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PODCAST

Dire Straights

Tracy Clark-Flory & Amanda Montei

A feminist podcast critiquing heterosexual love, sex, politics, and culture. www.direstraightspod.com

society & culture relationships

All Episodes

22:17

The anti-feminist conspiracy to make women need men

Dire Straights ·

2026/03/18

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comThe right-wing really wants women to need men.Maybe you’ve heard: Earlier this year, The Heritage Foundation—the same ghouls who brought us Project 2025—released what they’re calling a blueprint for America’s next 250 years. It’s titled “Saving America by Saving the Family.”Of course, this report isn’t about saving families. It’s 168 pages of policy recommendations that would strong-arm women into dependent

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73:20

The definitive feminist history of the wine mom

Dire Straights ·

2026/03/04

Whether you believe all wine moms are members of ANTIFA or that they’re just apolitical white ladies with too much rosé all day, it’s irrefutable that drunk and high mommies have a long, loaded cultural and political history.Centuries before mommy juice and Mom Water™, before the Bad Moms movies and the giant wine glass memes, moms were getting high to escape the crushing demands of marriage and motherhood. And we can’t really blame them?In this episode, we go deep on inebriated moms, digging into

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20:00

The Hetero State of the Union

Dire Straights ·

2026/02/25

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comThanks to everyone who tuned into our Substack Live.We started with a debrief of last night’s State of the Union. If you didn’t watch: Congrats. Let us recap for you.Just a few topics we touched on:* Trump as Daddy Protector of Patriarchy (also: a leering creep)* That bombshell NPR report on the DOJ withholding files re: allegations of Trump abusing a minor* Why the U.S. men’s hockey team (and the entire Trump

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24:59

Epstein was behind the #MeToo backlash

Dire Straights ·

2026/02/11

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comThanks to everyone who tuned into our Substack Live.Today’s bonus episode was a cultural and political grab bag. Just a few topics we touched on:* Tracy blaming dire straightness for her skateboarding-related concussion* Chris Harrison’s new trad marriage dating show* Epstein’s hand in the #MeToo backlash* The files telling us what we already know re: the conspiracy of patriarchy* Sexual violence isn’t just a

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75:50

Men need therapy. They also need feminism.

Dire Straights ·

2026/02/04

Perhaps you’ve heard, men will do literally anything to avoid going to therapy. They will eat raw liver, obsess about the Roman Empire, run American democracy into the ground, start their own paramilitary organization, design AI housebots, invent social media, start podcasts with their bros, open carry— anything other than Zoom for an hour with a mental health professional.Meanwhile, men are—according to men—lonely, depressed, disempowered, and confused about what to do with themselves. Masculinity

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20:00

The hetero-politics of ICE

Dire Straights ·

2026/01/28

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comThanks to everyone who tuned into our Substack Live.We got into the hetero-politics of the Department of Homeland Security. Given that our podcast is all about deconstructing heteronormative culture and politics, and imagining new ways forward, we felt like it was pretty urgent times to do a bonus episode on the state-sponsored, hypermasculine violence we’re seeing across the country right now.Just a few topics we

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26:53

Monogamy is a feminist problem

Dire Straights ·

2026/01/21

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comMonogamy is essential to the culture of heterosexuality.From its historical roots as a marital expectation for wives, but not husbands, to its current role in maintaining a society that runs on women’s unpaid labor, it’s clear that monogamy is a feminist problem. In this episode, we look at how monogamy fuels toxic romance myths about soul mates, isolates love and care within the nuclear family, and shrinks our

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18:31

Is ‘Heated Rivalry' an escape from heterosexuality?

Dire Straights ·

2026/01/14

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comWelcome to Dire Straights Live, one of our bonus podcast episodes recorded on Substack in front of a virtual audience. If you're listening on a podcasting platform, make sure to join us at direstraightspod.com for the full experience—and upgrade to paid so you can listen to the whole episode.We dig into HBO’s Heated Rivalry, the spicy gay hockey drama that everyone is talking about. Given that our podcast is all

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81:19

Is dating dead?

Dire Straights ·

2026/01/07

We’re back from the flurry of the holidays and new year, and we’re digging into dating. Last month, we hosted our first-ever live recording of this podcast, and let’s just say we heard loud and clear that dating today… sucks.People are burnt out on the apps, the gender divide is stark, and straight women’s attitudes toward partnership and marriage are shifting. Meanwhile, men are failing to put in the effort to meet the moment, leading many straight women to question whether dating men today is even

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27:01

Can married and divorced women be friends?

Dire Straights ·

2025/12/17

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comIn this episode, we ask an age-old question that somehow also feels very of the moment: Can married and unmarried women be friends?More specifically, can married and divorced women be friends? What about married women and women who have no interest in marriage at all, like those who see marriage as a hetero-patriarchal institution that we might all do well to opt out of? What about single women who are opting out

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96:45

Christmas is an ad for heterosexuality

Dire Straights ·

2025/12/03

You just survived Thanksgiving. You might now be surviving the onslaught of holiday commercials and Hallmark movies starring big-city career women who are reminded of the true meaning of Christmas after falling in love with a rugged small-town hunk in a plaid button-up.Maybe you’re also cruising the sales, checking the Christmas lists, planning the next holiday dinner, and feeling a little overwhelmed. You might even be thinking, Hmm, this season has a certain dire straightness to it.It’s time to

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34:39

Is it women’s job to save men?

Dire Straights ·

2025/11/12

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comAre men OK? Is there actually a “male loneliness crisis”? Is it women’s job to fix it? What role should straight women play in rescuing men from… whatever the hell is going on with them? What would it take for men to help themselves? And how on earth should a mother of boys be in this era?Everyone has a lotttt of questions about the state of men. Meanwhile, toxic visions of masculinity abound, from the dark corners

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79:18

A feminist takedown of WWE masculinity

Dire Straights ·

2025/10/29

This week, we wrestle with what WWE and UFC tell us about the current moment in gender, heterosexuality, and American politics. We talk about some truly terrible men—Vince McMahon, Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Tate, and, of course, Donald Trump.Turns out, pro-wrestling is a perfect lens for understanding our wannabe dictator of a president, from his political rhetoric to his cultish following. We look at how a particular brand of chest-thumping, s**t-talking, and reality-challenged masculinity

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31:17

Marital 'intimacy' is the fifth shift of women's work

Dire Straights ·

2025/10/15

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comToday, we’re talking about the fifth shift — all the labor and consumerism that heterosexual women engage in to maintain their marital sex lives.Appointment sex, date nights, intimacy classes, coaching programs, books about desire, erotic subscription services, and hours of internet content about keeping the spark alive. And then there's pills, gummies, bacon-flavored lube (an actual thing), and many more late

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71:16

What happened to 4B?

Dire Straights ·

2025/10/01

Remember the 4B movement? Last fall, the idea exploded in the U.S. right alongside the election of Donald Trump. Some called it a “sex strike.” The idea was that women were going to say “no” to men. No dating, no marriage, no sex, no babies.There were viral TikToks. It was all over the headlines. It sparked debates, backlash, mockery, and threats. And then the meme disappeared.A year later, we’re looking back at what happened to the 4B movement—or, maybe, more accurately, the 4B meme. We’re also

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32:38

Have we lost the divorce plot?

Dire Straights ·

2025/09/17

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comThis week, we’re doing an epic survey of American divorce plots, including the literature, film, TV, and cultural attitudes that shaped our understandings of divorce from a young age, teaching us about family, love, and heterosexuality.That means we’re talking about tough divorcees of the 80s and 90s—including ex-wives who get a new lease on life after their husbands dump them for younger women—and the “chick

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80:58

'Red flags' are the state of dating right now

Dire Straights ·

2025/09/03

In this episode, we’re talking about men who call their exes “crazy,” don’t text back, refer to women as “females,” and listen to Joe Rogan.In other words, we’re talking about “red flags.”Maybe you’ve seen a viral video of a woman listing off warning signs that a man is no good. Maybe you’ve seen that guy on TikTok who re-posts videos of straight people behaving badly and then runs around waving an oversized red flag to pass judgment on their dysfunction. Or maybe you’ve just listened to a friend

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25:10

We got AI boyfriends

Dire Straights ·

2025/08/20

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.direstraightspod.comWe got AI boyfriends for a weird and wild weeklong experiment—and now we’re reporting back.There are dozens of popular apps that let users either design their own virtual romantic companions or choose readymade partners modeled after common straight-guy archetypes, celebrities, and popular characters from TV and film. You can even simulate a very realistic phone call with your bespoke digital boyfriend. And these

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74:48

‘Why am I in this relationship?’

Dire Straights ·

2025/08/06

This summer’s pop music has a lot to say about heterosexuality.It’s seen as a burden and an addiction—men are compared to children and cocaine. Haim is literally asking, over and over: “Why am I in this relationship?” It’s textbook heterofatalism when Sabrina Carpenter sings, “I swear they choose me, I'm not choosing them.”But some pop stars are actually escaping sad straight relationships—or else abandoning the romantic fairy tale. Cardi B is living a divorce revenge plot, Lorde is discovering a

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