Witches, Bitches, and Sluts

Xtina Rose
  • 5.0 (1)
  • History
  • Updated Weekly

Witch. Bitch. Slut. These are just a sample of the many names women have been called throughout history through today. Witches, Bitches, and Sluts is a twice-weekly show about how women get discredited through these labels, and why the false version so often outlives the real one. Every week, Xtina Rose digs into how women get reduced to one word. Some episodes tell one woman's story — the accusation, the truth, and why the myth stuck. Others go deeper into the research behind the pattern. Rigorously researched, casually told — this isn't a lecture, it's the conversation you'd have with a friend who did way too much reading before showing up.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    Tituba: "The Devil Came to Me"

    "I have done nothing." That's the first thing the 1692 court record says Tituba told the magistrates. By the end of the day, she'd confessed to meeting the Devil, and the Salem witch trials had begun. In the first of three Salem episodes, host Xtina Rose separates what the records actually say about Tituba from three centuries of invention. We cover the enslaved "Indian woman" in the minister's house, the loaded questions that made her confess, the girls who went quiet when she said what the room wanted, and the thirteen months in jail that ended with her being sold for her fees. Then we follow how later writers turned her into a Black Caribbean "voodoo" witch leading girls in the woods, from a Victorian illustration to The Crucible, and how that myth lets them off the hook. CAUTION: This episode discusses slavery, racism, and a confession that was beaten out of a woman, as well as imprisonment and execution. Please take care of yourself while you listen. Read the records yourself: Tituba's actual 1692 examinations are free online at the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive: https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n125.html Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Tituba: "The Devil Came to Me"

  2. Sep 28

    Stevie Nicks: "I'm not a witch. Get a life!"

    It's SPOOKY Season! ...Aaaaand I'm sick, so pardon my nasal voice. This is the first of our Spooky Season Witch episodes, and I am starting with an ICON. Although most of my episodes focus on women who were damaged by their labels, occasionally I'll occasionally feature a woman who triumphed over her label. I'm going to call those Icon episodes, and our first one is Stevie Nicks. -- "I am not a witch. Get a life." That's what Nicks told fans in 1998 — more than two decades into a career, people still couldn't stop asking about her supposed spellcasting. In this episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose traces how "Rhiannon," a 1976 television performance, and a decade of New Age fascination and Satanic Panic backlash turned a working songwriter into a supposed sorceress. We cover the double standard that let David Bowie play an alien without comment while Nicks got treated as a confession, what the label actually cost her — a year spent afraid of her own wardrobe, credibility as a songwriter, and years of a hidden addiction the mystique helped obscure — and how she eventually took the label back on her own terms, from American Horror Story to two solo Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. Content note: this episode discusses drug and alcohol dependency and stalking-adjacent fan behavior. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Stevie Nicks: "I'm not a witch. Get a life!"

  3. Sep 21 ·  Video

    The Trap of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire

    The fastest way to misunderstand a Black woman is to reach for a familiar label. We start with the one Michelle Obama names so plainly: how easily Black women get tagged as “angry,” then we pull the thread back through history and forward into research that shows what those snap judgments can do. I walk through three stereotypes that work together like a trap: Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire. Mammy isn’t just a costume from old films it’s a story that made slavery and domestic labor look like devotion, then got replayed through minstrelsy, advertising like Aunt Jemima, and Hollywood roles that rewarded self-sacrifice. From there, we connect Mammy to the modern “Strong Black Woman” expectation and the mental health toll of being praised for endurance while being denied care. Then we shift to Jezebel and Sapphire, two labels that police desire and punish resistance. We talk about how sexual violence gets excused through stereotype, how media representation trains audiences to see Black women’s bodies as public property, and what studies reveal about implicit bias that shows up in seconds. Finally, we bring Sapphire into the workplace, where words like “aggressive” or “difficult” can hide unequal standards, and we name the constant “shifting” Black women may do just to avoid being misread. If this resonates, listen to the full episode, share it with someone who needs the language for what they’ve seen, and leave a rating or review so the show can reach more people. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    The Trap of Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire

  4. Sep 14 ·  Video

    Hattie McDaniel - Not Your Mammy

    Hattie McDaniel's Oscar Speech "Any Kind of Man Would be Better than You" by Hattie McDaniel Bob Corley as Beulah The world remembers Hattie McDaniel as a milestone, and too often as a stereotype. We’re telling the story that gets lost when one role becomes a person’s whole identity, and asking the uncomfortable question her career forces on us: what if the thing that makes you famous also makes it harder for people to see you? We follow Hattie from her Kansas beginnings and a childhood filled with music to the hard-earned skills of vaudeville, radio, and recording in the 1920s. When the Great Depression hits, we watch her take service work to survive, then turn a late-night “volunteer talent” moment into a springboard to Hollywood. Once she arrives in Los Angeles, the opportunity comes with a catch: again and again, the industry casts her as “the help,” even as she makes those limited parts vivid through timing, expression, and authority that can flip a scene on its head. Then comes Gone with the Wind, the “Mammy” role, and a publicity machine that pushes audiences to confuse the actress with the character. We dig into Black newspaper criticism, the conflict with NAACP leader Walter White, and why blaming individual performers can distract from the studio decision makers who control scripts, budgets, and what kinds of Black lives are allowed on screen. We also confront the cruel irony of history: Jim Crow exclusion at the Atlanta premiere, a whites-only Oscars venue, and Hattie seated apart after making Academy Awards history. We close with what people often miss: her work on Beulah, her Sugar Hill housing fight, her community support during wartime, and the strange legacy of her missing Oscar plaque and its later replacement at Howard University. If you care about film history, Black Hollywood, media representation, and how stereotypes shape real lives, listen now, then subscribe, share, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the full story. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Hattie McDaniel - Not Your Mammy

  5. Aug 31 ·  Video

    Dragon Lady, Lotus Blossom, and Asian Women

    A character shouldn’t be able to haunt an actor on the sidewalk, yet Lucy Liu’s fear after playing Ling Wu points to something bigger than celebrity. We’re digging into the Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom stereotypes and how they teach audiences to read Asian American women as either dangerous and hypersexualized or sweet, passive, and disposable. These labels didn’t start with one actress and they don’t end on a screen, they shape the way real people get approached, desired, dismissed, and feared. We trace the history from Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and Yellow Peril panic to Madama Butterfly’s tragic devotion template, then connect it to the research that explains why “hostile” and “flattering” portrayals work together. Using ambivalent sexism theory, the stereotype content model, and the Bias Map, we link perception to harm, including what happens when conditions feel threatening and scapegoating rises. Then we get concrete with peer-reviewed work on media representation, the Gendered Racial Microaggression Scale for Asian American women, and findings on fetishization, submissiveness expectations, media invalidation, and the mental health toll. Finally, we test the hopeful claim that things naturally improve over time and show why it’s not about the calendar, it’s about control. From The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians to Ally McBeal and Ghost in the Shell, representation changes when Asian American creators hold the pen. If this gave you a new lens, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Dragon Lady, Lotus Blossom, and Asian Women

  6. Aug 24 ·  Video

    Anna May Wong: A Thousand Deaths

    Hollywood didn’t just typecast Anna Mae Wong, it built a whole set of “acceptable” fates around her and then acted like those limits were natural. We pull apart how a third-generation Chinese American woman from Los Angeles became one of the first true movie stars of the 1920s and 30s, while the industry still insisted she could only be a threat, a sacrifice, or a lesson for somebody else’s story. We follow the real-world machinery behind the Dragon Lady stereotype and the Lotus Blossom archetype, from early breakout roles like The Toll of the Sea and The Thief of Baghdad to scene-stealing performances in Shanghai Express. Along the way, we connect her life to the wider context Hollywood rarely acknowledges: anti-Chinese racism, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the studio system’s comfort with Yellowface. Then the trap snaps shut with the Hayes Code’s ban on interracial romance, a “rule” that becomes an excuse to deny her the one role everyone expected she’d finally get: Olan in MGM’s The Good Earth. We also trace what happens after the snub: Wong’s first trip to China and the pain of being rejected as “too American,” the smaller films where she finally gets more control, her World War II relief work, and the late-career recognition that arrives with sharp edges, including the dream part she never gets to play in Flower Drum Song. We end with how historians and modern culture are reclaiming her legacy, and why her story still explains so much about representation in film and television today. Subscribe, share this with a friend who cares about film history, and leave a review so more people can find the show. *Special Appearance by my golden Bao Bao (aka Dumpling) Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Anna May Wong: A Thousand Deaths

  7. Aug 17 ·  Video

    Dumb or Deadly? Examining the Dumb Blonde and the Femme Fatale

    A single look can get a woman filed as sweet and harmless or cold and dangerous, and the switch can happen in seconds. We start with Dolly Parton’s iconic joke about the “dumb blonde” label (and the way Marilyn Monroe and Britney Spears echo the same pressure), then trace where these stereotypes came from and why they keep returning in new forms. We walk the long history of blonde hair as a Western beauty ideal, then set it beside the ancient lineage of the femme fatale, from mythic temptress to film noir’s calculating “fatal woman.” Next, we map both characters onto real psychology: the stereotype content model shows the dumb blonde as high warmth and low competence, while the femme fatale flips to low warmth and high competence. Ambivalent sexism ties the knot, revealing “benevolent” and “hostile” reactions as two sides of the same response to a beautiful woman. Then we get concrete with research. A large dataset analysis finds the dumb blonde’s central claim is simply false: blondes don’t score lower on intelligence tests. So what’s being measured? Studies show that directing attention to a woman’s appearance drops how competent, warm, and moral she seems. We also dig into experiments where attractiveness helps women in low-status roles but becomes a penalty for authority, plus courtroom and modern workplace findings that capture the “femme fatale effect,” including how insecurity in the audience can drive distrust. If you’ve ever watched a woman get praised as “cute” until she asks for power, pay, or credibility, this one will feel uncomfortably familiar. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the moment that hit you hardest. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    Dumb or Deadly? Examining the Dumb Blonde and the Femme Fatale

  8. Aug 10 ·  Video

    BIO: Marilyn Monroe - "You have to be smart to play dumb"

    They called Marilyn Monroe a “dumb blonde,” and the world repeated it so often that the label started to sound like a fact. We’re not buying it. We trace how Norma Jean became “Marilyn,” how studios shaped her image, and how the public confused a paid performance with a real personality. Along the way, we look at the cost of turning a woman into a symbol: critics dismissing her as a phenomenon, people insisting she was “witty but not smart,” and an entire culture more comfortable with her being sexy and harmless than sexy and intelligent. We get specific about the mechanics: the early attempt to market her as a femme fatale, the pivot into comedic sex symbol, and the careful work behind the voice everyone imitates. We talk coaching, breath work, and the stories that show she could switch the persona on and off, treating “Marilyn” like an alter ego she controlled. We also dig into evidence of her intellect, including her reading life and the way lazy commentary still tries to flatten her into a joke. Then we follow the power move that should have defined her legacy: refusing another shallow role, founding Marilyn Monroe Productions, and forcing Fox into a renegotiation that raised her pay and gave her real creative approval. Finally, we name the darker through line: how denying her agency shows up in mental health treatment, conspiracy narratives, and even the way she’s exploited after death. If you care about Hollywood history, gender stereotypes, celebrity branding, and the true story behind Marilyn Monroe, hit play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave us a review. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    BIO: Marilyn Monroe - "You have to be smart to play dumb"

  9. Aug 10

    "Are Women Human?"

    Content note: this episode discusses slurs, sexual shaming, racism, and harassment. Are women human? Obviously. So why do we have so many words that turn women into categories: the b*tch, the sl*t, the witch, the gold digger, the crazy ex? In this first episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose starts with Dorothy L. Sayers's 1938 question, "Are Women Human?" and explores research on how labels work. We cover labeling theory, why words for women become insults, the psychology of warmth and competence, Ambivalent Sexism Theory, and the backlash that competent women face at work. Xtina also shares her own story: being called a sl*t before her first kiss, being cast as the villain in her divorce, and why she unmatches men who "love Asian women." Finally, she explains why she's reclaiming these words and what it would take to actually treat women as human. Mentioned in this episode "Labour" by Paris Paloma: https://youtu.be/jvU4xWsN7-A (don't miss 2:45) Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

    "Are Women Human?"

  10. Trailer ·  Video

    TRAILER: Who Wins When A Woman Becomes A Slur?

    Trailer for the podcast Witches, Bitches, and Sluts. A podcast that investigates when women are labeled and why. Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee. Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

  • 1 Trailer
    9 Episodes

Trailer

About

Witch. Bitch. Slut. These are just a sample of the many names women have been called throughout history through today. Witches, Bitches, and Sluts is a twice-weekly show about how women get discredited through these labels, and why the false version so often outlives the real one. Every week, Xtina Rose digs into how women get reduced to one word. Some episodes tell one woman's story — the accusation, the truth, and why the myth stuck. Others go deeper into the research behind the pattern. Rigorously researched, casually told — this isn't a lecture, it's the conversation you'd have with a friend who did way too much reading before showing up.

Information

  • Creator
    Xtina Rose
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Witches, Bitches, and Sluts
  • Show Website
    Witches, Bitches, and Sluts