Episode Details

Jenny (00:02):

I think is actually thought provoking. I've seen some conversation around the idea that there was this intentional move to make white women the face of this administration and to do it in a way that is you're woefully unprepared. You maybe even are intentionally ill prepared to take the fall and that that is not a new dynamic for white men.

Rebecca (01:03):

She really can't talk.

Jenny (01:06):

Okay. I'm sorry. We had just talked, so I was not prepared for your voice to sound like that. It sounds great. It sounds great. Yeah.

(01:28):

I know. I know, but I still wasn't ready. I'm sorry, friend. That sucks.

You sound really sorry.

(01:53):

Yeah. No, I like this, Rebecca. I feel like this is so much about what I've been researching and writing for my book is what I'm calling the anatomy of a missionary and looking at how white women were set up as soft power for imperialism and the gender social role that white women serve abroad. I think we're experiencing now what Emma says calls the boomerang of imperialism. And so the roles that white women have taken on in the global south for 50 years plus, we're now seeing those higher levels of power, but it's not actually ... It is levels of power, but it's mostly levels in proximity to male power that are still above those women. So they're always going to be on the sacrificial block whenever they need to be more than the white males in those positions would be, is what I think.

(03:05):

I would call it a position of power so long as the performance is enacted to suit power. And I just read this really great article from Carrie Twigg about how Christine Nome essentially got fired because she couldn't perform on TV well. And Trump is looking to continue to build his media empire and use propaganda to get people to continue to stand behind him, and she didn't perform well. And so it is power so long as you don't mess up, but the second that you don't align yourself with the way that power wants you to. So it's a really precarious power, I would say.

Rebecca (03:56):

See, I would even say, I don't think that's why she got fired. I would say that- And there was no move to find someone that's actually qualified, who had a snowball's chance of performing well on the world stage. So that's why I'm like, I don't think it is as simple as she didn't perform well. She was never going to perform well. And you knew that when yo