RedFem

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.