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Blood and Terf is a podcast about the links between the "deology of TERFs- trans exclusionary radical feminists- and fascism, cults, pseudoscience, and other reactionary political phenomena, hosted by E and M.
Episodes
Sunday Feb 21, 2021
Sunday Feb 21, 2021
After a lengthy interlude, the podcast returns with a theory episode: We've invited a guest, in form of mysterious insurrectionary, "A" who will be helping us dig through Umberto Eco's classic work " Ur-Fascism", as we compare it to a range of antifascist critiques and viewpoints. A is very kindly using her academic knowledge to help us construct a more coherent theory schema so that we can properly lay everything out to avoid being too inscrutable for listeners.
General content warnings for discussions of transphobia and fascism. One passage written in the 60s, quoted in this episode, uses a word now considered a racial pejorative. Discussions about the "Cult of the Child" in the latter part of the episode include brief mentions of the concept of Child Soldiers and child abuse in general
Works cited in this episode include:
"The Last Phase in the Transformation of Capitalism" by Michal Kalecki
"Fascism- What it is and how to fight it" by Leon Trotsky
"Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution" and "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of brainwashing in China" by Robert J Lifton
"Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats" and Against History Against Leviathan, by Fredy Perlman
"What can we Do with Antifascism" by Alfredo Bonanno
Further reading on a similar vein includes:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-the-continuing-appeal-of-nationalism
A also runs a youtube channel called "Soft Insurrection"
Music for this episode was by Molly Noise
Wednesday Dec 30, 2020
Wednesday Dec 30, 2020
To close out 2020, the podcast is taking a look at the mysterious ways in which plague and disease related reactionary anxieties have swept across the far right spectrum, catching transphobes in their wake. Britain has a long history of transphobia, but the political role of antivaccination is also a longstanding political tradition in British culture. Combine this with 2020 being Plague Year, and with a whole host of bizarre reactionary patterns of thought penetrating the general societal consciousness, and you get the perfect melting pot of hatred and pseudoscience.
Content warnings for this episode include: mentions of antisemitism, anti-asian racism, general transphobic bullshit, serophobia. discussions about eugenicist policies and generally ablist politics, as well as lengthy discussions of the various ways our governments have contrived to kill people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources and shownotes to be expanded later.
Articles directly mentioned:
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements
Further background source on Medieval antisemitic narratives relating to leprosy:
an article explaining the "Plandemic" hoax:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21254184/how-plandemic-went-viral-facebook-youtube
Music for this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
Thursday Nov 12, 2020
Thursday Nov 12, 2020
In this 2 part episode we have a closer look at how the transphobic political wave has used access to and influence over major political and cultural institutions. Obviously, all political movements attempt to influence society, but this episode will be an analysis of who they target and how they succeed. Basically, we are going to do a rather broad assessment and forecast of “terf strategy”- if indeed there is such a thing.
Here we are with part 2! We conclude our study of general terf institutional methods with a look at the world of Academia, and from there expand into a general speculation on how transphobic politics operates on a strategic level.
This episode also features garbled ravings from M, about 19th century war theorist Carl Von Clausewitz, a request from E to the listener, an extremely dubious interpretation of how random number generators work and some new intro/outro music from a comrade called Alaska.
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
Tuesday Nov 10, 2020
In this 2 part episode we have a closer look at how the transphobic political wave has used access to and influence over major political and cultural institutions. Obviously, all political movements attempt to influence society, but this episode will be an analysis of who they target and how they succeed. Basically, we are going to do a rather broad assessment and forecast of “terf strategy”- if indeed there is such a thing.
In this first half we look at the UK media and columnist scene in broad terms, and also examin how this interacts with the government and civil society activism. all this is in preperation for part 2, in which we continue our general analysis with a look at academia, and then use this information to make a model of how the TERF strategic hivemind works.
While we would generally warn listeners that most of our episodes contain discussion of material that may be upsetting- and this episode is not necessarily an exception- the subject matter in this episode will be a bit more abstract than previously. More broad strokes and less gory details.
the article quoted at the end:
https://lithub.com/how-fringe-christian-nationalists-made-abortion-a-central-political-issue/
Sunday Oct 18, 2020
Sunday Oct 18, 2020
Early 21st century intellectual powerhouse, Spigot once asked " what about fat queer dicks?". Continuing from our last episode, we ask the same question. If the Fascist political penis can have all of these supposedly positive martial attributes, what happens when something negative appears on the horizon? Fascism is nothing if not contradictory: the penis is also terrible and fearsome and can be an organ of corruption. But how do fascists rationalise this? We attempt to answer that exact question.
Content warnings: antisemitism, racism, specific and detailed discussion of the Penis as an organ, and generalised discussion of serious sexual assault, STIs, Homophobia, Serophobia as well as specific mentions of child sexual assault and surgery/invasive medical procedures. As ever, heinous amounts of transmisogyny.
Selected sources and further reading:
Male Fantasies Vol 2 (K. Theweleit) : https://monoskop.org/images/4/4d/Theweleit_Klaus_Male_Fantasies_Vol_2_Male_Bodies_Psychoanalyzing_the_White_Terror.pdf
Eliza Gauger on the subject of Ergi and Seidr:
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/814705700915941376
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/825404890918768642?s=20
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/470510121349435392
https://twitter.com/3liza/status/630923737777373184
More on Seidr specifically: https://norse-mythology.org/concepts/seidr/
The Graun article we mentioned towards the end of the episode:
Carol Cohn on the language of the defence industry intelligentsia: https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/mitchell-institute/FileStore/Filetoupload,756488,en.pdf
Link to an accessible PDF of the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/cultural-encyclopedia-of-the-penis-e46430630.html
Music for this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose Music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
Thursday Oct 15, 2020
Thursday Oct 15, 2020
This episode is the first in a special series examining the role of masculinity in fascism, in order to make a more detailed study of how this crucial relationship of concepts is tied into the evolution of modern transphobic politics.
To kick off this series-within-a-series we have the first of a 2 part special all about that most political of organs: the Penis.
Content warnings for this episode include: Specific and detailed discussion of the Penis as an organ, and generalised discussion of serious sexual assault, Homophobia, and transphobia
Some helpful links relating to phallic Architecture, and the role of the Fasces in modern fascist symbology:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/06/upward-thrusting-buildings-ejaculating-cities-sexist-leslie-kern-phallic-feminist-city-toxic-masculinity
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3227-feminist-city
https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/pvncp/nazi-architecture-as-affective-weapon.html
http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Phallic_architecture
Link to an accessible PDF of the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/cultural-encyclopedia-of-the-penis-e46430630.html
Klaus Theweleit's 2 part book " Male Fantasies" is an ongoing and semi continuous pooint of reference for us, and this epsiode is far from being an exception to that rule. We would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding Fascism and its sexual politics.
Musicfor this episode was kindly provided by Molly Noise who can be found at https://twitter.com/ImPureNoise and whose other profiles are at http://linktr.ee/MollyNoise and whose Music specifically can be found at https://mollynoise.bandcamp.com/
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Monday Sep 21, 2020
After years of being largely ignored outside of certain specialist reporters, the vast conspiracy theory cult known as Qanon has finally begun to come to the attention of mainstream news. In the UK this has been reflected in the sudden appearance of Qanon linked protests, rallying around the "Save Our Children" banner. Following this, and a notable uptick in people drawing links between TERFs and Qanon, we here at Blood & TERF podcast have been hard at work for a few weeks doing background research on our primer episode on how the TERF/GC/Transphobe movement exhibits multiple alarming similarities to cults in general, and modern online movemetns like Qanon in particular.
Contents warnings for this episode include: discuaaion of abusive social environments in the context of cult organisations and abusive relationships, as well as sexual assault and coercion. we also discuss various aspects of the beliefs of the Qanon movement, including a description of their core belief system whcih is heavily pre-occupied with child sexual exploitation
The BITE model developed by Steven Hassan which is referenced in the episode is available here, as is further information about how Hig Demand Groups operate: https://www.openmindsfoundation.org/the-bite-model-of-influence/
Further reading on cults and their internal models of organisation may be found in the works of Robert J Lifton, including "Though Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "brainwashing" in China" as well as his later and more up to date work "Destroying the World To Save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism"
The podcast QanonAnonymous is dedicated to covering the Qanon movement in a lighthearted and somewhat doomer-ish manner, and is available here: https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous
TrashFuture Podcast has also occasionally delved into the wild and wonderful world of how TERFs operate in the british political scene, and has released episodes relating to Qanon as well. They can be found here: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/
Music was provided by Marina Crustacean, who can be found at https://twitter.com/MusicCrustacean and https://soundcloud.com/marinacrustacean
If you wish to contribute music to the podcast we can be contacted at the following email adress: Bloodandterf@gmail.com
Our Dreamwidth, which will be used for collating more extensive shownotes, can be found here:
Sunday Sep 06, 2020
Sunday Sep 06, 2020
Over the past couple of years the political situation in Poland has been deteriorating for many minority groups, particularly for LGBT people, and now Trans people are in the spotlight. A series of high profile protest actions by Trans activists, frequently violently repressed by the state and a large and violent right wing presence on the streets have brought the struggle for civil rights to prominence over the last year.
In this episode your hosts interview Irys, a Polish trans person, about the context for these events, as well as the general situation in Poland, and as ever, find a way to link it back to Umberto Eco...
Content Warnings for this epsiode: Discussion of violence and abuse directed at trans people from the police, medical community & the far right. Discussion of specific assaults. Discussion of medical procedures. Discussion of abusive environments in homes, schools, and medicine.
Organisations mentioned in this episode include:
Trans Fuzja Trans Fuzja's website and donation page can be found here: http://transfuzja.org/en/artykuly/donate.htm
Lambda Warzawa: http://lambdawarszawa.org/
Stop Bzdurom - twitter: https://twitter.com/stopbzdurom website/crowdfunder: firefund.net/stopbzdurom
Kampania Przeciw Homofobii/ Campaign Against Homophobia: https://kph.org.pl/
Music was provided by Marina Crustacean, who can be found at https://twitter.com/MusicCrustacean and https://soundcloud.com/marinacrustacean
If you wish to contribute music to the podcast we can be contacted at the following email adress: Bloodandterf@gmail.com
Our Dreamwidth, which will be used for collating more extensive shownotes, can be found here:
Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
Tuesday Aug 18, 2020
Leftism in Britain has a TERF problem.
Thankfully, your hosts, E and M, are here to help, by subjecting terf ideology to a Stalinist show trial. Obviously the TERF movement is guilty, but how? And why? In this episode we examine how the origins of the TERFism in the British radical left allowed it to gain a stranglehold on significant parts of the Labour Party, some of the more significant parts of the British Marxist scene, and how this overlaps with the roiling centrist rage at the rise of Corbynism.
For these crimes, obviously, the TERFs shall be sent to the Gender Ideology Gulag, but first, we have to explain in excruciating detail how and why they have betrayed communism.
A content warning: we discuss the following TERF related things- bullying, homophobia, transphobia, stochastic violence, sexual assault and general interpersonal abuse.
Lastly: If you are a trans music artist and would like to provide music for our as yet absent intro and outro, please contact us at bloodandterf@gmail.com.
Tuesday Jul 28, 2020
Tuesday Jul 28, 2020
In this episode, E rants about the class struggle & the wretchedness of liberal feminism, M tries his hardest to get sued by comparing a beloved childrens author to, simultaneously, a member of ISIS, Stormfront & the Qanon cult, & we decipher how on earth JK Rowling managed to get her beliefs so screwed up that all of that sentence actually makes sense!
CN: Transphobia, discussion of antisemitism, discussions of extreme right wing ideology & anti-trans rhetoric