Tiffany Torres Williams joined TDWS for an emotionally layered conversation about evangelicalism, motherhood, reproductive rights, queer kids, and what happens when women finally start questioning the systems that raised them.
Tiffany talked about growing up deeply evangelical in Texas and the profound rupture that happened when so many Christians aligned themselves with Donald Trump. What stayed with me most was her description of leaving evangelicalism not as a political shift, but as an existential crisis. When your church is also your family, your friendships, your support system, your childcare, your social life, and your entire worldview, questioning it can mean losing almost everything at once.
We also spent a long time unpacking Dr. Oz’s horrifying phrase that America is “under-babied,” and why that rhetoric hit so many women viscerally. Tiffany connected it back to evangelical messaging around “be fruitful and multiply,” while we talked about the broader reality: women are being pressured to have more children while simultaneously losing healthcare, reproductive freedom, childcare support, financial stability, and basic bodily autonomy.
The conversation got especially emotional when we talked about queer and trans kids, including the recent murder of Juniper Blessing, a trans student at the University of Washington, and the growing fear many parents feel watching anti-trans rhetoric escalate nationally. One of the clearest threads running underneath the whole show was this: the people demanding more babies often seem deeply unwilling to protect the vulnerable children already here.
And somehow, despite the heaviness of all of that, the conversation still managed to include jokes about grapes, trad wives, abortion tourism in Montana, and Lawrence volunteering as tribute for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Chris Resists, ShālahBPookie - TheRebelCrone, LeftieProf, Jai C. Porter🇨🇦, and many others for tuning in, and for Karen Marie Shelton and Yanni Hamburger for moderating.
Thanks for listening!
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