A Special Place in Hell

This week, the girlx discuss the recent Washington Post article about Artemis Langford, a University of Wyoming student who was driven out of a sorority house for not being the right kind of girl — specifically, a 6’2” biological male with a five o’clock shadow and some strange hobbies.

Relevant Links

“Judge Rules against Female Sorority Members Who Sued after Chapter Admitted Male Student” from The National Review

HOUSEKEEPING

💭 Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

☕Follow Meghan’s other podcast, “The Unspeakable” 

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

An uncharacteristically somber episode in Hell, in which we share our frustrations and disbelief at the callous responses to the attacks by Hamas on Israel.

Relevant Links

Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine.

Claudine Gay’s response to the student groups statement.

“Nothing will ever be the same again” by Yael Bar-Tur

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HOUSEKEEPING

Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

Follow Meghan’s other podcast, “The Unspeakable” 

Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

Follow us on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation For Individual Rights And Expression (FIRE) and author of the new book, “The Canceling Of The American Mind,” visits A Special Place to explain once and for all that cancel culture is real. For the much-anticipated followup to the seminal “The Coddling Of The American Mind,” Greg teamed up with 23-year-old wunderkind Rikki Schlott to show how cancel culture is much more than a moral panic. In fact, it’s a manifestation of the social dysfunction that results from people batting for power and status in a culture that has come to value grievance over resilience.

And in case you find yourself in arguments with people who take the position that Cancel Culture Doesn’t Exist Because Louis CK Is Still Performing™, Greg cites several recent examples of blatant speech suppression (including at Stanford Law School) that you’ll want to write down and keep in your back pocket.

Finally, as FIRE co-sponsored the recent Free Press debate in L.A. about whether the sexual revolution failed (in which Sarah and her partner Grimes DESTROYED gently but definitively toppled the opposition), Greg and the womyn/girlx do some Monday morning quarterbacking of the event and also discuss the confounding press coverage. 

GUEST BIO:

Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is the author of five books, notably “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure” with Jonathan Haidt. Most recently, Greg is the co-author of the upcoming “The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Destroys Institutions and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution” with Rikki Schlott. 

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HOUSEKEEPING

💭 Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

☕Read Meghan’s Substack post about the press coverage of the debate and “Bari Weiss Derangement Syndrome” 

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 And TikTok.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

This episode is for premium subscribers only. Become a member if you want early access to all episodes, and to get access to the bonus-only episodes like this one.

In this episode, the girls/women cover the Coleman Hughes vs. TED saga, and try their best to come up with a fresh take on race and cancel culture, but fail. 

Also, Meghan shows off about a super exclusive event for geniuses which she got invited to for some reason. 

Relevant Links

Read Coleman Hughes’ piece on The Free Press here.

Read the response from Chris Anderson and Adam Grant here.

You can also read Jesse Singal’s take on the whole thing here. 

This very book-heavy episode, the girls/women discuss the relevance of Banned Books Week since no one really reads and libraries are essentially homeless masturbation zones. Meghan shares her distaste for the morally-dubious lessons of The Giving Tree (the Shel Silverstein classic), but Sarah defends it as a necessary parenthood redpill. 

Finally, they discuss a problematic listener comment about single parenthood and the black community. 

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HOUSEKEEPING

💭 Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

☕Follow Meghan’s other podcast, “The Unspeakable” 

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 And TikTok.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

In this episode, Sarah and Meghan do their podcasterly duties and discuss the scandal (or is it merely a juicy nothingburger?) surrounding Ibram X Kendi’s mishandling of the more than $43 million that poured into his Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University. After getting high on schadenfreude fumes, they ultimately decide it’s not Kendi’s fault but the well-meaning (mostly white) enablers who threw money at him because, well, he was there — and apparently a genius.

The womynx then move on to the topic on every commenter’s lips this week: Marriage and whether it’s good for society or simply another tool of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist, heternormative, homosapiast, Taylor Swiftian, Basic Bitchin’ patriarchy. 

Arguing for the “good for society” side are people like David Brooks, who recently added to his arsenal of pro-marriage data by citing a paper by Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago Business School showing that married people are happier. Arguing for the “shut up conservatives; it’s not that simple” side is Rebecca Traister of New York Magazine, who is concerned that nice liberal elites are becoming trad-curious and playing into the hands of Republicans and their anti-woman agenda. Who is correct? We are, of course!

Want to hear bonus episodes? Upgrade your subscription.

HOUSEKEEPING

💭 Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

☕Follow Meghan’s other podcast, “The Unspeakable” 

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 And TikTok.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

And what was the outcome? Despite being an uncharismatic, humorless scold with a normie American accent, Sarah won the debate! It hardly seemed possible, but she and her partner Grimes (aka “Techno Mechanicus’s mother) proved to a packed house that The Sexual Revolution™ was an unmitigated success a net positive.

In this special episode for paying subscribers only, Sarah and Meghan discuss the debate, the audience, the afterparty, and the zombie apocalypse that surrounded the beautifully-restored Ace Theatre in a sad pocket of downtown L.A. Sarah also works through the anticipatory anxiety she carried with her across the country (in business class!) and reports that Anna was not scary at all, Grimes showed us women really can have it all, and Louise Perry could have recited the phone book and still sounded smarter than everyone else thanks to her sublime British accent. 

The w*myn also talk about motherhood, who should have kids, and take a bold stance against eugenics. (Sort of.)

Know someone who is as black-pilled about the culture wars as we are? Donate or give a gift subscription.

HOUSEKEEPING

💭 Follow Sarah’s Substack, “Hold That Thought.”

☕Read Meghan’s Substack post about the press coverage of the debate and “Bari Weiss Derangement Syndrome” 

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 AndTikTok

In this episode, the girls/wom(y)n — aka Meghan Daum and Sarah Haider — tackle the subject of academic tenure and ask whether it actually encourages ideological conformity at universities. Also under discussion: have the social sciences have been captured? Why are so many administrators? Moreover, why do universities bend over backward to cater to 18-year-olds when the people who really matter are aging donors?

Finally, in this episode: AT LONG LAST we learn what Sarah and Meghan were like in high school: Meghan was a writing and oboe prodigy who was borderline learning disabled in other areas, and Sarah was just a little too good at convincing people that assisted suicide is a good thing.

In the bonus, the g*rls/wom*n discuss all of you who have hate-subscribed just to spite us, answer some premium subscriber questions, and ask if universities fail their missions when they are politically motivated.

Want to hear the bonus? Upgrade your subscription now.

Relevant Links

Why Conservatives Must Not Abandon Universities: A four-point plan

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

HOUSEKEEPING

🎟️ Get your ticket to The Free Press debate with Grimes, Sarah, Louise Perry and Anna Khachiyan.

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter: www.twitter.com/specialplacepod

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 And TikTok.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit aspecialplace.substack.com

In this episode, the girls/wom(y)n — aka Meghan Daum and Sarah Haider — tackle the subject of academic tenure and ask whether it actually encourages ideological conformity at universities. Also under discussion: have the social sciences have been captured? Why are so many administrators? Moreover, why do universities bend over backward to cater to 18-year-olds when the people who really matter are aging donors?

Finally, in this episode: AT LONG LAST we learn what Sarah and Meghan were like in high school: Meghan was a writing and oboe prodigy who was borderline learning disabled in other areas, and Sarah was just a little too good at convincing people that assisted suicide is a good thing.

In the bonus, the g*rls/wom*n discuss all of you who have hate-subscribed just to spite us, answer some premium subscriber questions, and ask if universities fail their missions when they are politically motivated.

Relevant Links

Why Conservatives Must Not Abandon Universities: A four-point plan

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

Know someone who is as black-pilled about the culture wars as we are? Donate or give a gift subscription.

HOUSEKEEPING

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, Meghan’s community for freethinking women.

🎥 Follow us on YouTube!

❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter: www.twitter.com/specialplacepod

📸 And Instagram.

🎵 And TikTok.

Today the girls/women discuss the phenomenon of Oliver Anthony, the breakout star behind the hit song Rich Men North of Richmond Is he actually a music industry plant and does it matter? Are political songs all terrible, or is it just Sarah’s opinions?

Next, they talk about the New York Times’ evangelical zeal of reporting on hate crimes. In two recent, high-profile cases, a store owner was shot for defending a pride flag and a man was stabbed at a gas station while vogueing. Meghan and Sarah question whether or not there is more to these stories.

In the bonus segment, Meghan and Sarah talk about how much they love libraries — except for when they try to shush their free speech. And the New York Times finally confirms whistleblowerJamie Reed’s claims about Washington University’s youth gender clinic in St. Louis.

Want to hear the bonus segment? Upgrade your subscription now.

Housekeeping:

🎟️ Get your ticket to see Sarah and Grimes debate Louise Perry and Anna Khachiyan on Sept. 13.🏔Meet Megahn Daum in Denver at The Unspeakeasy 1-day retreat.🎥 Follow us on YouTube! ❌ And on the platform formerly known as Twitter: www.twitter.com/specialplacepod 📸 And Instagram: www.instagram.com/specialplacepod 🎵 And TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@aspecialplaceinhell 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aspecialplace.substack.com