RedFem

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'.