In this episode, Susan Evans, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and Marcus Evans, a psychoanalyst, discuss their latest book, Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Work ing with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (Phoenix, 2021) wherein they analyse some of the psychoanalytic ideas regarding gender dysphoria and the political and social climate surrounding transgender identity today. Covering some of the issues relevant to gender dysphoria, Evans and Evans cover the mental health co-morbidities often conterminous to adolescent and childhood gender dysphoria as well as adjacent familial and social issues that inform the exploration of gender identity. Detailing some of the frameworks for delivering therapy—to include its complexities—Evans and Evans note that oftentimes adolescent gender dysphoria is fraught with anxiety related to the subject’s inability to tolerate ambiguity and confusion and they detail how best to work with adolescents and helping them accept who they are.

Lisa Marchiano, a writer and Jungian analyst discusses her book Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself (Sounds True, 2021). In this episode, Marchiano speaks with Julian Vigo about employing fairytales in Motherhood to recount Jungian psychoanalysis through stories of descent and emergence from the well, the central metaphor of her book. Outlining Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong process of discovery and experience of meaning in life, Marchiano expands individuation to include the openness of the subject to learning about the self. Discussing motherhood in the context of family and culture, Marchiano distinguishes between individuation and the current cultural drive towards individuality, noting how the current seeking out the “authentic self” is anything but authentic. Underscoring the importance of “sinking down into our embodied selves” in the context of the narrative of motherhood where sacrificing one’s youth is part of the experience of caring for a child, Marchiano notes that “feeling more ordinary” sits in diametric opposition to the contemporary “discovery of the self” which often revolves around a victimhood narrative.

Jo Phoenix, Professor at The Open University, discusses being de-platformed from a 2019 talk at the University of Essex after being accused of “hate speech” and “transphobia.” Addressing the points made in the the Reindorf report released earlier this week which details deeper institutional problems where the ideological capture by Stonewall within university policy, Phoenix and Julian Vigo explore how the University’s Supporting Trans and Non Binary Staff policy was based upon an “incorrect summary of the law” which was not reviewed by the university resulting in the curtailment of Phoenix’s and Rosa Freedman’s academic freedom. Considering how 121 universities and pubic and private organisations are members of Stonewall’s highly criticised “Diversity Champions”—to include the government and the Ministry for Justice—Phoenix analyses the most damning part of Akua Reindorf’s report: “In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is. To that extent the policy is misleading.”

Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief  and founder of The Grayzone and author of The Management of Savagery (Verso, 2019), discusses the shift in coverage of the Middle East within mainstream media over the past two decades and the need for journalism to pay attention to the voices of the people. Drawing from his work in the West Bank and Gaza, Blumenthal scrutinises the disproportionate attacks by Israel on Gaza which in turn hits back demonstrating the “futility of Israel’s military strategy.” Analysing how Israel is engineering an “artificial Jewish majority” demographically manipulating the population in order for Israel to declare itself a “Jewish state,” Blumenthal notes how Gaza is a “human warehouse for a population that the Zionist ideology has mandated as surplus humans.” Blumenthal carefully runs through the history of the region that physically and ontologically has ensured the separation of Palestinians within Gaza likening this to a mass imprisonment that is “ethno-supremacist” at its root. Critiquing American unilateralism and its allegiance to a “rules-based order” designed to undermine the United Nations and circumvent international law, Blumenthal denounces these “rules” as mafia rule of law which wish to exist in a “state of legal exception outside of international law.”

Cultural and medical anthropologist Alyshia Gálvez discusses her groundbreaking book on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico, (UC Press, 2018). Elaborating the ways Mexican are impacted by trade and economic policies and the wider public health and cultural implications from the the precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes in Mexico to the, Gálvez expands upon trade policies like NAFTA and USMCA that have chipped away at Mexican culinary traditions. Across the border, Gálvez considers the ways in which culinary culture is kept alive for expatriate Mexicans in the US by paqueteros, an informal brokering service of grassroots entrepreneurs who connect people on both sides of the border with goods that maintain culinary traditions that otherwise would have long been forgotten for emigrant communities.

Jay Lalezari, MD is a physician and the Director of Quest Clinical Research who recently penned “Hope for Critically Ill Covid-19 Patients Within Reach” wherein he describes the results of a randomised, double-blind study of a drug called leronlimab (Vyrologix or PRO 140) which demonstrates a 82% reduction in the rate of death at Day 14 for patients on a ventilator who received 2 weekly doses of leronlimab compared to a placebo. Stressing the urgency for the FDA to approve leronlimab under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), Lalezari examines the various obstacles to achieving this end—from the ways in which Small Pharma faces greater economic hurdles compared to Big Pharma to the effort by short-sellers to sink CytoDyn, the producer of leronlimab, to the politics that allow Big Pharma to overpower smaller pharmaceutical companies strategically and economically. To confirm the finding for the FDA, CytoDyn must perform another trial of leronlimab that will take months to complete meanwhile critically ill patients in the Philippines are receiving leronlimab as part of the therapeutic treatment for critically ill COVID-19 patients and in Brazil some patients are well on the road to receiving this life-saving drug in Phase 3 trials soon to be conducted in up to 45 clinical sites.

Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC (1989-1995), elaborates the mandate of the HRC during his tenure and the overwhelming struggle in the face of the AIDS crisis. Detailing the struggles facing gay men in the 1990s, McFeeley discusses the HRC’s mission to secure healthcare for those living with HIV and AIDS seeing through the the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act (1990) which allotted federal funding to cities suffering the fallout from AIDS. Addressing the changing mission of the HRC during the Clinton presidency, McFeeley highlights the organisation’s work to secure HIV/AIDS funding during the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) period noting the rifts these competing narratives posed diving many within the LGB community. Noting the exclusion of women’s voices within the HRC and underscoring the role of lesbians fighting alongside gay men during the entirety of the AIDS crisis, McFeeley considers some of the recent threats posed to women’s rights as a result of the promotion of gender identity current within the LGB community where he notes the difficulty of the subject “because it’s a class of rights and it feels like for one to win the other has to lose.”

In questo nostro primo episodio in lingua italiana, Marina Terragni, giornalista, scrittrice, docente universitaria elabora la situazione in Italia oggi affrontata da donne e ragazze alla proposta del governo del disegno di legge (Ddl) Zan e come questa proposta di legislazione, se fosse convertita in legge, sostituirebbe i diritti delle donne e delle ragazze nei settori dell'assistenza sanitaria, dello sport, della sicurezza personale, delle carceri, dell'aula scolastica e molto altro ancora. Terragni spiega qual è la posta in gioco con il Ddl Zan e perché tutti gli italiani di tutte le convinzioni politiche devono spingere i loro funzionari eletti a votare contro i cambiamenti proposti che confondono, quasi intenzionalmente, i diritti degli uomini e delle donne omosessuali con una lobby molto ben finanziata che cerca di ribaltare i diritti delle donne.

Tim Newbold, a senior research fellow in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, talks with Julian Vigo about how biodiversity is changing around the world due to climate change and what this means for human societies. Newbold shares his and his team’s latest research to include “A biodiversity target based on species extinctions” addressing the declining populations of insects, birds, and reptiles due to the removal of natural habitats and other imprints that humans leave on the planet. Discussing recent research demonstrating that between one-fourth and one-fifth of species face extinction within the coming decades, Newbold covers his team’s work on biodiversity models addressing the widespread declines among bumble bee populations. Addressing the functions of natural ecosystems dependant upon biodiversity such as seed dispersal, nutrient cycling and pollination, Newbold notes that with the loss of species from ecosystems these important functions are also lost.

Donna M. Hughes, Ph.D., a professor holding the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island who researches the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, discusses the fallout to her article on 4W, “Fantasy Worlds on the Political Right and Left: QAnon and Trans-Sex Beliefs.” As a result of having published her piece, Hughes was mobbed through defamatory comments and other misrepresentations of her person made by both her colleagues and activists, some of whom have pressured her to resign from the university. Framing these attacks as emanating from a totalitarian body of neoliberal identitarians, Hughes outlines how the underlying ideology to a movement that takes aim primarily at women detailing the attacks over her research on sexual violence by colleagues who frame trafficking as “sex work.”