Breaking Down Patriarchy

On today's episode I'm joined by my friend, entrepreneur Reese Harper, for a vulnerable conversation about the idea of being a provider, self-actualization, and how men and women together can collaborate to dismantle patriarchy in our workplaces.

Reese Harper (he/him) is a financial advisor, a musician, and an entrepreneur. He loves outdoor recreation, writing, and spending quality time with his family.

Music is one of the keys that can unlock our memories, sometimes almost transporting us back through time. Whoever you are, chances are you have at least a few of these musical shortcuts to the past…

Maybe you remember driving down the highway with your friends, windows down, singing together at the tops of your lungs. Or maybe you remember seeing a favorite band in concert and the electric energy when they played that one perfect song. Music can tie us to moments of community, of family, of grieving and celebration and callings of faith. Music even ties many of us to our most romantic moments through a special song that we share with a partner or spouse. Whatever genres you listen to, whatever instruments you play, music grounds all of us in our most intimate and important moments.

On today's episode we're joined by Jessie Iacono who takes us on a journey through music and memories, through childhood struggles, to marriage, to motherhood and medical crises, all while confronting patriarchy and trauma alongside the guiding lyrics of Billy Joel.

Jessie Bryan-Iacono (she/her) is a writer, a business owner and real estate investor. She enjoys reading, watching her three kids play sports, being active and travelling with her family.

*Note: this episode includes discussion of topics such as mental illness and self-harm

On today’s episode we’re going to be exploring the systems of patriarchy at work in the sciences and the arts, hearing from two special guests – computer engineer JoCee Holladay Porter & artist Shannon Christie - as they help us reckon with both sides of this double-edged sword.

Shannon Christie (she/her) is a social worker, artist and writer, and the founder of Ragtag Magazine, a web publication focused on creativity and community in the Pacific Northwest. When she has any amount of free time, she loves trying new Thai restaurants, doting on her houseplants, and collecting shiny rocks.

JoCee Porter (she/her) is a computer engineer and a wannabe science communicator. She runs a book club highlighting female authors in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

A church (which is just a building used for Christian worship) can look like all sorts of things. Some churches boast stunning stonework and intricate stained-glass windows, while others are only modest wooden structures. You can find churches built up in trees, in caves, or on top of volcanoes. Some swell with the sounds of solemn hymns while others are radiant with music and praise. What these churches all have in common, however, is that they’re centers of faith, of doctrine, and of community engagement, and they often hold power in the community’s that they serve. Can that power be disseminated and wielded responsibly? Of course it can. However, far too often we find troubling stories of toxic patriarchy and abusive behaviors surfacing within our church communities.

On today’s episode we’ll be joined by two guests — Kathy Barbini and an Anonymous Contributor — who share their stories and help us explore the roles of patriarchy in our churches and beyond.

Kathy Barbini (she/her) is an independent documentary filmmaker and former producer for national television programs. She loves hiking, the ocean, movies and reading. Learn more about Kathy's latest film at baptizingfeminism.com

Most of us would love to have a perfect memory, but we often fall far short of this aspiration. Who hasn’t forgotten someone’s name right after being introduced, or failed to remember where you left your car in the parking lot? Our memories are rarely as reliable as we’d like them to be. And more so, our memories – even some of our most formative ones – can alter over time. Like a game of telephone, each time we return to a memory it can change ever so slightly until the story in our mind — while it may reflect a personal truth — is suddenly far from the facts of the lived reality. Memory is ephemeral, ever-shifting, and foundational to the ways we understand our worlds and ourselves.

In this episode, we explore the phenomena of memory with two outstanding guests -- Emilly Prado and an Anonymous Contributor -- discussing and exploring the influence of patriarchy along the way.

Emilly Giselle Prado (she/her) is a writer, DJ, and educator living in Portland, Oregon with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area and Michoacán, Mexico. As an award-winning multimedia journalist, Emilly spent half a decade independently reporting on a wide range of topics, most often centered on amplifying the voices and experiences of people from historically marginalized communities. Her writing and photographs have been published widely, appearing in more than 30 publications including NPR, Marie Claire, Bitch Media, Eater, Oxygen, The Oregonian, Remezcla, and Travel Oregon. Emilly is the author of Funeral for Flaca, a memoir-in-essays shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Award and called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine. She is also the author of Examining Assimilation, a youth non-fiction title at the intersections of identity and U.S. history. Emilly is a Tin House and Las Dos Brujas Workshop alumna, Blackburn Fellow and MFA Candidate at Randolph College, and a co-founder of Portland in Color. She moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latinx DJ collective she co-founded in 2017.

How do you feel about beauty pageants?

In 1968, the feminist group New York Radical Women organized a picket of the Miss America Pageant and paraded sheep around the area to protest models being judged like animals at a county fair. These activists refused to talk to male reporters, which forced newspapers to call in women reporters from their usual assignments covering second-tier stories. And then they set up a freedom trash can and they piled in their bras and false eyelashes and put in copies of magazines such as Playboy and the Ladies Home Journal. These demonstrations at pageants spread to many other countries, including to the Miss World pageant held in England in 1970, where protesters threw flower bombs and disrupted the event with football rattles. And then in Scotland in 1975, a large group of women called the students signed up for a beauty pageant. And then on the day of the contest, they all stormed in together wearing overalls and no makeup, essentially hijacking the event.

Whatever listeners think about beauty pageants, it's about to get more complicated. On today's episode, we hear a fascinating essay from Holland Allebes Anderson, granddaughter of the very first Miss World Kiki Hawkinson.

Holland Allebes Anderson grew up in Southern California. She is currently a student at Brigham Young University Provo, studying to become a Landscape Architect with an emphasis in urbane farms and edible parks. Holland is an artist of many mediums such as oil paint, ink, digital art, installation art, chalk art, performance art, and poetry. Her art and thinking are shaped by her faith (Church of Jesus Christ), parents, gender, plants, and her humor.

On today’s episode, we interrogate the tradition of patronyms and, in the process, exploring the history of coverture laws, marital customs, and more as our guest—Amelia Hapgood—delves deep into the question of “what’s in a name?”

Amelia Hapgood is a BYU student, a newlywed, a devout feminist, and a wanna be runner. She is from Arkansas, and loves being in a family of all girls!

Welcome to BDP! I’m AMA, and today we’re airing a special episode in response to the Supreme Court ruling on June 24, 2022, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. 

The right had been granted in 1973, by way of the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, when the justices ruled that the decision of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term was covered under the “right to privacy” clause of the 14th amendment. 

Nearly fifty years later, conservative judges appointed by Donald Trump led the court to revoke women’s right to make this choice for themselves. In response, the three liberal justices on the court wrote that the court had done grave damage to women’s equality and to its own legitimacy.

They wrote, “With sorrow — for this court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent.”

To help make sense of this issue, we are re-airing an episode from Season 1 that looks in depth at the original Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade. And to make it this episode easier to share with others, we condensed two long episodes down to just one 45 minute piece. So please, whether or not you heard it in 2020, give it a listen now, and then share it with anyone you know who may be struggling to figure out how they feel about this topic. I know it took me a lot of time researching for me to come to my own conclusions about abortion rights, so I have a lot of compassion for people who find this issue challenging. My hope is that more people will do honest-hearted, open-minded research, starting with  reading Roe v. Wade itself. But in the meantime, here’s a review of this essential text.

Look up “Reproductive Rights protest near me” and you’ll find lots of options.

Beyond these suggestions, we encourage you to continue to vote for and advocate for candidates and legislation defending abortion access. Elect leaders who trust women.

Where are we today? Where do we want to be in the future? How do we get there?

On today's episode we hear stories from Theresa Beauchamp and Delin Ruhl, two people who've taken action in moments of injustice. Our guests share their remarkable tales of standing up against oppression, whether that confrontation happens behind the lines of a phone bank or face to face in the streets.

Theresa Beauchamp (she/her) is a retired family practice Physician Assistant and full-time political activist focused on reproductive and racial justice and the fight against voter suppression. Boogie boarding, e-biking with her husband, live theatre, hiking in the Sierras and playing with her grandchildren rejuvenate her along her journey as a lifelong activist.

Delin Ruhl (they/them) is a musician and storyteller based out of Portland, OR. Locally, Dell plays alto saxophone for the Carroll Raum Swing Orchestra, and flute for the group Jump Up Pup. They have also played whistle and bodhran with the group Possibly Irish at Enchanted Forest, and enjoy performing original sets at venues like The Ranger Station and Floyd’s Coffee. Theater credits include Is He Dead? and The Glass Menagerie (Hawai‘i Pacific University), for which they received a Hawai‘i State Theater Association Po‘okela Award for Leading Actor. Regional theater credits include A Christmas Carol (Goodman Theatre), Circle Mirror Transformation; Mauritius (Hawai‘i Repertory Theater), and Someone Else’s Slippas (The Arts at Mark’s Garage). Offstage, they can often be found debating with their parrot, snuggling their 20-pound Flemish Giant rabbit, or writing limericks.

Dr. Nanette Gartrell and Dr. Dee Mosbacher have been pioneers in the struggle for LGBTQIA+ civil rights for over forty years, contributing essential research, political action, and groundbreaking documentaries on gay and lesbian experiences. On today's episode, I'm honored to sit down with these personal heroes for a conversation about their lives, their activism, and their love.

Nanette Gartrell, M.D., is a Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the Williams Institute and holds a Guest Appointment at the University of Amsterdam. Previously on the faculties at Harvard and UCSF medical schools, she is the principal investigator of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), which since the 1980s has been following a cohort of planned lesbian families with children conceived through donor insemination. She has published extensively on this topic, including in the New England Journal of Medicine. Her investigations provide information to specialists in healthcare, family services, education, and public policy on matters pertaining to sexual minority parent families. Dr. Gartrell graduated from Stanford University (B.A.), University of California (M.D.), and completed a psychiatry residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker. She was a producer/director of the Academy Award-nominated “Straight from the Heart” and eight other award-winning documentaries. As a public sector psychiatrist, Dr. Mosbacher specialized in the treatment of the severely mentally ill, including many who were homeless. Dr. Mosbacher served as San Mateo County’s Medical Director for Mental Health, on the board of California Pacific Medical Center, and on the faculty at UCSF. She has received many awards, including a NOW Women of Power Award and a John E. Fryer Award from the American Psychiatric Association.