Transcript | Ep. 129: Disinformation + Digital Blackface

Cristen: I'm now envisioning like a new, like, rebranding campaign since Austin is now, like, not weird anymore. Let's let's keep the Internet weird.

Bridget: Yes! it should be weird. It should be fun. It should be artistic. It should be creative. It should be avant-garde. It should be all of those things that made it a draw. Like when I log onto Twitter, I'm just like, oh, what enraging crap am I going to see today? That's not that's not what it should be.

Caroline: Fucking capitalism.

[theme music]

Cristen: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike. I’m Cristen

Caroline: I’m Caroline. Before we get into today's episode, we've gotta thank all the unladies who've given Unladylike some love over on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't already, please please use your internet powers for good. Rating and reviewing the show makes a HUGE difference to help signal boost it.

Cristen: Someone else we’ve gotta thank is today’s guest Bridget Todd. We appreciate her coming on the show, of course — and for what she’s doing to help make the internet a better place. Which is no small feat!

Caroline: Oh yeah. C, you and I have known Bridget for a while, and for y’all who don’t know her, Bridget is a digital activist. By day, she works for the gender justice advocacy group Ultraviolet. And in the little spare time she has left over, she’s also the host of the podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Cristen: Through that podcast, Bridget set out to debunk the stereotype that the Internet is a boy's club and to show how women, specifically women of color, have always been innovating and organizing in digital spaces. Think: BlackLivesMatter, MeToo, OscarsSoWhite.

Caroline: At the same time, Black and brown women have had to work overtime to protect themselves and their identities online

Bridget: Across the board, black women are disproportionately targeted for things like disinformation campaigns and like lies online. And we are living in a time where it's totally acceptable to just flat out lie about who black women are. You know, there are so many people out there who are ready and poised to believe the worst, especially if it's about people who are underrepresented, people who they already have some sort of negative attitude toward or negative perception toward. They're already going to be willing and ready to believe and spread these messages, even if they’re lies.

Cristen: Today, Bridget's shedding light on how this kind of racist, sexist disinformation works and what tech platforms have - and haven't - done to stop it.

Caroline: She's also sharing the backstory of the very important hashtag yourslipisshowing and why sometimes, the best way to handle disinformation in our feeds is to disengage.

Cristen: But first, we’re traveling back to the dial-up days, when preteen Bridget was first finding her way around the world wide web.

[stinger]

Cristen: OK, so we want to know, do you remember the first time you used the Internet, could you set the scene for us?

Bridget: Oh, my gosh. Well, it was in my childhood home. We got our first, like, those super clunky gray computers that take up the entire desk.

Cristen: Yes.

Bridget: One of those we my dad brought it home in this gigantic box and he set it up. And this room that had been known as the den in my home was now known as the computer room.

Caroline: Yep

Bridget: And I still remember, you know that noise, the like *makes noise* like that noise. I mean, That was the noise of getting connected. And I remember so clearly going on America Online for the first time which you know back then, that basically was the Internet and discovering this incredible thing called chat rooms. I remember it like it was yesterday. So clearly.

Caroline: Well so OK, you mentioned chatrooms. How how did you use the Internet when you first got on there? And and what what parts of it appealed to you?

Bridget: The parts of the Internet that appealed to me first were definitely talking about music and pop culture and movies. You know I grew up in a small town shout out to Midlothian, Virginia, and at the time it felt like I was like this weirdo. You know, I was black. I was part of a black family in a mostly white town. I was like one of the only black people at my school. At the time I didn't know this, but I was sort of coming to terms of what it meant to be queer and owning that identity. So I spent a lot of my life feeling like I couldn't really connect with anybody. And so getting the Internet in my home was the first time really that I felt like I could connect with other people like me, other weirdos. And, you know, it was chatrooms about really niche music or really niche movies or really niche fandoms. Finding the Internet really was this portal to this idea that there was a whole other world outside of my small town and my small school. So that was definitely my first iteration of why I was so excited to be online. That quickly turned into, like cybering and sort of like figuring out sex things. I feel like as most kids or young people with, like, unfettered Internet access, first it's like, oh, music and anime, and then before you know it, you’re somewhere where you maybe shouldn't be. That was definitely the second iteration.

Cristen: In those early Internet days though, did you have any sense that girls and boys like people your own age interacted with the Internet in different ways? Like, did it feel distinctly gendered at all?

Bridget: That’s such an interesting question. One of the reasons why I really enjoyed being online in those days was sort of getting getting the opportunity to sort of play with identity, play with gender, play with sexuality. And so I really enjoyed going online and pretending to be an older boy or like a teenage boy just to see what that experience was like. And so for me, in those days, the Internet is really where gender and all those kinds of identities were kind of just like things you could try on, things you could sort of experience from a different perspective. And so I I think early on I realized that I really did not like the experience of being gendered as a as I as a - at that time a girl on the Internet. And so playing with that identity was like much more fun for me. In my everyday life, I felt very sort of stifled by what it meant to be a girl growing up in the South. And the Internet, I wanted that to not follow me there. I did not want those kinds of stifling feelings or like being put into that kind of box for the sake of my gender to follow me online. So my online experience was very much one where I would log on and be a 16-year-old boy named Colin or something just for the fun of it.

Cristen: What was it like being Colin?

Bridget: Well, it's so funny because people treat you, at least from my experience, people treat you so differently when they don't clock you as being a woman on the Internet. That is true. That was true for me back then as Colin. That is true for me today when I go on Internet spaces with like male avis or male avatars or even just like non explicitly feminine, whatever that means, avatars, it's always the same. And so when I was young, I definitely knew that when you went into a chat room and people thought you were a boy, people treated you very differently. I feel like when I identified as as a young woman, instantly it was sexualized. Whether or not I wanted that or not, it was like just a very different experience. And that experience was exactly the thing that I was trying to get away from in my real life.

Caroline: When Bridget was cosplaying as Colin online, it was harmless. She wasn’t really out to trick anyone. She wanted to get taken more seriously and avoid chat room creeps.

Cristen: But as Bridget has gotten older, the IRL stakes of who we are — or pretend to be — online have only got higher. Which brings us to her podcast, There Are No Girls On the Internet.

Bridget: It would be great if the Internet was this egalitarian place where your identity never showed up, never made a difference, never mattered. But that's just not true. We know that women, LGBTQ folks, people of color, black women, we experience the Internet in very different ways than our white counterparts. And so I feel that our Internet experiences are largely informed by this real misunderstanding of what it is like to be a marginalized person on an online space. And so the title is almost sort of like a private joke with myself, where so many people would have you believe that there are not women and other underrepresented people online when we are there in full force. And so many people would have you believe that it doesn't matter what your identity is online, but we know that's not true. And so I really wanted to have a show that kind of poked fun at this this completely incorrect notion that identity doesn't matter when you go online, because we know that it does.

Caroline: We’re gonna take a quick break.

Cristen: Up next, Bridget shares how trolls are impersonating Black women on social to spread disinformation about COVID vaccines, abortion and … Father's Day??

Caroline: Stick around!

[stinger]

Cristen: We’re back with Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. On the last season of her podcast, Bridget dug deep on disinformation. Specifically, how Black and brown identities are weaponized and victimized to spread lies online.

Caroline: One particular story really stuck with us from her episode called ‘How Black Women Tried to Save Twitter.’ In it, Bridget breaks down how a black feminist named Shafiqa Hudson called out disinformation, how she was ignored, and how ultimately, she was proven right.

Cristen: So, some context. Back in 2014, Shafiqah, who goes by @sassycrass, noticed the hashtag #EndFathersDay trending on Twitter.

Caroline: Shafiqah took a closer look at who was tweeting it out, and she noticed that a lot of the accounts appeared to belong to Black feminists. So, think like, Black women avatars, Twitter bios full of feminist jargon…

Bridget: And Shafiqah was like, oh, gee, I don't really think any black feminists, nobody that I know would ever actually be advocating for for canceling Father's Day. That's such a weird thing. And she noticed something else, which is that all of these accounts, which were trying to sound like black women, they just weren't getting it right. You know, they would say things like expressions where it's like that's not the expression. They sounded like white people badly trying to pretend to be black women. The way that she describes it is like “obviously racist word salad,” the way that they would use their language. And so that was her first giveaway, that these were not actually black women.

Caroline: But once the hashtag blew up, the right-wing media made a meal of it. Here’s a cringe clip from Fox & Friends.

[CLIP - Fox and Friends]

Tucker Carlson: Well, it started out as a joke, but the hashtag "End Father's Day" is picking up steam with feminists online and with others in social media.

Clayton Morris: Tweets like "End Father's Day, because it's a celebration of patriarchy and oppression," have been popping up all over the place. Like some of these tweets. Here is from Tasha. She wrote in, "Everyone knows we only need mothers. Why do we even need fathers day? Fathers are useless. Hashtag End Fathers Day"

Susan Patton: Oh, come on. Just more of this nasty feminist rhetoric that they're not just like interested in ending Father's Day - they're interested in ending men. That’s really what...

Cristen: Meanwhile, a Twitter friend of Shafiqah’s, I'Nasah Crockett, did some digging and discovered the hashtag was a hoax. As Shafiqa suspected, anonymous trolls were posing as black feminists on Twitter.

Caroline: Bridget, why do you think that so many people, especially right wing media, fell for the hoax?

Bridget: People who are already predisposed to believing the worst things imaginable about black women, they they're the ones who really fell for it. And I think that we see that all the time. And that is one of the main tricks of disinformation online, is that they really do rely on the worst, like flattening out our our complex identities until they're the worst caricatures of who we actually are. But that's that's their bread and butter. But that's how they spread. There are so many people out there who are willing and ready to believe and spread these messages, even if they’re lies.

Caroline: Shafiqah and other Black feminists on Twitter reported the accounts as fake, but nothing happened.

Cristen: So, Shafiqah took matters into her own hands. She started a new hashtag #yourslipisshowing to identify and stamp out these bad actors. And “your slip is showing” is shorthand for “you’re being messy, and it shows” — like if your slip is hanging out from under your dress.

Caroline: The way it works is simple. When Shafiqah spotted End Father's Day tweets impersonating Black women, she'd retweet them with the hashtag yourslipisshowing.

Bridget: But it makes me sad because she should not have to do that work. Right. And it should not be up to her to to exert this kind of unpaid labor just to keep her online spaces and communities safe. And I think it's such a shame that so often the work of making platforms that we use safer, more inclusive, better, falls to black women, that labor is often unpaid. And we can have Band-Aid solutions. We can have bells and whistles that might help. But until we contend with that fundamental, you know, misogyny and racism at the heart, we're not really going to get anywhere.

Caroline: EndFathersDay was a ridiculous prank compared to what happened in the lead-up to the 2016 election. A Senate inquiry later found that Russian trolls had used fake social media accounts to impersonate Black Lives Matter activists and Black Trump supporters to mislead and polarize voters.

Cristen: Then in 2020, Twitter said it had removed a bunch of fake, inflammatory accounts that were impersonating Black people. You know: the exact same kinds of accounts that Shafiqa was trying to get Twitter to take down in 2014!! But the platform didn't say how many or whether it would crack down on the problem moving forward.

Bridget: And honestly, maybe if somebody had listened to Shafiqah Hudson and all the other women who spoke up when this was first going on years ago when they first spoke up about it, maybe that wouldn't have happened. Maybe they wouldn't have seen you know online spaces as such an easy and vulnerable target to cause this kind of chaos. And so, again, it doesn't really just stay online. It has a real world impact on our democracy and our discourse. And that impact is very damaging.

Caroline: yourslipisshowing isn't going anywhere, either. The hashtag is being used a lot right now to flag antivaxx disinformation being directed at Black Twitter. And that's just one example of how marginalized groups bear the brunt of disinformation campaigns

Bridget: Around when the vaccinations were rolling out, I personally saw so much disinformation and misinformation being targeted at the black community saying don't trust this vaccine. They want to test it on us. Well, that kind of message clearly is meant to play on black anxieties around medical mistreatment. And to be real that our country has a very clear legacy of mistreating black and brown folks are - in our medical systems. And another thing I want to bring up is this idea of Black women being targeted for disinformation specifically around abortion at one of the episodes we did on the podcast, we talked to this amazing woman, Ifeoma Ozoma, who was the first one of the first public policy hires on the platform Pinterest. And she really did a lot of work advocating for Pinterest to crack down on medical misinformation early on, like pre-covid. And one of the things that she found is that there is so much anti-abortion disinformation targeting black women, and they use this very kind of like inflammatory visual rhetoric. So it's like a lot of black wombs using pictures of black wombs where it’ll use like genocide language. It’ll say things like, oh, the most unsafe place for a black a young black man in a black womb, really like harkening on this language of genocide to confuse black women about their reproductive choices. And Ifeoma told me something I thought was so interesting is that nine times out of 10, even though those images seem like they're, you know, you know, black folks talking to other black folks, nine times out of 10, when you actually look at the source of where they came from, it's white supremacist websites or white supremacist people or white supremacist groups. And so they really find ways to confuse and target black women specifically and make you think as if like, oh, this is just like black, the black community having a conversation about our issues when in fact, it's like the origins are white supremacist in nature.

Cristen: So Bridget this is somewhat tangential to disinformation campaigns, but our conversation is reminding me about the everyday racism of digital blackface. So for listeners who might be unaware, could you first just explain what digital blackface is?

Bridget: So digital blackface is when you're - let’s say that you’re on Twitter, you want to have a reaction gif, you're white, but you use a gif of like a black woman reacting to make your point. And so the same way that in real life people put on blackface to to you know make a mockery of black people. It's it’s the same thing online. And so it's this idea that if you are a white person, you should be questioning when you - what kind of gif you use, what kind of emoji you use, whether or not you're trying to kind of use a mimicry of black identity to make your point. And it's very interesting. I think it really forces us to ask some questions about how we show up online that I think are just fascinating.

Cristen: Yeah. So I was wondering if you see any connection at all between that and the kinds of, like, actually orchestrated racist disinformation campaigns, because like you said, a lot of times, digital blackface is a lot of reaction, gifs and things like that, but. Are there common threads or am I overreading?

Bridget: No, I think it's a it's a really great question. I definitely see some common threads. And I think it just goes back to this idea of identity, specifically blackness online. And who feels ownership over that? Who feels like that is theirs? Who feels like they can profit off of that? Who feels like they can use that? You know the same way that you know nonblack people adopted these black personas this like bad blaccent and like stole black pictures to spread chaos in - online the same way that they felt so OK to adopt these black monikers to do that, I think it really is related to what it what it means when somebody uses a NeNe Leakes reaction gif. Like why is that the gif that you feel you need to use to express your point? What are you saying about blackness and how you can borrow from it and use it when it suits you when you're not black, you know? I think I think they are related. And I think when you look at things like for a for a while there was this thing happening online where Instagram models were kind of - I don’t really even know how to describe it. They were like darkening their skin and sort of adopting the the visual markers of black women or maybe even like racially ambiguous women. But a lot of times these women were just white women. And so people were like, hey, what? Like what? Why are you kind of playing with race in this way? Like, why are you darkening your skin? Why are you trying to come off as if you're not a white person? And, you know, if you do that, what is that saying about your what why are you so comfortable to wear the persona of blackness when it suits you, when you feel like it works for the Instagram picture or works for your Instagram following or works for whatever, like reaction gif you're trying to do? I think it is related and I think we should all be asking questions about whose identities and whose cultures we feel okay, just kind of trying on for a laugh or whatever.

Caroline: We’re going to take a quick break.

Cristen: When we come back, it’s time to talk about white ladies spreading lies online.

Caroline: Oooo don’t log off!

[stinger]

Caroline: We’re back with Bridget Todd, host of the podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Cristen: What roles are white women specifically playing in today's online disinformation and conspiracy mongering?

Bridget: Oof how much time do you have?

Cristen: I know! It’s such a - it’s a big question.

Bridget: I mean. Listen, I think that we know that a lot of white women, unfortunately, voted for Trump and are comfortable being agents of lifting up white supremacy and white supremacist ideals, like that's just a reality. And I think that for a lot of white women having something to rally around, like QAnon, right, or like “vaccines cause miscarriages.” I think that having something that makes you feel like you are making the world safer is very motivating for some of these women. Right I think that folks on the left, I feel like for so long, have been able to be like, oh, well, we are the ones who care about, you know, saving kids in cages. We are the ones who care about you know making things safer and better. And I think that for a lot of people, that has made them feel a bit left out because like nobody want - like even people who are like, horrible, I feel like I want to be able to say, oh, I care, I'm doing something good. And so I think things like QAnon, things like antivax. I think it presents a certain kind of woman, this idea that you can traffic in these dangerous white supremacist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic ideals, but still be doing it because you care because, you're trying to save the babies from QAnon, because you're trying to save women from having miscarriages because they were vaccinated. Right. And so I truly do believe that, like, it is a kind of misguided, like almost perverted sense of trying to, quote, spread some good in the world, but in fact, is so dangerous and so damaging. I truly do believe that a lot of these QAnon folks think that what they are doing is a good thing. But they can't see the ways that they've been, like, very cruelly exploited and misled.

Cristen: Do you think that this complicates the - the narrative about how women at large are treated online?

Bridget: Oh, yeah, it's something that I that I struggle with in my own work because. You know, I'm really interested in telling stories about the ways that women have pushed through all the shit that we deal with online to still make art, still shape culture, still do cool shit on the Internet. Right. But what complicates it is the reality that, like so many white women, are the ones who are trafficking in what I know to be like dangerous anti-black, you know, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and disinformation. And so it is it is complicated and I think it can be hard to contend with that, to know that so much of that ugliness is being trafficked and pushed by other women. But again, I mean, you know, the same way that patriarchy doesn't just hurt women, it hurts us all. I think it's like one of those big trips was like white supremacy hurts all of us. You know, misogyny hurts all of us. If you if you've been wrapped up in this idea that you know you need to be pushing X, Y, Z, dangerous anti-black conspiracy theory in order to be a good you know a good little foot soldier of white supremacy, even if you can't see it, you are also being hurt by that. And so it's very difficult. But I try to keep that in mind.

Caroline: Disinformation can be sneaky though! Even Bridget has fallen for it.

Bridget: It happens to us all. So the time that I did it and I felt so sheepish about was - it was this tweet that I saw that was like suicides are up 200 percent since the lockdown started. You know, tweet this and it had a number for like the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, like tweet this to let people who are struggling know that someone is always listening and there are there are resources out there. And I was like, oh, like, great message. Slam that retweet. I hit it, I hit re tweet so quickly, I didn't even think about it.

Cristen: Then, someone replied to Bridget’s tweet and ehhh, not so sure about that. What’s your source?

Bridget: And my first instinct because I'm a human, was to be like, how dare this person call me out? Like, don't they know that I make a show about disinformation? Who the hell are they? And that is that normal feeling. Right? If you've ever been called out online, that is a normal feeling. But the work is like pushing through that to be like, OK, let me think about this for a minute.

Caroline: Bridget did a little digging and found out that in fact suicides had NOT skyrocketed.

Bridget: And I came across this idea that, you know, claiming that suicides were up because of lockdown was not just some, like, innocuous, apolitical position, but in fact, people who were raging against things like mask mandates and lockdowns were using that talking point, like”oh suicides are up, people are depressed,” as a way to push back against lockdowns. And so if we start flooding social media with this maybe not true claim that suicides are up, even if you're trying to help, it actually doesn't help because it helps add to the idea that like, oh, and this is why lockdowns and mask mandates are a bad - bad idea. This is why we need to go back to normal. This is why we should open up the government. And before you know it, you are unwittingly spreading like a political message without even really seeing it. So when I hit retweet, you know I wasn't trying to spread a political message. I didn't think I was like adding to a chorus of bad, potentially dangerous covid takes. I thought I was going to be giving somebody resources, but it actually goes to show, like when we're on social media, I truly believe that we're conditioned to be moving so quickly and that we're conditioned to be like sharing stuff so quickly without even thinking about it, that if you actually stopped and just gave it a minute, and were a little bit thoughtful about about things that you shared, you would see that sometimes things are not as innocuous as you think.

Cristen: Why do you think it's so hard for us to do that, though, like it sounds so simple, like, oh yeah, like take a beat, you know, check your sources, whatever. But it's in practice, it's really challenging.

Bridget: It's been a constant struggle for me. I think it's a lot about instant gratification. There was a version of me earlier in my life where the instant gratification of social media was like a drug, I needed validation, like Facebook was like my validation machine. I needed it. I craved it. ..and on top of that, I know that platforms are designed to reward clicks, engagement, eyeballs and all that happening really quickly. And so it's not designed to reward things like thoughtfulness or slowing down or curiosity. Right. And I know speaking from personal experience, like I had to do some intentional work of weaning myself off of those feelings because I did not feel - when I would get online, I did not feel good about my online experiences. And I also just I didn't feel like a good steward of the Internet. I felt like I was making the Internet a crappier, less safe, less fun place to be because I was moving so quickly all the time. So I think it's just our culture, I think that we live in a culture that rewards instant validation, instant gratification, and platforms are there to, like, get rich off of it and supply us with an endless demand of it.

Caroline: Which is why it was so funny when Twitter for like five minutes, had that little thing that popped up, that was like, are you sure you want to tweet this?

Bridget: Right! Oh, God. Like, whatever Twitter does those little like things are like, oh, we're trying to make people slow down. I, on the one hand, I'm like, OK, I guess that's good. But on the other hand, it's like your whole business model is predicated on people not slowing down. So we know this disingenuous, like your business model thrives on, you know, engagement and chaos and disagreement and hot takes. It doesn't thrive on people slowing down. Like who are you kidding?

Cristen: Are you optimistic about the future of the Internet and online spaces, or should we really just like burn Facebook and Twitter to the ground?

Bridget: We should definitely burn Facebook and Twitter to the ground. I mean, I am an optimist at heart. I still I always still go back to how I felt when I was like 12, 13, that that freedom and that power and that hope that I found in the Internet, that hope that there were other weirdos, even though I was - felt alone in a small town, that there were other weirdos out there like me, like, that felt like a new kind of hope for me. And I believe that there are enough weirdos like that who can think big and think creatively and do some ideating about how we really can build an Internet and an Internet and media ecosystem that works for more people and that is more inclusive, safer, better, cooler and just more fun because the Internet used to be so much fucking fun, y'all. Like it was like the best. I used to race home from the bus stop to get on the Internet and now it feels like such a slog. But I truly believe that there are enough people out there who want to build something better that works for more people, that we can get to a good place like so many people will tell you that I'm being overly optimistic and that is completely fine. But I, I am I am hopeful. And also I think I really see it in like the younger generation. I think the generation that is coming up after me, they are so creative, so funny, so interesting. And they're living through, like, just very unusual times. And I, I have seen so much hope from that generation. And so I truly believe if anybody is going to save us, it's not going to be the Mark Zuckerbergs, it’s not going to be the Jack Dorseys. It's going to be your young cousin on TikTok. It's going to be the young person in your life who's upstairs on her phone, the whole the whole Thanksgiving dinner or whatever. It's going to be the young people who save us, I think.

Caroline: What can I mean, I hear you on the young people. I am also hopeful for the young people. But what can listeners of all ages do to combat online this information and hopefully make the Internet a safer space and more inclusive?

Bridget: I'm so glad you asked. The number one tip I always give when I do like disinformation workshops and trainings is make sure that you are careful to not amplify and share disinformation, even if you're trying to share it, to make a joke of it, even if you're trying to share it because you want to show how ridiculous it is or you want to dunk on it or anything like that. Nine times out of ten, because of the way that algorithms are designed, you're just helping it spread because the algorithm is going to think like, oh, she's sharing this, like people must want to see it. I'm going to make sure people see it. And so never share it. I would say nine times out of ten, you don't even need to engage with it. Focus instead on building out your own little pocket of the Internet where people know they can come for trustworthy, timely, relevant, local information. Specifically if they see you and your page, your Twitter, your Facebook, whatever, as a place they can go to get accurate information, they're going to be so nourished by that accurate content, they're going to be so much less susceptible to bad actors who are pushing lies and disinformation and conspiracy theories. So don't worry about trying to, you know, dunk on every piece of disinformation you see, it's out there. It's best to just let it go. Focus instead on sharing your own positive, accurate information on your little corner of the Internet.

Cristen: You can follow Bridget Todd on twitter @bridgetmarie and on Instagram @bridgetmarieindc. Make sure you subscribe to her podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet

Caroline: You can find us on instagram, facebook and Twitter @unladylikemedia. You can also support Cristen and me by joining our Patreon; you’ll get our undying love plus weekly ad-free bonus episodes, including our recent conversation on plant moms and succulent smuggling!! Subscribe over at patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Michele O’Brien is our associate producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford and Andi Kristins. Executive producers are Peter Clowney, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week...

Tess Barker: As I was leaving that hearing, a woman got my attention and she's like, “Excuse me, are you a reporter? Because I have a story for you.” And she was like, “Are you aware about like what conservatorship abuse is? And it's this really big problem in this country?” And I had this really weird feeling of like, well, that seems kind of like synchronicity, like, why did I run into those people and oh, my God, is this, like, even bigger than Britney? And so I got in the car, and I remember like texting with Babs while I was in the lyft, like “ I think this is like a really big thing.”

Caroline: We’re talking about Britney and conservatorships. We’ll hear from Tess Barker and Babs Gray, hosts of the podcasts Toxic and Britney’s Gram. They are going to break down how an anonymous voicemail they received made #FreeBritney go mainstream. Plus, we’ll hear from Zoe Brennan-Krohn from the ACLU who shares why conservatorships are a disability rights issue.

Cristen: You don’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get Unladylike.