Brett Kavanaugh is Ruining People’s Sex Lives
This week on Gaslit Nation, we’re joined by the fearless, brilliant Carter Sherman, an award-winning journalist at The Guardian and one of the sharpest voices covering reproductive rights and sexual politics. Her new book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future, is a battle cry for Gen Z, a generation navigating the fallout of a stolen Supreme Court, Me Too, incel culture, and a pornified internet.
We dive into how young people are rewriting the rules of intimacy in the face of political oppression. Carter’s reporting brings us inside the bedrooms and minds of Gen Zers who are coming of age in a country where Roe v. Wade was overturned exactly as we knew it would be. A generation told they’re free is now wrestling with the reality that their rights are under siege, and for many, that anxiety has become physical. As one woman told Carter, she couldn’t even have sex without being hounded by Kavanaugh’s voice in her head.
This isn’t just a story of fear; it’s one of resistance. Carter shares how young people are pushing back, from Kansas voters defending abortion rights to college students canvassing in swing states. But she also warns of the growing threat: the rise of the Manosphere, where boys are radicalized by algorithms and learn to hate women before they can legally drink. What can young women and young men agree on? That the Democratic Party brand is toxic, because it's Republican Lite.
The Second Coming is a deeply reported, fiercely human portrait of a generation caught between tech, trauma, and tyranny. This week’s bonus show will look at the horror of Trump’s Big Evil Bill passing through Congress, and our discussion of Lillian Faderman’s landbook book The Gay Revolution–a resistance blueprint for us today.
Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation–we could not make this show without you!
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Andrea Chalupa (00:10):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide family in Ukraine. This week's guest, Carter Sherman has her finger on the pulse of a generation coming of age in the aftermath of the Trump packed Supreme Court striking down Roe versus Wade Carter is an award-winning journalist and one of the nation's sharpest voices on reproductive rights and sexual politics. In her bold new book, the Second Coming Sex, and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future, Carter investigates why Young Americans are having less sex and why that actually kind of matters. Carter brings us into a world where dating is shaped by political battles, sexual education is under siege, and Gen Z is re-imagining desire on their own terms. Welcome Carter to Gaslit Nation.
Carter Sherman (01:12):
Thank you so much for having me.
Andrea Chalupa (01:14):
Now, what gave you the inspiration to write this book?
Carter Sherman (01:19):
Well, I have been reporting on gender and sexuality for eight, nine years now. So I've gotten very used to talking to people about their sex lives, particularly young people, about their sex lives. And I often did it in the context of news events, so there would be some kind of new restriction on abortion or contraception, and I would call people up and ask them what that meant for their sex life, or there would be a study on porn and I would call people up and ask them if they felt like that aligned with their experience of porn. But I think the actual idea of the book came to fruition in 2021. So at this point, the Supreme Court had already taken up Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health, which is the case that in 2022, the Supreme Court would used to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I don't think the book actually came together as an idea until 2021, which is when the Supreme Court took up the case Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health, which is of course the case that ended up being used to overturn Roe Wade,
Andrea Chalupa (02:21):
Just like we all saw coming. Sorry, go on. Go on.
Carter Sherman (02:25):
Well, that's my point is that anyone who was working in and around reproductive rights on either side of the abortion issue, I think at that point knew that Roe was on its way out. And I was,
Andrea Chalupa (02:35):
Even though all those three justices under Trump talked out of both sides of their mouths when it came to that during their confirmation hearings. But go on.
Carter Sherman (02:43):
I mean, they very much said they respected precedent, and we all know how that turned out. So I was talking to a friend of mine who pays a lot of attention to abortion rights, pays a lot of attention to the Supreme Court, and she was saying that she was actually having difficulty having orgasms because she would get close with her partner, she would hear Brett Kavanaugh's voice in her head, and it was not sexy, as you might imagine. And I became very interested in how the overturning of Roe v Wade, the coming overturning of Roe v. Wade, could be impacting people's sex lives. And I started calling around and talking to young people across the country talking to sex therapists across the country. And what I found is that most people did not really believe that Roe was going to be overturned. It wasn't changing.
Andrea Chalupa (03:29):
I heard that all the time in 2016. They're like, oh, those Republicans, they depend on those abortions for their mistresses. They'll never overturn it.
Carter Sherman (03:37):
What one sex therapist said to me is, she worked in New York and she said that among her patients, there was a sensation that this is happening in the other country. This is not the country that we live in.
Andrea Chalupa (03:50):
American exceptionalism.
Carter Sherman (03:52):
Yeah. Well, I think northern exceptionalism oftentimes the sense that this is something that happens in the south, in the South, apparently in these people's minds is a backward place. And I did end up talking to one young woman I remember who lived in Texas. And so this is 2021, Texas was weeks away from enacting a six week abortion ban that totally flew in the face of Roe. And she was telling me that if she could not get an abortion, she was not sure that she would end up continuing to have sex with her boyfriend. And then Roe was overturned a year later, and we saw this flurry of activism, particularly among young people. We saw a run on contraception. We saw voters in Kansas, Kansas fight to defend abortion rights, a fight that they won, and that was propelled in large part by young voters, young canvassers.
(04:38):
And I started thinking about all of the things that have gone on in young people's lives that have made their sex lives exceptional compared to past generations about Roe v Wade about me Too, about the expansion of smartphones and social media and the internet porn for sure. And I decided that this was a book. We're seeing all of this activism going on. We're seeing young people really try to fight for their rights, and we're also seeing a movement that is very determined to make it difficult, if not dangerous, to have sex that is not straight, that is not married, that is not potentially procreative. And I wanted to look at what that clash really feels like for the young people who are living through it.
Andrea Chalupa (05:21):
I'm so glad you wrote this book because there's just so many forces coming into play all at once, as you just brilliantly described. And it's true, Brett Kavanaugh is ruining people's sex lives, and I think that should be the headline of this episode. He also was a me too story on top of all of it. Christine Blasey Ford. Yes. That was heartbreaking. Her testimony, and I'll never forget, we played this audio for minutes on the show of women protestors interrupting, I believe his confirmation hearing, screaming, wailing. It was just such a grief of a protest, and these white Republican men just simply did not care. They laughed this off and it's horrifying, and these generations especially that are coming up, that are paying the price for it. And I wanted to ask you also, so we talk a lot about the manosphere, the Joe Rogan Misogyny Industrial Complex and how YouTube, big tech, all of these algorithms that are being designed in such a way that they're radicalizing men and boys, and these algorithms are programmed mostly by white male engineers, and YouTube is a major culprit of this. And as a result, instead of us looking to these younger generations with hope, because it's the young people that have the energy, the idealism, that's always been the case in resistance to dictatorship. It's always the young people who are on the front lines of change. But this young generation coming up, the stats are showing that Gen Z males openly, proudly to alarming degrees. They hate women, they're being radicalized to hate women and to be open about and proud about it. How does that factor into your reporting?
Carter Sherman (07:14):
I spent a lot of time thinking about the manosphere over the course of writing this book. The book was almost done, basically done by the time of the election. And if you might recall, the night of the election, there was a post from Nick Fuentes who wrote Your Body, my Choice. And that exploded across social media. And it wasn't, I would say a huge surprise to me to see that young men went right. We know that young women are probably the most progressive cohort ever measured. That is in large part because of the activism around Roe v. Wade, because of Me Too Young women really feel like their rights are under assault, and that has motivated them to become engaged in politics in ways that we simply have not seen before in the United States. But young men, I felt a lot, had not really been energized in the same way by these struggles.
(08:12):
I think they oftentimes felt like they didn't know what their place was. I talked to one young man who was saying that he felt like me Too had been very negative towards cis men. And the thing is, this is a young man who is a reproductive rights activist. He is very active in trying to get people to participate and support democratic politics. And if even he could feel that way, it opened all kinds of questions up for me about how these young men are responding to these big developments that have gone on in their lives. And on the day of the election, I was actually in Arizona as I write this in the book, I was in Arizona and I was talking to a young man on a college campus, and he had a red Make America Great again hat. He had a turning point USA button that said, upper Republicans are hot.
(09:05):
And I was asking him about his opinion, and unsurprisingly, he had voted for Trump. And he was telling me, I was asking him how he felt specifically about the fact that Donald Trump had been adjudicated by a court to have sexually abused aging carroll. And he told me that he couldn't complain about anything around Donald Trump, which shocked me because I think even a lot of people who support Donald Trump find a lot to complain about him. And I just really feel like this is a turning point among young men where we're no longer seeing young men act the way we expect young men to act politically. We expect them to be young, to be progressive, to be more closely aligned with young women. And instead we're seeing young men act more like men, which is to say they vote conservatively and they're engaged in conservative politics,
Andrea Chalupa (09:54):
And you think it's the Manosphere supporting Donald Trump. So together, those two disinformation weapons combined to make a powerful mind hack of this new generation of young men that are coming up,
Carter Sherman (10:06):
I think the influence of the manosphere cannot be understated. And at this point, I think is kind of ill understood there is very much this stew that goes on in the manosphere that is, and that blames women for all of these feelings of alienation and loneliness that young men have
Andrea Chalupa (10:29):
Across cultures. I want to point out that there's an investigation on the same phenomenon coming out of Turkey, coming out of Australia. Go on.
Carter Sherman (10:37):
Yeah, no, it is very interesting how we're seeing all of these same phenomena playing out across the country and what's the common factor these people have access to the internet. So there's this stew going on and we're starting to see all kinds of things that we would've understood as being really limited to the manosphere leaking out into the rest of mainstream culture. When I was writing this book, I was writing about the manosphere and I was trying to procrastinate, and I was looking at something on the New York Times and they were talking about smell maxing, which I guess is a phenomenon among young middle schoolers who douse themselves in cologne. But the thing is that maxing that as a concept is something that comes out of incel culture. It's this idea that you can make your body more optimized. It's really sort of a melding of Silicon Valley optimization obsession with very traditional archetypes around men. And the paper of record was using this terminology uncritically. And so it's really hard to even tell what is the manosphere and what is not at this point is Joe Rogan the manosphere because he's, maybe he's just broey, but by some metrics he could be the manosphere
Andrea Chalupa (11:46):
And the New York Times is echoing the manosphere. And we saw that same dynamic in the 2016 election. It was Harvard's Neiman lab looking at internet and culture. They ran this investigation that the New York Times, especially the mainstream media generally in the 2016 election coverage amplified Bannon, the Bannon disinformation, the far right disinformation, especially when it came to Bannon's Hatchet job project against Hillary Clinton, like Hillary Cash, Clinton Cash, whatever that book was, and amplifying all of the scandals and her email scandals, she Hillary killed people. All the stuff that the right-wing, echo chamber was obsessed with. The New York Times was a mirror for that Neiman lab bound. And so they're still doing that. And the other thing the Times is doing that, I'd love for you to comment on, it seems like every other week the New York Times comes out with an article and it doesn't matter what the topic is, they'll find some topic, but what they'll focus on the most, especially visually with all these dynamic, exciting, sexy photos, because the internet that we consume, reading the news on our phones, it's visually driven. That's what we're attracted to most in online culture. So the New York Times will make sure that they do an article every other week looking at these sexy young conservative women, these young yuppies, maga yuppies in Manhattan, throwing these glamorous parties. And I'm like, they keep doing this. It's like a pattern. It doesn't matter what they talk about. And then they'll shoehorn some mention of some sad leftist panel somewhere that just does not look fun at all. What are your thoughts on that? I have
Carter Sherman (13:29):
Actually spent a great deal of time thinking about this because I do think that the Democrats have a problem and experts who are pollsters who are working on messaging for high powered political groups, they've ed this to me, Democrats have a problem where they seem unsexy and unfun, which is wild to me because this is the party that supports lgbtq plus rights, that supports abortion rights, that theoretically would be the sexy party because the Republican party is, as I said, oftentimes on the side of sexual conservatism, which is making sex, that is straight, that is unmarried. The Republican party is oftentimes on the side of sexual conservatism, which is aiming to make unmarried sex, queer sex, non procreative sex, all more difficult to access. And it's really ingenious of the Republican party that they have simultaneously managed to have that underlying goal while having the messaging that they are fun and sexy and interesting.
(14:32):
And I think that is driven in part by what the manosphere is selling because what the manosphere sells is that oftentimes you can find your way to getting women and having women and possessing women if you become a very traditional man. And so that is the linking point, this very traditional conception of masculinity that in my book, a lot of young men talked about dealing with and facing and feeling like it was airless and suffocating. I mean, no one can rise to the standards of masculinity that are being set by sexual conservatism because under sexual conservatism, a man has to be high status and a leader and dominant, and that is just not a way that anybody can be in real life all the time. If you go to work and you are in charge, that's great. That's masculine. If you come home and you're raising kids, you're certainly not in charge of those kids all the time. And then you feel like your masculinity is threatened. And so I think that what the Republican party has done is very much harness this idea of traditional gender roles and used it to somehow plaster over its actual message around sex, which is that most kinds of sex are bad,
Andrea Chalupa (15:44):
Right? It's all gaslighting
Carter Sherman (15:46):
It. It could be conceived that way. I think it's very interesting. I would say that sexual conservatism in general is very supportive of married sex and procreative sex. So they're not totally all anti-sex. And I think that's a common misconception, but I don't really think that a vote for Republicans is necessarily going to bring people closer to having more sex if that's their goal.
Andrea Chalupa (16:09):
Certainly not. Yes, because the Gen Z young women and the Gen Z young men are split so far apart now. And you even have these young Gen Z males complaining like they can't date girls. These MAGA supporters are having a hard time on these dating apps, right? And the Gen Z girls are like, no, thank you.
Carter Sherman (16:30):
I actually talked to one young woman and I quoted her in the second coming about her decision to not date because she feels like the ideology of incel, which is men who are involuntarily celibate, has infiltrated just the wider theater of gender relations. She feels like she cannot trust men to not secretly have these ideas in support of incel ideology, which basically holds that men are entitled to sex in some. And so she's straight, she's interested in men, she's interested in sex, but she's not having it because she's afraid of encountering these kinds of men.
Andrea Chalupa (17:05):
Valid fear,
Carter Sherman (17:06):
It seems like. I mean, it's one of those things where you never really know until you get down the line. And I think especially with online dating, it is so visual and so many young men I talk to felt like they were struggling with online dating, that it could lead them into places where they would agree with some incel ideas.
Andrea Chalupa (17:26):
It was justifying that toxic viewpoint. My goodness. Okay, so much to unpack here. I wanted to ask you where porn fits into this because we're living in a time where the 2008 global economic crash, we've never recovered from it. It's just getting worse. With AI automation taking more and more jobs, the rich growing richer, and just all of us being squeezed, and the rates for homelessness, housing insecurity, all of that is going up. So naturally when this happens, you have reports of adjunct professors, for instance, turning to prostitution just to support their career in academia. So you have more people turning to sex work only fans, let's just say even you porn. I don't know how that works. It's easier now, and there's more demand, let's say, for people to support themselves somehow given that no one else coming to our rescue institutionally. And Republicans are chipping away at the safety net, and Democrats have been doing jackal for decades to really stop this crisis from even happening. So what do you see in terms of porn, right? I've read that porn has become increasingly rapey, and that is normalizing what sex should be for young people coming up today.
Carter Sherman (18:44):
So porn is a very interesting and inflammatory topic as you're hinting, and it was one of the main reasons that I wanted to write the book because I was very interested in what porn is doing to young people. I think the first time I saw porn was in the eighth grade, and I was sort of among the first wave of people who was able to access internet porn at any point that I wanted. Older generations had to wait around to see what was ever in their dad's playboy. But now you can go online and find any kind of sex you want and probably a lot of kinds of sex that you don't. I wanted to know what this was doing to young people and their conceptions of sex in the way they were having sex with one another. The fact of the matter is, is that the science on porn is very muddled.
(19:25):
It is very hard to say what porn is doing or not doing to young people in large part because so much porn is just riddled with bias about what constitutes rough sex. What is degrading sex is anal sex always degrading, and it's hard to break those assumptions out of the research. There's this joke that gets said among pornography researchers that the only thing we know for sure that porn causes is masturbation. That said, I worked at Vice News for six and a half years, and it was an environment where I spent a lot of time talking to sex workers. I talked to porn stars, I talked to full service escorts. So I went into this sort of thinking that there would be among people on the left, a support for pornography as a free speech issue, as a issue of worker rights for sex workers, et cetera.
(20:15):
And I was surprised to find that even people on the left were deeply suspicious of porn and felt like it had warped them in some way. What we do know concurrent to this rise of porn is that we are starting to see choking occur more during sex. If you are under 40, you're twice as likely to have been choked during sex than if you were over 40. And there is a lot of concerning data about how often people actually ask for consent before choking their partners. If you want to choke somebody, do it safely. But I am in support of that. That's something that can do in the privacy of their own bedroom. But I am very firmly of the belief that you should ask for consent before you do any sexual act, and especially a sexual act that can lead to strangulation. And I talked to young women who felt like they had to be into that kind of sex because that was the kind of sex that they were seeing in porn because rough sex was the kind of sex that their partners were consuming.
(21:10):
Their male partners were consuming that they should act like they liked it too. One young woman, I remember saying that her and her friends called choking, I think a love squeeze. Oh, no. And she wasn't that into it. She was like, some people are into it, but not everybody was into it. And I think that is the main concern that I have is that we've spent so much time telling young people that porn is terrible for them, that porn is making their sex lives worse, that we've never actually spent that much time thinking about like, okay, now that they've absorbed that message, where does that leave them? Does it leave them with any tools to actually combat what they're thinking they're absorbing? And the answer is that we really haven't absence only until marriage sex ed or has over the last 25 years exploded in federal funding.
(21:56):
And as you might imagine, that is not the kind of sex ed that can actually include comprehensive information about how to think about porn. We could be teaching young people about porn literacy, where they learn that porn is a form of media. It's not a form of sex ed, and you can consume it, but think about what messages it's teaching you and think about whether or not that is actually real sex or a kind of kabuki sex. One could say we shouldn't go too far in saying porn is leading to more rapey sex, that porn is leading young men to be conservative. But I do think we should be thinking about, okay, we know that pornography is everywhere. What are the messages that's sending and are we actually providing young people with the tools to deal with it? And what's also important to keep in mind right now is that porn bans are proliferating across the United States.
Andrea Chalupa (22:45):
Oh, they are. But those are driven by Republicans.
Carter Sherman (22:48):
They are driven by Republicans, which I think is very fascinating because it seems like oftentimes the only time that Republicans act to limit what's going on on the internet as far as things that could be affecting young people's mental health and sexual wellbeing is when it involves something like sex work. So when they are implementing restrictions on sex workers' ability to make a living, and specifically what these porn bands are doing is they're implementing age restrictions on pornography so that places like PornHub have to double check their users' age. PornHub has said that they basically can't do that in a safe way. And so PornHub has actually shut down in many states. The concern here is that people will find porn other ways, and they might find porn on even less well-regulated sites. They might be turning to AI porn, which who knows what they're seeing or making through AI porn. And it doesn't really seem like this is a real solution to the issue whatsoever, particularly as it potentially infringes on a lot of first abend concerns.
Andrea Chalupa (23:49):
Yeah, this is a brave new world for parents raising children coming up in this. And it's no wonder that this new generation of young people, they're just so depressed. What would your advice be, or what do you hear from the experts on how parents today can meaningfully protect their kids? What should they be saying? They have to be proactive. I mean, no parent likes to have the sex talk, the talk with their child. It's the most awkward experience for both parent and child. What kind of guidance could you give parents today to basically sit their daughter down, sit their son down and say, choking? What is any advice that you possibly give any and despair?
Carter Sherman (24:33):
And I do really want parents to read the second coming. I do think it's important for them to understand how politics are impacting their children's lives and their children's sex lives.
Andrea Chalupa (24:43):
Oh, my five-year old comes home asking about Trump and bringing up Trump. I'm like, what?
Carter Sherman (24:48):
There's no way to escape it these days. It's everywhere. We're all tuned into this reality TV show. I think my advice for parents, and I'm not a parent, so I want that to be clear, it is very important for parents to talk to their young people about porn. The fact of the matter is that even if you think your child is not viewing porn, and I am not endorsing young people viewing porn whatsoever, the fact of the matter is that they're probably going to see it. They're probably going to encounter it. And so sex educators talk about something called porn literacy, which is basically similar to media literacy, where you interrogate what kind of messages are being sent by particular kinds of media. I'm not saying watch porn with your child or send them off to watch porn, but just let them know that this is a form of media.
(25:35):
This is like the Hollywood version of sex. These are actors. You do not expect people in Hollywood when they're staging a car crash to be realistic about it. It's the same thing with sex. And there are studies that show that when young people come into contact with porn literacy, they are less likely to consider porn to be a form of sex ed. They're less likely to have objectifying views of women to be less sexist towards women, that they're less likely to believe things like, oh, what a woman wears has something to say about her personality or her view towards sex. And if you cannot yourself have this conversation with young people, I highly recommend that you look online for porn literacy resources. There are plenty of sex educators that have put stuff out there and you can vet them for yourself and then pass it along to your child and basically be like, Hey, guys, come to me with questions. But here's an interesting TikTok video for you.
Andrea Chalupa (26:30):
Oh, I'm hiring someone.
Carter Sherman (26:32):
I'm going to outsource that project for sure.
Andrea Chalupa (26:36):
Yeah, I have parents.
Carter Sherman (26:37):
Go ahead. Yeah, I have a very strong memory of, I used to read my parents' parenting books because I a little brat like that.
Andrea Chalupa (26:44):
And now look at you.
Carter Sherman (26:45):
I know now, now you're
Andrea Chalupa (26:47):
Writing a parenting book for a nation.
Carter Sherman (26:49):
I mean, I want all people to read it. But yeah, I guess this is very much hopefully a useful guide for parents. But I was reading one of their parenting books and the experts that was writing this book mentioned blowjobs. And I went up to my mom and I was like, mom, what's a blowjob? And I just remember her face coming to a point, and I could tell in her head, she was thinking, this is a parenting moment. I have to be my best parenting self right now. And she told me what it was. She said that it's oral sex. And I said, okay, and moved on. And I think when you don't make it a big deal, when you approach things factually and more or less casually, then children will respond in kind.
Andrea Chalupa (27:32):
Yeah, it's amazing being a parent. You have to be the concierge at a Four Seasons resort, and you also have to be a Wikipedia page for your kids at any moment. And so I wanted to also talk about how this gaslighting of the Republican party, just how their policies, because they're a mass death cult, basically, they represent corporate greed, and they're so good at packaging their poison pills in these enticing packages. But the reality you pointed out is that they're deeply unsexy. I mean, even the mass death they're bringing by cutting all of our programs is deeply unsexy. But the transformation into conservatism, mini skirted conservatism, frat boy party, foam party conservatism is, I would say it's two forces. Because I covered the 2008 Republican National Convention, and I've seen the Republican party up close. It's deeply, deeply unsexy. It's like a mic judge film up close.
(28:40):
But what I think happened was you had two things. You had this sex tape renaissance of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton becoming international superstars through sex tapes. And Kim Kardashian continues to milk that, and she's increasingly Republican. She gave Ivanka Trump a big birthday shout out right before the 2024 election. She's close with the Kushners. We all know who sides she's on in this battle for the soul of our country. And then you have Trump, who is Mr. New York City surrounded by Girls Gone Wild Mar-a-Lago is just one giant fraught sorority party. And so all of that glamor, all of these blonde Barbie Trump women on stage with him in all their campaign stops. And Ivanka of course, being a shining emblem of that objectification of women, she's dumb as a doornail. And there's a great barrel video of Ivanka trying to crash a couple of world leaders having an adult conversation. And she's opens her mouth and just sounds so pathetic, but she looks the part, she's gold tall, beautiful. And so those two forces combine the Kardashian sex tape and that celebrity brand and the Trumps coming in. And I feel like that was really what set off this maga miniskirt conservatism.
Carter Sherman (30:11):
And you think that dates back to 2008?
Andrea Chalupa (30:13):
No, I said in 2008 I was at the Republican National Convention and I saw these Republicans up close and they're deeply unsexy. So what you're describing was not there when I saw it. This is all recent, and I think the recent forces work the Kardashians and the Trumps the reality show culture, which is what you said earlier.
Carter Sherman (30:32):
Yeah, there is definitely a reality show culture going on across the United States very large right now. The Republican coalition right now is very interesting to me because I think it is sort of fundamentally incoherent because you do have the celebrity wing that you're talking about, which Trump obviously comes from with being the Apprentice or running the Apprentice. I was never quite sure exactly how that show worked. And then you also have the rising tech, right, that we've sort of talked about a little bit where you have people like Elon Musk and Doge, and then you also have still the traditional family values conservatives, and those are the religious rights. The Mike Johnson's of the World is the Speaker of the House. And I think what is interesting is that the religious right folks have very much agreed to align themselves with people who I think that they probably fundamentally disagree with on a lot of things, particularly around sex, because they understand that this is a way for them to ultimately get their messages across.
(31:34):
And the thing is that if Donald Trump is flashy, if he is sucking up all the oxygen in the room, then you might be paying attention to him and not paying attention to the legislation that's actually moving through Congress that is chock full of these more religious traditional values. Conservatives and in particular state legislatures are full of the more traditional religious family values conservatives. And so much of this policy is happening at the state legislative level, and we're just not paying attention to it because what's going on at the White House is so enticing and so much more able to be consumed in bite-sized sound bites, whereas it takes a lot of energy and effort to understand what's going on in state legislatures and to understand how all of this is working together towards a broader project. One of the things that I spent a lot of the first part of my career on is looking at the decade long campaign to overturn Roe v.
(32:25):
Wade, because it really got started after Barack Obama was elected into office and the Republican Party came up with a project called Project Red Map. And the idea here was that they were going to retake state ahead of redistricting, which meant that they could cement their advantage in these state legislatures and then pass all kinds of restrictions. And you see, after they successfully did so in the midterms in 2010, a explosion of restrictions at the state level on abortion, which made it a much more difficult for people to actually access abortion in the states, and b, set up a pipeline for cases to go up to the Supreme Court to ultimately overturn Roe v Wade. And this was something that I feel like I spent so much time trying to tell people about, trying to bring attention to, and then for many people it just didn't become real until actually Roe v Wade was overturned. So something I really want to do with this book is say as flashy as the minis script conservatism is, and have as effective as it is at some policy areas, there is still very much this core of sexual conservatism within the Republican Party that is active on the lower levels, and that is paving the way for federal regulations that are going to happen regardless of who is in the White House. This is not something that can be ended when you elect a Democrat into the office.
Andrea Chalupa (33:48):
How can it be ended? Because what we're seeing, especially in recent election cycles, the Democrats were hoping to ride the coattails of these pissed off politicized Gen Z women that you're describing. They thought that these women were so radicalized that they would get Democrats across the finish line in 2024. And I just think it's always incredibly cruel for the institutions that should be doing more to defend us, putting all of their, depending on the people, the grassroots to really carry us through. It's just we're under too much stress, too much strain and trauma ourselves to really do this. When you're the institutions, you have the funders, you have the donors, you have the resources, get your shit together and start playing a long game like the Republicans have all this time. So what are your thoughts on that in terms of how do we get out of this?
Carter Sherman (34:41):
I mean, sexual conservatism has been with us, I think probably since the pilgrims arrived on American Shores. And I think that we're going to be seeing this push and pull between sexual conservatism and what I call sexual progressivism, which is an effort to expand reproductive rights, to expand access to contraception, to expand rights of LGBTQ plus people for the rest of the time that this country endures however long that may be. I think that something that is so important for people who care about sexual progressivism, who care about abortion rights, who care about LGBTQ plus rights is to get civic education into a better place, frankly, so that people do understand what state legislatures do so that people understand what school boards do. Something that I have never forgotten about this election, which I was covering for The Guardian, which is my day job. I was in Arizona, this was a few days before the election, before my conversation with the guy in the Red Hat who couldn't complain about Trump.
(35:40):
And I was following around canvassers who were trying to get people to support Arizona's ballot measure in support of abortion rights. And they talked to one young woman at a house in Maricopa County, which is one of the most important counties in the United States because of its prevalence in the electoral college. And she said, oh, yeah, I'm interested in this. This sounds great. And they left and I proceeded to interview her and I was asking her about how she's going to vote in the presidential, and she told me that she didn't really feel like her vote mattered very much because of unquote that school thing. And I was like, that school thing, you mean the electoral college? Oh my gosh. She was like, yeah, that. And I was like, no, your vote matters more. You have one of the most important votes in the country probably.
(36:25):
I live in New York City, my vote doesn't matter very much at all, and I just can't stop thinking about this young person and thinking about how we have got to make civic education more available to young people so that they understand how to agitate for the things that they believe in and understand frankly that they can make a difference, that not all hope is lost. And I know that people are tired, and I know that people feel really beat down, but all movements I think, require ceaseless work by the people at the bottom to keep them going. And it's unglamorous work, but it's just kind of how it is if you want to see change. And I think this is a lesson frankly, that sexual conservatives have understood for decades and decades, and that is how they've gotten to where they've gotten.
Andrea Chalupa (37:08):
They're just so well organized and deeply funded. I think that's why so many of my friends are obsessed with watching and or right now or shows a very militant, well organized, disciplined resistance to fascism. And that's what everyone is watching. They're not getting that in America today. You have these overworked groups like Indivisible doing, okay, let's do another March. Another march, but to what end ultimately. And you do have states like Sister District, the States project, we have them on the show all the time. We do phone banks with them and other things. They're extremely important. They are so outside the Democratic Party establishment. They in fact fundraise and do even more grassroots wise than the Democratic Party establishment. It just really feels like it's a time when it's every person for themselves right now, and it's against this well-oiled empire, the intergalactic empire of fascism that we're up against. What are your thoughts on that?
Carter Sherman (38:10):
Well, first of all, I also love and or great show, and it shows how difficult it is emotionally and physically to keep up a resistance. So I applaud it for that realism. What was interesting in doing all of these interviews, so I interviewed more than a hundred young people, people under 30 for the book. Most of them were under 25. And I always asked them for their political affiliation, and very few people identified as Capital D Democrats. If they were going to be on the left, they would say things like, oh, I'm a liberal, or I'm a leftist, or I'm progressive. And there just was not an alignment with the Democratic Party that I would've expected to see. And I think the Democrats as an institution, if they want to bring young people in, offer them something for real because it does feel like more and more people feel like the Democrats are just totally out of touch. They're unsexy. They're unfun. There's just not a sense that the Democrats are working for young people, at least among the young people I've talked to. And so if they want to win those young people back, I think there needs to be a change in feeling like the Democrats are taking their voter base for granted.
Carter Sherman (39:22):
Absolutely. Especially among people of color and young people of color.
Andrea Chalupa (39:25):
Absolutely. And that's what I've heard too as well. And one of the things that's happened with this alliance between Christian nationalism and the Republican party bringing Reagan to power ushering in the Reagan revolution, because really when the Christian evangelicals, they understood that if they all voted in a single block, they could finally, finally get their laws passed, like banning abortion and planting all the seeds to get there rolling back. I think because Jimmy Carter was an evangelical
(39:58):
And they were. Yeah, exactly. Jimmy Carter wasn't going to do it for them. So they had to all unite behind the Republicans, and they did so much damage, including rolling back oversight on homeschooling, which is a way that they indoctrinate children and families into their extreme Christian nationalist agenda against democracy. And so when the Republican party got overtaken by batshit crazy Christian nationalists, it just became such a toxic brand in the mainstream that more sort of classic run of the mill Republicans were just going to the Democrats. Going to the Democrats. If you're coming up politically and you wanted a cool brand, you would go to the Democrats and then over time, all of those Republicans moderates inside the Democratic party, turn the Democratic party into what the Republican Party should be today if we had a normal Republican party. And so we have a fascist party, which is the Republicans, and then we have a classic Republican party, which is the Democratic party establishment.
(40:58):
So that's why we have this branding problem. No one's pointing it out because no one, because you have this sort of never Trumper Republican resistance that's also very influential on cable TV and the podcast world, and the media loves to hold up all these former Trump officials who have flipped and are now on our team and say, look, so no one really wants to criticize what the real problem is of the Democrats, why they aren unsexy. The Democrats are unsexy because they're the Republican party at heart now. And so all of these liberals, all of progressives, let's say, they don't have a party. They just simply don't have a party in America anymore,
Carter Sherman (41:38):
And they might not vote because of that. Democrats are not, I want to be clear, the home of sexual progressivism, the way that Republicans are the home of sexual conservatives, again, I spent the first part of my career really trying to get people to pay attention to what was going on in abortion rights. And it was notable how little Democrats talked about abortion rights, and it was not until Roe was overturned and it became clear through places like Kansas and Michigan and the success of the pro-abortion ballot measures there, that this could be an election winning issue. And so they poured so much into supporting abortion rights in the 2024 election. To your point about schools, I really want to highlight that. I think it's a very good point in writing and reporting this book, I really came to understand how much schools and school boards are the fundamental battlegrounds for all of this.
(42:30):
If you are providing a comprehensive education to young people that changes things for decades. And so to see a dismantling of the Department of Education, for example, or to see rolling back of Title IX rights to propel more absence only until marriage education, that is all stuff that is in service or can be in service of sexual conservatism and really lays the groundwork for years to come. This is why all of these movements are long games. And it's difficult, I think, for many people in this time because it feels like there is no time left to play the long game. And I'm not a political strategist and a journalist. I report what people tell me and put it into context and share the history and so on. So I don't really have a solution for what Democrats can or should do in this moment, but it seems very clear that what they're doing is not really working to rally the troops. And I don't know that they're even realizing that.
Andrea Chalupa (43:29):
No, because they're Republican at heart, many of them. And it's too taboo to talk about abortion being healthcare
Carter Sherman (43:37):
In Bush fans rights.
Andrea Chalupa (43:38):
Yes. And I wanted to ask you about trad wives because all of that glossy influencer trad wipe content comes off as soft porn. What are your thoughts? What did you find?
Carter Sherman (43:53):
Well, it's not porn. I feel like there's a game you can play on the internet all the time where you're like, but is it porn? And sometimes an egg yolk being smooshed could be concerted porn. That's where we're at with the internet these days. I think the trad wife phenomena, which I have written about in my day job, is for the Guardian. For the Guardian, yes.
(44:13):
Is a really interesting, I think, manifestation of the failures of this country to necessarily provide a social safety net that makes it possible for mothers to feel supported, for parents in general, that feel supported. I do a lot of work on pregnancy and parenting, and we are the only rich country on the planet that does not have some kind of federally mandated paid leave. We spend far less money on subsidizing childcare than other rich countries do, and we don't really have the kind of healthcare systems that other rich countries do. So it's $3,000 usually to give birth in a hospital on private insurance with an uncomplicated birth these days that is much higher than almost any other country on the planet. And I think this makes it really difficult for women to raise children and be in the workforce. And so the allure of the trad wife is that, oh, you don't have to do that. You can go back to your home and you can just live on a beautiful farm with your 17 children and your husband will support you and you'll bake bread. And the allure of that fantasy is, I think, extremely understandable given how we have left women without a lot of help from the government.
Andrea Chalupa (45:22):
Yeah, absolutely. And given all that you've reported on for so long now, what, if anything gives you hope?
Carter Sherman (45:32):
Give me a second to think about that. Of course. Take your time.
(45:38):
Make sure to not edit that out. My long, long pause. I do think that talking to young people has given me hope because they're so much more active in politics than I was at their age. I really did not understand how my sex life related to the broader world and what resources could have been available to me. I was sexually assaulted in college. I was sexually harassed in college, and I didn't understand that I had rights and that I could have gone to the Title IX office sooner. But I don't think that is as true anymore among young people. I think people do know about the resources that are available to them, and they are taking advantage of them. I went to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2022, and I talk about this in the book. I was reporting on a school district that was plagued by sexual assault accusations and specifically accusations that young women were reporting that they had been sexually assaulted in K through 12 schools, and that the school administrators were not taking them seriously and violating their federal rights when it comes to sex discrimination and freedom from sex discrimination.
(46:48):
And it was very hard to watch how these young women were trying to stand up and defend themselves and defend their friends and to see that they felt like they were not being heard. Literally in some cases they felt like they were being silenced. And yet it was also so heartening to see that they were trying, that they kept it up anyway, that they knew that they deserved to be treated fairly and equitably as full human beings. And I talked to so many activists across the country for this book who felt the same way, who were defending their rights as young trans people who were defending their rights as young queer people who were defending the rights of other people who were men who were fighting for reproductive rights and felt that that was something that they should spend their time on. And so to see young people rise up and fight for whatever cause that they believe in a way that I just don't know that we've seen since the 1960s, that to me is heartening.
Andrea Chalupa (47:42):
Thank you so much. Everyone. Check out the book, the Second Coming Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future by Carter Sherman, an award-winning journalist at The Guardian. Thank you so much, Carter, for your brilliant work and for this fascinating discussion. Welcome to the Gaslit Nation action guide updated 4 20 25. That's Project 2025. All the resources mentioned can be found@gaslitnationpod.com. Just look for our action guide at the top of the main menu. Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action. Democracy isn't a guarantee. Democracy is a lifestyle. It's how we live. It's how we show up and how we care for each other. Below is a living list of ways to take care of yourself, protect the vulnerable, and help defend what's left to build a new democracy for all guides for the road ahead.
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Read for courage and clarity. Stride toward freedom by Martin Luther King Jr is more than a memoir. It's a blueprint for organizing. Under fascism, MLK was called radical in his time for simply demanding dignity and human rights. Remember, it's not radical to want clean air, fair wages, and freedom from fear and poverty, mantras and mindsets. When you're afraid, repeat, love that one simple, powerful word, love. Use it like armor intense public spaces or difficult conversations. Just repeat that word. Love in your head like a mantra to help you stay grounded in any tense situations. Have faith in your higher power, in your inner light in each other. You are not alone. Ideas like democracy cannot be killed. Stay human. Anger is natural, but unity is essential. Save the venting for trusted spaces. Focus on protecting and connecting. Protect yourself and others. Know your rights. The A CLU has a comprehensive guide.
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Check in on vulnerable people. A text message can be a lifeline. Know how to act if ice is in your area. Learn from Teen Vogue's Guide and start a neighborhood. Watch. Trans rights are human rights. The Human Rights Campaign has a guide on how to support trans people. Read it. Abortion is healthcare support Planned Parenthood practice Bystandard intervention. Learn the five Ds from right to B. Know how to deescalate, and if you need to record safely, beware of surveillance phones, apps, smart devices, their listening for sensitive communication. Go analog. Check out the Gaslit Nation Security Committee presentation on surveillance self-defense. Build community power. Join a mutual aid network. Local solidarity saves lives and serves as an early warning system. Check out global giving guide on mutual aid support unions. Start one or join one. Organizing your workplace is the frontline of our democracy. Listen to Gaslit nations interview with union organizer Jasmine Lely on how to start a union vote in local elections.
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State governments are our most direct path to resistance and reform. Get involved with organizations like Rent for Something States Project and Sister District Launch or support ballot initiatives for democracy like Katie Fahe did in Michigan where she took on gerrymandering and won small actions. Make big impacts, organize for the long haul. Smash the oligarchy not each other. Work with groups like The Working Families Party to create people powered alternatives. Fight the climate crisis. George Washington University provides a guide on realistic ways you can combat climate change today. Practice food and product safety, reduce meat, grow what you can and stay informed with sites like food safety News. Use important apps like Yuca and Cleary. Good Housekeeping has a comprehensive guide on strong water filters for your home. Create art. Art tells the truth. Culture moves people before policy does be prepared. Pack a go bag. Make sure it has IDs, meds, water masks, protein bars, chargers.
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Get your documents in order, passports, legal papers and clean records. Have a lawyer you trust on speed dial. Keep a journal, record what's happening. Believe your eyes and ears. Buy physical books. Preserve history and ideas. Don't rely on tech platforms alone. Have a safety plan. Know where you can go across town, state lines or abroad. If you need to care for your mind. Protect your mental hygiene block. Grifters and defeatists. Build a circle of resilience. Know your history, read widely. Learn how we got here and how others fought back before us. Listen to the Gaslit Nation special. How we got here. It took 40 years for the far right to hijack our democracy. We must plant seeds of change today together. Raise the next generation with Hope. Shield young kids from the chaos. As best you can, empower older ones to believe in the power of their voice.
(54:22):
No one is coming to save us. Change isn't about one politician. It's about systems, values, and who we choose to be. In the face of rising fascism, there's no single solution, but there's strength in numbers, in organizing and in love. Whether you live in a Republican hostage, red state or blue state, these resources are for you. Don't take your rights for granted. Practice democracy every day, including staying informed. And if you're not American and you live abroad, the Trump virus can happen anywhere. No democracy is exceptional. Be vigilant and protect your community. That's how we win. A better world is possible. Bookmark the Gas La Nation action guide@gasnationpod.com. Thank you for staying with us in the fight.
(55:29):
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up at the Truth Teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership All summer long. Gaslit Nation created with Love and Anger has been presenting a special series featuring leading experts on how to smash the patriarchy and the oligarchy to make the world safer for everyone. Trump didn't happen overnight. Let's plant Seeds of Hope together for the hottest of hot takes. Join the conversation at the Gaslit Nation salons. Every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern. I'll be there with our global community of listeners. Come for deep dives into the news. Learn from fellow listeners and share what's happening in your corner of the world. Can't make it live. Recordings of our Monday salons are available on Patreon, along with our monthly Gaslit Nation book Club.
(56:32):
Access the Salons, bonus shows, ad free episodes and more@patreon.com board slash gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. To help Ukraine with urgently needed humanitarian aid. Join me in donating to Razom for ukraine@rosoforukraine.org to support refugees and conflict zones. Donate to Doctors Without borders@doctorswithoutborders.org and to protect critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry. Donate to The Orangutan project@theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our editing wizard is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Carlin Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and don't forget to check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. Original music and Gaslit Nation is composed by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Farr, Damian Arga, and Carlin Daigle. Our logo design was generously donated to us by Hamish Spite of the New York based Firm order.
(57:44):
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