Waiting periods, but for men who want to start podcasts

hear me out

I’ve been thinking a lot about the surplus of white male podcast hosts this week after young women started the best living trend in recent tiktok history. 

It all started when some guy you’ve never heard of whose only credential for having a podcast seems to be having a kitchen table and only two matching chairs, said that he would leave a wife he does not yet have if she “let herself go” after giving birth to his child.

I will not even dignify this podcast by giving you its name.

“If my wife lets herself go after I have kids with her, I’m going to tell her, once: ‘If you don’t get your s–t together… If you can’t do that, I’m out,'' podcast guy number 1 said to podcast number 2 and 3. In a comment to the New York Post that was sent very officially via Instagram DM, podcast guy number 1 said his comments were taken out of context. “We were talking years down the line after childbirth. We just don’t want our wives to be obese,” he told the Post, confirming that his comments were in fact very much taken in context. This came on the heels of another dusty podcast guy you’ve never heard of who was disemboweled by a female guest he tried to disparage her and women as a whole, on air. Her response is worth a watch, or five.

But this is where the story gets tasty. Women on tiktok, a fearless digital army who had just spent the last week outing a man who was sending unsolicited dick pics to women he would proceed to ghost, decided to turn misogyny into feminist lemonade and use these men as inspiration for a unique kind of subversive performance art. It all started when @sadimmigrantkid discovered the “bearded cutie” filter which adds facial hair to a user's face and turned it into a joke about how she’d start a podcast about “what women don’t be doing.”

Tiktok: @hayhaymv

Women started to duet the post in droves adding themselves as male co-hosts, as female guests being interrupted and even starting their own spin-off podcasts parodying male podcast hosts that demean the opposite sex. 

Tiktok: Kimbersprings

While female users powered the best internet trend in recent memory, men also who joined the chorus of voices demanding more scrutiny for podcast guys, too. Joe Santagato and Franky Alvarez, the only new podcast guys I will accept, poked fun at the ludicrous idea that a husband should abandon the mother of his children if her body is affected by growing a person inside of it. “Dude this is so foul,” Santagato said. “Have my kid, carry him for nine months, give birth and rip open your a** and poudge. Let the stitches heal fine I’ll give you that, but then you’re back at the gym you fat b*tch.” “What is wrong with people?” Alvarez lamented after listing all the things that his wife had to give up in order to carry his offspring from her “body image” to “alcohol” to “prosciutto.” 

But like many witty internet trends started by women, it’s pointing to a problem with real tangible consequences. Podcasting is still a white boys clubs. Only 21% of the top-charting podcasts are hosted by women despite women making up half of podcast audiences. And some of the most popular podcasts like Joe Rogan’s have a “serious woman problem.” The vast majority of his guests are male (91% according to one study) and many with misogynistic views that don’t get challenged like the time he laughed with a guest who suggested coercing women into oral sex. Rogan has platformed transphobic and far-right extremists like Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys a hate group categorized as a terrorist group by Canada. And then there’s all the covid misinformation that’s even prompted Neil Young to remove his music from Spotify which hosts Rogan’s podcast.

 And even when Rogan does allow a woman on set, they seem to be young or attractive or both. He has a lot of disheveled male guests with unkempt appearances, but the women often seem to fit a standard of beauty that male guests don’t need to abide by.

And the dearth of female voices in podcasting doesn’t just stink for women, it can also negatively impact men. While Rogan is seen as a champion of men, there’s scant evidence that listening to Rogan’s podcast has helped any of them get laid. In fact, the evidence points to him leading even well-educated and high-profile men astray. 

So here’s my proposal. Women in this country have waiting periods imposed on them to get life-saving abortions. These rules are random and arbitrary and mostly put into law by misogynists who want control us. Why men shouldn’t have the same waiting periods before starting a new podcast? If the government gets involved with a woman’s decision to get an abortion, it’s only fair for it to get involved with a man’s decision to start a podcast. This is especially true when we consider the well-documented health risks of male podcasts. We have taxpayer-funded emergency pregnancy centers for women who are considering an abortion so why don’t we have them for men who are thinking of a podcast? Abortion clinics have shut down because of the size of their broom closets, why not impose the same trap laws on podcast guys and the size of their silver blue yeti mics or their melamine kitchen tables? It’s legal to lie to women who are seeking an abortion add tell them it causes cancer, so why not tell men that starting a podcast could give them covid dick? Find me a politician that will advocate for this position and I’ll show you a politician that has my vote. And while we are at it, let’s get the Supreme Court involved because if men already have it all, are male podcasts really necessary?