RedFem

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).