I’m excited to welcome back Jennie Young to the podcast. Jennie is here to talk about dating after divorce and how to protect yourself from getting tangled in the patterns you worked so hard to get yourself out of. She’s the creator of the Burned Haystack Dating Method — a sharp and fiercely feminist approach to spotting danger early in the dating process, and the author of the upcoming book Burn the Haystack

In our conversation, Jennie and I dig into the realities of dating after divorce: from spotting danger in seemingly “safe” profiles to challenging the patriarchal scripts that keep women waiting to be chosen. Plus, we talk about shifting into the seat of choice, what it looks like to feel genuinely comfortable being single, and how these changes ripple out into raising kids with healthier expectations.

✨ Podcast episodes are available in two formats – audio and video! If you’d like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.

What you’ll hear about in this episode:

• Jennie shares her origin story and the ah-ha moment that led to creating The Burned Haystack Dating Method (2:31)
• The feminist philosophy behind Burned Haystack and how it flips the traditional “pick me” script (5:33)
• Why green flags can actually be red flags in disguise: from love bombing to performative sensitivity (15:25)
• The importance of being comfortable (and even happy) being single before re-entering dating (32:44)
• What the “extinction burst” in the toxic manosphere means, and why starving it of attention is essential (35:09)
• How to shift the messaging for our kids so they grow up with healthier expectations and values (42:39)

Learn more about Jennie Young: Jennie Young is the creator of Burned Haystack Dating Method, a dating method grounded in applied rhetoric and feminist praxis. It is designed to combat many of the challenges of dating in a market that is too frequently mediated by misogynistic and patriarchal structures. She holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and discourse studies from Case Western Reserve University and a satire writing certificate from Second City Chicago. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, and others and covered by major media outlets such as The New York Times, Newsweek, RollingStone, and others.

Resources & Links:
ALL NEW: The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast Episodes are Now Available on YouTube!
Focused Strategy Sessions with Kate
The Divorce Survival Guide Resource Bundle
Phoenix Rising: A Divorce Empowerment Collective
Kate on Instagram
Kate on Facebook
Kate’s Substack Newsletter: Divorce Coaching Dispatch

Jennie’s book Burn the Haystack
Jennie’s Substack, Burned Haystack
Jennie’s website
Jennie’s Facebook Group
Jennie on Instagram

Episode 317: Burned Haystack Dating Method with Jennie Young
Episode 325: They Helped Me Find Love—Now They’re Interviewing Me About It! With Alyssa Dineen and Jennie Young

Show transcript:

Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back. I am excited today to bring back my friend, one of the women. Entirely responsible for changing my life. My friend Jennie Young. We’re gonna be talking about dating after divorce and how to protect yourself from getting tangled into some of the same patterns that you worked so hard to get yourself out of.

My guest is Jennie Young. She’s the creator of the Burned Haystack Dating Method, A sharp, funny and fiercely feminist approach to spotting danger early in the dating process like. On the apps y’all, she’s a professor of writing and rhetoric and expert in applied rhetoric and critical discourse analysis, and the author of the upcoming book, Burn the Haystack, which we are super excited about.

You can pre-order it now and it’ll be coming out in April, right? April 7th. Yep. All right. So Jennie teaches women how to decode the subtle and not so subtle [00:01:00] ways, misogyny shows up in dating profiles, messaging and conversations. Jennie, welcome back. I’m so glad you’re here. 

Jennie Young: Oh, thank you. I am thrilled to be back.

Kate Anthony: All right. I wanna start with your, obviously your origin story. I think we’ve talked about this a little bit before, but you didn’t just wake up one day and decide to teach women how to burn the haystack, as it were. You lived in deep, deeply entrenched in the haystack first. Yes. Okay. For those of you, of the, of my audience who perhaps may not be yet familiar with your work, first of all, go back and listen to the two previous episodes we’ve done together.

Share the aha moment that had you create the burned haystack dating method. 

Jennie Young: There were a few aha moments I think. Initially it was just that I was wholly unprepared for how horrible the dating apps were going to be. Even though I’d heard all the stories and everything, it was still much worse, or it felt much worse in a much more personal [00:02:00] way when I was like, in the weeds of it. And I think the aha moment for me was when I started researching online, like what kind of advice is out there. I kept running into advice that I knew was inherently not only. Not only bad for women and that it was going to be ineffective and inefficient, but that was actually dangerous for women because women were hearing all this messaging that was like, be cool, be don’t be chill.

Look fun. Be appealing to everyone. Give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Meet as many people as you can. Go out on as many dates as you can because it’s a numbers game, and the more people you meet, the better your chances are. For success. I knew in my gut that was wrong. I also knew that like at a certain age.

Like I felt I’ll I’ll die before I complete this process. And so I started just researching all kinds of things and one [00:03:00] of the questions I typed into Google late one night, not expecting it to lead to any of this, was, how do you find a needle in a haystack? Since that’s, the proverbial thing we’re all looking for.

Yeah. It said you burn the haystack to the ground, just set it on fire and then you’ll see the needles ’cause metal doesn’t burn. And I got chills when I read that because I realized that’s it. And that’s the opposite, right? Women are being told to pick through every little piece of hay and consider it.

’cause it might be 

Kate Anthony: a needle. You don’t know. It might a 

Jennie Young: needle. It might be the one, maybe she got on a date with that piece of rotten hay. So I realized that what was, it was like affirming. The way my gut was already leading me. Yeah. And that’s, that night was when I decided to call it the Burned Haystack Method and really root it in what we call feminist practice, which is just like practices based on feminist principles.

And to use critical discourse analysis, which is like a highly formalized [00:04:00] method of rhetorical analysis to vet men’s profiles. 

Kate Anthony: So what are the feminist principles that are inherent in this? Because what I heard you say is that I’m gonna go back to the advice that most dating quote experts and coaches, who, by the way, most of them.

That I’ve known personally or have come across. They haven’t been single in this era. Or they’re men. Or they’re men, yeah. Exactly. I, yeah, I, that I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole any like in any but I would back then back, 15 years ago for sure I was looking at them, but what I.

Would hear from the dating coaches that I knew who had been in, relationships for 10 years, for 20 years. When I would say, it’s a shit show. You guys, you don’t understand. I would be poo-pooed. I would be told that I am the shit show or I’m the pro. I mean in kinder ways. But essentially what they were saying was, shit show.

You are too picky. You are not giving people a [00:05:00] chance. One person even said to me, you’ve probably already dated or met the person that is your needle. You missed it. Which is we talk about, we have talked a great deal and you’ve done a lot of incredible Instagram lives and reels on Bumble being like, when you’ve blocked somebody, they resurface them because you might mean you might have missed something.

Or you, maybe you didn’t really do it on you, you were wrong, essentially. And I feel like the idea that, like I’ve already dated the person is the dating. Coach’s version of Bumble being like, oh, here’s the person you blocked before, who was your fucking abuser, or who had sexually assaulted you, or whatever it is, or whatever reason that you have to justify that you blocked this person.

Jennie Young: And even the notion that you have to justify that women. Can’t just not like a guy can’t just not be interested. Oh, no. But it has to be justified somehow. 

Kate Anthony: But what [00:06:00] if, Jenny? Because what if, because you know your instincts are right and they’re, that’s like the whole.

Thing that was like the entire messaging was that my instincts are wrong. I don’t know what I want. Obviously if I’m still single, it’s because I’m the problem and I don’t know what I want or how to find it. 

Jennie Young: For sure. And the other thing I noticed right away and this is very much like within feminist studies, but there’s a term we use called the male gaze that we see. Because patriarchy is so internalized, we see ourselves through the male gaze even subconsciously, right? So if I’m getting ready to go out to dinner with my girlfriends, I’m still on some level going to be thinking, is this appealing to men, right? Some of the most popular, like how to date books are written by male coaches, and if you read them clo, and these are the liberal enlightened guys, but if you read them closely, what they’re really telling you is [00:07:00] not how to find a person you wanna be with, but how to make yourself appealing to men, right?

Specifically by learning how to think like a man. And the subtext of that is that’s better. Because we’ve normalized male ways of thinking and being, as being at the top of the hierarchy. So anyone who’s gonna succeed in any way, whether that’s on the dating market or in corporate America, or in athletics, the more you are like a man, the more successful you’re gonna be.

And all of the discourses around dating and how to do it successfully that I was finding were rooted in that kind of thinking, which is extremely patriarchal and not good for women. It just serves men in more and different ways, while doubling down on how destructive it is to women. 

Kate Anthony: And not just destructive, but actually downright dangerous.

Actually dangerous, right? Actually dangerous because [00:08:00] you tell women go on as many dates as possible, and by the way. Be sexually alluring on the first date to men. That’s literally putting our lives on the line. Yes. And the statistics back that up. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. There’s a reason that we have to have an Uber for women only.

Yes, there is. Yeah. Like the idea that wasn’t the bigger story. Everyone’s oh goody, now Uber’s gonna be safe for women. And this is great. And I was like, maybe the bigger story is what the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right, so we were, you were talking, you started talking about feminist theory, the feminist philosophy behind this, and I wanna talk a little bit more about that.

Can the feminist practices, can you Sure. So 

Jennie Young: another, I think Vital turn, 

Kate Anthony: yeah. 

Jennie Young: That Burn Haystack tries to help women make is that most women have been socialized. To want to be the girl who gets picked. And pick me girl is like its own trope, [00:09:00] but 

Kate Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennie Young: But even without that, just the notion that we want men to pick us.

Which if that’s the guiding, I don’t know, intention or goal, you’re gonna naturally. Lower yourself, twist yourself around, accommodate, perform things that aren’t necessarily who you are, right. In order to get that thing which is male choice chosen, right? Yeah. But we’re not living in that economy anymore and I use economy.

Broadly, but even in a strictly financial sense, we’re not living in that economy anymore. Young women are starting to make more money than young men in many fields. So all of those structures that have kept these patriarchal norms in place for generations are being disrupted, which is why there are so many angry men, by the way.

That’s exactly right. 

Kate Anthony: Exactly 

Jennie Young: right. That it’s pissing them off. It’s pissing them off and they used to be able to show up, be mediocre, and not do much else, and get what they [00:10:00] wanted, which was whatever, a wife, a mother of their children. And that’s just not how things are anymore. So like I’m trying to talk with women and I know young women already talk like this with each other.

My students do. They see themselves very much as sitting in the seat of the person who’s choosing. Rather than hoping to be chosen, and we don’t wanna slant that toward the other side. I don’t want a world where men are sitting around waiting to be chosen and feeling, whatever.

Thinking less of themselves and having their self-esteem tanked. I don’t want that either. What we want is. Equality and a true feminism lifts everybody up of all genders. Yes, 

Kate Anthony: that’s 

Jennie Young: right. Yeah. 

Kate Anthony: Feminism is not about making women more powerful than men. It is. All we’ve ever said is we just want it to be equal.

Yep. 

Jennie Young: That’s it. Equal in all ways. We want it to be equally safe, right? We want equal shots at happiness. We want equal shots at [00:11:00] autonomy, like all these things. Equality. 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. I just wanna tie this into also my audience who are, women who are experiencing divorce or contemplating divorce.

The notion that we get to choose is so radical, right? For so many women, yeah. I talk with women all the time. Who are trying to find, I wish he would just hit me. I wish it was just bad enough. I wish that, he would just get mad one more time so I can when they don’t actually wanna be in the marriage anymore.

And to impress upon them that like, that’s enough. 

Jennie Young: It’s the justification we were taking. Exactly. But just at the 

Kate Anthony: other end. Yeah, exactly the same thing, right? Yep. No, and like I like, we were talking about being at the seat of choice. I always say we wait for men to boys to ask us to dance at the school dance.

We wait for men to ask us on dates. We wait for boy for men to propose to us. We’re always waiting for the man to make a choice so that when [00:12:00] it comes time to deal with this very intense, difficult choice we are. Absolutely Ill-equipped 

Jennie Young: to say I choose married well and we don’t even married.

We don not even feel like we have the right. No, we don’t. Absolutely. It’s hard to make a good choice. If everything in your orbit is giving you the message that you don’t have the right, how can you have conviction? Your choice. That’s right. It’s almost an impossible construct if you don’t break it down.

Yes. Explicitly. That’s what we’re trying to do. 

Kate Anthony: Explicitly. Explicitly, yes. So the feminist theory or the, the feminist desire for all of us to have equal choice. There are no laws on the books governing men’s bodies, but yet we just don’t have the experience of being able to choose.

A lot of my audience has already lived through one really, bad relationship. Many of them think that they’ve learned the [00:13:00] red flags from that experience, right? But what they haven’t really learned is how to spot different red flags, right? Or like different red flags in a different kind of guy.

Right? There’s I’m curious what are some of the most dangerous quote green flags that women are socialized to see as safe. But are actually red flags in disguise. Yeah, that’s, I have some ideas from some of your rhetorical patterns, but I wanted to, hear what you, 

Jennie Young: that’s a good question.

I’m gonna come back to it in one second. I think another thing that’s worth noting here is if we’re specifically talking about the set of women who are dating post-divorce, you’re inherently in a more difficult field, right? When you’re in, say, college. Everybody’s single. So you have a true cross section of society from which to select your partner. If you are a woman, let’s say over the age of 30, 35 and divorced, you’re now primarily looking at [00:14:00] men. Who are also divorced or still single for some reason. And we know that things like extremely avoidant people or various personality disorders, mental illnesses, those kind of groups are disproportionately represented on the dating apps.

Within the male set, not with women. Women initiate most divorces. Something like 80%, I think, right? Yep. Yep. Okay. And these are the reasons they’re leaving these guys, right? Because women, ’cause they’re don’t leave easily, right? No. 

Kate Anthony: Oh my. We’re so desperate to not leave, right? Like by the time we’re done, it’s 

Jennie Young: i’ve tried everything.

So what that means is that the group of men who are out there. Are the ones that women did leave. Okay. So this is a formidable challenge and it’s why it is so important to be able to read these flags accurately. So to go back to your question, what are some red flags that look like green flags?

Probably the most popular one is the whole [00:15:00] love bombing notion, right? Oh yeah. Like someone who’s just madly in love with you after one date and. They want all of your time and all of your attention, and they’re showering you with gifts and they wanna make all kinds of commitments for the future.

And they don’t want you to even think about dating anybody else. That’s not love. That’s something else, right? It’s yes. Obsession, it’s control. It’s, maybe some sort of extreme anxiety on their part that’s being mapped onto you. But that’s not healthy either. No. That’s also. Form of control.

Yeah, so I would say that one love bombing, maybe an another one, and one I’m seeing a lot right now with the rise of the whole trad wife thing is men who are presenting with, Hey, listen, I wanna take care of you. Oh, I don’t want you to have to worry about money. I don’t want you to have to worry about any, I’m gonna provide all of that.

I want you to be able to stay home with our children, okay? And if those are things you want, which are perfectly fine things to want, [00:16:00] but if that’s what you’re hearing and what he’s saying is this is going to be a really toxic, conservative, unequal structure, then you’re gonna end up in a really bad place 

Kate Anthony: and you’re going to.

Be left with zero financial autonomy and freedom. Which makes your choice to leave. If it be, if it does, if the toxicity plays out, as we’re pretty sure it will. You removes that choice, which is also absolute. That’s how women get trapped. Yeah. That’s the point. Yep. That’s the point of it.

Yeah. Another one that I know that you’ve talked about and I’ve seen a lot, is that performative sensitivity. Yeah. They’re just so emotionally available, but they’re also, really in touch with their trauma and they’re gonna talk about it and they’re gonna reel you in with your vulnerability.

Their vulnerability. It’s oh my God, he is so in touch with his. Feelings and wow, I, and it’s a, [00:17:00] because of there’s so much toxic masculinity out there, A man who can really express himself is real, feels like a green flag. 

Jennie Young: For sure. And it, I think this falls into.

The, one of the other rhetorical patterns we use is the Greek tragedy of the funny guys, like the guys who tell you how funny they are. Truly funny people do not have to tell you they’re funny and truly sensitive. Evolved. Men do not announce it. You’ll see it. In their interactions and in their actions and in their own lives apart from you.

That’s more, that’s like way more meaningful. How they treat their daughter is way more meaningful than how they talk to you. Yeah. How they treat their female colleagues is more meaningful. So these are the kind of thing and it that, you know there, there’s no way to get all that immediately. Like these are the kind of things that you have to watch over time, and that’s why.

In Burned Haystack, we use profiles and early messaging to rule [00:18:00] men out. Yes. Not to rule men in. So I can look at a profile and tell you, yeah. Block him. That’s gonna go nowhere. Good. But there’s no way I can look at even as much as I’ve studied this, I can’t look at a profile and say that’s a needle.

Kate Anthony: Right, absolutely. 

Jennie Young: Because smart guys can present well, or they get somebody else to write their profile. Like you, you just don’t, you can’t really know what you’re seeing at that point. It’s like the burn haystack is the very top of the funnel, right? Like where you’re just like in or out.

Yeah. Should I proceed or not? 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. And it’s, and it truly is. If you spend any time in your group, first of all, men are really bad at this. 

Jennie Young: Really bad, despite the fact that they have access to all the information they could ever want for free to be really good at it. 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. And I love this.

You talk about this a lot and I love it because there’s this idea everyone’s always don’t give it away for free, Jenny. You’re posting about it. You’re giving them all the information so that they can so that they can then [00:19:00] like game the system. And you always say but they won’t because that’s too much work.

Jennie Young: They won’t read your profile. They won’t read your profile. There’s no way they’re gonna read critical discourse analysis. 

Kate Anthony: They’re not gonna watch all of your reels to figure out how to game it. Because by the way, also they’re not interested in gaming it. They’re also, they’re just interested in getting the lowest hanging fruit that they can.

So they’re not like actually interested in gaming the system because then they would be with a woman that is like light years ahead of them. 

Jennie Young: So much That’s true. It wouldn’t work out for them, right? That wouldn’t make any sense. They don’t wanna meet that woman. 

Kate Anthony: They really don’t 

Jennie Young: like if they have to gain burned haystack to meet a woman, that’s not the woman they want anyway.

Kate Anthony: That’s right. They literally want the lowest hanging fruit. The other thing is that they want the people who are brand new to this, who haven’t figured out how toxic this whole system is yet.

What are your thoughts when you see [00:20:00] somebody proclaim to be a feminist in their, a man proclaimed to be a feminist in their dating profile? 

Jennie Young: I’m always skeptical. I don’t now remember, I work in academia, so I meet a lot of men who self label themselves feminist. I can’t think of a single instance. I would agree with that.

Now, I definitely have male colleagues who I consider feminist. But they don’t introduce themselves that way. It’s so don’t another time. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve watched them and interacted with them and been like, yeah, he actually stepped aside so she could step up because she. Had more expertise in that topic, right?

That’s a feminist move on the part of a man. But those kind of things come through in actions more than, yeah. Tables 

Kate Anthony: one of my favorites, I don’t know if you have a rhetorical pattern for this, is I was raised by a feminist and I, yeah, and I have six sisters, so I was raised, surrounded by women, 

Jennie Young: so I know makeup, I know how [00:21:00] makeup works, but usually that goes somewhere like I understand about periods. 

Okay. Yeah. Okay, 

Kate Anthony: so this is these like green flags that are masking. That are actually red flags, right? This is why so many smart and capable women find themselves in another abusive dynamic, right?

And I think that one of the thing, and they often think like, how did I miss this? What did I do wrong? Oh my God, it’s me. It’s me. I’m the common denominator. 

Jennie Young: Or I have a bad picker. It hurts me every time I hear a woman say, my picker is off, my picker’s broken. ’cause then she is absorbing all the blame, right?

For her own abuse. 

Kate Anthony: One of the things that’s interesting is that from your perspective, from my perspective, and by the way, the perspective that you get if you are in communities like Burned haystack in particular, and also when I had my Facebook group, women would start to realize that oh wow, this is actually.

You and I have this bird’s eye view right. Of this, [00:22:00] because we hear these stories all day, every day. This is our job, this is what we do. And when you’re new to dating or you’re the, you’re in a, an abusive relationship and you haven’t gotten that elevated high level view of this, of the landscape.

You do think it’s

Jennie Young: You do, you absolutely do. That’s why I use the word decode so often. Disciplinarily, that’s appropriate. Like we talk about coded language and everything, but in a more like, conventional way of using that word it truly is once you unlock it, once you decode it, you’ll, you won’t get tricked like that again.

You can’t unsee it. And you can’t unknow it, right? 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. That’s 

Jennie Young: right. Because it all makes sense. What it’s like truly lifting off the veil and you’re like, oh. I get it now. Yeah.

Kate Anthony: One of my earliest sort of things, a about that, like that was a decode kind of thing, was like when I started to see the base, we’re talking very basics in early online dating is partner in crime looking for [00:23:00] partner in crime or work hard, play harder, full of hard knocks.

Yeah, school of hard knocks. My favorite is, I love to laugh. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Personally, I hate laughing, right? Yeah. These are like original. Those are the, for me, the og, when I would like. Start to realize oh my God, I see this everywhere. But when you’re in this for as long as you and I have been, and we’ve studied it as much as we have there are so many more things that you start to see so many more patterns.

That jump out. Yeah. 

Jennie Young: We’re not even wasting our time with partner and crime anymore. That’s, we’re just done with that. 

Kate Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennie Young: We’re going much deeper. 

Kate Anthony: Yes. And you and I have this. Because of what we do. We’re in this unique position of really seeing things so much more.

We know so much 

Jennie Young: more than we want to.

Kate Anthony: More than we want to. And I know for me it was one of the reasons that I was like, I’m not do, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m like, I’m just not. And I got. Super lucky [00:24:00] and hit the jackpot, 

Jennie Young: but it wasn’t all luck, right? Like you, you applied the method ruthlessly.

You used the, you said I think your words were in your email to me. I burned the shit out of the haystack. 

Kate Anthony: I burned the shit outta the haystack and I took Alyssa’s, she was like, yep. Set your distance as a, as a preference, not a deal breaker. And like the, that was like, oh, okay.

There he is. Yeah. And so when I did see his profile, I was like, oh, this is brand new. This is stuff I’ve never seen before. But for you, you’re still in the oh my God, I can’t, 

Jennie Young: yeah I made a couple half-hearted attempts because I had told. Like everyone in the community. I said, because I took myself off the apps Yeah.

For the last couple years. ’cause I was too busy doing Burned Haystack stuff. So I said, when I submit my book manuscript, I’ll give it another shot. And so I did. So that happened in early June? Yeah. I tried Bumble for one month and I [00:25:00] tried Hinge for two weeks. It was just real bad. So I’m on another break, but I’m also way overscheduled right now.

Honestly, yes. Even if it had been a decent experience, I don’t know that I’d be doing it right now. But We’ll, s yeah, I I haven’t given up, but yeah, as of this moment, I don’t have any active dating apps. No. 

Kate Anthony: And you did say like you did Cop too, like there was one that you blocked to burn that you were like, I might have made a, I might have not made a mistake.

Yeah, but this might have been the wrong call. It might have been. Do you find that? I know that for myself, like I became so cynical and so yeah. Like fuck all of you. Like I would see one thing and be like, oh fuck you. And then, that was literally me scrolling through the dating apps. Fuck you.

Which is probably not easy. Get that way. Yeah. It’s really not a healthy way to also it’s not a healthy way to approach it. It’s also, by the way, could be a very healthy way. Depending on what [00:26:00] you’re basing your, your blocking and your fuck you on. Did you, do you find that, like you just don’t have the patience for it.

You’re like, 

Jennie Young: I don’t have much patience for it and I’d be lying if I said that the work I’ve been doing almost 24/7 for the last two and a half years hasn’t. Gotten to me a little bit. It, it definitely has like it’s, and not just the app experience, but just, reading through so many comments in the group.

Sometimes I’m like, yeah, no, I’m pretty happy right now. I’m not sure I want to mess with this. Yeah. So it, it would have to be, yeah. Yeah. It would have to be something really good. But you’d, but you found something really good. 

Kate Anthony: I did 

Jennie Young: Not only didn’t detract from your life, but radically enhanced it.

Like you’re, 

Kate Anthony: oh yeah. And that was my Was it for you, yeah. And that was the thing for me too, was that I’d been single, fully single for eight years. Yeah, that’s a [00:27:00] long time. And not dating. It was a very long time and I think, I wouldn’t say. I was content, I was fine. Yeah. Happy life.

I have good friends, I have a lot of animals and I felt yeah, you know what? I am certainly not settling for anything. If this isn’t gonna add to my life, I don’t want it. 

Jennie Young: Yeah. And I think that’s where a lot of women are right now. And that’s where I am. I haven’t given up.

Kate Anthony: Yeah. And I think there’s a distinction between I was content and I was fine. Was I happy? Yeah, I was happy, but I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t like, oh, yay, this is how I get to live my life. It was like if this is the, if this is, if these are the choices, then this is how I’m gonna be living my life.

And I’ll make the best of it kind of thing. Yeah, exactly right. What are your thoughts on being like women, getting to that place, that comfort? Being comfortable. Being single. Being okay. Being single, being 

Jennie Young: happy. Number one, that’s the best place to date from, and I’m [00:28:00] not one of those people who’s, who says you see a lot of Instagram.

Dating coaches who are like, you need to work on yourself before you go out there and date. But which is true, but there’s also this implication that like until you’re a perfect human being, number one, men aren’t applying that. And so I think it’s misogynistic ’cause it’s giving women this not only do you have to be a hundred percent independent, but you have to be a hundred percent delighted and you have to be a hundred percent organized and you have to be successful and you have to.

Meal prep, all your meals are, whatever it is. 

Kate Anthony: Oh God, help me. Yeah, 

Jennie Young: I don’t believe that. Yeah, like that’s all kind of external stuff, right? That matters a varying amount to different people, but in terms of like your mental mindset, you’re going to do much better on the apps. And if you do end up with a partner, it’s gonna be a better partnership if it comes from a place of.

Choosing someone to add to your life rather than to rescue you from your life in any way. So complete you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The whole you [00:29:00] complete me thing ’cause nobody completes anybody. To be clear like that is also a. Fairytale. Yeah. So I think the more solid you are in yourself you’re gonna be more discerning, you’re gonna make better choices. Yeah. And if you do choose someone, you’re gonna be happier. Yes. Yes. Because you don’t have to compromise. And and again, all relationships are compromises. I think we, I think, there, there is the danger of getting too perfectionistic.

You don’t wanna compromise on deeply held values. That’s a problem. 

Kate Anthony: That is a problem, absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you have to know what your values are, right? You have to, right? Yeah. Exactly. That time with yourself to know what they are, so that when something comes in that’s aligned or misaligned, you actually know about it.

You, the alignment is right. Yeah, for sure. And I’m so with you on that whole you need to be really happy on your own and work on yourself right before another person come in. By the way, we’re all great. Relationships in theory. And also we’re human beings. We’re not robots. There isn’t a a level now I’m at this level. You said [00:30:00] something recently, you wrote something about, you were talking about the extinction event that you feel like you are in or approaching or in, I think an extinction event. Yeah. An extinction burst. They call it extinction burst.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you’re seeing and what do you feel like that means? Sure. And I think your question to your substack readers was how do we speed it up? 

Jennie Young: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Let this go extinct. Yeah. And to be clear, we’re not talking about men going extinct. We’re talking about toxic patriarchal behavior going extinct.

So if we look at like politically. Never have conservatives been so loud or so angry or so. Unhinged. That’s a, they’re 

Kate Anthony: so downtrodden and victimized. 

Jennie Young: And they’re downtrodden and victimized while also very violent and powerful and having of guns. So put all that together. And I actually posted a video [00:37:00] today where this guy traces and I think it’s valid. He is tracing this back to the Obama presidency. 

Kate Anthony: Oh 

Jennie Young: yeah. Really pissed 

Kate Anthony: off a bunch of white men. Really 

Jennie Young: triggered a lot of racists. Yeah. And a lot of sexists, right? Because we, Michelle Obama was like such a force so awesome in herself.

So I know, why can’t we have them back? Every time I see a picture of them, I’m like, please, 

Kate Anthony: every, but everyone’s like White House. 

Jennie Young: Yeah. 

Kate Anthony: We’re like at once. I’m like. Be free, go run. Your life. I know. And also, but we need you. 

Jennie Young: I know. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Very conflicting feelings there. So the extinction burst is that when a group, so let’s say it’s toxic single men, right?

When they realize that the tables are being turned on them, instead of being like, oh boy, we better. Figure out what’s going on here. We better listen to what people are upset about. Instead, they just try to yell over those people or plow over those people. They just get louder and [00:38:00] crazier and more out of control and more like willing to go to levels that people haven’t gone before.

And I, I feel like that’s what we’re seeing right now and not just me, like a lot of people are noting extinction, burst behavior. In the toxic manosphere in particular, 

Kate Anthony: and we’ve got, all, we’ve got the internet, we’ve got the, the podcasts and the bros. There’s just so much, there is so much opportunity for the echo chamber that they’re living in.

Yeah. So what happens in an ex, right? This is an extinction burst, but it, it gets bigger louder first. Yeah. And then and then it explodes and they all go away. Like what? What, what 

Jennie Young: happens? Where do they go? Yeah I liken it to a temper tantrum, right? So if you’ve got a child who’s throwing a temper tantrum, you have a few options.

Like you can give in to them and give them what they want. 

And it’ll stop the [00:39:00] temper tantrum like that. But then they’re gonna throw another temper tantrum. The second they, the next thing they don’t. Get what they want. Or you can. Ride it out while understanding that no child is going to throw a temper tantrum in interminably like that.

It just doesn’t work that way. They’re at some point, they’re gonna fall asleep or lose their voice or pass out or whatever it’s gonna be. These guys can’t keep going at this rate because they’re just gonna run out of energy, but also they’re becoming increasingly. Absurd and increasingly the punchline of jokes everywhere.

And they’re also not getting what they want, and it’s not working. It’s not working. They’re not getting what they want, right? So they’re trying to replicate that by spending more time on PornHub or only fans, or with their AI girlfriends or whatever. But that’s not really what they want either, right?

So that might settle them down for a little bit, but it’s not what they want. So you’re right it’s not working. At some point, that behavior, whether it’s individual or collective, has to [00:40:00] extinguish itself. That’s just, I was gonna say that’s just science, but I don’t really know that much about science, so I shouldn’t talk that way.

I think it, I think that’s, that sounds right, but I think that’s, we’ll go with that. But I’m listening to a lot of scientists talk about extinction bursts right now, but there’s also obviously a generational effect here, right? Like people, your son’s age. My son’s age, like when I read him. I read him the profile of the guy I wrote about this morning on Substack in my, this man must beamers.

He, he was appalled and he’s is that real? Oh yeah. Like I too, if I just looked at that outta context, I might be like, is that real? But when you see him over and I see them myself right in my own phone, like they’re real. And this was writing an extreme example, but also Yes.

Not really that also not unusual. 

Kate Anthony: Not unusual, 

Jennie Young: right. The extremity itself is no longer unusual. That’s right. 

Kate Anthony: Yeah, and I do think that’s right. I do think, I think that it’s like they’re age. They’re gonna age out. 

Jennie Young: They’re 

Kate Anthony: gonna age [00:41:00] out. 

Jennie Young: Yeah. It’s gonna take too long and it’s gonna be too unpleasant.

But I, I think the absolute best thing we can do is starve it of oxygen. 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. 

Jennie Young: Do not give it any attention at all. 

Kate Anthony: And 

Jennie Young: that’s very much in keeping with black to burn, with Burned Haystack 

Kate Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennie Young: Method, right? That’s right. We do. One of our rules is no fighting with men. 

Kate Anthony: We do not. Get, 

Jennie Young: we do not get into it with them.

We just don’t. We do not. We block them and that’s what they want. They want attention. If they can’t get positive attention, they want negative attention. So give them zero attention. 

Kate Anthony: That’s right. That’s right. And then they make another profile because it had to, it has to be the app. The app is doing something wrong.

There was another one of those, right? Recently it was like, I keep making profiles and I don’t understand why. What was that guy who’d been, I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I haven’t had a single date yet. And yeah, this app is, and it’s oh honey, clearly everyone else in the world is the problem.

Yeah, honey, right? And by the [00:43:00] way, meanwhile at the same time that they’re getting more and more unhinged and things are getting like wackadoodle. Women. Are. Increasingly going I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I’m opting out of this. I’m fine on my own. The fuel to their fires is just opting out.

Yes. Which, what you were just saying. So 

Jennie Young: the other thing we can do is do a good job raising the generations that are still. Rising. And there are many of us trying to do that. And it’s working in a lot of ways. Not totally but it’s getting better. 

Kate Anthony: It, it really is.

When I see my son and his friends, it’s an entirely different ball game. And it’s, it is, it’s so heartening. And also, by the way, they are the most vulnerable generation and age for this. Toxic messaging. So how would you, I know this isn’t your, necessarily your area of expertise, you’re a mom of a kid.

Similar. [00:44:00] How do we shift the messaging for our kids? What do we do as mothers listening? Moms listening to this podcast, almost everybody listens to this podcast for the most part. As a mom or have contact with the younger generations. How do we ensure that we spread this. We spread the good seed and the good messaging.

For our kids. 

Jennie Young: I think that the fact that our kids are the first kids growing up in a social media generation works both for and against us. In, they’re definitely exposed to things that we don’t want them exposed to and that our generation wouldn’t have been exposed to because it either didn’t exist or because the ways in which it did exist our parents could protect us from.

That’s not true anymore. So that’s one piece of it. The positive side of that is there’s a lot of really excellent influencers, scientists, psychologists, therapists, social workers, just other [00:45:00] young people who are, who, get it. That it’s all there and it’s all available.

And it’s all free. Yeah. So we don’t have to, it. It’s not even dependent upon us to articulate all those messages in some way that’s going to convince our children. For one thing, we were never convinced of anything our parents said. Like we needed to hear it from someone else before we considered it real.

So I almost think it’s more powerful too. Just point, we should be in, in dialogue with our children, right? Sure. That’s important. They need to know our value systems. They need to know our expectations for them. But I think point pointing them towards some voices. That are already saying what we want them to learn.

Is really powerful. And it has like a compounding effect. Because the algorithm, because of the algorithm, this is a place where algorithms can be recruited for good, right? If you get your teenage son listening to, speech prof or Professor Neil or something, and we frequently like compile these lists in in the haystack, yeah.[00:46:00] 

They’re naturally gonna get served more of that and honestly. If you can get your teenage sons to listen to women like, women their own age, who are creating like fantastic content. That’s right. That’s really powerful too. 

Kate Anthony: Yep. Absolutely. I could not agree more. And the one thing I’ll also say is that I.

Our kids do listen to us more than we listen to our parents. Oh, yeah. No, for sure. Because our kids actually like, because of the way we raised them and because of the sort of the compassionate parenting that we engaged in more Right? Over, more so than our parents did, they actually us more than, certainly, than we did our parents. They listen to us. They wanna hang out with us. They like us. That’s true. 

Jennie Young: They, yeah, they do definitely wanna hang out with us more than our whole goal was to like, get free. We’re like, we’re outta here. 18 gone. Yeah. 

Kate Anthony: Yeah. Exactly right.

My kids, my 20 year old’s pissed. I’m moving out. I’m the one moving out. What is happening? The fun is leaving, right? Yeah. I was trying to get out by 14, 15, like I [00:40:00] couldn’t get out quick enough oh my gosh.

Jennie Young: The other thing, and I want to preface it by saying I don’t intend this to be any kind of victim blaming.

Yeah. But if you’re in. Bad relationship and your, let’s say teenage son is seeing that someone can treat his mother badly for his entire life and there are no consequences to that guy. That’s a dangerous message. You were saying earlier, women are like, I just, I need an excuse to leave.

That’s an excuse. If you’re married to someone who’s treating you badly and you have children who are watching that regardless of their gender, they’re internalizing the idea that’s okay for them to either, like voiced onto someone else or to suffer and internalize themselves. 

Kate Anthony: a hundred percent.

I always say it, if this, if you don’t want this relationship for your kids, then get the fuck out. ’cause this is exactly what they’re, and that’s speaks loudly. Yeah, that’s why I left. It was the moment I realized I had to leave for my son to give him any chance. [00:49:00] That’s the moment that I was like, oh. Oh, 

Jennie Young: complete clarity.

Yeah. No, I’ve heard a lot of women say exactly that. 

Kate Anthony: Yeah. Thank you for saying that. It’s very important. Yeah. Jennie, thank you so much. This has been an some conversation. Oh, thank you for talking me. I, oh my God, I love you. I love having you. Oh, I love you too. I love talking to you. Everybody.

Listen. Go to Jennie’s Substack. So sign up for her Substack. Pay her for her Substack even though it’s free. She if you, it’s optional. Yeah, it’s optional to pay. We want to support the labor because Jennie has a full-time job as a professor and runs the burned haystack community and does all of this other work as a another full-time job that she’s not getting paid for.

So let’s pay her for it. Join the Facebook community. It’s an incredible community. We’ll link it in the show notes, but it’s Burned Haystack. 

Jennie Young: Yeah. If you search Burn Haystack on Facebook 

Kate Anthony: It’ll come. It’ll come up. Trust me. Yeah. She also runs that group, like there should be a [00:49:00] masterclass in how she runs it.

It’s brilliant. It’s a big group, but it’s not a shit show. I wish I had. Been in there to learn from Jennie before I closed down my group. But that’s a whole other thing. And please pre-order her book, Burn the Haystack. It is available. If you just, I don’t know. It’s on your substack, right? It’s on, it’s everywhere.

Just. 

Jennie Young: It’s everywhere. Yeah. There’s links in the Facebook group. It’s at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and the independent bookstore space 

Kate Anthony: bookshop.org I think is where I got mine pre-order because it matters. And Jennie, thank you so much. 

Jennie Young: Oh, thank you too, Kate. So good to see you. You too.

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