Why Will No One Date These Guys?

Given all the horrible relationship advice we've discussed on this pod, we were concerned professionals might be reticent to come on, but therapist Lindsay Luv was up for the challenge. Lindsay appears on this episode to talk about her work with marginalized individuals, dating and relationship trends she sees in her patients, her frank advice for young men seeking a partner, and her relationship war stories.

Find Lindsay online on Facebook, Instagram, and at therapyluv.com. Lindsay expressed support for the Highland Project, a group working to build black generational wealth (and can be found here), and the Loveland Foundation, which provides mental health support for black women (find them here).

This year our monthly Patreon donations will be going towards trans organizations and activism. This month we made a donation to the bail fund of trans activist who was arrested for protesting a horrendous trans bill in Oklahoma. Check out the link here. 

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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We have a very special guest in this episode... the wealthy patron who helps finance our podcast... HALEY DOWNING. We talk about dating, living in San Francisco, and a give a sneak peek of our elusive brother. This episode includes a typical Joel game show as well as plenty of juicy gossip. Who knows, maybe Haley will spill secrets on how to become a prime milf hunter? 

One fun note - we decided to treat Haley like any other friend and gave her a sample of our horrible recording skills. The content is great, the audio that content is recorded on...well, we can't win them all. 

This year it looks like our monthly Patreon donations will be going towards trans organizations. This month we'll be giving our Patreon proceeds to the Trevor Project, a non-profit that provides, among other services, a 24/7 suicide hotline for trans people. 

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Just when you thought we'd escaped the event horizon of this prolife zine, it resurfaces, ready once more to be our emotional punching bag. Welcome to 2023, "A Young Gay Femme Leftist Hands You a Prolife Zine." We hope we can be done with you by the end of the year, but we're still less than 20% thru your length so neither Joel nor Naomi are holding their breath. (for those just tuning in, we're discussing anti-abortion arguments and using one of the weirdest ant-abortion pamphlets we've ever seen as a template to work thru.)

We return to discuss the state of abortion in the US and then dive right in, addressing the claims that terminations for the safety of the mother will always be allowed (lie), that many doctors think having a baby is safer than having any abortion (lie), that the two common abortion pills are actually deadly for one's health (lie), and that countries with illegal abortions don't have more maternal deaths than countries with legal abortions (really hard to prove but the context isn't great for their argument). Joel also finally figured out who the author is and what groups she works with, which will not win him any journalism awards but does provide an interesting perspective on the sources she's using. 

This year it looks like our monthly Patreon donations will be going towards trans organizations. This month we made a donation to activist Erin Reed's substack, which is doing an amazing job tracking and drawing attention to trans legislation. 

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Part 2 of our unfortunately already-dated (WE RECORDED 9 DAYS AGO AND THIS IS NOW ANCIENT HISTORY) discussion of genocidal rhetoric and policy-making is out. Again, awareness of these issues is important, but don't bum yourself out if you don't have to. Eat some cake or play some videogames (not that Potter one) and relax.  Good work is being done by lots of people right now, but we may call on you to help throw some stones at some point.

In this episode we discuss the strategies governors are employing to undermine queer rights at all levels, what national actors could be doing to support trans and queer rights, why national newspapers like the New York Times are failing to cover this issue properly and what good coverage might look like, how this effects cis women, why people making grooming accusations have some very weird tolerances for bad behavior, and why, even with all of this bad stuff, there is stuff going on in the world that you can derive hope from.  Seriously, don't bum yourself out. Go listen to our Steve Harvey eps if you need a chuckle. Or consider this trans-themed gaming collection which directly supports queer creators, 

This year it looks like our monthly Patreon donations will be going towards trans organizations. This month we made a donation to activist Erin Reed's substack, which is doing an amazing job tracking and drawing attention to trans legislation. 

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Joel and Naomi discuss the very real issue of anti-trans legislation and escalating rhetoric in the US and abroad, a problem that anti-genocide think-tanks have deemed genocidal in nature. We give a little bit of background on recent anti-trans legislation and what it entails, why so many politicians are pushing anti-trans and anti-queer legislation, the ramp-up in explicitly anti-queer protests across the US, the rise in the use of the word groomer (as well as the history behind its usage), and why this impacts everyone. This is probably best consumed in conjunction with pt2 (out next week), where we give a couple glimpses of hopeful trends and suggestions for further action.

The Lemkin Institute's statement on trans genocide can be found here.

Track anti-LGBTQ+ legislation here.

Data on child maltreatment can be found here.

This year it looks like our monthly Patreon donations will be going towards trans organizations. This month we made a donation to activist Erin Reed's substack, which is doing an amazing job tracking and drawing attention to trans legislation. 

This is not the happiest of topics and might be a bummer. If you're not in the best of places mentally (and who is, these days), consider playing some video games instead. We've heard good things about Celeste. 

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Mustachio McGraw returns again to blah blah blah. To offset our desire to not discuss the book we bide time by sampling the worst soda we've ever tasted and reveal our new power mantra for the year, 2023: 20-Rigatoni (It makes more sense in context). 

There's some sexist statements about how men communicate, some poorly explained filler about male archetypes and how women can use knowledge of them to improve their relationships, some junk about the type of guys women should always avoid, and some stuff about online dating but neither Naomi or Joel are really feeling it. It's both too general to be useful advice and too specific at times to be helpful in most people's relationships. Also, this last part makes it clear he and Steve Harvey don't differ too much in how they think of women and gender essentialism, so we're not giving the benefit of the doubt we gave in prior sections. 

We will seriously entertain suggestions on how to destroy this book in the hopes no one else ever has to read it. 

We strongly urge our listeners to support the work of Planned Parenthood by donating here. For the indefinite future all Patreon donations will go to them, NARAL, or other orgs doing good work across the nation.

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Dr Phil is back to give out more advice, some of it weirdly helpful, some of it horribly sexist. We do our best to differentiate the man and our opinions on him from Steve Harvey, but given the similarities between their content and facial hair we do mess up a few times. Our apologies to Mr McGraw. 

In these sections Philip tells readers how to work past their trauma from prior relationships, describes how every woman is either nice or sexy, talks about the importance of marketing your good qualities when dating, explains the "fundamental differences" between women and men, and quizzes readers on whether they can identify common relationship myths. We have no issues with any of these statements and do not at any point object to the content. 

We strongly urge our listeners to support the work of Planned Parenthood by donating here. For the indefinite future all Patreon donations will go to them, NARAL, or other orgs doing good work across the nation.

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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We spent most of 2022 bagging on Steve Harvey so we figured we'd find a new daytime talkshow host enemy for 2023. Enter Dr Phil, America's favorite substitute for proper mental health education and treatment. After making a splash with his advice show in 2002 he dropped this 2005 gem, a comprehensive guide for women to find their happily ever after. Or at least that was the goal.

In Part 1 we dig into Phil McGraw's weird controversies and sketchy therapy style, how he suggests women think about dating, and the (actually maybe helpful?) lists he provides for visualizing your future partner.  It's not baaad advice, but there's enough weirdness to justify us taking shots here and in future episodes. 

We strongly urge our listeners to support the work of Planned Parenthood by donating here. For the indefinite future all Patreon donations will go to them, NARAL, or other orgs doing good work across the nation.

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Oh boy, a new year beckons, which means it's time for all you singles to get your resolutions in order and plot your dating strategy for the next 365 days. We've pulled some predictions about new dating trends from Bumble, OK Cupid, Match, and Women's Health, spend a bit too much time digging once more into Match's Singles in America survey, and Joel gives a few predictions of his own for the coming year. If anyone wants to cancel us for bad opinions, come back in 12 months and check how we did.

Credit to "Singles in America" for our cover art. 

We strongly urge our listeners to support the work of Planned Parenthood by donating here. For the indefinite future all Patreon donations will go to them, NARAL, or other orgs doing good work across the nation.

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

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Sup, 2023?  If you're like us you're probably still recovering from excessive mulled wine and eggnog consumption but it's time to get cracking on goals for the year. This time Joel and Naomi have some new advice for how to not just set goals but to create the processes necessary to achieve them. Joel brings in "Atomic Habits," a guide that explains how to create the processes to achieve your aspirations and break the habits you have that prevent you from being better. If you maybe fell short of where you wanted to get in 2022 as a better person or partner listen to this one to get a leg up in the coming year.

Also, we had some audio issues in the second half of this bad boy. Nothing unsalvageable, but certainly not our best work.  

Find a copy of Atomic Habits here. 

We strongly urge our listeners to support the work of Planned Parenthood by donating here. For the indefinite future all Patreon donations will go to them, NARAL, or other orgs doing good work across the nation.

Interested in starting your own podcast? Check out our Buzzsprout link to get a $20 giftcard for signing up to host through them. If you're interested but not sold on the merits of the platform, give us a holler and we'll talk about why we chose and continue to use it. 

Support the show