Jen Gerson: Mouthy Babe

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of ill repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley. And Maureen Holloway.

Maureen Holloway  0:08  
Wendy I don't know if you know this you should know this but you probably know one of my social media handles or names is mouthy babe.

Wendy Mesley  0:16  
Hmm. I did not know that I you don't use it very much.

Maureen Holloway  0:21  
No, I don't I my kids hate it for all sorts of Freudian reasons. Like, you know, Mom, you're not a babe and I don't want to hear about your mouth.

Wendy Mesley  0:29  
But you're Come on. You're still a babe.

Maureen Holloway  0:30  
Oh, yeah.

Sort of 

It goes without saying but I will happily pass that handle on to this week's guest Jen Gerson. 

Wendy Mesley  0:37  
Jen Gerson, she's a lot of things to a lot of people. She's a Calgary based commentator, she's written for the New York Times, The Economist Maclean's the walrus. All the big publications look a few Canadian papers.

Maureen Holloway  0:50  
Along with Matt Gurney, Jen hosts a podcast called The Line which can be found on Substack along with much of her writing, and I would go so far as to say that Jen is a scourge in all the right ways. She's not afraid to speak up and be highly critical of our governments or media, religion, foreign policy. 

Wendy Mesley  1:07  
Yeah. Well, she talks a lot about freedom of speech about conspiracy theories, and how to make your own makeup. You can make your own makeup apparently, well, yeah, anything you can make anything. You need wax and fish scales. I know that. 

So you've made some? 

Maureen Holloway  1:21  
No, I've read about it. But But I digress. Jade has been working on among many projects, she's got a book or she's working on a book on the Satanic Panic. The witch hunt that started back in the 80s when people believed that there were satanic cults that were preying on children. Some believe it's still ongoing. No shortage of topics make up notwithstanding with this week's guests. So it's really hard to know where to start.

Wendy Mesley  1:49  
Yeah, well, Jen has been on our wish list since the very beginning. We can talk to her about the book. Jen is gonna join us now. Hi, Jen, how are you?

Jen Gerson  1:57  
I'm very well. Thanks for having me. Production now now that now that you mentioned it, I guess I do have a lot going on.

Wendy Mesley  2:05  
Yeah, and you got a couple of kids? 

Jen Gerson  2:07  
Yep.

Yes. Seven and four now. So great age, great age to be running your own business, starting your own business and writing a book, of course, selfish. And I'm killing it on every front. Let me tell you. 

Wendy Mesley  2:19  
Well, I sort of had to talk Maureen into doing this because like, politics is not what we talk about. We don't talk a lot about daily news on this on this podcast, we talk to break. We talk. Yeah, well, and you do. But you're, you are a little bit mouthy. So I thought the two of you would get along.

Jen Gerson  2:38  
Nobody likes that about me. But you know, whatever. Your him.

Maureen Holloway  2:43  
What did you say that you were disagreeably agreeable? Or was that something that somebody pinned on you? 

Jen Gerson  2:50  
Like, that's the sort of thing that someone would pin on me. I mean, the funny thing is, is that I have a bit of a persona online, which is sort of shitposting fearless, devil may care kind of attitude. But the funny thing is like my offline self, I am a lamb. Like it the really hilarious thing is, is that I almost never get into arguments. I never really fight. I mean, there are a couple of exceptions. Like I'm very peaceable. I'm very easygoing, very chill, probably to a degree that is absolutely pernicious. And I'm actually started to think about this as like, I'm coming up on 40 Now, and I started to suddenly realize, maybe I should be less. It should be less...

Maureen Holloway  3:31  
no, no, no, no, no, I disagree. I may not agree. And I know where he is, right? I'm not I'm not politically, I'm one of the few people that would say, I don't know enough about this to have an informed opinion. And I think there should be more of that. But that being said, you know, I read you and and although our politics are quite different, I find myself nodding. You make a good point. When you're in a social situation, though, lamb that you are do people come up to you and say, what what Who do you think you are with these opinions? 

Jen Gerson  4:02  
Gosh, no, no, if anything, I mean, the I mean, maybe it's also because I'm in Alberta, right? But overwhelmingly the kind of well, firstly, I think I came off a bit of a weird vibe. I think I come across as quite aloof when I'm in social circumstances, which is interesting because actually, it's it's genuinely shyness really uncomfortable groups of people. But I think people can take that the wrong way. But when they do come up, they're generally quite like, you know, I don't always get I get this a lot. I don't always agree with you. But But you know, you make you make a good point or liberal I get, I get a lot of that. And I always find that to be an interesting response. Because I'm like, why would you ever expect to always agree with anyone like, I don't always agree with lots of people who I enjoy reading or lots of people enjoy spending time with I don't always agree with my husband and I tell them this quickly.

Wendy Mesley  4:47  
Well, I love that I love being able to disagree with people and I think it's really it's really important and and it's really good to know that smart people have a different opinion than you do. So I don't agree with it. Everything but I agree with a lot of what you write. So, but I want to know, are you still writing? Like it's a pin tweet from 2021 that you've got this book? 

Jen Gerson  5:08  
Yeah. Yeah. 

Wendy Mesley  5:09  
So are you or arent you writing the book?

Jen Gerson  5:12  
Sure, we'll be happy to know I just finished the draft of chapter nine, move chapter this coming. It is so slow. I was one of the people who my first book deal and I was I went to my publisher, and I said, I'm not going to be like other writers. I'm going to be on this shit. I'm going to get you your full manuscript in a year. I'm going to be like, Chapter month, let's go, you know, I'm going to be this super aggressive. And of course, three years later, I'm not done. So yeah.

Maureen Holloway  5:39  
On on on that. So I think you can take your time because the Satanic Panic, which is what we're talking about, that you're writing about, doesn't seem to be dis dissipating as quickly as you one would think it might be. There are a lot of people, particularly with Trump running for office again, who think that this is a real thing and that he and he is one of the finger pointers.

Jen Gerson  6:01  
Yeah. So this is a really interesting thing. Because when I started, I started writing about this because Tristan Hopper, who was the editor in chief of the Capitol, which is an independent kind of online only outlet in Victoria. He's he's a he's a delightful weirdo and a national treasure. And he's really into history. And one of the things that he was looking into is a history of Victoria. And he discovered that, for example, one of the origins of the Satanic Panic. Conspiracy Theory really took off because of a book that was based in Victoria. It was a 

Maureen Holloway  6:34  
Victoria BC, 

Jen Gerson  6:34  
Victoria, British Columbia. Yeah, so there was a woman named Michelle Probie. And her doctor Lawrence Pasteur, who did a series of I mean, he was a very credible, very, very well, well credentialed psychiatrist, I believe psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychiatry simply with a great track record. And he was doing these intensive therapy sessions with probate. And he worked with her for a couple of years. And it was pretty conventional stuff. It was anxiety and depression, ordinary marital problems. But then out of the blue, it came over exactly what year it is. Now think 76. She had a miscarriage. And in the process of being in the miscarriage, she was in hospital and went while she was in hospital, she had this really disturbing dream of like spiders coming out of her skin. And this made Pasteur think Well, geez, yeah, I mean, come on back, let's let's start to delve into this. And so they started to get into this habit of this quasi hypnotic style of therapy where she would go into these trance states. And in these trance states, she was start to regress to a flick a five year old version of herself, who started to have these sort of, in real time living memories of being kidnapped by a satanic cult, and forced to undergo no end of incredibly horrific spiritual and sexual and physical abuse over the course of several months. Because of course, it came out that her mother was a member of the satanic cult and all this kind of crazy stuff happened. And she came to believe that this was really literally true Pasteur himself who was a very devout Catholic, got really invested in the story. And it was also clear that they developed this very intense report over the course of this therapy. I'll, I'll spoil it for you. In the end, they wind up leaving their respective spouses and get married with one another. But in the process of doing this, they write this book and they they Pasteur who was a Catholic, I mean, he's, I think he is subconsciously feeding her. These, a version of what she wants to hear because of course, her tales of satanic abuse have this paradoxical effect of reinforcing his own Roman Catholic faith. He drags her into Catholic church, they get taken up by the archdiocese and eventually get taken to the Vatican to have her her accounts, honestly confirmed but heard heard out within the highest levels of the Vatican, and I believe the arch the Bishop of the Victorian archdiocese, it was a bishop Remi Derew who recently died. He actually wrote a foreword to her book, which gave her the book all sorts of credibility for a lot of people. This thing goes on to be a radical bestseller. It's very rapidly debunked. She was never even out of school for the period of time that she claimed that she had been kidnapped by the satanic cult. But I mean, the end of the book had things like appendices from her dentist that claimed that like, yes, there were there issues with her teeth and therefore this confirmed her account of like having things put on her teeth like crazy crazy ass shit. And I mean, by the end of the book, she was also claiming that as a five year old she was having actual communion with the Holy Mother Mary like it's it's it's...

Wendy Mesley  9:39  
There's so many so many issues here. So I'm fascinated by the whole conspiracy theory angle of it all because because now I mean, there are a number of conservatives in the states evangelicals, whatever who believe that Democrats are having children in the basement legged they're all satanist That's about Yeah, and it goes on and on and on and on, and you can debunk it all you want. But it doesn't even make a difference these days. 

Jen Gerson  10:07  
So just before it gets really fascinating, because you can look at see how this book created and contributed to the Satanic Panic of what we generally call the sort of the 80s and into the 90s is kind of when that that that period went, but all of the cultural zeitgeist that had prepared for the Satanic Panic all the groundwork with that was being laid through the 60s and 70s, the Cultural Revolution, the rise of sort of occultism, the rise of alternative religious faiths, you had the Marilyn Manson stuff, you had the rise of second wave feminism. So you had women heading back into the workplace, you had women going back and putting their kids in daycares, there was a whole sort of cultural tension that was happening as a result of that. And the Satanic Panic was kind of this reactionary backlash to all of that. But what really gets messed up here is when when you start to really dig into it, you start to realize that the actual conspiracy theory, which is a little bit different from the ordinary witch hunt conspiracy theories, it's a little distinct, but the actual conspiracy theory itself, which is that you know, people in power or worshipping children worshipping Satan, sacrificing children, in order for their own debauched and debased pleasure and or to gain satanic power within society in this explains how they gain power within society. You can I think the first real example of that coming out goes back to like, 1682, and something called the affair of poisons, you know,

Wendy Mesley  11:25  
What's wrong with that? So now we've got the conspiracy theories coming out the ying yang.

Jen Gerson  11:29  
Yeah, and my, my theory is that the Satanic Panic essentially never really ended. It just evolved, right? Like, it kind of had it kind of went through denouement, it became less mainstream for 2030 years for sure if it became a fringe conspiracy theory. But there's something about this particular conspiracy that speaks to our horrors and our dark side in such a profound sense that it never really leaves us it never goes away. It's just always kind of simmering there beneath the surface. 

Maureen Holloway  11:57  
This takes if you take this trip to a broader context, and my mind's going all over the place thinking about there are none so blind, that those who won't see or as my son likes to see their nuns, so blind, they're Nazis. You can't people are going to believe what they're going to believe. And this is true Trumpers, it doesn't matter what you tell them. They're going to save it all. That's you just have to spend three minutes online just to see what people it doesn't matter. And you must find as a pundit, as a writer that this is really frustrating, because in many ways, you are often preaching to the choir, that the people who read you are like, yeah, apps are going to going to agree with you, when really what you want to do is not persuade, at least be heard by people who don't blindly accept. 

Jen Gerson  12:44  
Yeah, I don't, I don't see that as my role. I don't think it's my job to preach to anybody. And I don't think it's my job to convince anybody, right? Like, I just take a very different view on this. And maybe it's a bit more of a detached view. But it's, it's my job to sort of explain what I think is happening. And people can take word leave that as it serves them, they can take whatever they find valuable out of that, and they can call me a bitch online. If they don't like it, that's fine. I don't fundamentally see my role as trying to, because that's a very top down way of thinking about a relationship between a pundit and his or her audience, right. It's, I'm here to tell you what, I'm not here to tell anybody what to think. I'm here to tell you what I think. Like I'm selfish. I'm a selfish aspect. Right? If you don't agree with me, that's fine. I don't care. But I mean, the other problem with the Satanic Panic conspiracy, and the problem with conspiracies is that it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it's all about those other people, those other people who believe the wrong things, you people, you people. And what you start to realize, when you study moral panics a little bit more is that it's a little more complicated than that, because moral panics aren't about you, people who believe the wrong things. moral panics are dynamic. They're like a play there about basically, essentially, a real perceived threat to the community that actually exists, but then is, is taken wildly out of disproportion. And then what Q Anon you get is like a hyperpolarization around that issue. So it's not like you people, you people believe these crazy  on conspiracies. It's you people who believe these crazy communities Q Anon conspiracies, engaging in a self in a sort of perpetually radicalizing dynamic with the right people who think that you're just crazy. And who, in the, in their, in their zeal to debunk you are now sometimes overlooking actual evidence of problems and harm. And the two sides wind up feeding off of each other and radicalizing off of each other into these more and more extreme camps. And that's what makes moral panics so completely destructive. 

Wendy Mesley  14:43  
But is there any way of stopping a moral panic? Or are you just always existed since the 1600s? It'll carry on forever.

Jen Gerson  14:52  
I mean, I think that that the cycle of moral panics is with us now and I think that if anything there these cycles are accelerating like the Satanic Panic was sort of like a 15 year height cycle right. And then it went back into the the underground or the fringes, I think that we're seeing now is that with with, especially the social media and the way that communication operates with social media now that the cycles of moral panic are becoming more intense and more, more condensed. So now moral panic kind of has a six, eight stimulates 12 to 18 month cycle before it collapses, right? That's what I think we're seeing...

Wendy Mesley  15:24  
Interesting, I was really fascinated by a piece that you wrote about immigration and how you know, Canada had long presented itself as the place to come and start off a new life and our doors are open. And it's very easy to be smug when we don't have borders that are, you know, next to Mexico or whatever. But you talk about it as sort of being irresistible catnip for politicians, and almost like a conspiracy theory. And I just wonder if you could expand on that whole link of conspiracy theory, immigration.

Jen Gerson  16:00  
So again, I had actually just said, I just finished my chapter on this. So I just, if you look at Michael Cohen's book, which I happen to have right here, because I was just working from it. So this is sort of one of the seminal books on academic books on on moral panics. And it's called Cohen folk devils in moral panics highly recommend, not necessarily like a like a page turner, but it's a good book. And he notices that there are a couple of particular issues around which are seem to be particularly vulnerable for moral panics, one of them being immigration, refugee asylum seeking that kind of thing, the idea that, if we let too many people in, this will be a threat to the to the mother culture, it's a threat to blah, blah, blah. The problem with this is that, of course, we do need to have a rational grounded conversation, policy driven conversation about immigration, there is a number at which we do run into issues around housing, around health care capacity around all these sorts of other types of basic capacity issues. So we do need to have a policy based immigration or immigration conversation here. But immigration is a particularly sensitive and vulnerable issue because it gets to a deep shadow kind of conversations around who we are as a society and like, like whether or not other people who aren't like us are a threat to that society, and it and it starts to tap these like real lizard brain hind brain problems. And as a result, it's very easy for really rational policy driven conversation around immigration, to blow up into something that is radically disproportionate to the threat, quote, unquote, threat that immigration poses, right.

Wendy Mesley  17:34  
So I'm not sure if you're saying there's a threat, or there's not. 

Jen Gerson  17:37  
No, I mean, well, look, I don't think it's about framing it as a threat is a moral panic kind of framing. Right. But that is how it but that's why the immigration is is such a vulnerable topic to to address. It's one of I think, like seven particular issues that you tend to see moral panics circulate around, but it's a very easy topic where you get into this idea that, okay, we're gonna have a rational conversation about immigration, but that hits on deep sort of emotional issues that people have around identity and collective identity and statehood and all of these things. And as a result, you wind up into these hyper polarized camps that again, wind up feeding off of one another and radicalizing off one another with one side saying, all the immigration is good, and there is no policy component to this issue at all. And anybody who, who wants to stem the tide, immigration at all, it's just a racist bigot. And the other side saying, my dudes, like, we can't house all these people. And also they tend to get radicalized into this position around Canadian national identity or home country needed national identity, right nativism, because this dynamic happens, what the conversation that doesn't happen is the one that's like, Okay, but how many immigrants should we be taking? They should be 100,000. Should it be 300,000? Should it be a million? Like, what's the correct number here and like,

Wendy Mesley  18:53  
And instead we're talking about white supremacism, and the replacement theory an

Jen Gerson  18:54  
White supremacist and what for white replacement theory, right? So it becomes...

Maureen Holloway  19:01  
When he this is very Jamie called the pasties. I love that. 

Jen Gerson  19:05  
Well, sure, but I mean, this. Immigration isn't the only one of these topics that this tends to happen around. I mean, Cohen notes, for example, sex violence, delinquent teens. The media itself is often a sub subjects of moral panics over time, I would add to his list of LGBTQ issues have a tendency to create this kind of moral panic dynamic. And as a result, when we're dealing with those types of topics, it can be really hard to have grounded conversations on these things without getting swept up into one side or the other.

Wendy Mesley  19:39  
Right. Yeah. So is that the world that we live in now of politicians taking advantage of the immigration instead of coming up with a policy to solve things....

Jen Gerson  19:47  
But it's not so easily managed? There's an issue. Yes, that's the problem. That's the other thing that you find consistently when you research moral panics, they don't exist in a vacuum. People didn't just like, come up one day and say the satanic the satinists after my kids, there was a rise in in open and and public Satanism like that there were actual, a couple a handful of genuinely what I would consider genuinely satanic serial killers throughout the 70s and early 80s. Like, these were actually things that were happening and going on. And people were putting their own own sort of cultural neuroses onto these these isolated events and then blowing them wildly up out of proportion. But, you know, moral panics don't come out of nowhere, there is an issue with immigration. Are we taking too many we are taking on more people than we can build houses for this is just, this is a B math conversation. So how much can we expand housing capacity and the capacity of the welfare state to accommodate the growth that we actually need to perpetuate our economic growth? This is a math conversation. There shouldn't actually be an emotional valence attached to it one way or the other. But there is there's a deep emotional valence attached to it. So as I said, any of these other issues, you can make the same kinds of observations about.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  21:10  
The Women of Ill Repute

Maureen Holloway  21:13  
Bringing the personality into question, discussion that may not require it. But I'm curious as to I have to say, speaking of satanic serial killers, what do you think of Pierre Poilievre. Yeah, but that's, that's a joke, everyone. Yeah, but the question is real.

Jen Gerson  21:30  
I don't know if I have the information I required to judge him as a person. Bluntly. I mean, how much of Pierre Poilievre is is that we see in public is a persona versus a kind of construction that is appealing to a real emotional desire for change in the country, right. Like, versus how much of that is a person? I think I see hints of a fairly thoughtful and conservative individual who genuinely wants to fix some real problems. And I see a lot of own the lib buffoonery. Right, and it's the own the lib buffoonery that people respond to very clearly. I mean, the other thing, too, is like, it's not just a matter of like those in a parallel way that I said earlier in this podcast. It's not my job as pundit to sit here and dictate to people what to think it's telling you what I think the relationship between the pundit and the audience is more symbiotic than that. Likewise, it's not the politicians just taking advantage of these emotionally fraught issues. It's their base in their audience responding to them talking about issues that that base cares about, and is worried about. Right. So again, it's a symbiotic back and forth relationship. And I think that we don't always necessarily detach ourselves enough from the play that's happening in front of us to see that.

Wendy Mesley  22:48  
It's fascinating. I just, I saw the, I guess you've done a podcast. And it started with a poll saying that nobody gives a shit about politics anymore. But they hate Pierre Trudeau. So it's, is that true? Like nobody? I mean, do you write a lot about political issues, and you care a lot about politics, I still do it.

Jen Gerson  23:10  
I built a career on it. Like it's, it's, I don't write about these things, because there's no interest in them. I couldn't build an audience. I can't I'm not I'm not that talented. I can't make an audience happen for topics that people don't care about. I mean, look, I could write about sewing and dune. And occasionally I do, and the audience will follow me there. But like, there's a limit. I couldn't feel my entire life just writing about sewing and dune. Right. It's a reflection of where the interest of the people actually is. And I am not sure I think that people don't like how Paul has it. Okay, I'll make another analogy here. When you pull people and you say, what don't you like about the modern media landscape? There'll be like too much opinion journalism, hate those opinion journalists. We need more like investigative reporting goddamnit. But then you look at what they actually read and pay for and what is it? It's opinion journalism, like you vote with your feet and your wallet, people, this is just what it is. And there's a reason why every single media outlet as we have every single one across the globe, as we have obtained better and better ability to track what people read and what they spend their time reading and listening to and click on. They have over time become more and more and more opinion based, or at least more voici. Right, at least more analytical, right? There's a reason why they've done that. It's yeah, okay, opinion is relatively cheaper than investigative journalism. It's an economic incentive. It's also a reflection of where the readers are, if there was overwhelming reader demand. For a lot of the things that we say we value, we would have more of it. 

Wendy Mesley  24:44  
I just wish that people were reading two sides of an argument. I can say that in the past that, you know, people made an effort and maybe it was real, and maybe it wasn't, but at least there was an effort now now it's just here's my opinion. And who knows, are people just following Every one who they agree with, or are they reading a bunch of stuff. So I don't know that that. I mean, it's I'm married to an Irish guy didn't grew up here and, and he very much identifies with people wanting to have wanted to come here wanting to have a better life as he did. But he also misses I think that the the lack of tradition, the lack of cohesion and the lack of so it's, it's, it's really, it's really complicated. 

Maureen Holloway  25:30  
I don't know if the question is...

Jen Gerson  25:31  
A really interesting example. Because of course, the idea that, you know, you had a daily newspaper that presented all of your peas, carrots and dessert intellectually in one sort of morning read. 

Wendy Mesley  25:46  
Sounds good. 

Jen Gerson  25:47  
It sounds great. That's fantastic. It was also a really short term thing. It was a it was an IT WAS anomalous, historically, the more traditional media model, which is what we're actually going back to is something closer to like a sixth and 18th Century Media model, which is that you have an absolute cacophony of voices, and opinions and newspapers that cater to those specific voices and opinions. And you know, your own ideology or your own worldview, you had a real smorgasbord of potential publications and outlets and writers whom you would you would gravitate toward in alignment with that. It was at a better or worse, or more or less democratic model. I don't know. I don't try to apply moral judgment to it. It's just It's just what we're returning to that. So the idea of like that the the model of media that we've become accustomed to in our lifetimes, that that I just think we should remember that is historically anomalous. 

Wendy Mesley  26:44  
Yeah. But it's only been 50 years. 

Jen Gerson  26:48  
No, no, it was, but it was a brief historical analysis, but the idea of objective journalism in with the traditional sense that that's not that was not the norm for the majority of the journalist and the time of journalism that we're hearing that history of the printing press. What was far more normal, was what we're coming into now, which is chaos and filter bubbles. And also, I would point out the past was also much more chaotic and violent. So are we going back to that? I don't know. The horse is so left the barn on that. That it's hard to, for me to apply a moral judgment to it or to limit the good old days. I mean, I can't also can't limit the good old days because I never had any good old days, like, I came into media so far past. Its best before date, I was at the post, I think, a decade after they stopped pulling around the Martini cart on Fridays. I mean, I never got the Martini cart. 

Maureen Holloway  27:40  
I'm sorry.

Jen Gerson  27:42  
But that was just the reality. So I don't have a lot of personal nostalgia for like 90s journalism. It's just I was I was out I wasn't in this game until basically the internet had destroyed it. And I've been in it my entire career in journalism has been one of decline. Right? What have managed decline. So I don't look at modern newsrooms. And with a lot of that same bruising, I've had, I had great, great early experiences, great early mentorship. But the path that I was able to take journalism no longer exists, it's been utterly obliterated. And the training that I had no longer exists, it's been utterly obliterated. And even the time that I spent in it wasn't all I can't look back on that time with a lot of rosy glasses. It's I attended more funerals and retirement parties. Let's put it that way. 

Maureen Holloway  28:30  
What are they teaching in journalism schools? And well, you're closer to this gen. than, than Wendy and I are. But I wonder because, you know, both Wendy and I went to Ryerson and what was called Radio and Television, arts and even that name so so archaic? What are the tenets of journalism now? I'm a world podcasters now and writers group. And that's it. Yeah, that's it. As far as I can see. I mean, anybody who tells me oh, well, you know, I've read the news on television. Good for you. How long is that gonna last? Is this path now? Is this Are we the established path? Now?

Jen Gerson  29:02  
I don't think there is an established path now.

Maureen Holloway  29:04  
Maybe

Jen Gerson  29:05  
Also, I regret to inform you when I've been out of school.

It's not as long as about as long as you like...

I suspect that that, you know, we're going to look back on on history and say, like, people of my age, were kind of like the transitional was this this this transitional moment where I still had like, a lot of the traditional journalism, training and mindset, but I was also sort of what at the beginning of seeing that change. I mean, see me as being establishment now it's just hilarious to me because I was always such a little shit. In my 20s I was much I was challenging my editors. I was an asshole. But anyway, I'm writing blogs and all that sort of stuff. Like I remember I wrote the had this terrible Blogspot post where I was, you know, in the Toronto Star radio room, basically. shitting on other editorial decisions. You know, I mean, your blog. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I know I see. 20 year olds doing this on Twitter, and I'm like, Well, fuck you.

Maureen Holloway  29:20  
To some way, there's a lot more freedom because we can save what we think. And especially, you know, in podcasting where we don't work for, I was gonna say the man oh my god, what is it 1972 We don't have a higher up to say you can or can't do that. But at the same time, society itself is far less permissive, I think, and far more quick to judge and the internet is full of people who think who, who have a voice as well.

Jen Gerson  30:27  
We've created a kind of moral panopticon for ourselves and your, your as constrained by that panopticon by two things. One is how you actually make your bread and what you can afford to say. And the ability of the institutions you work for, to withstand withstand, basically mob. Whatever mob mob disapproval, and some cases that have very strong institutional frameworks for that now, and some don't. Or you can just be an independent bitch like me, and I'm, like, come at me, cancel me all you want, I don't care. In which case, there is no restraint. I can say exactly what I think. And I'm not I don't feel restrained in the least. But that's a certain type of personality. Not everybody is going to be that as for journalism school, I mean, it's a really interesting conversation. I mean, I don't feel qualified to say how journalism school is being taught. Now, I do would notice that I look at the teachers who are teaching Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson. And I don't recognize any of them. But one. So I don't know what to make of that. I think there's two sort of approaches to journalism. And neither of them are good or bad. But they're just they're just two approaches that live in tandem with one another one is an analytical approach to journalism, and one is an activist approach to journalism. And I think the fundamental difference between the two approaches is that one is fixated on securing the activist approaches to fixated on securing an outcome. And the analytical approach is fixated on just explaining what the world is it is without any particular attachment to an outcome. 

Wendy Mesley  32:00  
I find that really interesting. We're gonna have to wrap in a minute or two, 

Maureen Holloway  32:05  
Makeup and sewing, making your own clothes. 

Jen Gerson  32:07  
And you know, it's your podcast, you can make it as long as you want. 

Maureen Holloway  32:12  
Oh, that's true. 

Wendy Mesley  32:13  
Well, I have a question about you do a podcast on The Line. So I mean, and now you're writing a book and you've got a couple of kids and you're, you're, we think you're an activist, but you're insisting that you're not an activist.

Jen Gerson  32:26  
I don't I don't see. How I define activism is I'm not attached to any outcome. 

Maureen Holloway  32:31  
Right. 

Jen Gerson  32:32  
Trudeau wins another term Pierre wins another term. Jemison wins another term, a meteor hits the earth, and we all enter the sweet death cloud of the end. I mean, like, I that's not, it's not I don't see myself as my job is to convince anybody or make anybody believe he was nice, or any make anybody agree with me, or to try and manipulate anyone into my preferred outcome? That's not my role?

Wendy Mesley  32:56  
Well, maybe that's not what you want. But that's what I think it's part of what you accomplish.

Jen Gerson  33:01  
But that's how people choose to interpret my words is that's on their responsibility. That's not my intent. And I think that the, I love doing the work for the sake of doing the work for the sake of doing the work. That's it, I just enjoy it. It's fun for me.

Wendy Mesley  33:14  
So how is The Line doing? I mean, it's a business and you want to make money and you want to you're writing a book, and you got a couple of kids and you're married? And all kinds of stuff? How's it going?

Jen Gerson  33:24  
No, I'm busy. I'm really tired. So no, I mean, it's it's it's the business side of journalism is really interesting. Building up the ability to have the craft to be able to do the writing is interesting. But figuring out how to make a business work out of it is also interesting. I mean, one of the values or one of the the interesting approaches that we've taken is that by going independent, Matt, and I can fully realize the value of our own labor.

Wendy Mesley  33:49  
So Matt Carney is your partner.

Jen Gerson  33:49  
 Yeah, my partner in the line, which is one way to to get paid, right? It's great. It's really hard to move from that into the next sort of, for lack of a better metaphor and energy state, sort of, sort of how do you make it into a business that has value in and of itself? Regardless of whether or not Matt and I are in it? How do we make the line be valuable? If it's not that jet? Right? Like that's, that's and therefore an asset in and of itself? How do we scale out? How do we hire people so that we can scale the value from a from a subscription based model or even address model or an even like a okay, you're paying to be on Jen and Matt's podcast to know now we have people working for us that help us increase the value of this product, right? Like it's a different way of thinking about about relationships in the world. And it's a really interesting approach. And it's an interesting challenge. It's interesting puzzle.

Wendy Mesley  34:49  
So I'm healthy babe, who cares about money? This is this is good.

Maureen Holloway  34:53  
 Oh, who doesn't? Can we have to care about money? 

Jen Gerson  34:54  
You can't you can't not care about money like this is this is like, there is no way like I would love to be able to say that, you know, I live in a cloistered convent and I serve the world by offering up my opinions as if from God and I give them up like that. That's, that's, that's not the world as it works. If you want to save the journalism industry, you have to start by saving yourself. Right? And if I can't make, I'm not talking like I don't want to, I'm not trying to get like, stupid money. But if I can't pay my mortgage, I can't pay my daycare bills. If I can't, you know, function as an adult, an independent adult in the world, then who am I to be saving, saying or criticizing anything about the industry? Right? Like you have to you can't avoid thinking about money, you can't avoid thinking about the business side of it. 

Maureen Holloway  35:39  
Well, you know what, we can make this podcast as long as we want. But actually, I don't mind telling you when you have a meeting with a potential sponsor who may want to speak to faces of vaginal dryness....

You got to know gotta do 

Jen Gerson  35:57  
What you got to do you take take take your take your your income where he can, man?

Maureen Holloway  36:01  
Yeah, exactly. I have no moral opposition to it. It's just embarrassing. Jen Gerson, you're a delight. You really are.

Wendy Mesley  36:08  
I find it so interesting. I mean, it's a safe assumption to make about many journalists that they see themselves as afflicting the comfortable or whatever. And Jen Gerson is very obvious about no no, no, I'm not I'm just laying out my opinion and you can think whatever you want and and and if you think that afflicting the comfortable is your goal, then you are an activist and I am a journalist so it's a really interesting way of of seeing the world I think so it's a....

Maureen Holloway  36:39  
No it's also clarifies brings great clarity is this isn't I'm not there to persuade you, although, I mean, I would argue every time you sit down to write anything, you are taking a viewpoint that you want to, to to convey and therefore you are being persuasive. So I don't think it's it's that that black and white, but that being said, I mean, her opinions are certainly to the right of mine. But that being said, everything that I've read of hers I understand I don't 100% agree with but I agree with a little bit even if it were the other way around, even if I was reading someone who was more left of center than me and who could persuade me or or at least have me agree with their opinion, I think is a good thing. The worst thing that can happen just be entrenched in your opinions, and completely inflexible. 

Wendy Mesley  36:42  
I always read her people like that. 

Maureen Holloway  36:50  
You're a huge fan and and you got me on to her and I am going to I'm going to go into subscribe to The Line, which is her podcast, because we have to support podcasts like this one. Please join me That's for real we got a meeting coming up so we're gonna let you go.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  37:50  
Women of Ill Repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley with the help from the team at the Sound Off Media company and producer Yet Valgraver.