Helen Roy, contributing editor at Claremont Institute’s The American Mind and host of the podcast Girlboss, Interrupted, joins the podcast. Helen and Inez discuss how the girlboss archetype went from lauded to reviled, and whether new womanly archetypes can be created and loved. They also chat about the Millennial vs. Gen Z divide and whether generational critiques of the modern woman have gone beyond the aesthetic.
High Noon is an intellectual download featuring conversations that make possible a free society. The podcast features interesting thinkers from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the most controversial subjects of the day in a way that hopes to advance our common American future. Hosted by Inez Stepman of Independent Women’s Forum.
TRANSCRIPT
Inez Stepman:
Welcome to High Noon where we talk about controversial subjects with interesting people, and I’m so pleased this week to have Helen Roy on. Helen Roy is one of my favorite writers on the subjects of family, femininity, and sex, among others. She’s a contributing editor to Claremont Institute’s “The American Mind,” and she hosts a podcast called “Girl Boss, Interrupted.” She also has a new newsletter for New Founding called “American Woman.” So welcome, Helen.
Helen Roy:
Thank you for having me.
Inez Stepman:
So I wanted to start us off with the question of your podcast, which is sort of beating up on the girl boss archetype, right? And it almost feels a little bit mean at this point because it seems like the girl boss is very cringey and unpopular.
Helen Roy:
She’s a bit of a dead horse, yes.
Inez Stepman:
I’m wondering how it went from a cultural phenomenon to a kind of insult, how that happened, and then what it means now that this archetype, what killed this archetype? What killed the girl boss? And what does it mean that it seems like beyond just our folks on the right, this is now an insult, girl boss?
Helen Roy:
Yes. Yes. That’s a great question. Well, I think that honestly some of it is intergenerational violence. Gen Z is pretty intent on differentiating themselves from millennials who are cringe and it’s their ascendancy now. They are the youth, they’re dictating the culture because that’s how our culture works, that the youngest and sexiest among us get to say what’s what, which I’m not upset about because I think it’s something that it’s a meme that deserves to just probably be beaten down, and at the very least, forgotten.
But there were material and practical reasons why this sort of thing fell apart too. So I think the girl boss thing, you could even say it started in the mid-70s, when women in the workforce went from just below, they crossed the threshold from 49% to 50%. And that was really when that wave of feminism that was focused on not just being present in the career but being a boss and achieving status in the working world was ascendant. But it really, those sort of ideas were marinating for a while, and then I think in the 90s especially, the 80s and the 90s really, well the 80s you see it too with the fashion, the padded shoulders and all that.
But anyway, I think people who grew up in the 80s and 90s, women especially, at that point this particular brand of feminism had subsumed all aspects of life and it became a narrative for raising children. And so this cohort of women born in the 80s and 90s, millennials, were saturated in this girl power thing and then they grew up believing this wholeheartedly. And originally, the self-identification, the #girlboss thing in the early days of Instagram stuck and made sense because it was millennials’ time and they were defining the trends.
But over time, I think millennials aged into a situation where they became pretty exhausted by living by that life script because it was so careerist and so insistent on equality with men that it insisted on behaviors that were the same as male behaviors. And just, I think, acting in a way that wasn’t lined up with female nature, just anybody will do… That happens to anybody. If you’re not behaving in a way that’s true and aligned and properly oriented, it just falls apart because that’s how the natural law works. So I think that that’s kind of what happened is millennials grew up and as they were aging out of cultural relevancy, they were simultaneously losing steam personally and so that’s where we are.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, I think that’s really true, especially during the pandemic and we’ll get to that, but this always makes me think of a truly emblematic anecdote, actually just a little bit older I think, because this is from Sex in the City, but Sex in the City is largely about Gen X, right? Where the girls in Sex in the City are complaining about girls in their 20s from the perspective of being in their mid 30s, and I can’t remember which one says to which, but one of them is like, “These girls in their 20s, they think they’re it.” And the other one says, “Yeah, don’t they know that we’re still it?” And I think that really encaptures this millennial sort of desperation for what you called the sex appeal of being the youthful generation. Millennials are not adjusting well to not being it anymore.
But I do fear that our cultural dominance actually will continue because simply the generation is so huge in the same way that Boomers… I mean there was that very clear cultural handoff moment at the Super Bowl last year where, for the first time the halftime show, it was geared explicitly at nostalgia for millennials. Boomers had such an outside impact on pop culture and on our culture more generally, I think because they were the biggest generation to date, well, we’re bigger than they are. So the world may validate, the marketing world out of pure capitalist greed may validate millennials’ delusions that they’re still it.
But the deeper question here would be, because you said, and I think it’s so true, that especially the elder cohort of millennials feels like they’re running out of steam with all the things that they were once very dedicated to. Not just the girl bossing thing, but the “changing the world.” So many of these sort of millennial tropes are generational tropes, I think a lot of those did kind of die an unnatural death very quickly during the pandemic where obviously a lot of people working from home, very, very isolating. Some people leaned into work, and they were working 16-hour days because there was nothing else to do, but now we have this phenomenon of burnout on the flip side of that.
Other people probably looking at their work and saying, “Is this it?” Without going out for brunch or seeing my friends at work or having the sort of distraction around this life fundamentally made it difficult for people not to see it for the sort of emptiness that came with that kind of life. And here I’m thinking of that famous cover, was it a New Yorker cover or whatever with the girl on the Zoom date with the cocktail and then she’s got pills on the ground and stuff everywhere. Was it the pandemic that killed off finally this archetype because it just couldn’t survive the kind of promises of that, couldn’t survive the loneliness of being locked in your house?
Helen Roy:
Did coronavirus kill the girl boss is the question? Yes. I think that it was the nail in the coffin for all of the reasons that you’ve already hinted at. I think that… I had a guest on my podcast, her name is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. She wrote a book called The Sexual State about how the government and media hold up these artificial and contra-nature sexual morays because they have to, because things would fall apart much more quickly if there weren’t a state to enforce certain things and propaganda to keep the wheels turning.
So I think that that’s true for a lot of memes, and there are a lot of unnatural memes that require a certain structure in order to stay alive. And I think that coronavirus really disrupted a lot of those structures and laid bare the truth of various institutions when all the, not just the bells and whistles, but the, gosh, yeah, I say structure I would say… Oh man, how would I describe that? Just the formality was taken away. All you have left is the raw substance and you can see it for what it is.
So I think that happened for a lot of millennial women. I would say definitely for the ones who had made their career their primary identity. They were forced to take a step back and all of a sudden it’s like this all-consuming loneliness and a real loss of identity for women then who have children who it’s a slightly different thing, I think that a lot of women who have children who previously would’ve just schlepped their kids to daycare and worked, and that was sort of an invisible, the domestic work of raising children was just this invisible thing that was outsourced. When that was no longer a thing and they were interacting with their kids in a more intimate way, I guess, I think that did one of two things really.
I think that either revealed to women just how much they were missing out on by not being with their children and it made them sad and made them reevaluate and want to turn inward, turn toward the home and be more present, or it really was debilitating and they were stretched too thin and they couldn’t get out of the house again fast enough. And I guess the truth of that whole situation didn’t completely make itself clear, or at least wasn’t motivating enough to inspire change, but anyway, so there are a couple different reactions, but in short, I do agree with you. I think that the pandemic was the nail in the coffin for that meme and for the public school meme and a lot of other things.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. I guess as you’re talking, I’m wondering whether, because we talk a lot about, and by we I mean people on the right, people who are, especially I think women engaged on these kind of questions of society and sex. We tend to focus a lot on the ideological, you were talking that the propaganda state supports that you’re talking about and how we can rearrange some of those things maybe to not make life obviously smooth-sailing or perfect, but to maybe undo some of the harmful incentives that have been put in place.
But how much of this is going the other way around? In other words, how much of this is cope for the things that we now lack, right? I’ve had Mary Eberstadt on this podcast, I think you have as well, right?
Helen Roy:
Yeah. Amazing.
Inez Stepman:
How much of this ideology is a necessary rationalization for women who just don’t have the same opportunities for things that actually statistically do make women more fulfilled and happy because of either economic factors or family breakdown of their own parents or the Boomer generation. I guess, what percentage of this is actively propagandized or is, even forgetting about propaganda, is just an actual ideology that people are governing their lives with? And how much of it is just cope, it’s backwards cope for the reality that you’re describing people facing in this pandemic, which is that people are lonely?
Helen Roy:
Oh, that is such a good point. It’s hard to say. It’s sort of a chicken and an egg thing, as are so many cultural things. It’s hard to pinpoint which domino was the first one to fall. Was the girl bossification of the American woman what led to loneliness? Or is loneliness what led to the girl bossification of the American woman? That honestly, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I think that many things can be true at once and these things do sort of feed each other.
So yeah, I think that’s true. I mean I think that there’s a considerable amount of cope and I don’t even… So as much as I beat up on the meme, I don’t like to beat up on individual women, and I think that most people are really just doing the best with the information that they have. And so I’m more critical of institutions of propaganda. So yeah, I don’t know. If people are coping through this, I would say, through with careerism, in the same way that if you were coping with, I don’t know, alcoholism — obviously they’re not the same thing, one is way more damaging, but —
Inez Stepman:
I’m not sure which actually.
Helen Roy:
Fair. But I don’t know. I think it’s time that women especially took a long look in the mirror. We need to contend with our legacy as women and the ways that our behavior, even if it’s something that makes us feel good or feel confident or feel empowered in the moment, sets a precedent for future generations to not have as many options, if that makes sense.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. I think you’re pointing to the fact that there isn’t really a neutral message that can be wrangled from this. Society’s always going to have some kind of default about the good life, and particularly in the context of this conversation, is going to have a default about what the good life looks like for a woman. And our societal default is very, very much in the girl boss direction still, as cringey as the meme has become, it’s also even for Gen Z and for the generation after that, I don’t see any indication, for example, that it’s going to be culturally acceptable for smart and ambitious young women to skip college, have a family, and come back potentially to some kind of career later in life. I’m not seeing those kind of avenues open up in any really fundamentally different way than when we were 16.
Helen Roy:
Yes, so true.
Inez Stepman:
So I don’t know. I guess I do wonder what’ll happen when the consequences of this become fully clear. I mean we had the pandemic as kind of a preview, but millennial women are going to be the lowest percentage married and having children, I think close to 50% of millennial women will probably never marry and have children statistically. How society reacts to that, whether it’s seen as something to justify or as a cautionary tale, I still don’t know, but I’m curious what kind of feedback you’ve gotten, especially since you do write about these subjects so often, particularly from women who are younger than us, if they think that this kind of millennial introspection, in the best case, holding themselves out as cautionary tales and saying, “Look, this didn’t really work out for me. This didn’t really make me happy.” Do you see that having an impact or do you see us being unwise older sisters?
Helen Roy:
Well, great question. So to one of your earlier points, I just want to emphasize and agree with that because it was a good one. The Gen Z criticism of millennials, for the most part of the girl boss thing is aesthetic. It’s purely it’s the aesthetic is cringe, but the philosophy, the critique is not to the level of philosophy and you know this because Gen Z women are just as, if not more, demeaning toward mothers and motherhood than their unwise older sisters.
So, but… Sorry. And your second question was, do you think is there going to be a real change here? Is there a change in the youth or do you… Okay. So I think that to the extent that culture is shifting, it’s going to be a very radicalized minority who responds. And over a long enough timeline, those people will simply outbreed the ones who are more nihilistic, but I don’t even know if we’ll ever live to see that. So I don’t know. I don’t know about mass culture. I think that, as far as the masses go, we might be a little too far gone. I don’t think there’s ever been a civilization that survived the sort of tendencies that our ours is falling into currently, but I think that there are enough people who are going to react strongly enough to build out a little balkanized enclave for themselves and the future will be interesting times, probably hard too.
Inez Stepman:
Well, I mean I suppose every future is hard and every past is hard, but I guess I’m wondering if the reaction to your work in particular, if you do get a reaction from younger women or from women, I’m assuming you’re a millennial. I don’t know why I assumed that, but-
Helen Roy:
Well, I don’t know. I was born in 1995, which I mean I’m married to a millennial, I’m probably spiritually more of a millennial, but I sort of have a foot in the next generation. It depends on when you think that one starts. To be honest, I think a more accurate date for Gen Z’s beginning is somewhere like ’97, ’98. So I’m a bit of a cusper, but I’m not really sure, but anyway.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah, no, I’m in the fat part of the millennial curve, but yeah, it’s funny because I actually sort of skew several years younger, didn’t matter in my case, it just makes me a younger millennial just because I grew up in Silicon Valley and a lot of the internet friends I hit earlier. And so I often find that my cultural or reference points about a lot of these things skew to somebody who’s about five years younger than me because we had iPods first and we had a lot of these sort of phenomena I was on. I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t writing my book reports based on Google searches. I mean I don’t think it was even Google then, it was Netscape or whatever, but based on internet research.
But in any case, regardless of the battle of the generations, but I do believe that generational stereotypes are a real thing. They reflect something, which obviously there are plenty of individual exceptions and there are plenty of people who are not stereotypical of their generation. But I mean, for example, one of the things I always found really unfair was the stereotype applied to millennials that millennials were lazy. I really don’t think that one was ever true. I really think that was Boomers looking at their younger employees who were doing things related to computers and thinking, “They just sit there on the computers all day.” Because that one has never been kind of true. In fact, I see the opposite, and especially in the archetype that you’re talking about that millennials never stop moving, they’re kind of corporately ambitious.
I think of millennials fundamentally as kind of the good kids, but they learned as the good kids who followed what their parents said, but what their parents said was all of the worst of the cultural revolution and especially the sexual revolution of the Boomers. But I don’t know, sorry, I didn’t mean to get off track and start-
Helen Roy:
No, that’s okay.
Inez Stepman:
… defining the lines between Gen Z and Gen-
Helen Roy:
It’s such an interesting topic, especially now because it’s become, I feel like generations have become identity groups in a unique way, whereas before they would’ve just been in the background of your life, I guess. But they’ve really become, to Mary Eberstadt’s point, it’s a new form of identity politics almost.
Inez Stepman:
Another identity that we can put on TikTok and Twitter.
Helen Roy:
Right, right, astrology too.
Inez Stepman:
That’s one thing I’ve never been able to stand. I really have a hard time taking it seriously because it usually comes from the same people who say things like, “Why would you read the Bible? Because why would you read what your Sky Fairy said in a Bronze Age book?” Or whatever it is, and have such a surface level understanding of 2000-year-old religions. But they’re like, “Oh, the stars predict my life.” It’s always been particularly difficult for me to not laugh into their faces when they take it seriously.
Anyway, but you did bring up about this corporatism angle, and you write about that and speak about that as well. And I’m wondering what you think the relationship between capitalism and this kind of female empowerment is, right? You tracked it from the 70s into the 80s into the 90, girl power era, and then now into the 2000s with girlbossing and now kind of an aesthetic critique, at least, of that. We’ll see about the deeper critique. And I think you’re probably right that it’ll only be a small minority of people who actually take the philosophical critique seriously, but what’s the relationship between essentially corporate culture and the girl boss archetype?
Helen Roy:
Great question. So you know what? I think that there’s a third player here, which is secularization, or at least the removal of God and family as the sort of center, God as the focal point of a society and the family as a most basic political unit. I think that changing, Godlessness, and then also the individual becoming the prioritized, most basic, the atomized individual becoming the center of our political life. I think that is what unleashed capitalism in a way that was just all consuming so that corporations felt free to seek more labor, to cheapen labor because “line go up” sort of mentality.
And that was beginning in the mid-century, sort of a postwar mentality. I am not an anti-capitalist. I think that free markets are great, but I believe that they must be restrained by a properly ordered conception of the human person, subject to the creator and as a member of a living community. So I think that a big part of the feminist story has been this unleashing of the corporate world to, I don’t know, break up families, to make essentials very… I mean I know that the corporations didn’t say like, “Oh, we’re going to make houses expensive today,” but it’s just a domino that fell when we invited women into the workplace, killing the family wage. That becomes the two-income trap, which becomes unaffordable housing now.
So that’s sort of how I feel about it. I don’t know. There are a lot of people on the right now who are, I think, critical of capitalism, but I think that it’s important to be very specific about what kind of things you’re talking about there. It’s just too broad a brush.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. I’m probably with you. I’m still definitely a capitalist. I think the free market is an excellent economic system. I think what we’re really pointing to is the fact that there are spheres of life that are non-economic, where maximizing… Capitalism is very, very good at maximizing material prosperity, but that is not the only kind of prosperity. I think that’s maybe from the sort of agnostic atheist perspective versus your Catholic perspective, that’s what you’re pointing to about correctly understanding the human person. I think what you’re pointing to there is probably, there are goods other than the material. And at those goods, capitalism is particularly bad because it’s so effective. Capitalism is a great mechanism for giving people what they want and what they’ll pay for. And the problem is a lot of things that people want aren’t good for them and aren’t good for society.
Helen Roy:
Yeah, totally.
Inez Stepman:
And that’s not a flaw we’re going to correct in human nature. In the same way that the Soviets believe they could build a new altruistic man who wasn’t motivated by self-interest, and therefore they could do away with an economic system based on self-interest, it’s almost the same critique to me, or a similar or hand-in-hand critique to say that, “Yeah, because man is self-interested and because man often wants things that are not good for him or her in this case,” that capitalism cannot provide the kind of moral structures in a society that it’s being relied on to provide, I think in the absence of what you’re saying, in the absence of other structures.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like capitalism or that I think that we need to switch. In fact, oftentimes, and this is where I push back against some of the dissident right folks, it’s not at all clear to me that a more socialistic system removes some of those barriers. It seems to me a lot of the atomization is coming from prosperity, and in that sense, capitalism is creating the prosperity, therefore it’s creating some of this atomization, but socialistic programs can create that too. What is social security other than one fewer reason that you need to have children, for example? Because the public guarantees your old age. It used to be that, before this kind of welfare net, if you didn’t have children and your family didn’t have children and everybody made the decision not to invest in the future in that way, then when you couldn’t physically work anymore, you were out of luck.
So there are ways in which socialistic society absolutely also empowers a certain type of atomization. I guess, what else about this sphere is going away? Because it seems to me that a lot of your remarks are pointing towards a kind of hole in our society for the non-material, as we just discussed. I mean the falling away of women into the workforce, and I’m describing it that way because they’re falling away from something and it’s not only within their private family lives, it’s also in a sort of public or political way. Are we looking at essentially the death of the private sphere or the domestic sphere? Whatever you want, however you would like to define that, actually that itself is a good question, right? What do you think is the sphere that is non-material and in the past, what have women’s roles been in maintaining that and how can we create a society in which there is such a thing as a domestic or private sphere in the Political sense?
Helen Roy:
Great point. And actually, I was thinking about this today because Joram had tweeted something about how so many of the enlightenment rationalist thinkers were single men who never had children, and this is now the sort of materialist ideology that dominates our world. And I mean even Adam Smith’s mother cooked his meals for most of his life. That’s a form of labor that can’t be quantified. I mean not because it’s unpaid, but it’s important and we wouldn’t have The Wealth of Nations if Lady Margaret hadn’t provided that for him.
So I guess to answer your question, I think the domestic sphere is falling apart and people are running away from it because, not because it’s unpaid, but because we cannot recognize unpaid labor and unquantifiable, immeasurable acts of service. We can’t recognize those things as having dignity and inherently dignified, inherently honorable, because we have this rationalist material brain. And capitalism and communism are just two sides of that coin, it’s whether you want to maximize it individually or share it with everybody, which that’s their stated aims, but let’s be real about the communists. No, but anyway, so I think that what are we falling away from? We’re falling away from a family life because we no longer have the vocabulary, the mindset, the cultural heritage, the impulse to recognize really love and acts of love as having status, as being things worthy of status, I guess you could say.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. And there are few creatures on earth more status conscious than women. And I don’t actually mean that as an insult to women at all. I think it serves a valid purpose, biological purpose. But you’re right that it’s always going to be hard to ask women to do things that don’t confer a certain amount of social status. But how do you rebuild that kind of impulse? I mean is it even possible to rebuild that kind of impulse in a self-aware way? Or is it all kind of a doomed LARP I guess? Once you lose that instinctual impulse towards those things, what happens to ersatz women of our generation?
Helen Roy:
I think part of the reason why Jordan Peterson was so powerful and affected so many people is because he, for the first time in a long time, started pointing to archetypes, started pointing to mythic, things of deep psychological significance that are in myths and connecting those dots for people. And the truth in that and the brilliance in that is because people need these stories to make sense of their lives. I think we re-dignify that role by holding up an archetype of woman that is worthy of love, respect, and admiration, and seeing her in the women that we know and choosing to recognize an archetype of a good woman and emulate an archetype of a good woman.
So this is… The only place I personally have been able to recognize a real revivification of the domestic realm is in my Catholic friend circles, because we have that archetype in Mary. And it is a pretty specifically Catholic thing; I think there are a lot of Protestants who want to diminish or disregard that role, she’s just another woman, but Catholics are very into Mary. We love Mary. But it’s actually a very effective social tool because she dignifies women in a sort of broad societal psychological level. And I think that’s kind of what it takes. I think that, because right now in the broader society, the more easily recognizable, easily digestible, frequently consumed image of woman is a woman in a porno. I don’t know. I think it has to do something with that, something to do with storytelling with these myths and history. And by the way, I’m not saying Mary was mythological. Okay? Let me just back that up. That’s heretical, that’s not what I said, but I hope you understand what I’m saying, but yeah.
Inez Stepman:
I understand that you’ve come down on one side of the Madonna versus whore complex here.
Helen Roy:
Sure, yes.
Inez Stepman:
You’ve picked a team. No, but I could imagine there being multiple archetypes, right?
Helen Roy:
Oh, for sure. I mean we have Mary Magdalene too.
Inez Stepman:
But still having to do with, I guess, the cultivation of traditional feminine virtues as distinct from masculine ones. So yeah, I think that’s a really interesting answer, actually, and I think that’s probably more true in what I observe or how, especially for women, and I actually just don’t know about men because I’m not one in this regard, but I know for myself, I’m very influenced by especially aesthetic archetypes, or I feel like I can bear just about anything in life as long as I have a sort of model in my head of what that would mean.
I think there is that impulse of memetic, slotting yourself in to a particular, even if it doesn’t fully describe every aspect of yourself, but that’s kind of not the point. That would be the sort of millennial narcissistic answer to it. “Oh, I don’t see myself represented in this.” But instead, it’s something to strive towards. It gives a sort of dignity to something that may not be immediately gratifying. Or as Alex Kaschuta always says, tickle your limbic system.
Helen Roy:
That’s so good. I love all of her little aphorisms. They’re so good. She’s just the best at that. Gosh.
Inez Stepman:
I guess speaking of the Madonna-whore complex, what is this sort of contradictory ball? Help me untangle this contradictory ball of impulses within, speaking of archetypes, right back to the girl boss archetype, because something that’s always driven me mad about this conception in our culture is a sort of schizophrenic view on sexuality that I think you’re actually pointing to. You came down on one side of the Madonna-whore complex, but the modern equivalent of that is probably the sort of sexless automaton in the boardroom and Only Fans playgirl outside of it.
Helen Roy:
Oh, I see what you’re saying, yeah.
Inez Stepman:
And there’s almost this very de-sexed and very unerotic conception of women in the workplace to the point of if a man puts his hand on your thigh, you’ve been horribly assaulted, and the company owes you money for your trauma. So that on the one hand, but then on the other hand, this extremely aggressive sort of sexuality that does seem to be a part of this girlboss archetype, that she has a lot of casual sex, she goes on a lot of Tinder hookups, and is really dedicated to this concept of having sexual relationships without the attachment or intimacy.
And I’m not, again like you said, I’m not talking about any particular person, this is part of this, right? And sometimes it very literally collides where a lot of the women that I’ve known who fall into the girl boss category that I’ve worked with, for example, when I did have a less ideological job and I did more, a lot of those women even dress very sexually aggressively at work in ways that are almost daring, it almost seems to be a dare to people around them, like, “Oh, you’re supposed to treat me as a sexless automaton, but here look at my cleavage and my legs while you do that.” But I’m wondering how you can… Untangle, for me, this just giant ball of impulses related to asexuality almost on the one hand or de-eroticization and hypersexuality and eroticization on the other hand, make sense of that for me.
Helen Roy:
Gosh, I wish I could. Let me think about it. I don’t know. What is that. I talk about it a lot and it is totally schizophrenic, but I suppose what it is, is they’re united in that they’re both cheap and shoddy imitations of what is understood as the male behavior. The all business serious, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah thing, and also the spread my seed far and wide thing. These are both, I don’t know. It’s schizophrenic because women aren’t supposed to act this way in either capacity because I think women naturally, at work, are interested in people.
And I mean I was actually talking with some of the guys at NatCon who run a great business and who have a couple women in the office, and we were just talking about how, no, it’s actually, well, these women, first of all, they have very full lives and what they bring to the workplace is uniquely female and they are feminine and they provide a certain social glue and peacemaking sort of capabilities that are really quite refreshing and conducive to success, right?
And so women can add things like this to work. I think anybody who’s adding their true gifts and offering that to other people is doing a good thing. It’s when you get into these cheap imitations where you get a more confused outcome probably. So yeah, I don’t know. I think that’s probably what both of those things are. It’s just cheap imitations of the worst kind of man.
Inez Stepman:
You pointed there to a contradiction, and the diversity thinking, women are interchangeable or identical with men, they’re not really adding anything unique even to the workplace, right? If they’re interchangeable with men, they’re not bringing anything different to the table. There’s always been that contradiction, I think, in a certain type of feminism where on the one hand, if women ruled the world, there’d be no war, and on the other hand, women and men are the same. Those things are obviously not compatible. But I want to wrap up with this question. How did you come to some of these conclusions? Did you grow up in a traditional family or did you find your way to a lot of these conclusions via your observation or poor experience? Or how did you get where you are on a lot of these questions?
Helen Roy:
Well, that’s a good question too. No, I didn’t, I wasn’t raised in a traditional home. I kind of learned the hard way. I think some combination of observation and bad experience. I think I’ve always been just a bit of an outsider. I grew up in the South and my parents were Yankees, so I think I’ve always been… You could say maybe I came to be comfortable in a more observational role, which is probably why I grew up and became a writer.
But yeah, I don’t know. It was some combination of observing other people and then observing myself. And also, I will say it’s not all bad. I think some of my best ideas and my clearest understanding of what has happened has been through the very redemptive experience of marriage and having a relationship with a man that is inherently dignified and who helps me think things out and forces logic. This sounds silly as it’s coming out of my mouth, but I do mean it. Yeah, so I don’t know. There are bad experiences that everybody learns from, but actually, honestly, my most informative things, the things that motivate me now are the fact that I love my life and I wish desperately that I could tell my younger self when I was having all those learning experiences that there is a better way. And so yeah, I said this on Alex’s podcast, it’s just too good of news not to share.
Inez Stepman:
On that uncharacteristically upbeat note for this podcast, thank you so much, Helen for joining High Noon today. Really highly recommend Helen’s writing and her work, her podcast, “Girl Boss, Interrupted.” Thanks so much for spending this close to an hour with us today.
Helen Roy:
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Inez.
Inez Stepman:
And thank you to our listeners. High Noon with Inez Stepman is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. We have other productions of the Independent Women’s Forum, such as At The Bar, which is a podcast that I do with a colleague of mine, Jennifer Braceras, we actually have an upcoming episode on the Supreme Court term. We talk about issues at the intersection of law, politics, and culture. We also have a podcast called She Thinks, which is more of a daily download into policy issues. We have a lot of really great and interesting guests over there as well. So if you’re looking to understand a policy issue better or to understand something that’s in the news better, always a great place to go, She Thinks.
But you can also help us out with this podcast, High Noon, by hitting the subscribe button, leaving us a comment or review on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, or iwf.org. Be brave, and we’ll see you next time on High Noon.
