There's no shortage of hero stories in our books, on TV, and in movies. And for a long time, most of our heroes, from flawed to super, had something in common: they were either white dudes or femme fatales. (Or in Superman's case, a space alien who passed as a white dude.) But wait! That doesn't mean we're doomed to have the same kinds of stories or the same kinds of heroes forever. Join Eula Scott Bynoe and Jeannie Yandel, hosts of KUOW’s Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace podcast, for a fascinating, funny conversation about who gets to be the hero and why it matters.

Eula and Jeannie will welcome real life superheroes, comic book writer G. Willow Wilson and Salon.com TV critic Melanie McFarland.

BTSW Live: Who gets to be the hero?

If you've ever had a job, you know what we're talking about. Being talked over. Being passed over. Being told you're too intimidating or not authoritative enough. Racism and sexism at work might not look the way it did a generation ago, but it's still very real. Jeannie Yandel and Eula Scott Bynoe break down how sexism and racism shows up in the modern workplace. And with humor, smarts, and help from some badass experts, they bring you real tactics you can use to push back.

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After the latest series of national events where, as Eula says, the country has "played us for f***ing fools", Eula and Jeannie have decided it's time for a break. Like so many of us, they need some quiet and some rest. They're taking a break for the summer but hope to be back in the fall. If you have a podcast you want to share with our listeners, shoot us a message at btswpodcast@gmail.com. We're happy to see if we can drop it in our feed. And we're still reachable on Twitter and Instagram @btswpodcast.  If you're a Patreon member, 1) thank you for your support! and 2) Eula and Jeannie hope to show up there over the summer with AMAs and other bonus material.  It's a really hard time to be a human. Take care of yourselves. <3 See you in a few months.  
 


Running Out Of Words

When we asked the BTSW Facebook group whether they'd ever been voice policed on the job, we got a ton of stories and responses. So many that we decided we needed to dedicate a whole episode just to those stories. So today is Part 2 of our conversation with the hosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries - the podcast about linguistic discrimination.  Megan Figueroa is a linguist, writer, and research scientist, and Carrie Gillon is also a linguist and the language planner and researcher for the Squamish nation in British Columbia.  If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, go check it out. The Vocal Fries drop some truly amazing wisdom about the connections between voice and grammar policing and white supremacy and colonialism. Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace is an independent podcast! Become a patron on Patreon and help support the show.  
 
 


Firing The Voice Police (Part 2) With The Vocal Fries

We usually ask folks to support our show on Patreon. Today, we wanted to suggest places to support crucial abortion services.  Planned Parenthood  Shout Your Abortion National Abortion Federation  **NOTE: During this episode, we refer to Rachel Jeantel by her last name only.  We wanted to clarify and use her full name here. Rachel Jeantel was a primary prosecution witness at Trayvon Martin's murder trial. Court officials claimed she was "hard to understand" and ultimately her testimony was dismissed as not credible.** A couple months ago, Jeannie asked the BTSW Facebook group whether anyone had ever gotten criticized for how they speak or sound while at work. The response was overwhelming. So many listeners had stories about getting their voice or speech policed on the job.  Megan Figueroa and Carrie Gillon know about voice policing better than most - and the many ways it causes more harm than good. They're the cohosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. Plus, Carrie is a former professor of linguistics and the Language Planner and Researcher for the Squamish Nation, and Megan recently finished her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she's a Project Manager at a language development lab. Carrie and Megan go deep on the ways linguistic discrimination can harm women on the job and elsewhere, and why all of us who have taken joy in correcting someone for using the wrong "your" or "their" on Twitter maybe need to check ourselves. 

Firing The Voice Police (Part 1) With The Vocal Fries

Hi! We love making BTSW - and if you love listening, help us make it! Become a patron of the show or make a tax-deductible donation.  "BREAKING: Schwing quits the Northwest News Network. The reason? My male colleagues make tens of thousands of dollars more for the same work. And TBH, making this public scares the S-H-star-T out of me. " That was a tweet reporter Emily Schwing sent in March 2019, after quitting her job with something called the Northwest News Network. That’s a collection of public radio stations in Washington and Idaho that do regional news reporting. (BTSW's old production partner, KUOW, is part of the Northwest News Network.) We talked with Emily because she DID a tactic we actually talked about on the show - she quit a job because she felt like she was dealing with a gender pay gap. And then - even though she didn’t really want to go public about why she quit- she went public about why she quit. And then something unexpected happened - her tweet went kinda viral. Local newspapers picked up the story. And suddenly Emily found herself wondering what was going to happen to her job prospects if future employers Googled her and found all this stuff about her complaining about being underpaid at her previous job.  FWIW: Emily has done some amazing work since March 2019 - with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and with the excellent podcasts Reveal and 70 Million. 

A BTSW Tactic In Action: Going Public About A Pay Gap

Over the course of making this podcast, we have gotten a lot of messages from listeners asking for help, perspective, and advice on crappy work situations. Eula and Jeannie rounded up a bunch of those messages and brought in some deep expertise to help respond - in the form of the fantastic Keita Williams, founder and head of the elite accountability practice Success Bully. She brings insight and tons of tactics for sticky (wait! we mean sexist and racist) workplace dilemmas.  NOTE: This episode was originally recorded in The Before Times (2019), but disappointingly, the problems listeners wrote in about then - from self-proclaimed woke dude co-workers who come down harder on women to gendered pay gaps to leaders bragging about never taking a sick day - are still extremely relevant. Yes, bosses are still being stingy about sick time DURING A PANDEMIC. It's a real thing. Let's all take a moment to sigh in disappointment. 

BTSW Live: Who gets to be the hero?

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