Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to my podcast, which doesn't have a name.
Speaker 1: It's the Nameless Podcast, but it's a show about cool
Speaker 1: people who did cool stuff, and we're looking for a
Speaker 1: good name for it, something that really says what it's about.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if either of you all have ideas cool
Speaker 1: humans did things that were also kind of cool. I
Speaker 1: do like supper Woodus it is. It does have a
Speaker 1: nice ring to it, exceper with Deus it is. So
Speaker 1: my guest this week is not other than Garrison Davis,
Speaker 1: who is, among other things, the co host of the
Speaker 1: Very Optimistic Show. It could happen here. Garrison, how are
Speaker 1: you doing today? I'm doing pretty optimistic? All right. It's
Speaker 1: when whenever, whenever we talk about post civilization, it has
Speaker 1: to be optimistic or else. Why are you thinking about it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I actually agree with that. Yeah, I know you you
Speaker 1: are you are you are a wizard's foremost expert on
Speaker 1: post civilization. If if you if you didn't know that's true. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we've got Sophie Lichtterman as well, who's a producer extraordinaire. Sophie,
Speaker 1: did you know that extraordinarire is an annoying word to spell,
Speaker 1: and I just appreciate your effort. Then all right, well thanks,
Speaker 1: I even got it right on the first time. That's
Speaker 1: one time I spelled bourgeois right on the first time.
Speaker 1: Who I just have never tried to spell it again.
Speaker 1: I want to quit while I'm ahead. Fair. So today
Speaker 1: is part two of our two part series on the
Speaker 1: public universal Friend, which is a bunch of easy words
Speaker 1: to spell. Who is a generalist prophet of revolutionary era
Speaker 1: New England. Who is a sort of cool person doing
Speaker 1: sort of cool stuff, very cool along gender lines, sort
Speaker 1: of middling cool in terms of being the head of
Speaker 1: a religious sect. So let's talk about the end of
Speaker 1: the world. All of our interests are colliding. So so
Speaker 1: Puff only had one doomsday prediction as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, and it came and went pretty early in
Speaker 1: their career as a prophet. Yeah, that's That's the problem
Speaker 1: with making a prediction like four years is that you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna live to see it. Um, you got you
Speaker 1: gotta make it further further than nets you get enough
Speaker 1: enough steam to carry you on through the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. See you'd think that, But as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, basically everyone who predicts the end of
Speaker 1: the world. You're not wrong. They just it just keeps working.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Yeah, so they predicted. Puff predicted
Speaker 1: that the world would end sometime around April one, sight
Speaker 1: as it's the j K Day. Puff wasn't the only
Speaker 1: person who assumed it was the end times. Millinarian fever
Speaker 1: was all the rage, and a lot of people thought
Speaker 1: that the American Revolution was basically the harbinger of the
Speaker 1: second coming of Christ. Well, good thing, we don't deal
Speaker 1: as millinarian some anymore. I know. Well, fortunately in case
Speaker 1: we do have to deal with it. But I finally
Speaker 1: learned when the word where it comes from? Well, would
Speaker 1: you tell I? I always assumed, because I'm not the
Speaker 1: smartest person's ever lived, I used to assume that basically
Speaker 1: was just like people were freaked out around the year
Speaker 1: one thousand or like it's his mills. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: would think, so, yeah, we're out of years, the end
Speaker 1: is coming because they like couldn't imagine a fourth dig
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like it's like the original Y two
Speaker 1: K exactly why one you read from the same script.
Speaker 1: I am what's going on? But so like most people
Speaker 1: who are listening to us probably already know this, but
Speaker 1: all of these Christian end time cults. I believed that
Speaker 1: there was supposed to be a big funk off battle
Speaker 1: between good and evil and then Christ would rule on
Speaker 1: earth for a thousand years. Yeah, because that is in
Speaker 1: the Bible. Uh yeah, yeah, I see it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where millenarian comes from. And good thing that's no longer
Speaker 1: a big part of our modern politics. Yeah, No one
Speaker 1: would base their political ideology based on that these days.
Speaker 1: Definitely not. I would, however, be a hypocrite for judging
Speaker 1: people for thinking the end was coming in their lifetimes. Sure.
Speaker 1: I host another podcast that you all can check out
Speaker 1: called Lived Like the World Is Dying, which is about
Speaker 1: community behind and prepared right on the podcast called it
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here. Yeah, So everyone's thinking this stuff. And
Speaker 1: the thing is is that like all of these people
Speaker 1: who are thinking the world's gonna end, they're not always wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, world's end in different ways, societies and different
Speaker 1: ways of being come to an end, even before you
Speaker 1: get into sort of multiverse stuff about whether or not
Speaker 1: most timeline. It's the most winged thing I think, I know. See,
Speaker 1: but I know exactly what you're talking about, though, Yes,
Speaker 1: All of the people who thought that we came really
Speaker 1: close to nuclear armageddon during the Cold War are like
Speaker 1: seen as like silly now, But they were right. We
Speaker 1: came really close to nuclear armageddon in the Cold and
Speaker 1: we just traded it for another looming cataclysmic Yes, and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll maybe we'll skirt through this one too, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get a new one in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Who knows. So a bunch of these revolutionary war assholes,
Speaker 1: they're not just fighting for no taxation without representation. They're
Speaker 1: fighting to usher in a thousand years of peace, glory,
Speaker 1: and happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth times
Speaker 1: a flat circle. Yeah, and Okay, I'll be real. I
Speaker 1: think prophecy is fucking boring and makes for hack writing.
Speaker 1: Whenever I see prophecies in fiction, I'm like, here we go,
Speaker 1: and I roll my eyes, and if I run across
Speaker 1: a chosen one, I usually put the book down. Uh,
Speaker 1: Harry fucking Potter whatever. Speaking of j K Day, I
Speaker 1: don't know whether I even want to say no offense
Speaker 1: to all you Harry Potter fans out there. No, they
Speaker 1: they can take the offense. Yeah, I'm not saying, don't
Speaker 1: read it. I'm saying people might whatever we're talking about
Speaker 1: trans history here. So the Public Universal Friend figured their
Speaker 1: prophecy to herald the end of the world because there
Speaker 1: was some like Quaker stuff that interpreted some Bible stuff
Speaker 1: to mean that when women started doing prophecies ship it
Speaker 1: was a end of the end times. Another place in
Speaker 1: the Bible talks about forty two months. So Public Universal
Speaker 1: Friend was like, great, forty two months after I'm on
Speaker 1: Earth as puff Boom Apocalypse April seventeen eighty or so
Speaker 1: April coming and going was. It seems like it was
Speaker 1: probably pretty stressful. But they got kind of lucky for
Speaker 1: a moment because on May seventeen eighty, New England had
Speaker 1: a quote dark day when ash from forest fires filled
Speaker 1: the sky from New Jersey to Canada and day turned tonight.
Speaker 1: I love when that happens. Yeah, Garrison lives in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest. I think I sure do so. As related
Speaker 1: by a soldier named Joseph Plumb Martin, we were here
Speaker 1: New Jersey at the time the Dark Day happened. The
Speaker 1: fouls went to their roosts, The cocks Crew and the
Speaker 1: whipper Wheels sung their usual serenade. The people had to
Speaker 1: light candles in their houses to enable to see to
Speaker 1: carry on their usual business. The night was on commonly
Speaker 1: dark as the day was, and and this is where
Speaker 1: it was less dark. Up north it was way worse
Speaker 1: and you needed candles outside. So everyone was like, oh,
Speaker 1: the apocalypse. And some people are excited. Some people are
Speaker 1: probably worried. It actually seems like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are excited because millinarianism um and also their end of
Speaker 1: the world men a thousand years apiece, I have a
Speaker 1: really different okay whatever, um, So the the ash lifts
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, and spoiler, the world
Speaker 1: does not come to an end. It just keeps going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not for Susannah Potter, a universal friend, because she
Speaker 1: died on the Dark Day. So a few days later,
Speaker 1: according to some sources, endoubted by other sources because people
Speaker 1: kept trying to claim that Puff claimed to be Jesus,
Speaker 1: but completely likely Puff tried to resurrect their friend from
Speaker 1: the dead ala Lazarus. The attempt did not succeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they rarely do. Yeah, it's like once I think, um, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess doctors do it every day. But this doesn't
Speaker 1: really damage the friend's reputation. Much for whatever reason, the
Speaker 1: group only grew after the world didn't end. And Okay,
Speaker 1: my hypothesis is that people come for the doomsday and
Speaker 1: stay for the community. I mean, yeah, that is this
Speaker 1: is how a lot of cults work, even like modern
Speaker 1: doomsday cults kind of function on a similar on a
Speaker 1: similar level. And I mean that's that's a lot of
Speaker 1: like churches work too, Like they people keep going because
Speaker 1: it's one of the only available forms of culture that
Speaker 1: people feel like that's like accessible, and it's a built
Speaker 1: in sense of community in an already very alienated world.
Speaker 1: So that's why so much of the world, or so
Speaker 1: much of the States at least, like runs on these
Speaker 1: church communities. Um, because that's like you know, like that's
Speaker 1: that's what's something I want to talk about in terms
Speaker 1: of like mutual aid networks. For a lot of the country,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we could consider like mutual aid
Speaker 1: or like community like that type of like community support
Speaker 1: is based out of church hubs. Um. And not not
Speaker 1: all of them are like shitty to ward queer people
Speaker 1: on all of them are racist, Like, some of them
Speaker 1: are like actually fine, Um, some of them are very
Speaker 1: not fine, but like it it definitely is not just
Speaker 1: one or the other. Yeah, so it's it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting thing on in terms of like
Speaker 1: how much of that community aspect is so important to
Speaker 1: keep the religious machine going. No, totally, And I mean
Speaker 1: and and people need that, people need a sense of community,
Speaker 1: and so there is a lot being provided that is
Speaker 1: not being provided elsewhere. So Puff currently has a cult
Speaker 1: of hundreds of people, several churches across two states. They're
Speaker 1: living in a mansion provided by one of their followers.
Speaker 1: They read dreams, they preach boring ship. Things are going
Speaker 1: pretty well for them. So in the seventeen eighties, Puff
Speaker 1: decides to take this ship to the center of revolutionary
Speaker 1: American culture, Phillip fucking Delphia, the city that does not
Speaker 1: actually seem very important in modern context, but was very
Speaker 1: important at this time. And they make a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of trips over the course of like eight years, and
Speaker 1: they set up a little satellite base outside of the city.
Speaker 1: But Philly Billy does not like them, not because what
Speaker 1: they had to say they say the same ship as
Speaker 1: everyone else is saying, but because basically they're breaking the
Speaker 1: gender rules. When Puff isn't cult leader mode, I kind
Speaker 1: of don't like them, but when they're in persecuted for
Speaker 1: not being a woman mode, I'm completely on puff side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's basically Twitter that's fucking with them because this
Speaker 1: whole democratization thing that everyone is obsessed with during the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, it turns newspapers and from something that talks
Speaker 1: at people from on high to something that is meant
Speaker 1: to be a conversation between people. So now you're the
Speaker 1: fucking discourse and combined discourse with a non binary preacher,
Speaker 1: and you get drama. I get time to a flat
Speaker 1: circle as I and so yeah, as I. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, the revolution kind of cemented the like manly
Speaker 1: man American man and then through the strong women of
Speaker 1: America back into the cage of patriarchy. Out with the
Speaker 1: old system where your privilege based on class and noble lineage,
Speaker 1: and in with the new system, where your privilege based
Speaker 1: along lines of race and gender. And another thing that
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about too much before doing this reading
Speaker 1: about the American Revolution, about democracy and republican blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So in a monarchy, the only moral upstanding nous that
Speaker 1: society demands is of the nobility, because that's the only
Speaker 1: one that matters because they make the decisions because the
Speaker 1: rabble don't rule. This is I'm speaking in rude exaggerations here,
Speaker 1: but in a republic you've got citizens, and since they're
Speaker 1: ostensibly in charge, it suddenly matters that they're virtuous and
Speaker 1: ship So all of a sudden you can be way
Speaker 1: more controlling of everyone because everyone has to be virtuous,
Speaker 1: and by the standards of the time, gender bending not
Speaker 1: a virtue. So people are not stoked on Puff and
Speaker 1: their entourage. Literally when they first show up, people are
Speaker 1: so offended by the masculine clothing of the women in
Speaker 1: the group, which I think they were all wearing dresses,
Speaker 1: but just not the right kind of dresses. Yeah, the entourage.
Speaker 1: They couldn't find a place to stay. Eventually they found
Speaker 1: a widow who took them in, and a crowd gathered
Speaker 1: outside the house and through rocks and bricks at it
Speaker 1: because they were rioting over a non binary preacher and
Speaker 1: somewhat androgynous women showing up in town. But a Methodist
Speaker 1: church let them speak on their first visit, and the
Speaker 1: place was so crowded that people were turned away. They
Speaker 1: only made one convert in the first trip. But they
Speaker 1: made some friends, and they came back to larger and
Speaker 1: larger crowds and again. So most of the people who
Speaker 1: are joining at this point are now Quakers who have
Speaker 1: been kicked out of the church for supporting the revolution
Speaker 1: because the passive is m of Quakers. Not only can
Speaker 1: you not go fight, but you also can't pay taxes
Speaker 1: to the revolutionary government because that's like taking sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seven.
Speaker 1: The newspapers are attacking Puff, calling them crazy, calling them
Speaker 1: a blasphemer, accusing them of all kinds of various crimes.
Speaker 1: Angry mobs show up everywhere Puff stays or speaks, and again,
Speaker 1: not because what they're saying, but because of how they're dressed,
Speaker 1: because things don't change. One thing that the newspaper is
Speaker 1: really the letter sections all agreed on, though, is that
Speaker 1: Puff was really hot. They all, yeah, I'm I'm good
Speaker 1: that at least that is. It's noted within the history
Speaker 1: of books. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's it's always very important
Speaker 1: that uh they all gender friend wrong, and page after
Speaker 1: page talked about their hair falling down in black ringlets
Speaker 1: and how beautiful their faces or whatever. Someone that they
Speaker 1: perceived as a woman dressed like a man and beautiful
Speaker 1: and preaching. It's all too much for them. They can't
Speaker 1: handle it. And like, I think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that so many people hate trans people is because they're
Speaker 1: attracted to us and fox with them. Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even the long hair falling down to their shoulders, that
Speaker 1: was actually a masculine thing. Women mostly kept their hair
Speaker 1: hidden under caps, except some rich ladies who kept it
Speaker 1: piled up on top of their heads. But long hair
Speaker 1: hanging down, that's a man's haircut. Hm. And so public
Speaker 1: conjecture about whether or not women, or in this case
Speaker 1: people presume to be women, are hot. This always has
Speaker 1: ulterior motives. Right, most transparently, they're saying, well, this person
Speaker 1: can't be non binary. I want to suck them. But
Speaker 1: it's also tied into the narrative that puff in their congregation.
Speaker 1: We're all seducers, planning to lead people astray with their evil,
Speaker 1: evil attractiveness. I mean me too, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that was what they were interested in. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: kind of rumor discourse, Yeah, basically, but just funny because
Speaker 1: almost everyone who joins the congregation does so with their families.
Speaker 1: They bring their spouses, their siblings, whatever. But the public
Speaker 1: narrative is that this evil bitch is going to get
Speaker 1: women to leave their husbands and men to leave their wives,
Speaker 1: which happens, but it's usually because people didn't want to
Speaker 1: be in those marriages anyway. And the only like religious
Speaker 1: complaint that I really came up with is that men
Speaker 1: shouldn't subordinate themselves to women. So even their religious complaint
Speaker 1: is still just a gender and they're convinced either Puff
Speaker 1: and all their followers or delusional or their the Inner
Speaker 1: circle or grifters. These are the only two possibilities. And
Speaker 1: to be fair, I think you could say that about
Speaker 1: it like every fucking Christian denomination going on at this time,
Speaker 1: to various degrees of accuracy. I mean, that is kind
Speaker 1: of the classical thing with Yeah, that is like one
Speaker 1: of one of the oldest coin tosses. Yeah. But what's
Speaker 1: funny is that the Society for Universal Friends wasn't either
Speaker 1: of these things. As far as I can tell, I
Speaker 1: think they knew exactly what they were doing. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on how you want to judge Puff's interpretation of
Speaker 1: their own identity as a divine bean or whatever, but
Speaker 1: not a not a grifter. Um. Certainly not to any
Speaker 1: kind of scale. And I don't know, maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a little bit of each, but mostly not none of either.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I find so interesting about them
Speaker 1: getting like run the funk out of Philly is that
Speaker 1: in these rural backwaters everyone's like, well, this person wears
Speaker 1: weird clothes and has a really fucking weird name, but whatever.
Speaker 1: I like what they have to say. And then the
Speaker 1: center culture and politics of the New world is like, no,
Speaker 1: our little brands are breaking And I feel like this
Speaker 1: like says a lot about how people today still make
Speaker 1: assumptions that rural communities are inherently backwards. Yeah, as a
Speaker 1: ural queer person, I like pointing this out a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know, so dealing with all this bullshit, all
Speaker 1: the angry mobs and ship it's too much and puffs.
Speaker 1: Fourth and final trip to Philly was a momentary thing
Speaker 1: under the radar, just passing through the city successfully drove
Speaker 1: them out, not by using cr gas. But if today
Speaker 1: you wanted to drive non binary preachers out of your city,
Speaker 1: you might choose to use CR gas. I mean, actually
Speaker 1: shouldn't either, and if you do, you should do c
Speaker 1: S gas. But you know, oh, you mean you mean
Speaker 1: this this? Oh I thought that was a water bottle,
Speaker 1: but yes, that is I mean, whoa Okay, so Garrison
Speaker 1: is holding up a water bottle that is printed like
Speaker 1: a is it CR gas or c S gas? This
Speaker 1: is yes, okay, this is a forty millimeter pot dispersion
Speaker 1: round made by defense technology, one of the I'm not
Speaker 1: going to one of the defense one of our sponsors. Nope,
Speaker 1: this isn't behind the basic we're wholesome here, wholesome one
Speaker 1: of our enemies, defense technology. That's right, holding one of
Speaker 1: our friends. Tap water publicly available more or less free,
Speaker 1: and should be protected. I mean, I feel like the
Speaker 1: I feel I've tried really hard to buy tear gas before,
Speaker 1: and it's challenging. Um I think we should de regulate
Speaker 1: tear gas to make it available for civilian purchase, because
Speaker 1: then people can start using it and things would be
Speaker 1: more interesting because right now only cops can buy it
Speaker 1: in most cases. Um, So if it becomes a public utility,
Speaker 1: I think some real progress could happen. So c S
Speaker 1: gas on tap in every home? Is that what you're saying? Yes,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. I rarely look around two and
Speaker 1: thank to myself, society is not currently interesting enough. But
Speaker 1: to be fair, things could always be more interesting. We
Speaker 1: certainly could, and you know who probably will or won't
Speaker 1: make things more interesting are the rest of the sponsors
Speaker 1: the Today Show. Okay, and we are back, and our
Speaker 1: heroes have just been driven with rocks and bricks out
Speaker 1: of the city for being Yeah, I was, I was.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if they got stoned at all, because
Speaker 1: that is definitely I'm not aware of them actually suffering
Speaker 1: physical violence as a result of their gender presentation. So
Speaker 1: it's better in colonial America anyway. So they say, all right,
Speaker 1: fuck it, let's go rural, and let's go to the
Speaker 1: edge of colonial control what they consider the edge of
Speaker 1: civilization Western New York. Sure. Starting in the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: Puffs Crew started heading out west to the frontier to
Speaker 1: scope out spots to start a settlement. They sold all
Speaker 1: their ship all the like meeting houses in Rhode Island
Speaker 1: in Connecticut or whatever, and they bought some land fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand acres. A few families go ahead and they start building.
Speaker 1: Then on February nine, Puff and Puffs buds about sixty
Speaker 1: families and all head out to the frontier and wagons
Speaker 1: and treacherous roads doing the work of colonization, and for
Speaker 1: all their anti racist principles. I mean, in the thirty
Speaker 1: years or so after independence, the US expanded westward so
Speaker 1: fast that it's stole more territory than had had stolen
Speaker 1: in the entire two hundred years prior. And the indigenous
Speaker 1: people who sided with the British crown were probably right
Speaker 1: about which party to back. So off they go into
Speaker 1: the quote unquote wilderness and set up a settlement called Okay,
Speaker 1: they're really original namers. It's called Friends Settlement. They really
Speaker 1: did get what a convention would be like, yep, this
Speaker 1: is the one. Yeah, we just think literal yeah. And
Speaker 1: so they're over in the Finger Lakes chunk of western
Speaker 1: New York and an area that colonial armies had laid
Speaker 1: waste to the hode and a showne on the folks
Speaker 1: who had had sided with the British, and they had
Speaker 1: destroyed entire communities and fields and ship And it was
Speaker 1: those soldiers who came back with detailed maps of where
Speaker 1: there was fertile soil that spurred the push of settlers
Speaker 1: into the area. MH. But I will say it's it's
Speaker 1: easy a sitting judgment of people like Puff who are
Speaker 1: well meaning and go off and settle stolen land growing
Speaker 1: crops in the ashes of genocide. But I'm a white
Speaker 1: settler to I live on Maso Womack Land, and in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm like, well, I didn't do the steel,
Speaker 1: and it was stolen hundreds of years ago, but I
Speaker 1: live with the privilege that came from it having been
Speaker 1: stolen by people who look like me. And I'm not
Speaker 1: the best person to articulate any of the stuff I'm
Speaker 1: talking about right now, but I think it's worth thinking
Speaker 1: about whenever one we should be aware of people are
Speaker 1: not going off into like Virgin territory or whatever, and
Speaker 1: to like how we sit, you know, hundreds of years
Speaker 1: later in that sense. So that's where the public universal
Speaker 1: friend goes traveling preacher time is over. Now it's time
Speaker 1: for everyone to live in perfect bliss and harmony under
Speaker 1: God's law a k a. Puff law. But they fucked
Speaker 1: up the land purchase because the ship was hotly contested,
Speaker 1: super shady there in court constantly for it, which is
Speaker 1: like funny because I don't think of like when I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: we're off to go settle the wilderness. I don't think
Speaker 1: like and I'm going to be in court constantly about
Speaker 1: exactly where the boundaries are of my property or whatever.
Speaker 1: They buy their own land three times from three different people.
Speaker 1: They clear the forest, they plant crops, They live off
Speaker 1: of bottled milk and hard times, and like all rugged frontiersman,
Speaker 1: this is a story that gets talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: People definitely talk about this part. They subsist off of
Speaker 1: government subsidies. When there's famine and everyone out involved in
Speaker 1: the new land rush starts going hungry because more people
Speaker 1: are going and they can possibly grow food in time.
Speaker 1: And I don't think there's any shame in the help.
Speaker 1: But I just think I pointed out because you have
Speaker 1: this like rugged individualist myth American doing it yourself, traveling
Speaker 1: the bar and waste land where no soul has ever
Speaker 1: stepped before. Too. Uh huh. Yeah, exactly. None of that
Speaker 1: is richt at all. Yeah, with a map of where
Speaker 1: all the fertile fields are, because you've destroyed all of
Speaker 1: the ones that were owned by the other people. And
Speaker 1: then as soon as you get there, you turn around
Speaker 1: and the government gives you handouts in order to help
Speaker 1: you do this work. Yeah, sixty people by eight and
Speaker 1: it's the largest white settlement in Western New York. And
Speaker 1: some sources say that they were friendly with the indigenous
Speaker 1: people of the area and defended them, but I don't
Speaker 1: know whether that means physically or verbally. And I see
Speaker 1: vague references to how the Universal Friends stuck up for
Speaker 1: them here and there in court, but I can't find
Speaker 1: any details of that. And I think everyone either wants
Speaker 1: to vilify Puff for being an evil cross stresser or
Speaker 1: wants to heroize Puff for being a virtuous trans ancestor.
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to figure out what's what right. Um,
Speaker 1: the queer icon crowd wants to downplay their colonial nous,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I know, I want Puffed to have
Speaker 1: been doing good stuff. I get really sad when I'm like,
Speaker 1: and then here's their dumb rules and then here's their
Speaker 1: dumb fucking whiteness and all this ship. But who knows.
Speaker 1: They did go along in to help sign some treaties
Speaker 1: with the Hodna Shawnee that were like, they were there
Speaker 1: in like a in a reasonably good sense, and they
Speaker 1: were personally well received by the Hoda Shawnee. But I
Speaker 1: don't fucking no overall. In addition to fucking up their
Speaker 1: land purchase, they also fucked up the communal living thing
Speaker 1: because they're Americans and they care about capital p property.
Speaker 1: So when they pulled their funds to buy the parcel
Speaker 1: of land, they then parceled it back out to people
Speaker 1: based on how much they contributed. And why did this
Speaker 1: funk everyone up? Because gentrification the price of land skyrocketed.
Speaker 1: The rich people were suddenly able to sell out everyone else,
Speaker 1: so they did. All the rich people conspired and took
Speaker 1: control of almost all the property they had bought, and
Speaker 1: then they leveraged it and they sold it and they
Speaker 1: all became real estate prospectors. This is not puff. This
Speaker 1: is like the fucking judge and all these other fucking assholes.
Speaker 1: And they made banks selling all the stolen land like
Speaker 1: they brought back like ten times their own investment in
Speaker 1: only a couple of years. Tell me, it's a story
Speaker 1: that you've heard before. It's like a if a house
Speaker 1: full of mostly white queers moved to a non white,
Speaker 1: gentrifying neighborhood and then the rich ones among them flipped
Speaker 1: the house a couple of years in and fucked over
Speaker 1: everyone else. Yeah, and then the whole neighborhoods full of
Speaker 1: yep yep. So that's what the first non baronary cult
Speaker 1: America did. Yeah, that is, um, not much has changed.
Speaker 1: That seems to be the theme of the theme of
Speaker 1: this episode is that not much of queer culture has changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least white queer culture. Yeah, well why, I don't
Speaker 1: know whether it's changed, whether non white queer culture changed.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there's one lesson I've learned while
Speaker 1: researching the show. It's that you've got to rob the
Speaker 1: rich people. They can't just stay rich and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's cool, Well, I'll just act like equals. The Paris
Speaker 1: Commune should have robbed the bank, and the Society of
Speaker 1: Universal Friends should have said, if you want to be equals,
Speaker 1: then you've gotta be fucking equals and have the land
Speaker 1: held in trust between all of us. You don't got
Speaker 1: to kill the rich, you don't even have to punish them.
Speaker 1: You just have to stop them being richer than other people.
Speaker 1: That's that's the lesson that I've learned so far old researching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or else, eventually they'll bulldoze all that low income housing
Speaker 1: to put up a fancy coffee shop. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: four for one of those one of those four story
Speaker 1: apartment buildings. Actually what they built was the first grist
Speaker 1: mill and timber mill. Ah uh. And so the judge,
Speaker 1: guy Potter, he put up most of the money, and
Speaker 1: he was if anyone was grifting this whole time, it
Speaker 1: was probably him. He probably wasn't grifting. He probably was
Speaker 1: like okay, whatever I mean, he was a jug. It's
Speaker 1: it's yeah. Um. So soon him and his son's own
Speaker 1: fifty five acres and seventeen investors get the whole chunk
Speaker 1: of society land. They own all of Friends Settlement and
Speaker 1: everyone else is basically fucked. I feel like that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be allowed. You shouldn't be allowed to own land, especially
Speaker 1: that much. Yeah. Are you saying that people shouldn't be
Speaker 1: allowed to own more than they use of land? Pretty much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't shouldn't own it in the first place. But yeah,
Speaker 1: with a different conception of ownership maybe um yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Also really importantly, Friends Settlement, they could have been Frenton.
Speaker 1: Frenton would have been cool friend and town. Yeah, town
Speaker 1: of friends. Okay. So so Puff and company they move again,
Speaker 1: this time to get away from those greedy assholes, and
Speaker 1: they settle a new place called New Jerusalem or sometimes
Speaker 1: just Jerusalem, Okay, which is deviating a little bit from
Speaker 1: their naming standard. But yeah, not a not a giant
Speaker 1: fan though, No, no, I'm not a big fan. So
Speaker 1: here's another thing that will sound unfamiliar to you. Puff
Speaker 1: wouldn't sign their dead names to any of the documents
Speaker 1: based so their life companion, who never gets called that,
Speaker 1: but was clearly that Sarah Richards, signs for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And then Sarah Richards, the second in charge, she goes
Speaker 1: and dies of being alive in the eighteenth century. I
Speaker 1: guess she's thirty six and she's in ill health. So
Speaker 1: she dies At the new spot. They build Puff a
Speaker 1: house and then all the single celibate women live there together.
Speaker 1: And and because Puff was so otherworldly, they didn't eat
Speaker 1: with everyone else. They took their meals privately with another woman,
Speaker 1: their new second in command. Uh huh. So it really
Speaker 1: really sounds like I'm describing a gay eighteenth century cult.
Speaker 1: Yes they might have been, but if they were, they
Speaker 1: probably were less the queer orgies type and more the
Speaker 1: secret gay marriages type. Yeah, I mean, with their celibacy stuff,
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because who knows if they would have
Speaker 1: considered lesbian sex to actually be sex at all, Like
Speaker 1: it's I I wonder how I'm not I'm not like
Speaker 1: a sex historian, um, but I wonder how that would
Speaker 1: have been framed. Now, I don't know. I think I
Speaker 1: think it would have still been seen bad, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, because their problem was less pro creation like
Speaker 1: they are. Actually instead of saying maritle sexes for procreation,
Speaker 1: they were saying maritle sexes a safe container within which
Speaker 1: to hold your horrible, horrible, evil lust carnal desires. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so if you're going to fox someone, you should suck
Speaker 1: your spouse or whatever. Right that That's at least what
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, puff was very consistent
Speaker 1: about publicly. So they go off and they they have
Speaker 1: um New Jerusalem, and even in the fucking woods, they
Speaker 1: can't get away from judgment. People would come and visit
Speaker 1: the weird quote lady preacher like basically as a tourist
Speaker 1: attraction and write essays about how they don't like puff
Speaker 1: Um once again, not for religious doctrine, just for not
Speaker 1: being ladylike, and sometimes for like not eating dinner with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just like queer freak show type stuff. And
Speaker 1: then they would also write complaining about how sometimes husbands
Speaker 1: weren't the head of the households, sometimes the wives didn't
Speaker 1: have children. A lot of places claimed that the whole
Speaker 1: society died out because they didn't have any children at all,
Speaker 1: but that's actually not true. That they did have children.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a total celibacy thing. They just didn't have
Speaker 1: funk off numbers of children, like they didn't have most
Speaker 1: of them didn't have like thirteen children. So the average
Speaker 1: household in the society had four children, and the average
Speaker 1: household elsewhere in the area had seven. And most most
Speaker 1: parents had their kids before joining. If you joined without
Speaker 1: kids and then had kids in the cult, you would
Speaker 1: end up with two point five of them. Well average
Speaker 1: wouldn't theoretically end up with a kid, I mean who knows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and actually there and so there's all these stories also
Speaker 1: about unmarried folks living together, which sort of throws a
Speaker 1: wrench in the whole like how they viewed celibacy thing.
Speaker 1: And there's also story stories about men not giving a
Speaker 1: ship if their wives had kids with other men. And
Speaker 1: it's like these are thrown as like tiny little practically
Speaker 1: footnotes and all these history books. And it's so annoying
Speaker 1: because I'm like, you're describing a gay polly cult. Just
Speaker 1: fucking do it. Just tell me, tell me what happened,
Speaker 1: commit to the bit. Yeah, and Puff was a disciplinarian,
Speaker 1: but a goofy. One one guy might have been a
Speaker 1: boy climbed a tree to peek into a women's bedroom
Speaker 1: at the main house where the celibate women all lived.
Speaker 1: And he fell and he broke his shoulder. And when
Speaker 1: he and when he was confronted about how he broke
Speaker 1: his shoulder, he was like, I was peeking into the windows.
Speaker 1: So so Puff made him wear a cowbell around his
Speaker 1: neck for months. That's funny. Um. One woman laughed too much,
Speaker 1: which was in pious of her, and had her mouth
Speaker 1: sealed up with strips of paper temporarily. Oh no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one man was forced to wear a woman's cap
Speaker 1: for a while in public to humiliate him. And I
Speaker 1: have no idea what his offense was. Yes, it's yeah, classic,
Speaker 1: but like this feels like the cult leader version of
Speaker 1: those people who take pictures of their Instagram pictures of
Speaker 1: their dogs holding up like shame signs. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's cringe e. But it's not as bad as a
Speaker 1: lot of other things that are happening in the area.
Speaker 1: Like this idiosyncratic discipline probably makes them one of the
Speaker 1: least authoritarian sects in America. Yeah, it's also possible that
Speaker 1: none of the discipliney happened. There's so many people who
Speaker 1: are committed to follow in too, like like people are
Speaker 1: just like committed to proving that Puff is like a monster,
Speaker 1: and so there's so much ship written about puffing and
Speaker 1: print and also in these rumors, there's rumors that I
Speaker 1: believe sometimes come from people who later left the group,
Speaker 1: that both men and women were sneaking into Puff's bed
Speaker 1: at night. Once again, tiny throwaway lines. Yeah, the settlement
Speaker 1: lasted for decades but never grew. It just slowly declined.
Speaker 1: Um they were too isolated to gain new recruits. Existing
Speaker 1: believers started to drift away, especially the rich men, basically
Speaker 1: the people who had a lot to lose. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't even like most of the men left, but almost
Speaker 1: everyone who left were men. One guy, one of the
Speaker 1: real estate prospecting potter boys, managed to get the friend
Speaker 1: arrested because okay, so so Puff gave puff sister a horse,
Speaker 1: but the sister was married to a potter boy. So
Speaker 1: then Puff asked for the horseback and the sister gave
Speaker 1: it back but didn't ask the husband first. So that's
Speaker 1: stealing because the wife's property is the husband was the
Speaker 1: husband's property. Yeah. Yeah, and Puff refused to cooperate with
Speaker 1: the warrants at all at first because it was in
Speaker 1: their dead name. And finally they like went down to
Speaker 1: the court house and posted their own bail under the
Speaker 1: name of ye universal Friend commonly called Jemima Wilkinson, which
Speaker 1: is how they basically handled it every time they were
Speaker 1: like forced to use their dead name. Eventually, in sev
Speaker 1: another warrant went out for the public Universal Friend, this
Speaker 1: time for the charge of blasphemy. Basically, people were like,
Speaker 1: Puff is claiming to be Jesus and Puff was probably
Speaker 1: not claiming to be Jesus. Puff was kind of into
Speaker 1: the like sometimes it was sort of neither confirmed nor
Speaker 1: deny being Jesus, but mostly was like, I am Jesus's messenger.
Speaker 1: But people figured if they claimed that Puff claimed to
Speaker 1: be Jesus, they would get more headway. Yeah, and Puff
Speaker 1: didn't want to go to court or jail, so Puff
Speaker 1: refused to let them for a while. The first time
Speaker 1: someone came to rest Puff, Puff fucked off at a
Speaker 1: gallop and outran their pursuers. The second time, two men
Speaker 1: showed up at the friend at Friend's house to arrest them,
Speaker 1: and the celibate women who lived there surrounded the men,
Speaker 1: ripped their clothes, and physically threw them out of the house. Cool.
Speaker 1: Eventually it took a posse of thirty men to arrest Puff.
Speaker 1: Almost all of them were people who had the men
Speaker 1: who had left the society. They broke down the door
Speaker 1: of Puff's house with a fucking axe in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. They found Puff in too poor health
Speaker 1: to travel, and so Puff was like, all right, fine,
Speaker 1: look y'all fucking win. I'll turn myself in the morning.
Speaker 1: And they were like, oh, yeah, okay, you can turn
Speaker 1: yourself in the morning. But you know it won't turn
Speaker 1: you in unless you know what loone snitch on you
Speaker 1: and get you taken away by a posse. If any
Speaker 1: if any of the ads that follow are likely to
Speaker 1: turn you in, we're sorry, and you can send your
Speaker 1: comploints to at a writing quay. Yeah, it totally will
Speaker 1: get the notification and here's some ads today, and we
Speaker 1: are back and Puff actually does go turn themselves in
Speaker 1: in the morning. I believe, uh the charges blasphemy And
Speaker 1: basically everyone is mostly mad that Puff is upsetting, even
Speaker 1: though like legal court, Stuff is saying that Puff is
Speaker 1: upsetting the proper social order of who's supposed to be
Speaker 1: in charge. But there's only one problem with their case
Speaker 1: against Puff. Blasphemy is not a crime. Even back then
Speaker 1: in New York, blasphemy not a crime. And it took
Speaker 1: a year for the indictment to fall through, dear God,
Speaker 1: even though it's literally not a crime. It's like if
Speaker 1: someone showed up and was like, you, ma'am, have painted
Speaker 1: your bedroom read? And I was like no, And then
Speaker 1: I got charged tragged off the court. Uh so eventually,
Speaker 1: but while they were in court and the judges were like,
Speaker 1: this isn't even a crime more, sorry, do you want
Speaker 1: to give a sermon instead of a defense? And Puff
Speaker 1: was like I do, and stood up and gave a
Speaker 1: sermon and everyone in court agreed. It was a perfectly
Speaker 1: fine sermon because at the end of the taste is
Speaker 1: not theologically radical at all. I mean, it'd be cooler
Speaker 1: if they were, you know. But so then the anti
Speaker 1: puff faction of these rich, politically connected men, they keep
Speaker 1: doing other ship and their quest to destroy the society
Speaker 1: and return the rule of men. And this is like,
Speaker 1: this is about that. It's also a land grab. But
Speaker 1: these are the people who have already grabbed tons of land.
Speaker 1: This is like they're mad that they were emasculated by
Speaker 1: not being in charge for a while. They sue over
Speaker 1: land dispute, some of its petty. Some of it ends
Speaker 1: up evicting and a bunch of society folks from their homes,
Speaker 1: leaves people in debtors prison, and the fate of Jerusalem
Speaker 1: itself was taken at a court thanks to more fuckory
Speaker 1: and patriarchal interpretations of property law because the signer Sarah Richards,
Speaker 1: who is dead now, had been the legal property owner
Speaker 1: and her kid, Eliza's husband Enoch tried to grab all
Speaker 1: the property. And I just want to take a moment
Speaker 1: here to appreciate how cool the name Enoch is. I mean,
Speaker 1: Enoch is is the class a classically cool name. Shout
Speaker 1: out to all the Enoch's listening. You've got a cool name.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the Book of Enoch, which I totally
Speaker 1: know it is. Is that a Bible thing? Kind of
Speaker 1: it's the Bible but weirder? Huh? Okay, yeah, ever heard
Speaker 1: of like Anochian magic? No, it's the stuff John d practiced.
Speaker 1: It's based on the Book of Enoch. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the weirdest you can go while still
Speaker 1: kind of under Judaism or Christianity. Okay, okay, it sounds
Speaker 1: ali adjacent to me. So this Enoch no good trying
Speaker 1: to funk over everyone and basically steal a bunch of ships.
Speaker 1: And so the society argues that Sarah Richards yes had
Speaker 1: signed a paperwork, but it was just in trust for
Speaker 1: the society and for Puff. And it took a fucking
Speaker 1: like decade or maybe I don't know, some longest number
Speaker 1: of years in court, tons of appeals. The society wins
Speaker 1: and they get to keep their town, and it bankrupts
Speaker 1: them and trust is like broken, and tons of people
Speaker 1: have left and everyone's upset. It doesn't destroy the society,
Speaker 1: but it deals at a blow from which it never
Speaker 1: really recovers. And Puff was forty three years old when
Speaker 1: they died in eighteen nineteen from heart disease after years
Speaker 1: of infirmity. The body they were in was older than that,
Speaker 1: like sixty six years old total. And their followers put
Speaker 1: Puff's body in a box full of lime in the
Speaker 1: basement just in case, you know, Puff might get resurrected.
Speaker 1: They were like, this is not happening again. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And so after a couple of years, when Puff doesn't
Speaker 1: come back from the dead, two men carry the body
Speaker 1: off and buried in an unmarked grave, which is a
Speaker 1: Quaker tradition, and supposedly the two men passed along the
Speaker 1: location through generations, each telling their firstborn where the body
Speaker 1: is buried. The Dowingston Republican, which is a newspaper, so
Speaker 1: the following in their obituary for Puff about how the
Speaker 1: followers had started a commune. On this occasion, much mischief
Speaker 1: was done in the community. Men left their wives, and
Speaker 1: we believe in some instances women their husbands to follow
Speaker 1: her into the wilderness. One of the requisites for initiation
Speaker 1: into her church was fasting for forty days, during which
Speaker 1: time a specific allowance of flower only was allowed to
Speaker 1: each person, barely sufficient to keep a soul and body together,
Speaker 1: which in some cases produced delirium. These particulars are gleaned
Speaker 1: from the wreck of our earliest recollections and may not
Speaker 1: be in every particular strictly correct. The newspapers like, we
Speaker 1: might have this wrong, but we think we think it
Speaker 1: was bad. I mean, I guess that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm saying like, I don't know if this is right.
Speaker 1: And then that newspaper quotes another newspaper which is unnamed,
Speaker 1: about Puff's death and again continues to miss gender them.
Speaker 1: She a few moments previous to her death, placed herself
Speaker 1: in her chapel and called in her disciples one by
Speaker 1: one and gave each a solemn admiration. Then raised her hands,
Speaker 1: closed her eyes, and gave up the ghost. Thus the
Speaker 1: second Wonder of the Western Country has made her final exit.
Speaker 1: Much curiosity has been excited since her departure. The roads
Speaker 1: leading to her mansion were, for a few days after
Speaker 1: her death literally filled with crowds of people who had
Speaker 1: been or We're going to see the friend exclamation mark
Speaker 1: all caps. Her mansion stands on a barren heath, admits
Speaker 1: the solitudes of the wilderness at some distance from this settlement.
Speaker 1: I wonder what the first curiosity of the Western Country was,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they mentioned that they're the second, so that
Speaker 1: does that does leave one to question. Yeah, if anyone,
Speaker 1: if anyone knows, tell me not that I right, okay,
Speaker 1: just actually at me, just your other at that you
Speaker 1: check more off? Yes, yes, totally and my notifications turned
Speaker 1: off on I right, Okay. This is a funny joke.
Speaker 1: It's always funny. Is the person who I'm talking about
Speaker 1: isn't here, and half the audience might not have any
Speaker 1: idea what I'm talking about. That's what makes it. That's funny.
Speaker 1: That's what jokes are based on. That's what you call
Speaker 1: a L O L. Is that what the us some
Speaker 1: of the kids say, Sophie, you really tapped into that
Speaker 1: gen Z TikTok culture there, Sophie. Thanks care so speaking
Speaker 1: of gen Z in no way at all. The society
Speaker 1: of Universal Friends. They carry on for a couple of
Speaker 1: decades longer and slowly start shrinking, and then they die
Speaker 1: away completely in the middle of the nineteenth century, which
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Their beliefs outside gender weren't different from
Speaker 1: anyone else's, and Puff had really been holding it together.
Speaker 1: A couple of dudes showed up afterwards and claimed have
Speaker 1: been told by the spirit of Puff to take control.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, like I'm supposed to be in charge now, right,
Speaker 1: what's up? And sure, sure, buddy, yeah, what have I
Speaker 1: was stuck around for a couple of years before everyone
Speaker 1: was like, you're fucking grifter and kicked him out. Um
Speaker 1: and Puff did right into their will that all the
Speaker 1: poor members be taken care of forever, so like all
Speaker 1: the like basically money of the church was put into
Speaker 1: a trust to take care of the people who couldn't
Speaker 1: take care of themselves. And even in their will, they
Speaker 1: tried their hardest to avoid their dead name. The first
Speaker 1: sentence said that it was the last will and testament
Speaker 1: of the person called the Universal Friend, who in the
Speaker 1: year one thousand, seven hundred and seventy six was called
Speaker 1: Jemima Wilkinson and ever since that time the Universal Friend,
Speaker 1: and it signed with an X so that they didn't
Speaker 1: have to write their name out. Wonderful, I know. And
Speaker 1: people talk about the second like it's this failure because
Speaker 1: it died out, But I don't think they gave a
Speaker 1: shit about that. They they recruited enough people for their
Speaker 1: new town, they set up their new town, and then
Speaker 1: they lived their lives and then they died, and they
Speaker 1: succeeded against the world that was like fucking dead set
Speaker 1: on seeing them destroyed. They survived being driven out of
Speaker 1: Philly by an angry mob. They survived decades of attempts
Speaker 1: to have their own townships stolen from them by angry dudes.
Speaker 1: People tried to get Puff thrown in prison for charges
Speaker 1: that don't even exist. And whatever life they wanted to lead,
Speaker 1: they let it. Maybe it was gay, maybe it was ace,
Speaker 1: maybe a solivate romantic. Maybe the men and women were
Speaker 1: both just tired of bullshit gender roles have been foisted
Speaker 1: on them and wind up quiet religious lives. They lived
Speaker 1: in relative peace for decades doing whatever the funk their
Speaker 1: thing was. Any verdict Care or Sophie and what their
Speaker 1: thing was, I mean, yeah, I fe feel I feel
Speaker 1: like it could be wrong to come down hard one
Speaker 1: way or another. It's like they were definitely doing their thing.
Speaker 1: Their thing could be a lot of different things, like
Speaker 1: aspects of their I mean, obviously they were queer and
Speaker 1: like the gender sense, but I mean that they definitely
Speaker 1: tried to create their own thing outside the regular confounds
Speaker 1: of society that they found restricting. So they're clear in
Speaker 1: that general sense as well, whether that related to how
Speaker 1: they intersect with like sexuality. It's challenging because so much
Speaker 1: of their stuff is around like celibacy, but just who
Speaker 1: who knows, who knows what that actually means? Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: like within within their context, totally. It could have been
Speaker 1: like a sexual romantic you know, like yeah, like it
Speaker 1: could be so many things. If I, if I were
Speaker 1: to put my money on a spot, I would claim
Speaker 1: that Puff was probably a sexual and um or celibate,
Speaker 1: whether or not a sexual, but in romantic relationships with
Speaker 1: some of these people, you know. Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that is what happened. So and they
Speaker 1: managed two different types of escapes from patriarchy, which are
Speaker 1: both really cool. One, Puff escaped from the confine of
Speaker 1: the label of women and took on what in a
Speaker 1: modern context would be considered a trans not binary identity.
Speaker 1: But to they in the Society of Universal Friends also
Speaker 1: dramatically expanded role of women. The women in the group,
Speaker 1: while still staying within the social category of women. They
Speaker 1: dressed like men, some of them took men's names, They
Speaker 1: went unmarried, they preached their own property, all of that,
Speaker 1: And and I bring this up because these are often
Speaker 1: presented as opposite goals. You either escape womanhood or you
Speaker 1: embrace it and expand what's possible within it. But you
Speaker 1: can just fucking do both, and those are not diametrically opposed.
Speaker 1: Now those things can go concurrently. Gender is not that
Speaker 1: it's not a strict set of rules determined by God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's something that we invent because we're
Speaker 1: our own gods and we can create gods at will. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One final mystery. A lot of the society's history is
Speaker 1: buried by time, although we have also a lot of
Speaker 1: other we I don't I don't have it. Various historical
Speaker 1: societies have a lot of the history. Um And at
Speaker 1: one point a descendant sued for a trunk full of
Speaker 1: papers and then kept or destroyed some of them before
Speaker 1: returning the rest. And Okay, I like, I like to
Speaker 1: think that these lost documents are proof about the queer sex.
Speaker 1: Called it probably worth They're just like burning a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of like erotic poetry. I'm gonna go with you, Magpie.
Speaker 1: I agree of the queer sex is fact. And that's
Speaker 1: the tale of the public universal friend who wound up
Speaker 1: way more interesting, but also less perfect. And I've been
Speaker 1: led to believe when I started this research, and which
Speaker 1: I guess is the truth about basically most people that
Speaker 1: people heroize way messier, way less perfect, way more interesting.
Speaker 1: But it's they're always worth considering. I think, no one,
Speaker 1: I mean, some people should be wholly discounted. But I
Speaker 1: think the people that we're talking about on this podcast
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, you shouldn't. Obviously we're like against the
Speaker 1: idea of a hero. Yeah, but if even if someone
Speaker 1: has some things that you don't like, like all of
Speaker 1: the rules for their church, they're still worth considering within
Speaker 1: the context of what they were actually going against, right,
Speaker 1: like what what systems they were pushing back on, and
Speaker 1: how they were trying to deal with questions around like
Speaker 1: identity and expression and systems of patriarchy. Um, because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard to go from zero to sixty. Yeah, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: So you're ready to start a sect garrison, I've considered
Speaker 1: it for a while, definitely, Um, I mean I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to start of secret society. Uh, and I may
Speaker 1: or may not have started multiple secret societies, but no,
Speaker 1: always it's it's always it's always interested me as as
Speaker 1: an idea. One time, I um, I fictionally like literally
Speaker 1: created a fiction zine about a secret society and distributed
Speaker 1: it and there was an address that said, if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about the secret society, contact of
Speaker 1: following address. And within a year that house burned down.
Speaker 1: Oh my good, good for you anyway, So I just
Speaker 1: gotta start. I'm just gonna start doing that and putting
Speaker 1: the address of my enemies. Sophie, what about you? You're
Speaker 1: gonna start a sect? And if so, what would the
Speaker 1: tenants be? I mean, I if I would, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell tell anybody on this podcast. But Garrison, I do
Speaker 1: have a list of addresses. The earth isn't die, it's
Speaker 1: being killed. Do the killing of names and addresses? Gay?
Speaker 1: Do you have any plugables for us? At the end here? Um,
Speaker 1: let's see. Well, if you want to hear me talk
Speaker 1: about random parts of queerness and gender on occasion, I
Speaker 1: will probably do so at certain points on it could
Speaker 1: happen here at the show that I co write some
Speaker 1: episodes of, I will be tabling a whole bunch of weird, weird,
Speaker 1: weird books and and zines at Portland's Red Pride. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about that. You can use
Speaker 1: the internet, um yeah, and pictures of my new cat
Speaker 1: on at at Hungry about Tie, Margaret, don't you have
Speaker 1: a book coming out? Is it available for preorder? Perhaps
Speaker 1: maybe it might be by the time you listen to this.
Speaker 1: It's called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow when it comes
Speaker 1: out from a k presl in September twenty and pre
Speaker 1: orders may or may not be up, and preorders matter
Speaker 1: way too much into the weird like algorithmic metric run
Speaker 1: world that we live in. Just just saying, um yeah.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram at Margaret killed Joy.
Speaker 1: And I have another podcast it's called Live Like the
Speaker 1: World Is Dying and it's about prepper stuff, I mean,
Speaker 1: not prepper, a community and individual preparedness and these uncertain times.
Speaker 1: That was like a legal disclaimer. Yeah for some for
Speaker 1: some very obvious reason, a lot of people don't love
Speaker 1: the term prepper. Yeah, prepper has a lot of connotations.
Speaker 1: But yeah, whatever, Yeah, cool, that is, that is very cool.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just happy to continue the tradition of
Speaker 1: it's it's not quite plagiarizing zines. I just they're just
Speaker 1: written by other people. I'll have I'll have at least
Speaker 1: one zine that I wrote on my table, all right,
Speaker 1: but most most of them are from other people because
Speaker 1: I'm too busy writing podcasts. Yeah, it'd be like that sometimes,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It's we can more more, more
Speaker 1: magic gendersts, I think would be being a good direction. Yes,
Speaker 1: Garrison should write them, and so should you. Cool People
Speaker 1: Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: but more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts up m