Hey, and welcome through another episode than nonprofits. You know, sometimes people
only open their mouths just to change feet, and Cynthia is going to lead
us into a story about one such person who had to change his feed several
times in the same speech. Cynthia, Well, the NFL is actually distancing
itself from controversial comments made by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. During a
recent commencement address. Butker criticized Pride Month diversity initiatives and suggested women find more
fulfillment in marriage and motherhood than careers and sparks. That actually sparked widespread backlash.
The NFL stated that Butker's views do not reflect the league's stance on inclusion.
Glad and many others, including the sisters of Mount Saint Scholastica Monastery,
condemned his remarks. Butker's comments, included a reference to Taylor Swift, have
generated sig magnificant criticisms online, you know, from the swifeties, and also
posing an optical problem for the NFL and the Chiefs. The story is actually
from aj Willington from CNN, published on May seventeenth, twenty twenty four.
Now, Jimmy Bucker does seem to have isolated himself with the speech. Can
you elaborate on that. Yeah, well, not only is the NFL distanting,
it's from distancing itself from him, but so is his own team.
I mean, the chiefs have not responded for comment, and it seems as
if they kind of just want this whole thing to blow over. It doesn't
seem that many people are stepping up to support him, at least, you
know, not anybody of any consequence. Of course, we see Christian nationalists
and everybody praising him, the same people who told Lebron James to shut up
and dribble, or other athletes Colin Kaepernick, for example, who have something
to say. You know, they're not taken seriously, they're not revered,
right, But Butcker's being revered by usual suspects. In any case, many
people are distancing themselves, especially members of Catholic organizations. Particularly I want to
talk about the Sisters of of Sount met Mount Saint Scholastica. You know,
I think this Catholic order of women speaking out against Butker speaks to a larger
picture of women within Christianity not really taking what they've been dealt right, being
told their whole lives being told for generations, thousands of years that they are
subordinate to men. Standing up to this kind of rhetoric is truly I think,
uh, you know, enlightening. I think promising is the word I'm
looking for, And so that was what stood out to me. Cool Eli,
do you do you think Bucker might have been creating straw men with the
speech? Uh? In you could say in a way, so, I
mean he refers to it seems the way I understand what he says is that
he's referring to women having success testful careers as a diabolical lie. And similarly,
somebody that I was discussing this online with referred to it. He said,
He's like, do you really think women are more excited for an Associate
of the Month titled than for a family and kids? And my response to
that is, if you're equating like having a career with being an Associate of
the Month, that either is just a massive straw man to what the problem
is, or it's an honest indicator of his and Butker's opinion about the value
of women in the workforce or in business or the sciences or politics, or
academics or education or medicine, like, do I need to keep like there's
more? Is that enough? There's so many things that women can do.
A pair of young women in high school recently trigonometrically solved pythago the pythagoreaan them
theorem, which for the past hundred years was thought to be impossible, and
to young women in a high school in New Orleans did it. Women can
do so many things that have nothing to do with having a family or kids
or what men want them to do. And that's what Harrison Butker is messing.
Now. He had some pretty unpopular opinions about Pride Month and Cynthia.
Do you think this is just pointing out the clash between outdated and religious ideas
and modern day progressivism. I think that Butker is very much so stuck in
the fifties with his particular adolism. You know what he said about, you
know, the LGBTQ community, basically saying that, you know, Pride Month
is labeled as a deadly sin, and also even talking about like, you
know, how diversity and equity initiatives are just like you know, wait,
wait, what what is deadley about pride? That's a good question. I'm
starting to catch off. But that's just such a strange because that's such a
strange thing to say, I'm sorry, God, No, No, you're
fine. No. It is like, you know, I think that one
of the things that a lot of a lot of like you know, fundamentalist
Christians and he even maybe some Catholics actually do. It's like, you know,
do this equation that you know, homosexuality in of itself is a deadly
sin, right, but you know, you know, the Bible only addressed
this homosexuality like six times, you know, and that's like between the Old
Testament and New Testament, that's the only time that addresses it. And if
you actually look at the the times that it addresses it, it's less about
the act and more about like you know, some of the the acts that
came behind the act as well as far as like you know, like let's
say, for instance, like Sodom and Gomorrah Solimon Gomora was not necessarily about
you know, men having sex with men. Sodom and Gomora was more so
about violence that was actually being wrought against the people that were in that area
at that time, and that's why God decided to go ahead and get rid
of it, you know, so this, so this whole thing about deadly
sins and people actually just celebrating who they are as just like, you know,
something that's completely diabolical, is just absolutely heinous and crazy. And I
think that the more that I was listening, because I actually sat through Butker's
speech, and I know that I took the l for all of us,
okay, And as I was sitting there, I'm like, oh my goodness,
I feel like I'm sitting in a really bad episode of Donna Reed from
the nineteen fifties, especially when he started to cry Kelly and Panel when he
talked about his wife now wife that he met in middle school and said that
one of her greatest things that she's ever did is become a mother and a
homemaker. And and to be honest, like, you know what, it's
probably a good thing that I wasn't his wife, because I probably would have
ran up on stage and calls violence. But that's neither here nor there.
No, I would never do that. Maybe, But I digress. So
this thing that he's really saying about, you know, everything that's you know,
supposedly the ideal of how things are supposed to go. As a sister
het white male because that's basically the ideologies that he was saying that should be
women belong in the home. Women are supposed to be mothers. Women's highest
regard, even if you have an education, should be making sure that you
are running a household for your husband and your children, that you know.
Pride month should never be a thing. Diversity, equity, inclusion are all
these different things, right, Like, basically, you want to take the
country back pre civil rights movement, that's what you really want to do.
And I'm glad that there was some distancings that was happening. And even though
he's a fairly young person that still has these really outdated ideologies. You know.
The one of the things that I'm really hoping that maybe his teammates could
do, who may be a bit more woke, is to actually do some
intervention and educate this person on why his rhetoric is false and faulty and dangerous.
Yeah, I agree. I don't want women, any particular women to
get the wrong oppression that we don't think they should be homemakers and mothers if
that's what they want to do. But I don't think that's the purpose of
and I think that's what Bucker was kind of communicating with this speech. Now,
Eli, I think, Eli, Jimmy me. We've all had experience
with working women. Eli, what have your experience has been like? Well?
I well, I mean personal experiences. Something that sticks out to me
a lot, or it doesn't really stick out to me, but I thought
of it when I was reading this article. Is that, like one of
my closest friends just became the general manager at her rock climbing gym. She
has no kids, she's never been married, doesn't isn't in a relationship,
doesn't seem to have an interest in any of those things, and it's perfectly
happy. If anybody asked me, which they didn't, I would say that
she is successful. She seems successful, and it has nothing to do with
being a mother, being a wife, having a family. It has nothing
to do with any man or any other person except her and what she wants
to do. And she became the manager because she just likes to work,
she likes to rock climb. She did those two things together and that's what's
fulfilling for her. I agree with what you said. People who want to
be homemakers, who want to be mothers, who want to be wives and
stay at home. That's perfectly fine. It's the idea of placing a value
judgment on which of those things is right or better or the ought that's when
we start to have issues. Yeah, I really found this really kind of
insulting that he would say this at a commencement speech. Hey, women,
you went to college, you got yourself a degree, But who the fuck
cares? You got to stay home and take care of the kids anyway.
You know what, I have something I want to say to that though,
because well, you know what, I was going to just ask you what
that if you thought this was an inherent problem with religion today and the way
it treats women, Oh, of course, man. Religion has to order
itself, and religion needs victims, right, and it looks inside of itself.
It's like a virus almost, you know, the way that religion kind
of spreads. It needs to kind of infect people. It needs a host,
and it makes hosts out of women, it makes hosts out of children.
It allows itself to stay, to stay in place because it's got people
that can keep the order, keep the order intact. And this is not
something that's going to go away. Women are attacked in every religion, right,
and I've said that before, and I've seen comments on my videos where
people say, Okay, well, what about the religions that are good for
women? Which ones name one, call me and let's talk about it,
because I don't know what you're talking about. And so I do want to
say on that note that you we don't have to say, well, women
can work or be at home. They can do both, right. You
know, society is a little bit harder on women because of their natural child
rearing role that they often take on and having the baby close to them for
longer and earlier on. We as a society need to be able to compliment
them to make life easier for them. But you know what, like you
said, you know, we have experience with working women. I know female
commanders, generals that have children that are incredibly influential to other people that our
country would be worse off if they were not in the leadership roles that they
were in, and religion would systematically remove them from that by subjugating them to
men. So there's my long answer on that. I just want to reiterate
women have children and work, you know, do what you want to do,
don't do any of it, but to kind of pigeonhole somebody to an
either or scenario is just wrong. Okay, now I'm going to try to
drag the drag Cynthia back in again. We have an election to worry about,
we have innocence being slaughtered in other parts of the world, and the
big thing everyone was worrying about for a few days was something that this kicker
said. Do you feel like this was kind of a distraction from things that
were going on? It can be if you let it. I think that
even though that he said the things that he said, and I know that
there's like bigger issues other than the Kickers' ideologies from nineteen fifty two, I
think that it's important to still be able to highlight these things because we're still
just feeling women, especially disparities when it comes to how we show up in
workplaces and still having to balance homewise. I was listening to an NPR story
today about childcare and about how expensive me going through that right now? Oh
gosh, I know. And it's still the women who take the brunt of
childcare issues and making sure you're paying for it, oftentimes trying to work additional
hours and things of that nature in order for you to afford it. And
it was even reported that childcare is oftentimes coming up as twenty percent of a
person's income instead of maybe being six or seven percent, which it ought to
be. And you could and that's a lot of attributing factor, right,
And it's not to negate anything else that's going on in the world that we
should be very much so aware of speaking up about being an ally to those
who are experiencing suffering around the world. I'm very conscious of that, but
I also have to be conscious of the brunt of the burden that is being
placed, especially on women themselves, when it comes to having to walk this
line of making sure that if you are a parent, that you're the best
parent in the world, that you're keeping a roof over your head. And
also, you know, we had a very long tradition of people working,
like when you are in a multiple generational home, or even if you are
in a two parent home where both parents are working versus just one parent actually
going to work in one parents staying at home, a lot of times that
is not reality, that's not tenable, And especially like when you are looking
at the cost of being in different cities around the United States, and how
you have to keep up a certain you know, income level in order for
you to afford things like food, shelter, transportation, insurance, et cetera,
et cetera. And you know what, and the thing about this particular
guy, Buckker, is that, yeah, you can do that. You
are NFL kicker, you know, no pun intended, who is making millions
of dollars a year. Yeah, you can afford to have kids and your
wife can stay at home. That is not the reality for the majority of
us that are living in the real world. Butker, so I need for
you to actually, like I said, I'm hoping that the Kansas City chiefs
are listening to, like somebody listen to this or listen to like the myriad
of commentary about Buckker's commentary right and really get him into line saying that,
hey guy, the craft that you are spewing is not the reality of life
right now, okay, And you need to go ahead and dial it back
because the people and especially for the people that are coming to our games who
are supporting us, our average working class people, and you need to respect
who they are, right And these are people that and a lot of times
probably don't have our scraping together the money to go see one of these games.
Right. These are people that are working three days a week just to
pay their housing. Then they're working on Thursday to pay for the electric bill,
and then on Friday and they're working to pay the phone bill and the
gas bill, and then they have to go to work Saturday and Sunday to
feed their family or watch the kids for two days during the week, two
or three days during the week while the wife goes out and does it.
So you're right, I don't think he has as much of a clue as
what we're going through in that respect. Yeah, I would totally agree with
that. Now, one of the things that really happened with this, there
was a lot of backlash to the things he said. And I don't know
if any of you looked at what right wing media said about the backlash,
but they turn this not into an attack on Butker, but an attack on
Christianity itself. And I wanted to get I wanted to get everybody's ideas on
that. So Jimmy, let's start with you. Well, I think that
it's easy to play the unoffended card, right when you have somebody that is
a legitimate target that for the reasons that we all just listed would be completely
torn down in an argument over the facts. Right, So you have this
guy who is a clear representation, just through his comments alone, a clear
representation of the socio economic divides in this country and the fact that the people
on top don't really care about the people on the bottom, Right, they
don't really care about the people who are suffering. We can have a conversation
about that, and I can point to Butker all day long and say,
look, this is exactly what people are rallying against when they talk about these
kinds of issues. We can talk about how women are being oppressed, right,
especially by religion, or how women have it harder in society. We
could talk about that all day long as well. But you know what makes
it more difficult is when a group of people get together and say, hey,
you insulted my religion, and and you know they're they're That's the real
distraction, right, that's the real distraction to take take eyes off of Butker,
who was essentially and I'm going to air quote this a godsend UH for
the conservatives and UH and the the Christian nationalists and nationalists in this country because
Ironically, those are the people that were terrified that Taylor Swift was at the
super Bowl because it made them look bad because she was more popular than their
candidate, because she's more popular than a lot of them are. And here
we have this guy who serves that role for them, and we can pick
them apart easily, and they turn around and say, Okay, well now
that's my religion. Uh, and it's just a cop out. Honestly,
Eli, what do you think about this, the backlash that you know,
the right wing media calling in an attack on religion, not on Butcker's actual
speech. I think I agree with Jimmy's last point exactly. They're they're just
and kind of like I've mentioned before, they were kind of just turning it
into something else so that they can protect their religious views. Again, just
so I really, I don't have very much of anything to add to what
Jimmy said. It was pretty succeed it was very extinct. It's very clear
to call it an attack on Christianity. I mean, every time I'm on
it feels like I talk about that graphic with the umbrellas that describes the model
for a godly or a christly marriage with and it always the idea of marriage
and Christianity, or of women in Christianity is that they're subservient to men.
And obviously all of his other things that he's you know, he talked about
during this speech, they're all these ideas of Christianity. It's not that we're
attacking the religions, that the ideas that you have because of it are bad
ideas and we need to get rid of those. If you can have your
religion without the bad parts, sure, but I think you get rid of
the bad parts, don't have the religion anymore because all the good parts we
can get from something else too. Cynthia, we started this segment with you,
and I want to end it with you. I want to give us
some final thoughts before we finish. Yeah, you know, in the end.
But curse speech is just a stark reminder of the persistent class between progressive
values and outdated and his comments have not only alienated a significant portion of the
NFL's women they but also put him at odds with the league striving for inclusively.
You know, the kicker, he really needs to remember that personal beats,
beliefs are just that they're personal, and when you put them in a
public platform, especially in such a regressive way, expect the world to kick
back. No punitent. That was great. That was a great message for
Butker. Now, if you want to watch something exciting, informative, maybe
a little bit controversial, you can now watch AXP twenty four to seven lives
stream channel on YouTube. It's free and it's also free to watch more nonprofits
right here.