White Picket Fence
Wonder Media Network
Introducing White Picket Fence, a podcast about the fractured politics of white women. Host Julie Kohler unpacks how white womanhood in America has been constructed, how it's evolved, and how it affects our politics. Join us to explore how white women have fallen short and how we need to step up and own our political stake in advancing justice.
- 32 minutes 52 secondsRecommended Listen - Temperature Check: What is the Status of Abortion Access in the U.S.?
Whether it’s communicated in polls or at the ballot box, access to abortion is extremely popular in the United States. Yet, our rights are being blatantly stripped away—and abortion care won’t be the only sexual and reproductive right to face attacks. Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, sits down to talk with us about the status of abortion access in the U.S., what to anticipate, and what brings her hope.
We're experiencing a coordinated strategy by anti-abortion extremists to dismantle reproductive freedom nationwide. And they won’t stop just at abortion—contraception and gender-affirming care will face the exact same attacks, likely using the same strategies. The fight for emergency abortion care continues, too. Post-Dobbs and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” hospitals, especially in rural areas, will continue to close their obstetrics wards. Abortion care will be continuously pushed farther out of reach.
Listen to more rePROs Fight Back: https://www.reprosfightback.com/
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11 December 2025, 9:00 am - 42 minutes 3 seconds"Hope is a Discipline"In the midst of a virulent gender backlash and relentless attacks on our rights and freedoms, imagining a better future can feel impossible. In this season finale, we suggest an antidote to this feeling of doom: hope. Not as an emotion but as a practice. As inspiration, we highlight the unique power of women-led resistance efforts, tell the overlooked stories of a trans survivor of Nazi Germany, and begin to articulate our north star vision for gender, family, and a more just, pluralistic nation.
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30 October 2025, 7:00 am - 30 minutes 48 secondsSisyphus in a Sundress
Tradwives. Stay-at-home girlfriends. Femcels. If you're a young woman in America, this is the kind of content you've likely seen on your feed lately. Last episode, we explained how the Right's investment in the "manosphere" fueled the current gender backlash. But for conservatives to successfully cement their Christian nationalist agenda, they can't just appeal to young men. They also need young women. So today, we're diving into the burgeoning "womanosphere," the social media content and political messaging designed to shift a generation of young women to the right....and back into the home.
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23 October 2025, 7:00 am - 24 minutes 24 secondsThe Business of MasculinityWe're starting this week's episode with a bit of a rewind, back to the 1970s in the U.S. As women gained new rights and visibility, a backlash took shape among men who felt left behind. What began as scattered grievances soon grew into a movement promising to restore a vision of power they believed had been lost. Over time, this ideology found fertile ground online, fueling everything from digital echo chambers to cultural battles over faith and identity. In this episode, we explore how the market for masculinity became a cornerstone of America’s broader gender backlash—and what its staying power reveals about our politics today.
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16 October 2025, 7:00 am - 32 minutes 43 secondsSeizing the Means of ReproductionLately, our government has seemed a little...baby crazy. President Trump declared he will be the "fertilization president." Vice President JD Vance announced he wants to see "more babies in the United States of America." Today, we're diving into the American pronatalist movement, a coalition of tech bros, religious traditionalists, and right-wing extremists determined to raise the American fertility rate. We'll cover who is in this movement, what they hope to accomplish, and how this iteration of pronatalism is tied to Christian nationalism and white supremacy.
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9 October 2025, 7:00 am - 37 minutes 11 secondsHatred Rolls Downhill
Nearly a century ago, Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, Germany became the first establishment in the world to offer comprehensive medical services, counselling, and sex education to the LGBTQ community. The Institute reflected the progressive values that were foundational to the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first democratic government. But authoritarianism was on the rise. And to the Nazi Party, the Institute was an existential threat.
What we’re experiencing today in the U.S. is frightening. But it’s not unprecedented. The weaponization of gender and sexuality is a universal feature of authoritarianism. In this episode, Julie digs more deeply into the connection between attacks on women and LGBTQ people and authoritarianism, by looking at other autocratic regimes, both past and present.
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2 October 2025, 7:00 am - 33 minutes 15 secondsAmerica's Gender WhiplashAmerica is facing a gender backlash—a backlash so swift and severe, it feels more like a whiplash. Right now, no group is more at risk than trans Americans. On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed a controversial executive order meant to deny trans identity and push transgender people out of public life. Since then, attacks on trans rights—trans existence—have become increasingly hostile and widespread. But even as many conservatives work overtime to focus the public's ire on trans people, it's clear that their attempt to enforce a strict gender binary could have much broader consequences. Consequences that will reach all Americans.
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25 September 2025, 7:00 am - 3 minutes 1 secondSeason 6 Coming Soon!Right now, we're in the midst of a gender backlash. A growing number of voices have started calling for a return to a simpler time. A time, they say, when men were men and women were women. But "gender" is being used as Trojan horse, a way to advance an extremist agenda that stands to harm millions of Americans. This season on White Picket Fence, we're pulling back the curtain. We'll examine the ways this backlash is showing up in our policies, our culture, and the social media content we scroll past every day. And we're asking what becomes possible when we imagine a better future -- and what we owe the next generation. New episodes drop this September.
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11 September 2025, 7:00 am - 2 minutes 59 secondsWe Won a Webby Award! And – A Sneak Peek at Our New SeasonWe’re thrilled to share that our fifth season of White Picket Fence won the Webby Award for the best News & Politics limited series! It’s such an honor to be recognized and to continue to shed light on the manufactured “marriage panic” that, if anything, has only grown more pronounced since the season was released. If you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, please check it out and share with your friends. And stay tuned for our next season dropping this fall… check out this sneak peek.
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10 July 2025, 8:00 am - 34 minutesHow We Build FamilyWhen host Julie Kohler became a mom, a community of care sprouted up around her. The people who showed up to support her and her family were essential -- and they would be whether or not she was a single mom. All season, we've dissected the institution of marriage in the US. But what are we missing when talk only about marriage? For the final episode of this season, we're asking what the future of family could look like if marriage wasn't the ideal. We're talking to people who have created networks of support within and around marriage and examining the language and policies that can enable us to lead the lives we want to live. Whether that includes marriage, or... something else!
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18 July 2024, 4:00 am - 31 minutes 4 seconds37 WaysWe’ve spent a lot of time this season investigating the current marriage panic. The pro-marriage crew is sounding alarm bells that if we don’t start marrying, and quit divorcing, things in the U.S. will only get worse. But our theory on this show is that the path to stability and happiness actually leads in the opposite direction. What if we could look beyond our shores, at a country that was taking a very different approach? This episode, we’re visiting Denmark: One of the countries that consistently, year after year after year, has some of the happiest citizens in the world. And we’re taking a look at Danish culture around marriage and divorce and relationships and family to see if we can learn some secrets from the experts.
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