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Based Camp: Growing Up in the Progressive Cult
Here is a terribly translated transcript of the episode (mostly just here for SEO):
Hello Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today. I'm gonna give you a topic today because I want you to talk more. I talked way too much in that last video. I don't like that. So I want to hear about your origin story growing up within the San Francisco Bay Area sort of your parents' background, how that shaped your worldview today.
Interesting. Sure. Yeah, because I would say that meeting you was, it did feel like entering a cult deprogramming program that I only realized after meeting you that I'd grown up. With the subconscious understanding that there were certain things I wasn't allowed to think or feel, and that I just wasn't allowed to hold certain beliefs and so I couldn't which I think is really interesting and I think we're seeing more and more of that being discussed openly.
So this is a fun thing to talk about. I guess I'll dive into it. I, let's start with your parents. What. How did they meet? What's their background? Yeah. I think they ended up in common circles after graduating when both of them were married to other people.
I know that my mother. Would babysit for my father and his ex-wife. They would do various, things and that she had a close relationship with my half-brother and sister early on.
And that they, my mother and my father were also in a polyamorous relationship, which sounds awfully familiar, like in similar. She was not doing things with your brother and sister, she was taking care of them as a nanny. Yes. And she's in a polyamorous relationship with your father, with dad and his wife.
Great. Yes. And it's actually sounds very similar to common relationship structures in the Bay Area today. There are many polyamorous families so it's, oh no, they're real trailblazers. In terms of that stuff, is it, how don't, and I think that's the thing is people say that polyamory and act like polyamory is this new invention and that it's, so to you, it's not new.
I promise you that stuff was not happening in Texas. This is a, your family was just on the cutting edge of this new cultural movement. But I maybe, but to some extent she thought this was all normal. So you can talk about what were, so they ended up I'll just because you're taking No ill I will explain a little bit more.
So, obvi in this case, actually polyamory did not work out. It led to a fairly not fun divorce from my father and his ex-wife. That was really difficult for my half-brother and sister. My mother basically gave an ultimatum to my dad saying listen, I, I. I can't do this polyamorous relationship either I need to move out of state and just kind of quit you cuz I'm too in love with you or we need to be monogamous.
And he ultimately decided to end his marriage and get with my mom, which was rough. That's polyamory doesn't always work out. But anyway, so I. You'll fast forward if you're going. So they ended up going together to Japan and then they were gonna go to China to train under different masters.
Your dad was an Aikido master in Japan. And your mom was going to be a Tai Chi master who was going to study Tai Chi. Yes. In China. Yeah. But in Japan, after a long time of trying to get pregnant, they didn't think they could get pregnant. They accidentally got pregnant with Simone. And that is where you were born.
I was born in Japan. That's right. Made in Japan and they moved back to the United States after my first birthday where they were turned to the Bay Area where both of them grew up, where, you know, both our, of our collective families are and they were still very involved in all these cultures. So, talk about things like what you thought of politics growing up, what you thought of gender growing up, what you thought of sexuality, what was this world that you were in?
Yeah, I mean it, I in many ways think it was very ideal. I, back then there, there was so litt
Published on 2 years, 7 months ago