We discuss the cycle of women being put on psychiatric drugs over the last seventy years, typically a trend of SSRIs and then switching to stimulants, and its relationship to femininity. The internet has caused many women to self-diagnose due feeling there is something wrong with them and then seek out the diagnosis. Many women, against all observable evidence, feel inadequate and that their must be something wrong with them if feel unable to keep up with the demands of motherhood or the increasingly hostile work environments of late capitalism. From the popular rise of Prozac to today's methamphetamine shortage, we discuss some of the reoccurring themes women describe when seek medication to "feel better".
Plus, why women and girls are often told they "talk too much" (especially when good communicators), the never ending treadmill to nowhere of femininity, being outside the social fabric as a gay person, how economic demands create social avenues, the denial of social construction in gender norms amidst declarations of nature, and the problem with Twin Studies.
In advance of Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th companies such as Meta, Walmart, McDonalds, and others, have announced the scrapping of their DEI policies. We discuss that political shift and also lasts weeks criticism of the LA Fire Departments DEI policies that led to the circulation of some inadvertently comical clips of fire fighters espousing the need to 'look like' the people you're saving. We also wonder whether Mark Zuckerberg’s metamorphosis into a jujitsu ‘bro’ and change of political allegiance is authentic or if it’s simply part doing what’s best for his company. Plus, whether Canada should join American (Hannah is ready to enlist!), the competence rhetoric of the ‘anti woke’ right, the central point people get wrong about social construction, mixed sex platoons in the army, and the feminisation of workplaces that creates emphasis on who you are rather than what you do.
Since the start of 2025 the presence of Pakistani 'grooming gangs' operating across the United Kingdom has dominated online discourse and parliamentary debate. We discuss the nature of these 'gangs', provide a cultural analysis of why they existed, and consider the scale of the political cover-up by the Labour Party, police, and local authorities. Plus, the key divide in feminism on the issue, the Left’s sentiment that they own feminism because their project is a claim to liberating all humanity, Jimmy Savile, islamophobia as conceptually tied to imperialism or a useless term, and the Left’s delusion that ethnic minorities are universally aligned with them.
Dr. Ally Louks, a scholar at Cambridge University, created a frenzy online after posing for a selfie with her PhD thesis entitled 'Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose’. Her tweet went viral, with over 120 million views to date. We discuss the backlash and why we think her English Literature PhD caused such a furore. Including... anti-intellectualism, envy, knowledge as something possession of a particular sex, the crisis in the American academy, and the history of conservatives in literature. Plus, what dealing with academic charlatans is like, what PhDs actually are, and why men sometimes hate something a woman does precisely because it’s excellent.
We respond to Labour MP Pat McFadden's suggestion that anyone wanting to be euthanised should pay for it themselves. We talk package deals, budget deaths, and spectacular deluxe send offs involving planes and assassination-style takedowns. We wonder how the bureaucracy around death will work? What will the safeguards be? Can there be safeguards around death?
Jen’s outlines her dark theory about why Kim Leadbeater is so interested in promoting death and Hannah explains euthanasia as a phenomenological understanding of Satan in cultural form. Plus, vapid progressivism, intersectional car crashes, consequences for the ‘euthanasia defence’, the unintelligibility of MPs to the general public and the unintelligibility of the general public to MPs, middle-class people’s denial around the state, and liberalisms obsession with the individual and the individual as the only point of analysis for the liberal.
The Labour government is set to introduce inheritance tax on farms that will potentially decimate the farming industry in the UK. We take a heretical leftwing position by arguing against this in the name of food sovereignty, productive value, and anti-globalisation. We discuss how the Left used to be the advocates of organic food, free range farming, and have entirely ceded that cultural ground to the Right. We then delve into the widening pathways of alienation in our society in terms of consumption regarding food, living in regard to housing, the creation of life in relation to surrogacy, and with euthanasia now an attempt to socially construct death.
We give an example of how trans-humanism cannot even fit into our institutions citing YouTube couple Jamie Raines and wife Shaaba who have screwed themselves out of IVF on the NHS due to Jamie being male on her medical records and also not qualifying as a heterosexual couple because they’re both actually female. Plus, the Marxist definition of oppression, Hannah lambasts the language around assisted suicide, and Jen states she'd prefer to be hit by a bus than be euthanised.
We discuss the relationship between transgender ideology's tendency towards categorisation and the black and white concreteness of mind required to buy in to it. The more ambiguous, messier parts of subjectivity can cause a certain ambivalence, for which surgeries, hormones, and cosmetic procedures become a way to make concrete changes to oneself in the hope of splitting off parts of the self that don’t fit neatly into a core self-image or identification with a desired category. This black and white thinking has its basis in emotional maturity, which is partly why so many as mature 'detransition', having come to integrate all parts of themselves psychically as age.
Similarly, in regard to maturity and a lack of experience, it is remarkable how often it is that those with little to no sexual experience are the people most attracted to and highly fascinated by sexual categories or sexual politics. As if labelling yourself with three types of sexual identities, or obsessing over the social relations between the sexes, would fill a void of inexperience and lack of understanding.
Plus, transgender ideology’s curious rejection on social construction for the more concrete arguments of hard science, why sanitising and infantilising gay people through rainbows is a recipe for making us all look like pedophiles, and the value of seeing other women say “no”.
Donald Trump won the American Presidential election last week in a landslide victory, winning every swing state, and almost 'flipping' a few others. We discuss how he managed to pull off a feat that most polls and political commentators were not expecting. If Trump's win signals a wider crisis of liberalism, what hope is there for the Democrats to renew themselves and win this side of 2040? The election humiliated not just the many pollsters who expected a blue victory, but also the mainstream media, who found themselves floundering for explanations as to what had gone so wrong. We discuss the denial of those mainstream media commentators and others in the Harris camp who now find themselves political refugees as they continue to not face the seismic political shift Trump represents. Plus, the feminine bullying tactics of woke liberals, the new emergent fault line of globalisation vs anti-globalisation, Jen feeling surprisingly sad after the election result became clear, the racism of low expectations, and we ask whether Rory Stewart inadvertenly indicated he was privy to intelligence conversations about bumping Trump off? And sorry for the fireworks!
The 2024 U.S Election results will be known in just 36 - 48 hours time. We discuss how acrimonious the run up has been, and how dominant online discourse has become in shaping political outcomes. We cover the new normalcy of openly wishing violence on your political opponents or those who differ ideologically to you, how the online sphere has fostered petulance as politics, and why assuming everyone who disagrees with you is stupid is a bad idea. Plus, the UK’s predilection for teaching children gruesome histories, Ben Shapiro on Jewish whiteness, moral incontinence, and whether we should only be nice about people after they die. Towards the end of the episode we give our predictions on whether Trump or Kamala will win and, of course, the mass global fallout from the tragic state murder of Peanut the squirrel.
We review Matt Walsh's new documentary uncovering the DEI movement in the United States. 'Am I a Racist?' looks at race relations specifically, and the self-help, grief counselling, Protestant evangelical culture found within the workshops he attends. There is a pessimism at the heart of these DEI sessions, one that has a wider context in capitalist realism, afro-pessimism, and Victorian morality. The function of pessimism here is about proposing a foreclosure of systemic change or reorganising society in a meaningful way to end racism, so that instead people individually 'do the work' through self-flagellation and quasi-psychological deconstruction. That sets up the lucrative grift of DEI workshops or events as the only activity someone can attend to be anti-racist, rather than focusing on political action. Individualistic measures become the ceiling of what one can do to defeat racism.
Plus, Derrida's 'reiteration' theory, women's loyalty to men as highly racialised, the red flags of coercive workshops, and a prediction of land acknowledgements happening even in Israel some day. At the end of the episode we discuss some of the damage done by vegan activists to indigenous communities in the north of Canada.
The UK's Labour government has announced a proposal to introduce euthanasia for the terminally ill. We approach that in the latter 40 minutes of this episode, after a discussion of what it's like to be a feminist in public. Expressing feminist ideas in public can lead to encountering attention seeking tactics and subsequently becoming blackpilled. We also discuss the combination of radical feminist theory with socialist feminist practice, and men adopting feminist understandings due to novelty. The latter half of the episode is concerned with euthanasia, as well as the newly proposed Ozempic injections for the unemployed obese, and work coaches for mental health in-patients. Social constructionism requires state intervention, but this particular form of statecraft is being supported by Humanist organisations pretence that the UK's main opposition is an evangelical Christian contingent that does not exist and is not large enough to be a political force. Little reflection is taking place on how the slippery slope is built-in to euthanisia, leading to, for example, people in Canada with Alzheimer’s being signed-off for euthanasia by their legal guardian family members. Plus, the subjective nature of suffering, the feminist arguments against euthanasia, and the death of capitalist hedonism and its possible monstrous rebirth in euthanasia.
Last weekend LGB Alliance Conference was attacked by Trans activists releasing insects at their event. We discuss why LGBA inspires such ire from Trans activists and how this attack was a form of resent-filled revenge after losing Self-ID with the Labour government. We also consider why young women are attracted to Transgender activism and why young T and Q activists are so committed to attempting to attach themselves to LGB (voyeuristic proximity to sexuality). Specifically, middle-class TRA women can be understood to be petulant, brattish 'scabs' that have no solidarity with other women who 'go on strike' against gender. Another aspect is how socially underdeveloped young women are attracted to transgenderism because it’s a form of rejecting adult sexuality and adulthood, in a similar kind of way anorexia and political lesbianism are. Plus, devaluing other women as a defence, growing up a tall girl, the abject, the shortsightedness of being young, opting for stunts when can’t organise mass protests, and the phenomenon of 'Trans until graduation'.
Many who once found their political home on the Left feel as if they woke up in a new household, with new inhabitants, and the back garden on fire. Are we in the global North living in a post-Left era? We discuss that prospect, including the political dishonesty and cynicism of the Left today, and the far-Left's turn away from mass politics. Plus, how specifically women's politics change as they age, predictions of an atomised society where everyone communicates via avatar coming true, Kemi Badenoch, and how in the digital information economy self-confidence and lack of discipline reigns.
Does Transgenderism, as a personal fad and wider trend, mirror the lifecycle until adulthood? We discuss that in relation to the theme of Hannah's latest Substack article about internet culture in the 2010s. Before the dissolution of the distinction between internet culture and culture at large, the internet was a place where asocial oddballs could retreat and be siloed together, but today, as every generation moves online, a certain kind of 'reality testing' has emerged. All teenagers find relief in seeing other teens who talk about having problems because teenagehood is generally difficult, but eventually, everyone has to grow up and no longer rely on adolescent culture in order to be a normal, successful adult. Transgenderism functions as a kind of 'rebirth', renewal, and 'revelation' that extends that period of pre-adulthood, but only for so long.
The final third of the episode discusses the folk devil of the evil mother who won’t allow a loving father access to their children. That includes conversation about lesbian childrearing, family courts support of violent fathers, the taboo around father violence, and Sammy Woodhouse’s campaign against rapists rights.
In the last week more details of Sean 'P Diddy' Combs' arrest and property raids have come to the light. Combs is to be charged with sex trafficking, multiple counts of sexual violence, and other serious offences. We discuss the Epstein-like aspects of the case, how men with enormous wealth, power, and influence, can create sexual economies of exploitation, access, and resource distribution in service of their own personal fiefdoms. Plus, the various rumours around the blackmail ring created by Combs and how this was all started by pop singer Cassie's lawsuit against him for various assaults. We also consider how privacy is becoming the number one value and luxury in our technological age, Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, and the loneliness of celebrity.
We contrast drag queen's humiliation of women with the unwillingness to humiliate men on similarly dark terms, using the examples of rap battling and drag kings. We also examine drag subculture as fuelled by sexual jealousy, with contempt and resentment towards women at the motivational heart of why gay men want to do drag queen performances in the first place. Plus, drag kings as banal cringe, the over-reliance on sexual humour in LGBT culture, the problem of what to do for gay rights nowadays from a third sector perspective, the great Mr Meno, LGBTQ+ politics as a strange mix of hyper-sexualisation and infantilism, and the way gay men sometimes use women in a similar way to how straight men do.
We discuss transgenderism as a subculture embraced by the bourgeois classes a decade ago, but more recently filtering down to the working-class and lumpen. This is how culture often works, the dominant classes introduce cultural forms or alternative lifestyles, but dispense with them once those forms become popularised. We make a distinction between how transgenderism operates for the elites, as a kind of currency and status signalling, whereas for the lower working-class and lumpen, it functions as a means of justifying their separation from social norms and, for some young women, as a cry help. Plus, Elliot Page and Mae Martin, Emo, and the Victorian trope of women living relatively bed bound due to 'nerves'.
Most women are not into ‘kink’, nowhere near the scale of men, so why do some claim to be? We discuss kink as a vocation for the 'low value' within the sexual marketplace, how liberal feminism successfully propagandised the idea that female sexuality is overall similar to male sexuality overall, and how being in receipt of another person's desire isn't novel. We also challenge the popular understanding that sexuality is an island away from the rest of your life. Plus, we discuss the absurd ‘lesbian prostitution’ film Concussion, consider why it is that demonising sexual contact entirely leads to later sexual dysfunction, and how denial / repression generally leads to psychosexual problems and psychosomatic illnesses.
The Tate brothers are facing charges of human trafficking, the trafficking of a minor, and running a criminal organisation in Romania, centered around their digital pimping of women to e-johns online. We discuss the latest news on the impending trial of the Tate's and explore the psychology behind Andrew Tate (the older more famous brother) who has groomed girls across continents via the internet, and lives his life in an openly sadistic, predatory manner. The episode also includes the definition of narcissism, the norms of prostitution, the Tate brother’s 'baby mamas' both as victims and perpetrators, and the showdown between the Trad Right vs. the Porno Right. Plus, Hannah’s fears for Generation Alpha, Candace Owens and antisemitism, and the three key specific elements that constitute human trafficking.
Is the GC Movement over in the UK and what will happen to it elsewhere? Are the divisions that have become more prominent due to a series of victories? Who counts as GC? Have we really won? And to what degree? We also discuss the characteristics of structurelessness, how the internet is where politics is transmitted today, but the confidence building of real life organising cannot be matched, and the conundrum of, if someone doesn't want to join a movement with conservatives, why join a movement with conservatives? Plus, the meaninglessness of land acknowledgments, that the term far-right means fascist, and how making politics bearable means also having the courage to be misunderstood.
Rachel Gunn, a 36-year-old academic with a Cultural Studies PhD in breakdancing, competed at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, resulting in much confusion and amusement caused by her comically poor performance. How did 'Raygun' get in the Olympics? Is it a stunt? Is she being bullied now by those lampooning her online? We discuss that saga and the conflation between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, with examples. Plus, Hannah’s views on Australian men, insane British TV shows, anonymous marking and standardised testing, the concept of the 'dead Indian', and TRA notions that objectify and utopianise indigenous populations.
The media and internet has been in uproar about two XY intersex males competing in the women's boxing during the 2024 Olympics. We discuss the history of intersex males competing in women's sport at the Olympics, second-wave feminist Shulamith Firestone's understanding of racialised intrasexual competition and racial solidarity towards men as part of heterosexual competition, DEI, 'white feminism', women's rugby player Ilona Maher, and disqualified intersex athlete Caster Semenya. Plus, lesbophobia in boxing, moralism and moralising, continental philosophy vs. analytic philosophy, why the upper middle-class are often thick as lack knowledge from experience, liberals as conflict avoidant, and the U.K. utterly falling apart over the last few weeks.
Ballerina Farm are the Trad lifestyle family vloggers going viral after a Times interview revealed the 'farm wife' had given up ballet at Juilliard to begin having her first of eight children with her husband, who is heir to a billion dollar airline.
We discuss the labour-intensive reality of farm work, the literal dirt involved in domestic labour that stays hidden, and how women’s time and labour is considered of less value to men’s. Plus, the cringe concept of ‘date night’, the nature of regret as forgoing rather than doing, opportunity as time-sensitive, men’s resentment online over women in cosy office jobs, rational choice theory, the perils of social media couple vlogging, lesbian’s fast pace of marriage and divorce, and British collective cynicism vs. American frontier individualism.
With one presidential candidate nearly assassinated and another dropping out of the race altogether, we review the meltdown of U.S politics over the last fortnight. We also discuss JD Vance’s comments about only having as many votes as you have children, Kamala Harris's margaritas with senior management vibes, and we give our prediction that CIA asset Pete Buttigieg will be the Democratic VP nominee. Plus, the wider context of flashy U.S politics upstaging dreary U.K. politics, the denial breaking around Joe Biden's health, and why we should not be surprised by the terrible conduct of our political leaders given our societies are ruled by its social scum.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week announced Labour will uphold the UK ban on puberty blockers. We discuss Wes's political history of taking flack from LGBT groups, explore why gender non-conforming kids might view puberty blockers as a barrier to the onslaught of demonisation that gender non-conformity elicits (beyond the usual reason of a Munchausen by Proxy parent enforcing a trans identity on a child). We also comment on the pure and total horror gender non-conforming lesbians often receive from feminine heterosexual women, who genuinely think we would be better off cosplaying as straight men (as they are of highest value in their eyes) and how their endorsement and promotion of transgenderism is partly a sop to their own hostility.
For men and women invested in traditional gender norms, puberty blockers are understood as a hope for the future, where children who would likely grow up to by gay, are instead given the 'golden opportunity' of replicating the superior lives of those traditionalist heterosexuals who believe gender non-conformity to be a disease or medical problem to solve in the first place. The effect of 'transing' a child is also a message to other children about the absolute essentialism of gender. It sets up a pathologisation of all other gender non-conforming kids around the 'trans child', working as a political statement that seeks to ensure absolute conformity to gender norms, or risk being considered defective, and in need of urgent corrective medical intervention.
We discuss examples of girls 'transitioned' in childhood who are bald and miserable by age 28, and women who have phalloplasties no longer being able to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time due to pain, or ride a bicycle as can’t grip the handlebars anymore. That true picture of cultural sadism, personal misery, and quasi-eugenics taking place through puberty blockers as the first step on the conveyer belt to the destruction of gay people's health and sexual function, often makes it hard to believe it can possibly be true. However, public awareness since the Cass Review combined with adults 'transed' as children documenting their heath disasters on social media, means no one can any longer claim ignorance when tribunals arrive.
We discuss the first week of Keir Starmer’s Prime Ministership, and how if we scratch what seems to be a social democratic measure, we find a neoliberal one. How lowball ambition will not change the United Kingdom’s housing crisis or stagnant economy, especially given we now have a lower GDP than the state of Mississippi. Who will the next Tory leader be? What will Labour do regarding Transgender ideology? Will there be any change to 47% of 3-child families living in poverty? We make our predictions and implore anyone who can't see a future here, to exit the UK for a better life, if possible, before it gets worse.
Plus, what would a middle-class riot look like? How downwardly mobile do they have to be to care? The sibling rivalry of todays dating scene, the impending baby shortage, and our understanding of our era of neoliberal bureaucratic Borg rule as what Mark Fisher called ‘market Stalinism’.
The recent Trump vs. Biden televised debate has led to calls for President Joe Biden to be replaced ahead of the 2024 U.S Election later this year. In the first half of this episode, we discuss Joe Biden's political career, and in the latter half we cover the almost Shakespearean tragedy of his life course, from hawkish statesman who suffered tragedy upon tragedy in his personal life, ending up publicly humiliated on TV due to late stage dementia. We consider that why the average age of politicians is increasing might be due to younger generations distrust in institutions and politics? Plus, Biden as a quintessentially 20th century politician, whilst Trump a firmly 21st century figure, Howard Hughes as the real American hero, Biden as Junior Soprano, and Trump as the prototype of the gold rush modern-day cowboy of a lawless frontier.
It is just one week before the UK General Election is held on July 4th, tipped to be won by the Labour Party. We discuss Labour's relationship to Trans, the function of their 'two sides' rhetoric, and why Jeremy Corbyn given his own experiences should perhaps feel some sympathy towards gender critical feminists. Plus, the Left's radio silence over racist porn, transgenderism as a problem for women in the Global South, how people in politics excavate their personalities, Jewish philosopher Maimonides's view of lesbianism, the mythology of ‘white feminism’, the instrumentalisation of conversion therapy, and how the medical establishment have found in transgenderism a way to monetise autism. Also, who we are going to vote for, the groundhog day mistreatment of women on the Left by the Left, and Jen does a Keir Starmer impression!
We discuss the rightward political shift in Europe, reflected in both the recent EU election results, and the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform party in the UK this week. Jen gives her prediction that Marine Le Pen will win the French election, and explains why it is in part due to tactical errors of the Left. Plus, how Nigel Farage is pitching himself as the U.K. Trump, making voting Reform seem like a protest vote against the political establishment, in a way not totally dissimilar to Brexit. We put forward that due to the Global North not providing an alternative vision to the status-quo, many are looking to the political Right for change. Increasingly, this is within the context of globalisation vs anti-globalisation / nationalism replacing the traditional political Left / Right dichotomy.
More widely, the disintegration of societal institutions has made the ‘outsiderism’ of Trotskyism, critical theory, and nerd Millennial culture, deeply unpopular. The backlash to the evaporation of social fabric is that being a ‘normie’ is becoming cool, and that it's a sign of superiority to have the hallmarks of social institutions like marriage and religion, given their cultural disavowal and decline. Japan has led the way ahead of us in terms of social trends, such as celibacy, and their housing crisis arriving before ours. Japan's political landscape is one where the younger generations are the most conservative, with older generations being more politically liberal or radical, a situation that is also likely our future.
The UK General Election is set for July 4th 2024 and we face the situation of Keir Starmer's Labour Party being to the right of the Tories on some questions, the peril of electing a Deputy PM in Angela Raynor who has previously supported obvious perverts, and almost zero incentive for young people to vote for either of the two main parties, given we could barely fit a wafer cracker between their policies. We discuss Labour's obsession with fudging issues by creating 'third ways' on topics, such as believing they can deliver both 'single sex spaces' and 'self-ID'. Plus, how Starmer's core base is the PMC, who he not only embodies and represents the interests of, but is of their class.
The wider context of the PMC and their acolytes is that the working-class embarrass them. The PMC and middle-class consider themselves morally superior and more deserving to run things than the one person one vote General Election a liberal democracy allows for. The middle-class elements that orbit the PMC, typically aspiring to ascend to it, are actually workers in the sense that they sell their labour, so have to create moral constructs in order to separate themselves from the working-class, who disgust them. They do this day-to-day through having different habits of consumption, but they also pick political issues on which to perform outrage and perform empathy, such as Brexit, the war in Ukraine, or "smashing the gangs". This means they avoid having uncomfortable conversations about the realities of imperialism and global capital.
The episode ends on the wider shift to the right across Europe (though it was recorded before yesterday's EU election results where the rightwing won big), the NHS, immigration, and private finance.
This episode discusses the baptism by fire that is female adolescence, and how if autism is added into that mix, Transgenderism starts to look like an available escape hatch for young girls who are socially non-conforming - one that has the additional bonus of alleviating the anxiety of surrounding adults. We discuss the psychoanalytic concept of 'psychic equivalence' in relation to autism, the difficulty of not understanding or being unwilling to follow feminine social scripts, and how a Trans identity can be a way to explain disinclination to socially conform and, vitally, perhaps be forgiven for it.
The PMC and middle-classes, as fervently ideologically conforming due to their anxiety-provoking position sandwiched between the bourgeoisie and working-class, have no reasoning available to them as to why a child might not want to conform by adopting dominant norms and highly gendered social scripts, because they ultimately cannot fathom why anyone would not want to advance themselves wherever possible. Transgenderism provides not only an explanation, but affords the PMC and middle-class parents cover for their hostility towards anyone without their values, including their own offspring.
Plus, the strangely sexualised marketing to adolescents of Playboy Bunny t-shirts and stationary, the bizarre measures adults take to groom adolescents into heterosexual social relations, and the very clear social messages of hatred and hostility gender non-conforming girls receive within the family and from the media.
This episode is on the contemporary far-Left's turn away from the working-class towards the lumpen proletariat - except in the case of criminalised lumpen women. We discuss how the far-Left has adopted 'pet' lumpen proletariat groups (mentally ill men who identify as women, male asylum seekers, male criminals, men who are too dysfunctional to work, etc.), but only in so far as to lionise the figure of the emasculated proletariat man as an archetype, never the downtrodden, financially precarious, often prostituted or criminalised lumpen woman. How is it that the objectives of the PMC have come to chime with this figure of the lumpen man? And that the revolutionary Left, once concerned with the working-class as the revolutionary class, has swapped for the goals of the PMC (the most dominated section of the dominant class), in combination with the interests of the lumpen man, making both central to their politics.
We also discuss the little known modern Trotskyist understanding of political practice that creates disruption by fermenting social contradictions, and that out of this chaos rises the opportunity for a re-organisation of society once the status-quo is unstable and unsustainable, leading to the options of barbarism (fascism) or socialism. Previously it was understood that the structural contradictions of capitalism would inevitably at times throw up such opportunities, but today's pessimistic and demoralised vanguardist far-Left, beholden to postmodernism and post-structuralism, acts as an agent to create contradictions and unsustainable policies, as a matter of strategy. This notion of disruption as valuable is one way to understand the ludicrous irony of preaching safety on campuses and that misgendering kills, whilst being willing to re-traumatise and up the probability of rape against the most vulnerable adults in our society: women in prison. This leads us to a topsy-turvy moral world where thoughts are so harmful people need their livelihoods destroyed for 'thought crimes', but rape against women is so irrelevant and benign it is not worth mentioning.
Plus, the roots of the concept of 'validation', Trans activists wanting life to be one continuous DBT session, prison abolition as a luxury belief, and how for those from the upper-crust of privilege disagreement feels injurious and hostile, because they've not witnessed or experienced anything worse and it undermines the vision fed to them of their entitlement to power. Hannah tells the story of confronting a man chasing a woman in a car and the total disinterest of the police once it was reported. And we wonder about how the collaboration between the PMC and TRAs, aided and abetted by the new postmodernism-afflicted radical Left, thought they could pull of the heist of the century: trading the rights of women and children in order to advance their own power.
Shay Woulahan joins RedFem this week, standing in as co-host for Jen (who is under the weather), to discuss where we are at in regard to defeating gender ideology. Are we returning to 'true trans'? Is Trans becoming cringe and uncool amongst Gen Alpha (young teenagers) as much as the internet suggests? We comment on the new historical revisionism by those who pushed Self-ID and claimed there was no such thing as sex, now backtracking heavily due to the Cass Review. The quite incredible digital scenes of those who witch-hunted gender critical feminists for years, and claimed no men would ever abuse Self-ID, now using GC talking points from 2018.
Plus, what's being going on in Ireland recently regarding gender identity, the trajectory of JK Rowling, the similarities between anorexia and 'gender dysphoria' in teen girls, the straight millennial women pushing gender ideology in schools, and the return to preppy 1980s culture, as summarised by TikTok club anthem of the summer, "I'm looking for a guy in Finance, 6'5, blue eyes".
We talk about the queer politics of Eurovision and the role of infantilism as an attempt to foreclose political criticism and how no one (not even Graham Norton) can keep up pronoun pretences for more than 5 minutes. We also discuss the flattening effect of the LGBT paradigm, our newly discovered term 'KERF' (Kink Exclusionary Radical Feminist), the frailty of queer politics, and the mind prison of transgenderism. We ask, what would a lesbian Eurovision look like? And are twink performers doing 'bimboism', but for gay men? We conclude that LGBTQ is today centrally about the Q and the T, and occasionally the G.
Plus, through discussion of new lesbian dating show I Kissed A Girl (on BBC iplayer) we dissect political lesbianism as the embryonic form of woke identity politics. We discuss aspects of political lesbianism, such as Self-ID, invasion of lesbian spaces, lesbian erasure, covert entryism, and other Trans-like tactics. That leads to the debate around born this way vs. choice, lifestylism, and what is the definition of a lesbian? (Answer: a female homosexual).
We discuss how political activism can flatten the personality or erode personal life, and how the Left's narrowing of subjectivity, or ignoring subjective experience, created a space for postmodernism, and its over focus on subjectivity, carte blanche to thrive on the Left. We also comment on why the student Palestine protests are taking the form that they are, the time when the socialist Left was against Queer Theory, and how some people use political activism to work out or deny their psychological problems.
We also discuss how women on the far-Left are considered in the same way as on the political right, namely; base, easily suggestible, and lacking objectivity. Both Hannah and Jen talk about their experiences in socialist groups where there was a suppression and suspicion of any member's subjectivity that fell outside the party's remit or goals. Plus, Trotskyism as opportunism, why the moronic Left had to brand the Canadian truck strikers as 'fascists', Joan Didion's view of the archetypal young Marxist-Leninist, C.S. Lewis's criticism of materialism, how the Left and Right paradigm is breaking down into globalism vs. anti-globalism, and we give a shout out to the Marx Engels Lenin Institute.
We discuss the tactics of the student protests taking place across campuses in the United States and compare them to similar protests over Israel's military assaults on Gaza a decade and a half ago. Topics include: the utopianism of thinking it's possible to create a space outside of society and how this kind of anarchist political tendency lends itself to authoritarianism, often leading to personal fiefdoms. We discuss the logic behind micro-aggressions and the difference between 'decolonisation' and anti-colonialism. Plus, how 'decolonisation' on the curriculum likely led many students to believe their university would support any campus demonstrations and encampments, how mutual aid is Victorian charity with a faux radical veneer, and how protests can be moral laundries for the elite.
Women in greater and greater numbers are choosing not to have children. We discuss the reasons why, both material and ideological, and how the internet, particularly apps like TikTok, have removed the mystery of different lifestyles and bashed down the once private walls of the nuclear family. Online, the Red Pill 'no eggs' rhetoric attempting to shame women into attaching themselves to a man, is failing because it's like playing on a social chess board from 1953. We think through the contradictions of people like Jordan Peterson encouraging femininity, housewifery, and for women to be stay-at-home mothers, whilst also criticising the 'devouring mother', when those are exactly the conditions that set it up. Also, the contradiction of giving only carrots and never metaphorical sticks to boys and then wondering why young men don't feel the need to accomplish anything or graduate into full adulthood, like getting a job and moving out of the parental home, in order to bag a wife or serious girlfriend.
This episode also includes wider discussion of men in crisis, how romance culture today is dead, dating apps as a form of ruthless shopping, how relationships now start with a sexual encounter, and women coming off birth control in large numbers. We contest Louise Perry's comments about the welfare state reducing the birth rate, instead putting forward an analysis of how the unrestrained market has ripped through everyone's lives, ensuring very few young people are financially secure enough to have a baby. Plus, globalisation meaning the nation state is less relevant, the Victorian culture in UK schools, Michael Hudson's book 'Super Imperialism', and confusion around the 4B movement in South Korea, where many online seem to think 4B caused the birth rate to drop, when in fact it was the effects of neoliberal economics, which the 'Sampo' generation of the early 2010s came to represent, well before 4B.
The release of the Cass Review last week on the treatment of 'trans' children in the NHS has caused huge waves and responses that indicate where we're heading. We discuss its moral inditement of the PMC, their rapidly devalued sunk cost, and the media classes witch-hunting of women who acted to protect children before Cass. This episode includes comment on Novara Media's apology to JK Rowling for falsely accusing her of being a 'holocaust denier', the Left's political vacuum where safeguarding doesn't exist, how ex-Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt was branded a 'transphobe' back in 2010, and how it's the liberal PMC who are being revealed as the homophobic moral monsters of the modern West. We also think about how we arrived here, covering how women on the liberal-Left are incredibly submissive and male-approval seeking, how lesbians are considered expendable, and that lesbians on the Left often inadvertently reflect liberal-left women's 'low value' status (in heterosexual terms) back to them, making them uncomfortable with female homosexuality and our presence politically.
We also talk about how Nancy Kelley, former Stonewall CEO, was the asexual chummy figure cleverly placed to hide a thousand perversions, detransitioners who have 'human dysphoria', why referrals to Gender Identity Clinics are drying up in part because Gen-Z is less approval seeking from institutions than Millennials are. Plus, the not uncommon self-isolation of lesbians due to the hostile environment they face, that transforms the closet into something not just metaphoric, and how the smiling homophobia of Left-liberals, who used the tools of power available to them to do violence to gay children is far, far worse than the average street homophobe.
We discuss the political and moral quandaries around euthanasia, otherwise known as medical assistance in dying. How what was effectively a liberal 'harm reduction' policy of assisted dying for the terminally ill, later the elderly and frail, has now expanded its application towards those living with a physical disability or mental health issue. This episode includes commentary on Canada's notorious MAID policy, the excellent Japanese film Plan 75 that explores state-sponsored euthanasia for the elderly, and how the profit-motive determining that only those who are productive have value is the opposite of universal human dignity. We also cover the fact that over two thirds of those euthanised are women, that suffering is part of the human condition (we are all suffering some of the time, in some way, and suffering is not without meaning), and why we cannot accept a society that determines human worth according to economic productivity or ability to rely on private capital.
The abandonment, smearing, and legal harassment of Hilary Crowder by her ex-husband, rightwing commentator and supposed Trad Christian Steven Crowder, is causing a crisis in sexual politics amongst the rightwing. Why? Because Hilary Crowder is the epitome of a Trad woman, a virgin-until-marriage, deeply religious, stay-at-home mother, and yet she's been left high and dry by a man who seems more concerned with Youtube and his interest in transsexual men. If Hilary Crowder can be treated this badly, then it demonstrates the Tradwife lifestyle is an unreliable route for the everywoman. The rightwing is tearing itself apart online, with conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Lauren Southern supporting Hilary's bid for child support, whilst Tim Pool and Pearl Davis argue she should get a job (thus contradicting their claims women should stay at home to look after their children). The 'lawfare' by Steven Crowder is not only directed at his ex-wife, but former employee Jared, who Steven nicknamed 'gay Jared' and forced to dress up in women's clothes regularly.
We discuss that bonfire and the abusers playbook currently being deployed by Crowder (drive your spouse crazy, then threaten to use the legal system to make her mental health records public in a bid to embarrass and control her), sadistic narcissism, and what happens to everyone when we can't tolerate distress (a collapse in containment and loss of the ability to mentalise). Plus, Kanye West's inability to do 'lawfare' against billionaire ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and so resorting to humiliating her lookalike in Bianca Censori by parading her around naked, dead-eyed narcissistic rage, and how Ben Shapiro is basically a Betty Freidanite.
Love affair or sexual abuse? That is the question at the heart of 'Tell Them You Love Me' (available on Sky, NOW, and Apple TV), a documentary on woke Philosophy Professor Anna Stubblefield, who was convicted of sexually abusing a student, after gaining access to him (Derrick) through the debunked method of 'facilitated communication'. We discuss the woke race and disability politics surrounding the case and put forward that the attempt the claim disabled people have no limitations due to their disability plays a role in removing provisions and protections for those people. The idea of the resilient individual who thrives through greater agency under neoliberalism is just one way that neoliberal ideology has deformed the New Left since the 1970s (another is reducing structural issues of race and disability to mere identity politics). The wish to have moral superiority and experience a 'moral high' through enacting ones politics in ones own lifestyle is more to do with a fantasy of grandiosity and performative identity game-playing than creating meaningful political change in the wider world. Peter Boghossian is not wrong when he describes the scale of the intellectual fraud going on in woke academic departments in the United States, theories that in the Anna Stubblefield case when practiced led to a crime. Proving true that, indeed, ideas have consequences.
The episode also covers the panic around black single mothers in the USA, the grift of identity politics as a form of poaching and proximity, the satanic panic, the myth around multiple personality disorder, and the difficulty of accepting apathy in others about subjects we feel passionately about. Plus, the ideologically-sponsored delusion of believing your own romantic love story is unique (which ultimately turns people into objects), the feminine grandiose fantasy of being the only one who understands a particular other person (usually a man), projecting your own internal world onto others as a sign of a lack of empathy, and how those heavily involved in ideologically production today, such as in Big Tech, are incredibly cautious about subjecting their own children to it.
We steelman the argument for 'girl boss feminism' as a way for some women to achieve financial independence and freedom from men and the family under capitalism. Much of the logic of 'lean in' feminism, as epitomised by former Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, is about accruing enough capital as a woman to afford privately the things socialism would otherwise provide for women nationally i.e childcare, laundry services, food provision that's an alternative to mothers cooking, etc. We think through why rich, successful women are so often hated by both the Left and the Right, including within feminism, concluding it's because access to capital presents a possible freedom from dependence on men and the family. However, that material reality is often trumped by ideological commitments (to exactly men and the family) that are deeply engrained and cultural.
We also discuss the TikTok documented trend of 'stay at home masc' lesbians, partly in regard to how lesbians defy gender roles, the archetype of the British middle-class mummy, the often sordid underbelly of middle-class life due to repression and need for respectability, the risks of being a Tradwife, an example of which is the obvious hatred of Stephen Crowder for his ex-wife and children. Plus, Dolly Parton's lesbianism on the DL, the importance of having written agreements if one partner in a marriage isn't going to work, and the importance of not just money from professional advancement, but how the ensuing self-esteem and self-respect also distances women from dependence on the family / men.
Why is the Royal Family struggling to produce a photo of Kate Middleton? We suggest there are multiple threads to whatever crisis and stalemate is going behind closed doors at Kensington Palace (specifically, in all likelihood; an affair, a looming divorce, Kate's mystery illness, and a King on his way out). It is a cause for concern if a woman - any woman - has not been seen in public for three months.
Today it's increasingly difficult to fake real life events due to the internet and the hive mind of social media sleuths. We ask whether a Royal Family as a state-funded public-facing institution is viable in the 21st century? Do we even need a Royal Family? One that owns swathes of the UK's shoreline, land, and influences much of the country's development despite not really being good at anything.
We also discuss how marrying into families still means you're still an outsider and only included upon certain conditions, how posh people are excellent at pretending to not notice things and presume everyone else also has a high aptitude for denial, the Royal Family's long history of mistreating women, and how the Royal's media machine is singlehandedly proving we do not have a free press and Noam Chomsky is entirely correct about how public consent is manufactured.
We again this week discuss TikTok's ReesaTeesa's mega viral story series 'Who TF Did I Marry?', this time with spoilers and a full discussion of modern dating's potential for deception. The episode includes how to spot red flags and not need to understand them (but use them as an immediate guide), questions to elicit candid answers on dates, accepting you will never be an exception to someone's history of poor behaviour, and how you don't really know someone until have seen them face adversity. We also cover Alain Badiou's theory of subjectivity being revealed through responses to events, the disappearance of third spaces, being the average of your five closest friends, 'time boundaries', and the pitfalls of meeting a romantic partner outside the context of their own lives i.e via dating apps or the internet. We also delve into serious mental health issues, specifically how people can make you accomplices in their fantasies, and that the more someone's delusional narrative falls apart the more disintegrated, disregulated, and unpleasant they tend to become.
We comment (without spoilers) on TikTik's viral 51-part series 'Who TF Did I Marry?' by ReesaTeesa, an American working-class woman from Atlanta. Discussion includes how marriage is increasingly an ambition of and gateway into the middle-class, sibling rivalry for twins, why your place in birth order matters, and the relationship between failed narcissism and psychosis. Plus, how social media is the new frontier for marketing, but also a playground for con artists, how to really find security as a woman, and that realising drinking water is good for you is fairly recent knowledge...
We put forward a central problem for feminists working with the Left, specifically, that leftwing men are not at all leftwing when it comes to women and women's issues. Suddenly, leftwing men, who dominate the Left both in numbers and ideologically, are no longer social constructionists, but total naturalists and genetic determinists, immediately when it comes to women. We give our experiences of leftwing men discussing much more seriously, and with far greater care, the rights of animals than women's rights.
We also put forward our case for socialist policies that would transform society for the better for women, and point out the only leftwing men who sympathise with these also tend to have sympathies for radical feminist analysis. Leftwing men are typically not even social democrats regarding the issues of women. This episode also includes how you should not bring your whole self to work, womb envy, the greater alienation women live under, the lie of male provision and protection, and the need for the state to bypass men in providing salaries for housework as a bid to end the possibility of women's dependence on the family.
We conclude that the suggestion from some feminists that feminists should work with the Left, is actually asking us to work with the equivalent of the far-right on women's issues. We cite a historical example to support that conclusion by discussing how the far-Left in Germany during the early 20th century did not support the right to vote for women, claiming women's suffrage should only be a concern after the revolution. Today, if the vote were removed for women, we speculate that most socialist men would overwhelmingly dismiss it as a bourgeois concern.
We delve into the sheer impossibility of feminists working with the political Left, overwhelmingly due to the door being slammed by the Left itself. By the Left we mean socialist groups and communist parties, not liberal or rightwing Labour parties i.e the radical leftwing who have a vision to liberate humanity (given that feminists seek to liberate women). It is difficult to get across just how hostile the Left is to any women wanting to organise as women, who believe women are oppressed on the basis of sex, or simply want to highlight and tackle male violence.
We provide our reasoning as to why the Left is so hostile to feminists, why some feminists on the Left still think it's possible (typically because they're married to leftwing men they wish to view as nice / kind), and give some examples of women being expelled, ostracised, and attacked, for simply pointing out male sexual violence or wanting to organise politically as women. We also discuss how today's Left is a collection of defunct sects either having been taken over by, or looking to be taken over by, anti-social men who want their own personal fiefdom, which goes someway to explaining why the Left is so beset by sexual scandal.
At the end we issue a challenge: a leftwing gender critical feminist should run the experiment of joining a socialist or socialist-leaning group, announce her politics around Trans, bring up male violence, and offer her analysis against prostitution and surrogacy, then report back as to how long she lasted before being ousted.
We mount a defence of Taylor Swift and the barrage of inane criticism she receives online. We discuss 'girl culture', how fandoms are replacing sub-cultures, and how people and things idolised by women are so often denigrated. Now that Swift's lawyers have intervened to stop the sexualised 'deep fake' images of her appearing on Twitter, we hope that could force new legal restrictions on sexual 'deep fake' images of women generally. We also discuss the backlash from some Conservatives against Swift, how she could likely run for President and win, and together imagine that once installed as our Dear Leader, we promise to listen to and learn more about her music in order to leave the Swiftian re-education camp complex.
We discuss the age of consent laws in the UK (currently 16) and present the case for the age of consent being raised to 18, with a two-year close in age exemption (so that teenagers could date other teenagers of a similar age i.e their peers). We also try to 'steelman' the arguments against. Could there be feminist arguments against raising the age of consent? Would it have to be the same for same-sex relations? And what are the impacts around other 'age of majority' legal questions, such as smoking, joining the army, etc. We also discuss why it's predominantly the lumpen underclass and upper class wealthiest elites who seem to openly believe child sexual abuse is normal and harmless.
This episode discusses polyamory and makes the claim it is ultimately not a real relationship formation by any measure, representing instead a lack of boundaries and disorganised attachment styles, subsequently making it a performance attractive to sexual losers i.e those considered to be 'low-value' within the sexual marketplace. We begin with the early radical feminist critique of monogamy and marriage, before turning to the present day to consider how it is chiefly the absence of sexual ethics on the Left that created a vacuum to be filled by the dominant ideology i.e neoliberalism. This can be seen in how those claiming to by polyamorous treat their sexual partners as consumer products, exchangeable commodities, or purely use-value objects.
Existing as a kind of accelerationist infantile utopianism, there's a pretence in the performance of polyamory that the bedroom can somehow by free of ideological chains (it cannot) and that the psychosocial world we are constituted by somehow evaporates in the hallway of our homes. Infantile leftists believe polyamorous arrangements to be 'revolutionary' simply because it differs from trad marriage and the nuclear family (the unit that emerged through the development of capitalism). Polyamory, if it were real, would, like polygamy, be the relationship scenario that is the least equal, least likely to engender trust among participants, and be far less mutual than traditional monogamous marriage. We share some anecdotes of polyamory from our own leftwing circles that demonstrate the attempt to do polyamorous arrangements tends to end quickly and badly, often in violence or humiliation (typically of a woman).
We conclude that pretending to be polyamorous is about signalling to anyone and everyone that you are sexually available and desperate for sexual validation, whilst also not being up to the adult task of commitment and all of the responsibility and limitations on freedom that entails. That reality, of not being emotionally mature enough to find and maintain a committed relationship is offered an illustrious cover story by claiming to be doing polyamory, as if existing on a more sophisticated or higher sexual plane, when in actuality it means not being able to manage commitment, or find it from someone worth investing in.
We talk about how the infantilisation of LGBTQ+ politics has helped kill off lesbian nightlife and its effects. Including, the awkwardness of asexual discos, gay bars becoming popular with straight people and then inevitably changing, and the difficulty of maintaining a policy that only allows women through the door in the era of gender identity. We cover the wider context of historical neglect of lesbian venues due to an optimism that they would always exist, how a women's disco is not the same as a lesbian event, and monogamy's impact on lesbian footfall through nightclubs.
Also discussed is the reality that it's a challenge to maintain venues for any minority that is less than 1% of the general population, how poor provisions in those that do exist reflect lesbians low social status, and the apparent fact that hiking and cruises are much more attractive to lesbians than going out late night. The episode also includes the door policy at Heaven of checking women's fingernail length, the 'lesbian manicure' that brings new meaning to the phrase 'bowling alone', the now unimaginable time of weekly student gay nights pre-2008 economic crash, and Hannah regales a very award gay disco at Labour Party conference.
Are contemporary fascists and communists in practice all ultimately moderates due to the political climate that has narrowed around capitalism since Soviet collapse? We discuss that question, as well as why the rightwing are bold whilst the socialist left are pessimistic and tribal, the purpose of the Labour Party, and ask why socialists are masochistically loyal to organisations who hate them. This episode also includes commentary on 'stuck culture', living in times of social decay, why rightwing women are more likely to acknowledge male violence than socialist women, and the imagined scenario of Keir Starmer shitting in Jeremy Corbyn's house.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison after taking part in the plot to murder her Munchausen's by Proxy mother, after decades of neglect, physical abuse, and medical abuse. We discuss women's relationship to their bodies, their children, fictitious disorder (the new term for Munchausen's Syndrome), and the predicament of dealing with a low sense of Self.
This special edition episode discusses the taboos surrounding Christmas, including overfamiliarity, serving up passive-aggressive 'shit sandwich' situations to younger relatives, the weird 'queer' concept of 'chosen family' (that doesn't exist in practice), and the traditional expectations of harmony and happiness which many families do not manage. We also consider the questions of unequal domestic labour amongst the sexes within family structures, the non-existence of feminist communes as alternatives, and fraught dynamics between people who do, or are pretending, to love one another.
In 2013 Oscar Pistorius murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day by shooting her to death as she hid in a bathroom. We discuss our changing perspectives on the trial, his conviction at first for manslaughter and later murder, and comment on the fact Pistorius is due to be released after only serving six years in prison. This episode also includes discussion of wounded masculinity and its close relationship to male violence as a way to regain any perceived lost ground of male dominance. Denial around disability and lack of recognition, and how denial produces emotional repression and in turn that can produce out of control anger. Plus, vulnerable men as not being nicer, kinder, or more complex than less vulnerable men. Guns as phallic substitutes, women coping with male violence against women (including against themselves) by siding with the man, and Jen describes an incident of being sexually harassed by a disabled man at a public political rally.
Why do women seek romantic love more than men? We consider that question through discussion of New Age digital 'high demand group' Twin Flames Universe and the recent documentary on the cult available on Prime (which is much better than the one on Netflix). Our key focus is idealised romance culture that's primarily sold to women and how that informed the function of gender identity inside the Twin Flames cult. The gender essentialism inside the cult of allotting every person as either a 'divine feminine' or 'divine masculine' and heterosexually pairing people off into arranged marriages based on those oppositional, supposedly complimentary matches, is highly representative and revealing of Transgenderism's underlying essentialist ideology and tendency towards conversion therapy.
We also discuss the illusion of the perfect partner, eroticisms relationship with separation, the need for a developed Self to engage fruitfully in romantic relationships, women's avoidance of conflict, and the almost limitless scope of the internet to access and exploit emotionally desperate people.
This episode serves as an introduction to the Cambodian genocide and we discuss, as communists, how the genocide occurred, the ideas that led to it, and ask, how much does communism have a cultism problem? Discussion includes identifying cult tactics of control, the rise of radical groups within a vacuum caused by political and state instability, understanding the Khmer Rouge as a kind of 'peasant ISIS', who viewed the working class as their oppressive class. We also touch on the reoccurring persistence in radical politics of a need to systematise all matters and believe in one universal theory that explains everything, and proposing a system based on the one grand theory that can supposedly solve all society's problems.
We regale more experiences from the late 2000s and mid 2010s that steered us on our journey to peak trans. Jen speaks about a disastrous date with a Drag King, Hannah talks about being chatted up by a 'transwoman' wearing a giant vulva, and we tell a socialist woman's story about a 'transwoman' showing up to her Women's Network meeting begging for money for fake breasts, who then sexted all the women attendees after. We also discuss the Trans online begging phenomenon of so-called 'mutual aid' in its origin of anarchist thinker and Russian crackpot Peter Kropotkin. Towards the end of the episode we bring up the joining of the T to LGB in the student world and how the Black Students campaign in the UK avoided postmodern identity politics madness in bygone days.
The advent of gay marriage in the Western world led to many third sector industry organisations in need of a new cause (step forward transgenderism). In this respect, was gay marriage worth it? Especially considering only 10% of gay people are married. We discuss that, cohabitation laws, wages for housewives, and the tension between women's role in the family and the state. What would a feminist vision of marriage look like? What could an adept welfare state offer to guarantee a living standard outside of marriage for mothers? If we take as valid the radical feminist criticism of the welfare state potentially operating towards women as a patriarchal father or husband, how could such a risk be mitigated?
The latter half of the episode is concerned with late capitalism's failure to secure working class marriage and social reproduction, making marriage and having children largely out of reach for everybody young, including straight people, creating a strange kind marital 'equality' in its growing impossibility. Hannah speaks about how she's convinced that capitalism and patriarchy are separate (dual systems theory, as outlined in Heidi Hartmann's essay Marxism & Feminism: An Unhappy Marriage) as capitalism structurally undermines patriarchy in certain periods and contexts, such as the present, making the nuclear family economically unviable for most people young enough to biologically reproduce. Jen suggests that perhaps soon banks will propose polyamory and 'throuples' as a way to secure a mortgage!
Why are so many lesbian prone to conformity? As seen in the adoption of transgender identity by so many lesbians. But also, why is lesbianism sometimes associated with feminism? We discuss political lesbianism, lesbian invisibility, lesbophobia as a form of misogyny rather than strictly homophobia, lesbian experience as distinct from that of gay men, lesbians as a taboo within families, and the conflation between female friendship and lesbianism. Plus, the figure of the 'man hating dyke', lesbian's probably naivety about men compared with that of heterosexual women, the real or perceived ideological prejudice that at times prohibits lesbian's freedom of movement, lesbians being understood to be men or manlike, and Jen comments on her research in South Korea on the radical women's movement.
With reference to Lauren Southern, Candace Owens, Katharine Birbalsingh, and Pearl Davis, we ask why so many rightwing women do not practice what they preach in terms of trad gender roles? High-powered, and often unmarried and/or childless career women, traditionalists and conservative women advocate marriage and being a housewife for women, but not for themselves. We explore this political trend, what Andrea Dworkin had to say about the tendency of rightwing women towards exceptionalism, and comment on a number of topics, from educational traditionalism, to the importance of having the freedom to learn conflict resolution during adolescence, and the latest Marks & Spencer's Christmas advert.
We also wonder why Marxist-feminists, who only view women's liberation as women workers under capitalism, not liberation for women as a sex class, so often want to be stay-at-home wives and mothers? Despite their politics focusing on the workplace and women as workers. How is it that more leftwing women want what rightwing women advocate for in terms of lifestyle, than rightwing women do themselves?
Asexuality or being 'ace' (short for asexual) is a newly invented LGBTQ+ category promoted by former gay rights charity Stonewall. What is it? Asexuality includes being 'gray sexual', meaning feeling more inclined towards sexual activity some of the time than at other times, and 'demisexual', which means wanting to develop romantic feelings for a partner before engaging in sexual contact i.e most people, most of the time. You can be an 'asexual lesbian' or 'demisexual gay man', so asexuality is not so much of a claim to orientation (which sex you fancy), but a characteristic of that sexual orientation or its overall sexual character.
Where does the category come from? We discuss 'asexuality' as reaction to, and logic of, pornography: that there is now an invented group category, who are supposedly a minority, who refuse the pornographic representation of being sexually available for immediate sexual contact with strangers at all times. It also, we say, represents the instantaneousness of access to pornography online and as if refuting this, and preferring greater sexual connections with real people in real life, is somehow novel or now a marginal view, placing you in a minority status sexual group.
We also discuss the impact of SSRIs on women's libido, Jen refutes any claim to asexuality at all from a Freudian perspective, and we consider whether Stonewall is simply looking for its next 'young person' cohort to claim it represents now that the Trans train is grinding to a holt. What services would asexuals need? Are Stonewall planning to campaign for those in sexless marriages, who number in the millions? We also consider 'asexuality' as a way to frame the volcel and incel trends, and that most people as they mature do not consider their sexual orientation, or their sexual life, to be the most important things about them - are they therefore, in their tens of millions, also asexual?
We think through 'asexuality' as an effect of alienation, the loss of third spaces, Trans and Asexuals as an oddball club, and how these new sexual categories are an attempt to create subcultures and social scenes after their decline this century. Towards the second half of the episode other themes include lifestylism as competition e.g. mommy vloggers and lifestyle bloggers, organic fun as the only real fun, and we discuss why women love True Crime so much?
We discuss whether the gender critical movement is the inheritor of the second-wave feminist movement, or in fact perhaps the inheritor of the radical feminist tradition itself? Hannah makes an argument for the latter, Jen argues for the former. Does being gender critical mean simply being critical of Transgenderism, or does it require interrogating gender roles and gender as an ideology (a set of ideas and practices that reinforce one another) as a whole? Can someone be a conservative or traditionalist and still be considered part of the GC movement? And in what sense can gender norms and gender conformity be understood within a radical feminist framework when there has never been a fully developed and fleshed out radical feminist theoretical model of it?
This episode focuses on the radical feminist idea of gender abolitionism and asks, could we really ever fully abolish gender? Gender, here understood as the ideological norms and social expectations of the sexes. We discuss what abolishing gender would look like, and also take a rather large detour into Critical Race Theory and Robin DiAngelo for the first half of the episode, before bringing it back to the question of gender.
Topics include 'white woman tears' as a form of feminine policing that appeals to authority, Lacan's understanding of being 'born into language' (and thus society, ideology, and culture), Foucault's conception that power, as dominance and submission, is inescapable, and how this lead to Derrida's deconstructionism as a kind of doomerism that necessarily forecloses liberationary ideas like gender abolition. Those three post-structural thinkers informed Judith Butler, who therefore accepted gender as immutable and unchangeable, and so attempted to instead reconceive sex as mutable and changeable. This, we argue, is a disastrous concession that reflects the turn away from meta-narrative structuralism, one that implicitly heralds the possibility of structural change and remaking the world, towards a pessimistic and individualistic deconstructionism (a pessimism that developed in part through disappointment at the failures of the USSR) where all that can be remade is the individual at a micro-level and in a very limited sense.
We also explore the framing that "all politics is, is what happens to a man and his family" in relation to divorce and secularisms impact on 'social reproduction' (a Marxist term meaning how society and cultures reproduce themselves). This leads to admitting, and scrutinising, the tension between the family as a unit of private social reproduction (socialisation in the home and through the family) and public social reproduction through the state (socialisation through schooling, universities, healthcare, and childcare settings).
The 'bimbo', a feminine archetype that has at times existed as a cultural construct, stereotype, or epithet thrown at women, is making a return in the form of 'bimboism'. What defines bimboism? Wilful empty headedness, nonchalance, vacancy, a superficial interest in matters, or only an interest in the superficial, combining to ensure nothing is ever taken seriously, except appearance. We ask why self-consciously adopted 'bimboism' has become popular amongst young women? And even some 'looksmaxxing' young men. We put forward two key explanations, firstly that the given the declining prospects for young people, who are watching the world and their futures burn (sometimes literally), is it any wonder many want to checkout mentally? Secondly, in our pornified culture, that raises the expectation to have sex of the kind represented in pornography, the modern 'bimbo' is surely a form of disassociation and attempt to appear and be absent, other than a pornified image. If 'bimboism' is a protective measure and retreat, when else has that happened historically? And isn't there some appeal to everyone in rejecting responsibility and shrugging off caring about serious things?
We discuss Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique', the effects of social media's one-dimensional flattening of subjectivity, and consider the powerful impact the cultural space of the internet has across differing generational lines and especially sex. Other topics include the recent Stonewall leadership change, modern technology's relationship to anxiety, and the aesthetics of porn genres.
This episode discusses lifestyle politics and the false dichotomy of 'the personal is political' (false because it excludes politics), touching on housing cooperatives, communes, normalised drug use in sub-cultures, the delusion of aesthetics as politics, anarchist clubs for boys, and we conclude that giving the impression of politics, rather than doing politics, is symptomatic of social movements in decline.
Should politicians be held to a higher standard in their personal and professional lives? What's the line where hypocrisy becomes too stark and a political figure is longer a credible advocate? Other themes include how unchangeable ideological values trump unchangeable sexual orientation (at least in public). How everyone acts in their own interests, not in a cynical calculated way, but overall ideologically. Radical feminists view of psychology as a 'male field' meaning child development doesn't feature in radical feminist theories. The vulnerability and discomfort of accepting how childhood powerfully shapes us.
Other topics include Jen's trip to Russia and the quick-adaptation to cultural norms, the psychoanalytic understanding of homophobia, identity politics in feminism during the 1980s. We also discuss 'manosphere' self-help therapy rhetoric and expansive self-advancement vs. today's feminine 'sisterhood' risk of lowering your horizons, retreating into 'stringy' relationships based on a claim of 'loving' or liking all 'womyn' and withdrawing into the world of the home and online sphere.
Bodycount, the concept gripping the internet over the last month, refers to the number of sexual partners a person has had. The concepts prevalence emerged through the online RedPill space and has become a key term in the backlash against 'sex positivity' over the last few years. In a dating world now defined by apps, the internet, and, increasingly, a renewed traditional system of sexual value, in what way is 'bodycount' supposed to matter socially? Is it possible to instead think of our sexual partners as subjects, with personal histories that are meaningful, rather than as property or objects?
We discuss a 'pro-women argument' for men paying on dates, research that undermines naturalist perspectives on paternity, and criticise evolutionary psychology's perspectives about men and women's different sexual tendencies. We also discuss why some gay people still remain closeted, claim lesbians and gay men are perhaps representative of their sexes preferred sexual relations because they show how each group behaves when unmediated by the other, and consider how late-stage capitalism is beginning to undermine patriarchy.
Other topics include casual sex as self-harm, clocking into triple digits at lesbian festivals, polyamory as 'sexual HR' organising people romantically as consumable products, and how those who are 'poly' tend to be dissatisfied and dissatisfying immature perverts who never achieve emotional intimacy with anyone. We also ask why do gay men not have solidarity with one another in the way straight men do? And whether heterosexual men can ever get over their neurotic retrospective jealousy about their partners previous love lives?
Recent SWP member and NEU Regional Secretary Simon Murch plead guilty to the rape of a child under 13 on September 4th 2023. This episode is about the culture of far Left groups, Jen's experiences in the SWP during the 'Comrade Delta' period a decade ago, wherein the de facto General Secretary of the SWP sexually abused two teenage girls, and asks the question: why does the far-Left attract men intent on sexually abusing children? Given the far-Left wishes to liberate humanity and replace present society with one based on its own ethical and moral vision, that it believes to be superior, why is the sexual abuse of children considered so insignificant to the organised groups on the far-Left? The episode includes discussion of morality and moralism, the difference between the 'woman question' and the 'feminist question', and an update at the end that comments on the SWP's inadequate statement on Simon Murch.
This episode explores the two key reasons that the moronic Left seeks to brand gender critical women (slurred as 'TERFs') as fascists. Firstly, we discuss that no one seems to know what an actual fascist is anymore and so the label is applied haphazardly and erroneously as an attempt to discredit any and all opposition to Transgenderism. Secondly, that it's an attempt to apply No Platform to gender critical women (historically, the tactic of No Platform was used only against fascists) in order to shut down debate, whilst also legitimising violent tactics (again, historically, it was only fascists that were considered dangerous enough that street violence could be used against them. Today, Trans Rights Activists seek to move gender critical women into the category 'fascist' so that violence against them becomes justified). The episode uses the example of McLibel defendant and Spy Cop victim Helen Steel, leftwing activist royalty within the UK, now branded a 'fascist' despite decades of work on the Left. Plus, the Melbourne Let Women Speak event and how the above reasoning played out against the women who gathered there.
This episode leads with the mugshot from Trump's recent arrest and the paving of his way to power by his inept political opponents. That discussion enters into a wider conversation about what exactly the hell is MAGA communism? In relation to that, we consider Cuba, the EFF, Palestine, Venezuela, and the BRICS system, plus the revolutionary process and its combined subjective and objective conditions. The last part of the episode deals with Oliver Anthony's viral song Rich Men North of Richmond and how it has fast become a working class anthem, transcending political divides in America.
The backlash to sexual liberalism is here. Using Youtuber Logan Paul's recent experience of online trolling that has broken the internet, this episode discusses the shift from Millennial 'sex positivity' to its reversal now captivating Gen-Z, with women's value measured by their sexual discretion, rather than how sexually available they are (and how this is a wider contextual shift from modern leftwing patriarchy to traditional rightwing patriarchy). That includes the end of the concept 'slut shaming' and the new incredibility of the 'slut walks' only 10 years ago. This turn is in part due to the popularity of Red Pill online content that draws on neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and mysticism. A highly critical appraisal of the worth of neuroscience and evolution in regard to psychology forms the mid-section of this episode. That leads to a discussion of this summer's Adam22 'cuck porn' incident and how turning wives and girlfriends into capital through digital pimping is becoming considered obscene and a way for even a rich or famous man to fail and become a 'sexual loser'.
The episode ends with exploring the meaninglessness of the term 'pretty', and yet more discussion of British culture, specifically the inability to take compliments and the knee-jerk reaction of considering any reference to sex as comical.
Would we Russia 1917 the Royals? Find out! This episode imagines the inner life of the British Royal Family, with speculation about its members, their marriages, and merges a sex-based and class-based critique of the aristocracy in Britain. We speculate that the inner Royals are quite miserable, consider that perhaps Charles and Camilla are an example of an epic 'love story', and comment on Prince Harry's obvious oedipal behaviour via Freud's theory of the compulsion to repeat. Includes wider discussion about the rumour that posh men are ineffective lovers, the British cultural adoration for queuing, and the inner Protestant wish to be punished by nanny. The episode ends with a call for Princess Anne to ascend the throne and Hannah exposes Jen's shocking deviation away from communism by sympathetically watching the Queen's funeral.
We review Greta Gerwig's new film, Barbie, and discuss its themes and representations. That includes the "Alan" men who don't do well in patriarchy, Ti Grace Atkinson's structural model of lesbians as rebels, Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles interestingly correct take on the film, and the vital question of whether Margot Robbie is mid? We also discuss women wanting to be possessed by men, Jen's crush on Jodie Foster, decontructive comedy, Amy Schumer as Barbie, and more.
Is collective suffering worse than private suffering? i.e what would cause the greatest suffering for women, a status as public property or private property? We discuss traditional vs. modern patriarchy, and consider the contemporary far-Left's vision for women as achieving liberation through surrogacy, prostitution, and transgenderism. Later contrasting that with Sharia (women as private property) and also conservative men's understanding of women as happiest if wives, homemakers, and mothers. The episode includes a section on the most famous woman of the Russian Revolution, Alexandra Kollontai, her anti-feminism, and a life serially taking Ls from leftist men. We end with how women on the political right are often 'girl bosses', whilst leftwing women contrastingly submissive, and the impossibility of interrupting a Mormon woman.
Is Trad, short for traditionalism, the new punk? If the Left are now known for their policing, liberalism, and infantilism, how could rejecting that not be appealing? If HR departments are increasingly dominated by liberal ideology, and the Left have not stepped up as todays rebels, then it is traditionally rightwing ideas that can start to fill that void and offer opposition. In a climate where home ownership and raising children becomes increasingly economically unaffordable for young people, marriage and kids becomes a flex of wealth and success. Rejecting porn in favour of traditional relationships, going to church, owning a property within a natural setting, and the permanent values attached to these, offer an alternative to meaningless sex, relentless commodity acquisition, chaotic market free fall, and the superficialness of the internet. But can Trad really be punk when it proposes a return to the past and essentially a renewed conservatism? Listen and decide!
Jen tells the story of the 'racist kinky chair' that split a socialist group, a premonition of how the declining and dilapidated far-Left would increasingly operate in the Global North. Episode also features discussion of Lacan's famous line 'there is no such thing as a sexual relationship', Butler's justification of pornography through deconstructionism, misunderstandings of Wittig's 'lesbians aren't women', and how polyamory results in treating sexual partners like products. We finish on the alienation present in transgenderism and inside the neoliberal workplace, where people are treated as subjects to be commodified to the greatest extent possible.
On the back of International Non-Binary Peoples Day we discuss what a nonsense non-binary is and how it essentially functions as an attempt at retreat from womanhood (female adulthood) for many girls and young women, leaving in its wake the potential dismantling of women's rights for all. Episode includes debunking the existence of gender identity at all, how we are already seeing a return to 'True Trans' by the Transgender lobby after being given an inch and taking a mile, plus how demanding other people use pronouns is embarrassing and cringe.
In this episode we tell the stories of how we gradually hit 'peak Trans' (reaching 'peak Trans' or 'peaking' refers to realising that the liberal media narrative around Transgenderism is false). This is told from a perspective as lesbians and activists on the socialist far-Left.
We discuss the emergence of Traditionalism and its surge in popularity amongst Gen Z. In a world of porn, online dating, cost of living crisis, and increasing alienation, why are young people turning to traditional catholicism, romanticising feudalism, and rejecting democracy in favour of monarch rule? We go over Trad's aspirations (marriage and children), its sexual politics (please, no more porn!) and other rising subgroups of volcels (voluntary celibates), femcels (women deciding to be celibate), and incels (involuntary celebrates) that are each responses to the current landscape of dating app merry-go-rounds, normalisation of BDSM, and the downturn in privacy and adult independence. Traditional sexual politics is seen as the antidote to these, with women turning to conservative dating apps like The Right Stuff to find a man who isn't interested in a polycule or calling himself a woman.
The latter third of the episode concerns what Marx actually meant by 'abolishing the family' and the liberal Left's twisted version of it that promotes surrogacy, brothels, sterilising gender non-conforming children, and, of course, unbridled access to violent porn. We end on Sophie Lewis (author of Full Surrogacy Now) and her call for a caste of women who will be sexually exploited by all - a mirror of the call for a caste of women in prostitution. Final remarks are on Lewis's claim that people can experience 'queer love' with octopi (perhaps there will be a squid on the Pride flag soon).
This episode begins with a focus on what Pride was, the marketing disasters of Bud Light and Target, and why the concept of 'chosen family', recently endorsed by high street chain Primark, is stupid. Why are companies invested in supporting the increase of letters in the LGBTQA+ alphabet soup? We argue there is a corporate interest in promoting the continual extension of LGBTQA+ because it builds a greater market to sell Pride affiliated products to - the more straight people who identify in expands the 'rainbow demographic' of buyers. We also discuss the events of Pride Month, specifically the proposed reforming of the UK Equality Act to insert 'biological' in front of 'sex' so it's harder to conflate sex with gender identity. Jen tells the story of Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle in her kitchen in relation to his contribution in parliament against emboldening these sex-based provisions in law. Finally, we comment on the break slamming u-turn of Melbourne University over the last 4 weeks and the irony of targeting lesbian academic Holly Lawford-Smith during Pride Month.
Formerly beloved British TV presenter Phillip Schofield has recently been sacked and exposed for grooming, but the child grooming aspect of the case has been obfuscated by an emphasis on 'lying' and winding the narrative around sleeping with a colleague with less status. We discuss the taboo around grooming in our society and why people feel more comfortable talking moralistically about less harmful sexual issues than child sexual abuse. Who does that serve ideologically? And why is it so hard to maintain focus on the reality of child grooming when supposedly everyone deplores it?
Last time we record in the park! Apologies for the background noise.
The episode is about Kathleen Stock's appearance last week at the Oxford Union, with a rather large interlude in the middle of that discussion about the environmentalism movement and its particular class composition. With mention of Hegel, Lenin's internship at the Winter Palace, and Stock's status as premier golden retriever lesbian, we cover the ridiculousness of 'safe spaces' at Oxford and how self-advancement is the key purpose of the protests we saw last week.
This episode was recorded in a park - so expect some breeze, planes, and birds - but we are soon investing in microphones! With windshields, other professional equipment, and plan to do the show in a properly set up studio environment as of next month.
After taking part in a Twitter space organised by some Australian feminists last week on the theme of feminism and the far-right, we spend this episode answering the rest of the questions that were intended to be discussed during the space. We cover the differences between fascism and communism, the history of No Platforming, whether communistic / socialist countries are democracies, whether feminism is antithetical to fascism (short answer: yes, entirely), why fascists claim to care about pedophilia, and much more.
This episode is about obnoxious rightwing commentator Steven Crowder's newly public divorce and his tactics to Amber Heard his wife via the courts and public smearing. We discuss the security footage that shows Steven threatening his 8-months pregnant wife who was carrying twins and how limiting a resource (such as a car) is a form of control. We also chat about how neither the rightwing or the Left live up to the sexual politics each promotes, with the 'sex positive' Left actually being incredibly traditional and the Right frequently beset by 'sex scandals'. We move on to how fathers often become jealous of their newborn babies and Jen fails to pronounce Candice Owens' name correctly.
After a Twitter space attended by 400-women about 'feminist grifting' hosted by anonymous user 'Kylie' we discuss the merits of the claim that Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, is a 'grifter' (defined as a person who engages in petty or small-scale swindling). We talk about Kelly-Jay Keen's experience of mob violence in New Zealand, how the far-right are radicals who want to totally reorganise society and are therefore not conservatives in any sense, before moving on to Trump derangement syndrome and other liberal afflictions. This episode also features our analysis of how limited the false dichotomy of the 'personal is political' is and how it fundamentally leaves out what's important: politics. We make a case for populism and how terms like 'nonce', 'pedo', and 'goof' are part of the vernacular of the working-class and how the Left has ceded ground and handed an area of success to the far-right by being absolutely terrible on the issue of CSA (child sexual abuse) and safeguarding.
Special guest Shay Woulahan and RedFem's Hannah Berrelli discuss Let Women Speak's recent successful event in Belfast. They touch on issues of how sectarianism impacts feminist organising in Northern Ireland, address the presence of notorious unionist Jolene Bunting, and elaborate on the nature of anti-Irish racism in Belfast (including the "fuck the Pope" chants by the counter-protesters at Let Women Speak). Plus discussion of Rosa Luxemburg, socialist-feminism, why it's vital to allow all women a voice to speak on their experiences of misogyny, and what happened in the pub after the Let Women Speak event.
This episode addresses the idea of prison abolition and the liberal so-called 'harm reduction' drug policies that are both considered radical in North America. We critique these from a socialist leftwing perspective, also touching on the legalisation of prostitution, and draw these together as forms of abandoning - and profiteering from - the most vulnerable in society, particularly women at the bottom of our class system.
This episode starts with the political witch-hunt against Donald Trump, what his arrest means for the 2024 election, MAGA communism, and what the decline of the dollar means for the global politics. We outline support for the BRICS system and a power shift towards a multi-polar world, against which China derangement syndrome and banning TikTok forms part of a backlash. Talk of America brings up discussion of the recent Nashville shooting by a Trans-identified woman and we close out the episode with our thoughts on how the infantilisation of adults is the flip side to pedophilia.
We discuss the last weeks GC events in Australia and New Zealand from a far-Left anti-fascist perspective. With the help of quotes from Adorno, Sartre, and Lenin, we think through some of the issues that have arisen within gender critical feminism around this question of working with the rightwing and the tarring of women as being 'associated' with the far-right. Is the term neo-Marxism an antisemitic dog whistle? What do actual anti-fascist protests tend to look like? And why do Speak Outs for women cut at the heart of patriarchy?
We discuss whether feminists should work with right-wingers on single issue causes. We cover the historical ground of the last century of far-left political actors working with right-wingers within United Fronts and ask why feminists would be an exception? We later digress and chat casually about if breastfeeding is a form of labour and touch on the idea of whether male dominance is a social relation in the same way capitalism has its set of absolute social relations (we didn't prepare for this theme of the show, so it is light-hearted and a general natter - we do hope to discuss these more seriously in the future, especially as we have divergent views on the issue of whether women's biological reproduction is labour).
We discuss new Vice documentary The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate, out now on BBCiplayer. Tate is revealed as a serial rapist as the documentary interviews three of his victims, the CPS revealed as incompetent and complicit as decided to not prosecute despite three women coming forward, and we give our thoughts on how sinister Tate's lair in Bucharest is (all staff look uncomfortable!) Our chat forays into the wider issues of porn, prostitution, and that wanting to taking people out into the woods away from civilisation tends to indicate cultishness. We also comment on how poor socially Tate seems and how his fake extrovert image is a cover for a closed, malignantly narcissistic personality.
The likely conclusive episode of a 3-part series analysing how the Left has been degraded into radical liberalism, postmodernism, and disorganisation. We discuss how the radlib Left purports to support women workers rights and yet wants a brothel in every office and trade union building. How the characteristics of being a socially and developmentally delayed 'loser', or embarrassment around being a 'normie', and other forms of cringe, have become central currents among the desiccated Left of the Global North. We also chat about the misogynist Left's justification of porn as 'sex work' and so by their own logic they should only want Andrew Tate to be a better boss to his 'workers'.
In the absence of revolutionary or radical thinking, if the sexist Left's vision won, we would be left with a world not particularly different to the current one (and one arguably far worse for women). It is that fall from being able to envision a different set of social relations that really marks the once radical Left's drift to liberalism, capitulation to the status-quo, and ultimately an acceptance of the current social order.
We discuss the disintegration of the UK Left from the 2010s onwards and how that decline led to space for postmodern ideas to take hold. The ensuing existential crisis over dwindling numbers led to an unwillingness to challenge postmodern ideas as they gained popularity. The Left began to liberalise as a reaction to its marginal status. It viewed Transgenderism opportunistically as a social struggle to reignite a civil rights 'fight' that could make them relevant again. Because of the Left's lack of genuinely emancipatory sexual politics - at least in the Global North - there still exists a strategic oversight that has ensured the Left continues to lose credibility: namely, that the working class is ever going to think men entering spaces with women and children is acceptable. By taking on the ideology of the PMC, of which gender identity is just one part, the Left has consigned itself to being attractive to either individuals from the middle-classes playing rebel, or oddballs who take part in politics to experience social contact.
The so-called post-Left and post-socialist conclusions of American Marxists are increasingly shared by us here in the UK. Unless we revamp materialism and popularise a structural analysis, somehow, against all odds, we will only be left with nostalgia for better times past where class struggle was once possible.
This understanding threads through out the discussion as we cover much more ground across a litany of feminist and Marxist questions, tell of our own experiences, argue political labels are almost useless today, that tribalism is anti-politics, and so on.
This episode recounts an unsettling weekend Jen experienced that features a character known as 'Peter the pedophile'. The discussion forays into the terrible things people often end up doing for money when young and poor, how hyper-sexual humour is a form of aggression, and how lesbians and gay men are not the same species.
Some advice to apply when traveling abroad so that you, as a woman traveler, can avoid the things we've encountered. Male violence is an unfortunate global reality, one often demonstrated to women whilst traveling due to them being understood as an 'outsider' to that particular place, especially its male society. This discussion recounts several sexual assaults that took place to one of us whilst traveling abroad and the subsequent creation of some fairly strict travel rules based on those experiences.
We discuss Prince Harrys' new book 'Spare' and comment on its post-modern twist, dub it a Freudian field day, and remark on his hypocrisy regarding the Royal Family. We read it so you don't have to!
We put forward that femininity cannot just be assessed at the symbolic level of aesthetics and beauty practices, but requires a social-relations analysis as the infantilisation of women in service of patriarchy. We also discuss in the final third of the episode how the far-Left has a tradition of working with the rightwing, taking every available platform, and that activists should be defined by their political work, rather than self-declared political identity.
We discuss the recent arrest of digital pimp Andrew Tate for sex trafficking and entrapment of women in Romania. We compare and contrast Tate with Jordan Peterson and put forward our analysis that Tate is a symptomatic figure of late capitalism and societal decay. Our discussion touches on multi-level marketing scams, financialisation, and a critique of contemporary heterosexual social relations.
We review the final three episodes of Megan Markle and Prince Harry's Netflix docs-series and arrive at somewhat more sympathetic conclusions. Includes reference to Lacan's being or having the phallus! Freud's compulsion to repeat and some advice for the Royal duo: acknowledge your unearned wealth and find greater freedom in honesty...
We discuss Catherine Liu's excellent book Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, but focus on the only chapter we have sharp criticism of entitled 'The PMC Has Sex'. Why? Because the chapter represents the failings many communists, Marxists, and socialists have when it comes to an analysis of sexual politics and unwillingness to engage with feminism.
On The Woman Question (our blog) will soon have a positive review of the overall book on the site.
We discuss when the Left hadn't lost its mind a decade ago. The Left was not beset by the identarianism or liberalism we see plaguing it today. Leftwing political organising existed in a way that seems impossible now in radical politics (at least in North America and the UK). The years we focus on are 2008 to 2014. Part 2 coming soon where will discuss in further detail what happened after this period.
Liberal denialism meets upper-crust emotional repression (and get married). The Meghan & Harry docuseries currently inflaming social media represents a culture clash between British upper class norms and West Coast culture. Celebrities are boring and should stop trying to not be. Validation seeking is unhealthy, including for Meghan Markle.
We discuss the debate around the fall of Roe vs. Wade, contraception, assumed heterosexuality within medicine, dating apps, and Dworkin's 'Brothel Model'. Hannah also picks her nose a great deal.
Our analysis of the closure of the Tavistock's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) for children when it was announced back in July 2022. The discussion then forays into a chat around why women choose to 'transition', then about radical feminism and why women - even inside feminism - are considered disloyal or viewed with suspicion if develop themselves subjectively as they age. The heart of this, we conclude, is because whilst human beings develop, objects do not. So whilst women are regarded as objects it will be the case that when a woman evolves, develops, or transforms subjectively, she will be regarded with suspicion and understood as a misbehaving object and baffling subject.
Hannah speaks about her experience of getting kicked out of church last weekend due to standing beside - and standing up for - her gay male friend JD who was holding an LGB Alliance tote bag.
We discuss why the Left within the Global North are all too sympathetic to pedophiles and how the Left has never developed a sexual politics that can challenge the status-quo or patriarchy. This episode includes ideas and concepts from Marx, Dworkin, Freud, Foucault, Sartre, and more! And we also speak about our analysis of the SWP split of 2012 and collapse of the ISO years later.
