Sex Gets Real 143: Sarah Pappalardo from Reductress on satire, media, & feminism

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This week, we have our first listener confession from CK all about the first time she ended a relationship. Heads’ up that it contains themes of abuse within BDSM.

Then, Sarah Pappalardo from Reductress is here! If you haven’t seen Reductress yet, get thee over to their satirical site immediately and be wowed.

We talk about media literacy, mainstream feminism, white feminism, and all the ways feminism has been co-opted by commercialize and media. Sarah talks about using satire and comedy to confront a Trump presidency, companies like Dove with their empowerment branding, and when satire goes too far.

There is a ton of laughter and misandry mixed in with the very heartfelt and serious topics we dive into. Plus, what are Sarah’s thoughts on Amy Schumer as a feminist? Sarah’s response is incredible, and something all of us should be more aware of in our “feminist” icons.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

In this episode, Sarah and I talk about:

• Reductress and their new satirical book “How to Win at Feminism”.
• Mainstream media being based on advertising, which means it automatically excludes a lot of different kinds of voices and people since media needs to rely on folks with disposable income.
• Bad sex advice in magazines like Cosmo and how they’re changing (but is it enough?).
• Emotional labor and how media informs the ways we relate to each other. Reductress dedicates a lot of its content to pointing out the emotional labor women are expected to do in sex and relationships (and at home and in the workplace), and Sarah was surprised by how much of their content would feature that theme.
• Alt-right and Breitbart using fake news as real news versus The Onion and Reductress using satire as a critique of the mainstream news.
• The challenge of talking about really complicated issues, like trans issues, on a satire site without confusing people or creating content that could be misread and harmful.
• Dawn’s favorite headline about feminist men and hugs from Reductress.
• A really hysterical headline about meeting your boyfriend’s mother and your boyfriend’s cum.
• What Sarah sees as one of the more corrosive and invisible tricks the media uses that many of us aren’t aware of in our daily consumption of news headlines.
• Dawn’s frustration over some crappy media twists on scientific studies that fuck us all up.
• The ways men also suffer from patriarchy and these ideals around penis size and body ideals and toughness.
• The Reductress homepage take-over around a sexual assault/rape issue in the comedy community that put rape culture front and center a few months ago.
• The empowerment industrial complex and manifesting in women’s business and how it reinforces the status quo. We talk about Dove’s empowerment advertising claiming to help women while also selling firming lotions.
• Amy Schumer – what does Sarah think about her and her white feminism. Sarah’s answer is beautiful and I hope we can all learn from it. It actually ties into James Deen and his “feminist” porn, too.

About Sarah Pappalardo

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!

Hey, everyone! Dawn Serra here with Sex Gets Real. I have my first listener confession for January that I’m going to read in just a minute. It is from a listener who’s going by CK, and it’s on our January theme of firsts. If you want to submit your first story, which you can either record and send to me or type out, and I will either read or have read, you can go to dawnserra.com/ep143 for Episode 143. There’s a link with all of the guidelines. January’s theme is firsts. It doesn’t have to be your traditional first. It can be any kind of first relating to self, love, sex, relationships. I also announced February’s theme in the newsletter that went out last week. So if you aren’t already on the Sex Gets Real newsletter list, be sure to hop over there, where I will be doing advanced sneak peeks and sharing the theme for each month for confessions. I hope to hear from you soon. 

Dawn Serra: This week’s episode also features an interview with Sarah Pappalardo, who is the co-founder and editor of Reductress, which is a comedy satire site that uses satire to really highlight the way that mainstream media and mainstream feminism influence us. She’s also the author of a satire book called “How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All — And Then Some!” 

This episode is actually something I’m really excited about. I know that I talk a lot on the show about media literacy and the importance of us being able to suss out the difference between mainstream media, feeding us content, and of course, needing us to click over and over again. Of course, the sensationalist headlines and the stories that they tell that inform us. And really being able to look within for our own answers, even if it seems to fly in the face of what all of the messages around us say. 

Dawn Serra: This conversation with Sarah is both serious and funny. You’ll hear us laughing about a Reductress article that they had about how to be gracious meeting your boyfriend’s mother for the first time when you’re filled with his cum. They did this fantastic homepage takeover that was nothing but articles about rape culture, but it was actually really funny and accessible in such a powerful way. Sarah and I are going to talk all about that. We also laugh and make some jokes that are very steeped in misandry. We also point out some of the contradictions around feminist men who come into spaces and try to take up space, and the ways that we create cultural feminist icons in people who maybe weren’t really ready for that. Amy Schumer comes up when we talk about that. Even though this topic or this interview isn’t specifically about sex, it is very much about the way that the media and the way we consume it influence how we think about sex. And the ways that these really ridiculous articles get created from scientific studies that just sends so many of us into tailspins of shame and pain. So I’m really excited about this. 

But before I dive into my chat with Sarah, I want to share with you this listener confession from CK. She offered a content note that it does include emotional and mental abuse and abuse within BDSM. So if you’re sensitive to that, then you might want to just skip ahead a couple of minutes. Here we go.

Dawn Serra: “I’ve been more or less constantly in a relationship since I was 14 years old, but I didn’t leave someone until I was 24. He was older, much older. We met when I was 19, and he was an accomplished academic in his mid-30s. I was submissive. He was not so much dominant as domineering. The power disparity between us was built in from the beginning and only increased the longer we were together. It was ostensibly a polyamorous relationship; he was married. By the time we’d been together a couple of years though, it was apparent that his version of polyamory involved him being able to do whatever, whenever, and with whomever he wanted, while I was kept on an increasingly tight leash until I was effectively ordered to be monogamous to him. 

The list of abusive behaviors I was subjected to ranged from screaming at me to vicious attacks on my character to punching things in front of me, and making it clear he’d be punching me if he was less nice. Into all of this, five years later, just as I accepted this was pretty much my lot and was about to move in with him and his wife as his collared slave, another man entered. A longtime friend, our conversations started out innocently enough, and neither of us saw it coming when we fell in love. I’m talking the kind of love that hits you with the force of an 18-wheeler truck. We were lost. We couldn’t keep away from each other. Night after night, we talked online and fell harder and harder. 

Dawn Serra: I begged my master to allow the relationship to open up again on my side. Remember, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted, and I wasn’t allowed to say anything about it. But it was useless. He made me promise I’d choose him. Then, of course, he tried to make me choose between the two men I loved. My new love went to see him and try and reason with him. By this time, my new love and I even offered to take sex off the table. All we wanted to be able to do was hold each other and kiss. My master ordered us to stay away from each other. We managed two days. 

That week, my master alternately ignored me, yelled at me, and sent me vicious text messages. The biggest professional challenge of my life came on that Friday night, and then it passed without my master even acknowledging it, despite knowing how important it was to me. The next morning, I went to see him. We talked for four hours. I told him he was abusing me, and it had to change. He told me his behavior was fixed, and nothing would ever change. He laid out his terms for the privilege of continuing to be in a relationship with him,  terms that would render me even more powerless than I already was, if that was possible. I told him no. I gave him back his collar. He tried to cajole me into staying. “We’ll go to counseling,” he promised. But by then, it was far too little, far too late. Again, I told him no, and I walked out of his house. 

Dawn Serra: I called my new love. “It’s over,” I said, “Come and see me.” He drove the 100 miles that separated us. That night, I cried in his arms, and then invited him into my bed. The happy ending? That man is the love of my life. We’re now living together and making non-monogamy work in a functional and equitable way that works for us. That, at the age of 24, was the first time I left someone. CK” 

Thank you so much for sharing that story with us, CK. I’m so happy that you have your happy ending, and that you were able to move through that very terrible, abusive, tough first. I think many of us can relate to that first. I’m really happy to have shared it on the show. 

All right, everyone. If you’re ready for this week’s chat all about media and satire, and me and Sarah just dripping with misandry. Here we go. Me and Sarah Pappalardo from the Reductress. 

Dawn Serra: Welcome to the show, Sarah. I’m so excited to have you here to talk about Reductress.

Sarah Pappalardo: Hey, thanks for having me. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. For our listeners who aren’t familiar with Reductress, what’s your highlight version of what people can find there and what it is? 

Sarah Pappalardo: Reductress is a satirical women’s magazine. We like to say it’s like The Onion meets Cosmo, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that parodies women’s media in general.

Dawn Serra: I want to just begin by saying that I hope every single person listening goes and checks it out. Because it’s, in my opinion, guaranteed to both make you laugh and make you feel like, “Oh, thank God. I’m not the only one that feels that way.” 

Sarah Pappalardo: That is the goal. 

Dawn Serra: Yes, yeah. I have so many questions for you about what it’s like creating the content and your process, and some of the amazing things that you’ve done over the years with Reductress. And of course, your new book. I know that you’ve got your new book, “How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All — And Then Some!” Can you tell us a little bit about the book and some of the themes in the book? Because when I was reading some of the items in the book, I was filled with glee.

Sarah Pappalardo: Oh, good. Glee is good. Yeah. The inspiration for the book came a couple years back when feminism was hitting the mainstream in a way that was both reductive, frustrating, funny to us. It just seemed the media – the mainstream media – had adopted feminism without really knowing where it came from or why it was there. So we wanted to write a manual on how to be a feminist from the point of view of this clueless, well-meaning women’s magazine who just discovered feminism. A lot of the book is very much in the voice of Reductress, but goes deeper into how to do love and sex as a feminist, how to be in the workplace as a feminist. Most of the advice is pretty misguided. 

Dawn Serra: As we see with most media that’s specifically aimed at women.

Sarah Pappalardo: Yes. In that, we hope that you find a lot of nuggets of truth in that book as well.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. One of the things that I love that I saw as a snippet from the book, and I can’t wait to read it, is how to be sex positive even when you’re bloated, and how to love your body even though hers is better? To me, those types of things just encapsulate so much of what we see in women’s magazines and online stories and bloggers who are really into the self-care spheres. 

Sarah Pappalardo: Yes. 

Dawn Serra: I’m wondering, do you feel like this brand of feminism that we see that’s really highlighted by women’s magazines right now is the epitome of white feminism? Or, do you feel like it’s more about merchandising and feminism?

Sarah Pappalardo: I think the two rely on each other. I would say the answer is both. I mean, on the one hand, magazines, all media make money through advertising right now. We are then advertising to a demographic that can spend money, that is a consumer market. Which means that we’re inevitably excluding many, many women from participating in this exchange. Those people have means tend to be white or at least have a degree of economic privilege that a lot of women don’t. So is it going to be a truly intersectional feminism? Maybe not. Not always, at least. Unless there’s a particular awareness of it.

Dawn Serra: Of course, because this show is about sex and relationships, and a lot of what I’m trying to do is very counter cultural and anti-patriarchy and that kind of stuff, so I particularly love a lot of your sex and relationship headlines. I would love to know what do you think is some of the most frustrating content that you see when it comes to talking about sex and relationships that’s aimed at women?

Sarah Pappalardo: To me, it’s that everything is treated like all directives are this monolith that we must abide by. We saw that in iterations in old print Cosmo ads, just like “18,000 Ways to Have Sex With Your Man.” Just by nature of being the media, its voice is authoritative. Suddenly, a helpful sex tip turns into this, “You must be doing this.” 

I think we’re seeing that evolve right now into things that are actually more inclusive advice and intersectional and queer-friendly and not as heteronormative or cis normative as it used to be. But it’s the authoritative voice that is still making you be like, “Oh, shit! I do have to be sex positive all times.” Even if I am bloated and I’m really tired, I’m like, “I’m not allowed to be…” I think there’s still this challenge of meeting the expectations that the media demands or that we perceive to demand of each other. 

Dawn Serra: I totally agree that just by nature of it being on the cover of a glossy magazine with a Hollywood A-lister or something like that, it really comes across as, “Here are things that you must know or you need to be doing better.” Of course, almost everything in all women’s magazines, be it Oprah or Cosmo or Glamour, is about improving the self to make yourself more palatable and lovable and sellable and fuckable and all those kinds of things. 

So much of what I love that you do on Reductress is… I don’t know. A couple of the headlines that I pulled out were “6 Date Ideas That Are Easier Than Admitting It’s Not Working Out” and “8 Guys on Tinder That Have Been to Machu Picchu But Never to Therapy.” Part of what I really love that you’re highlighting here is, there’s this emotional labor element that I think media hasn’t started picking up on yet. So they’re starting to realize that maybe sex advice shouldn’t be universal. They’re starting to realize that maybe there’s different body types. But there’s still this element of, “You have to do all of this work in order to earn a man.”

Sarah Pappalardo: Definitely, that is never left. Yeah. I mean, I think when emotional labor was only– The term was only even acknowledged in the past couple of years. So it’s going to take another three or four for the mainstream to catch on it, and then find a way to make money off of it. But it’s true. I mean, it’s not some– I don’t think we’d launched the site knowing that so much of our content would be devoted to that emotional labor element of just how we relate to each other in relationships. But it’s become a huge part. That even extends to stuff, the content we do about women in the workplace and things like that. It all ties together. 

I think the least we can hope to do is make women more aware of the specific things that they might be putting themselves through, believing that they have to, and that maybe, it is actually absurd, and they just needed to see it that way.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, highlighting the absurdity, and using that as a way to give permission to maybe start moving away from it. Maybe you don’t have to shave your armpits or maybe you don’t have to worry about if that guy’s swiped right or not. 

One of the things that I just would really love to know from you, since you’re really in the thick of it is, there is– I think Reductress and Onion are part of this movement, and The Colbert Report of fake news is real news. Seeing that, in some ways, the fake news is real news is using humor too, as Reductress does, really punch up and highlight the different ways that we’re oppressed. But then there’s also fake news coming out of the “alt-right” and a lot of their pro-patriarchy, pro-racist bullshit. I would love to know, as the Reductress has evolved, do you find that more people are actually using fake news to consume their news? Or, do you think that people are still really treating it as entertainment for the most part?

Sarah Pappalardo: I mean, I think there was a study back in 2012 that a fair amount of people did use The Daily Show and Colbert Report as their primary way to obtain news. And it makes sense. There’s so much news. We’re just inundated with stuff on social media so much that sometimes skipping one step from the source material and skipping to having a perspective on it. Like good satire, all it’s really offering is just a particular perspective on what’s going on. I think a lot of people, just by nature of not having a lot of time, and also wanting to be entertained like satire, it makes sense why people are leaning toward that. 

As far as actual fake news, like Breitbart level or whatever they’re doing in Russia, there’s been sites– Fake news has always been the enemy of satire, and they’ve always been so called “satire sites” and Onion knockoff since the dawn of the internet.

Sarah Pappalardo: I mean, I think the real difference there is that fake news is allowing people to engage in some kind of wish fulfillment when they read it. It engages with what they want to believe, more than what might actually upset them. We hope that with good satire that we’re, at least, challenging people’s perspectives or pressing for them to see beyond what they’re just taking for granted. But I think fake news is just all about wish fulfillment. That’s why we’ve seen it used on the right so much. Unfortunately, now, the left with some unreliable news sources coming out there, just simply make money off of clicks.

Dawn Serra: When your whole team is really working together. Do you have this sense of responsibility around making sure that you’re constantly challenging the status quo in a way that allows people to move past some of their assumptions? Do you have this feeling of responsibility of, “Maybe we can shift to the dialogue a little bit with what we’re doing?”

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. But with that comes a lot of challenges. Because the premise of Reductress is that we’re a satirical women’s magazine. So think of all the problems that are baked into the genre. It’s heteronormative. It’s cis normative. It talks down on women. We’re always at risk of perpetuating the things that we’re against just by nature of the format. So that’s a huge challenge. 

Then there’s also, “How do you speak about trans issues through satire that can’t be misread?” How do you say something so clearly? How can you say something clearly enough that a wide swath of people can understand it as it’s intended. And that’s where it gets challenging. 

Sarah Pappalardo: It’s fairly easy. We’ve been successful with doing the type of material that is relatable to a lot of the majority of women, the majority of women 18 to 35, who are internet literate, and then some men. But I mean, it’s very hard to talk about, I don’t want to say niche, but just really talk about serious issues on the margins without sometimes misconstruing a complicated issue to be consumed by the masses, who don’t maybe share the language that we do within the office.

Dawn Serra: I love that so much. And I agree completely. It’s a powerful thing to recognize. I think that you really beautifully tiptoed into some very sensitive topics when you did the homepage takeover around rape culture and sexual assault and sexual harassment. I thought that was one of the most powerful things that I had seen of using satire and humor to actually call out rape culture in a way that was very palatable, to be aware that when you start talking about people who are really struggling at multiple intersections and multiple margins, and lots of people that are mainstream wouldn’t have the understanding of that language so the nuance would potentially be lost. I have hope that we can get to a point where we can have these more nuanced conversations. But I definitely don’t think that we’re there yet, for the most part.

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah, same. I mean, I’m fully committed to speaking about it in any forum that’s possible. But I’m still very, very wary as an editor to do it via satire. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Have you ever broken from the satire mold on Reductress because there was just an issue that you felt needed attention, and it needed attention in a way that satire just wasn’t going to work? Or, do you use other platforms for those conversations?

Sarah Pappalardo: We usually use other platforms for those conversations. Although, you’ll probably see it headline every now and then that could just read almost as real. There are definitely plenty of headlines on the border that slip through. But we definitely… I can’t really say exactly where we set the bar because it does depend. We take it on a case-by-case basis. But we’re never going to just go fully outside of the voice of the site on the site. That’s the one thing we have. We hold on to it so dearly.

Dawn Serra: I was doing some research of other interviews you’ve done and articles about Reductress. One of the things that cracked me up was that you get requests from men to feature men on the Reductress. Like, “Why don’t you have an advice column from men?” or “Why don’t you have men featured?” I think that’s just such a hysterical thing. I’d love to know, is that something that you continue to get? Or, has that abated as people started to really understand what Reductress was about? Do you actually respond to these guys? Or, do you just move on because it’s not worth your time?

Sarah Pappalardo: Well, it depends on how well we know them. Like, “Yeah, totally. Just pitch. Send it to the email.” I mean, bless everyone’s hearts. Every pitch still gets filtered through our interns, and gets in a pitch doc so I, fortunately, don’t have to personally say yes or no to anyone’s face. Fortunately, those requests have petered out a little bit, at least in the past few months. But I think there’s a lot of well-meaning men who just think that they’re inserting themselves in a conversation that is valuable and important. Honestly, I wish I had that level of confidence. I’d be running the world right now.

Dawn Serra: Right. One of my favorite headlines that I’ve ever seen on Reductress was actually one that just came out a couple of days ago. It just perfectly encapsulated, I think, what you’re talking about. It’s the “5 Feminist Men Who Will Give You a Hug Whether You Want One or Not.” 

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: I think that there are so many cis men out there who are starting to be aware of their privilege. They’re just aware enough of patriarchy and oppression and feminism that they label themselves feminists. I definitely think there’s a lot of men out there who are very powerfully using their privilege to challenge the status quo. But then we get these well-meaning guys who still don’t quite get, like taking up personal space and emotional labor, but they know all the feminist terms. That headline alone… I feel like you run into these guys a lot too in kinky spaces, where everyone’s been through the consent discussion, and you shouldn’t touch anyone without having a conversation about how somebody wants to be touched. But because they’re feminists and they’re non-threatening, they’ll just hug you anyway because they know it’s OK. It’s just this mild, low level frustration of, “Oh, you still don’t get it.”

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah, exactly. Maybe it just lends itself to the people who are just more likely to be so vocal about their personal politics are also going to be the most outgoing and vocal in other ways too. But because there’s plenty of great male feminists who don’t even need to talk about it all the time. Bless their hearts.

Dawn Serra: Bless their hearts.

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. I’m a big fan.

Dawn Serra: I’m wondering, now that we’re going to be moving under a – I hate even saying this – Trump presidency, do you see the content that you’re posting on reductress shifting or having a new section that’s dedicated just to his presidency and his politics, and what the world is going to look like under his rule for the next couple of years? Or are you really going to try and stick to more of the women’s magazines and the women’s issues, and if something comes up around him, then fold it in?

Sarah Pappalardo: Well, I mean, a Trump presidency is a woman’s issue, so we’ve already begun. I mean, probably, with just the exception of this week, we’ve been running pieces every day about Trump and Trump adjacent stuff. We’ll probably continue, too. Is there going to be a whole politics vertical? Probably not. But maybe, who knows? Yeah. I think it’s just going to be a continual thing. 

Beth and I had to fly to LA the day of the election, and we had to go for work. Neither of us wanted to leave home for a week. But we both steeled ourselves and realized, “If ever there was a reason to do our jobs, this is the time. So, yeah. This is part of our job now.” We were hoping we’d just be celebrating the fun quirks of having our first female president. But this is the plate of shit we’ve been given. 

Dawn Serra: Right.

Sarah Pappalardo: We’re going to make a shit sandwich.

Dawn Serra: I really think that you are going to have endless, endless, endless additional material now, in such a more frustrating, sad way. But this is just going to write itself at this point for people who do comedy and satire, as SNL is showing us.

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely a level of it that writes itself. It’s just everything about him is just like a walking joke. But there’s the more– I’m really looking forward to the comedians who are really willing to go there and talk about all of this more insidious stuff that’s happening because it’s pretty bad. And, yeah. I don’t know. I think some really incredible art. If that’s the only upside from this, there’s going to be some incredible art that comes out of this presidency.

Dawn Serra: I totally agree. And I expect some fantastic Reductress headlines. 

Sarah Pappalardo: Me, too.

Dawn Serra: Over the years, you’ve covered so many different aspects of women’s lives and women’s media and feminism. I’m wondering, has there ever been anything that you published where afterwards you were like, “Eh. Maybe that was a tad too far.” Or, “Maybe we didn’t massage that one enough?”

Sarah Pappalardo: Not that I can think of… There are usually a few. Mostly what happens is they get misconstrued. Maybe not necessarily that people think they’re real, but that the intention in the headline is genuine, when it’s really supposed to be undermining whatever is stated in the headline. Sometimes I feel a little bad when people are genuinely hurt by that. If it is something that’s heteronormative, cis normative headline. But I do find that we have a really good comments section on our Facebook page. I do find that our readers do tend to self-regulate and discuss a lot of stuff pretty respectfully. So that helps. But, yeah. There’s probably a few in the back that I felt bad about.

Dawn Serra: That’s one of the things that I found so fascinating is the typical experience, I think, for women in social media and people who write about women or write about feminism is this onslaught of trolls and cruelty and just hatred and disgust. I was so pleasantly surprised to be reading through the comments of so many of your Facebook posts and seeing that people were genuinely just expressing their feelings about the post or laughing and tagging others. There were some back and forth comments, and one or two people getting a little butthurt that their joke didn’t land. But there, overall, seems to be this lack of the typical internet cruelty. I find that so fascinating. Do you think that’s just luck? Or, do you think it’s because the people who read you tend to be in on the joke for the most part? Or, how did you make that happen? Because I’m so delighted by it.

Sarah Pappalardo: Oh, no. I mean, my only theory is that we’re just not big enough yet to attract more trolls. That’s about it. But it does seem like just the majority of people have their hearts and minds in the right place. It tends to self-regulate the tone of the comments. But, yeah. I mean, there’s still some trolls that find us. I mean, I think the thing that I always notice in my Reductress subtweet feed is there’s just always some man that’s responding to Reductress post as if Reductress is just a stupid woman. Just talking down to a woman like a fucking idiot. It’s just such a bizarre exercise because it’s like you’re talking to a wall. You’re just talking to a Twitter bot essentially. That just never ceases to amaze me. But I think Twitter is still definitely the wild wild west of where the worst trolls tend to troll us.

Dawn Serra: As I was looking through your comments, one of the things that cracked me up is you have a new post that came out called “How to Impress Your Boyfriend’s Mother When His Cum is Still Inside You.” The responses are, for the most part, a lot like, “Oh, my god. That’s so gross.” “Oh, my god. I’m so disgusted. I can’t get that image out of my mind.” People pulling little quotes about keeping your legs together so it just didn’t slide out, and all this kind of stuff in the comment. It’s really funny seeing… Several people said, “Wow! You went all in on that one, Reductress.” I wonder, do you feel proud when you get that kind of reaction?

Sarah Pappalardo: I mean, I don’t know. I’m surprisingly prude when it comes to putting out content like that. I don’t think anything in my actual life. I’m not a prude in real life. But I think it comes down to when I’m like, “Here’s the site, mom.” The most popular articles are just like dick, cum, butt, cum, jizz. I’m just like, “That’s what I’ve been working so hard on all this time,” that I just get weird about that. So am I proud? Yes, but with some weird reservations, I guess.

Dawn Serra: There should be a tag like “Not for grandma.”

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah, exactly.

Dawn Serra: I think just over and over and over again, the calling out of the ridiculousness around the ideal sex moves and the top ten sex seduction techniques and all that kind of stuff, it makes my sex educator heart feels so happy. That people are getting it. I wonder, I think that more and more people are becoming aware that these Bible-style approaches to dating and seduction and sex aren’t really the way that it works. They’ve been misleading us for years, and so there’s more nuance. But I wonder, what are some of the softer, more subtle, less obvious corrosive messages that you see in media aimed at women that you’ve been trying to really bubble up through Reductress, that maybe fewer people really realize is a problem?

Sarah Pappalardo: It’s the tone of fear and stoking insecurity. You’ll see it a lot in just the way that headlines are tweaked. This is a fun thing to do. If you ever look at the actual link to whatever you’re reading, and you can sometimes see the original headline before it’s been updated to be more intense to stoke fear or insecurity or be like, “Are you a terrible woman?” or something like that, because it actually does get more clicks. I think that has probably always been an issue with print magazines, but just got ramped up so much in the internet age when everything is just getting clicks. I feel like that just triggers our nervous system in little bits throughout the day every time we read it. Maybe it’s never like, “Oh god. This is making me suffer,” but I think it is like a slow drain on our self-worth if we are just constantly asking ourselves, “Wait, am I doing it wrong? Am I a terrible person? Am I really going to die if I don’t do this?” So, yeah. It’s really the tone that gets me.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I actually wrote a little bit of a rant a couple of days ago because I saw this short little article in The Guardian that had a title that, of course, got my attention saying a new study has found that women prefer penises that are slightly larger than average for one night hookups. Of course, I had to go read it. Then I found the study and I actually read the study. What made me so angry was this was a study of 75 cis, heterosexual, affluent white women in Northern California. They were handed 3D printed cylinders of varying sizes that in no way resembled a penis, and then asked to recall the penis size of a recent lover. Then if they had to pick one of the cylinders for a one night stand, which one would they pick? They happened to pick one that was a half an inch longer than the standard male penis. 

Now, it was this big headline that women prefer bigger dicks when it’s one nightstands, and smaller dicks when it’s ongoing relationships. That kind of twisting of science, I think, is also so frustrating and dangerous because most people don’t have the time to go read the study of how many people participated, and what were their demographics, and what were the actual findings. Somebody’s taking up one paragraph abstract, and now it’s getting picked up by all these new sources like fact.

Sarah Pappalardo: Sure. I mean, I see that happening all the time with janky studies. It even happens on the flip side, where it’s like drinking a glass of wine a day will make you a better fuck and you live to 100. That’s also not true. But it’s clearly something you want to believe, so you read the damn article. I’m sure that that article about penis size just horrified a bunch of cis het men, just enough to click on it, and then be like, “Oh, wait. Nevermind.” Yes, it’s so terrible. 

Dawn Serra: It’s really frustrating. You know what’s so interesting is I’d say that of the thousands of emails I’ve gotten on this podcast, about 50%, if I’m categorizing it in very broad strokes, it’s 50% are women, 50% are men. I get a lot of emails from trans and non-binary and all kinds of those folks. But when I really boil it down to the big categories, it’s about half and half. So many of the men that I get emails from are feeling a great deal of shame about their bodies, shame about either their libido, their penis size, how long they can stay hard, feeling like they can’t ever be a real man, that no woman will ever love them so they are like socially isolating themselves, and men who feel like they must be terrible in bed because their partners aren’t orgasming. 

As I’ve done this over the years, I think we all know that patriarchy hurts everybody. It’s just in different ways. I know bell hooks said that the first victim of patriarchy is men. But I think one of the really powerful things about reading Redoutress, not only for women, but for men, is also seeing so many of these headlines that are manipulating women are also manipulating the way that, one, women treat men that uphold this toxic masculinity, but then also these expectations that we put on men about what a real woman wants or what real men are like. It’s just like this big toxic soup. I’m wondering, do you get responses from men about finding either relief or permission through the satire work that you’re doing?

Sarah Pappalardo: Ah. I haven’t gotten a lot of relief emails. From them, it’s more like a curiosity. They’re learning just a little bit about women, what women experience. Usually, it’s the typical well-meaning guy who’s like, “Really that happens to you?” Whether it’s something about sex or something in the workplace or elsewhere. We get more of that. But I don’t know if we’ve done a lot of– I don’t know. I mean, I guess if it’s like stoking any feelings in guys, they’re certainly not talking about it to me. I wish they would. I wish guys would speak up more. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. 

Sarah Pappalardo: It’s just so hard and tough.

Dawn Serra: I know. I agree. That’s one of the prices that we pay with hypermasculinity and patriarchy is that cis men feel like they don’t have permission to feel awkward or to not be sure of what they want or to be unsure of seduction techniques. It’s like you have to know all the things and be the expert and take up all the space, which then, of course, we see playing out when men ask to be featured on Reductress. But it’s two sides of the same coin of just this toxicity that’s harming all of us in different ways. 

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: I know that you did that big homepage takeover with all of the rape culture stuff that was… I can’t tell you, I saw probably three dozen, at least, of my friends on Facebook around that time just posting screenshots of, “Everyone has to go check out Reductress right now,” and loving that. I think what I just really love to know… I have a couple of questions around that, but the first is, how did you find your way of navigating talking about rape and sexual assault and rape culture in a way that was still within this humorous, punching up satire that you use on the magazine? I mean, it feels like a very dangerous line to tread.

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. I don’t think it could have happened in the way that it did, if what had happened in the comedy community didn’t happen, and just everyone in the office’s collective experience of rape culture. It was really coming from just a deep, sad, and genuine place of everyone who contributed and wrote for that homepage takeover. But what had happened in the comedy community was a man had been officially kicked out of Upright Citizens Brigade because he raped at least two women and assaulted many more. That was less of the story. The story was more of the backlash and the conversations happening around it – the victim blaming, the questioning women’s claims, defending the rapist or even just making bad jokes about the rapist. 

We were just seeing every aspect of rape culture play out on social media, on podcasts, radio, just everything. We were just seeing all of it. When we had put out and asked for pitches around the subject, we got hundreds of pitches in just minutes. We realize, “Oh. There is no way there’s just one way to talk about what’s going on. There’s at least 16 different individual topics to address here.” I think by keeping it specific, rather than… Keeping each individual piece as specific as possible and honed in on one aspect of rape culture. We avoided just merely saying, “Rape is bad,” or be like, “Haha! Dumb,” making fun of victims of rape or something like that. We were just really thinking of it like a cohesive piece, maybe like a book with many chapters, and really just tried to hit every important aspect of rape culture that we were seeing play out that week.

Dawn Serra: And what was the response? I mean, did that bring trolls out of the woodwork or did you just get a lot of people who were really grateful that you were actually taking the time to take on this challenge?

Sarah Pappalardo: Honestly, it was all grateful, zero trolls. Which I was surprised by because I was a little scared the night before being like, “Is this going to be that thing?” Because the months following it was just nonstop trolls around Trump supporters and all that stuff. But, yeah. There were not really any trolls and just a huge response, positive response. And a lot of thank yous, and a lot of, “I never knew how to articulate things until I read this.” A lot of guys being like, “Is this how it is?” So I think some really great discussions came out of it. At the very least, we called it out for what it was. 

Dawn Serra: Are there any topics that you haven’t yet really either explored or you’ve only scratched the surface that you’d really love to feature on Reductress at some point in the near future?

Sarah Pappalardo: I mean, I would love to dig into politics a bit more. Yeah. I have a feeling that it’s not so much the topics, but the different mediums that we’re really going to be exploring. Just how the idea of Redcctress can extend to video and things like that, more than other subjects necessarily.

Dawn Serra: I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately on the power of intention, the secret approach to business and to women’s lives of, “If you want it bad enough, then you can have your wildest dreams and riches. So therefore, if you don’t have those things, then it’s because you don’t want it bad enough.” This hyperindividualism and this hyper everything is your responsibility approach to women’s success and women in business. I know there’s some people doing some really awesome work pushing back against that. But I’m wondering, is that something that you have taken on in Reductress yet around the way that women are expected to achieve success?

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. We touched on that in the book a little bit between the women at work section and our last section called “Savor Being a Savior,” where it touches on that empowerment. The empowerment industrial complex, I guess, is what it’s now becoming. It’s just amazing how well people have capitalized on the idea of self-improvement and constant reinvention, and hoping and wanting, like, “How do you put a price on it?” Well, you can. 

We tackle it from, again, just like, “What are the inherent contradictions in these things?” I mean, god! Take Dove, for example, in the empowerment advertising. It’s like, “Oh, we’re totally being body positive. But also, we’re selling you firming lotion to fix your problems.” There’s just always these walking contradictions in selling empowerment and selling these dreams. We’re just there to point at them more than anything. 

Dawn Serra: Have you had any companies come to you and ask for guidance on how to do better?

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah. I was actually at an ad agency on Friday, and they were asking the same thing. I wish I had an answer. I think… Ah. You know, I think that’s really what I’m going to spend a year thinking about because it’s really… Obviously, it’s easy to see the problems in what we do. But it’s really hard to imagine what an ideal landscape is because there’s so many. Even just among feminists, intersectional feminists or anyone who cares about social justice, you’ll get a million different ideas of what that should look like. Right down to the idea that consumerism and capitalism itself should be abolished. It depends on what shared worldview you’re operating on, and that would then form my answer. But I don’t really have one big solve other than staffing ad agency with people who don’t look like you, that look like the broadest swath of America that you can find. And avoid tokenism, and strive for true diversity. I think that’s probably our best bet to operate within a capitalist structure. As for throwing it all out the window, beats me. Going to have to ask a cultural theorist on that.

Dawn Serra: Well, I think one of the really powerful things about what you do, and you’ve been doing it for so many years, is you’ve had this unique opportunity to really look under the covers or look behind the curtain of the ways that women specifically are told to love, are told to experience sex, are told to shape their bodies, are told to love their bodies no matter what they look like. Then all the products get sold. I’m wondering, as you’ve done this work, have you found that it’s influenced your personal relationships and the way that you experience your body or the way that you experience sex on an individual level?

Sarah Pappalardo: I think being the most gay person in the office, I think I avoided a lot of the things that a lot of my co-workers struggle with. I mean, right down to, I’ll just have talks with my straight friends and still in 2016, hear that her boyfriend doesn’t go down on them, and that they feel uncomfortable about their vagina and what it looks like and what it smells like. I don’t even remember the last time I’ve thought about stuff like that. I know it’s a thing, but I thought that guys, when we’re in our 30s, we’re supposed to stop caring about that. But, yeah. I mean, I think I’ve just been maybe lucky enough to avoid most of that to begin with. Not all of it, but most of it.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, one, that’s awesome. Two, yay for queer community and having a space where you get to actually explore a lot of those things and overturn them, and then be surrounded by people who are like, “Oh, yeah. You decided to stop shaving. That’s awesome.” Or, “Who gives a fuck what you do with your body? It’s your body.” It’s so difficult to find spaces where that’s truly celebrated. I love that you’ve been insulated from that because more of us need to be.

What is the number one thing that you want people to take away when they come to Reductress, and they start tiptoeing into the content that you’re putting out, and getting a feel for what your tone and your voice is? What are you hoping that– For all the listeners out there who haven’t been to Reductress, I hope that they go check it out and find some of their favorite headlines because I’d love for them to share them with me. But what are you hoping that people walk away with?

Sarah Pappalardo: Well, first priority, I want them to laugh. That really does come above everything. We are making comedy. We’re making satire. But secondly, I want them to at least come away acknowledging maybe some small thing that they may have taken for granted. That they can be like, “Oh, yeah. That.” Whether it’s something that happens to them or something that they do themselves. Because, again, we do have a lot of fun pointing out the foibles of white feminism that we ourselves are totally guilty of. We really try hard to make content that’s not always just pointing at the big, bad white man all the time, and trying to find the nuance in what’s really happening in the world around us, so that we can read an article and maybe not just point and laugh at the other. Even if it is punching up, even if that other is a CEO of ExxonMobil. But actually be able to look within ourselves, and maybe see things that we might not be doing that are so great or that the people around us might be doing.

Dawn Serra: I love that. I know that a lot of the pieces that I’ve seen on social media that friends of mine have shared from your site have stimulated some really interesting conversations. Some of them have been fantastic and fascinating and deepening the conversation. Others have brought out a lot of people who do that knee jerk defensiveness, like, “Hey, this isn’t fair. You’re picking on me. My life wasn’t easy, even though I’m a white dude.” But I love that there’s just conversations happening, and I want more of that. More conversations, more finding ways to actually engage with each other Instead of just this constant, “I’m not going to talk to anybody that’s not like me. I don’t care about anything outside my bubble.”

Sarah Pappalardo: Definitely, definitely.

Dawn Serra: There’s one last thing I want to ask you about before we wrap up. This can be a really hot button topic for a lot of different reasons. I am definitely not the most educated on the comedy world. So I’m blindly asking this question a little bit. But I’ve seen so many articles on The Establishment and the body is not an apology, really calling out Amy Schumer as being very problematic with her white feminism, and the way she talks about sex and her body and other people’s bodies. I’m wondering, from your perspective as someone who is very media literate and who has a great deal of experience in comedy, and you’ve been in the comedy community, and what you put out there is all about being funny, have you on Reductress either taken on a perspective around Amy Schumer’s work or do you have any thoughts about that? Because I’m really curious.

Sarah Pappalardo: Well, we do have one piece on Amy Schumer called “Amy Schumer Amy Schumer Amy Schumer Amy Schumer Amy Schumer. Amy Schumer?” It’s about a thousand words just being like, “Amy Schumer, Amy Schumer, Amy Schumer, Amy Schumer, Icon. Amy Schumer.” I mean, I think that’s the official Reductress stand on what Amy Schumer has done right and wrong in her career. 

1. So separate from how I personally feel about what Amy Schumer has done, I think that it’s important to acknowledge the media cycle that has cycled around her. She didn’t walk into stand up saying, “I’m a feminist.” Boy, what she said earlier In her career is not very feminist. But she started making some content on her show that could be read as feminist. Then she didn’t call herself a feminist. The media anointed her with the capital F feminist title. Then the moment that she did something not feminist, she was lambasted for it. 

Sarah Pappalardo: I guess what I’m saying is, there are a lot of people that we hold in very high regard that are not necessarily out there, haven’t even branded themselves as feminists, that were then criticizing based on feminist standards. I, personally, never held her to that standard to begin with. I think she was never that. I don’t think that she has the– Maybe she does know because, I mean, hell, I don’t know her, but I don’t think that she ever really had the language to talk about the things that are important to the discussion of feminism. So I don’t know if I can fully blame her. 

I think, at this point, that she’s now this big and has had this much time to reflect on it, that she does have a degree of responsibility to practice what she preaches, if she does choose to continue preaching. But, yeah. I don’t give her as much shit as a lot of other people do because I just don’t think that she was really a feminist in the way that you and I would understand it any more than anyone else.

Dawn Serra: Yeah I think we saw that happen too, with the porn star James Deen. He was labeled a feminist and realize that was an opportunity for growing his audience. So then he took on that label, but at no point was there anything happening that was particularly feminist that was really challenging the status quo. I felt so much hurt and anger and betrayal when all the rape allegations came out around him, and just like this fallen icon of feminism. It just made me really feel like we need to be a lot more careful with who we’re labeling as our feminist icon. 

Sarah Pappalardo: Yeah, exactly. Cause I mean, I didn’t follow all of James Deen’s porn. But as far as I know, the best thing he did was make porn that didn’t suck. Beyond that, I don’t really know how he was serving the community. So, yeah. We propped him up, and then we found out that he wasn’t what we thought. And it’s very disappointing. 

Even Reductress, we didn’t launch Reductress being, “This is going to be a feminist website.” What made it feminist was the fact that everybody in this room is a feminist. Well, we’re full-time comedians and performing and writing, our feminism informs everything we do. So the content by nature of that is going to be feminist. But we never stuck our noses out and said, “We are a feminist satire site.” That label was given to us, and I wholeheartedly accept it and can bear that responsibility. But I think a few good years of queer theory and all that, I have some degree of ability to back up that claim. But not everyone who gets propped up can. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I think some of the differences that I see too around the Amy Schumers and the James Deens of the world, and other people like Reductress that get labeled feminism is, for people who are willing to take on that responsibility, I see a willingness to be wrong and to apologize for that. Then to grow from it in a really genuine way of, “Wow, I didn’t realize that we were white washing this,” or “I didn’t realize that was an ableist term.” Then we move on, and we don’t do it anymore. Versus I think when it becomes part of a brand that then becomes part of merchandising and becomes part of why you’re popular, when the shit hits the fan and something really goes wrong, there’s a lack of apology or the apology isn’t really heartfelt because they weren’t really in anyway. And there’s very little growth or the growth happens too little, too late.

Sarah Pappalardo: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Nothing has made me realize my own blind spots more than creating content. It really helps you learn, and you have to come at it with a degree of humility because when you’ve got a big workload, it’s easy to let your blind spots really get blinder because you’re just trying to burn through stuff. I really appreciate when people do point out stuff that might be wrong, whether it’s just who we represent in photos or anything like that. We’re all coming at it with a degree of humility in and are definitely willing to listen.

Dawn Serra: Wouldn’t it be amazing if all of us were willing to do that, even on the smallest scale of just in our personal lives? If the people around us are saying, “Hey, I’m having this problem,” if we would, instead of saying, “Wow, I don’t see that. Thank you for sharing that with me,” I think we would have such a… I don’t know. There would be so much more growth and connection happening instead of this, “Well, it’s not a problem for me. So good luck.”

Sarah Pappalardo: Totally. We all just need to read our anger and stop for a minute, and be like, “Wait. Why am I angry? Is it because I’m afraid of being wrong or losing this weird little seat of power I have in this discussion?” It’s like, if we just take one minute of every day that we get backed into a corner, we’d all be a better society.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. We would have, I think, deeper connections and deeper conversations, and more opportunities for letting go of so many of the things that feel shitty. But when we get defensive, and we want to stay in our little places of power, as you said, what we’re also doing is holding ourselves in those same places where we’re feeling shame and uncertainty, and we can’t be vulnerable around it.

Sarah Pappalardo: Exactly. 

Dawn Serra: Well, Sarah, I would love for you to share with everybody who’s listening how they can stay in touch with you and find Reductress, so they can go check out all the amazing work that you’re doing. And also support you by checking out the book and your podcast and all that good stuff. So where can they find you?

Sarah Pappalardo: You can find Reductress at reductress.com, at @Reductress on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. You can find our book “How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All — And Then Some!” on Amazon or in any bookstore you want to go into. Our podcast “Mouth Time” is available where podcasts are found. You can find me on Twitter at @yourpappalardo.

Dawn Serra: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me and having this really rich conversation all about comedy and feminism. This just made my day, so I really appreciate you carving an hour out.

Sarah Pappalardo: No problem. It’s great talking to you.

Dawn Serra: Great. Thank you. You, too. To all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Be sure to check out Reductress, I will have all of the links on dawnserra.com for this episode. I will be talking to you next week. Bye.