Because we live in a grind culture that insists on incessant productivity and normalizes exhaustion, we have lost the capacity to define and defend rest. Thanks to Tricia Hersey’s work in Rest is Resistance, this episode describes how we are damaged by the ‘cult of urgency and busyness’ and how we might begin to reimagine the radical potential of learning how to rest.

In this episode, we are going to examine the shortcomings and liabilities of resilience. For one, it can easily become accommodationist—that is, adapted to the survival, rather than elimination, of ongoing harm—and, as a result, resilience tends to reward the individual who persists in ‘bouncing back’ from intolerable situations.

Together with Dr. Kristy McCray, we discuss the many ways that sports work to reinforce (or challenge) gender norms, why trans women have especially become the locus of so much social anxiety, and the importance of ensuring participation in sports for all persons.

Let’s look more closely at the increasingly normalized ‘fear of gender’ and the many ways it reinforces the purported ‘biological reality of sex.’ The fear of gender, in many ways, is the fear of gender self-determination, or the right of a person to decide their own gender identity rather than obey what ‘biological truth’ has determined to be true and unchangeable.

We will continue exploring the assumptions that underlie ‘woke gender ideology.’ This time, we will focus on the purported ‘biological reality of sex’ as defined by the Trump administration’s Executive Order ‘Defending Women from Gender Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’ Learn how a scientifically inaccurate understanding of biological sex is leveraged in anti-gender and anti-trans political efforts.

What is driving the new rhetoric of ‘woke gender ideology’ and its weaponization in the current political climate? We pay special attention to the concepts of ‘wokeness’ and ‘ideology’ this week as well as discuss how to allow for despair without falling into paralysis.

This episode continues the conversation of last week, Preparing for Trump 2.0. Eighteen speakers from the larger podcast community share brief and powerful insights into what they are doing differently or refusing to do in this volatile political climate.

Let’s consider how we might differently approach the second presidency of Donald Trump. How, for one, can we guard against overwhelm and dysregulation? How can we direct our energy and attention to meaningful projects rather than fall into another extended outrage cycle?

Let’s discuss the rise in trans panic, or the cultivation of widespread anxiety and fear at the very fact of trans existence. We talk about the ways in which trans panic serves particular political ends as well as underscores the phantasmatic nature of gender. Using gender affirming care as an example, we consider how much trans panic relies on fictitious stories about gender and ignores the lived realities of trans youth specifically.

Together with various voices from Generation Z, we will examine the shifting gender and sexual identities and practices of this generation. For one, at least one in five members of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ, so they are the largest demographic of LGBTQ persons in the United States.

Let’s discuss different ways of understanding the motives of misogyny, or what is more commonly understood as the hatred of women, as well as examine the upsurge in misogynist rhetoric in the 2024 Presidential election.

We will approach patriarchy as a social system that overvalues maleness and masculinity at the same time it devalues femaleness and femininity. We will also talk about the ‘logics’ of patriarchy that not only attempt to justify the system as inevitable and good but also encourage men to fear the judgment and reprisal of other men.

We will turn to the work of Sara Ahmed to better understand how we become a problem for others when we dare to expose or name a problem in the first place.

Let’s examine the political usefulness of anger, especially as an appropriate and ethical response to injustice and mistreatment.

What are some of the anxieties and fears that keep us silent or unwilling to speak? Why do we think silence protects us when it doesn’t make us any less afraid? Let’s consider what Audre Lorde can teach us.

Unlearning is crucial if we are to evolve our thinking, but we may need to learn how to unlearn. Ignorance has many motives, but I am most concerned about the ways that power benefits from our ignorance. Let’s understand how that happens.