Jennie Young: Burn the Haystack — Feminist Rhetoric and Dating
Professor and rhetorician Jennie Young applies feminist communication theory to online dating patterns, showing how toxic messaging reveals broader dynamics of power and language.
Why we picked this
Young is a professor of writing and rhetoric using academic rigor to decode something most people just experience as frustrating — the result is both genuinely funny and analytically sharp.
Dr. Jennie Young, PhD, is a professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay who specializes in feminist rhetoric, humor, and applied communication. Her book Burn the Haystack takes online dating as its primary text — but what it’s really analyzing is power, language, and the patterns that show up when people think no one is paying close attention.
Young’s Burned Haystack Dating Method identifies recurring toxic rhetorical patterns in men’s messaging — techniques she names things like “Test and Apologize” and “Disciplinary/Directive” — and explains the communicative logic behind each one. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, The Independent, and Inside Higher Ed, which tells you something about the range of registers she can write across.
The talk promises to be both analytically rigorous and genuinely entertaining — the kind of evening where the academic framework makes you laugh in recognition rather than reach for your notes. Young argues the skills in the book apply well beyond dating, into the classroom and the boardroom: wherever communication is being used to establish hierarchy rather than connection.