"Divorce/Marriage RANT"
- 22 hours ago
- 38 min read
Updated: 14 minutes ago
Shownotes and Transcrip from the 5th episode of the new podcast, "Clitoral Conflables," from The Agentic Feminine
June 23, 2026
Shownotes:
Shoutout to moms on the end of a completed school year! • Meredith’s braces are off! • Three interesting news stories • Update on Meredith’s divorce proceedings and general commentary on how craptastic heteronormative divorce/marriage is in the U.S. present-day.
REFERENCES AND LINKS:
📋 America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2022 (the original link to this Census report has been removed, so this is the link available)
Transcript:
CONGRATS TO MOMS!
Meredith (00:03)
Hello and welcome to clitoral conflabs. I think this is the fifth episode, and I am recording June 17th, 2026, which is a Wednesday. And first of all, I just want to give a shout out to all the moms. I know that we are like two or three weeks into summer vacay, but I want to give you a congratulations for a completed school year because that's a huge deal. I mean, all the rides, all the breakfasts, all the dinners, all the practices.
All the concerts, all the games, you did that too. You got them through the tests and through the homework. And you deserve a big shout out, especially the solo moms and the single moms and the divorced moms. I know at the end of every school year, I feel a relief, before summer sets in and I'm like, okay, go back to school. But I feel such a relief that they have accomplished this academic year.
We're coming up to having to deal with college and admissions and picking colleges and all those types of things, and that sort of terrifies me. But at the end of the school year, I am so jazzed that we made it, we got it, we accomplished it, and it's a big accomplishment for me too. And so it's a big accomplishment for you. So congratulations, and I hope that you're staying sane this summer, two or three weeks in with everything that's happening, and there's no structure and whatever. ⁓
I GOT MY BRACES OFF!
The other thing I want to talk about is YAH if you are watching this, I got my braces off. I got my braces off, y'all. And I have not read Lindy West's "Adult Braces" yet. So I don't know what she said about them, but my god, that was rough. I had them for almost two years, and I'm super happy to have them off, but I also feel like I look super crazy and weird. I kind of look like a serial killer with these teeth.
I feel like I have an almost 50-year-old face and now I have these perfect teeth and it doesn't match and it's really fucking weird. And the other thing is I got these bonded retainers on the inside of the top of my teeth and the bottom of my teeth. And that makes me want to talk with a lisp. So I've been doing my speech exercises hardcore so that I don't get lazy and I can now articulate. So
I think at this point my Texas draw will be much less because I can move my mouth more, which I choose to do and I like. It doesn't hurt with braces. So here we are. New grill, y'all. I mean, I don't even I don't know how to react. I don't know how to react. I had really crooked teeth. It was like a heart soul wound that my teeth were so crooked my whole life. And I wanted the braces so badly. And then the braces were a really hard.
Challenge for me and then and painful, really painful challenges and getting the wires switched out and the canker sores, like everything was and now they're off. And I'm like, I look like a psycho, but I don't, and I should be super grateful. And I'm a ridiculous person for not just sitting in the gratitude of the privilege of being able to have like that cosmetic procedure of braces done and having good teeth. Now I can kind of wear dark
darker lipstick without feeling super self conscious and I can smile without feeling s super conscious and like be enthusiastic and articulate and so I should just shut up and be grateful. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna shut up and be grateful.
NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Meredith (03:18)
Okay, today I'm going to introduce a new element of the show called "News You Might Have Missed." I don't know if I'm gonna keep calling it "News You Might Have Missed," but it will be news that you MIGHT have missed because I am a news reader and I'm a story collector. So I'm going to be presenting news or articles.
That are relevant to rewilding women. Some of these may go back quite a few months, but are still quite germane to what we're trying to do here. And sometimes I'm going to respond and add my own commentary at the end because a lot of these do deserve it.
RURAL WOMEN NOT SAFER THAN URBAN WOMEN
Okay. First up, we have an article from The Conversation, one of my favorite publications by Walter S. DeKeseredy who is a professor of sociology at the West Virginia University, published August 25th, 2025, entitled "Rural women are at a higher risk of violence and less likely to get help." Now, one of the reasons this that this caught my eye is that one of the big pushbacks I get if I ever choose to punish myself by debating with the right wingers in the comment section of any of my social media is that they have a constant refrain that urban areas are more dangerous than rural. And of course, when they say urban, they mean Black. And by rural, they mean white.
Now, the person who wrote this article has been teaching a course on rural criminology since 2014, so it's very likely they know their business. DeKeseredy says, and of course I will have a link in the show notes to all of this, that "Nearly 50 years of research shows that male violence against women knows no geographical or demographic boundaries. It occurs among all socioeconomic groups and in almost all communities, regardless of size and location.
Yet, crime in rural and remote places is reported to the police at lower rates than in urban areas." He goes on to say, "Most criminology scholars do not study violence of any type in rural communities, which partly contributes to the widespread belief that rural women are safer than their urban and suburban counterparts." Can you believe that?
He writes that quote, Data conclusively shows that rural women across the U.S. report physical and sexual violence at higher rates than those in more densely populated areas. Research also shows that rural women in the U.S. are more likely to be killed by their current or former male counterparts compared to their urban and suburban counterparts. End quote. The reason for these discrepancies, he says, include geographic and social isolation.
Widespread acceptance of violence against women and community norms prohibiting women from seeking social support. And then he goes on very specifically to makes it even worse is the absence of effective social support services and the higher rates of gun ownership." Social workers have to travel long distances, a lot of times at their own expense, he says, to reach these women, and that rural abusers feed off their female partner's isolation. Like it makes me even sick to think about it. I mean enraged.
Also mentioned in the article is the high correlation between gun ownership and intimate partner violence in rural areas and also the higher rate of gun ownership in rural areas as opposed to urban areas.
DeKeseredy provides a statement from Neil Websdale, director of the Arizona State University Family Violence Center from nearly 30 years ago that is still relevant today, discussing rural gun violence, that concludes by saying, "In urban areas, it is more difficult for abusers to discharge their weapons and go undetected.
People in the country are far more familiar with the sound of gunshots and often attribute the sound to legitimate uses such as hunting." The article also highlighted the particular threat of the safety of social workers because of gun ownership. Ideas for solutions, according to DeKeseredy include • banning the possession, purchase, sale, and transfer of handguns, which he says, "are the weapons men use the most to kill women, regardless of where they live." And he also states that "it is estimated that 38 percent of fewer women are shot to death by intimate male partners in states where background checks are required for all handgun owners." Thank you, Moms Demand Action.
Next up, he talks about the efficacy of orders of protection or restraining orders because it leads to the loss of gun permits and the right to keep guns at home. But what really jumped out at me is the importance of rural libraries in helping survivors obtain legal assistance and domestic violence service websites.
He suggests equipping rural libraries with greater structural capacity to help when these services are needed, and says that some experts are calling for women's police stations and more women's shelters in rural areas. So, like that was a fantastic article, in my opinion, full of really useful information.
And it changes the narrative that we've all been assuming because despite the fact that rural areas are positioned as the domain of white people by the broader cultural narrative in media, the Center for Rural Innovation states that 14 million Black, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, Native, and multiracial people live in these areas.
So, one of the lessons here, really for a lot of us white people who are from more politically right-wing areas and families and cultures, is to question a lot of these stories that we accept it as fact. For women, living in the country don't mean you've got it made in the shade, and that isolation can work against you. And this is sort of white supremacist ideology of rugged individualism and is really a patriarchal tool for keeping women vulnerable.
And the narrative that rural areas are safer than urban was really baloney dog whistling to paint Black people as more violent than white people when in fact the opposite is true.
MEN IN SENEGAL LEARN ABOUT POSITIVE MASCULINITY, GENDER EQUITY, WOMEN’S HEALTH
Meredith (08:56)
One news story that popped out to me that I love was from AP News by Mark Banchereau – I think that's how you say his name, B-A-N-C-H-E-R-E-A-U – and published August 16th, 2025, is titled "Senegal's Schools for Husbands Aim to Shift Gender Roles and Keep Mothers from Dying." In Senegal, a United Nations-backed initiative is helping, quote,
Respected male community members learn about positive masculinity and health and social issues and promote them in their communities, which is important because it highlights that men often have the decision-making power in households, including those related to reproductive health, whether a birth should take place in the hospital or not, and what kind of prenatal care women can access. This is a big deal.
This article goes into the efforts to reduce maternal deaths in the births and the deaths of newborns within their first month, and says that one of the key problems was that many women were giving birth at home. These programs also discuss gender and reproductive health from gender based violence to fighting stigma around HIV. And while the program has been around since 2011, it recently caught the attention of the Ministry of Women, Family, Gender, and Child Protection.
Which sees it as an effective strategy to combat maternal and infant mortality. Niger, Togo, and Burkina Faso are also experiencing the growth of similar programs to increase male involvement, increasing contraception use by both men and women, and access to prenatal care and skilled birth attendance.
Banchereau continues, quote, Discussions for men have also focused on girls' rights, equality, and the harmful effects of female genital mutilation. The program now operates over 20 schools in Senegal and over 300 men have been trained. And that men who once enforced patriarchal norms now promote gender equality, which has led to a reduction of forced marriages and more acceptance of family planning according to Senegal's Ministry of Gender. Come on, how great is that? I love stories like that.
I don't know if these programs were affected by the cuts Elon Musk's Doge Department of Young Privileged Men cut when Trump gave them free reign upon much of the federal government soon after he was sworn in, but I'm hoping not.
PARENTAL STRESS; NEED FOR COMMUNAL PARENTING
Meredith (11:12)
All right. Lastly, we have another from the Conversation by Elizabeth Sharda, an associate professor of social work at Hope College. And this one is near and dear to my heart as a solo parent to three kiddos who wants to help increase social and cultural awareness of matriarchal norms and values. In her piece titled "Parents Don't Need to Try Harder – to Ease Parenting Stress, Forget Self-Reliance, and Look for Ways to Share Care." Now, before I go into the article,
I want to state that the common nuclear heteronormative family construct is a more recent white supremacist patriarchal tool to create domestic servants for men as they go about living their life. It is not natural, nor do I think it is sustainable in a thriving society in which women have agency and access to resources. that said, let's begin. Sharda points out that.
Quote, People have never traditionally raised children in isolation and yet we're more isolated than ever. End quote. She contends that the nuclear family developed with industrialization and discusses the adverse health effects of high stress parenting, which parenting in isolation contributes to. Furthermore, she points out how throughout human history, people have generally lived in multi-generational, multifamily establishments, and now, quote,
In the age of the nuclear family, it's common for multiple generations to come together only on special occasions. End quote. To discuss the more common form of communal child raising throughout human history, she refers to what anthropologists call allo-parenting, derived from the Greek word "allo" meaning "other," and it basically means community members other than the birth parents participate in the caring for and raising of children.
This was the norm for a huge, vast percentage of human history. So it's no wonder that mothers in the US, under the hyper-individualistic nuclear family tradition, report high numbers of self-medication, stress, depression, et cetera. Well, Sharda provides three types of communal support or help for parents highlighted by social scientists. One, tangible help.
Meaning material or financial resources or assistance. Number two, emotional, expressions of care, empathy, and love. And three, informational, provision of information, advice, or guidance. She discusses the possibility of relieving parental stress through systemic strategies such as quote high-quality mental health care, expanding programs like Head Start that support parents and caregivers, and investing in social infrastructure.
Like public libraries and parks. End quote. She adds a list of helpful suggestions for stressed out parents to start building their own allo-parent network. Now, while I was thrilled to see an article in a publication such as The Conversation discussing the negative effects of our nuclear family construct and the benefits of communal parenting, there's a gaping hole in this article that I hope isn't because Sharda teaches at Hope College.
Which is a Christian institution, and Christianity being the main patriarchal construct in the US in which women are expected to perform servitude. When she's discussing parental stress, she fails to provide an extremely relative (*RELEVANT) point that women take on a much larger share of the parental stress than men.
The fact is that women bear the burden of isolated nuclear family style parenting vastly more than men do and an article discussing the nuclear family construct without identifying the effects on mothers, especially those who birth the children, is problematic because it presents the stress as equally shared between mothers and fathers, and that's not even close to the case. Like it's harder for moms to build an allo-parenting structure when we're isolated and it's mostly on us.
And this is important, especially when our culture can really penalize a mother who doesn't appear as if she's got it all under control. October 2024 article from the Gender Equity Policy Institute asserts women spend twice as much time as men on childcare and household work. And working women spend two times as many hours per week as working men on childcare and household work combined.
When nuclear families break down, moms overwhelmingly take on all the daily necessities of the kids. Like me. With US News and World Report stating that of the 30% of children who live with just one parent, 75% of them live with their mothers.
The Institute for Women's Policy Research reports mothers were three times more likely to lose their jobs during the COVID pandemic than fathers. And why stop there? A Harvard study found that professional mothers are considered less competent than women without children. Mothers are considered to be less committed to their jobs than women without children, whereas fathers were considered more committed to their jobs than men without children. Mothers were less likely than women without children to be recommended for hire, given promotions,
or even receive callbacks. Mothers were also held to a higher punctuality standard despite the fact that they're caring for the future generations, whereas fathers were allowed more days with a late start than men without children. And finally, mothers are recommended with a lower starting salary than women without children, whereas fathers, yep, you already know, are recommended with a higher starting salary than men without children.
Now, those stats were not broken down even further by race, but the most elementary of pattern recognition skills would indicate that Black mothers are likely to face much worse treatment in the workplace than white mothers. But to get back to the original article, yes, we need to be a society discussing communal parenting of children much, much more.
And there is progress. Right after my daughter started kindergarten in Dallas, the kids' school, and yes, it was a public school. I'm a big supporter of public education, added a preschool program, which was really thrilling given the fact that it was in Texas, like for real. But the reimagining and remaking of social spaces and what will eventually be the aftermath of the Trump regime must include more support for mothers, especially single moms, and most especially Black mothers and single Black moms.
And these policies must form the foundation for any sociopolitical or socioeconomic organization or political party, podcaster, policymaker, or simply any citizen wanting to forward progress in any way, shape, or form. Equipping those who care for the children, and in most cases it is the moms, is the most important political strategy we can implement to produce a thriving society. This is matriarchy, and this is what we're gonna do.
MEREDITH’S DIVORCE UPDATE
Meredith (17:50)
All right, moving on to the next segment. Now, if you're watching this, you can kind of tell I look a little different. Yes, today is the next day, June 18th, which is a Thursday, 2026. Yesterday I had to log off and go do mama things, which is the story of my life. So I'm picking back up today. But I wore the same shirt and everything to try to have some sense of continuity, right?
Now let's talk about something very personal in my life that I'm then going to extrapolate and apply to the broader reality women are facing. I'm going to be talking about divorce and marriage from a heteronormative point of view. I have no experience in same-sex marriage and divorce, though I support both, but this podcast will be from my lived experience.
Almost a couple months ago, I was recently informed that the Appellate Court in Dallas, Texas, approved an appeal the ex-husband lodged regarding one of the decisions in our divorce trial. This means that I will have to go through a whole new divorce trial in a few months. So happy day. What could be better for a solo mom of three kids trying to start a movement-making organization and paying the bills? So yeah.
To give you a brief synopsis of the backstory, if you're unfamiliar with me and what's been going on in my life, four years ago, the ex-husband filed for divorce. Now, I was ending the marriage and wanted to separate gently and move into this next chapter of our lives, separating finances and rebuilding my professional and financial self after having been a stay-at-home mom for over a decade, running a household and being everything that this man needed to be so he could have a thriving career.
You know the story, it's quite common. As we separated, I also wanted to stay on his health insurance. And I thought I deserved that after how hard I had worked for our family and for him. Plus, he had just gotten a job in California. So I knew that we would save a lot of money because his company had offered to move the family out there and we could live close to each other and co-parent our children in a new healthy dynamic. I thought it would be a great beginning to a new chapter in our lives.
And I think he just thought that I was insane. And he was probably right. But I wanted the best for our children and I was willing to move past all the pain and suffering I had endured in the hellhole that became our marriage. He decided not to play along with my post-marriage fantasy, filing for divorce. Now, frankly, I understand like I was crazy naive to even think it was a possibility.
When you're but when you're married to someone, you know, and it's problematic, there are a lot of narratives and stories that you will concoct in your head to make it okay that you've chosen this person and to make it okay that you've chosen this person to be the father of your children. So you'll twist yourself into knots, or at least I did, trying to see the best in them, despite year after year and mountains of evidence proving otherwise.
That if they feel so compelled, they will stomp you into the ground without a second thought.
And that's a hard reality to swallow. So some of us waited for as long as we can until it's just painfully clear that our self-preservation depends on us coming to grips with the reality of the situation, which needs to end. He decided to go ahead and file for divorce, which plunged me into a sort of desperate flailing, trying to get my life together in Dallas while having become a solo parent to our three young kids, our geriatric cats, one dog who is my baby, it's my baby, and having been left in a house that was literally falling apart all while he was across the country.
So we had tried to be amicable, and it took me until mediation to come to really understand that things had only been friendly because I was allowing myself to be screwed over. And once I really understood what was going on and put a stop to it, things got frosty and unpleasant and have continued that way.
So we went through trial and I wasn't thrilled with the judge's decisions, but I could see that the judge was basically splitting the baby. Now, that sort of approach to family law can be really harmful to the dominant caretakers of children, who are mostly mothers, who are statistically going to bear a much bigger burden in the aftermath of divorce than the fathers.
The judge's attempt at a 50/50 decision denied me any spousal support or alimony despite having been a stay-at-home mom for over a decade and doing everything in my power to help him build his career and the life he wanted.
And whatever, I'm a mature adult. So I sucked it up and I got on with the program of rebuilding my life and starting a new chapter raising my kids on my own, other than child support, and my mom helping me move across the country and And live nearby in case of emergencies and supplement my income a bit. I could not have done this without her. And so I see you. Like I see you moms who do not have access to resources or support because that's the only way I was able to do it.
Now, about six months after the divorce decision came in, the ex filed an appeal of the decision. Now, I don't want to go into specifics yet because we're heading into this new trial, and his lawyers proved during the first trial that they were more than willing to comb through my internet and social media activity to find things to use against me, which I get, like it's fair game and they have a job to do. So I just gotta watch what I say.
But what I've learned about narcissists is that they are zero sum. They want it all and they will go to great lengths to get it.
As a result of this type of behavior, he and I have spent an absolute shit ton of money on lawyers that should have gone toward building a communal life in which our children could thrive. By the end of this, we will likely both have spent way more than if we had just capitulated in the beginning and given each other what the other one wanted. Hindsight's 2020, at least for me, and was all this fighting worth it? I don't really know. Honestly, I don't know if all this was worth it.
So he filed the appeal six months after the divorce decision came down. And by the way, the trial, like the decision took a couple months to come down after the trial.
And the trial was fifteen months after he filed for divorce. So all these things take so long. So he filed for the appeal six months after the divorce decision came down. A year after he filed the appeal, our lawyers gave the oral arguments for and against the appeal in front of the judge. A year after the judge heard the or the appellate court or whoever heard the oral arguments, then the judgment came in that they approved the appeal and they approved it in his favor.
So now, like I said, we're slated for a new trial in a couple of months. Now I don't have the money for a new trial. I don't have the money if the trial comes down and a decision that will force me to pay him a large sum of money, which is what he wants. I'm a solo mom of two teenage boys in high school and one middle school girl. And my kids are flourishing, but this is all on top of me trying to build this business, this organization, The Agentic Feminine. So yeah, it's not what I would call ideal.
And the reality is my story isn't nearly as bad as the many, many stories I've read of women who have gone through divorce and are going through divorce. So I don't feel too distraught over the whole thing, at least like right now in this moment, because it does change like every, you know, it changes. I don't feel nearly as terrified as I did the first go-round. You know, I'm a little bit more experienced at this point and our assets have already been split. We've settled into this post-divorce life.
That likely will remain exactly it is as it is, regardless of the outcome of the trial, with little more than our bank accounts taking a huge hit. Hopefully, hopefully, you know. But I will use this event to discuss the reality of heteronormative marriage in the US present day because it is a shitstorm. And we need to talk about it. And we need to empower women to have greater agency in the direction and flow of their lives, whether they want children or not.
Now, I'll be talking about heteronormative marriage and divorce a lot during the lifespan of this podcast, the lifespan of The Agentic Feminine, and for the rest of my natural born life. So for this episode, I'm gonna go in broad strokes and not get into the nitty-gritty of each of the main
But trust, trust that we will be doing deep dives on all of these topics from here on out because marriage culture in the US has got to change or end. The rest of my comments do not necessarily reflect my individual experience or the behavior of those around me, but I've been immersed in divorce culture and in contact with many, many, many divorced women over the last few years, and undeniable patterns emerge.
FAMILY COURTS NEED TO BE REFORMED
First of all, Along with the rest of the US court system, the family court system must be reformed. Sure, it's claimed that the courts prioritize what's in the best interest of the children, but too many times this is not the case. Too many times the courts allow themselves to be weaponized by men intent on harming the mothers of their children, regardless of the effects on kids.
It's clear that courts prioritize whomever appears to bring the least amount of drama without regard to the backstory behind what a woman has had to deal with that has brought her to this moment and has driven her to these desperate measures. And furthermore, too many judges prioritize equal asset alignment instead of equitable asset allotment without any due consideration for what mothers have had to sacrifice for their kids and for the success of their husbands or the future they face rebuilding their families after the nuclear family construct is shattered.
I know it's gotta be hard to be in family law, whatever a person's role, litigator, judge, what have you. There was a whole conversation between lawyers on Threads a few weeks back when so many attorneys said that they absolutely prefer criminal law over family law because of what they had to deal with and what they had to witness, and it was THAT BAD.
So I'm not trying to place blame on people there to do a job in a jacked up system, but I do want to advocate for women and highlight the systemic issues that harm women and children. Thriving societies require thriving children, and thriving children require well-resourced and supported caregivers, which for the most part are the mothers. When women must sacrifice their physical and financial health when they have children, family courts should prioritize ensuring the mother is well-
Protected. I have seen women completely drained financially because men use the courts to punish women who would dare to leave and remove their service and status men receive from that marriage. And the bottom line is that it should be very EASY to end a marriage. It should be very easy for a woman who wants to end a relationship to end it.
I remember hearing years and years ago about some story that I've never been able to verify, but discussion pops up on the socials about it periodically, about somewhere where marriages or proposal of marriages that are seven years long, and at the end of each seven year period, both parties had to decide if they wanted to opt in for another seven years. And if either of the members didn't want the marriage to continue the relationship, it was just dissolved, like easy peasy lemon squeezy. So I'm thinking that's something to consider.
HETERONORMATIVE MARRIAGE IS CRAPTASTIC, BUT LEAVING CAN BE RUINOUS AND DANGEROUS
There is plenty of evidence that cultures that were not yet conquered into patriarchy did not participate in these lifelong legalistic structures that bound women to men, mostly in service of them or as property. And as time goes on, it has become clear that heteronormative marriage for the most part is detrimental to the thriving and well-being of women. That we have structured society so that for a woman to pursue her wants and needs, whether it is to have children or afford to live a specific lifestyle or career, she needs to attempt to be chosen by a man. And there is EVERYTHING fucked up about that system.
Plenty of women stay in marriages because the hurdle to try and live peacefully and establish a healthy co-parenting relationship is just too high. I mean, I know of a divorced couple who could not communicate about their kids healthfully because he's such a shithead that they have to interact with each other over a court-monitored texting app. And you bet I limit my communications with my kids' dad as much as I possibly can. Like everything is super relevant and nothing extra.
But in reality, it can be highly dangerous for a woman to leave a marriage. Intimate partner violence numbers are horrendously high, with homicide being the leading cause of death for pregnant women. And the most dangerous time for a woman experiencing domestic partner violence is when a woman is trying to get out.
I hold in my heart Dr. Cerina Fairfax, who was killed by the man she was married to when divorcing him. And he had been a well-respected lieutenant governor of Virginia, a state which requires couples who have minor children to live apart for one year before the divorce is granted and six months if there are no children involved. This is state-sanctioned patriarchal abuse.
And Virginia is not the only state that does this. In the months since the death of Dr. Fairfax, my newsfeed has presented a nauseatingly high number of incidents of men killing their wives, children, and sometimes themselves rather than allow the relationship to end peacefully. This is indicative of a broader problem with our patriarchal culture, in which women are generally the head domestic servants in a heteronormative marriage, as discussed by Angela Saini in her book The Patriarchs. What goes into this?
Well, let's talk about the importance of status as a priority in our culturally and economically hierarchical society, discussed with remarkable thoroughness in Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste. We need to pull back the layers of patriarchal culture in which men center themselves with a great sense of entitlement and seek status through marriage to women they don't actually respect, like, or care about.
They simply want to claim the cultural and social capital in a system that still largely thinks of women and children as property and service providers. And society manipulates women and girls into these harmful arrangements through broader social conditioning, but also through gatekeeping resources such as healthcare, through a health insurance system only accessible in mostly male-dominated industries.
The lack of access to healthcare once marriages end put women and children at grave risk. And yes, I speak from personal experience on this one. Access to healthcare and resources is a huge reason women stay in shitty marriages. So am I a bit jaded? Perhaps, but maybe I'm just a bit more clear-eyed and wise because I speak from experience.
A society in which women can thrive is not one in which women have to forego financial independence and sovereignty and place their fate, well being, destiny, and that of their children in the hands of men who have been conditioned and socialized in patriarchy, placing women and kids at great risk.
We must stop conditioning our daughters to think the attention of a boy or man is something to value, and that happiness is on the other side of a wedding and having babies when most of the time it's really glorified unpaid labor with an anemic side of social advancement.
There might be an increase in standard of living, but at what cost? Your soul? Because that's non-negotiable for me. And yes, I say that from a place of privilege with having my kids be a little bit more self-sufficient at the ages of eight, 10, and 12 when I ended the relationship. Furthermore, none of my kids are high needs. I do have neurodivergent child, but he's low needs. So that was another form of privilege that I had that my kids were able to be relatively Self-sufficient reasonably for their age. When my kids were really little and they were high needs, there was NO WAY I was leaving.
Now, y'all, I know a lot of married couples, and to be honest, NONE that I envy, though from what I've seen, the healthy marriages involve a lot of male participation in the household domestic work and childcare.
But I bet plenty of women would have walked away yesterday if they were independently well-resourced, the process was hassle-free, and the kids were safe. There's a reason gray divorces are a thing. And if you don't know what gray divorces are, look up 'cause they're pretty popular.
Now my social media algorithms are routinely filled with women so happy their houses will never have another angry man in them. Women showing off their new pink home decor or sharing how peaceful their nervous systems are now that they never have to suffer a man tantrum on a family trip, during the holiday season,
or when trying to plan someone's birthday party. My experience is that when my attention was on things other than my duty to my marriage or my kids a little too much, I was gonna pay for it some way, somehow. And I'm so relieved to have found kindred women going through or having gone through similar experiences to mine because I have felt very alone during this whole process.
I think one of the biggest problems is that the voice of divorced moms is particularly absent from mainstream and popular media, despite us being a pretty large share of the population. According to 2022 US Census numbers, there were 10.9 million single-parent family groups in the US, with 80% of them being headed by a mother. The lack of visibility of single moms is obscene given our numbers, the important role we place in raising children, and how acutely we experience sociopolitical systems and decisions, including our close proximity to government and corporate support and/or malfeasance.
That said, y'all, I recently bought the book Black Single Mother by Jamila Lemieux and I can't wait to dive into it headfirst.
Okay, let's talk about the inevitable. While I would never suggest a woman marry a man, these things do happen. So here are my suggestions. I think the changing the last name thing is highly problematic and misogynistic.
Furthermore, I would insist on the children having the same last name as their mom. Almost every time it will be the mom taking the children to the doctor's office and signing them up for school and these types of important life events. So they need her name to ease the administrative load, if nothing else.
Now, I was happy to change my last name at the time because my dad was a malignant narcissist and I really liked my parents-in-law and I was thrilled to lose the association with my So what's the solution to this last name issue? Keeping your dad's name or keep taking your husband's? Like this whole thing is so stupid. I have no idea.
But every now and then I come across a couple who settled on a new last name together and I don't hate it. I do plan on eventually changing my last name after my youngest turns 18 and it will not have family origins. And by the way, keeping your last name and not taking the last name of a man and having the children take the last name of the mother, should NOT be controversial in the slightest.
The fact that it is is simply illustration number eleventy million that we live in an oppressive patriarchy that still considers women property of men next up in modern day marriage protocol. Women must, and this is not an option, I repeat, have their own bank account, credit cards, financial resources, independence, and sovereignty.
No man can should ever and I mean EVER have authority over a woman's finances, ever, PERIOD Not up for discussion. If a man is opposed to this, he is centering himself. He does not love this woman. He does not want to see her secure and protected. And yes, that is a huge red flag and evidence that he will likely not make a good partner and his behavior will only get worse once children are involved. You can bank on it.
Now I just listened to Debbie Millman's Design Matters podcast where she was interviewing author Ann Patchett and I love Ann Patchett man, but then she had advice for people about to get married, and I could not believe it. I almost audibly gasped. Because it was to have joint finances down to the last penny. I was stunned because this is so harmful and creates a situation where women are drastically vulnerable to abuse.
Now, I respect her so much. And she talked about how she had dated her husband for 11 years before they got married. I'm gonna point out she was also likely in a really healthy and empowered position financially. And I don't think she ever had kids.
So I do think those are major factors in her conclusion. But for most women, allowing a man to control your access to financial resources can put you in an extremely exposed and unsafe circumstance. I knew a woman whose husband died suddenly and the banks froze their joint account for six months and she had to scramble all over the place to borrow money. I know another woman and have heard from many more whose husbands drained the accounts before leaving them.
Let me tell you, the horror stories of what has happened to women because of joint finances are ubiquitous in divorced women's spaces. And just because you're married doesn't mean a surprise isn't right around the corner or an unexpected event such as an illness or a death. So that is gonna have a drastic impact on your joint accounts. It's an incredibly dangerous thing to do and an incredibly disempowering decision to make. Now, it sounded to me like Ann Patchett was saying that that was what love was to her.
But if that's the case, like the joint finances was what was love. And if that's the case, like we need to have a deep discussion on romantic love, what it is, what it means, and how we express it, especially in the first four years of a romantic relationship when you're in that obsessed, addictive phase. Because disempowering yourself financially to express your devotion to a man is a very patriarchal concept and spectacularly harmful to women.
Next up, women should have very good education regarding financial management. Now I grew up in scarcity and I was not raised with financial education or know-how, which primed me for a relationship in which I was valued for my service rather than personhood and little by little lost all my independence and financial viability, leaving me extremely weak and vulnerable.
My lack of financial know-how led to financial difficulties I came with to the relationship with my now ex-husband. That led to a depletion of my authority in our partnership, created a narrative of my being irresponsible or undisciplined with money that I was never able to shake, no matter what I did or how I improved.
The whole thing prompted me to accept the financial control and sovereignty of my then husband, which I highly regret and left me in a terrible place. And this brings up a very good point.
There is a quotation that makes its way around social media routinely and is attributed to a similar line by author, I think her it's pronounced Shantel Tessier or Shantel Tessier –
If you give a man the power to feed you, you give him the power to starve you.
And how many times have we seen, again and again, when women sign their fate and the fate of their children, their ability to have shelter, to eat, to access resources and thrive to a man, they get royally screwed.
And there is a real possibility of becoming impoverished and indigent with health problems and early death because of the end of the union with that man. Like it's a fucking horror story and it plays out all the time. Why?
Well, let's talk about these men, y'all. Let's get into it. More specifically, let's talk about what patriarchy does to men. Now I'm just gonna gloss over it here because I have some juicy episodes coming up that dive into this at greater depth, but let's touch on it.
Okay. And honestly, Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste, is probably one of the most important books to read in this day and age. And in it, she discusses "group narcissism," that in a status hierarchy, the dominant group centers themselves and is centered by society. I will add, it's to such an inherent extent that they don't even necessarily consciously grasp that this is a manufactured construct as opposed to the natural way of things.
We should have a list of books men should have to read if they want to marry a woman, and Caste should be number one. Maybe followed by The Chalice & the Blade and The Patriarchs. Seriously, I could list a ton of others. And I would want a written or video report as evidence of comprehension. But that's probably asking too much.
We seen week after week and story after story of men murdering their wives and sometimes their children and themselves, but we also saw the uncovering of a rape academy by CNN an online school for men on how to drug and rape their wives and partners that had 82 million visitors in March of this year alone. there were other sordid details so enraging it's almost beyond words. This is after multiple real-life cases of men drugging their wives and allowing other men to rape them while the women were unconscious.
I mean fucking Christ.
Also, a major topic on social media has been Alpine Divorce after the conviction of an Austrian man who left his girlfriend to freeze to death on Austria's highest mountain, and a previous girlfriend who had come forward to say he had abandoned her in the same way two years prior.
And then there was the guy who was convicted after trying to push his wife off a cliff during a hike in Hawaii. And when that didn't work, trying to stab her with the syringe and then finally resorting to beating her with a rock to unsuccessfully try to end her life.
And there's an ongoing case of a search for the body of Lynette Hooker, whose husband now under criminal investigation and has given inconsistent statements about her disappearance during a little sailing trip in the Bahamas, also known as a Maritime Divorce.
Women have come out of the woodwork across social media to give versions of their own stories of being abandoned by men in dangerous situations, including dangerous metropolitan areas.
This was such a noticeable trend on social media, even The Onion put out a great spoof piece titled, "State Department Issues Travel Warning for Women Vacationing with Husbands."
Now, let me tell you, even if a woman survives, even if she finds help or isn't injured, this behavior is extremely abusive. Sending her nervous system into a tailspin and making her so unsafe has traumatic, lifelong repercussions physically and psychologically. These men should face criminal conviction for this type of behavior, regardless of whether the woman survives, and also be subject in civil court to punitive and monetary damages.
And I'm gonna add a little sidebar. We need updated information, which is harder and harder to obtain, but there is evidence that when men murder women, they receive shorter prison sentences than women who kill men in self-defense. And that's because patriarchy values the lives and personhoods of men more than women. Women are denied sovereignty over their mere existence.
Another fucking thing that has just made me lose faith in men is the ubiquity with which women have to guard their drinks in public, whether it's products to cover drinks, nail polish to detect drugs in drinks, because even bartenders are sometimes in on the drugging.
I recently heard a story from someone who went to a club where the bouncer had confiscated tons of bottles of eye drops from men entering the club with the intent to intoxicate women to prey on them sexually. And let's be clear, they didn't turn these men away. They confiscated these bottles and then let these predators in the club. Like they let them in the club. Like it's fucking bleak, y'all.
So women are naturally turning away from men. They are unsafe. From Korea's 4B movement to the fantastic swell of women online sharing the wonders and glee when living alone after having cohabitated with a man.
I remember when I shared online a picture of my first set of new dishes in over 20 years, and this was a big deal. My previous ones had been hand-me-downs from my stepdad that were like those old iHop and Denny's dishes, and they were good dishes, y'all. Like they held up, but they were ugly as sin. And I always wanted some nice, lovely, gorgeous dishes that I can enjoy serving my food on.
So when I shared my new dishes, so many women came out of the woodwork to congratulate me and give me their own stories of their first purchases once they lived alone. And I don't live alone, y'all. I live with my kids, but having a household without a man of the house in the fucking house is fucking awesome.
Keke Palmer's comments on the Today Show about being done living with a romantic partner went viral and sparked a lot of support and agreement across the socials. And she recently gave a tour of her house, I think to Architectural Digest, where she disclosed that she and her sisters are living together and raising their kids together.
When women do so well alone or without a man, but with a supportive group of women around them, why does our society try to push us into these nuclear, heteronormative arrangements so forcefully?
Rewarding us with some grand status as a married woman, which is nothing but close proximity to men. While there's myriad, vast reasons patriarchy operates in this way, I'm gonna point out one specifically. When a woman is struggling for her life or the lives of her children, even if it is fighting a spiritual death in this arrangement with a narcissistic man, she cannot be helpful to movement-making, or building a better, more equitable infrastructure or future for society. She's certainly in no place to challenge the system that is trying to extract value from her existence and consume her from the inside out. She cannot be helpful in fighting white supremacy or in fighting patriarchy because in such a marriage, she loses her voice. She loses her oxygen. She loses her ability to stay in touch with her inherent wisdom and intuition – especially if she is married to a man who proactively isolates her. Inside patriarchy, the weakening of women into mere servitude and rendering them into subservience is the point of marriage that is EASY to enter and very difficult to leave.
Now, yes, I know plenty of lovely men, and perhaps you know plenty of lovely men, men who you would think would never engage and cooperate in any of these types of activities. And while many of these men do not actively participate in the cruelty and direct exploitation of the system, they benefit from it.
They don't question it, they go along with the existing system, which is harmful to women, harmful to Black people and people of color, and the LGBTQ+ and the disabled.
They practice patriarchy in their marriages, refusing to educate themselves on issues important to women, on racism and white supremacy, or even on healing their past traumas so they don't treat others poorly, including their kids, and can regulate their own nervous systems.
They might at best practice benevolent misogyny or white supremacy, offering resources to marginalized people who do not challenge them in any significant way, while gaining in status for their acts of generosity.
And the bottom line is, regardless of what type of man a person is, a Republican vote is an act of violence against women, against Black people, and other under-resourced exploited populations. Hell, it is a vote against the planet. It is nothing less than supporting an abusive and oppressive system.
Now, I'm raising two sons as best I can to be able to understand that the world that they experience is not the world that everybody else experiences. And they have a responsibility in this dynamic.
But let me tell you, I am not here to fix men. That is the responsibility of other men. I am here to help women protect and empower themselves in a system that wants to consume them and extract from them.
So, what's the answer?
There are an array of strategies in place and coming online to help women exit marriages they no longer want to be in. My first suggestion is to get a copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and read it and return to inherent wisdom and intuition and no, I'm not kidding. That might be one of the most important things a woman does in her life.
And let me say, let me say, if you are a woman and you're in a marriage that you like and that you think is wonderful. I am happy for you, and you deserve it. Women deserve to be well-loved and well-supported, and I am ecstatic for you.
But legally speaking, it should be as easy as falling off a log to dissolve a marriage. I understand splitting assets is complicated and convoluted. I speak from experience. But the dissolution of the legal framework of connection should be as easy and instantaneous as filing a little paperwork. Forcing women to maintain a legal tie to a man for any length of time longer than she wants, is oppressive and abusive.
I’ve seen talk on Threads about divorce duolas becoming a thing, and I think that's wonderful. I highly encourage and support a growing framework to help women through the process of divorce, which can be absolutely devastating and wretched. Women need support during this time.
I just hope this isn't simply some area where vulnerable women are ripe for exploitation. There are more and more agencies and coaches entering the scene to help women through this process, and I would like to recommend some, but I haven't had a chance to suss out the credibility of any of them, really aside from Olivia Howell.
Now you can follow Olivia Howell on Threads at Olivia O L I V I A Howell H O W E L L. And she's the CEO of Fresh Starts Registry. Which I think she started with her sister. Fresh Starts Registry offers free divorce consultations. You can visit the website at Fresh Starts Registry dot com, and I highly suggest you do so if you're new to the divorce process. Fresh Starts Registry is, quote, the world's first divorce registry and global divorce support network, providing resources, education, and support for every step, end quote. And she also has a podcast called Divorce Happens.
If anyone knows of any divorce resources that they can vouch for, I encourage y'all to leave them in the comments. Now at this time, I'm a busy solo mom of three, very active kiddos, and prioritizing my time trying to get this podcast up and off the ground. But yes, eventually The Agentic Feminine will provide resources for women seeking to dissolve their marriage or simply leave a relationship that no longer works for them. We won't stop trying to build a world in which women can thrive.
And that must include a robust, vibrant network for women who, for whatever reason, need to change their circumstances. We need a robust and vibrant support system for women in every aspect of their lives, including the ones who do want to marry or do not want to marry. But the main thread here is agency, that women are the sovereign authority of their lives and should have the legal and financial agency to make the decisions that are best for them and their children.
Meredith (51:59)
All right, that does it for this episode of Clitorial Conflabs. Thank you for listening. You're a goddamn rock star. I'll be back soon with an introduction to the breakdown between matriarchy and patriarchy, which will be awesome. Till next time, I'm sending you support during these dark days and wishing you well. We're in this together, and I appreciate you being here. Bye for now.
