Myself and Ashley had a conversation that went all over the shop: from the suffocating political consensus, to the roots of social contagions, to why autogynephiles want to wear the frilly apron but don’t want to do the cooking.
Listening back (don’t ever listen back) I can hear my brain desperately trying to connect synapses and failing, and I speak far too fast, so I apologise for all the brainfarts (especially to all the non-English speakers trying to keep up with me). Ashley is so interesting that all the questions I ever had came tumbling out all at once. An awesome woman.
Enjoy.
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Show notes (AI generated)
Episode Overview
In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with sociologist, writer, and editor Ashley Frawley about therapeutic culture, social conformity, identity politics, family life, citizenship, and the social dynamics underlying contemporary gender ideology.
Drawing on her work in sociology, social problems theory, and the medicalisation of social life, Frawley examines how particular ideas become dominant within institutions and public culture, how social movements emerge and evolve, and why certain forms of identity and vulnerability have become culturally privileged in contemporary Western societies.
The conversation explores the “Brussels consensus” inside European institutions, the changing relationship between capitalism and family life, therapeutic models of citizenship, historical moral panics, social contagion, the rise of gender identity ideology, and the social conditions that make particular belief systems culturally persuasive.
Throughout the discussion, Frawley argues that contemporary social conflicts cannot be understood purely through biology or psychology, but must also be understood as products of wider historical, cultural, political, and institutional processes.
Ashley Frawley
Patreon
🔗 https://www.patreon.com/AshleyAFrawley
🔗 Compact Magazine
https://www.compactmag.com/contributor/ashley-frawley/
Frawley serves as Senior Editor at Compact, a publication focused on politics, culture, economics, and contemporary social debates.
🔗 Bloomsbury Author Page
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/ashley-frawley/
Significant Emotions: Rhetoric and Social Problems in a Vulnerable Age
🔗 Bloomsbury
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/significant-emotions-9781350026810/
🔗 Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1q-G24wAAAAJ
Ashley Frawley is a sociologist, author, and editor whose work focuses on social problems, therapeutic culture, wellbeing discourse, family policy, emotions, and contemporary political culture.
She is Senior Editor at Compact Magazine, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Kent, and Visiting Research Fellow at MCC Brussels.
Organizations & Institutions
MCC Brussels
🔗 Official Website https://brussels.mcc.hu/
Jonathan Haidt
🔗 Official Website
https://jonathanhaidt.com/
Referenced during a discussion about social science, moral psychology, and the replication crisis.
Daniel Kahneman
🔗 Nobel Prize Biography
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2002/kahneman/facts/
Referenced in relation to behavioural science and contemporary psychology.
🔗 Michelle Remembers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
https://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Remembers-Smith/dp/0722179588
The Replication Crisis
🔗 Nature Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a
The discussion examines methodological and reproducibility problems affecting psychology and related social sciences.
The Communist Manifesto
🔗 Full Text
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Referenced during discussions about family structures, labour mobility, and capitalism.
David Goodhart — The Road to Somewhere
🔗 Publisher Page
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-road-to-somewhere/
Referenced during discussion of “Somewheres” and “Anywheres”, mobility, local attachment, and identity.
John Stuart Mill — The Subjection of Women
🔗 Full Text
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27083
Referenced during discussion of women’s citizenship, reason, education, and public life.
Historical Parallels & Social Contagion
The Satanic Panic
🔗 Encyclopaedia Britannica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
🔗 Repressed Memory
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8935987/
Ian Hacking
🔗 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Gender, Citizenship & Vulnerability
How Society Got a Sex Change
🔗 Compact Magazine
https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-society-got-a-sex-change/
Frawley references her essay examining changing social ideals surrounding sex, gender, citizenship, and identity.
Topics discussed include:
• stereotypical femininity
• vulnerability as a social ideal
• masculinity and socialization
• changing gender norms
• citizenship and identity
The “Women Are Wonderful” Effect
🔗 APA Record
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1994-33384-001
Discussed in relation to cultural expectations surrounding femininity, morality, accommodation, and vulnerability.
Host
Róisín Michaux
🔗 X (Twitter)
https://x.com/RoisinMichaux
🔗 Apple Podcasts — Peaked
Listen & Subscribe
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