[PREVIEW] Episode 576: The Wife Economy

0:00Absolutely. And you know, later on in this conversation, we're going to talk a little bit about the difference or try to tease out maybe what those differences are between the tradwife and the housewife as these sort of feminine archetypes, I guess, because I do think there's something there. They're related but very different and kind of different approaches towards, let's say, monetization and liberation. But I want to talk about the Mormon of it all first because I don't want to get around that before we get into reality TV because what you said about Mormons being weird is so, first of all, so true. Mormons are so weird and so American in a way that even other even strands of American Protestantism, there's something so, so American about Mormonism

1:00and a lot of it has to do with their, the emphasis on small business ownership, yes, and enterprise, as well as the sort of more like esoteric elements. But what you said about them being conservative in a different way, they're not conservative but they are conservative, but in a different way than you would think of like, Baptist, right? Or like, or evangelicals or whatever. This is not American evangelical Christianity or nobody is doing any kind of like tongue rituals or like covering up in a way that is because the devil is going to get you or something like there's no like fire and broomstone. Although they are, they do have their special underwear. Of course, of course, so we cannot discount the special underwear. Anytime you talk about Mormons, you have to bring that up. But do you know what I'm saying? There is something very, I feel like evangelical Christians, kind of, especially the ladies,

2:03you know, they will kind of like, they'll have like one shoulder out, one leg out and they kind of like tease it. Oh, but I'm conservative or something. Mormons are very different. Yeah, and their approach to all of that is very different. Can we talk about this for a little bit? Yeah, and Mormons have of course, there is now a pretty wide range of Mormons too, of course, right? So you have more what you could call fundamentalist Mormons, who observe the special underwear, which is very real, which comes from the church and which is they literally release it every year. And for women, there's different sizes of strap and all this stuff. And it is quite controlling. But then you have all the way to, you know, these Mormon influencers that we're talking about, you know, you would, they certainly do not wear the underwear in public. And I know for when I interviewed some of these women, it was like, oh, you're clearly not wearing underwear because you're wearing garments that can't support any kind of underwear. So like we've,

3:09which is of course what the new shows are about is new Mormons. So, but I would say Mormonism is interesting because what I meant by it's not so straightforward conservative is Mormonism at its core is a deeply and explicitly patriarchal religion. The man is the head of the household, the cosmology of the Mormon faith, the Church of Latter-day Saints, is that, you know, men are the heads of the household women provide for the family and the household and they grow their families as big as possible so that they can literally ascend and live in heaven forever. So, so it's very serious and and literal. They don't think they're going to like their spirits will ascend to heaven. It's like, no, you're going to go. You're going to wake up and you're coughing and you're going to rise rise up and go go live on these on these other planets, much of which is chronicle in the Book of Mormon. The lyrics are actually really helpful in understanding the Mormon religion.

4:12So, so and then in that in that ascension, the faith is metered out in an incredibly um, meat it out in an incredibly top-down structure that is very very highly controlled by, you know, a group of apostles that's like a tiny group of men, then there's a bigger group of men and then goes all the way down to your church and your ward or whatever. And then in your ward, you are having to really perform as a good Mormon to keep your name in the books to keep being able to do these rituals you have to do. And these are again, the Mormons that actually adhere the most of the religion. But in that aspect, Mormonism is not necessarily culturally conservative as much as it is like controlling to me. Like it's a much more like high control organization than it is. I don't know a more um, a more kind of explicitly conservative um or like past focused religion.

5:16It's actually quite focused on the future, which is why there uh, uh, and we can get into this too, why Mormons and tech have always gone together in a way that I think more other types of conservative religions do not, right? Like Mormons have actually always been part of the American tech world in a way that I think is really under examine. And so that actually is a huge part of why Mormon women became influencers is they were literally more online than their counterparts. Like more people in Utah in the early 2000s got online faster than in other parts of the country because Mormons are so into the internet, um, you know, the University of Utah was part of Arpanad in the 60s. So they literally built the internet along with Silicon Valley and other parts of California. We just don't talk about it as much, but they are very into hardwiring the future than now they're into the cloud. And and there are Mormon, you know, tech, um, evangelists who um, really believe that the way they

6:20will ascend to heaven is through the cloud. So all of that basically, yes, physically. Yeah, we will when we when we are digitally uploaded to the cloud that will that will also be how they immune with sort of our true nature. Yeah, they must love the idea of like uploading oneself to like a silicon substrate. And there are Mormon transhumanists who are like really prominent in that movement. In that movement. So like again, all of that does not say Scientology. Yes, yes. They don't like that, but yes, yes it is. they