Slate Double X Podcast Live Taping: Exploring Issues of Femininity, Masculinity, and Gender Violence

On September 18th, the Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict hosted a live taping of the Slate Double X Podcast. The pod­cast featured Slate Double X founding editor Hanna Rosin, Slate writer Dan Kois, and Noreen Malone of The New Republic. The pod­cast was innovative and entertaining, drawing a crowd not just of George Mason students, but of professionals throughout the area. Rosin, Kois, and Malone discussed three twenty-min­ute segments filled with wit and intel­lect. Among the segments discussed were sexism in the technology industry and what the three referred to as “tech bros.” A tech bro is a term coined to address the prevalence of men in the rapidly growing tech industry. Though tech is the fastest growing industry in the United States, women remain proportionately unrepre­sented. Besides big names like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, there is little visibility of women in the tech field. Thus, the proto­type in the subculture of tech has emerged as what Dan Kois referred to as “guys who are so unbelievably self-confident” in the tech industry.

Another segment delved into the all too flagrant epidemic of sexual assault in the military. Rosin, Kois, and Malone not only acknowledged the prevalence of such heinous acts, but speculated upon the best way to respond to such offenses as was emerging from Congress. Rosin noted that the first camp, rep­resented by Senator McCaskill, proposes that acts committed within the military should be reported through chain of command and tried internally in military court. Alternatively, Senator Gillibrand of the second camp pro­poses that independent prosecutors should try sexual assault in the military out­side of the military system. Malone praised the state­ments of Senator Gillibrand, indicat­ing how both Israel and Great Britain’s militaries have changed the proce­dures for reporting sexual assault. The fear in doing so, Malone suggests, “is that reports of sexual assault would skyrocket.”

The collaboration between the Center for the Study of Gender and Conflict and the Slate Double X Podcast presented a unique type of dia­logue, asserting how important it is to understand the com­ponent of gender in everyday interactions. As Slate contends, the podcast series is “by women but not just for women.” (Slate