RedFem

Love affair or sexual abuse? That is the question at the heart of 'Tell Them You Love Me' (available on Sky, NOW, and Apple TV), a documentary on woke Philosophy Professor Anna Stubblefield, who was convicted of sexually abusing a student, after gaining access to him (Derrick) through the debunked method of 'facilitated communication'. We discuss the woke race and disability politics surrounding the case and put forward that the attempt the claim disabled people have no limitations due to their disability plays a role in removing provisions and protections for those people. The idea of the resilient individual who thrives through greater agency under neoliberalism is just one way that neoliberal ideology has deformed the New Left since the 1970s (another is reducing structural issues of race and disability to mere identity politics). The wish to have moral superiority and experience a 'moral high' through enacting ones politics in ones own lifestyle is more to do with a fantasy of grandiosity and performative identity game-playing than creating meaningful political change in the wider world. Peter Boghossian is not wrong when he describes the scale of the intellectual fraud going on in woke academic departments in the United States, theories that in the Anna Stubblefield case when practiced led to a crime. Proving true that, indeed, ideas  have consequences.

The episode also covers the panic around black single mothers in the USA, the grift of identity politics as a form of poaching and proximity, the satanic panic, the myth around multiple personality disorder, and the difficulty of accepting apathy in others about subjects we feel passionately about. Plus, the ideologically-sponsored delusion of believing your own romantic love story is unique (which ultimately turns people into objects), the feminine grandiose fantasy of being the only one who understands a particular other person (usually a man), projecting your own internal world onto others as a sign of a lack of empathy, and how those heavily involved in ideologically production today, such as in Big Tech, are incredibly cautious about subjecting their own children to it.

We steelman the argument for 'girl boss feminism' as a way for some women to achieve financial independence and freedom from men and the family under capitalism. Much of the logic of 'lean in' feminism, as epitomised by former Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, is about accruing enough capital as a woman to afford privately the things socialism would otherwise provide for women nationally i.e childcare, laundry services, food provision that's an alternative to mothers cooking, etc. We think through why rich, successful women are so often hated by both the Left and the Right, including within feminism, concluding it's because access to capital presents a possible freedom from dependence on men and the family. However, that material reality is often trumped by ideological commitments (to exactly men and the family) that are deeply engrained and cultural.

We also discuss the TikTok documented trend of 'stay at home masc' lesbians, partly in regard to how lesbians defy gender roles, the archetype of the British middle-class mummy, the often sordid underbelly of middle-class life due to repression and need for respectability, the risks of being a Tradwife, an example of which is the obvious hatred of Stephen Crowder for his ex-wife and children. Plus, Dolly Parton's lesbianism on the DL, the importance of having written agreements if one partner in a marriage isn't going to work, and the importance of not just money from professional advancement, but how the ensuing self-esteem and self-respect also distances women from dependence on the family / men.

Why is the Royal Family struggling to produce a photo of Kate Middleton? We suggest there are multiple threads to whatever crisis and stalemate is going behind closed doors at Kensington Palace (specifically, in all likelihood; an affair, a looming divorce, Kate's mystery illness, and a King on his way out). It is a cause for concern if a woman - any woman - has not been seen in public for three months. 

Today it's increasingly difficult to fake real life events due to the internet and the hive mind of social media sleuths. We ask whether a Royal Family as a state-funded public-facing institution is viable in the 21st century? Do we even need a Royal Family? One that owns swathes of the UK's shoreline, land, and influences much of the country's development despite not really being good at anything.

We also discuss how marrying into families still means you're still an outsider and only included upon certain conditions, how posh people are excellent at pretending to not notice things and presume everyone else also has a high aptitude for denial, the Royal Family's long history of mistreating women,  and how the Royal's media machine is singlehandedly proving we do not have a free press and Noam Chomsky is entirely correct about how public consent is manufactured.

We again this week discuss TikTok's ReesaTeesa's mega viral story series 'Who TF Did I Marry?', this time with spoilers and a full discussion of modern dating's potential for deception. The episode includes how to spot red flags and not need to understand them (but use them as an immediate guide), questions to elicit candid answers on dates, accepting you will never be an exception to someone's history of poor behaviour, and how you don't really know someone until have seen them face adversity. We also cover Alain Badiou's theory of subjectivity being revealed through responses to events, the disappearance of third spaces, being the average of your five closest friends, 'time boundaries', and the pitfalls of meeting a romantic partner outside the context of their own lives i.e via dating apps or the internet. We also delve into serious mental health issues, specifically how people can make you accomplices in their fantasies, and that the more someone's delusional narrative falls apart the more disintegrated, disregulated, and unpleasant they tend to become.

We comment (without spoilers) on TikTik's viral 51-part series 'Who TF Did I Marry?' by ReesaTeesa, an American working-class woman from Atlanta. Discussion includes how marriage is increasingly an ambition of and gateway into the middle-class, sibling rivalry for twins, why your place in birth order matters, and the relationship between failed narcissism and  psychosis. Plus, how social media is the new frontier for marketing, but also a playground for con artists,  how to really find security as a woman, and that realising drinking water is good for you is fairly recent knowledge...

We put forward a central problem for feminists working with the Left, specifically, that leftwing men are not at all leftwing when it comes to women and women's issues. Suddenly, leftwing men, who dominate the Left both in numbers and ideologically, are no longer social constructionists, but total naturalists and genetic determinists, immediately when it comes to women. We give our experiences of leftwing men discussing much more seriously, and with far greater care, the rights of animals than women's rights. 

We also put forward our case for socialist policies that would transform society for the better for women, and point out the only leftwing men who sympathise with these also tend to have sympathies for radical feminist analysis. Leftwing men are typically not even social democrats regarding the issues of women. This episode also includes how you should not bring your whole self to work, womb envy, the greater alienation women live under, the lie of male provision and protection, and the need for the state to bypass men in providing salaries for housework as a bid to end the possibility of women's dependence on the family. 

We conclude that the suggestion from some feminists that feminists should work with the Left, is actually asking us to work with the equivalent of the far-right on women's issues. We cite a historical example to support that conclusion by discussing how the far-Left in Germany during the early 20th century did not support the right to vote for women, claiming women's suffrage should only be a concern after the revolution. Today, if the vote were removed for women, we speculate that most socialist men would overwhelmingly dismiss it as a bourgeois concern.

We delve into the sheer impossibility of feminists working with the political Left, overwhelmingly due to the door being slammed by the Left itself. By the Left we mean socialist groups and communist parties, not liberal or rightwing Labour parties i.e the radical leftwing who have a vision to liberate humanity (given that feminists seek to liberate women). It is difficult to get across just how hostile the Left is to any women wanting to organise as women, who believe women are oppressed on the basis of sex, or simply want to highlight and tackle male violence. 

We provide our reasoning as to why the Left is so hostile to feminists, why some feminists on the Left still think it's possible (typically because they're married to leftwing men they wish to view as nice / kind), and give some examples of women being expelled, ostracised, and attacked, for simply pointing out male sexual violence or wanting to organise politically as women. We also discuss how today's Left is a collection of defunct sects either having been taken over by, or looking to be taken over by, anti-social men who want their own personal fiefdom, which goes someway to explaining why the Left is so beset by sexual scandal. 

At the end we issue a challenge: a leftwing gender critical feminist should run the experiment of joining a socialist or socialist-leaning group, announce her politics around Trans, bring up male violence, and offer her analysis against prostitution and surrogacy, then report back as to how long she lasted before being ousted.

We mount a defence of Taylor Swift and the barrage of inane criticism she receives online. We discuss 'girl culture', how fandoms are replacing sub-cultures, and how people and things idolised by women are so often denigrated. Now that Swift's lawyers have intervened to stop the sexualised 'deep fake' images of her appearing on Twitter, we hope that could force new legal restrictions on sexual 'deep fake' images of women generally. We also discuss the backlash from some Conservatives against Swift, how she could likely run for President and win, and together imagine that once installed as our Dear Leader, we promise to listen to and learn more about her music in order to leave the Swiftian re-education camp complex.

We discuss the age of consent laws in the UK (currently 16) and present the case for the age of consent being raised to 18, with a two-year close in age exemption (so that teenagers could date other teenagers of a similar age i.e their peers). We also try to 'steelman' the arguments against. Could there be feminist arguments against raising the age of consent? Would it have to be the same for same-sex relations? And what are the impacts around other 'age of majority' legal questions, such as smoking, joining the army, etc. We also discuss why it's predominantly the lumpen underclass and upper class wealthiest elites who seem to openly believe child sexual abuse is normal and harmless. 

This episode discusses polyamory and makes the claim it is ultimately not a real relationship formation by any measure, representing instead a lack of boundaries and disorganised attachment styles, subsequently making it a performance attractive to sexual losers i.e those considered to be 'low-value' within the sexual marketplace. We begin with the early radical feminist critique of monogamy and marriage, before turning to the present day to consider how it is chiefly the absence of sexual ethics on the Left that created a vacuum to be filled by the dominant ideology i.e neoliberalism. This can be seen in how those claiming to by polyamorous treat their sexual partners as consumer products, exchangeable commodities, or purely use-value objects. 

Existing as a kind of accelerationist infantile utopianism, there's a pretence in the performance of polyamory that the bedroom can somehow by free of ideological chains (it cannot) and that the psychosocial world we are constituted by somehow evaporates in the hallway of our homes. Infantile leftists believe polyamorous arrangements to be 'revolutionary' simply because it differs from trad marriage and the nuclear family (the unit that emerged through the development of capitalism). Polyamory, if it were real, would, like polygamy, be the relationship scenario that is the least equal, least likely to engender trust among participants, and be far less mutual than traditional monogamous marriage. We share some anecdotes of polyamory from our own leftwing circles that demonstrate the attempt to do polyamorous arrangements tends to end quickly and badly, often in violence or humiliation (typically of a woman).

We conclude that pretending to be polyamorous is about signalling to anyone and everyone that you are sexually available and desperate for sexual validation, whilst also not being up to the adult task of commitment and all of the responsibility and limitations on freedom that entails. That reality, of not being emotionally mature enough to find and maintain a committed relationship is offered an illustrious cover story by claiming to be doing polyamory, as if existing on a more sophisticated or higher sexual plane, when in actuality it means not being able to manage commitment, or find it from someone worth investing in.