RedFem

This episode discusses the baptism by fire that is female adolescence, and how if autism is added into that mix, Transgenderism starts to look like an available escape hatch for young girls who are socially non-conforming - one that has the additional bonus of alleviating the anxiety of surrounding adults. We discuss the psychoanalytic concept of 'psychic equivalence' in relation to autism, the difficulty of not understanding or being unwilling to follow feminine social scripts, and how a Trans identity can be a way to explain disinclination to socially conform and, vitally, perhaps be forgiven for it. 

The PMC and middle-classes, as fervently ideologically conforming due to their anxiety-provoking position sandwiched between the bourgeoisie and working-class, have no reasoning available to them as to why a child might not want to conform by adopting dominant norms and highly gendered social scripts, because they ultimately cannot fathom why anyone would not want to advance themselves wherever possible. Transgenderism provides not only an explanation, but affords the PMC and middle-class parents cover for their hostility towards anyone without their values, including their own offspring.

Plus, the strangely sexualised marketing to adolescents of Playboy Bunny t-shirts and stationary, the bizarre measures adults take to groom adolescents into heterosexual social relations, and the very clear social messages of hatred and hostility gender non-conforming girls receive within the family and from the media.

Shay Woulahan joins RedFem this week, standing in as co-host for Jen (who is under the weather), to discuss where we are at in regard to defeating gender ideology. Are we returning to 'true trans'? Is Trans becoming cringe and uncool amongst Gen Alpha (young teenagers) as much as the internet suggests? We comment on the new historical revisionism by those who pushed Self-ID and claimed there was no such thing as sex, now backtracking heavily due to the Cass Review. The quite incredible digital scenes of those who witch-hunted gender critical feminists for years, and claimed no men would ever abuse Self-ID, now using GC talking points from 2018. 

Plus, what's being going on in Ireland recently regarding gender identity, the trajectory of JK Rowling, the similarities between anorexia and 'gender dysphoria' in teen girls, the straight millennial women pushing gender ideology in schools, and the return to preppy 1980s culture, as summarised by TikTok club anthem of the summer, "I'm looking for a guy in Finance, 6'5, blue eyes".

We talk about the queer politics of Eurovision and the role of infantilism as an attempt to foreclose political criticism and how no one (not even Graham Norton) can keep up pronoun pretences for more than 5 minutes. We also discuss the flattening effect of the LGBT paradigm, our newly discovered term 'KERF' (Kink Exclusionary Radical Feminist), the frailty of queer politics, and the mind prison of transgenderism. We ask, what would a lesbian Eurovision look like? And are twink performers doing 'bimboism', but for gay men? We conclude that LGBTQ is today centrally about the Q and the T, and occasionally the G. 

Plus, through discussion of new lesbian dating show I Kissed A Girl (on BBC iplayer) we dissect political lesbianism as the embryonic form of woke identity politics. We discuss aspects of political lesbianism, such as Self-ID, invasion of lesbian spaces, lesbian erasure, covert entryism, and other Trans-like tactics. That leads to the debate around born this way vs. choice, lifestylism, and what is the definition of a lesbian? (Answer: a female homosexual).

We discuss how political activism can flatten the personality or erode personal life, and how the Left's narrowing of subjectivity, or ignoring subjective experience, created a space for postmodernism, and its over focus on subjectivity, carte blanche to thrive on the Left. We also comment on why the student Palestine protests are taking the form that they are, the time when the socialist Left was against Queer Theory, and how some people use political activism to work out or deny their psychological problems. 

We also discuss how women on the far-Left are considered in the same way as on the political right, namely; base, easily suggestible, and lacking objectivity. Both Hannah and Jen talk about their experiences in socialist groups where there was a suppression and suspicion of any member's subjectivity that fell outside the party's remit or goals. Plus, Trotskyism as opportunism, why the moronic Left had to brand the Canadian truck strikers as 'fascists', Joan Didion's view of the archetypal young Marxist-Leninist, C.S. Lewis's criticism of materialism, how the Left and Right paradigm is breaking down into globalism vs. anti-globalism, and we give a shout out to the Marx Engels Lenin Institute.

We discuss the tactics of the student protests taking place across campuses in the United States and compare them to similar protests over Israel's military assaults on Gaza a decade and a half ago. Topics include: the utopianism of thinking it's possible to create a space outside of society and how this kind of anarchist political tendency lends itself to authoritarianism, often leading to personal fiefdoms. We discuss the logic behind micro-aggressions and the difference between 'decolonisation' and anti-colonialism. Plus, how 'decolonisation' on the curriculum likely led many students to believe their university would support any campus demonstrations and encampments, how mutual aid is Victorian charity with a faux radical veneer, and how protests can be moral laundries for the elite.

Women in greater and greater numbers are choosing not to have children. We discuss the reasons why, both material and ideological, and how the internet, particularly apps like TikTok, have removed the mystery of different lifestyles and bashed down the once private walls of the nuclear family. Online, the Red Pill 'no eggs' rhetoric attempting to shame women into attaching themselves to a man, is failing because it's like playing on a social chess board from 1953. We think through the contradictions of people like Jordan Peterson encouraging femininity, housewifery, and for women to be stay-at-home mothers, whilst also criticising the 'devouring mother', when those are exactly the conditions that set it up. Also, the contradiction of giving only carrots and never metaphorical sticks to boys and then wondering why young men don't feel the need to accomplish anything or graduate into full adulthood, like getting a job and moving out of the parental home, in order to bag a wife or serious girlfriend.

This episode also includes wider discussion of men in crisis, how romance culture today is dead, dating apps as a form of ruthless shopping, how relationships now start with a sexual encounter, and women coming off birth control in large numbers. We contest Louise Perry's comments about the welfare state reducing the birth rate, instead putting forward an analysis of how the unrestrained market has ripped through everyone's lives, ensuring very few young people are financially secure enough to have a baby. Plus, globalisation meaning the nation state is less relevant, the Victorian culture in UK schools, Michael Hudson's book 'Super Imperialism', and confusion around the 4B movement in South Korea, where many online seem to think 4B caused the birth rate to drop, when in fact it was the effects of neoliberal economics, which the 'Sampo' generation of the early 2010s came to represent, well before 4B. 

The release of the Cass Review last week on the treatment of 'trans' children in the NHS has caused huge waves and responses that indicate where we're heading. We discuss its moral inditement of the PMC, their rapidly devalued sunk cost, and the media classes witch-hunting of women who acted to protect children before Cass. This episode includes comment on Novara Media's apology to JK Rowling for falsely accusing her of being a 'holocaust denier', the Left's political vacuum where safeguarding doesn't exist, how ex-Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt was branded a 'transphobe' back in 2010, and how it's the liberal PMC who are being revealed as the homophobic moral monsters of the modern West. We also think about how we arrived here, covering how women on the liberal-Left are incredibly submissive and male-approval seeking, how lesbians are considered expendable, and that lesbians on the Left often inadvertently reflect liberal-left women's 'low value' status (in heterosexual terms) back to them, making them uncomfortable with female homosexuality and our presence politically.

We also talk about how Nancy Kelley, former Stonewall CEO, was the asexual chummy figure cleverly placed to hide a thousand perversions, detransitioners who have 'human dysphoria', why referrals to Gender Identity Clinics are drying up in part because Gen-Z is less approval seeking from institutions than Millennials are. Plus, the not uncommon self-isolation of lesbians due to the hostile environment they face, that transforms the closet into something not just metaphoric, and how the smiling homophobia of Left-liberals, who used the tools of power available to them to do violence to gay children is far, far worse than the average street homophobe.

We discuss the political and moral quandaries around euthanasia, otherwise known as medical assistance in dying. How what was effectively a liberal 'harm reduction' policy of assisted dying for the terminally ill, later the elderly and frail, has now expanded its application towards those living with a physical disability or mental health issue. This episode includes commentary on Canada's notorious MAID policy, the excellent Japanese film Plan 75 that explores state-sponsored euthanasia for the elderly, and how the profit-motive determining that only those who are productive have value is the opposite of universal human dignity. We also cover the fact that over two thirds of those euthanised are women, that suffering is part of the human condition (we are all suffering some of the time, in some way, and suffering is not without meaning), and why we cannot accept a society that determines human worth according to economic productivity or ability to rely on private capital. 

The abandonment, smearing, and legal harassment of Hilary Crowder by her ex-husband, rightwing commentator and supposed Trad Christian Steven Crowder, is causing a crisis in sexual politics amongst the rightwing. Why? Because Hilary Crowder is the epitome of a Trad woman, a virgin-until-marriage, deeply religious, stay-at-home mother, and yet she's been left high and dry by a man who seems more concerned with Youtube and his interest in transsexual men. If Hilary Crowder can be treated this badly, then it demonstrates the Tradwife lifestyle is an unreliable route for the everywoman. The rightwing is tearing itself apart online, with conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Lauren Southern supporting Hilary's bid for child support, whilst Tim Pool and Pearl Davis argue she should get a job (thus contradicting their claims women should stay at home to look after their children). The 'lawfare' by Steven Crowder is not only directed at his ex-wife, but former employee Jared, who Steven nicknamed 'gay Jared' and forced to dress up in women's clothes regularly.

We discuss that bonfire and the abusers playbook currently being deployed by Crowder (drive your spouse crazy, then threaten to use the legal system to make her mental health records public in a bid to embarrass and control her), sadistic narcissism, and what happens to everyone when we can't tolerate distress (a collapse in containment and loss of the ability to mentalise). Plus, Kanye West's inability to do 'lawfare' against billionaire ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and so resorting to humiliating her lookalike in Bianca Censori by parading her around naked, dead-eyed narcissistic rage, and how Ben Shapiro is basically a Betty Freidanite.