TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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I'm Christina Rowns, and welcome to Labeled This Week, a new mini-episode series for witches, bitches, and sex.
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When I started this podcast, I started with the database.
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Every time I saw a woman get called hysterical, emotional, unstable, a liar, etc., I logged it.
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Who said it, who it was about, and what happened next.
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But I can't keep up.
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It's happening every day.
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By the time I finish researching one story, I have five more to add to the database.
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So from now on, every week, alongside our regular episodes, I'll be doing a mini episode called Labeled This Week.
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It's a quick rundown of who got labeled in the last seven days and the question I always come back to.
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Since this is the first one, I'll start by catching you up on two ongoing cases.
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A quick heads up though.
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This section discusses sexual assault and the deaths of children.
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First up, Cornell University.
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Last month, a former Cornell student filed a lawsuit under the name Jane Doe.
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She alleges that members of the Chi-Fi fraternity drugged and sexually assaulted her in October 2024 when she was 20.
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The men named in the suit deny any wrongdoing.
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She reported it to campus police that year, but no charges followed.
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Now the district attorney has reopened the case, but he's also said her lawsuit differs dramatically from her original statement.
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But her attorney disputes that.
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And that's the label.
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Inconsistent.
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When a woman reports an assault, the scrutiny often goes to whether she told it the same way every time.
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Not to the people she accused or the people who investigated.
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And here's what that label is covering up.
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NBC News reported that campus police interviewed witnesses and received anonymous tips in 2024.
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And the district attorney didn't review that information before deciding not to charge anyone.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James has now taken over as special prosecutor.
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This Tuesday, Cornell's trustees announced that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates will lead an independent review.
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And Doe's attorney says she's getting threats to drop the lawsuit.
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So who benefits when she's labeled inconsistent?
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Everyone whose decisions would otherwise be examined.
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The men she accused, a university facing a lawsuit, and a prosecutor whose original call is now under scrutiny.
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Our second ongoing case is one that's divided people since the trial began.
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Lindsay Clancy is a former labor and delivery nurse in Massachusetts.
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In January 2023, she killed her three young children.
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That isn't disputed.
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Her defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and wasn't criminally responsible.
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Prosecutors argued she knew what she was doing and acted deliberately.
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The trial ended in a mistrial on September 4th.
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According to the jury for person, 11 jurors were ready to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
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And one refused.
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On October 1st, the judge denied the defense's motion to throw out the case.
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So a retrial is still possible.
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And I'm not here to decide her criminal responsibility.
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I'm here to look at the labels because this case has two competing ones that have divided the public since the trial began.
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Is she a monster or a woman who was severely ill?
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Who benefits if the label is monster?
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A monster is a one-off.
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She doesn't make us ask harder questions.
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But if she was ill, then we have to ask why a nurse surrounded by medical care didn't get the help she needed.
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Postpartum psychosis is rare, treatable, in a psychiatric emergency.
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And experts say women often struggle to get diagnosed.
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Monster lets that system off the hook.
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And I'll keep updating you if new information comes out.
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Now to this week's new labels.
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Starting in South Carolina, Dr.
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Annie Andrews is a pediatrician, a mom of three, and the Democratic nominee for U.S.
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Senate there.
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On Monday, President Trump used a version of an anti-trans slur three times in a true social post attacking her as a play on her name.
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Andrews isn't transgender, and that's the point.
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The slur wasn't meant to describe her, it was meant to attach a label her opponents think voters will reject.
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And it does double duty.
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It targets her and
Load full transcript
it tells every trans person listening that their identity is an insult.
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And who benefits?
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Trump has told us how he sees this issue.
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Last month he called trans issues one of our great sound bites of all time.
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And CNN reports his allies are worried about this race.
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A slur turns a candidate into a culture war target before voters ever hear what she's proposing.
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From one Senate race to another.
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In Florida, State Representative Angie Nixon is the Democratic nominee for U.S.
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Senate.
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At an October 1st rally in Lakeland, Vice President J.D.
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Vance called her a socialist and told the crowd, quote, then get the hell out of here.
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You don't belong in America if those are your views.
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End quote.
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Nixon is a black woman born and raised in Jacksonville.
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The label is explicit.
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She doesn't belong here.
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Vance tied it to her politics, but once she's cast as someone who doesn't belong in the country, her proposals don't have to be debated at all.
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And who benefits?
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Anyone who'd rather not argue with her on her merits.
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And from politics, we go on to Hollywood, where the labels came with a price tag.
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On Tuesday, the New York Times published an investigation into at least five women who say professionals were hired to destroy their reputations.
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And the details are coming out in court.
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In leaked recordings published by the Hollywood Reporter, digital fixer Jed Wallace says ordinary insults aren't enough when targeting one woman, producer Amanda Ghost.
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In recordings about another woman, Jessica Safati, he discusses building a narrative to establish her as a liar.
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Wallace and others involved have either denied wrongdoing or not responded to the reporter.
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So who benefits?
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This one is the easiest answer of the week.
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Whoever is paying.
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If these lawsuits are right, labeling women isn't just an insult, it's a service and it's for sale.
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Ghost's defamation case against actress Rebel Wilson is reportedly scheduled to go on trial in January 2027, and we'll be following it.
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Before I go on, one number to close on.
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34%.
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In a Gallup survey released last month, about one in three US women said a healthcare provider had minimized or dismissed their symptoms in the past five years.
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It was the most commonly reported negative experience in the survey.
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So who benefits from labeling her anxious or dramatic?
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Maybe a rushed system where it's faster to apply a label than to run a test.
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She's the one who pays for it.
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And that's labeled this week.
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Every week the names change, the questions don't.
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Who applied the label?
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What evidence supports it?
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And who benefits when it sticks?
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If you see it happen, send it my way on Instagram at the.wbs dot pod.
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Once again, that's at the t-h e dot wbs dot pod po d or at the wbspod at gmail.com.
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See you next week.