Blood and Terf Podcast: Recent Episodes
bloodandterf
Blood and Terf is a podcast about the links between the "deology of TERFs- trans exclusionary radical feminists- and fascism, cults, pseudoscience, and other reactionary political phenomena, hosted by E and M.
A lighthearted and off topic epsiode recorded while E was off with covid earlier this year, where M, plus guests C and A talk about the british police, specifically why theyre so dreary, rabidly weird, and bad at posting.
This episode was mainly recorded in January and is hugely late due to various totally avoidable delays caused by war, pestilence, and laziness. Also sorry this one is so long!
Normal programming to resume in coming weeks.
Police violence including sexual assault and extrajudicial murder is discussed in this episode
In our last episode this year, we interview Doctor Liz Brown, an american medical practicioner, who practices gender affirming and family care in a west coast state fo the USA. The interview is intended to serve as an informed conversational comparison between UK and US healthcare systems and how that affects trans healthcare in both places, whilst also being a deeper discusiion of helath materialism as a political concept
content warnings for this episode include the normal discussions of transphobic politics, but also reference to surgery, medical abuse, and various aspects of trans healthcare, and fuckups relating to that.
Music for the episode was by Marina Crustacean, and an anonymous friend of the show
Sorry for the wait! ... Again.
Anyway, true to our word we have now got all of our material out prior to the cranks over at LGBA, so here is our second epsiode on their conference and the weird goings on in it. Our previous episode was about the policy aims of LGBA and their apparent strategy. This one looks into their collective wriggling brainworms: we attempt to figure out all the weird tangled up ways in which theyve completely lost it. Basically theyve gone into Crank Mode full time and are essentially nothing but a collection of washed up liberals and middle aged alt right wannabes and i guess its up to us to report on this?? Somehow???
This episode contains discussions of the Holocaust, child sexual assault, violence against children, some discussion of sexual assault against adults, as well as extensive discussion of body horror, surgery, ablism, antisemitism and a variety of transphobic tropes and prejudicial speech, as well as audio clips covering some of these topics
Intro music is by Molly Noise
Music at the end of the epsiode is by John Kander and Fred Ebb. We are reproducing it in conjunction with audio clips of political speech its reproduction in this instance constitutes a transformative work.
On thursday 21st of October 2021, the political organization called “the LGB alliance” held a conference of 400 plus people, from across the transphobic political movement. Much of the reporting and public commentary on the conference has focused on a few shocking or comic high points: the terrible disco, the dire reputations of certain attendees such as Andy Ngo, clips of transphobes behaving weirdly and the generally odd vibe. However the actual contents of the conference, and its nature as a political event have not been delved into in detail by most commentators: most people think the event was a bit of a joke.
We think this is a mistake. Thanks to a friend of the show who attended and recorded the event, we’ve obtained a recording of the entire thing, and the stuff in the recording point in some very concerning directions.
The next few episodes of ours will be covering this conference; those who follow our twitter will know how many hours of material and pages of notes M has been labouring on; we refuse to inflict 7 hours of our nonsense on anyone in one block.
Much of the conversation at the conference touched on various tropes similar to those found in fascims, including bodily essentialism and conspiratorial rambles about invading, encroaching, plotting forces. We’ve covered the theory around these in previous episodes; this is not going to be sports commentary of the same old plays.
But in between regular deployments of wildly bigoted tropes, slanders, and slurs, a theme was clearly hammered home to attendees: the LGBA has a clear strategy of destroying its opponents (Stonewall, we know, though other targets were discussed) and engaging in a multi front campaign across all the major institutions of civil society to roll back the trans rights movement, as well as modern intersectional politics in general.
The LGB alliance seeks to be a sort of anti-stonewall vanguard, working within the higher institutions of british civil society, campaigning to totally change NHS, BBC and wider government policy with relation to gender and LGBT issues in a deeply reactionary direction. This has thus far been what most people familiar with the trans rights movement would have assumed about the organisation, but the depth of the reality needs to be seen and directly analysed.
We will be using audio clips from the conference where possible, and reading out transcripts where the audio quality does not allow for a good listener experience.
Content warnings for this episode include regular sound clips of highly transphobic political speech, including discussions of my common transphobic tropes.
As ever, our music is by Molly Noise
World reknowned feminist scholar Judith Butler has posted a new Hot Take, and now everyone is fighting! Its a guardian aritcle about how the "gender critical" ( transphobic) movement is a building block of modern fascism, and oh boy are people up in arms already. We thought we should join in the fun and get really red, mad, and nude with rage and excitement just like the rest of you.
Our episode on the LGBA conference is in the works but this was worth a ruch job cos the article is interesting in its own right
There are no major content warnings for this episode.
link to the article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash
We return after a 4 month hiatus, to report on the Labour and Tory party conferences, as well as various issues growing out of them, and have a general chat about clout chasers, global political growth of state-fascism, and all other sorts of cool stuff.
Normal content warnings apply: discussion of transphobia etc. That said, this episode is a fairly light one.
sorry about the delay everyone!
Ok look this episode is really long, and its really weird, and the reason for that is that E is a big softy who allowed me to rant for like 2 hours about how the misinformation networks that evolved out of the media landscape of Syrian Civil war news reporting have to be understood if one is to understand modern fascist misinformation in general. Thats it. Thats the episode. Have fun. Im sorry ( I'm not sorry, except about the poor sound quality: we had a lot of technical problems editing this one). We will be back to slightly more normal content in episode 16 lol.
Content warnings include brief discussion of the effects on the human body of chemical weapons including Sarin gas and Mustard gas, as well as general discussions of violence and transphobia as per normal
Music for this episode was by Molly noise
Some sources on the misinformation campaign surrounding the chemcial weapons attack on Douma in 2018:
https://www.bellingcat.com/tag/chemical-weapons/
https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/news/douma-and-the-opcw-leaks
https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2020/02/opcw-independent-investigation-possible-breaches-confidentiality-report
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/23/the-opcw-douma-leaks-part-3-we-need-to-talk-about-a-false-flag-attack/
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/09/douma-chemical-attack-evidence-syria/
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/20/russia-sows-doubts-chemical-attack-syria-aided-pro-trump-cable-channel/
No joke title this time! In this episode we take a few listener questions, recap the last several months of transphobic activities in the UK and US. We also discuss the importance of the Kill the Bill protests in the UK, and some of the current dynamics of progressive movements allied to trans liberatory politics, as well as examining the prospects of more mainstream political forces getting entangled in the transphobic reaction. We also catch up with Cult Watch, which has been neglected for so long that it was sort of overflowing...
As we arent discussing anything particualrly hardcore in this episode there isnt any specific trigger warning.
Music for this episode was provided by Marina Crustacean
Our premise for this episode is pretty simple: Rapidly proliferating transphobia in the USA is about to explode. All the reactionaries, from the cable news talking heads down to Qanon diehards, are searching for new horrid fascist narratives, and its pretty clear that one of the big ones is Trans Panic. Theyre trying to adapt in the post-trump era, and find profitable new battles to fight and we think that people need to act fast to counter this.
This recent shift hasnt gone unnoticed: a fair few leftist, LGBT or antifascist commentators have already remarked upon it. However, as in Britain, US based leftist organisations, including much of the antifascist movement, havent responded much. If youre in such a group, you need to ( in our opinion) put the pedal to the metal and begin mobilising against this rapidly. If patterns play out in the states like they did here in the UK, the religious right and their street fascist allies will use transphobia to make inroads into civic life in ways that will be hard to counter if not stopped fast.
This episode covers a lot of ground that regular listeners to the show will know already so if youre a regular then you might find a lot of this familiar: in many ways its a truncation of our normal content. we thought that itd be good to have a sort of "ABC's" episode for the purpose of turning peoples attention to the specific organisational requirements at hand.
We've recorded this as a sort of introductory/propaganda piece, so if youre already on side please share it, particulary to anyone you know who lives in the states, and most particularly if they are already in, or are thinking of joining, a leftist or antifascist organisation.
No major content warnings for this episode other than the general subject matter of transphobia, conspiracy theories, cults etc
music for this episode was by Molly Noise
In this episode, we’ve invited a guest on, in order to explain the weird and wild landscape of Scottish politics, and how it is bound up in a wave of transphobia. Dalm who is an organiser with the IWW , and is based in Scotland, has kindly agreed to come on the show. with her help we have a general look at how Scottish politics has been shaped in a surprisingly reactionary mold, despite the country's progressive political reputation.
A note from M: This episode touches on a wide range of topics, including the rise of the SNP and the fall of scottish labour, the role of the Salmond scandal and how it has affected the internal political dynamics of the independence movement, and the historical legacy of various sources of conservative thinking in scottish domestic politics. I think that its a fairly good explanation of the broad strokes of scottish politics with relation to transphobia and eactionary strands of thought in scotland, but its by no means complete. We kind of dip our toes into several discussions, where each of them could easily have an episode devoted to them. For example the brief section about sectarianism and organised religion barely touches on the structural involvement of the Orange Lodge in Scottish political party organisations, and we dont even mention the long term cultural impacts of now relativley minor traditions such as Calvinism. Not to mention the hours of comment that could be offered on modern millenial progressive politics in Scotland post 2014! While editing this episode I found myslef getting a bit annoyed with myself in retrospect for not including more about this sort of stuff in the episode plan but you cant do everything! Future episodes about Scotland are entirely plausible, given that in many ways we barely scratch the surface in this one, and how important the SNP has become in mainstreaming radical transphobia, and if and when we do them I hope to flesh out the stuff in this episode a lot more.
Our music for this episode is by Marina Crustacean
Content warnings: transphobia, discussion of sexual assault, religious sectarianism, eyewitness descriptions of transphobic organising in a cult like environment.
Many Thanks to Dalm, our guest for this episode.
After a lengthy interlude, the podcast returns with a theory episode: We've invited a guest, in form of mysterious insurrectionary, "A" who will be helping us dig through Umberto Eco's classic work " Ur-Fascism", as we compare it to a range of antifascist critiques and viewpoints. A is very kindly using her academic knowledge to help us construct a more coherent theory schema so that we can properly lay everything out to avoid being too inscrutable for listeners.
General content warnings for discussions of transphobia and fascism. One passage written in the 60s, quoted in this episode, uses a word now considered a racial pejorative. Discussions about the "Cult of the Child" in the latter part of the episode include brief mentions of the concept of Child Soldiers and child abuse in general
Works cited in this episode include:
"The Last Phase in the Transformation of Capitalism" by Michal Kalecki
"Fascism- What it is and how to fight it" by Leon Trotsky
"The struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism" by Otto Ruhle ( with introduction from Alfredo Bonanno)
"Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution" and "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of brainwashing in China" by Robert J Lifton
"Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats" and Against History Against Leviathan, by Fredy Perlman
"What can we Do with Antifascism" by Alfredo Bonanno
Further reading on a similar vein includes:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-the-continuing-appeal-of-nationalism
A also runs a youtube channel called "Soft Insurrection"
Music for this episode was by Molly Noise
To close out 2020, the podcast is taking a look at the mysterious ways in which plague and disease related reactionary anxieties have swept across the far right spectrum, catching transphobes in their wake. Britain has a long history of transphobia, but the political role of antivaccination is also a longstanding political tradition in British culture. Combine this with 2020 being Plague Year, and with a whole host of bizarre reactionary patterns of thought penetrating the general societal consciousness, and you get the perfect melting pot of hatred and pseudoscience.
Content warnings for this episode include: mentions of antisemitism, anti-asian racism, general transphobic bullshit, serophobia. discussions about eugenicist policies and generally ablist politics, as well as lengthy discussions of the various ways our governments have contrived to kill people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources and shownotes to be expanded later.
Articles directly mentioned:
https://www.jta.org/2020/03/06/opinion/history-shows-that-epidemics-can-carry-dangerous-side-effects-for-jews-deadly-anti-semitism
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements
Further background source on Medieval antisemitic narratives relating to leprosy:
https://opr.degruyter.com/confronting-antisemitism-through-the-ages-a-historical-perspective/erich-s-gruen-the-blood-libel-and-the-leper-libel-ancient-anti-semitism/
an article explaining the "Plandemic" hoax:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21254184/how-plandemic-went-viral-facebook-youtube
Music for this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
In this 2 part episode we have a closer look at how the transphobic political wave has used access to and influence over major political and cultural institutions. Obviously, all political movements attempt to influence society, but this episode will be an analysis of who they target and how they succeed. Basically, we are going to do a rather broad assessment and forecast of “terf strategy”- if indeed there is such a thing.
Here we are with part 2! We conclude our study of general terf institutional methods with a look at the world of Academia, and from there expand into a general speculation on how transphobic politics operates on a strategic level.
This episode also features garbled ravings from M, about 19th century war theorist Carl Von Clausewitz, a request from E to the listener, an extremely dubious interpretation of how random number generators work and some new intro/outro music from a comrade called Alaska.
In this 2 part episode we have a closer look at how the transphobic political wave has used access to and influence over major political and cultural institutions. Obviously, all political movements attempt to influence society, but this episode will be an analysis of who they target and how they succeed. Basically, we are going to do a rather broad assessment and forecast of “terf strategy”- if indeed there is such a thing.
In this first half we look at the UK media and columnist scene in broad terms, and also examin how this interacts with the government and civil society activism. all this is in preperation for part 2, in which we continue our general analysis with a look at academia, and then use this information to make a model of how the TERF strategic hivemind works.
While we would generally warn listeners that most of our episodes contain discussion of material that may be upsetting- and this episode is not necessarily an exception- the subject matter in this episode will be a bit more abstract than previously. More broad strokes and less gory details.
the article quoted at the end:
https://lithub.com/how-fringe-christian-nationalists-made-abortion-a-central-political-issue/
Early 21st century intellectual powerhouse, Spigot once asked " what about fat queer dicks?". Continuing from our last episode, we ask the same question. If the Fascist political penis can have all of these supposedly positive martial attributes, what happens when something negative appears on the horizon? Fascism is nothing if not contradictory: the penis is also terrible and fearsome and can be an organ of corruption. But how do fascists rationalise this? We attempt to answer that exact question.
Content warnings: antisemitism, racism, specific and detailed discussion of the Penis as an organ, and generalised discussion of serious sexual assault, STIs, Homophobia, Serophobia as well as specific mentions of child sexual assault and surgery/invasive medical procedures. As ever, heinous amounts of transmisogyny.
Selected sources and further reading:
Male Fantasies Vol 2 (K. Theweleit) : https://monoskop.org/images/4/4d/Theweleit_Klaus_Male_Fantasies_Vol_2_Male_Bodies_Psychoanalyzing_the_White_Terror.pdf
Eliza Gauger on the subject of Ergi and Seidr:
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/814705700915941376
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/825404890918768642?s=20
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/470510121349435392
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/630923737777373184
More on Seidr specifically: https://norse-mythology.org/concepts/seidr/
The Graun article we mentioned towards the end of the episode:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/24/my-boyfriend-wedding-dress-unveiled-shortcomings-masculinity
Carol Cohn on the language of the defence industry intelligentsia: https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/mitchell-institute/FileStore/Filetoupload,756488,en.pdf
Link to an accessible PDF of the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/cultural-encyclopedia-of-the-penis-e46430630.html
Music for this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose Music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
This episode is the first in a special series examining the role of masculinity in fascism, in order to make a more detailed study of how this crucial relationship of concepts is tied into the evolution of modern transphobic politics.
To kick off this series-within-a-series we have the first of a 2 part special all about that most political of organs: the Penis.
Content warnings for this episode include: Specific and detailed discussion of the Penis as an organ, and generalised discussion of serious sexual assault, Homophobia, and transphobia
Some helpful links relating to phallic Architecture, and the role of the Fasces in modern fascist symbology:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/06/upward-thrusting-buildings-ejaculating-cities-sexist-leslie-kern-phallic-feminist-city-toxic-masculinity https://www.versobooks.com/books/3227-feminist-city
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/07/14/book-review-feminist-city-claiming-space-in-the-man-made-world-by-leslie-kern/
https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/pvncp/nazi-architecture-as-affective-weapon.html
https://hyperallergic.com/459504/fasces-fascism-and-how-the-alt-right-continues-to-appropriate-ancient-roman-symbols/
http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Phallic_architecture
Link to an accessible PDF of the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/cultural-encyclopedia-of-the-penis-e46430630.html
Klaus Theweleit's 2 part book " Male Fantasies" is an ongoing and semi continuous pooint of reference for us, and this epsiode is far from being an exception to that rule. We would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding Fascism and its sexual politics.
Musicfor this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose Music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
After years of being largely ignored outside of certain specialist reporters, the vast conspiracy theory cult known as Qanon has finally begun to come to the attention of mainstream news. In the UK this has been reflected in the sudden appearance of Qanon linked protests, rallying around the "Save Our Children" banner. Following this, and a notable uptick in people drawing links between TERFs and Qanon, we here at Blood & TERF podcast have been hard at work for a few weeks doing background research on our primer episode on how the TERF/GC/Transphobe movement exhibits multiple alarming similarities to cults in general, and modern online movemetns like Qanon in particular.
Contents warnings for this episode include: discuaaion of abusive social environments in the context of cult organisations and abusive relationships, as well as sexual assault and coercion. we also discuss various aspects of the beliefs of the Qanon movement, including a description of their core belief system whcih is heavily pre-occupied with child sexual exploitation
The BITE model developed by Steven Hassan which is referenced in the episode is available here, as is further information about how Hig Demand Groups operate: https://www.openmindsfoundation.org/the-bite-model-of-influence/
Further reading on cults and their internal models of organisation may be found in the works of Robert J Lifton, including "Though Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "brainwashing" in China" as well as his later and more up to date work "Destroying the World To Save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism"
The podcast QanonAnonymous is dedicated to covering the Qanon movement in a lighthearted and somewhat doomer-ish manner, and is available here: https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous
TrashFuture Podcast has also occasionally delved into the wild and wonderful world of how TERFs operate in the british political scene, and has released episodes relating to Qanon as well. They can be found here: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/
Music was provided by Marina Crustacean, who can be found at https://twitter.com/MusicCrustacean and https://soundcloud.com/marinacrustacean
If you wish to contribute music to the podcast we can be contacted at the following email adress: Bloodandterf@gmail.com
Our Dreamwidth, which will be used for collating more extensive shownotes, can be found here:
bloodandterf.dreamwidth.org
Over the past couple of years the political situation in Poland has been deteriorating for many minority groups, particularly for LGBT people, and now Trans people are in the spotlight. A series of high profile protest actions by Trans activists, frequently violently repressed by the state and a large and violent right wing presence on the streets have brought the struggle for civil rights to prominence over the last year.
In this episode your hosts interview Irys, a Polish trans person, about the context for these events, as well as the general situation in Poland, and as ever, find a way to link it back to Umberto Eco...
Content Warnings for this epsiode: Discussion of violence and abuse directed at trans people from the police, medical community & the far right. Discussion of specific assaults. Discussion of medical procedures. Discussion of abusive environments in homes, schools, and medicine.
Organisations mentioned in this episode include:
Trans Fuzja Trans Fuzja's website and donation page can be found here: http://transfuzja.org/en/artykuly/donate.htm
Lambda Warzawa: http://lambdawarszawa.org/
Stop Bzdurom - twitter: https://twitter.com/stopbzdurom website/crowdfunder: firefund.net/stopbzdurom
Kampania Przeciw Homofobii/ Campaign Against Homophobia: https://kph.org.pl/
Music was provided by Marina Crustacean, who can be found at https://twitter.com/MusicCrustacean and https://soundcloud.com/marinacrustacean
If you wish to contribute music to the podcast we can be contacted at the following email adress: Bloodandterf@gmail.com
Our Dreamwidth, which will be used for collating more extensive shownotes, can be found here:
bloodandterf.dreamwidth.org
Leftism in Britain has a TERF problem.Thankfully, your hosts, E and M, are here to help, by subjecting terf ideology to a Stalinist show trial. Obviously the TERF movement is guilty, but how? And why? In this episode we examine how the origins of the TERFism in the British radical left allowed it to gain a stranglehold on significant parts of the Labour Party, some of the more significant parts of the British Marxist scene, and how this overlaps with the roiling centrist rage at the rise of Corbynism. For these crimes, obviously, the TERFs shall be sent to the Gender Ideology Gulag, but first, we have to explain in excruciating detail how and why they have betrayed communism.A content warning: we discuss the following TERF related things- bullying, homophobia, transphobia, stochastic violence, sexual assault and general interpersonal abuse. Lastly: If you are a trans music artist and would like to provide music for our as yet absent intro and outro, please contact us at bloodandterf@gmail.com.
In this episode, E rants about the class struggle & the wretchedness of liberal feminism, M tries his hardest to get sued by comparing a beloved childrens author to, simultaneously, a member of ISIS, Stormfront & the Qanon cult, & we decipher how on earth JK Rowling managed to get her beliefs so screwed up that all of that sentence actually makes sense!
CN: Transphobia, discussion of antisemitism, discussions of extreme right wing ideology & anti-trans rhetoric
In our 1st "proper" episode we examine how the TERF ideology neglects & fetishises children, turning the imaginary child into a sacred idol for an increasingly cultish politics, based on the nuclear family, fascist concepts of motherhood, & antisemitic canards.
Can Little Timmy escape the clutches of TERF tyranny? Or does freedom beckon on the horizon? Listen on to find out...
Content warnings: discussion of antisemitic tropes, misgendering, abuse and general transphobia
Your hosts E & M explore transphobia's connections to Fascism, Pseudoscience, Cults & reactionary ideology. We examine Ray Blanchard, whom M insists on calling "a known academic sex pervert", and his similarities to the greatest pseudoscientist ever:Trofim Lysenko. Also explored are "the cringe tumblr left" "permaculture" "prosecco stormfront" & Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism".
Content warnings: medical procedures, medical abuse, cults, fascism & swearing