Strong Feelings

Latest Episodes:

Feminist Business School with Jennifer Armbrust Sep 05, 2019

Show notes

Can business be a site for radical creativity and social change? Join us as we go back to school with feminist business consultant Jennifer Armbrust.

Jennifer is the founder and director of Sister, a consulting firm that advises companies on bringing feminist principles into business practices. She’s also the creator of Feminist Business School, an online course, and the author of Proposals for the Feminine Economy. We talk to her about what it means to bring feminism into business, what it might look like to build more equitable economic systems, and why she thinks all entrepreneurs should read some Audre Lorde.

Listen to your body’s messages as guidance, instead of seeing your body as an inconvenience to work—which is what capitalism says. Capitalism says, “you could work so much more if you didn’t get sick or pregnant or have to eat or go to sleep!”... So, that’s kind of the first place I work. How do we bring your body back into your business and let your body have some votes on what happens throughout the day?
—Jennifer Armbrust, founder of Sister and creator of Feminist Business School

We chat about:

Why Jennifer let go of the pursuit for “ideological purity,” and embraced bringing her feminist backpack into the weeds of capitalism instead
How our culture of overwork and constant pressure to produce fails us
Why listening to your body, not just your to-do list, is a feminist act
Why fear is what keeps people—and companies—stuck
The importance of “tinkering”—using small shifts to create change
The limitations of “conscious capitalism” in creating equitable futures

Plus:

Sara and Katel talk about their own successes (and...not-so-successes) bringing their feminist practices into their work
Why having a woman in charge doesn’t make a business feminist
The problem with individualistic “go get yours” women’s empowerment messages
White feminism in history: how Southern white women’s slaveholding helped secure their economic future

Photo credit: Aubree Bernier-Clarke

Funding Abortion with Seneca Joyner Aug 29, 2019

Show notes

Abortion rights are under attack across the country—from “heartbeat bills” aimed at destroying Roe v. Wade to “crisis pregnancy centers” that lie to pregnant people. But Seneca Joyner knows we can fight back—by organizing and paying for abortions.

Seneca is the manager of community organizing at Women’s Medical Fund, the oldest and largest abortion fund in the country. She’s also a Muslim, an anarchist, a parent, a historian, and...a joy to talk with. So listen up for a deep dive into abortion rights and access, what’s happening legally right now, and why Seneca is 1,000% sure that we will win.

Our average pledge at Women’s Medical Fund is $128. And we often talk with people about that because what that means is that before folks call us...they have pooled their resources to bring money to the table, but they’re short, on average—for this extremely safe, regular medical procedure—less than $130.
—Seneca Joyner, manager of community organizing, Women’s Medical Fund

We talk about:

Why organizing for abortion rights is just as crucial to raising money for abortion care. “If we are not organizing ourselves and our communities to ensure abortion access...abortion will be so heavily criminalized that it won’t matter that we have half a million dollars to give away. It will be impossible for folks to access care for any reason.”
How black women’s real lives aren’t represented by the dominant narrative. “I grew up in the eighties when the dominant discourse was that... black women were literally ruining the black community. And then I looked around and I saw myself, but I saw my mother and her friends. They were so joyful.”
Why crisis pregnancy centers are really anti-abortion centers—and their goals are to waste your time. “When people decide to have an abortion, they are resolute about it... And a way that our abortion opponents have hit on that has been extremely successful is that crisis pregnancy centers juuuust make it—they’ll add another week or two weeks in the ways that they obstruct people from actually finding a clinic.”
How Muslim faith and abortion advocacy fit together. “I was more able to live not only my life as an abortion enthusiast, but also as a person who had an abortion that was a parent that loved people and wanted to see good in the world—it was actually coming over to Islam and doing this work as a Muslim woman that enabled me to do every part of it.”

All the links

The Politics of Feeling Good with adrienne maree brown Aug 22, 2019

Show notes

Are rest and joy part of your daily regimen? Maybe they should be. Author and activist adrienne maree brown joins us to talk about her new book, Pleasure Activism.

adrienne is a black feminist writer and social justice advocate based in Detroit, and Pleasure Activism will change the way you think about yourself, your body, and your relationship to feeling good. She’s also the author of Emergent Strategy, the cohost of How to Survive the End of the World, a doula, a facilitator, and so much more. This is an episode we’re gonna be sitting with for a while.

Because the crises are so big, there’s a real desire to constantly be responding to these crises —there’s never a moment when we can’t justifiably be working because there’s so much to work on... But what ends up happening is we suffer because we don’t have joy, and connection to each other, and connection to our bodies, and connection to family, and pleasure in our lives. And that suffering builds up into exhaustion. That exhaustion leads to a depletion of hope, a depletion of vision, a depletion of innovation under pressure.
—adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism

We talk about:

Acknowledging our bodies, even when things are dire. “No matter what else is happening, we still have this body that is full of nerves that can feel pleasure.”
The power of reclaiming your body and relearning how to feel. “Somatics is a way that you can recreate, regenerate belonging through learning how to be authentic and to feel your feelings in real time, and communicate them in real time, ask for what you actually want and mean.”
Raising sexually liberated kids, and talking frankly about sexual trauma: “If we are comfortable bringing children into a world in which they could be harmed, we need to get much more comfortable discussing that harm and figuring out ways to intervene on it.”
Why we are what we practice—and that means practicing intervention, not politeness, in the face of racism. “If you keep rubbing at the same spot in your clothing, eventually you’re going to change that spot, you’re going to make it a worn-down area. I think we do the same thing ourselves. We wear down parts of ourselves that we actually need to keep sharp and strong. Like analysis, like the part of ourselves that can intervene on racism. We wear those things down by being polite over and over and over again.”

More from adrienne: Website | Twitter | Insta

Plus:

Giving the finger to “posi vibes only”
Reclaiming rest for black bodies with the Nap Ministry
Rest is more than just another productivity hack
The case for not reading your email in the morning

What are you doing for pleasure? Tell us!

All Pleasure, No Guilt with Jasmine Guillory Aug 15, 2019

Show notes

It’s episode 69, y’all—and that means we’re getting steamy. Author Jasmine Guillory joins us for a look at the world of romance novels: why they’re important, what people get wrong about them, and what it’s really like to write them for a living.

Jasmine is the New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding Date, The Proposal, and a new book, The Wedding Party, which just came out in July. Her hugely popular romance novels have earned fans from Reese Withersppoon to Roxane Gay to, well, us!

We loved hearing Jasmine talk about why she centers black women in her books, how she writes about bodies in inclusive ways, and why romance novels aren’t guilty pleasures—but rather a sweet (and sexy!) comfort in tough times.

People of color have always embraced stories that weren’t about us, so we have known that everybody else out there can do it… These are stories that everybody wants to see.
—Jasmine Guillory, author of The Wedding Party

We chat about:

Jasmine’s latest book, The Wedding Party. It’s about Maddie and Theo, who share a best friend and a mutual hatred—till they end up in the same wedding party, and keep “accidentally sleeping together.”
Why so many of us (ahem, Sara) are biased against romance novels. “There’s so much misogyny out there in the world, both external and internalized, that people kind of think that books that treat women as whole people...there must be something wrong with them.”
How pizza and tacos are central to a steamy plot. “I want more women especially to stop thinking of foods as ‘bad’ or ‘good’—to stop thinking of themselves as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ based on what they eat that day.”
Why Jasmine’s sex scenes get super-sexy—without focusing on characters’ body parts. “I wanted them to feel like no matter what they looked like in comparison to the character, there are certain things about your body that will still attract people.”
Writing consent into the storyline. “If you’re writing a story where a heterosexual relationship is at the center of it, the power dynamics between the two people are important and you have to analyze that.”

Plus:

Self-optimization culture is a tool of hyper-capitalist patriarchy, pass it on
Getting your nails done and watching goofy TV is fine, ty
This is now a Jia Tolentino stan podcast. Don’t miss Athleisure, Barre, and Kale: The Tyranny of the Ideal Woman and Trick Mirror
Finding optimism for the fight against gun violence with last weekend’s Presidential Gun Sense Forum and the upcoming Recess Rallies with Moms Demand Action

Faith, Loss, and Fiction with R.O. Kwon Aug 01, 2019

Show notes

What’s it like to spend a decade working on your first novel, become a bestselling author, and still have the first thing people say about you be that you’re “adorable”? We talk with Korean American writer R.O. Kwon to find out.

R.O. is best known for her 2018 novel, The Incendiaries. It’s a story about young love, religious fundamentalism, violent extremism, and coming to terms with the loss of faith. It was named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Atlantic, Bustle, Buzzfeed, the BBC, and a bunch other outlets—and it’s finally out in paperback this week.

It was a dream to talk with R.O. about finding massive success after working on her book for 10 years, loving literature she couldn’t see herself in, and why we all need to stop calling Asian women “cute.”

I was desperately in love with an art form—literature—in which I physically could not and did not exist… the books I had around the house that I loved and still love were Henry James and Jane Austin and Edith Wharton. All these books by very dead people in a world in which—if I were ever to appear in, say, Edith Wharton’s world—I couldn’t have even gone into the rooms where things are happening. Nobody would have talked to me. At best, I might have been a circus attraction.
—R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

We chat about:

Why reworking the first chapter over and over isn’t the best way to finish a novel. “I had twenty pages of the most elaborately reworked prose I had ever read. I threw it all away and then I started again.”
Why including sexual violence in the book came so naturally. “It would have felt unrealistic to me I think in retrospect to have a more sanitized version of a college world. That wasn’t the college world that I knew, at least.”
What it’s like to lose your faith at 17. “My entire life is divided into before and after. And that aftermath has in a lot of ways felt like an aftermath where a predominant note has been grief.”
How she handles online harassment. “Every woman writer I know who is online in any way is getting harassed—that seems to be a part of our online lives, which is so awful. So, there has been harassment, especially anytime I write a nonfiction piece that has anything to do with gender or race or, god forbid, both.”

Plus:

Embracing a shitty first drafts mentality—in writing and pretty much everything else.
How perfectionism makes us feel safe and in control, but actually shuts down progress.
Fuck yeah to saying no! Did you know you can rest even when you're not sick?
Why capitalism hates that you have a body.

Feeling Seen with Naj Austin Jul 25, 2019

Show notes

What does community mean? How do you build one? And why do they matter—particularly for people of color?

We chatted with Naj Austin this week to find out. She’s the founder Ethels Club, a new private membership club and workspace created by and for people of color. And while Ethels is definitely a spot where you can perch with your laptop for a few hours, it’s way more than coworking: we’re talking exhibits from artists of color, mental health programming designed to destigmatize therapy and connect members to therapists of color, and so much more.

The first Ethels Club is set to open in Brooklyn in October—and that launch can’t come soon enough for the thousands of people who’ve flocked to her waiting list (including early investor Roxane Gay). So we asked Naj how she’s making it happen, what it means to build a business and a community at the same time, and why she’s committed to offering more than just a desk and some wifi to her members.

People are looking for spaces where they can feel seen, celebrated, and find like-minded people in real life.
—Naj Austin, founder of Ethels Club

We chat about:

How Ethels Club went from a spark of an idea to an actual business with Naj as CEO
Why Naj got fed up at typical investor meetings, and decided to raise funds from other people of color instead
When and how she took the leap from employee with steady pay and predictability to running Ethels Club
Why she thinks so many people are interested in a space like Ethels, which goes beyond a basic coworking spot
Waiting for Beyoncé to call (🤞🤞🤞)

Plus:

Why you should find a group of your peers to chat through challenges and celebrate wins with—like therapy, it’ll help!
Why Collective Strength (our community in Philly) is for women and femme or nonbinary-identifying folks—and we’re totally OK telling men to skip our events
Fuck yeah to every single beach body out there (except Sara’s sunburned thighs)

Reviving Girlhood with Mary Pipher & Sara Pipher Gilliam Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

When Mary Pipher first published Reviving Ophelia in 1994, she changed the way America thinks about teenage girls and their needs. Now she’s back with a new 25th anniversary edition of her landmark book—this time, published with her own daughter, Sara Pipher Gilliam.

From student debt to school shootings to climate change to digital culture, a lot has changed for teen girls in the past 25 years. But many things remain the same: body image issues, anxiety, sexual harassment and abuse. We sat down with Pipher (who you may remember from the spring, when she came on to discuss [women, friendship, and aging](link to ep)) and Gilliam to talk about what teen girls experience today, what it was like to write a book together, and why it matters so much for all of us that we change our “girl-poisoning culture.”

There’s a strange way in which girls today are never together and never alone. And so the primary building blocks of self—which is to be interacting face-to-face with other people and to be alone reflecting and developing one’s own inner strength—those aren’t occurring right now.
Mary Pipher, co-author of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, 25th Anniversary Edition

We chat about:

How the culture we remember as teen girls in the ‘90s is so very different for teens today
Why depression among teen girls has gone up and down over the years, where it stands now, and what social media has to do with it
How Sara Gilliam went from reading her mom’s book for teen authenticity 25 years ago to co-authoring the update with her as an adult
The ways today’s teen girls helped update Reviving Ophelia for modern times
How it’s too late for parents and teachers to simply tell teens to stop using smartphones, so it’s important to encourage intentionality around social media and device usage instead

Plus:

Why we simply had to get our driver’s licenses immediately
Exploring the love/hate relationship we had with our early jobs
Why you need to wear at least two hemp necklaces for school pictures
Fuck yeah to naps and Netflix breaks during the day

Talk Money, Get Paid Jun 20, 2019

Show notes

Talking about money is uncomfortable for lots of people—including us! But way too many of us aren’t getting paid what we deserve, and if we want to change that, then we all need to start speaking up—for ourselves, for each other, and for a more equitable financial future.

So join us for this deep dive into all things work money: how to ask for a raise, negotiate an offer, and deal with all the weird feels that come up along the way. To help us out, we’ve got clips from our first Collective Strength event, where we were joined by one of our most fave people ever: author and consultant Karen McGrane.

Plus, we asked y’all to tell us what advice you’d give your younger selves about salaries and negotiation, and a bunch of you answered! So we have tips and stories from folks at lots of career stages—all designed to help you feel more prepared to go get paid.

The more you do it, the less emotional it becomes, and the more it just becomes a very transactional kind of thing. The only way that you get to that place is by committing to yourself that you will negotiate every offer that you get... Every time you get a salary offer, ask for $5,000 more. Period. Every single time. And it can be more than that. Maybe you are making more money than that and it’s time for you to ask for $10,000 more or $20,000 more—I know somebody who once negotiated $100,000 more! Your ability to do that, though, starts with you being willing to ask for $5,000 more.
—Karen McGrane, managing partner, Bond Art + Science

If you put some of this advice to the test, we’d love to hear how it goes! Leave us a message at (267) 225–5923, send an email, or find us on Twitter!

We chat about:

That time Sara took on more and more work without a promotion—and ended up way behind financially.
What we learned—and didn’t learn—about salaries growing up.
Why negotiating your salary over the phone is the way to go, even if email feels easier.
Why you should wait as long as possible to talk salary when you’re interviewing for a job.
The “PITA quotient”: Remember to consider what a job will take from you then set your rate appropriately.
Why Karen thinks you should always ask for at least $5,000 more in a salary negotiation (or, hell, maybe $100,000 more).
How to “lovingly plot revenge” when you find out your salary is too low.
Sorting out all the awkward feelings that come along with money talk.

Plus: What we’re doing on our summer vacation, big love to Harvest for supporting us all year, and fuck yeah to already hearing a money success story from a Collective Strength attendee!

In this episode:

Management Muscles with Lara Hogan Jun 13, 2019

Show notes

Did your first management gig come with a small pay bump and zero training? Ours too! But being good at doing a job doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be good at managing people doing it. That’s where our guest, Lara Hogan, comes in!

Lara is an author, public speaker, and coach for managers and leaders across the tech industry. Her latest book, Resilient Management, is brand-new this week. We’re huge fans of the way Lara throws out the playbook of a domineering boss who aims to intimidate. Instead, she’s all about nurturing, coaching, and sponsoring people— so they can grow and reach their goals. And she does it all with empathy, warmth, and humility. Love.

Find [people] an opportunity. Put your name on the line for them, put your reputation on the line for them, and help them get opportunities that they are looking for.
—Lara Hogan, author of Resilient Management

We chat about:

Lara’s new book, Resilient Management!
Why there’s more to managing than just mentoring, and how to start sponsoring and coaching people, too.
What goes into training to be a leadership coach, and how to find the program that’s best for you.
Why moving desks in your office seems like a pretty small thing but is actually often a Big Deal in the workplace, and what that can teach us about humans’ core needs at work.
Why it’s a must to get to know people who aren’t just like you in the workplace and find ways to sponsor them in their areas of interest, rather than defaulting to what you think might benefit them.

Plus:

Screwing up when you’re the boss.
Crying at work.
Still worrying about that weird thing you said at a party in 2004.
Realizing not having a boss is great...until you have no one to help you grow.
Being on the receiving end of a thousand “I want to talk to your supervisor” conversations.
Giving a big fuck yeah to the badass women who rolled up their sleeves and helped us make our first Collective Strength event happen!

Know Your Worth with Becca Gurney Jun 06, 2019

Show notes

What happens when one woman looks around her field and notices the leaders are mostly men? If that woman is Becca Gurney, she starts her own design studio, and creates a place that chooses to hire women, pay them fairly, and find clients ready to do the same.

Becca is a Washington, DC-based graphic designer, art director, and founder of Design Choice. She’s built an agency focused on social justice issues that’s vocal about fair pay and offering work those who are often overlooked in the field—women and people of color.

The hardest part is knowing what you’re worth and then sticking to it. I do a lot of research to understand what my worth should be and a lot of that research involves knowing what men who are doing what I’m doing are charging.
—Becca Gurney, founder of Design Choice

We chat about:

How Becca makes a conscious choice to look for new women and/or people of color to work with on projects, instead of hiring the same people over and over—and why you should, too
The truth behind being asked to work for peanuts all the time—even when you’re the founder of a design studio—and the importance of turning down work that doesn’t value you and your expertise
How to build a supportive network when you’re just starting out as a freelancer
Why keeping politics out of business isn’t required—and can actually help guide your work to new places
How to figure out what your male peers are making so you can be sure you’re being paid what your work is really worth

Plus:

The conference organizer who complained about speakers asking to be paid for their work and got ratioed on LinkedIn for having such a Bad. Take.
Why Eva PenzeyMoog deserves all the stars—and cash—for her talk on designing against domestic violence
Why it’s important for us to share what we make, how we ask for it, and which conferences treat speakers best.
Why Karine Jean-Pierre is the woman we all need in our corner.

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Can business be a site for radical creativity and social change? Join us as we go back to school with feminist business consultant Jennifer Armbrust.

Links:

Plus:

Abortion rights are under attack across the country—from “heartbeat bills” aimed at destroying Roe v. Wade to “crisis pregnancy centers” that lie to pregnant people. But Seneca Joyner knows we can fight back—by organizing and paying for abortions.

All the links

Are rest and joy part of your daily regimen? Maybe they should be. Author and activist adrienne maree brown joins us to talk about her new book, Pleasure Activism.

It’s episode 69, y’all—and that means we’re getting steamy. Author Jasmine Guillory joins us for a look at the world of romance novels: why they’re important, what people get wrong about them, and what it’s really like to write them for a living.

Links:

Plus:

What’s it like to spend a decade working on your first novel, become a bestselling author, and still have the first thing people say about you be that you’re “adorable”? We talk with Korean American writer R.O. Kwon to find out.

We chat about:

Links:

Plus:

What does community mean? How do you build one? And why do they matter—particularly for people of color?

Links:

Plus:

When Mary Pipher first published Reviving Ophelia in 1994, she changed the way America thinks about teenage girls and their needs. Now she’s back with a new 25th anniversary edition of her landmark book—this time, published with her own daughter, Sara Pipher Gilliam.

Links:

Plus:

Talking about money is uncomfortable for lots of people—including us! But way too many of us aren’t getting paid what we deserve, and if we want to change that, then we all need to start speaking up—for ourselves, for each other, and for a more equitable financial future.

In this episode:

Did your first management gig come with a small pay bump and zero training? Ours too! But being good at doing a job doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be good at managing people doing it. That’s where our guest, Lara Hogan, comes in!

Links:

Plus:

What happens when one woman looks around her field and notices the leaders are mostly men? If that woman is Becca Gurney, she starts her own design studio, and creates a place that chooses to hire women, pay them fairly, and find clients ready to do the same.

Links:

Plus:

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