This episode explores the attack against progressive political agendas in the U.S. How have recent actions rolled back hard-won achievements in the realm of gender equity and racial diversity? And why is class relatively underemphasized in the U.S. when it comes examining voter preferences among women? Listen to hear about how reactionary narratives of patriarchy under threat are unfolding, and why increased welfare measures and childcare support are unlikely to lead to the Right’s desired pronatalist birthrates.
Guest featured on this episode:
Katha Pollitt is a poet, an essayist, and a columnist at The Nation. She has published in The New York Times, The London Review of Books and The New Yorker. Pollitt has taught poetry at Princeton and at Barnard College and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her collections of essays include Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, Subject to Debate: Sense and Descent on Women, Politics and Culture, Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time, and a collection of personal essays titled “Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories. Her book, Pro, with the subtitle, Reclaiming Abortion Rights, 2014, was listed as a notable book of the year by the New York Times, and it remains an important and timely contribution to the debate on reproductive rights and freedom.
