Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror

I just started listening to the podcast. Thus far, my favorite episode has been when they had Juliet McKenna on the show. She had a lot of great insight about Arthurian literature. I really enjoyed her thoughts on the portrayal and roles of women in these stories.

“It’s Thursday, I’m cold, and I don’t feel like fighting the patriarchy” I am instantly in love with this show. I’ll be listening to every episode 🥰🥰🥰

I usually use podcasts to listen to tidbits of information on news, politics, and entertainment. But one day I was bored by the usual slate and wanted something new, preferably something to do with writing in literature or film, so I subscribed to maybe 15 more podcasts in the hopes of finding something decent. Not only did BtGS turn out to be the best of the batch that I was trying out, it pretty quickly became my favorite podcast entirely. Even when some of the subjects are rather straightforward, the conversations are fantastic. I highly recommend Breaking the Glass Slipper, and perhaps also supporting their Patreon if you end up loving them too!

I have a love/hate relationship with this podcast. The themes are excellent and the conversations and guests are engaging. I love the idea of having a podcast that makes space for feminist discussions in SFF and Horror contexts. However, I find myself feeling frustrated that this podcast only seems to understand feminism in the white feminism context. There are only occasional mentions of trans/cis genders, ability/disability themes, diverse sexualities, and racial experiences. Often the guests do most of this work. I would love the hosts themselves to do more modern feminist academic reading and to better apply an intersectional lens in their conversations. The horror host in particular seems to only consider "the girls and the guys." I recognize that the hosts are coming from a European perspective (I'm including but it does regularly surprise me how Euro-centric their conversations sometimes are. I'm listening to the episode about female monsters, and am surprised at how Greek focused the conversation is. It seems hard to make any larger statements about female monsters if the only ones considered are coming from the famously misogynist Greeks. Other episodes have sometimes shown that the hosts idea of women in history only means the roles of European/English women in the last ~500 years. It feels surprisingly myopic for a show about intersectional feminism and genres that push at conventional understanding. I love so many things about this as an SFF podcast, but I wish it was stronger as a feminist podcast.