Feminism Created Communism
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.33755
Summary
In this episode, we talk about feminism in the 20th century and how it started in Russia and Eastern Europe. We talk about the history of feminism in Russia, why women stopped having kids in the early 20th Century, and the reasons why women should have more children.
Transcript
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and i interviewed i interviewed someone um yesterday or the day before um he he wrote
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a book called the history of sex and i was surprised to learn that actually um the
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women stopping having kids it's matching with what you're saying started in the 20s
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because i always thought like the 60s was the beginning of like the everyone always thinks
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that like the 60s he said that was more of like the accumulation of a lot of trends that were
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already happening so he said in the 20s like before then women used to live with their parents
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and then until they got married and they would get married younger but the 20s was when like that
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was that was really the beginning of the end yes your family which kind of also lines up with like
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they're not being waves of feminism right exactly that i would totally agree with him on that
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and in the east so in like russia and the the communist bloc countries because the bolsheviks
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in russia take over in 1917 and they're pushing feminism as well but they use a different
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strategy in russia and the communist bloc countries in eastern europe to push it so from a communist
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perspective they're saying look if you want to fight the bourgeoisie and empower the worker you've
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got to get rid of traditional marriage and families because property and wealth are passed down through
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the patriarchal limit um lineage so if nobody knows who their dad is then that takes away any incentive
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to build cross-generational wealth to own property to work your way up you know from being a serf to
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being somebody who has land and owns a business or things like that and this is so the people in power
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can stay in power yes exactly so that they they can be the ones who are the landowners and control
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everybody and you know they promise you security in return like oh we'll make sure all the workers
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of the world are taken care of trust us but they were the first to the first to legalize in russia
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and they had a horrible woman who was in charge she's she's the subject of book number two uh her name
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was alexandra kolantai and she was kind of like the russian margaret singer but much worse
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she made not only legal in russia in 1918 i believe 1919 uh not only legal but paid for free up until
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the day of birth in every russian hospital so what happened is within the span of about 10 years
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in russia they got to a point where they had three abortions for every one live birth and it was
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decimating the population and they're heading into world war ii stalin takes power and he has
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to make abortion illegal again because he said we're not we're going to get completely invaded
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and taken over because we just had world war one in a famine and now we're not having any babies like
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the birth rate had just dropped like a rock with just this free paid for and everywhere and then they
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also took marriage out of the church uh because you know they got they basically decimated the orthodox
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christian church in russia and turned uh they kind of had the first no-fault divorce they turned marriage
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into a really flimsy legal contract that you could kind of have it or not have it you could break it
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and nobody cared um they're they were kind of the first ones to institute no force wait and so i just
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realized so another way to decimate the patriarchy is to give the kids to the woman yes because if the
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woman gets the kids then there's no like you can't have a patriarchy when the women have all the children
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right right and it takes away every motivation men have to get ahead in life you know the reason that
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men accumulate resources is because they want to get a good wife they want to have a family they want to
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have kids to pass everything down to if you rip that away from them they don't really have any motivation
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to do anything for themselves they're then they're so then in russia it becomes you work for the state
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everything you're working toward in life is for the state not for your spouse not for your kids not
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for the future of your family not for your grandkids um so why would you want to own land why would you
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want to have uh money saved up that you can pass down to your children if you don't even have any rights
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to your own children you're not even sure if they're yours right so in the 20s they didn't have dna tests
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and they thought this was a great thing um to to maybe not know who the dad was of all these kids
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because the kids belong to the state now oh and and because they're pushing all the women into factory
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working out of the home they had the first daycare system in russia as well called creches
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where it was communal raising of children um and it was like the philosophy they had a whole family
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law code that they rewrote where um the idea was that you should have babies but only to the extent
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that you want to create new labors new laborers for the state and alexandra kolentai wrote that
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women should stop seeing themselves as mothers and start seeing themselves as labor units who can
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produce more labor units and oddly even though this is a communist idea this is another thesis antithesis
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synthesis situation where you had capitalism in the west so you had liberal feminism based on
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capitalism here which is women should have bank accounts women should own property women should
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own companies and be ceos and be boss babes and then in russia you have women should devote themselves
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not to their husband but to lenin this was like an actual slogan they had uh that lenin should be your
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true love and then later stalin right so don't have a husband don't have a family devote yourself to the
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russian state and wed yourself to lenin and have babies so that there's more soldiers and producers
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for the state and now in modern times we're kind of seeing a blending of those because you have marxism
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here in the west blended with capitalism so we tell women get educated go into a whole bunch of debt
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early in your life build a career all through your fertile years and then later when you're 35 40
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if you can find a man and get pregnant then you can think about that stuff so basically we tell them
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to do it backwards that's what the guy um that wrote the the his name is david baker but he wrote the the
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history of sex was saying too was that the biggest because i always thought that the biggest impact on
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like women's birth rates was fertility but he was saying no that he thinks it's women going into the
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workforce because i was like thinking about i'm like when i was 18 19 i i i certainly wasn't thinking
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of having a family i was going to college and right and a couple generations ago that's what women at 18
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or 19 were thinking they were thinking i want to get the best while i'm in my prime i want to get the
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best husband i can for myself i want to start having children with him and build a family so that in my
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golden years when i'm older i'll have people who care about me people who will take care of me i'll have
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security going into my old age i'll have grandchildren great-grandchildren things like
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that now we tell them no you have to start building your 401k and your investment portfolio in your
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career during those years don't be worried about family we in fact we tell women that they are losers
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that they are stupid that they are silly if they have like what happens when a girl gets pregnant at
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18 everybody around her goes oh her life's over all right yeah just like oh she's gonna be a loser
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now she's never gonna be anything this is something that i heard too because i had my first daughter
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when i was 20 and i was always in like advanced classes and like smarty pants kids programs growing
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up and things like that and i i didn't like school because i figured out early on that it was not for
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smart people and that it wasn't about learning really so i didn't want to go to college by the
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time i got college age and i had my first daughter at 20 and i was like shocked by how much i loved being
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a mom i was shocked because i was a tomboy and i i was never like overly feminine really but i wasn't
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a feminist i just wasn't thinking politically i guess but i loved being a mom were you were you a daddy's
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girl yeah yeah i was like i was a really big tomboy too but i find it's like usually the oldest girls
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in families and they're like close with their dads and like a boy yeah between two boys i was close with
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my dad and yeah yeah yeah so when i when i had my daughter and i was like i remember going to drive
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her to daycare she's like six weeks old and i'm supposed to go back to my crap job that i don't care about
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and i'm driving to daycare going wait so i'm gonna take this tiny person who depends on me for
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everything and i can't think of anything but her and i don't really want to do anything except take
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care of her i'm gonna go drop her off with some other lady pay that lady half of what i'm gonna
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make today at a job i don't care about so that she can do the job i want to be doing and i thought
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this is the dumbest system ever who came up with this it seems really inefficient it's really painful
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like the baby is crying i'm crying and all the women around me go you'll get used to it you'll
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get used to it the baby will get used to it and you'll get used to it and i'm like but why what
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like this seems really dumb why is it set up so that i have to go back to work in order to like
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live and you know so that's when i really started questioning things but those things are done
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intentionally now so the average first of all women uh get more degrees than men now which you probably
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have heard a lot of these stats but more degrees are earned by women than men now the average woman
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graduates from college with about 36 000 in debt uh she makes an average of 40k a year in the united
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states so that's not very good for that much debt and then um so what what are you looking at when
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you're in your mid-20s well i have to build my career so i have any hope of paying off this debt
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which means i don't have time for like getting married and having kids and then to think about taking
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time away from your career to have children well you're not going to be keeping up with your wages
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you're not going to be um considered relevant or up to date in whatever field you're working in so
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a lot of women just don't ever get there they just they're told that to be a good smart girl
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and to be successful these are the steps you have to do and you'd better have a career and your own
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money first that's like a prerequisite to having