TW: This episode contains frank discussion about sexual assault and rape culture that may be difficult for some listeners.

Are we living in a hell world folks? Sure. But (if we may loosely steal from Prince) are we all gathered here today to get through this thing called life? Absolutely. We’re doing our unqualified best on this episode to help navigate the Brett Kavanaugh issue; the fact that as of writing these notes, a man credibly accused of sexual assault who stood in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee and drunkenly ranted about conspiracy theories against him while perjuring himself dozens of times about recorded references to wanton sex acts, is possibly about to take a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court as one of the 9 most powerful people on the planet. But hey, he likes BEER okay? Don’t you like BEER? We all like BEER! I’ve never blacked out from drinking BEER! HAVE YOU SENATOR?!

But to be serious for a bit we’ll explore how we deal with ourselves and our own judgements in light of these things. And what does our cultural reaction to behavior from both the gross, condescending, conservative power structure as well as the purity identity politics, social media woke-tivist crowd tell us to do with masculinity? Is there a place in our society for a non-toxic masculinity?

We also try to perk things up in the second half with a reading series from Connor Kilpatrick’s excellent article from the Summer 2018 issue of Jacobin It’s Okay to Have Children. We’re taking on both liberal and conservative views on who should and shouldn’t have children in our reading series and not pulling punches. Yup. It’s a dating podcast that’s ALL politics today, so send your angry emails to [email protected].