Bad Gays

Warning: this episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised. 

This week, we tackle the French author André Gide, a self-styled "immoralist" who oscillated between an austere Protestantism and a sensualism he associated with the so-called "Orient," and who elevated pederasty above sodomy in a way that helps us understand the often-disfiguring influence of upper-class male sexual desires on the construction of the 20th century gay male identity.

Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!

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SOURCES:

Kadji Amin, Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History, electronic resource, Theory Q (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)

Andre Gide, If It Die . . .: An Autobiography, New Ed edition (New York: Vintage, 2001)

Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters (Vintage, 2012)

Andre Gide, The Immoralist, trans. Richard Howard, Reissue edition (Vintage, 2014)

Mary McAuliffe, Paris on the Brink: The 1930s Paris of Jean Renoir, Salvador Dalí, Simone de Beauvoir, André Gide, Sylvia Beach, Léon Blum, and Their Friends, Illustrated edition (Lanham Boulder New York London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020)

George D. Painter, Andre Gide: A Critical Biography (London: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd)

Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Reprint edition (New York: Vintage, 1994).

Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present (Harvard University Press, 1999)

Edmund White, "On the chance that a shepherd boy...," London Review of Books, December 10, 1998, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n24/edmund-white/on-the-chance-that-a-shepherd-boy.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Today we welcome special guest (and Associate Professor in History at the University of Cambridge) Arthur Asseraf to talk about Mustapha Ben Ismaïl, a terrifyingly ambitious twink who rose from being an illiterate street beggar to Prime Minister on the strength of the king's love for him –– and whose disastrous policies helped bring an end to Tunisia's independence. 

Arthur's Twitter.

Arthur's faculty page.

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SOURCES:

Argentina, 1942: a scandal breaks. Tabloids scream about newly discovered photographs –– taken by the amateur photographer Jorge Horacio Ballvé Piñero –– at homosexual orgies in Ballvé's apartment, photos allegedly depicting young cadets from the national military university in compromising positions. 29 cadets are expelled, discharged, and/or punished, Ballvé thrown in jail, and the government collapsed, toppled by a right-wing coup promising moral cleanup. 

Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment: today’s subject caused such a scandal in her life that even its fictionalized depiction in a novel was banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Mozart of bisexual drama, sword-fighting crossdressing opera singer Julie D'Aubigny burned through a dizzying series of lives, loves, husbands, mistresses, swordfights, operatic performances, lovers, and successes at the Paris Opera before dying in a convent in her early 30s. 

Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!

SOURCES

“Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes: Julie D’Aubigny.” In The Dublin University Magazine, 408–10. William Curry, Jun., and Company, 1854.

Blackmer, Corrine, and Patricia Juliana Smith, eds. En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera. 0 edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

Carlton, Genevieve. “Meet The Sword-Fighting, Bisexual Opera Singer Who Broke All The Rules In 17th-Century France.” All That’s Interesting, March 3, 2022. https://allthatsinteresting.com/julie-daubigny.

Cuttle, Jade. “The Story of Julie d’Aubigny: The French Opera-Singing Sword Fighter.” Culture Trip, August 8, 2018. https://theculturetrip.com/france/articles/the-story-of-julie-daubigny-the-french-opera-singing-sword-fighter/.

Gautier, Theophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Translated by Patricia Duncker. Revised edition. Cambridge, London: Penguin Classics, 2005.

Giovetti, Olivia. “Women In Love.” VAN Magazine, April 9, 2020. https://van-magazine.com/mag/women-in-love/.

Harris, Joseph. Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in 17th-Century France. Tübingen: Narr Dr. Gunter, 2011.

Hoddinott, Fiona Zublin, Meradith. “The Badass Rogue Who Cross-Dressed and Dueled Her Way to Infamy.” OZY(blog), January 27, 2020. http://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-badass-rogue-who-cross-dressed-and-dueled-her-way-to-infamy/76908.

Interlude. “The Daring Criminal Swordswoman Who Became an Opera Star!” Interlude (blog), October 28, 2016. https://interlude.hk/lesbian-diva-swordswoman-julie-daubigny-aka-mademoiselle-maupin/.

Kelly Gardiner. “The Real Life of Julie d’Aubigny,” May 11, 2014. https://kellygardiner.com/fiction/books/goddess/the-real-life-of-julie-daubigny/.

Koestenbaum, Wayne. Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality And The Mystery Of Desire. Reprint edition. London: Da Capo Press, 2001.

“Maupin, d’Aubigny (c. 1670–1707) | Encyclopedia.Com.” Accessed January 9, 2023. https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/maupin-daubigny-c-1670-1707.

Tucker, Holly. City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris. Reprint edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. Updated edition. New York: Verso, 2021.

Westby, Alan. “Julie d’Aubigny: La Maupin and Early French Opera.” The Los Angeles Public Library, June 28, 2017. https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/julie-daubigny-la-maupin-and-early-french-opera.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

We're starting off Season Six with George Santos, who rocketed the pathological homosexual narcissism we've spent much of our show discussing to the halls of Congress. In gay bar, there is at least one delusional queen who can't stop lying about his life. If you give him firearms and crystal meth, he turns into Andrew Cunanan. If you elect him to Congress, he turns into George Santos, who we argue is as likely as anyone else to become the first gay President of the United States.

Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!

SOURCES:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/27/pete-buttigieg-police-shooting-south-bend-indiana

https://gothamist.com/news/listen-george-santos-eviction-tapes-show-him-begging-to-feed-pet-fish-mulling-public-assistance

https://forward.com/fast-forward/529798/george-santos-jewish-american-republican-congress/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/george-santos-9-11-attacks-mother-lies-b2275927.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/george-devolder-santos-maga-house-candidate-in-new-york-haunted-by-gig-at-alleged-ponzi-scheme

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/nyregion/george-santos-republican-resume.html

https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/the-daily-santos-vol-7

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23520848/george-santos-fake-resume

https://patch.com/new-york/oysterbay/disabled-veteran-george-santos-took-3k-dying-dogs-gofundme

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/nyregion/george-santos-yacht.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/the-plan-for-george-santos-magas-newest-it-girl.htm 

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/george-santos-files-paperwork-to-run-in-2024.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Happy Christmas! It's Bad Gays Live! Relive our reading of the Jack Saul chapter – covering the life and times of the Victorian sex worker and pornographer – from our book BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY at Foyles in London, with the inimitable Shon Faye reading out the saucy bits (maybe use headphones if you're spending today with Grandma, unless you and Grandma like joking about delicious frigging up the rear), followed by a conversation with her and the audience about the project. 

Bad Gays: Season Six - Coming January 2023!

Thanks for listening!

SOURCES:

Chandler, Glenn. The Sins of Jack Saul. Surbiton, UK: Grosvenor House Publishing, 2016.

Hyde, H Montgomery. The Cleveland Street Scandal. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976.

McKenna, Neil. Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England. London: Faber, 2014. 

Saul, Jack. The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. London: William Lazenby, 1881.

Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.

It's the Magnus Hirschfeld episode. We invited Laurie Marhoefer – Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington, and one of our most-cited historians ever – to discuss their new book on Hirschfeld, called Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love. On the episode, we touch on Hirschfeld's life story as a pioneering doctor who helped invent modern homosexual identities and worked on some forms of trans-affirming health care –– while also discussing the ways he integrated racism into the homosexual identities he was creating, collaborated with eugenicists, and was often willing to accept more rights for some at the expense of others. 

Our intro and outro music are, respectively, a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer and Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien

Our UK tour has been fun -- and the US is next! Ben (sadly Huwless) will be stopping in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, New York City, and Boston in the back half of June. All the events are available for RSVP and booking –– many with great discounts on copies of the book and swag included! –– so visit badgayspod.com/book to get your spot before they're gone, as most of our UK events have sold out!

Happy Pride! We invited Ruby Hann, who completed her MA in History in 2020 and her MSc in History in 2021, both at the University of Edinburgh, to talk about Eugen Sandow, the bodybuilder who spread the cult of muscle around the world. Her research is focused on masculinity, sexuality, and the body in early twentieth century Britain. Ruby is not currently in academia, but she still occasionally writes, lectures, and attends conferences. You can follow her Twitter @RubyVolunteers to find her work. 

Our book is available at badgayspod.com/book along with tour dates in the US and the UK!

SOURCES:

Budd, M. A. The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

Chapman, David. Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Dyer, Richard. White: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2017.

Waller, David. The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman. Brighton: Victorian Secrets Limited, 2011.

Waugh, Thomas. Hard to Imagine: gay male eroticism in photography and film from their beginnings to Stonewall. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Brauer, Fae. ‘Virilizing and Valorizing Homoeroticism: Eugen Sandow’s Queering of Body Cultures Before and After the Wilde Trials’, Visual Culture in Britain 18:1 (2017), 35–67.

Conrad, Sebastian. ‘Globalizing the Beautiful Body: Eugen Sandow, Bodybuilding, and the Ideal of Muscular Manliness at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Journal of World History 32:1 (2021), 95–125.

Elledge, Jim. ‘Eugen Sandow’s gift to gay men’, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 18:4 (2011).

Mullins, Greg. ‘‘Nudes, Prudes, and Pigmies: The Desirability of Disavowal in "Physical Culture"’, Discourse 15:1 (1992), 27–48.

Snow, K. Mitchell. ‘Does this fig leaf make me look gay? Strongmen, statue posing and physique photography’, Early Popular Visual Culture 17:2 (2019), 135–155.

Watt, Carey A. ‘Cultural Exchange, Appropriation and Physical Culture: Strongman Eugen Sandow in Colonial India, 1904–1905’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 33:16 (2016), 1921–1942.

Our book, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History is now available for pre-order from Verso –– and we're making many, many stops across every corner of Great Britain (Northern Ireland, we're sorry and we'll be there soon) to promote it, including three stops in London and stops in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, and Cardiff. All the events are available for RSVP and booking –– many with great discounts on copies of the book and swag included! –– so visit badgayspod.com/book to get your spot before they're gone.

For white, suburban, heterosexual middle America, Jeffrey Dahmer, like AIDS, was the natural, even the righteous, consequence of homosexual promiscuity. He remains one of the exemplary constructions of the supervillain serial killer, the perfect subject of a true crime story. Today’s episode is about Jeffrey Dahmer as man and metaphor: about the phenomenon of the serial killer-monster, about the ways in which homophobia, racism, and the various true crime myths Dahmer helped reify ironically impeded his arrest and enabled his crimes, and about the twisted, slap-happy identification with Dahmer pursued by some gay men.

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SOURCES:

ABC News. “Jeffrey Dahmer Hero Charged With Homicide.” ABC News. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://abcnews.go.com/US/jeffrey-dahmer-hero-tracy-edwards-charged-homicide/story?id=14853608.

Barron, James. “Milwaukee Police Once Queried Suspect.” The New York Times, July 27, 1991, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/27/us/milwaukee-police-once-queried-suspect.html.

AP NEWS. “Dahmer Case Raises Complaints of Racism With PM-Dahmer Confession, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/6452017abebdb9eaa87e90817bf59b7e.

AP NEWS. “Dahmer Tells Judge He Blames Nobody But Himself With PM-, AM-Dahmer Sentencing, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/49045923cf0d3c1a0ffc82eda398b935.

AP NEWS. “Dahmer Tells Judge He Blames Nobody But Himself With PM-, AM-Dahmer Sentencing, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/49045923cf0d3c1a0ffc82eda398b935.

Davis, Donald A. The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare. St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1991.

Gage, Gabriella. “True Crime’s Deceits: The Genrefication of Tragedy.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 21, 2021. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/true-crimes-deceits-the-genrefication-of-tragedy/.

Masters, Brian. The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993.

O’Brien, Brendan. “Homeless Man Who Escaped Cannibal Serial-Killer Jeffrey Dahmer Gets Prison Sentence.” National Post, January 24, 2012. https://nationalpost.com/news/homeless-man-who-escaped-canibal-serial-killer-jeffrey-dahmer-gets-prison-sentence.

Sarah McGonagall. “Did You Know? In 1991 Officer John Balcerzak Was Fired after Handing 14 Year-Old Konerak Sinthasomphone Back to the Man He Had Just Escaped from despite Two Bystanders Begging the Officer Not to. Later That Night, Konerak Was Tortured and Killed by That Same Man - Jeffrey Dahmer.” Tweet. @gothspiderbitch (blog), June 19, 2020. https://twitter.com/gothspiderbitch/status/1273785359869116421.

Toofab. “The Racist Reason White Cops Handed a Dying 14-Year-Old Back to Jeffrey Dahmer.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://toofab.com/2020/06/19/white-cops-handed-a-dying-14-year-old-back-to-jeffrey-dahmer/.

Tithecott, Richard, and James R. Kincaid. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

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It's a dog day afternoon: today's episode profiles the bank robber John Wojtowicz, who infamously (and as memorialized in Sidney Lumet's 1975 film DOG DAY AFTERNOON) held up a bank in 1972 to pay for gender-affirming surgery for Elizabeth Eden, his trans girlfriend. Or did he? We take a look, using the story to think through 1972 as a fault line for emerging attitudes about homosexuality and trans femininity, Wojtowicz' surprising involvement in early gay liberation activism in New York City, the DOG DAY AFTERNOON phenomenon and what it says about growing distinctions between gay men and trans women and how they were represented and compensated, and the ethical complications of Wojtowicz as a figure in history and in historical memory.

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Update:

Thanks to listener Ziz for pointing out that trans actress Elizabeth Coffey –– one of the legendary ensemble of Dreamlanders who starred in the films of extremely good gay John Waters –– was up for the role of the character in Dog Day Afternoon based on Eden and was turned down for looking ‘too feminine.’ This adds important context regarding the filmmakers’ transphobia and questions of representation and compensation in the film.

SOURCES

Check out trans historian Zagria’s three part series on Eden and Wojtowicz, with links to some fantastic digitized primary sources at the end:
Zagria,  "Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon,” (three-part series), Gender Variance Who's Who. 
 -  https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-i.html

- https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-ii.html

 - https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-iii.html

Check out Morgan M. Page’s show One From The Vaults, you might want to start here with her three-part series on Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries:

Morgan M Page, “OFTV 3: STAR House, STAR People,” accessed March 1, 2022, https://soundcloud.com/onefromthevaultspodcast/oftv-3-star-house-star-people-1.

Anthony Macias, “Gay Rights and The Reception of Dog Day Afternoon (1975),” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal 48, no. 1 (2018): 45–56.

Arthur Bell, “Littlejohn & the Mob: Saga of a Heist,” The Village Voice, Vol. XVII, No. 35, August 31, 1972, https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/03/11/the-bank-robbery-that-would-become-dog-day-afternoon/.

“The Boys In The Bank,” LIFE Magazine September 22, 1972, LIFE Magazine 

Garance Franke-Ruta, “The Prehistory of Gay Marriage: Watch a 1971 Protest at NYC’s Marriage License Bureau,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the-prehistory-of-gay-marriage-watch-a-1971-protest-at-nycs-marriage-license-bureau/274357/.

Lisa Photos, “The Dog and the Last Real Man,” Journal of Bisexuality 3, no. 2 (March 1, 2003): 43–68, https://doi.org/10.1300/J159v03n02_04.

Liz Eden Papers, Collection 6, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center Archive, New York City, New York (digitized) Morgan M. Page, “It Doesn’t Matter Who Threw the First Brick at Stonewall,” June 30, 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/trans-black-stonewall-rivera-storme/.

“The Man Who Robbed a Bank for Love,” BBC News, February 16, 2015, sec. Magazine, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31457718.

Regan Reid, “Talking To the Directors Who Made a Doc About the Real Guy Behind ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’” Vice (blog), August 18, 2014, https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn3pd5/talking-to-the-directors-who-made-a-doc-about-the-real-guy-behind-dog-day-afternoon-342.

Susan Stryker, Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution second ed., (New York: Seal Press, 2008).

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much in the news. Until last week, she was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, and was the first woman and the first LBGTQ person to hold the rank, Dame Cressida Dick. Today, part two of two: we discuss Dick's tenure at the Metropolitan Police, the extrajudicial murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, Dick's cynical deployment of her identity to deflect critique, the spy cops scandal, the botched investigation into gay serial killer Stephen Port, the Met's dismal record on race, and the protests that finally forced Dick out.

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SOURCES:

Ramzy Alwakeel, “I Covered Stephen Port’s Murders. I Know Cressida Dick’s Departure Isn’t Enough,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-resignation-met-police-stephen-ports-murders/

Anonymous, “Gangs Violence Matrix and Black Londoners,” Text, Mayor’s Question Time, December 10, 2018, https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2018/5242

Jason Bennetto, “We Are Still Racist, Police Chief Admits,” The Independent, April 21, 2003, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/we-are-still-racist-police-chief-admits-116145.html

Owen Bowcott and Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent, “Jean Charles de Menezes: Family Lose Fight for Police Officers to Be Prosecuted,” The Guardian, March 30, 2016, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/30/jean-charles-de-menezes-police-officers-shouldshould-not-be-prosecuted-echr

Graham Bowley, “Police Erred in Shooting in London, Report Finds,” The New York Times, August 18, 2005, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/world/europe/police-erred-in-shooting-in-london-report-finds.html

Caroline Davies, “Stephen Port Laptop Not Inspected until He Had Killed Three Times, Inquest Told,” The Guardian, October 13, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/13/stephen-port-laptop-not-inspected-until-he-had-killed-three-times-inquest-told

Vikram Dodd and Dan Sabbagh, “Daniel Morgan Murder: Inquiry Brands Met Police ‘Institutionally Corrupt,’” The Guardian, June 15, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/15/daniel-morgan-met-chief-censured-for-hampering-corruption-inquiry

Jamie Grierson and Jamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent, “Met Carried out 22,000 Searches on Young Black Men during Lockdown,” The Guardian, July 8, 2020, sec. Law, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/08/one-in-10-of-londons-young-black-males-stopped-by-police-in-may

Mark Hughes, “Seven Mistakes That Cost De Menezes His Life,” The Independent, December 13, 2008, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/seven-mistakes-that-cost-de-menezes-his-life-1064466.html

Marina Hyde, “Farewell, Cressida Dick, the Met Chief Only Interested in One Thing: Ignoring Bad Coppers,” The Guardian, February 11, 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, “Secrets and Lies: Untangling the UK ‘spy Cops’ Scandal,” The Guardian, October 28, 2020, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/secrets-and-lies-untangling-the-uk-spy-cops-scandal

Ben Quinn, “Macpherson Report: What Was It and What Impact Did It Have?,” The Guardian, February 22, 2019, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/22/macpherson-report-what-was-it-and-what-impact-did-it-have

Alex S. Vitale, “Cressida Dick Isn’t the Problem. The Police Are the Problem,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-metropolitan-police-alex-vitale/

“Trapped in the Gangs Matrix” (Amnesty International, May 2020), https://www.amnesty.org.uk/london-trident-gangs-matrix-metropolitan-police

“Review Identifies Eleven Opportunities for the Met to Improve on Stop and Search | Independent Office for Police Conduct” (Independent Office for Police Conduct, October 2020), https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/review-identifies-eleven-opportunities-met-improve-stop-and-search

“Stephen Port: How Met Failings Contributed to the Deaths of Three Men,” BBC News, December 10, 2021, sec. UK, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59576717.

We also encourage people listening to this episode to learn more about organizations combating police violence. Here are some organizations in the UK and around the world engaged in activist work related to this episode:

London Campaign against Police and State Violence http://lcapsv.net/

United Friends and Families Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/

Sisters Uncut https://www.sistersuncut.org/

Inquest  - a charity that focuses on getting truth and accountability for state related deaths https://www.inquest.org.uk/

https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/

@HackneyCopWatch @N15Copwatch @LambethCopwatch @CopwatchSthwrk @bizziewatch @MCRcopwatch @BristolCopwatch

@KidsOfColourHQ @npolicemonitor 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much in the news. Until last week, she was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, and was the first woman and the first LBGTQ person to hold the rank, Dame Cressida Dick. Today, part one of two: we begin telling Dick's life story and then delve into the history of the Met, its relationship with LGBTQ people, and the conflicting strands of LGBTQ politics that emphasize conflict vs collaboration with the police. Next week: more on Dick herself and her checkered career in the force.

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SOURCES:

Many of the sources we used to research this episode will be cited in next week's show notes. For this week:

Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006

Moya Lothian-Maclean, “Lords of the Manor,” Human Resources, accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/human-resources/id1565249472.

Asa Seresin, “Lesbian Fascism on TERF Island,” Asa Seresin (blog), February 11, 2021, https://asaseresin.com/2021/02/11/lesbian-fascism-on-terf-island/

“‎Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder,” accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/untold-the-daniel-morgan-murder/id1114802610.

We also encourage people listening to this episode to learn more about organizations combating police violence. Here are four organizations in the UK related to this episode - next week we will add more resources to the show notes with similar groups in the other areas where we have the highest listenership:

• London Campaign against Police and State Violence http://lcapsv.net/
• United Friends and Families Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/
• Sisters Uncut https://www.sistersuncut.org/
• Inquest  - a charity that focuses on getting truth and accountability for state related deaths https://www.inquest.org.uk/
  

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

For a time, one of the world's most famous rock stars – singer of stadium rock anthems that still signify foot-stomping machismo – existed as an avatar of the most exuberant, feared, liberation-era forms of homosexuality: going from a 1970s long hair in skin-tight leotards cut to the navel to a Castro clone with a handlebar moustache who wore fisting T-shirts in his music videos. If the legacy of Mercury and his music often seems to smooth his work, and that of his band, Queen, into a sort of middle-aged, KISS FM everyday normality, here we lean into the contradictions of the charismatic man and the nuances of queer life in the 1970s and 1980s.

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SOURCES

John Harris, “The Sins of St Freddie,” The Guardian, January 14, 2005, sec. Music, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jan/14/2

Jim Hutton and Tim Wapshott, Mercury and Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1995); Lesley-Ann Jones, Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury (London: Touchstone Press, 2012)

Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne, Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury (London: Weldon Owen, 2016)

“Remembering Queen’s Infamous 1981 Tour of South America,” Remezcla (blog), accessed February 8, 2022, https://remezcla.com/features/music/we-remember-queens-infamous-tour-of-latin-america/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

A very special opera queen episode profiling an opera queen gone wrong: the Italian opera and film director (of 1968's famous Romeo and Juliet) who fought fascists as a partisan in the hills over Florence, mingled with Visconti and Cocteau and Marais and Chanel, and directed Callas in many of her mid-career triumphs before beginning to harden his style from lush realism to a celebration of set decoration above all. Zeffirelli, born at a time when the last composers whose works still fill the grand opera repertory were dying, faced, like all practitioners of the operatic arts in the 20th century, a choice between making living theatre or dead, ten-ton museum pieces. He chose the museum-piece approach and in so doing did tremendous artistic damage.

CONTENT WARNING: THIS EPISODE DISCUSSES CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE AND RACIST LANGUAGE.

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See Callas in Tosca in 1964 here.

See Leontyne Price's costumes for Antony and Cleopatra here and  here.

See Zeffirelli's MET Opera Turandot set here.

See Waltraud Meier sing the Liebestod here.

SOURCES:

Duane Byrge, “Franco Zeffirelli, Oscar-Nominated Director for ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Dies at 96,” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), June 15, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/franco-zeffirelli-dead-romeo-juliet-920639/

Rachel Donadio, “Maestro Still Runs the Show, Grandly,” The New York Times, August 18, 2009, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/arts/music/19zeffirelli.html

Roger Ebert, “Romeo and Juliet Movie Review (1968) | Roger Ebert,” accessed January 31, 2022, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/romeo-and-juliet-1968

Johanna Fiedler, Molto Agitato: The Mayhem behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera (New York: Anchor Books, 2003)

 Jonathan Kandell, “Franco Zeffirelli, Italian Director With Taste for Excess, Dies at 96,” The New York Times, June 15, 2019, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/arts/music/franco-zeffirelli-dead.html

Rebecca Keegan, “The Dark Side of Franco Zeffirelli: Abuse Accusers Speak Out Upon the Famed Director’s Death,” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), June 18, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/franco-zeffirelli-abuse-accusers-speak-1219298/

Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (London: Da Capo Press, 2001)

Barbara McMahon, “Zeffirelli Tells All about Priest’s Sexual Assault,” The Guardian, November 21, 2006, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/21/books.film

 Peter Murphy, “Bruce Robinson Interview,” The New Review, accessed January 31, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20070707184620/http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/brucerobinson.html

John J. O’Connor, “TV Review; Zeffirelli’s Lavish ‘Turandot’ at the Met Opera,” The New York Times, January 27, 1988, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/27/arts/tv-review-zeffirelli-s-lavish-turandot-at-the-met-opera.html

Neda Ulaby, “Franco Zeffirelli, Creator Of Lavish Productions On Screen And Stage, Dies At 96,” NPR, June 15, 2019, sec. Obituaries, https://www.npr.org/2019/06/15/514094174/franco-zeffirelli-creator-of-lavish-productions-on-screen-and-stage-dies-at-96

Daniel J. Wakin, “For Opening Night at the Metropolitan, a New Sound: Booing,” The New York Times, September 22, 2009, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/music/23opera.html

Franco Zeffirelli, Zeffirelli: The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, 1st American ed (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986)

“Opera: ‘Falstaff’ Staged by Zeffirelli; New Production of the Met Is Magnificent; Bernstein Conducts —Colzani in Title Role,” The New York Times, March 7, 1964, sec. Archives, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/07/archives/opera-falstaff-staged-by-zeffirelli-new-production-of-the-met-is.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

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Are you ready to have your timbers shivered and your mainbrace spliced? Today’s subject is a mysterious one, a historical figure whose life and reputation are confused by propaganda, romance and mythology: the Irish pirate Anne Bonny. We'll use her story to discuss gender, race, and class in the Golden Age of Piracy.

Visit www.badgayspod.com for an episode archive, a link to pre-order our book, and more information about the show.

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SOURCES:

B. R. Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York: New York University Press, 1995)

David Cordingly, Women Sailors and Sailors’ Women: An Untold Maritime History (Random House, 2001)

Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2012)

Charles Johnson and David Cordingly, A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (Guilford, Conn: Lyons Press, 2010)

Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn, Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997)

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013)

Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011)

Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2013)

Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Verso Books, 2014)

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The "Eulenberg Affair," a series of media scandals about homosexual behavior at the highest levels of the German Imperial court, dragged on in the press for years as it made and broke careers in journalism, sexology, and the court while helping define both Imperial Germany’s relationship to masculinity and the emerging homosexual emancipation movements. Plus drag ballet, Wagnerists, extremely racist paintings, songs about roses, and moustaches with names.

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SOURCES:

SOURCES:

Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Vintage, 2014)

Miranda Carter, “What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire

Norman Domeier, “The Homosexual Scare and the Masculinization of German Politics before World War I,” Central European History 47, no. 4 (2014): 737–59

Norman Domeier, “Scandal & Science – The Power of Sexology in the Eulenburg Affair, 1906-1909,” n.d., http://www.hist.ceu.hu/conferences/graceh/abstracts/domeier_norman.pdf

Martin B. Duberman, Jews, Queers, Germans: A Novel/History, Seven Stories Press first edition (New York ; Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2017)

John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany, trans. Terence F. Cole, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Alex Ross, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (New York: Picador Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)

Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Theory and History of Literature, v. 22-23 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The 15-second clip of "Monatsrose" by Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg is sung by tenor Marcel Wittrisch with orchestra and organ conducted by Bruno Seidler-Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq2XXG8JRNU

This Nazi diplomat was assassinated by the Jewish activist Herschel Grynszpan –– and his death became a pretext for the murderous pogroms of Kristallnacht. Grynszpan's lawyer, the flamboyant anti-fascist Vincent de Moro-Giafferi, pioneered in this case what was perhaps the first –– and only morally good –- use of some version of a 'gay panic' or ‘gay blackmail’ defense. But was vom Rath actually gay?

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SOURCES:

Jonathan Kirsch, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris, First Edition (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2013)

Museum of Jewish Heritage, The Forgotten Life of Herschel Grynszpan, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLl_iK1xiiE;

Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990).

The eccentric inheritor of an enormous oil fortune and gender non-conforming-lesbian-trans man (we'll talk about it!) who dated Marlene Dietrich, raced speedboats, and turned their private Bahamian island into a domain over which they ruled over native people with an iron fist while allowing themselves and their guests every possible eccentricity and pleasure. All this accompanied by their lifelong companion: a foot-tall leather doll named Lord Tod Wadley.

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SOURCES

Michael Craton, A History of the Bahamas, 3rd ed (Waterloo, Ont., Canada: San Salvador Press, 1986).

Kate Summerscale, The Queen of Whale Cay (New York: Viking, 1998).

“Obeah: ‘Magical Art of Resistance,’” Early Caribbean Digital Archive (blog), September 2, 2018, https://ecda.northeastern.edu/home/about-exhibits/obeah-narratives-exhibit/

Tom Cheshire, “Boss of the Bahamas,” The Rake, accessed December 20, 2021, https://therake.com/stories/icons/joe-carstairs/.

Zora Neale Hurston, “‘Bahamain Obeah’ (1931),” Bahamian Fragments: Bits and Pieces from the History of the Bahamas, accessed December 20, 2021, http://www.jabezcorner.com/Grand_Bahama/Ten%20Ten/hurston1.htm

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Francis Bacon was an artist whose radical generosity teetered on the edge of self-obliteration –– and he sometimes pulled others over the edge with him. Many of our listeners will be familiar with Bacon’s work, or at least would recognise his idiosyncratic style if they saw it; sweeps of fleshy paint across black fields of colour, portraying contorted, mangled bodies, racks of hanging meat, and the iconic screaming mouth. But Bacon is almost as famous for the way he lived his life: his raucous partying, brutal barbed tongue, and love of boozing made him an emblem of London’s bohemian Soho scene. What linked his work and his life was an obsession with violence, something that he knew intimately. 

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Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993)

John Maybury et al., Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Biography, Drama, Romance (BBC Films, British Film Institute (BFI), Arts Council of England, 1998)

Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2019)

Richard Curson Smith et al., Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence, Documentary, Biography (IWC Media, 2017)

David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, Third edition (New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2016).

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The crimes, trial and execution of Utah citizen and devout Mormon Arthur Gary Bishop seemed to be the manifestation of many of both the public fears and moral panics of the United States in the 1980s. 'Stranger Danger', pornography, homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse became the focus of heated public debate and new religiously-inspired political organisations such as the Moral Majority. Huw is joined by David Eichert, a PhD candidate studying international law, sexual violence, gender and sexuality, to discuss Bishop, his relationship with his Mormon faith, and wider social attitudes towards his crimes.

Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and more.

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SOURCES:

Carlisle, Al, The Mind of the Devil: The Cases of Arthur Gary Bishop and Westley Allan Dodd, Carlisle Legacy Books, 2020
Petrey, Taylor G., Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism, University of North Carolina Press, 2020
Nathan, Debbie and Snedeker, Michael, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, iUniverse, 2001
Strub, Whitney, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right, Columbia University Press, 2013

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

On the (in)famous author of the George Miles cycle, The Sluts, and many other classic works of radically transgressive gay fiction. Joining Ben to tackle Cooper's work–as challenging to traditional notions of identity-driven and self-consciously pretty gay fiction as it is to the hetero mainstream–is Diarmuid Hester, a radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and an authority on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance. He is based at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is the author of the acclaimed new critical biography of Cooper, Wrong.

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SOURCES:

Cooper, Dennis. The Sluts. New York: Da Capo Press, 2004.

Cooper, Dennis. The George Miles Cycle. Five novels, information available here: http://www.dennis-cooper.net/georgemiles.htm.

Hester, Diarmuid. Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Press, 2020.

Dennis Cooper's blog.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Violette Morris, a powerhouse athlete with 14-inch biceps, discovered a love for trousers and fast driving while piloting ambulances for the Red Cross during the First World War. But her outrageous and mannish style – she dated Josephine Baker, smoked, and cut her breasts off to better fit behind the wheel of a race car – outraged the respectable upper-middle-class world of women's athletics. And when she was cast out of respectable society, she became a Nazi spy and a sadistic torturer known as the "hyena of the Gestapo."

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Camilla Christine Hall was born on March 24th, 1945, in St Peter Minnesota. Her father was a Lutheran pastor, and her childhood was suburban and unremarkable. Like many of her generation, she would become involved in the anti-war movement and the New Left; unlike many of her generation, she would also become involved in Gay Liberation, and a  strange cult-like organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army, which became infamous for bank robberies, murders –– and the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst.

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SOURCES:

Hearings, Reports and Prints of the United States House   Committee on Internal Security.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Gertrude Stein is remembered as a novelist, playwright, poet, and, art collector –– and the hostess of a Paris salon that gathered the cream of interwar modernism, including Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Matisse. A semi-open lesbian, her books include Q.E.D., one of the earliest English-language lesbian novels, and Tender Buttons, a book of poems full of allusion to lesbian sexuality. But in the last years of her life, as a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France, Stein sustained her lifestyle as an art collector and ensured her safety through the protection of powerful Vichy government officials – part of a pattern of involvement in far-right, antisemitic, and fascist politics. 

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Today’s subject is the man who would be King, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, firstborn son of Edward VII, Grandson of Queen Victoria, known to his friends and family simply as “Eddy." Wrapped up in a sizzling sex scandal, he became a prime example of a British royal story: an intellectually dull man, charmless, with neither cultural interests nor creative talents, but who, due to sheer accident of birth, found himself permitted to indulge all his whims.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Born in a violent and difficult childhood in the American South, Truman Capote would rise to the highest levels of literary celebrity, praise, and fame: even joining the highly-exclusive jet set of 1960s and 1970s high society. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas. But Capote would be pursued by demons throughout his life – alcoholism, other forms of addiction, and crippling self-doubt which would end up leading him to destroy his own social reputation. 

Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

A man with a passion for the dangerous, subversive, and avant garde; who eschewed the middle brow and loved the urbane and modern. Known in his life not just as a man of taste, but a tastemaker, someone who set the tone for elite cultural society in his lifetime; the white author, critic and photographer Carl Van Vechten became enchanted with the Harlem Renaissance, approached Black cultures as a source of ideas that he could take and exploit, and perpetuated racist stereotypes in his work.

Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The composer Benjamin Britten was a central figure of 20th century music; and the national composer that Britain had been searching for since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695. He never shook his Communist and pacifist sympathies –– even as he rose to the highest levels of elite British cultural production. A fervent pacifist, antinationalist, and homosexual –– with a deep, complex, and troubling love of children –– Britten, through the strength of his music and through the nation’s desire to have a musical hero of its own, became an utterly unlikely national celebrity.

Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual attraction to children.

Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

This is a story of sex, death and political malfeasance that will make Teddy Kennedy look like Anne of Green Gables. It has everything you’ve come to expect from a Bad Gays story about the English upper classes — psychosexual repression, violence, class prejudice, hypocrisy, the brutality and cheapness of life at the heart of the political system, and plenty of people named things like Rupert, Auberon and Emlyn.

=Content warning for child sexual abuse in the early parts of this story=

But as ridiculous and kinky as the fruity rulers of Britain are, the story is darker than that. This story is also about the way the law is impervious to the informal networks of power in the British establishment, and how homosexuality was subject to a series of double standards, tolerated in the powerful but suppressed in the ordinary citizen, practiced in private and denied in public. Today we’re discussing the life of a man whose sexuality stole his chance at power, the MP and leader of the Liberal Party, the Right Honorable Jeremy Thorpe.

Visit our website at badgayspod.com for t-shirts, our Patreon, and an episode archive.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Season 4 –– ! –– with apologies for socially-distanced audio quality. Today's victim was a British colonist and mining magnate who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. An ardent white supremacist – no matter what revisionist historians and the right-wing press claim – he rose from being a sickly child to having a near-complete domination of the world diamond market. Come for the "private secretaries," stay for the Big Hole. 

Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and a link to our Patreon.

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SOURCES:

Aldrich, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2003.

Brown, Robin. The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes' Plans for a New World Order. London: Penguin Books, 2015.

Jourdan, Philip. Cecil Rhodes: His Private Life By His Private Secretary. London: Bodley Head, 1911.

Rotberg, Robert I. The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Despite beginning his career as a member of the civil service ruling Britain's colonial empire, John Maynard Keynes was also a key member of London's cultural and artistic elite, the Bloomsbury Group, whose libertine approach to sexuality and relationships marked them out from their stuffy Victorian forebears. A patron of art, literature, opera and ballet, Keynes' economic writings would go on to make him one of the 20th century's most influential economists. Huw discusses the life and theories of John Maynard Keynes with Richard Power Sayeed, author of 1997: The Future That Never Happened (Zed Books, 2017).

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The author of the iconic lesbian –– and trans –– novel The Well of Loneliness was born to privilege before consorting with suffragettes and radicals, embarking on scandalous lesbian affairs with singers, and writing the novel whose release and censorship would turn it into "the Lesbian bible" and them into "sapphic Jesus." But what problematic racial politics –– and flirtations with Fascism –– lie lurking in the biography of Radclyffe Hall, who offers a non-gay perspective on early 20th century theories of sexual inversion? Ben discusses these questions with special guest Dr. Jana Funke, co-editor of a critical edition of The Well of Loneliness set to be published by Oxford University Press in 2023. 

Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and a link to our Patreon.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

To close our season, the story of Lisa Miller, an American woman who gave birth to a child coparented with her partner Janet Jenkins, and then left Janet, became a self-proclaimed ex-lesbian, sued for single custody of their daughter, and when the courts decided against her, abducted their child and fled the country with the assistance of well-connected far-right pastors in 2009. Lisa and their daughter, Isabella, are still missing. 

Visit our website for T-shirts, an episode archive, and more information about the show.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Lisa and/or Isabella, please contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

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SOURCES:

An essay on the Smiths frontman whose music and lyrics turned the abject aspects of the identities of so many queer teenagers into something that made them stand out and shine – and whose focus on working class cultures of masculinity began to turn towards the far right. 

Visit our website for T-shirts, an episode archive, and more information about the show.

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

In 1992, Aileen Carol Wuornos, an itinerant sex worker, was arrested for the murders of seven men in or near Volusia County, Florida in 1989 and 1990: all of them shot while Wuornos was on the job, all of them shot at point-blank range. She became, in the view of the public, according to the filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who made two documentaries about her and about the media storm that surrounded her, a "man-hating lesbian prostitute who tarnished the reputations of her victims,” a useful foil for family-values string-em-up-dead politicians who wanted to show that they were tough on crime–and an unlikely lesbian hero.

Visit our website for T-shirts, an episode archive, and more information about the show.

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SOURCES:

At the height of his career, today's subject was a national hero in the UK, knighted by George V. His life ended as a traitor and a pervert, executed by hanging in Pentonville Prison before being thrown in an unmarked grave in the prison yard, his body covered in quicklime. His name was Roger Casement, and we'll talk about his rise and fall, Britain’s hypocritical relationship with imperialism and colonialism, and secret black diaries full of "gentle thrusts" and "splendid erections." 

Visit our website for T-shirts, an episode archive, and more information about the show.

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SOURCES:

Achebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa: And the Trouble with Nigeria. Penguin Great Ideas 100. London: Penguin Books, 2010.

Philip Cortelyou Johnson may be more responsible than anyone for the shift from Modernism as a new way of living to Modernism as an elite bauble. Born into immense power and privilege, he was a deeply committed elitist, and dilettante fascist, who used his money and connections to whitewash his youthful (and ongoing) embrace of Hitler in specific and far-right politics in general. As a key curator and preacher of the Modernist gospel in the United States, he was central in divorcing the style from its egalitarian political aspirations. In response to criticism, he said: “I am a whore. Very well paid.”

Visit our website for T-shirts, an episode archive, and more information about the show.

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SOURCES:

A fraud and liar of epic proportions: a dashing art forger whose difficulties selling his naturalistic work in the Modernist-dominated 20th century art market, and experience of persecution as a gay Jew in Central Europe during World War II, fueled the creation and sale of millions' worth of fake Picassos, Matisses, and other masterpieces: some of which are still hidden in major collections and museums. 

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SOURCES:

Forgy, Mark. The Forger's Apprentice: Life With the World's Most Notorious Artist. Scott's Valley, CA: CreateSpace, 2012.

Keats, Jonathon. Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of our Age. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Martinique, Elena. 'Elmyr de Hory - The Story of the Most Famous Forger in Art History.' Widewall.Ch, June 19, 2019. https://www.widewalls.ch/elmyr-de-hory-art-forger/

On the "complicated" side of "evil and complicated" that makes up our show's motto, we present the story of the gravely-voiced Congressman who blazed trails for gay political involvement at the highest levels of power in Washington, only to spend the latter part of his career selling out the left to finance capital and excluding trans people from fights for non-discrimination legislation. Whip-smart, funny, and always ready with a biting comeback, Barney Frank came to embody the transformation of the Democratic Party away from the working class and towards a suburban party preoccupied with shallow diversity rather than true racial and economic justice.

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SOURCES:

The Anglo-Irish aristocrat, politician and statesman Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry: better known, like Bjork or Madonna, by his mononym - Castlereagh. A Whig politician, he was hated by the populations of both England and Ireland for his support of vicious repression against liberal, reformist, and radical politics and activism. Lord Byron put it best: "Posterity will ne'er survey / A nobler grave than this: / Here lie the bones of Castlereagh: / Stop, traveller, and piss."

Like our show? Support us, buy cute shirts, and check out past episodes at www.badgayspod.com/

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SOURCES:

The United States of America's first gay – and worst – President. This bumbling slaveholder collaborated with the Confederacy, promoted the racist Dred Scott decision at the Supreme Court, and cohabited in Washington with a dashing Alabama Senator who, in the words of President Andrew Jackson was the "Aunt Nancy" to his "Aunt Fancy." 

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Like our show? Support us, buy cute shirts, and check out past episodes at www.badgayspod.com/

Sources:

A man variously known as the “Iron Hedgehog” and a “malignant Dwarf”, but also as charming, courteous, and, most importantly “a good party man,” a man who held the position of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs - the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge - Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.

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Like our show? Support us, buy cute shirts, and check out past episodes at www.badgayspod.com/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

With special guests Mac Folkes and Edna Bonhomme (@jacobinoire), Ben explores the life story, politics, and cultural phenomenon of Pete Buttigieg. From his resume-polishing early life to his racist record as Mayor to his recycling of stale right-wing attacks on progressive policy, we look at how longer-term trends in gay life and culture, including the split of the "mainstream" wealthy and white gay rights movement from multiracial struggle, have influenced both his politics and the broad audience they have found. 

== Update, 8 March, 2020 ==

We are devastated by the recent death of Mac Folkes, one of our two guests on this episode. A legend of the scene, a devoted friend, and a fierce fighter for justice. Rest in power.

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SOURCES: 

Mayor Pete editing his own wikipedia: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/pete-buttigieg-wikipedia-page-editor.html

On his early life and childhood: https://apnews.com/47fc3e167cd64488b16890c8973bb208

On his time at Harvard, including quotes from his memoir, Shortest Way Home: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete

Andrew Sullivan on Rhodes Scholars: https://books.google.de/books?id=cIdMpKduSmkC&pg=PA108&dq=andrew+sullivan+rhodes+scholars&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

On McKinsey, and its business model and recent scandals: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/world/africa/mckinsey-south-africa-eskom.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/business/mckinsey-puerto-rico.html, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/mckinsey-company-capitals-willing-executioners)

On Mayor Pete's secretive record at McKinsey: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/pete-buttigieg-mckinsey-clients

On Mayor Pete's record on housing and environmental racism: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/mayor-pete-buttigieg-south-bend-gentrification, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/south-bend-poor-say-democrat-pete-buttigieg-left-them-behind.html

On the firing of Darryl Boykins: https://theintercept.com/2019/09/20/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-police/

On the shooting of Eric Logan and protests in June 2019:  https://wsbt.com/news/local/probe-of-eric-logan-shooting-could-revive-scrutiny-of-buttigieg, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/mayor-pete-buttigieg-protesters-heckled-south-bend-police 

On the community/police events Mayor Pete skipped to campaign: https://theintercept.com/2020/01/23/pete-buttigieg-south-bend-police-oversight-fundraisers/ 

On the recent protest at a campaign event in which Mayor Pete asked the protestor to 'respect the format': https://twitter.com/AlxThomp/status/1221198787466665986/photo/1

On Mayor Pete's changing position on Medicare for All and attacks on proposals for universal social programs: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/16/buttigieg-tweet-medicare-for-all-048745, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/467478-buttigieg-i-never-believed-in-medicare-for-all-that-ends-private-insurance, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/politics/buttigieg-sanders-warren-free-tuition.html

An article on the campaign's treatment of staffers of color that came out too late for us to include in the episode: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/buttigieg-campaign-black-hispanic-staff.html

On allegations the campaign faked Black support for its racial justice proposal: https://theintercept.com/2019/11/15/pete-buttigieg-campaign-black-voters/

As a military nurse, ambulance driver, kennelman, horse trainer, fascist, car salesman, thief, and actor, Colonel Victor Barker was the embodiment of early 20th century upper-class British masculinity. But he became famous after his trial and imprisonment for committing perjury on his marriage certificate to his wife —because Victor Barker was assigned female at birth. Juliet and Huw explore his life, and the questions it raises around gender identity a century ago.

The other polestar of human evil. "Justice is incidental to law and order." Johnny and Clyde. 

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SOURCES:

Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Medsger, Betty. The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI. New York: Knopf, 2014.

Simkin, John. "Clyde Tolson." Spartacus Educational: https://spartacus-educational.com/USAtolson.htm

Summers, Anthony. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The namesake of the secret dining society at Oxford where David Cameron may or may not have committed unspeakable acts with a pig. Perhaps you’ll have a clue to the themes of today’s episode when we tell you that the motto of the Piers Gaveston Society is "(Sane) non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse" or, for those of us without a private school Latin education, "Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much".

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SOURCES:

Hamilton, J. S. Piers Gaveston: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1988.

Phillips, Seymour. Edward II. Yale English Monarchs. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010.

Stewart, Alan. “Edward II and Same-Sex Desire” in: Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, ed. Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., Patrick Cheney and Andrew Hadfield. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005. 82-95.

What happens when a political analysis that comes out of the politics of alliance ends up departing from alliance: in other words, when people think that making something “gay” is enough. The kinds of people that get forgotten and spoken over when a certain kind of essentialist gay politics are deployed. And even though this crackpot plan never came to pass, today's show, about the failed attempt to establish a gay nation in rural California, reveals some of the flaws at the heart of ‘70s radical gay politics. 

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SOURCES:

Wittman, Carl. "Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto." https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/wittmanmanifesto.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

A young white London lad driven by a passion for extreme violence and racial hatred, who climbed pretty easily through the ranks of a small fascist party, and went on to become something of a big fish in the far-right's murky, polluted, poisonous pond. But in 1992, the Sun ran the following story, under a photo of Nicky Crane in his White Power vest: "Nazi Nick is a Pansy." 

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SOURCES:

Eden, Jon. Uncarved. http://www.uncarved.org/

Forbes, Robert, and Eddie Stampton. The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK and USA, 1979-1993. London: Feral House Press, 2015.

Kelly, Jon. "Nicky Crane: The Secret Double Life of a Gay Neo-Nazi." BBC News Magazine, December 6, 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25142557

"Today in London Anti-Fascist History: 1978 Blockade Against National Front March on Brick Lane." Past Tense: Radical Histories and Possibilities, September 24, 2018. https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/today-in-london-anti-fascist-history-1978-blockade-against-national-front-march-on-brick-lane/

Schaefer, Max. Children of the Sun. London: Soft Skull Press, 2010.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

The fairy godmother of the new European far-right. A vile racist named "The Greatest Dutchman of All Time" in a 2004 TV poll. A lens into how a particular version of homosexuality is compatibile with a particular kind of far-right politics – how a certain kind of “live and let live” attitude at the heart of white liberal gay politics can immediately turn into a wave of immigrant-bashing hatred that turns, inevitably, on queer people themselves. “I don’t hate Arab men," he said. "I even sleep with them.” 

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Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Beyond Tolerance: What did the Dutch see in Pim Fortuyn?" The New Yorker. September 9, 2002. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/09/09/beyond-tolerance

Margry, Peter Jan. "The Murder of Pim Fortuyn and Collective Emotions. Hype, Hysteria and Holiness in The Netherlands." Etnofoor: antropologisch tijdschrift 16 (2003): 106-131. 

Osborn, Andrew. "Dutch Fall for Gay Mr. Right." The Observer. April 14, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/14/andrewosborn.theobserver

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

A colonialist and conqueror, upholder of ideals of English masculinity, and religious fanatic; possessed of a powerful death wish. “Yes, that is flesh, that is what I hate, and what makes me wish to die.”

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Ellis, Heather, and Jessica Meyer, eds. Masculinity and the Historical Other. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Faught, C. Brad. Gordon: Victorian Hero. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Pollock, John. Gordon: The Man Behind The Legend. London: Constable Books, 1993.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Enlightenment monarch! Composer of hundreds of flute concertos. Emerged from the “sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire" to conquer vast swaths of Europe! Built a giant pink palace his wife wasn't allowed to visit. Worst dad in Bad Gays history? "Everything that speaks to eyes and touches hearts, Was found in the fond object that enflamed his parts." 

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SOURCES:

Blanning, Tim. Frederick the Great: King of Prussia. New York: Random House, 2016.

Gaines, James. Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.

Hadley, Kathryn (with Vanessa de Senarclens). "Frederick the Great's Erotic Poem." HistoryToday, 21 September, 2011. https://www.historytoday.com/frederick-greats-erotic-poem

The brief excerpt of Frederick the Great's Flute Concerto in C Major, No. 3, is performed by Emmanuel Pahud and the Kammerakademie Potsdam, led by Trevor Pinnock at the Harpsichord; we claim "fair use" for quotation and illustration purposes and encourage listeners who appreciate the extraordinary performance to purchase or legally stream it in full. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

A vituperative satirist who made kings tremble. Also, he wrote this:

My fingers are but stragglers at the rear,

Who go a-foraging for what they find;

And they are not ashamed to lag behind,

Since there’s no foe in front they need to fear.

They’ve wandered through a tufted valley near.

And you yourself have said they were most kind,

And so, I know, my lady will not mind

If they see other booty, nor think it queer. 

And yet, it may be, you prefer the Lance;

Then, let your stragglers reconnoiter, sweet,

And guide him like a blind man to safe cover.

He is no coward, since he takes a chance.

Though he, my dear, has neither eyes nor feet;

For a soldier always makes a perfect lover!

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SOURCES:

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

"The man who shot Versace." Vague intimations of homosexuality as a form of bloody death. A pure expression of the poisonous narcissism of American celebrity culture. The dark heart of evil twink energy. A black hole of gay narcissism. Black holes are attractors. We risk being sucked in. 

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SOURCES:

Goldberg, Michelle. "The Gay Golem." Metroactive, May 13-19, 1999. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/05.13.99/cunanan-9919.html

Indiana, Gary. Three Month Fever. (Reprint.) Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2017.

Orth, Maureen. Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History. New York: Doubleday, 1999. 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Season 2! The Greek Vice. Our first evil twink! Plutarch! Prophecies of world domination! Conquests of Persia! Pan-hellenism! Whitney Houston?

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SOURCES:

Badian, Ernst. Collected Papers on Alexander the Great. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2012.

Fox, Robin Lane. Alexander the Great. New York: Penguin, 1973.

Plutarch. The Life of Alexander. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/3.html

Donate on Patreon.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

For the first of our very special interview episodes, we welcome the artist and writer Sholem Krishtalka to talk about Andy Warhol. How did a shy, fey outsider become the ultimate art world insider? And what price did his superstars pay for the fame he exposed them to?

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SOURCES:

Andy Warhol  (New York: Viking, 2001).

A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story. (New York: Perennial, 1992).

Warhol, Andy. The Andy Warhol Diaries. (New York: Warner Books, 1989).

Thanks to your support, Season 2 is incoming. And stay tuned for special guests in the weeks to come...

The Polestar Of Human Evil. 

Stay tuned to this feed for Season 2 coming late summer/early fall; and special episodes featuring interviews and other content all summer. Thank you so much for your overwhelming support over the course of this first season. We're chuffed. We wish you productive, healthy, happy summers; free of evil twinks. 

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SOURCES:

Von Hoffman, Nicholas. Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Tyrnauer, Matt. Where's My Roy Cohn? http://www.altimeterfilms.com/wheres-my-roy-cohn. See review: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/27/wheres-my-roy-cohn-review-damning-documentary-on-villainous-lawyer

They were young, rich, and in love in the Jazz Age – until they killed their neighbor just to prove they could get away with it. Hitchcock's Rope is based on their story; now learn the truth behind the fascinating lives of Leopold and Loeb. 

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SOURCES:

Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. Excerpts: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/leopold-and-loebs-criminal-minds-996498/

Barrett, Nina. The Leopold and Loeb Files. Chicago: Agate Midway, 2018. Reviewed: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/26/reopening-the-case-files-of-leopold-and-loeb/

Darrow, Clarence. "Plea for Leopold and Loeb." https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/clarence-darrow-plea-for-leopold-and-loeb-22-23-and-25-august-1924-speech-text/

Schildcrout, Jordan. Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in American Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.

Leopold and Loeb's Letters:

http://www.crimearchives.net/1924_leopold_loeb/html/letters.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

He was a a thug, a bully, and a murderer who made himself a British popular hero. He was a friend of Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, and he once said, “I’m homosexual but I’m not a poof”. We use the deplorable story of Ronnie Kray to explore class, crime and postwar British attitudes towards homosexuality. A content note: this episode contains frank discussions of childhood sexual abuse; as such, listener discretion is advised. 

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SOURCES:

Campbell, Duncan. "The Selling of the Krays: How Two Mediocre Criminals Created Their Own Legend." The Guardian, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/03/the-selling-of-the-krays-how-two-mediocre-criminals-created-their-own-legendlegends

Kray, Ronnie. My Story. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1993.

Pearson, John. Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins. London: Arrow Books, 2011.

Pearson, John. The Profession of Violence. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Born in 1876,Weimar-era gay publisher and activist Friedrich Radszuweit joined public gay life in 1923, when he founded the Bund für Menschenrecht (Federation for Human Rights, or BfM) in Berlin and began publishing dozens of gay, lesbian, and trans*-themed periodicals. The BfM grew to become the largest (indeed in some sense the only) mass-membership LGBT organization of its time. It claimed 100,000 members. Too bad its founder would end up advocating for collaboration with the Nazis. 

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SOURCES:

Beachy, Robert. Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. New York: Vintage Books, 2015.

Halifax, Noel. "Richard Linsert and the First Sexual Liberation Movement." http://socialistreview.org.uk/420/richard-linsert-and-first-sexual-liberation-movement

Marhoeffer, Laurie. Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Miller, Ben. "Friedrich Radszuweit and the False Security of Collaboration." http://outhistory.org/blog/in-the-archives-friedrich-radszuweit-and-the-false-security-of-collaboration/

Cambridge-educated art historian, Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, expert in French baroque art – and soviet spy? We profile Sir Antony Blunt, an art historian whose youthful political convictions reveal intriguing connections between sexuality and espionage, and whose dramatic life provided the basis for John LeCarrè's classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 

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SOURCES:

Boyle, Andrew. The Climate of Treason. London: Coronet, 1982.

Carter, Miranda. Antony Blunt: His Lives. London: Macmillan, 2001.

Costello, John. Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, Buggery, and Betrayal. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988.

Lownie, Andrew. Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2016.

Simkins, John. "Antony Blunt - Spartacus Educational." https://spartacus-educational.com/SSblunt.htm

Wright, Peter. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Secret Intelligence Officer. New York: Penguin Viking, 1987.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

It's Andrew Sullivan: the gay catholic conservative journalist, supporter of race science, inventor of gay marriage, and self-appointed arbiter of the morality and respectability of the gay community.

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Sources:

Murray, Charles N. and Richard Herrnstein. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. (New York: Free Press, 1994).

Rubin, Gayle: "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." in: Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger (Abingdon: Routledge, 1984).

Sullivan, Andrew: published works and interviews/profiles of, including:

1. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/06/gay-marriage-votes-and-andrew-sullivan-his-landmark-1989-essay-making-a-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage.html

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20090425202254/http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/andrew-sullivan-thinking-out-loud

3. https://www.thenation.com/article/andrew-sullivan-overexposed/

4. https://newrepublic.com/article/113639/andrew-sullivans-gay-life-gay-death-1990
5. Virtually Normal. (New York: Knopf, 2005). 
6. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/10/magazine/when-plagues-end.html
7. https://www.poz.com/article/Larry-Kramer-HIV-20772-4898
8. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/denying-genetics-isnt-shutting-down-racism-its-fueling-it.html
9. https://www.villagevoice.com/2001/06/19/the-real-andrew-sullivan-scandal/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

If you liked Yiorgos Lanthinos' court psychodrama The Favourite, you'll love this exploration of the complicated life of James VI and I – a king who united Scotland and England, persecuted witches, and granted his male favorites extraordinary power and privilege. Come for the court drama and stay for in-depth discussions of primitive accumulation and the question of whether using the word 'gay' to describe a 16th-century monarch makes any sense at all. 

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Sources:

Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso Books, 1979.

Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Chatto and Windniss, 2017.

Bergeron, David. King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999.

Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2002.

Holstun, James. Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution. London: Verso Books, 2002.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

We take a look at the fascinating life of T. E. Lawrence: poet, archaeologist, sadomasochist, and agent of Arab self-determination and British colonial rule. 

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Sources:

Aldrich, Robert: Colonialism and Homosexuality (Routledge, 2002)

Lawrence, T. E.: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

ed. Norton, Rictor: My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (Leyland, 1998) http://rictornorton.co.uk/lawrence.htm

Sattin, Anthony: The Young T. E. Lawrence (Norton, 2015)

We profile Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, the beautiful and dissolute poet, publisher, and lover of Oscar Wilde–who helped bring Wilde to ruin, became an antisemite, and generally personifies the term "evil twink energy." 

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Sources and further reading:

Frank Harris: Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions 

Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand 

Douglas Murray: Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas

A discussion of the life and ideology of Ernst Röhm, the world's first openly gay politician: and a Nazi. ----more----

Sources and further reading:

Eleanor Hancock: "Only the Real, the True, the Masculine Held Its Value: Ernst Röhm, Masculinity, and Male Homosexuality." Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 8, No. 4 (Apr., 1998), pp. 616-641.

Laurie Marhoeffer: "Queer Fascism and the End of Gay History." Notches Blog, June 19, 2018. http://notchesblog.com/2018/06/19/queer-fascism-and-the-end-of-gay-history/

Laurie Marhoeffer: Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Boaz Neumann: "The Phenomenology of the German People's Body (Volkskörper) and the Extermination of the Jewish Body." New German Critique No. 106 (Winter, 2009), pp. 149-181.

Spartacus Educational: Ernst Röhm. https://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.html/