Transcript: Meghan Daum

My interview with the author, podcaster, and founder of The Unspeakeasy

Is cancel culture controlled by women? It’s a question that my guest on this week’s program has been asking for some time. Her conclusion is that, yes, the phenomenon is driven by women — and only women can stop it. She’s founded a community that, online and in person, has begun actively pushing back. 

Meghan Daum is the author of six books, including The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars. She’s the host of The Unspeakable Podcast, and co-host of the podcast A Special Place in Hell. She’s also the founder of The Unspeakeasy, a community for free-thinking women.

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the episode for free here.

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TH: Meghan, welcome back to Lean Out.

MD: Hi, Tara. Great to see you.

TH: Good to see you as well. Always nice to talk to you. Excited to talk today about women and cancel culture.

MD: What do you mean? What could you possibly mean?

TH: That's right, there is no cancel culture.

MD: No women either.

TH: That's a good point. Around this time last year, I was driving from Toronto to Vermont for the inaugural off-the-record Unspeakeasy retreat. I was listening to your podcast interview with the British feminist Louise Perry on the drive. You and Louise were talking about cancel culture being driven by women. This is the first time I heard that argument. It rang so true. The reputational damage, the outcasts from the in-group — this is all very reminiscent of grade school culture. When did you first start to notice that a lot of these Twitter pile-ons were initiated and driven by women?

MD: I made the connection a couple of years ago. Even as far back as maybe five years ago, I was thinking about this idea of toxic femininity. I even wrote a piece about this. If we're going to talk about toxic masculinity, we have to recognize toxic femininity. Look, I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb by saying that women and girls are a little bit more sophisticated and complicated with their communication patterns. They can pick up on signals between one another that sometimes men can't. I think cancel culture, at its root, has to do with an in-group/out-group dynamic that is very much paralleling what we see in middle school and in grade school. I would be hard-pressed to think of a high-profile cancel culture case that has been initiated by a man. Can you? Maybe a few. But nine times out of ten, I think it's a woman.

TH: This idea of toxic femininity is an important thread to pull here — it is a very female way of expressing aggression — and it has impacts on public life, as women have flooded into the workplace. It disturbs me that cancel culture is a fundamentally unserious form of debate. Sometimes when I read the takes on Twitter during these mass hysterias, during these pile-ons, I'm just embarrassed. These are not serious arguments. The people making them know that they're not serious arguments. How do you unpack that?

MD: I think cancelling somebody, or lashing out at somebody online, comes from a place of powerlessness — or at least thinking that you don't have power. If you can't get ahead or elevate yourself, or help yourself, through the normal channels, you're going to lash out at somebody and try to bring them down instead of bringing yourself up. Now, in some cases, people are genuinely harmed or aggrieved. I'm not saying there aren't cases where women or people in "marginalized groups" — I don't think women are a marginalized group — obviously, there are cases where there has been a real imbalance of power and people have abused their power.

So, we're not talking about that, let's be clear. But a lot of this petty stuff that you see online, this mob mentality, it comes from people wanting to signal that they're part of the group. While I think we do see men wanting to do this — especially if they're trying to preserve their place at work or in a professional setting — it tends to be women. And I think that, conversely, women who don't want to cancel people, who do want to speak out against some of these things, and who do not want to be in lockstep with the group, are reluctant to do so because they're very sensitive to the social penalties that come from other women. For stepping out and saying, “Hey, actually, I don't agree with this mob. I think something else.” That's something that, as you know, I've been thinking about a lot and I'm really trying to push against in all kinds of ways.

TH: I want to get to talking about your current project and how this is an antidote to that. But first, let's just talk more broadly about how this has all bled into our mainstream media — one of the themes of this podcast. I'm thinking about a wonderful piece, that you just wrote, which we republished at Lean Out, about the coverage of The Free Press debate on the sexual revolution in L.A., which you were at. Walk us through what you saw that night and how the coverage — again, by women — departed from what you yourself experienced at the event.

MD: The Free Press — which is Bari Weiss's media empire, let's just call it that — it's a wonderful news organization. She has a podcast. There's articles all the time. It's a really exciting new media outlet. Bari organized a debate in Los Angeles and the central question asked was: Has the sexual revolution failed? On one side were Louise Perry — who you just mentioned, whose book is called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution — and Anna Khachiyan from the Red Scare podcast. They were arguing that it had failed.

On the other side was my partner on my other podcast — you’ve got to have two podcasts these days — Sarah Haider. And Grimes, of all people. The techno-pop artist Grimes. It was a really lively debate. Bari moderated. It was a wonderful evening. The comedian Tim Dillon opened up, with a hilarious set. The theatre was packed. Many issues were raised. Really intelligent conversation. It was funny. It was engaging. Everybody was knowledgeable. It was just a wonderful evening overall. The crowd loved it. Lots of smart people there. All kinds of people. These were not just edgelords, as one of the critics described it later. These were not just e-girls in plaid kilts, or something like this. I had to look up what that meant.

Anyway, I thought it was great. Then there were two articles, at least. There was one in the Los Angeles Times and one in New York magazine that described an event that I just simply hadn't been at. It was described as something for right-wing journalists — or an opportunity for everybody to further their brands. That everyone was just being self-promoting.

What it really comes down to is — I call it Bari Weiss derangement syndrome. Let's just be clear about that. I think that there is such a reflexive, I would say fear of Bari Weiss and what she has created. And just this need to put her in this box as some sort of alt-right, or alt-right adjacent ideologue. Which she's not at all. She is centrist, if anything. I was just absolutely flabbergasted at the way these journalists and others had gotten this event wrong. It's really making me crazy. I don't know about you. Actually, I do know about you. I know it makes you crazy too.

TH: It's just so irrational. I'm such a pragmatist. Obviously it bothers me, as a journalist, when stuff is inaccurate. But also when these illogical, irrational arguments are being made, it just irks me.

MD: Yes. And look, I'm sorry to say it, but the Los Angeles Times couldn't have filled half of that theatre if they'd been giving the tickets away. I just think that we've reached a point now where people are really, really tired of this artificial signalling in the media. And are wanting something that is honest, even if you don't agree with all the points being made. Obviously, if you go to a debate asking the question of whether the sexual revolution failed, you are not going to agree with everyone. And by the way, the side arguing that it had not failed won the debate. My podcast partner, Sarah Haider, and her partner Grimes, won the debate.

I think it's clear that this is not some right-wing agenda being furthered. This is a pretty mainstream event that has been reframed as something to worry about. I'm actually worried about the reframing.

TH: I want to pull back now and talk about this "woke" phenomenon and the discourse around it. There is indications that this discourse is driven by women. There's a massive political polarization taking place, in which young women are getting more radically liberal and young men are getting more conservative. I’m thinking about the work of the American sociologist Musa al-Gharbi on this.