Cracked Ivory

Initially, this episode was intended to be exclusive to Patreon. However, given its subject matter, we decided to instead release it to early access and then publicly. Happy holidays!

For the Patreon companion episode, Emma, Talia and Lucy dive into Max Robinson's misguided nostalgia tour of the second wave's worst offerings. Robinson attempts to pen a sequel to Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire that talks about how we can choose to escape patriarchy if we all just try hard enough, how people transition because they think "FTMs" are taken more seriously than women, and how to run a detransition cult.

Sources:

Max Robinson, Detransition: Beyond Before And After, 2021.

Ky Schevers, Statement about Lane Lloyd - https://kyschevers.medium.com/statement-about-lane-lloyd-1f8d4d67137b

Sarah Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Towards New Value, 1988.

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In this very special episode of Cracked Ivory, Emma traps Talia and Lucy Kartikasari (she/they/he, luckartikasari on TikTok) on a call and subjects them to Abigail Shrier's opinions on transition, teenage sex, and race. Irreversible Damage is a fear-mongering screed combined with a how-to child abuse guide aimed at the parents of young trans children, a manifesto stating plain that children owe their parents not merely their lives and future earnings, but their very bodies and sex, neither of which can be tampered with under the heterosexual regime. We examine how this misbegotten suburban tantrum dehumanizes trans and detrans people alike, treating us as surgically mutilated sterile wretches rather than humans with dignity and free will.

The most distasteful part of the episode starts at 54:09 and ends at 1:00:56.

Sources:

Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Crazy Seducing Our Daughters, 2021

Talia Bhatt, 'Racebending' and 'Womanface': Discussing Social Constructs

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On this special episode of Cracked Ivory, Talia and Emma invite Jude Doyle (he/they) to discuss his new book, Did I Leave Feminism? They talk about the manufactured antagonism between feminism and queerness, how Western trans theorists talk about race and gender, recuperative readings of the second wave, and more!

Did I Leave Feminism? is out now everywhere books are sold.

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Today, Talia and Emma dissect The Transsexual Empire, a foundational text for the modern gender-critical movement. They discuss the history of radical lesbian feminism, the embattled discourse over trans women's place in it, and the way trans-exclusionary 'radfems' codified a feminist pretext for rank bigotry.

Sources:

Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (don't buy it; don't read it, but if you do, you know where to not buy it)

Finn Enke, Collective Memory and the Transfeminist 1970s: Towards a Less Plausible History: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/5/1/9/133890/Collective-Memory-and-the-Transfeminist

Sandy Stone, The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto: https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/trans-manifesto.pdf

Ky Schevers, Statement About Lane Lloyd: https://kyschevers.medium.com/statement-about-lane-lloyd-1f8d4d67137b

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Find more of Talia at taliabhatt.com

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Is there a difference between trans men and butch lesbians? Are non-transitioning queer people like refugees? And most importantly, HOW MUCH SEX ARE THEY HAVING IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM? This episode, Emma and Talia are joined by Isaac (The Trans Dandy, he/they/ze) to discuss Jack Halberstam's psychedelic experience Female Masculinity, a work of queer theory with a truly unearned reputation as 'representative' of the transmasculine experience. 

Find Isaac at: https://substack.com/@transdandy

Additional special thanks to our newest Cum Laudest Patron, Lava Monster, who had the impeccable timing of joining the exact moment Emma exported the finalised audio.

Sources:

Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Anniversary Edition: https://www.dukeupress.edu/female-masculinity-twentieth-anniversary-edition

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Talia and Emma are joined by May Peterson (she/her, goddessblade.bsky.social) to discuss the sizzling and steamy world of M/M romance fiction and ask: Does having critiques of M/M media make you racist?! A single Tumblr callout post that somehow managed to become an academic paper snowballs into a discussion on identity politics, transfeminine erasure, and the anti-intellectualism inherent to a discursive environment that relies more on vibes than actual arguments when discussing not merely fandom, but topics as important as politics, bigotry, and art.

Sources:

Sam Aburime, The influence of transphobia, homonationalism and anti-Asian prejudice: Anti-BL attitudes in English-speaking fandoms: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378234729_The_influence_of_transphobia_homonationalism_and_antiAsianprejudice_Anti-BL_attitudes_in_English-speaking_fandoms

Between Scylla and Charybdis: https://lysistrata327.substack.com

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For the first episode of Cracked Ivory, Talia and Emma are joined by legal historian and queer feminist of color Kay (who can be found at dihya-bint-neyth.bsky.social on Bluesky) to discuss Kimberlé Crenshaw’s oft-cited yet sparsely-read theory of intersectionality, along with its implications for masculinity studies, critics of feminism, and Ben Shapiro’s fear of bottoming.

Sources:

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf

Intersectionality Wars: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

Intersectionality and Masculinity Studies: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18902138.2024.2376445#d1e115

Crenshaw on police violence against Black women: https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/kimberle-crenshaw-who-coined-term-intersectionality-police-violence-against-black-women

Close Encounters of Three Kinds (Crenshaw 2010): https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2865/

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Talia Bhatt and Emma Zakharuk unveil their evil lesbian radical transfeminist agenda: to end both Manhood and Discourse with a single podcast. 'Cracked Ivory' is an examination of popular feminist discourses and the scholarship (both good and very, very bad) that spawned them! Coming soon to wherever you get your podcasts.

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Support the show

Find more of Talia at taliabhatt.com

Find more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co