJ Khaled - assorted introductions
LINKS
Jackée Harry is the best
Lessons from the Mizzou protests
Tressie McMillan Cottom’s incredible essay on fascism and “the media climate the Missouri students were navigating.”
TRANSCRIPT: DELICIOUSLY FILTHY
Ann: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Aminatou: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Ann: I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: And I'm Aminatou Sow. This week on Call Your Girlfriend we discuss Aziz Ansari's new show Master of None, the protest at the University of Missouri, the Irish abortion campaign Repeal the 8th, why Jackee Harry is so wonderful, and my ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous love for DJ Khaled.
[Theme Song]
Ann: And we are both sick.
Aminatou: Yeah, we . . . I feel . . . I've been feeling sick for a while. I think I'm coming down with something called walking pneumonia. [Laughs]
Ann: Uh-uh. Are you serious?
Aminatou: Yes, I'm very serious, so I'm going to find out this week. But I just . . . everything hurts.
Ann: Oh man, I'm right there with you. All of the aches plus my sinuses are throbbing like a David Guetta concert in my face.
Aminatou: Ugh.
Ann: And it is not pretty over here. I'm like sweating them I'm cold. Nasty.
Aminatou: I know. Apologies to Gina who has to edit this and hear all of my heavy breathing all this time. [Laughs] Like it's scaring me.
Ann: It's like nature's vocal fry, having a cold.
Aminatou: Oh, it's the worst. But you know what? We're worries. We're going to power through.
Ann: Ugh, it's so true.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I don't feel like a warrior but maybe if you keep saying it the sweats will stop and I'll get into the head space.
Aminatou: Yeah, I feel a little bit like a warrior today because I got so much done and I'm like I could die tomorrow.
Ann: I mean the thing that I got done was watching all of Master of None which as you know I'm rarely timely with my TV consumption.
Aminatou: I am so impressed with you. That came out like last week. What?
(2:05)
Ann: I know. The only way I watch TV in a timely manner, clearly, is if I get sick.
Aminatou: Man, I'm glad you've watched it. What are your thoughts?
Ann: My thoughts were I enjoyed it greatly and also great things happen when comedians with strong, interesting narratives about race start dating feminists which is what happened with Aziz Ansari.
Aminatou: I know, right? I'm like shout-out to Aziz Ansari's girlfriend.
Ann: Ugh, I love you.
Aminatou: Who's turned him into a great dude. The other -- you know, the thing about Master of None that's been so fantastic to me is just the immigrant parent narrative that it has. And it's something I think Aziz Ansari has talked about a lot actually, how his parents moved from India to South Carolina and his whole experience. And I don't know, the parents episode on that show really devastated me in the best way possible. And then I saw a thing he posted I think yesterday.
Ann: Oh my god, with his dad?
Aminatou: On Instagram with his dad. Like his dad I think is a doctor maybe?
Ann: He is, yeah.
Aminatou: Either way, he took all of this time off to do the show. So he was like "My dad took all of his vacation to do the show with me." And his dad told him "Really I just wanted to spend time with you."
Ann: Aww.
Aminatou: And, you know, I was like I melted into a puddle of tears. Aziz Ansari obviously melted into a puddle of tears. Immigrant parents are the best. They just give us so, so, so much and, you know, I also love that his message -- usually I get really annoyed when celebrities or people are like "Call your parents, whatever. Have fun with your parents." Some of us have really complicated relationships with our parents.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And I appreciate that in Aziz Ansari's message he says if your parents are good to you reach out to them.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: And that was something that really, deeply, profoundly spoke to me. I love that.
Ann: Right. And you can also see -- I don't know if you read his book but . . .
Aminatou: I did. The best -- I mean the only dating guide that's written for men and women at the same time.
(4:02)
Ann: I thought it was pretty good too. You can really tell through the show that he spent a lot of time talking to people of different generations to sort of -- to work on that book. And it comes up in there's the parents episode. There's also -- there's an episode about grandparents or old people. And I definitely could see a thread from the book to the show.
Aminatou: Yeah. His best friend on the show, Lena Waithe, is just so amazing. She's a producer and an actor. You should follow her on Twitter. She's @hillmangrad.
Ann: Oh, Denise forever too. Such a good character.
Aminatou: Yeah. Lena was part of the team that brought us Dear White People so it was just like very near and dear to my heart.
Ann: Yeah, so this is actually like silver lining. Great thing to have come from my illness for me, but to the world from Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang and Lena Waithe and everyone.
Aminatou: I am so excited to be talking to you about TV in real-time.
Ann: I know, it's unprecedented.
Aminatou: This is -- like I don't even know what to do with myself. I feel like you've thrown off the rest of the whole show now.
Ann: Maybe I need a sick day once a week.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Yes, Kickstarter for Ann. Sick day once a week.
Ann: Oh my god, sick day fund.
Aminatou: Do you have a sick routine? Because I totally have a sick routine. You know, not when you're like dying, but when you have a cold or something enough where you know that all you need to do is stay home for two or three days and eat ramen and be a little miserable.
Ann: I mean I don't have a routine. The common denominator is extreme fluctuation between joy at getting to stay in bed and like self-pity because I don't feel well.
Aminatou: Man, I have a whole -- I like making a weird fort on the couch. [Laughs] That's my thing. I have all of the same supplies. I almost exclusively always watch the same movies.
Ann: Which?
(5:52)
Aminatou: Because I want something that'll make me a little -- feeling a little shitty. I love watching Stepmom when I'm sick because you're just like devastated.
Ann: Because you're like "I'm not dying." [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah. If I'm really sick I'll watch Annie Hall.
Ann: Wow.
Aminatou: And I'll watch like an Olsen Twin movie, usually It Takes Two.
Ann: I mean whatever works for you to get back to health. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know. It makes me feel like I'm in middle school and I wish that my mom was around to take care of me. That's always -- that's my sick person self-care.
Ann: Yeah. I mean I like to whine about it. The truth is if someone else is around sometimes I find it kind of annoying, like I'd rather be sick alone truth be told. But I like to whine to other people about it for sure.
Aminatou: I know, right? When other people are like "Can I bring you something?" I'm like "No, I would like to be alone and miserable right now." [Laughs]
Ann: Leave it on the doorstep and let me text you about how much my nose hurts or whatever and that's fine.
Aminatou: I know. That's when you pull the "I'm contagious!" [Laughs]
Ann: Yes, exactly.
Aminatou: Girl, I haven't been contagious in years.
[Music]
Aminatou: So a couple of updates from the show. Two things. One, shout-out to all of the bad-ass lady feminists from New Zealand who wrote us in since the last show. I like that it's like this tiny island with all we know about them is they're awesome power ladies that live there.
Ann: Also hashtag #NotAllNewZealandLadies.
Aminatou: Exactly.
Ann: Depending on how we talk.
Aminatou: Exactly. If you want to know what we're referring to you can listen to our last episode. But yes, shout-out to New Zealand ladies. I was very excited to locate the New Zealand emoji on my iPhone.
Ann: Ugh, great job.
Aminatou: Flag emoji. Yeah, it's so perfect.
Ann: That map section is like a real geographical minefield/test.
(7:52)
Aminatou: I know. Especially all these countries in Oceania, man, they all have the exact same flag. I was sending a New Zealand emoji and then like an Australian one the next day and I was like wait, this is crazy. The other thing is this fantastic email we got, speaking of Australia, from this awesome listener Alice in Australia. It was a penis muscle update, because remember we talked about penis muscles.
Ann: I like to call them the Deangelo muscle.
Aminatou: Yes. Yes, and I call them penis muscles because I'm a child. So here's Alice's email on penis muscles: "My URL friend and shero Texnisa -- Texnesa? I don't know -- refers to them as cum gunners."
Ann: No! [Laughs]
Aminatou: "Which I really can't go past because it's deliciously filthy, though I think the proper name of the muscles is obliques."
Ann: Oof.
Aminatou: Alex, first of all, thank you for bringing cum gunners into my life. I will never -- I'm forever changed.
Ann: I mean thank you/hate you Alice for bringing cum gunners into my life. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Also I love the word obliques because obviously I know that that is because once in a while I'll pick up a men's fitness magazine if Channing Tatum's on the cover.
Ann: Sure.
Aminatou: Or I'll hear it at the gym. But I'm like oh, that's what they're talking about.
Ann: Yeah. For some reason I mix it up in my head with opaque as a word.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Which is more of a tights type of turn. I don't know. I can't really . . . clearly obliques do not feature in my daily life at all.
Aminatou: That's amazing. Also in Urban Dictionary they're called penis pipes.
Ann: Ugh, equally gross.
Aminatou: English language, I love you. What's next? Oh, a fun little Shine Theory update for you. So this week I guess Vivica A. Fox, the queen Vivica A. Fox, got into a little bit of an online/interview kerfuffle with her ex-boyfriend rapper . . .
Ann: A tiff. I think it was a tiff.
Aminatou: Exactly, there was a fracka with rapper -- her ex-boyfriend rapper 50 Cent. Honestly this story is great for me because The Real Housewives of Atlanta are back and I almost never watch the what happens live next because we live in the west coast now so it's not live for us and I'm like ugh, I can't call in so I'm not emotionally invested.
Ann: [Laughs]
(10:20)
Aminatou: But I just happened to watch after this episode and Vivica was one of the guests and she threw some major shade. I mean at this point it was not shade; she just roasted 50. And, you know, 50 is hyperactive on social media.
Ann: Sure.
Aminatou: So he's just been dying for this. I'll let you read up on the thing. So all these people are angry at Vivica. But one of my childhood heroes, actress Jackee Harry who is a national treasure -- first of all if you don't follow Jackee on Twitter you are just missing out. Her Twitter feed is amazing. She's just like the queen of shade. In fact I think her Twitter bio is like actress, director, philanthropist, shady boots. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, I'm looking at it right now to see what it says in fact.
Aminatou: She's so, so, so, so . . .
Ann: No, it's just all of her shows hashtagged. Another World, hashtag. Sister, Sister, hashtag. Everybody Hates Chris. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh my god. She's so good, but she like sent out this tweet. She sent out this tweet that was like "I don't have a dog in this fight but I can't let my girl @MsVivicaFox be disrespected. Her resume is legendary and her love is real."
Ann: Ugh! Such a good endorsement.
Aminatou: It's such a good endorsement and also such a good way to be a friend to someone who is having a public fight when you don't want to get involved.
(11:45)
Ann: Well it's kind of like when you haven't read someone's book or like when an author is asked to comment on a writer's book and give a blurb and they haven't read it yet, or they have and didn't like it, and they just comment on the writer in general. You know, a supreme observer of the human condition.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Rather than talk about the book itself. It's kind of the same tactic and I appreciate it.
Aminatou: Exactly. But Ann, if I die before you please make sure on my tombstone it says "Her resume was legendary and her love was real." That's all I want.
Ann: Ugh, I will engrave it myself if I can't get someone else to do it.
Aminatou: Thank you. Real friendship.
[Music and Ads]
(14:05)
Ann: I mean I feel like we have to talk about more serious things despite our illness because the list is long, namely everything that is happening at the University of Missouri lately which is where I went to school and where many -- I think you know a lot of other Mizzou grads too don't you? Yeah.
Aminatou: Yeah, well, you know, Caitlyn (?) who is the fourth in our podcast coven also went to Mizzou and so many, many, many bad-ass queer lady feminists we know went to Mizzou.
Ann: A ton. Yeah. And it is kind of interesting because, you know, there is a long, long history of awful racist incidents like structural racism problems at the university. It's one of the American institutions that was partially built by slaves and has never really 100% dealt with the embedded racism there. And so lately there has been this movement led largely by student activists, many of them queer women of color, to try to make some change to rectify that.
Aminatou: Yeah, no, I mean it's kind of crazy. Do you want to run us through the events on the ground I guess?
Ann: Yeah, so let me see if I can . . . there is, at this point, the list keeps growing so it's pretty bad. I mean a couple of years ago somebody strew cotton balls on the lawn in front of the Black Culture Center.
Aminatou: Ugh.
Ann: And recently, as in like this week since the protests have been going on, somebody vandalized the sign at the Black Culture Center and blacked out the word black so it just said Culture Center. Which, you know, again it's hard to keep the order even straight because they're all this classic sort of really violent, intimidating, racist vandalism. Also recently, though I think it was right after the protests started bubbling up, somebody drew a swastika with human feces on the wall inside a dorm room.
(16:02)
Aminatou: Allegedly, Ann. I've been reading a lot of conservative blogs and this is allegedly.
Ann: I've seen the police report/[0:16:10] so . . .
Aminatou: I'm sorry, when you're watching Fox News or listening to Fox Business Radio there's no such thing as facts.
Ann: Ugh. And, you know, also notably the student body president had the N word and anti-gay slurs shouted at him when he was walking near campus.
Aminatou: Oh my god.
Ann: And all kinds of other things like members of the Legion of Black Collegians were rehearsing a play and harassed by a drunken white male.
Aminatou: It's always a drunken white male.
Ann: Scariest people. Honestly those are the people you cross the street for, drunken white men. Other side of the street.
Aminatou: Thank you. You understand my pain.
Ann: And then, sorry, I mean this list keeps going on and on. And then also there was a student, another white male, who allegedly -- well, somebody made some threats on Yik Yak and they believe it's this white dude, this 19-year-old white dude who's a student. And so what's been happening is a lot of students of color don't feel safe coming to campus or going to class and there are some professors who are understanding about that. There are others who are like "Show up, you have an exam. What's your problem?" It's really interesting to see how in real-time, like this is not an abstract civil rights question, it's like "Oh, how do you deal with students who are in your class who are feeling/are threatened and intimidated?"
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, the thing that's been really interesting to me too in watching this conversation is how much it's getting folded into the oh, college kids are just being coddled and how . . . like this is the thing everybody says now. They're just like why are college kids so soft these days? And first of all . . .
Ann: They can't take a slur like they used to. Fuck you. Ugh.
(17:52)
Aminatou: Yeah. And I'm like first of all some of these older people are total idiots. The reason is that 1) social media so you're hearing about it more. I'm like college campuses have always been a hot bed of a combination of dumb ideas and amazingly brave people.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But it's like no, you have Twitter so you see hash tags. So 1) shut up. But the other thing that I think is really unfair, because there's also all this other stuff that's happening at Yale -- you can read about it on your own time -- but kids of color on college campuses, on white, predominantly white college campuses, are actually the toughest people at your school.
Ann: Right. And P.S., for context, I believe at the University of Missouri which has 35,000 students, faculty, etc., only 7% are black.
Aminatou: Exactly. I went to college at UT Austin, Hook 'me Horns, but you know, I think that our entire campus community with professors and everything was well over 50,000 and in my time UT was 3% black. So I would go days without talking to another black person and in fact in my department, Middle Eastern studies -- LOLs -- political science and Middle Eastern studies, but in the Middle Eastern studies department specifically I was the only black person. I know this because one time I missed class. I never missed class. I missed this ginormous class and the professor wrote me and he was like "I was sad not to have you today."
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: And then the TA said the same thing to me and I was like "Why are you guys writing me so hard?" And he was like "Well, you're the only black person here so we notice."
Ann: Wow.
Aminatou: How crazy. But anyway, back to the coddling conversation, I think that it is really unfair to lump these kids in with like, I don't know, kids who are trying to get weirder cafeteria food or something. And also just remembering that who you were at 22 changes and evolves a lot, right? I feel so lucky that no national pundit was weighing on what I thought as a 21-year-old college student because I had some half-baked, crazy ideas.
(20:00)
Ann: Yeah. I think about that whenever there is a temptation to write about or sort of derisively retweet a college newspaper op-ed because that's a really easy place to find something to argue with if you are an out-of-ideas op-ed columnist. Be like oh, I'll argue with this college student. And it's like that 100% does not exemplify also the best of what happens in terms of organizing and thought. Yeah.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: The response has been pretty frustrating.
Aminatou: Yeah, and then there's this other side debate that's going on, right, about what people think about the first amendment and public spaces during the Missouri protest. So I noticed this conversation between friend of the podcast Roxane Gay and Tressie Cottom who is an amazing professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and David Simon who is known for creating The Wire.
Ann: Who is known for being a bitter ex-journalist as well.
Aminatou: Exactly, you know, like white man. He's like the white man standing here where he got really upset about Roxane and Tressie pushing back on this idea that it was valid that some of the Mizzou protesters felt that their public space was being invaded and they didn't want to talk to journalists and blah, blah, blah. And it was -- for a Twitter debate it turned out really well but Tressie was saying all these things where I wanted to reach inside the screen and just scream "Yes!" you know? Where she's like social . . . she's like "Let me whisper to you: social movements often break rules, you know?" Or saying how amazed she was that people who proclaim to be invested in social change always appeal to rules. And David Simon obviously kept pushing back with the marketplace of ideas.
Ann: Sure.
(21:50)
Aminatou: The minute a white man trots out marketplace of ideas to you, run.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: Always run.
Ann: The marketplace of ideas is a really easy place for powerful people/white dudes to steamroll everyone out.
Aminatou: Exactly. I'm like I'm sorry, you know? You are -- the marketplace of ideas obviously works to your advantage. And so it's like the whole conversation devolves and at one point David Simon says that something is fascism.
Ann: I mean I can't even with that.
Aminatou: And I'm going to link to this piece in our agenda but Tressie just roasts him and it's amazing and just gets back and it makes me so happy.
Ann: Right. I mean one of the other things that's going on is people are paying attention to this movement in new ways because they can directly have access to people who might care about their cause who are not on campus and they don't need to go through the media to get it, thank you social media. And a lot of journalists especially -- like I had a great education at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, not without its blind spots though, and I think that is a place that -- and we are in a profession that is still figuring out the exact relationship it has to basically people who used to be sources becoming a direct point of contact for people who care about issues and news.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: And I think that that's a big part of this too is like, you know, maybe it's just because I know that about David Simon's background and in my head he's labeled as like bitter ex-newspaper person.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: But when I watched that debate I also watched it through that lens where he's like "Oh, the first amendment, for old-fashioned shoe-leather journalists like me who do our jobs the right way . . ."
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Like this idea of kind of an old media idea of certain people have more of a right to access.
Aminatou: You know, here's my other thing with journalists also is they always tell you -- they're always like "It's my job." And I'm like it's not that I don't care about what the journalists are doing, and I do think it's important for them to be in those places, but I think a lot of them don't really . . . they don't look below the surface of why minorities might not trust the media for example.
Ann: Absolutely. Absolutely.
(24:05)
Aminatou: Or that the trust is earned and can quickly be lost. And so it's just always appealing to this "It's my job." And I'm like who certified you?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Did we agree to this as a society that we're supposed to trust you at all times? It just drives me crazy.
Ann: And also just because you have a right to be a reporter in a public space on a university campus does not mean you have a right to have anyone you want to speak with you speak with you. I mean you have to earn the trust -- and this is exactly what you're saying -- you have to earn the trust of sources, especially people who have been historically misrepresented by people doing the job that you're trying to do right now.
Aminatou: Exactly. Let me read to you one thing from Tressie's amazing essay because it really stayed with me.
Ann: Please.
Aminatou: "This week we have witnessed a phenomenal act of social movement making in an era when many, myself included, have wondered if meaningful change in the US is still possible. Some of that worry is about aging, I'm sure. As you get older and the people around you get older you are inclined to wonder if the kids can ever be as all right as the kids you were."
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: "We overstate our youthful courageousness, then because we are wily from age we defend that overstatement by understating the courage of the youth who displace us. That may be natural, but when a cross-campus coalition of student athletes and student citizens at the University of Missouri organized to force the retirement of the college president and future transition of the university assistant chancellor they did something remarkable."
Ann: That's so good.
Aminatou: Yeah, I know. She's -- I mean it's true, people just . . . it's so crazy to me how the conversation went quickly from like "Look at what these kids accomplished in a week," to "Rah, media, media, hot take. Hot take economy." Just garbage so quickly, you know?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: I'm just so in awe of what those kids made happen.
(26:00)
Ann: Right, and are continuing to make happen because I think ti's also important to note that Concerned Student 1950 which is the name of sort of the core group of student organizers named after the push to initially integrate the university in 1950 . . .
Aminatou: So -- oh my god, that's like 30 years before we were born. That's insane.
Ann: I know. But anyway, that group still has a long list, I mean and they're very . . . we can link to it -- they're very easy to find -- that have to do with systemically addressing the racism at the university, not just replacing the president which was the goal that they were able to achieve already. So I think it's important to kind of pay attention that even after the hot-take stop, these activists are probably still going to be at it.
Aminatou: Exactly. Well in your community of Mizzou friends who have you been talking to that's working on the ground or kind of thinking about these issues?
Ann: I mean they're obviously, because alumni are old, there are warring Facebook groups, a racist one and a Concerned Student 1950 solidarity one. But I called Dr. Marcia Chatelain who went to the University of Missouri and is now an expert who studies a lot of social change movements and who paid particular attention to Ferguson and what people took away from observing those events and participating in them. And so I kind of had an alumni-to-alumni conversation with her about that.
Aminatou: Amazing.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Hi, Marcia, how's it going?
Marcia: Hi, Ann. It's good to be here with you.
Ann: You're in an airport right now?
Marcia: I'm always in an airport. I've just been having a great opportunity to travel to talk about my book, to talk about current social movements, so this is always the best time to grab me in transit.
Ann: Oh, well I'm glad I caught you then. You and I have a very important bestie in common which by the transitive property of besties means you and I might actually be besties already.
(27:58)
Marcia: I think we already are.
Ann: For the purposes of people who don't have a bestie in common with you, you could tell me a little bit about the work that you do and what you're an expert in.
Marcia: So an expert, I don't know, but . . .
Ann: Own it. Own it. [Laughs]
Marcia: I'm a professor of history at Georgetown University and I specialize in African-American history. I just published a group about girls and teenage women during Chicago's Great Migration called Southside Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration. And it's really an examination of black girlhood and its importance to the urbanization of African-Americans. So that's my kind of academic specialty. That specialty in women's history has really translated into kind of an ability to observe race relations and to have conversations on different frequencies about what's going on now and what's going on in the past. And so I spend a lot of times talking to communities about the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri last year, about Black Lives Matter and gender. And so in a lot of ways I think of myself as kind of a community teacher because I go to different communities and I really try to share with them the tools and perspectives that they need to kind of have these conversations after I leave.
Ann: Yeah, and you were also a graduate of the University of Missouri.
Marcia: I am. I'm a really proud graduate of the University of Missouri who like many of us is kind of watching this current situation unfold with the clash between student movements and power structures and looking at the tough work of all of it. It's just this experience to kind of watch places that you've been and people you love who are involved in this struggle and really wanting to be present for them and really wanting to help translate to people who are not familiar with these places and these people about kind of why the stakes feel so high right now.
Ann: And what do you tell people who maybe aren't as familiar with why the stakes are so high or why this particular movement and this moment is so important?
(30:03)
Marcia: I try to explain to people that the University of Missouri kind of goes through these five-year cycles where you start to see the rise of a student movement, and I think there is some institutional response -- there's some meeting folks in the middle -- but I think that sustainability piece is really hard for Missouri and for other universities. I don't think that Missouri is that different in terms of racial tensions and the things that students are struggling against. I do think that Missouri is distinct in that the presence of the Missouri School of Journalism makes kind of everyone really media-savvy. The work of the student journalists I think helps shape that culture. I also think that people don't realize that this is a long history of activism, but the thing that has changed in this moment are the tools for organizing and that's social media.
Ann: Right. It's really interesting that the tools for organizing that have really empowered and fueled a lot of social justice movements in recent years are also the things that have sort of upended media and that journalists are still trying to figure out in many ways how to use and get comfortable with.
Marcia: Right, and I think that this kind of recent conversation that in some ways I think is valuable but I really, really caution against folks getting really distracted by this conversation about the president's relationship with this movement . . . I think that because of the dexterity that organizers have with social media, the journalists don't control the narrative in the sense that you don't necessarily have to rely on journalists to spread your story but it's helpful to have them present to narrate the dimensions of it. And at the same time I think it's also kind of interesting that, you know, social media and a lot of the rumors that were coming out on social media about whether the KKK was on campus, whether white supremacist groups were on campus, and the way that social media allows for the circulation of rumors and misinformation also illustrates why we still need skilled journalists who are part of reporting this story.
(32:08)
Ann: Absolutely. I mean I certainly want to live in a world where activists have direct access to people who care about these issues and a platform that isn't media-controlled, but I agree that it's also really important to have people who are checking facts and who are using a little bit more of a professional process to tell stories. Like I want those things to both be happening.
Marcia: Right, and who have some self-restraint, right? Like everything that doesn't . . . that gets put out on Twitter and everything that, you know, is said, you don't run with. I mean we know with our journalism training that, you know, all the accuracy checks we had to do as student journalists and at the same time the desire to be the first one to break the story and really wanting to be part of a breaking news moment I think is something that can get very dangerous for young journalists especially not to get sucked into.
Ann: Right. And I think that as you pointed out the dynamic at the University of Missouri that's different is sort of the way that journalists are still learning how to do that and still honing those skills and basically coinciding with activists who are still trying to figure out how to use platforms to tell their stories the best. It's like how do you expect that there wouldn't be hiccups there or wouldn't be conflict? Just admit it's . . .
Marcia: This is what pisses me off, you know, beyond -- I can't even describe it, because this idea that a movement will kind of know what it's doing immediately is such a disingenuous critique. I mean this is why personally I can't tolerate too much critique of Black Lives Matter not doing X, Y, and Z. For a movement that is a year old, wow, look at the ground that they've covered. Look at the things that they've had to grapple with and develop. And most people can't organize their towels in a year.
Ann: [Laughs]
Marcia: So this movement is just going to be so pulled together. It's just ridiculous. And at the same time, right, the ability of a movement to take its critiques and its mistakes and make them valuable is also the type of thing that every movement needs a lot of support around. So the Missouri moment is not going to be a perfect moment and it doesn't necessarily undermine the value of what's happening. I often tell my students that the march on Washington in 1963, people got mad at each other. There was tons of !!br0ken!! There was sexism. There were all sorts of issues. And it just never takes away from the fact that 250,000 people gathered in the same place on the same day asking for the extension of civil rights. It doesn't take away from that; it actually makes it a much cooler story.
(34:40)
Ann: Right. And, you know, you've done so much teaching around Ferguson and those events and that organizing that happened. I'm curious if you were to sort of start to create a nascent like Mizzou syllabus or to start to craft a narrative around that is there anything you know you would want people to read or to pay attention to?
Marcia: Not to kind of be gross and self-referential but I think it'd be really interesting if folks kind of looked at the time when I was there when the movement was called Inclusion Now and we had an activity called The Hate Report where we basically published all the graffiti on campus and we had people write first-hand accounts of bias and hate crimes on campus and you see a direct line between the things that we were publishing in '98 and '99 to the experiences that students are having. But one of the impacts of The Hate Report was the university put together a really good bias reporting system and the response in terms of organizing an LGBTQ center in a really professional manner, you know, I feel really proud to have been part of that movement. But one of the things that people have to realize is it isn't that students are rabid and out of control or hypersensitive; it's that they're living in a climate that is so informed by a history of violence that it kind of seeps into your DNA the longer you stay on campus.
(36:05)
And so I would love for people to use the Internet, which is our friend, to see what Missouri was like in the '90s, what Missouri went through in the '80s with the question about divestment from businesses that did business in South Africa, and see this is a very activist and very progressive campus that has flown under the radar and now I think our long history has an opportunity to be told to a national audience.
Ann: Yeah, I hope so too as another proud alum. I really hope so. Well Dr. Marcia Chatelain thank you so much for taking the time today.
Marcia: Oh my gosh, thanks so much for inviting me Ann. The last thing I want to say, because it's so important to hear women's voices and I'm so excited that so many of the organizers were women and that although Jonathan Butler was a student who was hunger striking he said that this is something that queer women and women of color on this campus were working on. So I think that if this moment is going to teach us anything it's that sexism is so gross that we're just not having it and that makes me very excited too.
Ann: Yeah, women, the forefronters of every moment ever.
Marcia: That ever happened.
[Interview Ends]
[Music]
Ann: All right, this week in menstruation a shout-out to some awesome Irish women who have been tweeting the intricate, intimate details of their periods at an anti-choice politician which I love as an idea because basically wanting to regulate abortion and all the ways it's performed is sort of saying like "Let me get up in your body." And it's like okay, if you really want to get up in here this is what it's like. And they're doing it in support of the Repeal the 8th campaign which is the Irish abortion rights campaign.
(38:00)
Aminatou: That's awesome because, yeah, it's like I love Ireland and people always talk about Europe as this really progressive place but when it comes to abortion rights it's legit dark ages over there.
Ann: Yeah. I mean Catholicism, we have so much to hate you for.
Aminatou: Hmmm.
Ann: But these tweets are awesome, like this one says "I got my period two days ago. Pretty heavy flow at first but now just occasional spotting. #RepealThe8th."
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: What else? I love the idea of the daily update too. It's like color, consistency. This one says "My period feels like a bowl in a china shop but instead it's a shop of my uterus."
Aminatou: [Laughs] That's so good. Also am I the last person in the world to know that on the earlier days of your period the blood is really -- it's like that vibrant, vivid red or whatever and then it just gets darker as it progresses?
Ann: I mean bodies are different but that's been my experience.
Aminatou: Yeah, know, but that's what the gyno doctor told me. And I just looked at her like what? I'm very plugged into periods. I did not know this little factoid. So I felt really estupido.
Ann: That's why I didn't . . . I never understand women who faint at the sight of blood because I'm like don't you menstruate? What do you do on day two?
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I've never understood it.
Aminatou: Yeah, I mean I'm not afraid of blood at all, but you know, it's like those earlier days you're like whew, this is amazing.
Ann: I know, crime scene levels.
Aminatou: Just, yeah, it's very beautiful. [Laughs]
Ann: Anyway, well, yeah, I feel like there could be some international period tweeting to support this campaign as well because lord knows the women of Ireland deserve abortion access.
Aminatou: Ugh, shout out to all the Irish babes.
Ann: Shout out to Irish babes, yeah.
[Music]
(39:58)
Aminatou: I think I already have an answer to this, Ann, but have you been paying attention to DJ Khaled recently?
Ann: I mean I rely on you for all my DJ Khaled news so I'm going to hear it now.
Aminatou: DJ Khaled.
Ann: I mean please, yes, that.
Aminatou: Who, you know, he just slowly . . . I just didn't realize how delightful and just a mainstay in my pop culture life he'd been but he's recently released this new album called -- I don't remember what it's called in fact. [Laughs]
Ann: Let's guess, is it called Still Winning? Top of the Game? Something?
Aminatou: No. DJ Khaled has some very memorable one-liners or interview kind of quirks. One of them is him saying the word jewelry.
Ann: [Laughs] Jew-ry.
DJ Khaled: I have so much jew-ry, I got more jew-ry, and it's not even about the jew-ry.
Aminatou: Another one is him trying to pronounce the word accurate.
DJ Khaled: My sound is acreate. It's a real sound, and I made sure of that.
Aminatou: Another favorite was him trying to explain how he's been trying to work with Rihanna for a long time and for some reason -- I'm making the biggest air quotes -- her team will not release her phone number to him but allegedly they're friends.
Ann: [Laughs] Aww.
DJ Khaled: I really want to work with Rihanna, and she my friend. She my friend. I just -- it's just they won't let me get her number. I'm confused. I call everybody asking about Rihanna and she's my friend. I don't know why they won't let me call her.
Ann: Aww.
Aminatou: Yeah, he's just like a big, confident man and so utterly ridiculous. That's what I'm going to spend the rest of my weekend listening to.
Ann: Okay, to be fair to DJ Khaled though, don't you have those people in your social life who you see quite a lot, like often it will be someone's significant other or something, and then you think of something that you want to text to just that person or there's something . . . you want to get in touch with that person directly, and you realize that because you always get in touch with them through some other person you don't have their phone number?
Aminatou: [Laughs]
(42:00)
Ann: I'm just saying maybe it's possible.
Aminatou: You're right, Ann. DJ Khaled has the exact same relationship with Rihanna. I would like to text her or something, "We are friends but I don't know how this is happening."
Ann: I mean all he does is win so he'll eventually get her phone number, right?
Aminatou: Oh my god, all he does is win. DJ Khaled thank you for everything you do for the culture. I love him.
Ann: [Laughs]
[Music]
Ann: All right, should I do the outro?
Aminatou: Yes, please.
Ann: Ugh, okay, great. You can find us many places on the Internet, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, you can download our show on the Acast app which is great or on iTunes where we would love it if you left us a review. You can tweet at us at @callyrgf or email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Also -- this is the new thing -- you can even leave us a short and sweet voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.
Aminatou: Gina!
Ann: Gina!
Aminatou: I'll see you on the Internet, boo.
Ann: See you on the Internet.