Background reading:

• “Q&A: Lizz Winstead on the Lady Parts Justice Comedy Tour “Exposing Sexist Sh*t Heads”” — Michele Sleighel

Transcript:

00:00:08 Michele Goodwin: 

Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. As you know, we report, rebel and we tell it just like it is. On our show we center your concerns about rebuilding America, about expressing equality for all people, we examine the past as we think about the future, and in this episode I couldn’t be more pleased than to be joined by a live studio audience. 

And with me is Lizz Winstead. You know her as the co-creator and head writer of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, where she forever changed the way that people get their news. She’s also the founder and chief creative officer of Abortion Access Front, and truly one of the world’s leading top political satirists, working anywhere across the globe today. We’re in Washington, DC with a live studio audience. Sit back and take a listen. 

Lizz, what was the impetus for your dive into this space, which you’ve always been committed to, but so many people recognized you first as a comedian, the co-creator of The Daily Show, as being that kind of voice, and many would say, oh, this is just so radically different, drop the pearls, you know, to do this work. 

00:01:39 Lizz Winstead: 

Or clutch them. 

00:01:42 Michele Goodwin: 

Or clutch them. Clutch them. Yes. Yes. 

00:01:47 Lizz Winstead: 

Clutch the pearls. Well, I would say it would be more radical if I was just a comedian who was like, so my husband, or that kind of comedian. 

00:01:54 Michele Goodwin: 

Yes.

00:01:56 Lizz Winstead: 

But because politics was in my blood and I wanted to do comedy that had a purpose, the one thing that sadly was true was in The Daily Show work, in the Air America work, even in the standup work, when it came to abortion it was systems of patriarchy, even in places that we like, really exist, right? And so it was like, are men going to care about that? Like, do we want to do a story about that? I was like, yeah, you do. 

00:02:28 Michele Goodwin: 

Were you concerned that in doing this work that it might…that some of your audience might say I’m not interested in hearing that? 

00:02:38 Lizz Winstead: 

You know what? If I had the luxury of an audience caring about what women thought, that would be a consideration, but the thing that I really realized was standing on stage as a woman or somebody who’s just not a cis white guy is something you have to take. No one is saying, you know what we need is more women of color and women just taking up space and giving their opinions and running things. You know, no one’s saying that, and so if you…I would just get on stage and tell some bullshit jokes and people were like, how dare you be up there? And I was like, well, if you’re going to be mad I’m here, I might as well say something to get you actually mad, and then that would make the most sense. 

So, what I thought was, this is going to be harder, but if I’m out there saying things, there’s an audience that didn’t know people were saying things, so let’s find them. Let’s weed out the people that don’t want me there and bring in the people that want that conversation to be started.

00:03:32 Michele Goodwin: 

All right, so you had a sense of what was going on before so many, and when I think about the work that I was doing 25 years ago, you know, on IVF and women being criminalized and dragged out of hospitals in shackles and chains, the attention paid to that was very limited by people who didn’t see it as central to the cause of abortion, right? Reproductive rights was really just right and about abortion. It wasn’t about justice, it wasn’t about pregnancy, it wasn’t about maternal mortality, maternal morbidity, and any of those things. But we met at an AAF conference that was what…no. We met at Netroots. Was it Netroots?

00:04:17 Lizz Winstead: 

Yes. In Minneapolis. 

00:04:18 Michele Goodwin:

Okay. That’s right. But it was a long time ago. I mean it was way, way before Dobbs.

00:04:22 Lizz Winstead:

Yes. Way, way before I was doing this full time.

00:04:25 Michele Goodwin: 

Exactly. Exactly. Right. So, why were you there and thinking about this stuff?

00:04:33 Lizz Winstead: 

I’m just nosey. I was there because I was, you know, I was doing politics and I was kind of a generalist and I care about everything, but also like, you know, whiteness is something, when it doesn’t have to occur to you, it doesn’t occur to you, right? And so, within it I realized that if I…I got to tell my abortion story a lot, and that abortion story is the one that everybody knows, and it’s not the one that should be centered all the time. But also, I realize that I got to have my abortions, plural, and then I got to walk away and do my life. 

And then when I realized, I did this wild thing, when Wendy Davis was on the steps with the sneakers and I was in Minnesota, I told somebody this story earlier, I did some research and found out that there was all these other cities that were passing, states that were passing these kinds of laws, so I got in a van with my dogs and I drove around the country raising money and visiting clinics, and I found out what clinics needed and what was at stake, and I found out there was a hole in the movement. 

And for me, one of the biggest takeaways I can say is don’t replicate the work that good people are doing. Like, if you find work that no one’s doing, like, there’s not a bunch of comics walking around being like, I can gather 300 people in a room and do a show and through the course of that show, I can center the providers in that town and the activists in that town so that the town comes to the comedy show, but also learns about how they can get involved with the people doing the real work, and a lot of times for my audience, which was, I’m going to say 75 percent white folks, to hear from leadership, Black and Brown women for the first time on stage, and for them to be excited to take that leadership, was something I could offer. Like, I can be the pack mule for a lot of people doing really good work. 

And so, I just wanted to expand that, so I got back to Brooklyn really quickly, got a bunch of comics together, said, I know you’ve had abortions, why don’t we do something to preserve this for everybody so that everybody get on their path to destiny, and let’s do it. And that’s kind of what happened. 

00:06:40 Michele Goodwin: 

It’s interesting because that makes me also think about Renee’s work in storytelling, which became very prominent, and Renee Bracey Sherman is with us everybody, because we are podcasting right now, and the storytelling brief before the United States Supreme Court and the Dobbs decision was incredibly powerful, and she was very insistent about it centering voices of Black and Brown folks, which was not necessarily what everybody was on board with, but she really had to push on that. 

So, as I think about you pushing others to tell their stories, that was also a pre-Dobbs time when people weren’t thinking about sharing because of humiliation, the way that people can be humiliated, the ways in which people can be made to feel guilty. So, did you get support from within the comedian community, if that’s a thing, right away? 

00:07:35 Lizz Winstead: 

It is a thing. I got buy in from a lot of people at first and then some people were scared because, you know, you’re told that your career will be ruined, and I said, well, I hate that phrase, like seat at the table, because we didn’t build that table. People don’t want to sit at that table. Like, smash that table. Maybe this is the table, you know what I mean? 

So, for me it was the same thing where I said, look, take me as an example. Before I started this, I’d been on stage for two years publicly talking about abortion. I’m getting jobs nothing happened to me, so nothing will happen to you. Like, it’s not going to…nothing’s going happen to you. 

00:08:17 Michele Goodwin:

Heads won’t explode. Your head won’t explode. 

00:08:18 Lizz Winstead:

So, yeah, so to be able to work as an example first to show people you don’t have to be afraid was really important to me. So then, when we joined in, you just got more fans and people realized, oh my God, I’m getting more things. I’m telling my abortion story and doing comedy, and people are asking me to do one-person shows in my theater around these experiences and things like that. So, it was really good to be able to lead the way.

And to also do it as an older person with zero fucks to give was really nice, to be able to create this massive pathway where I could just say, just come on, it’s good, because I’m going to peace out and then you all are going to be at the forefront. So, it’s really nice. So yes, they did join and I think, yeah, that’s…yeah. They did. 

00:09:07 Michele Goodwin: 

So, picking up on that, there’s a documentary that was trailing you through some of that. Can you tell us a little bit about this documentary, which is coming to theaters near you all? 

00:09:21 Lizz Winstead:

Yeah. Yeah. So, we had a documentary crew following us for seven years. 

Sorry. Oh my gosh. My family, who really doesn’t understand that I work on Sundays. Can you have brunch now? 

So, it’s a documentary called No One Asked You, and it follows us on the road, and really, it was a real gift to have somebody follow and trail and tell the story not only of the work we do, which we have various programmatic things that are awesome, but to also show that as one organization, we can’t do everything, and part of our mission, which I really love, is that when people come to us and say, here’s what I like to do, if that’s not our wheelhouse, we can give them to Renee, or we can give them to a whole host of other organizations that they might not know about. 

Our media is terrible at talking about this, and when they do talk about it, they have just ceded the conversation to the right for 40 years, so the language they have is bad, it’s stigmatizing, it’s terrible, and so, you know, through the documentary we have this really nice media outlet that tells the story of how people can help.

And then through our podcast, we tell people every week the biggest stories in the news and then feature people like Amy, people like Michele as our go to legal person so that folks can hear that. I love seeing you on MSNBC, but I don’t love seeing you for three and a half minutes interrupted by somebody who is not an expert in the field. But you know what I mean? Like, that is just real. Like, hey, we’re going to have some weird generalist from the Lincoln Project and Michele Goodwin. What’s happening right now? Right? 

So, to be able to have a long form conversation and then have calls to action, tell people what to do, drive them to our activist calendar, all that stuff is…I just want people to not say, I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I don’t feel seen. My abilities are limited. My income is limited. I want them to know that we can get you someplace where you can find community, and if that’s with us…sometimes the community might just be communicating with us and we’ll get you to the place where you can do the activism, sometimes the activism we do is where you can connect with. 

00:11:49 Michele Goodwin: 

Well, one part of this activism has been you all have been shining a camera, quite literally, in the faces of people who’ve been disruptors, who’ve been aggressive, who’ve been assaulters, who’ve committed assaults against people who are trying to get the healthcare that they need, and I’d love it if you’d share a bit about how this somehow got you entangled with the FBI and January 6. 

00:12:16 Lizz Winstead: 

Yes, so through our touring, we go to a town for two or three days because not only do we do shows where we highlight the providers, we also do work at the clinics. We might fix their fences or do their lawns…

00:12:33 Michele Goodwin: 

Put in a prickly bush. 

00:12:35 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah. We do a lot of stuff that clinics can’t get, and then we also create community with the escort programs and the abortion funds and all those people.

And they all were telling us in these relationships about their local anti-abortion terrorists at their clinic, they knew their names. So, we’d be like in Mississippi and they’d be like, this guy, and here’s his name, and here’s what he did. Then we’d go to Montgomery, Alabama and they’d go, we got this local guy, and they would say the same name as this person. So I was like, wait, you all think that these people are local. They’re traveling around. Is anybody creating a database? And they were like, database?  We’re volunteer escorts. And I was like, that is fair. Okay. 

So, we decided to collect all of the information from all of these places, and we ended up accidentally, as this band of people, creating one of the largest databases in our movement about anti-abortion extremism, where they live, what they do. We join their churches under pseudonyms online, track them online, and so they reveal a lot of about who they are and where they’re going to be.

00:13:46 Michele Goodwin: 

They don’t hide it anymore. As if they ever really did. 

00:13:47 Lizz Winstead: 

They don’t hide it. Right, as if they ever really did. 

But they would say, we’re having a training to do a clinic blockade, and it’s like A, that’s a federal offense, B, thank you. So, we would we would attend either in person or we would screenshot it and get all the footage in the film, and then, in the middle of December they started talking about going to the Stop the Steal rally. So, we assigned people to follow each of these accounts and do all this stuff, and they started assembling and they started posting and we started grabbing. 

00:14:25 Michele Goodwin: 

And they were very explicit about what they planned to do on January 6. 

00:14:30 Lizz Winstead: 

Exactly. So, the morning…

00:14:31 Michele Goodwin: 

They weren’t hiding it. 

00:14:33 Lizz Winstead:

No. 

00:14:33 Michele Goodwin: 

I want to insurrect. Let me take over the government. Let me…

00:14:37 Lizz Winstead: 

I know. We coined the term Ginsurrection about Ginni Thomas and I really feel like it’s a Ginsurrection, so if we could all just start using that in our daily lives, I would appreciate it. 

So, the morning of January 6 we were like, hey, you know, they all are grumbling they’re going to go. Let’s everybody just monitor what’s happening. Maybe something will happen. Like, we didn’t know it was going to become that. 

00:14:59 Michele Goodwin: 

Right, because maybe they’re just puffery.  

00:15:03 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah, because so much of that shit, six people show up with their signs, like don’t tread on me and stuff. It’s like, nobody wants to. 

00:15:04 Michele Goodwin: 

Right. 

00:15:11 Lizz Winstead: 

So, thank God that we had this infrastructure in place because they all showed up and  we all saw what happened, and we grabbed all of their footage and we reported 30 of them to the FBI. And we just recently…

00:15:24 Michele Goodwin: 

Doesn’t that deserve something? 

00:15:30 Lizz Winstead: 

And then through our footage, for those of you who have seen the film, through our footage of them doing these blockades at clinics, our data and our footage got, it’s like up to 17, I think, people arrested and charged on face charges, which are federal violations that come with the possibility of an 11 year fine, 250…11 year prison sentence, 250,000-dollar fine, and one of them is a physician who might lose his license. So…

00:15:56 Michele Goodwin: 

Who shows up at clinics with his children and…

00:16:00 Lizz Winstead: 

A bullhorn. He brings a whole sound system and then plays like little children saying, Mommy, no, like at the clinic. He brings all of his adopted children. He’s like this creepy dude who’s just adopted all these children of color. It’s like a mess. 

So, we like to take on the anti-abortion movement, not only just expose them, but it’s always an and. Like, clowning with people who are terrorists is not the way to go. Bringing people up, showing America who they are, and then A, telling people how they can help continue that conversation, and then also get them arrested? Yes, please. That is a good plan. 

00:16:41 Michele Goodwin: 

So, last couple of questions and opening it up for any questions that you all have. 

00:16:47 Lizz Winstead: 

And the question can’t be, when are we eating? 

00:16:52 Michele Goodwin: 

No. Where were you when the Dobbs decision came down? Do you remember the moment in which you heard the Supreme Court’s ruling in that decision? 

00:17:02 Lizz Winstead: 

I…it’s wild. I was…I had to go pick up my dog because he bit the groomer, so I’m at the groomers and they’re like your dog bit me, and then some other woman was like, he actually just bit at the clippers, and I was like, I’m not here to have a fight. And then my phone starts blowing up. And then they’re like, can you get your dog out of here? And I’m trying to get a dog out of here and I’m seeing Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs. 

So, I’m walking in Brooklyn and I just went on Facebook Live, and I feel like every single time something has happened I’ve been in some weird and convenient public place where I just start bursting out crying, and then I find it compelling to go on live on Instagram and be wildly articulate so…but it was like…and I think part of that is, and I’m sure Amy and Renee, you can relate to this, it’s so…every time a big thing happens in our movement that, like, affects all of us, I get terrified about the media telling the story first because they tell it so badly. You get one chance, right? And so it’s like, I’m just this nobody with a little bit of a platform and I just want to make sure that at least it’s out there, and I know we all feel the same way, right? So that was that. 

And as we have all talked about, the second they decided to take the case, well even before that, but the second they decided to take the case we all knew and our hearts bled for all of it, we all knew what it was. 

00:18:32 Michele Goodwin: 

And if you listen to the oral arguments…

00:18:35 Lizz Winstead: 

And just like literally, can’t you just drop babies off at Blockbuster? Whatever she was saying? 

00:18:41 Michele Goodwin: 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 

00:18:43 Lizz Winstead:

Yeah, Amy Coney Barrett, and just like, you know, we all know. And just to write in a decision, and now we should revisit Obergefell, now we should revisit birth control and now…you know, it’s like we just need to revisit all the ways that we can oppress everybody in this room and people who are walking around with uteruses, like now, we finally just have carte blanche and it feels really scary. 

And so now we were like, well, we have to do something, and when people were so surprised and like, I don’t know what to do, we kicked into high gear and teamed up with Renee and RJ leaders and people who did abortion provision and people who do direct action and people who fund procedures and practical support, and we did this daylong marathon live stream that 10,000 people watched, and then we broke it up into sections of how you could do activism with workbooks, and 10,000 more people have watched it since then.

And that’s where the intersections of all of our work are crucial to come together to say, this person is who you need to go to for this, this person is who you need to go to for this. If you’re confused by the end of this, call us and we’ll make sure you get to where you need to go. And so I think that’s the biggest value, maybe, that we can provide in our movement. 

00:20:07 Michele Goodwin: 

Wow. I want to open it up for any questions that you all might have. I mean, very recently, the Alabama Supreme Court has issued a decision that is rife with biblical references and scorn and thunder clouds and all of that. 

00:20:28 Lizz Winstead: 

And deciding human beings can live in a vat at 320 below Fahrenheit, but I digress.

00:20:31 Michele Goodwin: 

Yes, exactly. That embryos have the status of children, which is a post-Dobbs reality and also a pre-Dobbs reality of the state of Alabama being committed to the criminal prosecution of women in that state. 

And a case prior to this actually heard by that Supreme Court saying that they see no difference between a 12 year old and a fetus, and a no difference between a viable fetus and a non-viable fetus just a few years before Dobbs, and this is affecting many.

So, questions for Lizz or comments for Lizz. I’m so grateful for this audience that we have here. Mark Joseph Stern, who shares my heart and who I’m always happy to share platform and stage with. 

00:21:21 Lizz Winstead: 

And I’m so excited to meet you. 

00:21:23 Michele Goodwin: 

You two have never met before? 

00:21:24 Lizz Winstead:

No.

00:21:25 Michele Goodwin: 

Okay. Live on a podcast. 

00:21:26 Lizz Winstead:

_____ 00:21:26 keeps you away from us.

00:21:31 Michele Goodwin: 

But I am…

00:21:31 Lizz Winstead:

Grateful.

00:21:31 Michele Goodwin:

…absolutely grateful, we all are, Mark, for your amazing work. 

All right, any comments? Questions? Yes?

00:21:39 Female Speaker:

Just a question. So, I walked in to the space and sat next to Renee and I wasn’t familiar with Renee’s work, but I turned to her and I said, what do you think about storytelling in the abortion…

00:21:53 Michele Goodwin: 

Oh my God. Look at that synergy.

00:21:54 Female Speaker:

But I was asking because we tell, like, I categorize the good stories, the bad stories, the okay stories, and so I’m just wondering, Lizz, how you disentangle labeling a story and giving space for every story as having value and equity and a chance to change the movement. And Jill and I have talked about my experience, and you know, I just thank you for holding space for that with no judgment, you know, but I wonder, you know.

00:22:28 Michele Goodwin: 

And if we can repeat it slightly.

00:22:31 Lizz Winstead: 

Sure. So, the question is, how do we really tell the stories, I think, honoring all stories, right? 

00:22:38 Female Speaker:

Yes.

00:22:40 Lizz Winstead: 

My whole thing since the beginning has been stigmatizing and demonizing anyone’s abortion story and putting them into buckets does a disservice to everyone. 

The other big thing that we stress is we need to live and work towards a country that values all pregnancy outcomes. Full stop, right? And so, if you’re a 16-year-old whose values say, I’m pregnant, I’m low income, but my value is I want to parent, than we provide that space and those resources for that person. Conversely..

00:23:17 Michele Goodwin:

And keep them alive during the process. 

00:23:18 Lizz Winstead: 

And keep them alive during the process.

00:23:20 Michele Goodwin:

And keep their children alive after they are born and when they become children and teenagers. 

00:23:23 Lizz Winstead: 

One hundred percent. That is the entire place we need to be. 

Conversely, if there’s a 35-year-old who is parenting two kids, cannot have another, has made that decision for themselves, honoring that, right?

And so that is the narrative we ceded. We somehow took…and I say we, I mean me, we, white women who were in charge of all of this narrative. 

00:23:50 Michele Goodwin: 

Sitting on millions and millions of dollars in endowment dollars. Just saying. 

00:23:53 Lizz Winstead: 

Well, yeah. You know, set this narrative of, how are we going to get people to tolerate abortion? Because that was what we were talking…and tolerating teen mothers and all of this stuff. 

You know, like, I will say something. I don’t know if it’s radical in this room or whatever. I believe that the way we talk about birth control is racist in this country. We will honor 19 and pregnant on the TLC Channel, and Catholics, aren’t they wonderful? The Catholics have six kids. But if low-income people who are Black and Brown want to have six kids, we don’t honor that. 

00:24:29 Michele Goodwin: 

Oh, they only get to have two kids.  

00:24:30 Lizz Winstead:

Or a TV show or any other shit, right? 

00:24:36 Michele Goodwin:

And I don’t know if they really get to have sex, you know? I mean, that is sketchy.

00:24:40 Female Speaker:

Get back to work. 

00:24:43 Lizz Winstead: 

So, you know, so for me it’s just super important that abortion as a community is a moral good, I often parrot Amy in the language that you use, and also valuing where people come from is it moral good, and parenting is moral…all of it is good, right? 

00:25:01 Michele Goodwin: 

All of it.

00:25:03 Lizz Winstead: 

And so making sure that we say that a lot. And I am in a lot of spaces where there’s a lot of women who have resources, who are white, who when I say that they’re uncomfortable, and I’m happy to…I’m…that’s my job, is to have those uncomfortable conversations. And at the end of the day, I don’t know how they’re going to feel. I hope I’m compelling with it, but at least they have heard it from…and so they can’t go back to their circles and still have their biases of how they talk. So, if I can be helpful, that’s just part of what I firmly believe. 

Does that answer your question? Okay. 

00:25:40 Michele Goodwin: 

It’s a wonderful question.

00:25:41 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah. Really good. 

00:25:43 Michele Goodwin: 

Others? Yes. 

00:25:45 Female Speaker:

I have a follow-up to that, because you mentioned how the discourse around birth control is racist, right? What else or in what other ways have you confronted the anti-Blackness within the reproductive rights movement? 

00:25:59 Lizz Winstead: 

So, I mean…

00:26:00 Michele Goodwin: 

And we’re going to repeat the question. 

00:26:02 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah. So, how do we address anti-Blackness within our movement? And I like that you said within our movement instead of always blaming. The right wing people who hate us are…we expect that, right? But the anti-Blackness, first of all, it’s foundational so it comes all the time, that’s what we learn, and the silence around, how do we really feel about these people? How come this person is having their abortion at 25 weeks? You know, how did they get to that? The fact that we need to talk circumstantially all the time about how anti-Blackness plays a role in access…because that is really it, right? Anti-Blackness is the roadblock….

00:26:53 Michele Goodwin:

And the leadership too, right? 

00:26:55 Lizz Winstead:

Yes. Yes.

00:26:56 Michele Goodwin:

And that’s become complicated as well, right? So in part, you know, it’s been leadership over time who had access to the steering wheel, right, and then to the gas pump, you know, to put the gas in that automobile, and where other people were situated.

I remember giving a talk for an anniversary for an organization and mentioning just because I thought it was important to mention, that within this organization, it was really important to not have internal glass ceilings where women of color couldn’t reach up. Over the next two days, so many women of color coming to me who were part of that organization crying and saying thank you so much for mentioning that, because that’s been my experience. That’s been our experience. And I said it because I thought it was important to say, and the reality was that was exactly what was being lived for so many women of color who were within those organizations. 

But of course, now there’s also the flip, and one sees this interestingly in academia too, right, now, like after crisis, let’s find women of color, but that also comes with its own kind of trickery. 

00:28:05 Lizz Winstead: 

Yes. Well, also, I want to say, like, creating a space, and I try to do this in my work, like, I feel like I know I’m doing well in making sure that the Black and Brown women in my organization are heard, is when…and Nicole said this, I mean, Nicole is somebody _____ 00:28:25 and I know, we had a knock down, drag out fight. Knock down, drag out. And she said, at the end of the day, this is the first time I didn’t feel like I was going to get fired fighting with a White woman, like my boss. And I was like…I don’t even understand, my Whiteness doesn’t even allow me to think, like that is the lived experience of Black women who go to work.

But like to be able to have an actual like, what are we fucking doing? It’s like, I don’t know what we’re doing. You know, to really have that conversation that’s literally about what are we doing, not having any kind of competency or adequacy or your job is threatened, it’s like we’re mad at each other right now, so let’s just be mad at each other right now. 

And then that was a hit in the face for me of, like, how do I need to reevaluate leadership? Was this an accident on my part? Was this intentional on my part? I didn’t know the answer to that, you know, but I want to examine that those things for myself. 

So, like all of this, anti-Blackness is at the root of all of it, and especially the barriers, right, because those barriers are, as we have people working at the cross sections of environmental justice and reproductive justice, you know, all of these things that come together, people just want compact ship and nothing is compact. The complexities of how we have set up systems for people to thrive, it’s all terrible and it has never ever helped anybody who doesn’t look like me, and sometimes people like me aren’t even on that train. Right?

So, I think really recognizing and working with Black-led organizations so they can say…like, when I first started this, I did not understand the framework of reproductive justice. I didn’t understand it. Completely. And Renee didn’t call me out, called me in and said, hey, if you’re going to be doing this, your framing needs to be this. And I was like, thank you for not like trying to make me look like an asshole. 

00:30:20 Michele Goodwin: 

Very Loretta Ross-y, you know? 

00:30:23 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, you remember. 

00:30:25 Female Speaker:

I do. 

00:30:25 Lizz Winstead:

And she’s still here, so I think I listened to her, but I think those things are real.

And the thing I will just button this with is, the thing as White women we can’t do or shouldn’t do, I believe, is be super mad and try to get ally cookies in public at other White women, because if we do that, you know who then the labor falls to? You all. Right? So like, talk to them, do that, and then like talk to your Black…

00:31:03 Michele Goodwin: 

You know what? That’s another podcast that, like little pearls that she just dropped right there, the sort of let’s pick up some cookies by demeaning somebody else to make it seem like you’re doing more.

00:31:13 Lizz Winstead: 

Yeah. And it’s like, all you’re doing then is like look, aren’t I great? I just made that person feel like shit. But it’s like, that person feels like shit is now going to go find a person of color and say, I don’t know what I did, and then the exact thing happens that we don’t want to happen, is that Black people have to explain their existence and more.

00:31:28 Michele Goodwin:

And it’s performative, too.

00:31:30 Lizz Winstead: 

Yes. It’s bullshit. I mean, I literally, I don’t have any tolerance, I have very little tolerance for a lot of that, and I try not to…you would think I would be like one of those people that’s like online being, trying to, and I just am not. 

00:31:44 Michele Goodwin: 

I have one more question for you, but I wonder if anyone else might, and it’s about Justice Thomas. Okay.

00:31:53 Lizz Winstead: 

Because you know, I’m an expert on JT.

00:31:58 Michele Goodwin: 

Exactly. You know what? I have a JT story. This one, we’ll just call him now JT.

00:32:08 Lizz Winstead:

Not even his first name. 

00:32:09 Michele Goodwin: 

Right. Yeah. No. When our daughter was about 7 or 8 years old and I took her to hear a Supreme Court argument, which, by the way, was the date in which Justice Breyer read her and about 10 or 15 other kids The Cat in the Hat, and he had the cat in the hat hat on and all the kids…it was really sweet. It was really great. 

But before that, during oral argument, she tapped me and she asked me, Mommy, why is the Black judge asleep? Because he looked asleep. He did. That was the era of I ask no questions and I look incredibly bored while I’m sitting here. Right. 

00:32:51 Lizz Winstead:

I’m good. 

00:32:54 Michele Goodwin: 

But the JT question is one of Dobbs and it’s one of now in Alabama, which is that in his concurring opinion he basically said, and everything else related to privacy should be scorched earth except interracial marriage, right? So don’t…

00:33:14 Lizz Winstead:

But you know why I think he said that? Are you sure? 

00:33:17 Michele Goodwin:

Well, you know. 

00:33:18 Lizz Winstead:

Because I feel like he’s going to throw into interracial marriage into the mix because she’s so terrifying, he doesn’t know how to divorce her marriage to get rid of her. He may have to draft policy on interracial marriage to get rid of her ass. I mean, I’m no lawyer, but I feel like…are you going to get fired now?

00:33:40 Michele Goodwin: 

No. No. Not at all. Not at all. But that does raise issues in terms of post-Dobbs now and everything else that’s affected. I mean, it’s really what is more than for podcast upon podcast upon…but any sense of what’s next?

00:34:05 Lizz Winstead: 

I mean, what I hope is next is that we take this opportunity to also remind people that Roe was the very bottom and it didn’t service a lot of people. So, as we rebuild and decide we want to have this movement that we’re going to actually have true bodily autonomy and reproductive emancipation, that that is going to be a thing that we are going to say…

00:34:28 Michele Goodwin: 

That includes everybody, right? Like, the next reconstruction as being foundational to the rights of people who are LGBTQIA, people of color, you know, everybody has space within the tent. 

00:34:40 Lizz Winstead: 

Yes. Exactly. And so that is it. 

I think that helping people learn that ballot initiatives are helpful, not enough, and also that as we are navigating this landscape of hopefully resecuring and expanding our rights to the full ways we want to live reproductive lives, that we are wholly understanding that we are responsible along the way for making sure that care is given, that clinics can exist, that people can learn how to self-manage their own abortions. Because as these legal battles are happening, people are still needing care, abortion care, childcare, living in healthy environments, and all of the things that have to do that, like that’s just maintenance that we need to do while we’re fighting this larger battle.

So, getting people involved in doing that, I think, is where, that’s where my next go is, and so I’m hoping that people want to like get on the get-go train. 

00:35:40 Michele Goodwin: 

Well, with that, Lizz Winstead, everybody, a round of applause.

00:35:50 Michele Goodwin: 

Guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of on the issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank each of you for tuning in for the full story and engaging with us. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode where you know, we’ll be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. 

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This has been your host, Michele Goodwin, reporting, rebelling and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michele Goodwin and Kathy Spillar are our executive producers. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug, and also Allison Whelan. Our social media content producer is Sophia Panigrahi, the creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandy Phipps, editing by Natalie Holland, and music by Chris J Lee.