(Please let the record reflect that I, Katie, used the phrase “girlbossed too close to the sun” in this episode before it appeared in the Taylor Swift Song That Shall Not Be Named.)
Today’s conversation is a deep dive into the cursed alliance between the neoliberal economic consensus and the social conservative movement in the late twentieth century—as told through the lens of the proverbial (and actual) right-wing podcasters telling men to Get A Job and delay companionship unless they’re capable of singlehandedly supporting a submissive1 wife and brood of children.
For the uninitiated, the name of this podcast was inspired by our muse2 Harrison Butker, and this particular part of a speech he gave at Benedictine College’s graduation ceremony last year. Today, we revisit our source material.
Since Charlie Kirk’s untimely death last month, many-a-thinkpiece (and this show) have cataloged the various unseemly things he had to say about immigrants, gay people, Black people, 14-year-old girls (“Bring back the MRS degree!”), and beyond—but very little air time has been given to one particular message he was giving men.
As we know by now, there’s an entire right-wing media ecosystem of MAGA Girlbosses insisting on Biblical Womanhood™ and Traditional Family Values™, as opposed to Feminism, Which Has Made Women Ugly & Depressed. Allie Beth Stuckey is one such arbiter of this ideology, dubbed “Conservative Women’s New Phyllis Schlafly” by The Atlantic last August. Even Dark Buster Bluth Stephen Miller’s wife Katie is cashing in on the endless flow of Primally Pure sponsorship dollars deluging the Womanosphere with her aptly named new show, The Katie Miller Podcast, which launched with an almost unbelievably uncomfortable two-minute3 sizzle reel.
The Womanosphere is the pink-pilled complement to the gender role normativity you’ll find in right-wing media for men (though run by women who own multimillion-dollar companies; pay that part no mind, of course). An overwhelming emphasis is placed on the conservative value of honoring tradition and its ability to safeguard and secure the future of “Western civilization,” a favored preoccupation. But where does that “tradition” come from? And more importantly, how does that “traditional” vision coincide with an economic context that’s less than conducive to it?
This isn’t a new “problem,” of course, but taking a wider lens complicates the straightforward story of a simple shift in personal preference as too many selfish young women indulging in an endless BRAT summer refuse to settle down with a nice boy like Travis Kelce4 and buy a house with a basketball hoop. Making matters more interesting, the recent NBC News Decision Desk poll found that young women and men are more or less in parity about their priorities:
We hear about “tradition” in the Kirks’ vision for the family. We hear about it in Allie Beth’s profile in The Atlantic, and in her chilling speech to women at the Turning Point USA conference. We hear about it in Harrison Butker’s speech to 20-year-old women. To understand why, we must revisit the origins of 19th century industrial capitalism and the centering of competitive individualism in the American psyche.
Exploring the relationship between these forces provides a much richer understanding of why, in 2025—in the years following 40-year inflation highs—we’re experiencing such a belligerent resurgence.
Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (2017) by Melinda Cooper
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992) by Stephanie Coontz
“MAGA Star Katie Miller’s New Podcast Reeks of Toxic Femininity. I Listened So You Don’t Have To,” by Arwa Mahdawi for The Guardian
“Who is Katie Miller?” by Bindu Bansinath for The Cut
“Keeping Up with the Millers: Stephen Miller and His Wife, Katie, Found Love in a Hateful Place” by Evgenia Peretz for Vanity Fair
“Scoop: Katie Miller Leaves Musk Full-Time, Launches Podcast” by Mike Allen for Axios
regrettably much of this episode is my ironic love song to the weird sexual undertones of all of republican politics rn. kinky!
derogatory
scientists should study why it feels 2 hours long
frankly i’m annoyed to have to namedrop two different players for the kansas city chiefs in these show notes but duty calls
