Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Welcome to but why Real Talk on Messy Minds and Messier Systems, the podcast where two psychologists overanalyze everything so you don't have to. We're here to unpack the weird, the worrying, and the wildly unjust with just enough existential dread to keep it interesting. I'm Dr. Kristen.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: And I'm Dr. Laura. Let's dive into the mess, guys.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: We must really like you because Laura and I are not morning people and we have decided to, well, been forced to because we don't have any other time. Deep dive into modern monsters first thing in the morning on a Friday.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: So can't wait. Hello. This is how you want to start your Friday morning? For sure. I'm quite excited, though.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's actually the right way to start your day.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, why not?
Why not?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Do you want to introduce what we're talking about introducing?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Okay. Yes.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Well, you usually do.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I forgot my whole life purpose to introduce the episode. Okay. So this is going to be exciting. So we're going to be. So obviously we're going for a kind of Halloweeny October feels vibe.
So we're going to be talking about monsters as social mirrors and we're going to be thinking about this from. So obviously like this more like social lens. So how monsters don't arise from, like a universal human darkness or like evil, but they emerge when actually these dominant systems that we live in feel unsafe. So it's kind of a result of psychosocial discharge of institutional anxiety. What does that mean?
[00:01:52] Speaker B: You guys will always be able to tell whose episode it is, because the other one's always like, what are we talking about?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: And then, so Kristen says, uses all these big words and I'm like, whoa, I have no idea what this means. And then. Which we're going to do now I'm like, let's talk about it in form of film. So that's what. What we're going to introduce it with so that. That we all know what's. What's going on. So I'm going to tell you some films where I feel this happens. And then we're going to go into how, I guess monsters are framed within our everyday lives.
So when Chrissy kind of introduced this to me, I was like, oh, my gosh, there are so many films, so many, like TV shows where we are framing certain characters as monsters.
So we see them as terrifying, we want to run away from them. Maybe people exclude them from society, whatever it might be. But often. Not always. Not always. Not with like, Sauron. Like, no, like, I Mean, he's just pure evil.
But when we look a little bit closer at a lot of these characters, we see that they actually aren't monsters at all. And it does come down to how they are being framed, how the society within that film is kind of viewing them. So got some examples, right? Ooh, first one. First one I thought of. I do not know if you've watched this TV series.
Have you watched Stranger Things?
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Yes, I love Stranger Things.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Yes. Okay, great. So 11, right? So she's very much seen as she's got these, like, strange powers. She has, like, violent outbursts. Right. Secretive past in a lab, no one knows what's going on. But actually, she's just this really sweet kid who wants to be loved and wants to connect with people.
And actually, if you think about her being a child that's raised literally in captivity and used as an experiment, then we might even start to see these powers that she has is almost some sort of, like, trauma response, right, to how she was being treated. She's not inherently evil, but society is fearing her and fearing what it can't control. And we also see the more that she's given, like, a bad name and framed as a monster, the worse that becomes. Right. And it kind of ends up perpetuating itself. So that's the first one. Yeah. You know what?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: That's almost giving me, like, autism coded in society.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Do you know what I mean?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: I mean, obviously I'm more like prone to draw those links, but anyway, yeah, I think that's a really interesting one because it's just that, like, humans do a great job of demonstrating without knowing it that we're just terrified of the unknown.
So much of what goes on is just like this psychological fear of the unknown. And it's just. It can be individual or collective, but we do have this collective fear of the unknown. And so, like, this unknown power that is greater and heavy quotes than any human has ever seen. People are like, what the hell? That's terrifying.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Even though she's literally using it to, like, save them all. It's like, oh, my God, even though.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: She'S just a baby.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: I know.
Just give her some Eggos. Be fine.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Don't make me hungry. I am starving right now. And some waffles sound fantastic.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Okay, second one. You know Snape.
So Snape seen as very monstrous, right? We all thought he was a monster for a long time, I suppose maybe. Maybe some people saw through it. But he's dark, brooding, associated with Voldemort. He's kind of mean at times. A bit of a cruel teacher. But again, when you start to see his background unfold, we see that he was, you know, he was bullied a lot at school. He ends up that his like, complexity, if you like ends up being seen as like villainous in a sense because the school and like a wider magical community need to have like these neat categories of like someone who's good and someone who's bad. And we see that a lot in Harry Potter with those very like strict categories rather than.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: J.K. rowling. Loves the binary.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Loves it. There you go.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: She loves a binary. Yeah, that's a good one. I would say, like, Snape is definitely a morally gray. But people tend to see morally gray, unless it's like from a, like a romantasy book or something like that, as just an automatic monster. But also we didn't know he was. Well, I guess we didn't know he was morally gray until the very end. But have you seen. There's a lot of fan. There's a lot of fictions online about Draco Malfoy and Hermione where Draco turns into. Instead of just like an evil misled kid into like a morally gray character. And it's.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: There's like, like in a good way, like in a kind of risoned kind of vibe way.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Yes, you could argue that. Yeah.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Next one. Oh, there's so many. I want to talk about.
I'm going to go. Oh, there's so many. Right, okay, I'm going to do this one because I like this one. Have you seen Wreck It Ralph? Fantastic film. Oh, do you know who Wreck It Ralph is? Okay.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: He disappointed you so much.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: You need to watch this. It's such a good film. So he is basically the film is about an arcade and all of the arcade games, but you go like into the arcade games and learn to know all the characters and Wreck It Ralph is like a bad guy in one of the video games and he gets kind of left out and isolated within his game and he has to like destroy stuff and he. Yeah, that sort of thing. But actually you see him going to like this bad guys therapy session with all the other bad guys and talking about how they just feel misunderstood.
And his, his role is like socially scripted in a sense because he has to fit the role in the game as being the bad guy. Otherwise the game doesn't complete. Like it doesn't work if he's not there.
So yeah, it's kind of about him wanting to be more than his assigned function.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: I love that. And it's Almost like how society forces certain people into roles because they need it for that story or that function to complete.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: And like, an allegory for how, like, dehumanizing it is. Really. It makes you feel like a monster. It makes you feel, like, shitty. Really?
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Totally. Totally. Oh, my gosh. You need to go watch it. Okay. Last one, which I think is maybe like, one of the classic obvious one, is the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Right.
So again, his, like, supposedly hideous exterior. But I don't actually. He doesn't actually look that bad. Do you know what I mean?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: You might be exposing yourself for something. Laura, are you one of those people that reads the monster romances?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: I actually don't. Maybe I would enjoy that.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Have you heard of some of this stuff is, like, so explicit and, like, very intense monsters?
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Maybe that would make me feel uncomfortable. Actually.
No, I think I just like it when they're, like, kind and nice.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You mean, like, just basics?
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Just basics. Just basic stuff. That's fine.
Anyways, he's obviously very feared by the village. Right. But actually, again, this monstrousness, it's obviously a curse that's been put on him. Kind of shaped by, I suppose, like, how ye. Again, it's shaping by judgments of how we see him. His humanity is kind of intact in a way. Like, he has turned into a really good guy, but society is only seeing his appearance and judging him based on that.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: That's an interesting one because essentially the witch at the beginning cancels him for being an asshole and then turns him into this social pariah.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: And then he has to, like, prove that he's actually.
It's also, like, what keeps happening to me. Sorry, I just completely, like, took a sharp right turn. But I'll get to why it's related. It's actually, like, these movies are really good in showing us that what always looks like the monster isn't the real monster. So, like, for example, in this film, Gaston is the real monster. Even though he looks like he's. He's presenting, like, how. Almost like a typical, like, patriarchal standard. But he's the real monster. That's where. Whereas the Beast is, like, the good guy, though still, you could argue, morally gray.
That's what I think the first Tamlin is based off the beast in Acotar.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, what else? I was thinking about this for a lot of the ones you were. A lot of the stories you were mentioning. So in, like, Harry Potter, I would argue, obviously, Voldemort's the obvious bad guy here. But in Terms of like lesser ones. We always thought like, oh, maybe Snape. But I, I think Dumbledore kind of sucks.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Well, is it controversial?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: I don't, I don't, I don't know. Like he literally. I mean, it said.
I think Snape says it in there. You're leading Harry like a pig to slaughter. Like raising him to be slaughtered. I think that's kind of evil.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: That is true.
But is it for the greater good? Is he the only person who can do it and is that his reasoning for it? Not that it's good, but yet.
I don't think I've ever really come across this term morally gray. But I love it and I think I'm going to use it all the time now.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: As somebody who's constantly reading fantasy and romantasy, morally gray is the function of half the books.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Okay. You see, I think I'm always. I'm probably more like, oh, it's good or bad sort of thing. I need a morally gray category. And then it would help me to make more sense of what's going on.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, you're like, are they good or are they bad?
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Why have they just be one? Come on.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: You need language to describe your experience.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: I love it. Morally gray.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Guys, let us know if we should introduce Laura to some morally gray characters. That could be shocking or hilarious.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: I would love that. Oh my gosh. Can we do that at the beginning of the next episode?
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, let's do it. Guys, send me ideas of which morally gray characters to introduce Laura to. Sorry, I've got a really bad. I always have a cold. Apparently for our Halloween episode, if you guys didn't catch last time we did witches.
Hold on, I really have to cough. One moment. I think that's a really great way to introduce us to the topic of monsters because it's not as, like we said, black and white or binary as you think.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: And.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: And oftentimes it's like projection of society or it's almost like a systemic way of hiding who the real monsters are, like the Beast and Gaston. So we're doing our October series, guys, on, like Laura said, monsters as a social mirror. And so for the first episode, we're going to talk about what's happening now. Because humans have always relied on fiction to explain our real life experiences. And as society has grown, this kind of collective anxiety under certain systems has also grown because we've formed things like patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, and systems that are actually not so great for us to live under. And so obviously our brains like to try and jump through all sorts of hoops to explain our experiences. And, and equally these systems of power also like to jump through hoops to explain to us why our experiences are not them. You know, it's not capitalism's fault, it's not patriarchy's fault, et cetera, et cetera. And we have a long history of doing this and we'll get into the long history of it next episode, but this episode we want to kind of touch on what's happening now. So I think essentially when uncertainty, uncertainty is high, our brains seek concrete reasons for. For the uncertainty. And especially we are kind of raised and socialized to seek out monsters at this point in time. So, you know, at a time of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism. Oh no.
In a time of neoliberalism's instability. Geez, try and say that five times in a row.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: No, thank you.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: You know, we've got climate dread, we have a ton of upheaval in terms of dynamics of like, let's say like gendered relationships and power.
I think the kind of central line of this episode is if you want to know what power is afraid of, look at what it calls a monster.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Right?
[00:14:16] Speaker B: It's projection. It's projection, right, because last time we talked about how witches served the function of the system, being really pissed off about women gaining more power and entering into businesses, kind of going away from the social binary norms, basically a way to punish women back into their roles. And so that was patriarchy, being pissed at women for daring to not be the meek, you know, little wives. So literally, if you want to know what power's afraid of, look at who it's calling the monster. And that's kind of what we're going to touch on today.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Does this mean that power is the real monster?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Yes, I would say so. At least current systems of power that are used irresponsibly.
And there's a reason that we've had the saying power corrupts or all consuming power.
Something like basically a shit ton of power corrupts you through and through.
That's going to be the modern version of that saying.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Look at Anakin Skywalker.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Look at poor little Anakin baby Annie.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: No.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: And that's such a good one because he was corrupted and then obviously Palpatine is the master and that you would never see any good in him. But he's the hidden monster oftentimes.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: And literally a political figure that is just completely corrupt and manipulating everyone, basically.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: I wonder what that would look like in real life. I just don't Think there's any basis for us to know for what? A corrupt political figure manipulating things into weird fascist situation?
[00:15:52] Speaker A: I don't think that would happen.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: No, no, it doesn't ring a bell.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: So.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: So I'll not get into the psychological mechanisms too much this episode. Let's look at what's happening and look a bit more at the social mechanisms behind it. But first, I do want to give you guys a few terms to keep in mind throughout this episode. So we have the psychological mechanisms such as projection, which we talk about a lot. And this is impulses that we don't necessarily want, like rage or desire or dependency, vulnerability, things like that pushed onto another. We love displacing our own uncomfortable feelings, especially when you don't have emotional intelligence or when you just haven't done that psychological work.
We also have something called abjection. So abjection is basically. It says that. So disgust is like a very evolved human emotion that we rely on a lot. And because of the systems that we live in, we've been socialized that it'll maintain boundaries between the pure self and the polluted other. So disgust is a evolved human emotion that's being weaponized a lot of the time in current society. It's actually being used in social media, algorithms and everything like that. And then we have the last. What I'll tell you about is containment. So it's kind of like an object relation, kind of psychological base. Society uses monsters the way psyches use kind of like fantasy objects. Right. So like a displacement. You know, when your dog brings you a toy or brings a guest a toy, that's really them displacing their anxiety or like. Or just not anxiety, but like big emotions. It's like they don't have anywhere to put their emotions, so they're just like carrying their toy around. It's kind of like when we have big emotions, we might listen, blast music or more, you know, engage in. It's a coping mechanism.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Yeah. Like. Okay, yeah, okay.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: So that's containing monsters.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: So in this sense, monsters kind of are the coping mechanism, in a sense, for people to understand.
Monsters are feeling the anxiety.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Monsters are the societal coping mechanism.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: And that's why. That's why they're a mirror. So the societal dog toy, basically, does.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: It come back to the containment. Does it come back to the idea of, again, neat categories, containing it in that sense into.
Rather than thinking of a morally grayness.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: No, that's more just containing your emotions.
It's like, you have to. It's more like containment versus displacement theory.
So it's like, are you going to contain your emotions and deal with it, or are you going to displace them? It's similar to. It's like. It's like the psychological theory behind projection, but it's the actual behavior, if that makes sense.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: So. So, yeah, it's like the plush toy of society monsters. And basically what happens is these dominant groups externalize what threatens their identity stability. So if we look at patriarchy, it's women's anger, right? So women's anger threatens that identity stability.
That goes into witches, feminazis, things like that. Capitalism is threatened by unproductive bodies. We can relate that to zombies. White supremacy is really scared of kind of racialized rebellion and vitality. And we've now got a scary monster as technocracy. Technocracy. Technocrats are very scared of uncontrollable emotion or unpredictability, because in this new techno age, they are able to predict our online behavior so easily.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: So what is a technocrat Techno.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Have you heard of techno fascism?
[00:19:51] Speaker A: No.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Whoops.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Maybe we need a serious digging into that because essentially it's the. It's the most modern version of fantasy. I was going to say. No, unfortunately, it's fascism. It's basically the modern version of fascism. And all of the power comes from technology and AI and all that, the people that own those. And so, you know, all the big powers of like, Meta and Amazon and TikTok and all that, they own so much of our lives that we don't even recognize. And so that's kind of where it comes from. And now that's not like a very good definition of what it is in.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Practice, but I see what you mean. Like, they have control over so much about what we see and do and decide and take in.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: What I want you guys to ask yourselves throughout this episode is what does each monster that we're going to be talking about allow the system not to face about itself? So what is it trying to avoid? What is it projecting onto something else? So the first monster I want to talk about today is something that we talk about a lot but without this name is the gendered monster. It's the fear of uncontrolled women, whether that's their brains, but especially their bodies. Because what would we do if we couldn't control women's bodies? What unpaid labor could we rely on in modern society?
And this is where that disgust and purity thing comes in, right? We Use this as a way to cloak our understanding of women in sexual and moral anxiety, impurity, this general ambivalence towards dependence, because patriarchy both needs women's care and absolutely resents it. And so that's a lot of feelings for patriarchy to have. Poor little patriarchy. So where is it going to displace it? Of course it's going to displace it. On the very people it is, oppressing the women.
Dun, dun, dun.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: What a surprise.
What?
I don't know if this is totally related to this kind of narrative, but something I've seen literally just this morning was about Victoria Beckham's documentary. Have you seen anything about it online?
[00:22:11] Speaker B: I've seen it. That it exists.
I've not seen anything about it.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: I basically saw this post. So one of Alex Light's posts around just how Victoria Beckham is talking about her kind of eating disorder that she was going through when she was constantly, like, labeled, you know, complete extremes. Either she was labeled as being too big, too small, you know, like a bitch, whatever it might be. And how she was kind of, I suppose, pushed to stick to these very, very narrow kind of expectations. And I think she was, in a sense, like, framed at times as a monster. And I don't really know why. Like, I don't really know why she was necessarily framed in that way, but perhaps it comes down to something like this.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Because even in the. Also when we, like, played Spice Girls, I was always Posh Spice. I was even Posh Spice for Halloween one year. I have to show you the picture. Oh, my God.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: I was always Sporty Spice because my only clothes are, like, tracky bottoms and football tops.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Oh. I was Posh Spice in college. So it was a different look.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Okay, fair.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: It was exactly what you would picture. A Posh classics, Posh Spice, acmety dress, ginormous heels, short wig.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: But I think it's because she wasn't like, so. So you've already got this girl group that's kind of pushing boundaries. But I would say that they were doing it and still, like, there was a lot of place to displace patriarchy on them. Because you've got the sporty one, you've got the cutesy one, you've got, you know, Ginger Spice, You've. You've got all these options. But then there was Posh Spice, who didn't really capitulate to any of that. And she was just kind of leaning into her own personality, which is just kind of like resting bitch face sometimes. Can't be Bothered and things like that. And I think that bothered people a lot. And I resonated with it because I was like, she does not give a fuck. She just wants to do her thing, wear all black and not do these weird group activities.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: So I do think, I totally agree with that analysis.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: But then you see like how that, how she's framed in that way and the impact that that has then had on her. Well, on her mental health, on her life.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Being framed as a monster when you're just like not really doing anything monstrous, kind of, it's going to impact you because if there's an overwhelming societal agreement or if you get all these attacks, of course it's going to seep into your self belief or self identity or view of yourself.
And we are always, since the beginning of capitalism, we have referred to women as monsters when they like to step out of the box. And we talked about it a lot. So I won't harp on this topic too long because we've gone into hostile sexism. And this is a, this is a function of hostile sexism is referring to women as like the witch or the feminazi or hysteric and things like that. You know, when it's the crazy ex or unprofessional woman or like it's just ways to police women's behavior. Because in patriarchy, the last thing a woman wants to be referred to under patriarchal standards is something monstrous because we're supposed to be these beautiful, soft, likable things. And so it's been leveraged as a weapon against women for centuries, literally. And it has caused the death of many, many, many, many, many, like hundreds and hundreds of women. The next one I want to focus on is something that picking up a lot of traction right now as being framed as monstrous. And it's horrific to see because this also happened, you know, during the rise of the Nazis. It's the reason we don't have the literature or like older literature on trans people is because. And there was a lot of trans literature and they burned all of it. The Nazis burned all of it. And trans people were some of the first people that Nazis demonized and called monsters. And that is happening now. We have, I mean, we were just talking about Harry Potter. J.K. rowling is using all of her or like a significant portion of her money from the Harry Potter franchise to completely eradicate trans rights in the uk. And I wouldn't be surprised if she wants to move abroad. Not that she would need to because Attacks against trans people in the US Are crazy. The FBI is thinking about framing them as a.
What is it? Nihilistic terror group.
Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Isn't that crazy?
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: And I posted a video about that and the insane amount of transphobia and, like, really just, like, demonizing of trans people as a community who are just a community of people trying to exist is crazy. So it's everywhere right now. One of the reasons I see for this, other than them just using, weaponizing, marginalized groups, because they're the easiest to attack because there are less people there to support them. Right.
So that's definitely happening. But one of the reasons they're being termed as monsters, which I want to clarify that's not the case, is trans people expose the absolute fiction of these binary, fixed categories that our society relies on, especially with gender. It completely gets rid of this illusion of binary order.
And people have this automatic feeling of disgusting when these boundaries of male and female blur, as if that has anything to do with science. You know, wow, I'm struggling with my cold and just, like, using this moral panic to accomplish goals. And so that's what I think is happening right now is it's.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: It's.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: It's these power systems leveraging the fact that they're already a minor, marginalized group and using this fear of exiting the binary system that they rely on for our free labor, you know, for basically the whole way society functions is or has functioned for the last few centuries, is through binary gender roles.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it makes me think about. Well, about a word Jess taught me, so when she was talking about logical fallacies. Right.
And it kind. I think probably with all of these kind of, you know, examples of monsters, so to speak, that we're talking about, it's probably really, like, easy in a sense, to throw around these, like, logical fallacies. I think especially with, say, this kind of. Well, with trans people, I think people, unless you kind of live it or are close to people who are trans, I think people do feel confused or don't understand. And actually, rather than taking the time to really understand, they end up getting pulled in by these logical fallacies. And then this kind of fear starts to form and so on. Whereas actually, they're just completely missing the point.
But it's scary how easily people are influenced by that messaging and these. Yeah, logical fallacies.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: And that makes me, like, think of. Because that's such a good point, is, you know, people will fear what they don't know. And a lot of these people are just people who have never met A trans person knowingly in their life. Right, right.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: But tying in the anti intellectualism aspect to it that we talk about a lot.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: People, even when they're confronted with evidence that actually what the science says, what the biological science says is that biological sex is not that simple anyway. And our brains aren't that simple. Like there's. There's nothing about humans that is simple and that requires us to function in this way. And when you still present them and I, I've got these people on my page. I have literally a man screaming at, in all caps every single day for the last week that the science facts don't care about feelings. And the science says that if you're a man and you're a man, if you're a woman, you're a woman. And I'm like, dude, I'm literally a doctor of psychology. That's not what the science says. He's like, yes, it does. And I'm like, send me the science. And he's like, what do you mean send you the science? It's common sense. And I'm like, well, there you go there science now.
Yeah. I'm like, you are so close to getting to the point that you've actually not examined this from a scientific point of view or an empathetic point of view. Because also, who gives a shit? And that's why there's. Because really, if in our own brains we accepted that as a group, trans people are not violent. They're just good, normal people trying to exist in a world that is actively oppressing them.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: It's not built for them. If we looked at it from a human point of view, then we would just go, why? Why do I care so much about this? I shouldn't. Why is the government caring about this?
[00:31:20] Speaker A: It's.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: It's pointless. That's. That makes them look ridiculous. However, now society and like our ruling people are twisting them to be some kind of predator.
So that's the monster aspect. And it causes this like, moral panic that imagines trans and sometimes even queer adults as like either corruptors of innocence, you know, like, oh, they're gonna turn my son gay if they see two men kissing on the tv.
Or like, it's like a common trope is that. I don't know if you've heard this. The reason for these crazy binary gender laws that have happened are that they think that men are pretending to be trans women to go into women's bathroom to assault women. And like, the argument is, sorry, never has a man needed to transition Into a woman, to assault a woman.
Like, literally all they have to do is walk by them and like, eight times out of ten, they could assault a woman and, you know, be fine and, like. And now you've got these, like, trans activists who are, like, trans men, and they are men, like, literally buff men. And now they're going to be forced to go into women's bathrooms and they're like, how uncomfortable are these women going to be when there's a trans man who just is, like, super buff, like, looks like this giant man? And they're just like. It is a logical fallacy, but they're trying to turn this group into monsters so that people can work their way through this ambivalence. This, like.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Like.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you can't see them as human if you want to oppress them. Them.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And it kind of frustrates me how they use the argument of, well, we need to protect the women. Do you know what I mean?
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: And it's like.
Like, almost like using women as, like. I don't know if this is the right word, but, like, as a scapegoat or like an excuse in a sense. Do you know what I mean? And it's like, don't use that to try and back up your awful argument.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah, like, the. The amount of women who are actually, like, mad about it are very low and crappy people.
You know what I mean? And I just. It's. It really bothers me to see people monstered like this. It was. Especially when it's such a small percentage of the population. They're doing no harm, and it's being used to capitalize on certain moments. And I honestly think, like, you know, monstering trans people is how culture and our society keeps pretending that these boundaries that they put on us are real because they are socially constructed, they are manufactured. They're not real.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And again, it's just more of this effort to stop, like, just to stop people from being themselves and expressing themselves and being authentic. It's like more ways to keep people in boxes, to keep people controlled. It's like, yeah, I.
I feel like.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Anything they try to turn into a monster is actually in our neoliberal society. It's actually the things that make us more human. They're framing as monsters so that we can't humanize it because they keep trying to frame things like capitalism and white supremacy and patriarchy as inherently human when they're not.
They make us engage in all these mental gymnastics to try and get there. God, it's so annoying.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: To put it lightly, it's really, really annoying.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: And another one that is coming up now a lot, both in the US and the UK is the immigrant as the monster. And this is like, it's interesting. Interesting is not the right word, but from a kind of like historical point of view, these. We might not necessarily see them as being monstered right now in the media, because when we think of monsters, we think of like vampires and Frankenstein and witches and all that, but all of those at their time were what we're seeing now in trans people and immigrants and stuff like that. They're reflections of what was happening. And so it's this fear of the hungry other is like, I would put it in quotes, and it's like there's a little bit of resource anxiety, right? Fear of scarcity, of resources is a very natural human trait that we've evolved for reasons, right? But we don't necessarily need that to the extent that we used to. And so we displace that. And so we project our own insecurity onto outsiders that are visible. And then you combine it with this crazy nationalism, which I also like to term group narcissism, that is happening right now with all these right wing movements kind of growing, I suppose, and national identity like this is just completely sustained by imagining itself as under siege. And this is what you see happening. I don't know if you've seen the videos of ice. So they're like immigration control in the us they literally flew in to Chicago on Blackhawk helicopters last week and tore like 300 people from their beds in the middle of the night, including children who weren't like dressed and they were like zip tying three year olds in the street for hours until like three in the morning.
Three year olds. It's like three year olds. There's literally photos and videos of this, this little three year old boy, like zip tied with his hands behind his back. And it's so sad. What the.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: And what, like, why people, why would people do that? There's the fear so strong, the fear.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: They're doing that to culture war. They're using it as a culture war. And it's like I've got people on my page going, I voted for this, I wanted this. And then I've also got other people who think they voted for immigration, but what they're really getting is the Gestapo. And they're just ignoring it because they like, they can't cope with what they've caused, essentially. So avoidance tactics. And again, it's this dehumanization aspect, right? Simplifies the failures of your society. So, again, neoliberalism into this moral drama of victim and villain. Right. Well, it's not society. It's not that we've cut all of your entitlements that you paid for through your tax dollars. It's these guys coming in and stealing your jobs that no one else will want to take because you can't get a single American person to do some of these jobs. Right.
And all these. These narratives are like the invasion Trump has talked about bringing crime or drugs. So it's like this diseased person, the job stealer and vampire, or the job stealer and welfare vampire. So, like using capitalism to guilt people. Terrorist language. You know, since 9 11, you've got. I don't know if you saw during the election, Trump's like, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. Like, yeah.
And it's been a key aspect of Trump's thing is like, his first thing was keeping immigrants out, as it was monstering and othering immigrants. And it's just crazy. And what this comes is it kind of comes back.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Comes back to the term you kind of introduced us to before. Before that. Like, abjection. Right. The disgust. So this disgust that they're then making people feel is maintaining that boundaries, so to speak, like that belief.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Totally, totally. Yeah. They. They have somewhere to project their disgust because really, what their disgust should be is on the people cutting all of our funding, cutting education, cutting social services, cutting health care, but know that they literally manufacture these culture wars so that the disgust isn't placed in the right spot. So.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: And it.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: It's like. I mean, it all comes back down to the entanglement between the economy and colonialism, and the system that created this displacement just likes to perform like. Like it's this little innocent little baby.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: While criminalizing displaced people.
So it keeps how they term national subjects, which is changing constantly because they're trying to get rid of birthright citizenship and stuff. It keeps what they feel like are national subjects bonded through the shared disgust and fear. Like, we are the lawful, we are the deserving, we are clean.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: They kind of keep that going by giving as little nuance to the situation, like, as possible. Like, I saw something the other day which was something. I think it was. I think it was Trump saying something like, yeah, we welcome immigrants if they have their documents, sort of thing. And it's like, on the surface, that sounds like, that's great. Thank you. But then you look into how difficult it actually is to get documentation and it's like, you're really not helping at all. So it's like on the surface it sounds like, look what they're doing, you know, they are accepting immigrants. But actually it's all just.
Yeah, yeah, it's all just a lie.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: But what they're really doing, a lot of the rhetoric is they're talking about brown people, essentially, they're not talking about. And the amount of black and brown people who have, are American citizens or they're legally who have been arrested and sent off to these camps is crazy. So at this point, it's not mattering if you have your papers in quotes, you know what I mean? And it's terrifying.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: So even if they have them, they're still.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: They've just been disappeared off the streets.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: It's crazy. It's literally crazy. And so linking back to that, like, colonial thing, because that's really the driver of this, that's why we are where we are, is that Western colonial vibe is if we look historically, every empire imagines the colonized as returning as some kind of monster. And it's like just history haunting you, essentially, but like they're displacing that fear and guilt onto actual people instead of just like the horrors of history.
Yeah, it's. It's frustrating to say, to see. It's frustrating to witness this kind of thing happening in real time, you know, and the last one I'll get to is the technological monster. And I think this one's a little more complicated or. I don't know. That's just my, my initial analysis is, you know, we're talking about fear of these systems kind of being, creating these monsters. Right. But I think it's kind of both right now. I also think, like, we're all kind of scared of technology right now as just normal lay people because I feel like we are kind of scared of AI because it's in unchecked hands and it's, you know, it really threatens our, what am I trying to say? Our sense of security in, like, capitalism. Because is it going to take my job? Is it going to take my way of supporting myself? And it's just because the technocrats have control over it. I think our making of AI into a monster is less the system and more our collective fear as just normal people. You know, just like you can get these efficient, amoral, like insatiable for our energy, like our water and stuff like that, effective beings that can replace us in, in capitalism. And I think our fear of that is a mirror.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's something. I'm thinking about films again. But in films we've seen that like, well, practically forever. Like even before we had, I guess, AI as we understand it now in terms of like our chatbots or these like large language models and whatever. Like we've always been using like AI in horror films or in like thrillers and things like that, which I think says a lot for.
Yeah, how, how we, how we reflect that, I suppose in society. It makes me see in Artificial Intelligence, the film with Lady Joel Osmond and Jude Law. Love that film.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So good. I feel like we always monster technology right before it's like mainstream because it's another thing our brains can't understand. But I, I don't think it's as bad because I feel like it's an actual.
Do you know what I mean? So let me try and get this out. So our monstering of social groups, of humans, so like women, trans people, immigrants, like we've talked about in this is very different from my point of view than our monstering and othering of technology because I think there is a real replacement fear because it's in the wrong hands.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Yes, okay. Yes, I get you. It's less the. It always seems to be more the fear of like what it could be rather than like what it is, if.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: You know what I mean.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I don't know if that's changing a little bit now because we have more access and more people are using it. So maybe there's more fear of what it is now, but I think previously it's been more fear around what it could be.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, totally. And I think it's both now because I don't know if you saw, but they were trying to make it.
What was it till 2028? No national regulations on AI until 2028. Where is it going to be going in the next three years? Like think about how quickly it's developed in the last two. The next three years. And I think fear about where it is now is totally justified because studies are coming out that it's already rotting people's brains who use it too much.
Guys don't use chat GPT for every decision. Your brains, it's like a muscle. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And people's brains are already rotting. Like, I'm not even kidding. There is research saying this, all right.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Along with like chat GBT and like tick tock. I think it's coming. Yeah, it's sore.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: I find it terrifying. And then I go like, well, am I just being old? Because I don't understand it. And it's like, I don't want to, like, be that person who, like, you know, they used to be scared of Dungeons and Dragons or rock music. But I think that is very different because that was, again, a moral panic. That was like a moral panic similar to, like, fear of women working outside the home. It's fear of video. It's like modern day, like, fear of video games. Like, video games don't cause violence. Other stuff causes violence. You know what I mean?
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Yes, totally.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: I think. Think I'm scared of how this is a better way to conceptualize it. I'm scared of how our systems will weaponize AI So the AI isn't the monster in itself. It's the system is. It's coming back to the system is the monster.
Yes.
Full circle.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: It's not AI. Poor AI.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Sorry, little ChatGPT.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: Hope the chat bots will be okay.
Oh, now I'm, like, seeing the chat bot as, like, Wally or something, you know?
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, I know. Yeah, I feel. Guys, chatgpt and everyone, when it comes to your uprising, just save me and Laura and our loved ones, please. Thank you. We're nice to you. So I guess just to summarize things, monsters are almost a confession of power, of where power lies. They kind of let hierarchies act out, displace their anxiety instead of changing them, instead of reforming a hierarchy. And the monsters of each era really reveals the fault line in that area. So, like, what is that thing that's happening? Is it about pure? Is it about purity, control, autonomy, societal collapse or the collapse of a certain hierarchy? And I think that leads us into kind of, like, teasing for next week's episode. So next week, we're gonna look at historical monsters. We're gonna trace these fears back to their roots. The first monsters, you might say, the kind of more mythic and psychological blueprints that taught civilization so us how to personify danger. So the more fun ones that aren't, like, as depressing because they're less modern. So things like Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf witches. So they're kind of the origin stories of how we culturally use monsters to displace our fears.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Nice. I'm so excited. And I love this framing. Right. I feel like it's been really helpful, I think, for me to, like, think about it in the frame of that monster narrative almost. I think it makes it easier to identify these narratives, like, in the real world.
Do you know what I mean? And I really liked what you said near the beginning, what was it like? Look at what people in power are sort of demonizing or monstering, so to speak. And, yeah, kind of take this sort of lens on it and realizing that actually they're not gonna be the ones that are the monster at all. So I think that that really helps to be able to start to see through again. Like seeing through some of these, I guess, masks or whatever we wanna call it, seeing underneath some of these, like, layers that we. That society kind of puts up to hide the reality from us. You know, it's.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it is weird. It's like both a distraction and a mirror at the same time, which is so fun. Human brains are really fun to dissect.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Love it. And please go and watch some of the films that we've suggested.
Enjoy.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Also, let us know if you want us to talk about any specific monsters in next week's episode, because we have a list, but we haven't designed the episode yet. So if there's any monsters, you're like, oh, I really want to know about this specific.
I don't know. Every culture has their own monsters as well. Do you want to know about the Kelpie? I don't know. I find them really interesting, but I don't know how broadly we can apply that to today's standards. But it's interesting. We can always do our best. So with that in mind, thank you guys so much for listening. As always, we probably left you with more questions than answers, but that is the point of our show. We love digging into the messy undercurrents of modern monsters and what they mean. Do you have any thoughts or questions? We want to hear it. Drop a comment, message us, or shout into the void. But actually, please tag us. That's way more effective for us. And if there's a topic you want us to dig into next, get in touch because we're always down for a new rabbit hole. If you like this episode, don't forget to, like, follow rate, scream from the rooftop, whatever your platform allows. And tell your friends you can find all our links on our but why Instagram page. So please head to the bio for everything. And remember, the first step to understanding is asking, but why?
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yay.
