Show Notes
The first of our Christmas special episodes! We’re looking at how to productively talk to family members with problematic views during the holidays, with words of wisdom from people who’ve had to have these difficult conversations. Big thanks to Theresa from Mermaids UK, Fiona Clark from Show Racism the Red Card and Kay and Danny. Theresa, Kay, and Danny are all using pseudonyms to protect their identities. This is a curly media production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from No Worries If Not!
How many hen dos have you been on this year, and how much do you think you’ve spent? If women are getting married less, why are hen dos getting more and more expensive? In the UK, women spend an average of £652 on a single hen do, and over £1,000 if it’s abroad. What’s driving this change? Is it Instagram, scattered friendship groups, or do we still treat marriage as the most important milestone in a woman’s life?
The number of women freezing their eggs in the UK has gone up nearly 30 times in just over a decade, AOC is documenting her egg freezing process on Instagram, and more and more companies are covering the costs for their employees. Is egg freezing reproductive freedom, or just delaying the baby choice? Is it a solution, or a band-aid approach for a system that still doesn’t accommodate the working mother? And when reproduction becomes a private industry, does having a baby and a career become a class luxury reserved for the wealthy?
When OpenAI changed ChatGPT’s personality on Valentine’s Day, some users lost their AI partners overnight. I spoke to a woman who built a new platform to keep her AI boyfriend ‘alive’ after the update, and a man holding OpenAI to account for the psychological harm caused by AI companions.
After facing allegations of violence and abuse, famous men are doing the ‘Christian Pivot’ - they’re embracing Christianity as a quick-fix PR cover-up.
More women are choosing to be #ChildFreeByChoice, in part thanks to the 'era of honest motherhood' where women online share the sacrifices they've made. In anonymous forums across the internet, mothers are speaking honestly about their regret and loss of identity, while films like Nightbitch, Die My Love, and Oscar nominated If I Had Legs I’d Kick You are bringing 'honest motherhood' into the mainstream. As birth rates fall, reductive headlines frame it as a 'global fertility crisis' or the fault of feminism. But when young women are faced with the reality of childcare costs, the gendered domestic labour gap and the myth that we can ‘have it all’, their reluctance to have children seems entirely rational.