Do The Kids Know?

...About Being "Overeducated"?

Do The Kids Know? Season 3 Episode 11

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0:00 | 32:27

Transcript available here.

This week we discuss the Twitter debate around being too "overeducated" and how it is misogynistic nonsense. We also discuss the developments with Roe v. Wade and the state of abortion access in Canada.

References:
Nora Loreto on Twitter

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Do The Kids Know? is a biweekly series of discussions between community workers and educators, Prakash and Kristen, that unpack race, media, popular culture, and politics in KKKanada (That’s Canada spelled with three K’s) from an anti-colonial perspective.

Our goal is to bring nuance to sensationalist media as well as to uncover the ways in which white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism is shaping our movements and behaviours. 

Keep tuning in to be a part of the conversation… don’t be a kid who doesn’t know!

Find us: @dothekidsknow (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok)
Email us: dothekidsknow@gmail.com
Tip us: patreon.com/dothekidsknow
Newsletter: tinyletter.com/dothekidsknow
Artwork by Daniela Silva (instagram.com/danielasilvatrujillo)
Music by Steve Travale (https://stevetravale.com)

DTKK is recorded on the traditional and unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. We are committed to working with Indigenous communities and leaders locally and across Turtle Island to fight for Indigenous rights, resurgence, and sovereignty. 

Until next time. Stay in the know~!

Support the show

------

Do The Kids Know? is a monthly series of discussions between community workers and educators, Prakash and Kristen, that unpack race, media, popular culture, and politics in KKKanada (That’s Canada spelled with three K’s) from an anti-colonial perspective.

Our goal is to bring nuance to sensationalist media as well as to uncover the ways in which white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism is shaping our movements and behaviours. 

Keep tuning in to be a part of the conversation… don’t be a kid who doesn’t know!

Find us: @dothekidsknow (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok)
Email us: dothekidsknow@gmail.com
Tip us: patreon.com/dothekidsknow
Newsletter: tinyletter.com/dothekidsknow
Artwork by Daniela Silva (instagram.com/danielasilvatrujillo)
Music by Steve Travale (https://stevetravale.com)

DTKK is recorded on the traditional and unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka and Algonquin Nations. We are committed to working with Indigenous communities and leaders locally and across Turtle Island to fight for Indigenous rights, resurgence, and sovereignty. 

Until next time. Stay in the know~!

Support the show

Kristen  0:15  
Hey kids and welcome to Do the Kids Know? That is this show where we talk about race, media, pop culture, and politics in triple K Canada. I am one of your hosts, Kristen. On my screen is your other host, Prakash. 

Prakash  0:31  
Hello. 

Kristen  0:32  
And today we are talking about... How did I already forget? Overeducation. Hahaha, I remembered. Overeducation. Prakash is going to lead it because you found a tweet. I also appreciate that you keep being out in these Twitter streets and being like we should talk about these tweets that I'm seeing on the internet. It is leading to no prep and I quite enjoy that.

Prakash  0:55  
Yeah, I think we can say that season three is a season of no research. I think that's no longer in our in our spirits to do more work in this way.

Kristen  1:04  
Yeah, like no research just vibes. Here's our thoughts. 

Prakash  1:06  
Just vibes. Just thoughts. 

Kristen  1:08  
Because I'm also like, we are highly educated. So like here's the things we've researched previously, but not for this.Thoughts.

Prakash  1:14  
Yeah, I think overeducated is a topic that we will have a lot to say. But anyway.

Kristen  1:20  
Yeah, before we do that co-star. Let me just how did... You go first this time? So how did costar read you this week?

Prakash  1:29  
So it told me the other day, you need to be with someone who demands that you show up as your whole self.

Kristen  1:37  
You need to be with someone who demands that you show up as your whole self. Who doesn't demand that from you?

Prakash  1:46  
Hard to say because I'm just like, I don't think I have a part self. But...

Kristen  1:52  
What part of yourself are you hiding Prakash?

Prakash  1:56  
My, my back part cause I...

Kristen  2:00  
Because you ignore it when it hurts you?

Prakash  2:02  
Because I'm wearing clothes. I was thinking about that the other day, I was like, you know, I never , I don't really know about what my back looks like.

Kristen  2:12  
You know...

Prakash  2:14  
Well, not that there's no way of knowing what my back looks.

Kristen  2:17  
Yeah, that's where I'm sitting. You could know.

Prakash  2:20  
I could know. I just don't and I won't and I ought not to and I shan't. 

Kristen  2:24  
Okay. 

Prakash  2:24  
I'm scared what I'll find. There's like another face back there or its like I have like a series of moles that looks like a 666 or something. 

Kristen  2:32  
I mean...

Prakash  2:33  
I don't need to open that can of worms.

Kristen  2:35  
I feel like one of your partners at this point would have told you already.

Prakash  2:39  
Maybe but I'm, again, my back is never to somebody. So maybe, this is it. Maybe we're learning. Maybe I need to like let someone see my back. 

Kristen  2:49  
That's the part of you that you need to divulge? 

Prakash  2:52  
Apparently. 

Kristen  2:53  
All right, you gotta let somebody see your back, Prakash.

Prakash  2:57  
Ooh, that's so vulnerable though. Anyway. This is about nothing. What about you? What was your read?

Kristen  3:06  
This week was weird. I think I'll share the weirdest one that I've already told you about because I was truly like, what the fuck? So on Monday co-star told me to stop treating my body like a ritual sacrifice.

Prakash  3:25  
Oh, yeah. 

Kristen  3:25  
What? 

Prakash  3:26  
And see this is my thing. Right? Which I also explained to you, but I will now explain to the public. Because traditionally, if someone is being prepared, or not prepared, I mean, it depends what kind of sacrifice we're talking about but is being prepped to be, you know, a ritual sacrifice. Usually it's accompanied by like, a festival. They're like, well treated, well fed, get to do all the things that they typically wouldn't have been able to do. Because usually people who are, you know sacrificed, were not like, you know, the royal or high class or whatever. So, you know, it was a chance for them to like, yeah, it was like it was a festivius, if that's a word, occasion. And so... 

Kristen  4:09  
Co-star wants me to not do that. 

Prakash  4:12  
Yeah, maybe you've been too generous with how you've been treating yourself. It's telling you to not do that. But I say live fast die young, YOLO, life's short. All those, all those mantras like, listen, you are, you're your own sole dependent, like...

Kristen  4:32  
Truly.

Prakash  4:33  
You ain't got no kids, you ain't gonna have them. 

Kristen  4:35  
Nah.

Prakash  4:35  
Like... 

Kristen  4:36  
I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to have them.

Prakash  4:44  
I'm gonna have to agree.

Kristen  4:45  
Right? Thank you. I don't think I should be allowed to have kids.

Prakash  4:50  
I mean, somehow if you did have one I'm sure it would be fine. You know, I would pitch in by being that kid's dead beat god parent. We'd worship at the altar of Rihanna.

Kristen  5:05  
I mean, that wouldn't be so bad, but I don't. I don't like if somebody wants to take my uterus and have children, if they want to take my eggs and like have children? Sure. I don't think I should have them and raise them. No.

Prakash  5:23  
No. Sometimes I work with kids. And I'm just like, I don't get it.

Kristen  5:28  
I have said, since I was a teenager, that the only benefit to watching kids is that you can give them back. If it's mine, I can't give it back.

Prakash  5:41  
No. I mean, you could. Ritual sacrifice.

Kristen  5:48  
Full circle. We've come full circle.

Prakash  5:52  
This is a, that was a joke. I do not believe in ritualistically sacrificing your kids or anybody for that matter.

Kristen  6:01  
That is a disclaimer, I thought we would never have to give on this podcast. But here we are.

Prakash  6:06  
On Do the Kids Know, you never know. Because we never know.

Kristen  6:12  
All right. All right, I'm gonna throw it to you to introduce our topic for today.

Prakash  6:17  
So this week, it's less of a particular tweet and more just like a phenomenon that has been appearing on Twitter. But you know, by the time this episode comes out, and probably will no longer be a topic of interest. But I think it's still worth for us to discuss. But this idea that women are becoming overeducated, and that this is essentially the downfall of society.

Kristen  6:43  
How so? How have the internets... Explain more. 

Prakash  6:47  
So basically, the men are out here feeling insecure about their lack of literacy, formal education and whatnot. And I think we've talked about it before about how there, there be many men with podcasts saying, all sorts of nonsense. Are we a part of that? I'm gonna say no, just because the things that people talk about, disclose, the way that they show their whole asses is wild to me.

Kristen  7:22  
Well, I think, I talk often about how the internet has made it so that like, people tell us their thoughts when they don't have to. Like, I remember one of my first criticisms of Twitter, was that, like, I don't need to know what you're thinking every minute of every day. But that is the point of tweets.

Prakash  7:39  
I mean, for me, it's like on Twitter, if it's not funny, if it's not discursive, if it's not informational, and if it's not linking to a photo of like a cute animal. If it's not cringe, like purposely cringe...

Kristen  7:55  
This is a lot of, if it's not.

Prakash  7:59  
Only five. If it's not one of those things, then I'm not interested. But you have it's like I had eggs today. Or like, you know,

Kristen  8:07  
But it's not even that, like, I have eggs today. It's the like, this is a fucked up thought that I have that I'm like, you could have kept that to yourself.

Prakash  8:16  
Oh, like I was talking to someone today about that TikTok where that guy who proudly announced that he hadn't used soap on his body in three months. 

Kristen  8:23  
Yeah. Like you could have kept that to yourself. We didn't need to know. We didn't know need to know. I didn't need to know you don't wash your legs. I didn't need to know you don't use soap. I didn't need to know, you made it to adulthood without learning how to properly wash your hands. I don't even know that information. But I do because the internet exists.

Prakash  8:43  
Yeah. So essentially, this argument is that like, yeah, because women are becoming more and more like, quote, unquote, overeducated that this has made them made them like too picky for the mens, or that that makes them unattractive to men, and that they're gonna die alone. And this is why we have declining birth rates and etc.

Kristen  9:08  
Okay. So there's a couple things here. The first one being that my immediate response is that dying alone is preferable to a man that thinks that I need to be less than him. That's number one. Number two, who is saying what overeducated is because that means that you, man who thinks that you should be more than me, have set the standard of what educated is and what educated is, is you. And so because I am more intelligent than you I am overducated, but that's not real. I am just educated. We are just educated at different levels. The standard for what educated is is not your brain. It's no one's brain. Yeah, they had a third point but I've lost it.

Prakash  9:52  
And I want to preface this by like in this conversation when we say educated overeducated or whatever. We're like, talking college, university like declamation like having, like, whatever the bachelor's, master's, PhD is, etc? Obviously, this is not the only way to be educated. 

Kristen  10:07  
Yeah, that's also why I'm like, What is this? What do you mean, when you say over? What is the standard for educated? What is it, who is setting it, because for you to turn around and say I am overeducated, it means that you set the standard at whatever you have. So whatever I have is more than what you have, and therefore I'm overeducated and therefore not attractive to you. And like, that's fine, I will just find somebody else, or I won't find, it's me, I won't find anybody because I don't need anybody, it's fine. But like standard, that's not real. Regular normal women will just find another man who is not intimidated by her level of education. 

Kristen  10:47  
And also, there are other things too, because what we perceive as, quote, unquote, overeducation, sometimes it's just common sense, oh, birth rates. That's the other thing, because the birth rates are lower, not just because more women are educated and more women are doing post secondary and more women are staying in academia, I don't know, that's a weird sentence, even for me to think of to say, but like, thank you men of the internet. It's also that like, we're just choosing not to give birth. And that has nothing to do with level of education. It has to do with the state of the world. It has to do with climate change. It has to do with capitalism. It has to do with poverty. It has to do with where we sit, classwise. It has to do with what our goals are. Like, it's not that we're choosing education over kids. It's not that we're choosing career over kids, we're choosing eating this week, over having dependents. Because also, having a dependent means that you now have somebody who you need to provide for for the next 18 years of your life. If all you have is contract labour, you cannot guarantee that you can care for someone for the next 18 years of their life. If you cannot pay a down payment on a mortgage, you cannot guarantee that you will be able to shelter a dependent for the next 18 years of their life. These are like, there are other things to consider when you think about why birth rates are declining, rather than just you're butthurt because the woman you want to date doesn't want to date you because she said you're stupid. And you can be stupid for other reasons. Just saying.

Prakash  12:19  
You definitely can. At the risk of going off topic, I want to make a quick pivot to talk a lot more about this whole, like birth rate situation, and child rearing. Because, because I think this is the thing that like, for for reasons that men want to have children, but don't want to take care of them. 

Kristen  12:38  
Thank you.

Prakash  12:39  
They want to rely on, you know, their like girlfriend, wife, spouse, whoever to do that for them. But yeah, it's like, it's a global phenomenon, that when literacy rates rise, that birth rates decline, and that the age of people giving birth also also increases. So people are older and having fewer kids. And this is often because when you have high literacy, when you are able to access education, you're able to just have more choices, that comes with having bodily autonomy. Either that like you were able to, like grew up in a situation which you had autonomy, maybe because of like a wealth or class or whatever. Whiteness, etc. Or because you're able to, like attain that through education, like, Okay, I was able to be, you know, the first in my family to like, attain a college degree. Now I have like a specialized skill, I'm making more money, I can support myself, I have choices. I don't have to rely on a man to provide those things for me. And then now I don't have a choice except to, you know, do what he says because he is a provider like. Education allows women especially people of colour, like people who are in like more, who are, yeah, historically have who have had fewer choices, to have those choices. And like this is why a lot of women pursue higher education not only at the undergraduate level, but at the Masters in the PhD as well because it affords them, yeah, more opportunities in theory, more choices, more autonomy over over what they do, which was historically not available to them. 

Prakash  14:27  
And I didn't double check this but in the States, I'm pretty sure that Black women are the highest percentage of degree abstainers. And so I'm assuming that Canada is like something similar, but we do see overall that like, there are more women pursuing higher education at the university level than men. And this could be for a lot of reasons also, because like, like, different kinds of work that do not require a degree but that are high paid skilled work like construction, like the trades, are also tend to be more available to men than women. Things like pursuing a military career, again, often lend themselves more toward men, because the culture of those institutions are extremely misogynistic. You know, just look at all of the, like current ongoing cases in the Canadian courts now with, with like, the Armed Forces officials who are facing several allegations of sexual assault from their, you know, the people that they're responsible for. It's fucked up. So again, like, yeah, why wouldn't? So yeah, so then it becomes the case that like, formal education within the university system becomes like, kind of the most obvious way in which women can obtain high skills to pursue better paying jobs, to have choices over their lives.

Kristen  15:57  
But it's also what we've been taught. Like, Western culture has taught us that you continue to pursue education so that you can continue to have more choice. So like, that's literally what they're doing. You've taught us to do this. And so we're doing it.

Prakash  16:20  
And it's like, if you're insecure, that your girl knows more than you, that's fine. I personally find extremely attractive when people know things about things that I have no idea about. 

Kristen  16:29  
It makes for interesting conversation. 

Prakash  16:30  
Yeah, otherwise, we're going to talk about, you know, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City like this is... 

Kristen  16:34  
I mean, there also needs to be space for conversations like that.

Prakash  16:38  
Get you a girl who can do both. I'm telling you, all these overachieving women can do both. Why?

Kristen  16:44  
Because people contain multitudes. I'm also just like, these same men who are saying that, like, women are overeducated now and therefore not attractive to me. Like are they're like, that's very misogynist. Yes. But I'm like, Are there equivalent women on the internet being like, men are so overeducated, and so over whatever and therefore unattractive to me?

Prakash  17:08  
Of course, because as soon as a woman declines, the male gaze or, you know, just assumes men, it's it, you know, causes a whole uproar, like, how dare you?

Kristen  17:20  
But it's like, I don't exist for you. I exist for myself. I don't know. I don't know.

Prakash  17:27  
I don't think men overall know that to be true.

Kristen  17:29  
Well, I hate to... Hate this, but I'm gonna say it. To be fair, society has taught them that women do exist purely for their gaze and their entertainment and their whatever they want.

Kristen  17:49  
Not to say they should continue to do it. But I also am like, not surprised when they do because it means that they haven't done that critical thinking necessary to think about why they think that when women wear shorts, they're wearing shorts for them. Instead of, you know, it's hot outside.

Prakash  18:07  
Yeah, speaking of the clothing, though, there's a great Oscar Wilde quote, that is, you can never be overdressed or overeducated. 

Kristen  18:16  
Yeah. But that's, I think that brings back to like what we were saying at the very beginning, like, who is setting the benchmark for what educated is, because everybody's just educated. I don't know. Because also, there are different types of education. Like I am book smart in theory, but hand me a two by four and like, a screw, and I have no idea what to do. You know? There are different types of education. There's different types of knowledge. So when you say someone is overeducated, what type of knowledge are you speaking about? Are they more educated than you in a type of knowledge that you wish you had, because then it's jealousy and you need to go back to school. Or you need to go and learn what they learn or engage them in a conversation about the thing that they know more about than you. And then you will also gain that type of knowledge.

Prakash  19:17  
Also, like some things are just like also like not for you to know.

Kristen  19:19  
Facts.  

Prakash  19:19  
And that's fine like... 

Kristen  19:20  
Facts. That's also true. 

Prakash  19:21  
There are a lot of things that I'm just like, are not in the realm of my understanding, you know, like, everything to do with like, computers. I just don't understand. Like, I understand it when a computer is on. And like, the electrons are flowing and whatever and like this, like helps information move or whatever, but like, how does like something like a USB that is not literally charged, how does it keep information? Like I don't, I still don't understand. I never I've Googled this many times being like, yeah, how does the USB work? How does like, how can I recover, lke, on my hard drive from an old MacBook? How can I do this? And I'm, like, watched I watched the video explaining it and I'm just like, Okay, I see the effects that it has. I see that it did the thing that I wanted to do. I don't understand how, like, it's still magic to me. 

Kristen  20:02  
Okay. 

Prakash  20:03  
And I was like, you know what? It's not for me to know. But there also, there are but this is to say that there are kinds of education that are truly not for me to know, like, you know, lots of Indigenous based like land based pedagogy programs. I'm like, this is truly like, this is not about me. It's not for me, like...

Kristen  20:19  
That's a really good point, though. Because the same person who's going to say that somebody is overeducated is the same person who's making this other person's level of education, their business. It's not your business.

Prakash  20:31  
So I think I found the tweet that really ignited this whole discussion. It's a tweet from this guy called Matt Gates. I guess he's famous. I'm not sure for what. But he has 1.3 million followers.

Kristen  20:43  
Does he have a is he certified? Is that what they call it? When there's that like blue check? 

Prakash  20:49  
Verified? Yeah.

Kristen  20:50  
Oh, see, I don't even know.

Prakash  20:53  
Certified. Certified douchebags. Or is that misogynistic? Certified asshole. That's, that's the neutral. Everyone has one. You're welcome. Also, did you know that so... 

Kristen  21:07  
No.

Prakash  21:07  
...all species...

Kristen  21:08  
Pause. Pause. Okay. Pause. Because you found a gender neutral insult, and I very much appreciate that.

Prakash  21:16  
You're welcome. It's called it's called DEI, Kristen. Get into it.

Kristen  21:23  
Oh, that's so great. Thank you for that. Yeah.

Prakash  21:26  
You're welcome. Yeah, I was gonna say that there is gonna cut this but just for just for you, just for you to know that basically, when any kind of like animal forms, it always has, like a first like hole that forms in its development, which is either its mouth or its anus. And I am like 85% sure that humans are born.. 

Kristen  21:47  
Ass first? 

Prakash  21:47  
...anus first,yeah. 

Kristen  21:48  
Haha, that's great. 

Prakash  21:51  
I'll double check this. If it's correct. I'll leave it in. If it's not correct, I'll take it out. So yeah, we're all assholes. 

Kristen  21:57  
That's funny. 

Prakash  22:00  
So yeah, so he's tweeted on May 4, "how many of the women rallying against overturning Roe or overeducated..." 

Kristen  22:09  
Whoa.

Prakash  22:10  
"...millennials, who sadly returned from protest to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no Bumble matches?"

Kristen  22:17  
Hold on, hold on. So now my fists are clenched. Because this isn't just like an incel women aren't attracted to me thing. This is now also a like, you shouldn't have rights, like you shouldn't have bodily autonomy. So not only should you not be smarter than me, you should also not have autonomy over your own body and person. And also, let me insult you and say that in addition to you, feeling like you have the right to speak out and feeling like you have the right to decide what happens to your body. You also are going to go home alone now, because you want both of those things. What kind of incel bullshit? I... Okay. Okay.

Prakash  23:15  
Okay, I was thinking about why this name was familiar to me. And I remember now. 

Kristen  23:19  
I'm already leaned back in my chair. So like, I don't know what else you could say to me today.

Prakash  23:24  
Yeah, buckle down. So one of the top comments, someone writes, figures, Matt Gates likes his women undereducated and under 18. And I was like, wait, this reminds me of a TikTok that I saw.

Kristen  23:35  
Oh, no. 

Prakash  23:37  
And, um... 

Kristen  23:37  
But no facts. This sounds Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Prakash  23:40  
Yeah, yeah. You also know who this is. Because he is. He was a part of like, Trump's whole thing. And he is a US representative for Florida's first congressional district. 

Kristen  23:52  
Of course, he's from Florida. 

Prakash  23:54  
So he is married. He looks really... His face looks like it has been like...

Kristen  24:01  
Oh, god.

Prakash  24:02  
...like molted cottage cheese. 

Kristen  24:02  
No. Why are you no, I don't want to see. It's okay. It's okay. Why are y ou torturing me in this way? 

Prakash  24:09  
He's... 

Kristen  24:09  
For context. He not only showed me the picture, he pushed it closer to the screen and then held it there. The entire time I was protesting. 

Prakash  24:18  
I just needed you to know.

Kristen  24:19  
I did know. And then you forced me to like, burn it into my brain.

Prakash  24:23  
But yeah, basically in 2020. During COVID, he had, okay I'll just read this verbatim from the Wikipedia. 

Kristen  24:29  
Okay. 

Prakash  24:29  
So yeah, in late 2020, the Justice Department opened its investigation of Gates for allegedly sex trafficking, the same 17 year old girl in 2017. And whether he had violated federal sex trafficking laws by paying her to travel with him across state lines. I mean, if I can, if I can find it, there is basically the, I think it was like an older sibling or a sibling of the 17 year old at the time, who was like, romantically involved with this representative of Florida who was in his late 30s. Yeah, kind of exposed him on on TikTok being like, yeah, he was like, he knows our parents, but was essentially like I'm grooming my younger sister and... So all this to say that he has a problem with people, women who are over, overeducated. And over eighteen. 

Kristen  25:18  
And what he means is he has a problem with women who will see him for what he is, which is a fucking predator.

Prakash  25:26  
I guess we can talk a little bit about this whole, like Roe v. Wade situation. I've been seeing a lot of people, Canadians being like, Oh, thank God, we live in Canada, blah, blah.

Kristen  25:34  
No. Do you know how many conservatives back anti-abortion everything? What do you mean?

Prakash  25:40  
It continues to be a part of, yeah, a lot of like, campaigns continue. 

Kristen  25:44  
Yeah. 

Prakash  25:44  
You will see them as we approach it, like election season. 

Kristen  25:47  
I'm so tired. "I'm so thankful we live in Canada". It's just as bad here. We're just quiet about it.

Prakash  25:52  
And if you live somewhere that's like not Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, it is still extremely difficult to access abortion, just because it is legal. I saw this tweet by Nora Loreto, I'll post it, if I can find it but she explains it that like, it's not like it's abortions are legal, the same way that like heart surgery is legal. Such that it can be performed, if there's the correct like setting equipment if a doctor wants to, is available, etc. And sometimes those things are just not there. Often they're not there. Being from an urban center, like I've known people who have gotten abortions. It hasn't seemed to have been like that difficult from the people who have shared experiences with me. But, yeah, you're not in these places. Yeah, Canada is it's not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, Canada and the US have a different kinds of like legal systems, because healthcare is delegated by the provinces, they can kind of also do whatever they want, but we shouldn't take whatever, like the legal framework of abortion is being legal. Like the legality versus availability is a question that, like we need to continue to interrogate. 

Kristen  27:06  
Yeah. 

Prakash  27:06  
And like, abortion activism, like continues to exist, because it is still extremely unavailable for many Canadians. There's still people who protest outside of clinics that provide abortion services. Yeah, there's a there's a really interesting chapter about it in Nora Loreto's book, Take Back the Fight, that like explains like how a lot of feminist organizing was centered around abortion, and then once they got the abortion right, people disappeared, but then abortion still did not become available to most women. And they still are not. So yeah, it's not enough to be better than the US because it's, it's bad here.

Kristen  27:44  
Like the bar is so low. The bar is so low. And I'm just like, truly just concerned about all of the people who can give birth who... Like abortion isn't just about going somewhere to get a procedure done. If people don't want to be pregnant, they will find ways to not be pregnant. And I'm just like, that really is where my concern is.

Prakash  28:15  
Because again, if you're rich, the legality of it doesn't matter. 

Kristen  28:18  
The legality of if it never mattered for you, because you had money to find a way. I'm thinking about like all the people who don't have like, they didn't have money to find a way but found a way. And then things were legal and available. And so they found a safer way. And now that safer way has been taken from them.

Prakash  28:34  
I saw like the Marxist critique, that's it's like, you know, yes, like, conservatives understand that, like, banning abortions, like will result in people being harmed through trying to have unsafe abortions. That like the children who are born because of a lack of access to abortion will like not live good childhoods. Like, you know, that these people will continue to not have access to like adequate medical care, housing, etc. Like, they know this. But the point of restricting contraception or abortion, or any of these things is to is like part of the state's goal of its own reproduction, that, again, going back to this like declining birth rate situation, is that conservatives think that this is a crisis because there needs to be a certain young population base in order to be able to like produce enough in the economy to take care of the elderly or to maintain the kind of economic structure that arose in the baby baby boom era in which there were like, a huge influx of young populations that were really able to contribute to like, a flourishing American economy, and they want to maintain that even though it was unsustainable then and now clearly. And they don't want to supplement this population shortage with foreign... 

Kristen  30:00  
It's that piece. It's that they don't want to supplement. They don't want, like they could very easily change their expectations. But they don't want to.

Prakash  30:11  
And again, they're insecure because to be able to migrate to the US or to a Canada or to the UK or Australia or New Zealand, you need to be highly educated.

Kristen  30:20  
For them to say that your education isn't good enough once you get here.

Prakash  30:24  
Oh, yeah, you know, you need to have the doctorate. But you can't be a doctor. What you can do is, you know, do laborious manual labor. But yeah, we could, I could keep talking about this, but you should probably stop because it's been a minute. 

Kristen  30:39  
And this wasn't even the original topic.

Prakash  30:42  
Yeah, sorry about that. All this to say, yeah, don't ever, don't let anyone belittle you for quote, unquote, being overeducated. But also if you had a lot of degrees...

Kristen  30:52  
Flaunt them. You earned it.

Prakash  30:53  
...but that doesn't mean that you know anything about anything. 

Kristen  30:55  
No. Oh, that means it means you know, a very specialized knowledge in relation to your degree. 

Prakash  30:55  
Yeah. 

Kristen  30:55  
You have a type of knowledge now, great. You don't have all the knowledge.

Prakash  31:08  
Yeah, listen, regardless of gender, regardless of education, diplomas, etc. we all were assholes, and can also be them.

Kristen  31:17  
So I was gonna say I'm still an asshole. I don't know.

Prakash  31:22  
Anyway, apologies slash you're welcome for this episode. And we will see you in two weeks for the next one. Stay in the know.

Kristen  31:31  
Bye.

Kristen  31:39  
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