The Witches Are Coming: Summary & Key Insights

Our culture’s favorite game is pretending. Pretending that things are fine, that sexism is over, that racism is a glitch in an otherwise functional system. I wrote about that denial because it isn’t harmless—it’s the foundation of how injustice perpetuates itself. Through television, through jokes, through the way we treat women’s anger as inconvenient.

America loves a narrative of progress. We tell ourselves we’ve come so far that to name inequality feels impolite. But what I began to notice was how entertainment smooths the rough edges of reality until we forget there were edges at all. That is why I turn to pop culture—because it’s where we practice denial most efficiently. Whether it’s a sitcom laugh track cushioning cruelty or a blockbuster recasting patriarchy as heroism, denial hides in plain sight.

By using humor I’m not defanging reality; I’m reclaiming it. Comedy is a mirror with better lighting—it lets us see the absurdity of pretending not to know what we already do. And once you stop pretending, that laughter becomes defiance.

I grew up loving movies and TV the way most Americans do. But when you’re a woman who writes about sexism, you start to see the seams—the way stories repeat themselves until they become cultural gospel. Media isn’t passive; it’s a builder of myth. And the myths it builds have teeth.

In this book I dissect the machinery that keeps harmful ideas alive. News cycles that frame accountability as hysteria. Studios that market feminist heroines while protecting men accused of abuse. Cultural criticism that mistakes neutrality for objectivity. The media’s complicity isn’t just in what it says but in what it refuses to confront.

These chapters were hard to write because they forced me to reckon with my own complicity too—how often I wanted to believe stories that made me comfortable. But understanding complicity is the first step toward challenging it. When I use satire, I’m not mocking individuals; I’m exposing the system that makes harm seem normal. I want us all to ask: who profits from these narratives, and who’s left out entirely?