THE UNSPEAKEASY COMMUNITY

Designed in the spirit of a Prohibition-era speakeasy, it's an underground world full of intellectual curiosity, good-faith debate and real humor.

The community is on a private social platform where users can experience viewpoint diversity and resist groupthink. It offers a space where intellectually curious (AKA, “problematic”) women from everywhere on the political spectrum can talk honestly about complex issues and ask meaningful questions to which there are no easy answers.

MEMBERSHIP LEVELS

    • Discussion forums on audience-favorite heterodox topics

    • Message board for local in-person meetups and heterodox events

    • Coffee Dates to connect 1-on-1 with other freethinkers

    • The Unspeakeasy Book Club

    • Meghan Daum-curated Bookshop of heterodox titles

    • The Unspeakeasy Member Professional Directory

    • Off-the-record Zoom visits from high profile “unspeakers”

    • Chances to connect in person with members in your local community

    $150 PER YEAR

    • Everything in Heretic membership

    • 10% discount on Unspeakeasy in-person retreats, effective Fall 2023

    • Undying gratitude

    • Everything in Pariah membership

    • Our love and admiration

    • Moral superiority

  • Have a free-thinking lady friend in your life? Give the gift of intellectual freedom with a membership to The Unspeakeasy.

    A gift membership is good for one year and comes with all the benefits of the Heretic level.

    Your friend will go through the normal screening process (which will be extra easy since it comes from a recommendation from you), and once that’s done, she’ll be in!

    Contact us for more information at info@theunspeakeasy.com

WHAT’S INSIDE THE UNSPEAKEASY COMMUNITY & OTHER FAQs

  • It’s a private social platform with a focus on viewpoint diversity and resistance to groupthink. Think of it as a mini-Facebook filled with smart, thoughtful women who won’t lose their minds if you utter names like Jordan Peterson or JK Rowling. When you come in, you’ll be able to introduce yourself (though you don’t have to) and see all the different discussion forums and what’s happening within them. Within those forums, you can start a new conversation or jump into an existing one. You can share articles, videos, photos, documents, and social media links, but nothing that’s posted in the community will appear anywhere else on the internet.  

  • The Unspeakeasy brings together women of all ages and backgrounds. Here, you will find stay-at-home moms, corporate professionals, creative artists, students, teachers, journalists, scientists, tech workers, physicians, therapists, librarians, electricians, farmers . . . on and on! Gen Xers and elder millennials are especially well represented, but members range in age from their early 20s into their 80s.

  • When you apply for membership, you’ll need to fill out a brief form asking for proof of who are you (there are lots of ways to do this) and a few sentences about what drew you to the community. There’s no exam required. We just need to know a little about you and make sure you sure understand more or less what we’re about. Once approved, you’ll come on in! 

    We ask that new members pay commit to a full year upon signing up.This helps ensure that everyone who joins is there in good faith and out of genuine interest. After the first year, renewing members have the option of paying monthly.

  • You cannot “join anonymously,” per se. The community is a circle of trust, and everyone needs to know who they’re interacting with. That said, if you are very concerned about posting under your full name, we can try to work with you to come up with a comfortable solution. 

    The important thing is that we know who you are.

  • Both and everything in between. Here you might find a committed socialist having a friendly conversation with a Trump voter. Or a person of deep religious faith finding common ground with an atheist. Mostly, these are women who are tired of having to fit their opinions into a single ideological box. It’s possible to think one way about abortion and another way about immigration. Or to listen to NPR and also heterodox podcasts. Who knew?

  • That’s exactly why you should join! As much as we talk about politics and culture war issues, we also talk about books, movies, parenting, cooking, sports, health, the latest big streaming series. There’s an advice forum if you need help with a touchy subject, book clubs, lots of ways to connect with Unspeakeasy members in your local community, and even a place for pet photos. At least once a month, Meghan will host a Zoot lm meeting where people can talk about whatever is on their minds.


UNSPEAKERS SERIES

A highlight of The Unspeakesy online community is our Unspeakers Series. All kinds of authors, artists, and thinkers join us for intimate Zoom hangouts where members can chat with them personally and ask them anything they want — all off the record. New speakers are always being added, and members are encouraged to offer suggestions.

Here’s who we’ve hosted so far.

  • Nellie Bowles

    Nellie Bowles

    JANUARY 2025

    Nellie Bowles writes the TGIF column for The Free Press, a media company she founded with her wife, Bari Weiss. She is the author of Morning After The Revolution: Dispatches From The Wrong Side Of History. (Listen to her interview with Meghan here.)

  • Andrew Hartz

    DECEMBER 2024

    Andrew Hartz is a practicing clinical psychologist and the founder and president of the Open Therapy Institute, which seeks to address political bias in mental health care. For several years, he’s written about political issues and mental health for outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, City Journal, Quillette, Discourse, the Federalist, Real Clear Education, and Heterodox Academy.

  • Julie Bindel

    NOVEMBER 2024

    Julie Bindel is a British journalist, broadcaster, author and a feminist campaigner against male violence towards women and girls. Her latest book, Lesbians: Where Are We Now? will be published by Swift Press in Spring 2025 and her new podcast, Julie In Genderland, premiered in September 2024.

  • Jennifer Block

    OCTOBER 2024

    Jennifer Block is an author and independent journalist who writes frequently about health, gender, and contested areas of medicine. She is the author of the 2007 book Pushed and the 2019 book Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution and has latey been covering the rise of gender medicine and its intersection with women’s healthcare. 

  • Jamie Reed

    AUGUST 2024

    Jamie Reed is one of the first public whistleblowers from a pediatric gender clinic in the United States. She is now the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the LGBT Courage Coalition, an American based non profit of LGBT adults seeking to reform youth gender medicine. The LGBT Courage Coalition seeks to impact culture and medicine to accept and support gender non-conformity in a non-medicalized way.

  • William Deresiewicz

    JULY 2024

    William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic and the author of five books including The Death of The Artist and the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His latest book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society.

  • Carole Hooven

    FEBRUARY 2024

    Dr. Carole Hooven is a human evolutionary biologist, author, and award-winning educator who works on issues related to sex and gender, health, psychology, and academic freedom in higher education. Her 2021 book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us kicked off a journey that led to her departure from a longtime post at Harvard and her arrival onto the front lines of the speech wars.

  • Rob Henderson

    JANUARY 2023

    Rob Henderson is the bestselling author of Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class and is perhaps best known for pioneering the idea of “luxury beliefs. He write about human nature, psychology, social class, TV shows, movies, political and social divisions, and more.

  • Lionel Shriver

    MAY 2023 & JUNE 2021

    Lionel Shriver is the author of numerous novels, most famously We Need To Talk About Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has been an outspoken critic of censoriousness in the literary world for many years and is now a columnist at The Specator.

  • Kathleen Stock

    SEPTEMBER 2023

    Kathleen Stock, author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminsm, is a former Professor of Philosophy and is now a writer, a columnist for UnHerd, and the co-director of The Lesbian Project.