Speaker 1: Oh boy, welcome to America. The podcast. Wait is that?
Speaker 1: Is that what we're calling it now? I don't think
Speaker 1: that's true. We just had like two episodes on international
Speaker 1: tourfs that think we are going to we're trying to
Speaker 1: be a little beyond America. I fucked it up. I
Speaker 1: fucked it up. Well that's the podcast. Goodbye, everybody. See
Speaker 1: Usually at this point you say, Garrison take over. All right,
Speaker 1: well let's let's get into this. What are we talking
Speaker 1: about today? Who are we? Where are we? What is life?
Speaker 1: Where it could happen? Here? Where is God? Final episode
Speaker 1: of the war on transpeople? Which means when this episode,
Speaker 1: when this episode is done, that means the war will
Speaker 1: be over. We did it, everybody, and whatever God's wants were,
Speaker 1: if long abandoned this place. We did get pretty good
Speaker 1: news about the governor of Utah, kind of surprising me here.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that just hit. It's nice. There's the there's that.
Speaker 1: I mean. Luckily, look, some of some of the bills
Speaker 1: that we've talked about actually have been shut down at
Speaker 1: this point. The Wisconsin Wisconsin bill got shut got got
Speaker 1: signed down surprisingly and in very very recently, like yeah,
Speaker 1: the past few days. Yeah. Um, there's a looks like
Speaker 1: there's still going to be injunctions on any investigations in
Speaker 1: Texas until the case gets put up. Still very much
Speaker 1: in the air. It's it's still in the courts, but
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's trying. It's at least it's kind
Speaker 1: of paused right now, and it's going to get settled
Speaker 1: at some point in either the lawsuit or in the
Speaker 1: higher courts. So we'll see, we'll see how that develops.
Speaker 1: But for right now, seems some things seem to be
Speaker 1: paused and some states are not are not fully passing it.
Speaker 1: I know there was a walkout by Disney employees today
Speaker 1: about over there don't say gay bill, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: see if that's gonna get signed. Um. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still still up in the air, but we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about something a little bit different, gonna do some
Speaker 1: We're gonna do some time travel. Oh boy, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I had to say. So we're going we're going
Speaker 1: to go back to another time in which there was
Speaker 1: a for a very brief period, a massive expansion in
Speaker 1: the knowledge about and sort of but both knowledge about
Speaker 1: and appearance of and safety of trans people and then
Speaker 1: it all catatrophically came crashing down. Oh good. And to
Speaker 1: help us with that is Robern Evidence my boss. Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: how are we doing, Garrison? How? How how are we doing? Oh?
Speaker 1: I'm doing actually fine, I'm just I'm just waiting for
Speaker 1: you to do your job and not passing over all. Right.
Speaker 1: So the important thing to understand is that like the
Speaker 1: kind of very concept of not just gay rights, but
Speaker 1: like our our modern attitudes towards like what it means
Speaker 1: to be homosexual and trans all have their origins in
Speaker 1: Germany in the not not just in the post war period,
Speaker 1: but really the last couple of decades of the Kaiser
Speaker 1: and the Weimar Republic. Like that is where kind of
Speaker 1: the modern Western attitudes towards what it like is to
Speaker 1: be homosexual really get formed, because obviously, like gay people
Speaker 1: have existed for forever, there's quite a bit of documentation,
Speaker 1: but if you look at like, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: two spirit folks within some indigenous American cultures, that's a
Speaker 1: very different attitude towards um, like what like trans people,
Speaker 1: I suppose the Western exactly. Yeah, so this is like
Speaker 1: they're there's Western quote unquote you know whatever. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: the actual thing that's going on, and like the the
Speaker 1: individual sexuality, and then there's kind of the the public
Speaker 1: concept of what it is um and and that is
Speaker 1: really forming. In Probably the seminal moment that kind of
Speaker 1: starts this progress is in August sixty seven, when a
Speaker 1: lawyer named Karl Heinrich Riks go before the sixth Congress
Speaker 1: of German Jurists in munich Um to urge them to
Speaker 1: repeal laws forbidding sex between men. So again there is
Speaker 1: still a kaiser and like this is this is before
Speaker 1: Germany is actually fully a nation, right because eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: when that happens, so Germany doesn't even really exist at
Speaker 1: this point. There's a series of like kings kind of
Speaker 1: being welded together slowly into a German state. And there
Speaker 1: is a lawyer getting up in front of like the
Speaker 1: council of different German jurists to urge an end to
Speaker 1: the laws that make it illegal for for men to
Speaker 1: have sex with each other. And one thing that's important
Speaker 1: to notice that obviously there are lesbians in this period
Speaker 1: of time, as again there have been throughout all of history.
Speaker 1: That's not really a legal problem, right, They do not
Speaker 1: face really legal repression and and I mean not to
Speaker 1: say that like there's not repression and things that they're
Speaker 1: dealing with, but it's not the same as as it
Speaker 1: is for like men who want to be in relationships
Speaker 1: with men. That's it's in fact a lot easier for
Speaker 1: women to be kind of like and this is not
Speaker 1: just Germany to be built to like kind of say
Speaker 1: like we lived together, right, like we're on and we
Speaker 1: live together like where. Yeah, that that because in part
Speaker 1: because men, just like I think a lot of like
Speaker 1: the men in this period just assume it's impossible like
Speaker 1: that women would do that or or the other side
Speaker 1: of it is like femininity is always presentuary, it's always
Speaker 1: like it's un as soon as the beauty symbol. So
Speaker 1: it makes more sense for women to find other women
Speaker 1: attractive because that's what beauty is is when is performative femininity,
Speaker 1: So like that's like way more obvious and it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense for but and it makes less sense for
Speaker 1: men to find other men attractive, and that's way more
Speaker 1: taboo because of the way that messages with like patriarchy. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think there could be a like gender
Speaker 1: studies and sexuality studies can have a lot of theorizings
Speaker 1: for how this is developed. But yeah, this this idea
Speaker 1: you can even see in like Victorian era and like
Speaker 1: run Us on Sarah of yeah, women who lived together
Speaker 1: and are very good friends, very very very close friends.
Speaker 1: I hope people don't feel like I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: flatten the history of like the concept of being a
Speaker 1: lesbian in the West, to to that at all, or
Speaker 1: trying to for that matter, flattened like homosexuality between men.
Speaker 1: But I am kind of making the point, and I
Speaker 1: am not the person who are kind of initially made
Speaker 1: this point. The scholarly work that I'm kind of basing
Speaker 1: my research on this on largely right now, and we're
Speaker 1: going to do an episode behind the Bastards that gets
Speaker 1: in two more of this, I think in the near future.
Speaker 1: But it's a called Gay Berlin by Robert baccy Um
Speaker 1: and in in the book, one of the things that
Speaker 1: Beach argues is that even though obviously same sex love
Speaker 1: is as old as the existence of quite a bit
Speaker 1: older actually than the existence of human beings, um, the
Speaker 1: public discourse around it, and like the political attempt to
Speaker 1: win rights for gay people starts in Germany in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, and it starts in this conference in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven. Um And and the guy who does
Speaker 1: this rix is a number one, is a gay man.
Speaker 1: Um And he had he had been open kind of
Speaker 1: to his relatives. He had started in the period before
Speaker 1: he gets up in front of all these lawyers to
Speaker 1: be open with like his family members that he was homosexual.
Speaker 1: Um but he had never like, he was not publicly out.
Speaker 1: And so on the same day that he appeals for
Speaker 1: a change in the legal code to make homosexuality legal
Speaker 1: in the German States is the day he comes out
Speaker 1: publicly as a gay man. Like. He does both of
Speaker 1: these things at the same time. And I want to
Speaker 1: from a New york Yeah, it's quite a moment. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from a New Yorker
Speaker 1: article that's covering all of this, and that's based again
Speaker 1: on the book Gay Berlin quote. He faced an audience
Speaker 1: of more than five hundred distinguished legal figures, and as
Speaker 1: he walked to the lectern, he felt a pang of fear.
Speaker 1: There was still time to keep silent, he later remembered
Speaker 1: telling himself, then there will be an end to all
Speaker 1: your heart pounding but Ulrix, who had earlier disclosed the
Speaker 1: same sex desires and letters to relatives, did not stop.
Speaker 1: He told the assembly that people with a sexual nature
Speaker 1: opposed to common custom were being persecuted for impule is
Speaker 1: that nature, mysteriously governing and creating, had implanted in them.
Speaker 1: Pandemonium erupted and Rix was forced to cut short his remarks.
Speaker 1: Still he had an effect. A few liberal minded colleagues
Speaker 1: accepted his notion of an innate gay identity, and a
Speaker 1: Bavarian official privately confessed to similar yearnings and a pamphlet
Speaker 1: titled Gladyus Furans or Raging sword or Rix wrote, I
Speaker 1: am proud that I found the strength to thrust the
Speaker 1: first lance into the flank of the hydra of public.
Speaker 1: It feel like that sometimes but incredibly based. Wow, what
Speaker 1: if there's a heaven? I hope this dude made it there,
Speaker 1: because one absolute unbelievable. So no, but like what it like, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the astonished, Like the astounding bravery that that takes. Um
Speaker 1: And he's essentially the first gay activist in a modern
Speaker 1: Western political context. Um, And it's interesting, like uh, within
Speaker 1: kind of the the next couple of years, things start
Speaker 1: to happen very quickly. Two years later in eighteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: uh and Austrian an Austrian writer I know right named
Speaker 1: Carl Kurt Benny um, who is kind of fighting sodomy
Speaker 1: laws and and and sodomy laws are laws that make
Speaker 1: everything that's not like missionary position sexily targeted towards towards
Speaker 1: gay men primarily. Um. So Carl Kurt Benny create like
Speaker 1: he's the guy who invinced the term homosexuality, like like
Speaker 1: two years after this is part of his like fight
Speaker 1: against these anti sodomy laws. Um. The eighteen eighties of
Speaker 1: Berlin police commissioner makes the decision to stop prosecuting gay bars. Um.
Speaker 1: And in fact, not only does he stop doing this,
Speaker 1: but he starts leading tours of the gay districts in
Speaker 1: Berlin just to like show off, like look at how
Speaker 1: it's kind of wow, what a weird picture of putting
Speaker 1: your head at least even like yeah, especially copy and
Speaker 1: like why are we arresting these people? Let's show this off?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So in eighteen nineties six, the very first
Speaker 1: gay magazine starts publishing in Germany in Berlin. Really do
Speaker 1: you want to know what it's called? Of course? Why
Speaker 1: of course, the German name is derrk eigen h and
Speaker 1: that means the self owning. That's great, it's pretty it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um. So the very next year, eighteen nineties seven,
Speaker 1: one of the primary heroes of the early gay rights struggle,
Speaker 1: physician Magnus Hirschfeld uh starts the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which
Speaker 1: is the first organized gay rights group in Western history
Speaker 1: at least. Um So, by the start of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff is in place, right And I
Speaker 1: think I'm even have been a little bit guilty of
Speaker 1: this in the past, of kind of focusing so much
Speaker 1: on Weimar Germany, um and all of the stuff that
Speaker 1: happens around game by rights there, and how progressive it was.
Speaker 1: This is building in Germany. Again, we don't consider the
Speaker 1: Kais or Reich as a particularly progressive place, but all
Speaker 1: of this is happening under the Kaisers. And there's there's
Speaker 1: so many things that are happening in the eighteen nineties
Speaker 1: and the start of the nineteen hundreds that directly mirror
Speaker 1: things that are happening in the United States in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. In fact, right as the century turns, um
Speaker 1: you start getting an advocate one of the first gay
Speaker 1: rights advocates in gay literature uses the phrase coins the
Speaker 1: phrase staying silent is death to like talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of gay literary, which is essentially the same slogan,
Speaker 1: the same stuff we're talking about right now with all
Speaker 1: of like the with with all the book bandings taking
Speaker 1: you know, doing a massive sweep of that the past
Speaker 1: the past few years. Yeah, this is nineteen hundred, like
Speaker 1: basically that this is starting. Um, so yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's even there's a lot of um. Activists
Speaker 1: start to complain and to try to complain both within
Speaker 1: like their own magazines and within like more public magazines
Speaker 1: about things like negative depictions of gay people in popular novels.
Speaker 1: They start to be the first arguments about whether or
Speaker 1: not it's morally right to out people who are gay
Speaker 1: but who are attached to anti gay organizations, because that
Speaker 1: starts happening absolutely, Um, it's it's sucking wild howld off.
Speaker 1: This is nothing new or than the sun. Yeah, but like,
Speaker 1: but this is also like the first time it happened
Speaker 1: in these types of countries, in these societies. Yeah, yea,
Speaker 1: but it is that is so yes, times of flat circle.
Speaker 1: But this is also like the first time it's happened,
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of been rehappening ever since. Then.
Speaker 1: It's important to note I didn't I didn't covers. When
Speaker 1: we start talking about Rix, well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who get angry, and obviously Rix is not successful
Speaker 1: in repealing the anti homosexuality laws. Um when he makes
Speaker 1: his speech. In addition to the people who are like
Speaker 1: yelling at him to sit down, there are like German
Speaker 1: deputies yelling no, no, no, let him continue, let him continue,
Speaker 1: like he needs to be allowed to talk. Um. So
Speaker 1: even like in this period of time, there are non
Speaker 1: gay people at a fairly high level in German politics
Speaker 1: who are like vocal allies and starting to become vocal allies.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty fascinating. So um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: World World War One happens, um doesn't go great for Germany,
Speaker 1: but you know, we we get after that. The Vimar
Speaker 1: Republic and the Viimar Republic is kind of the traditional
Speaker 1: era in which we talk a lot about, you know,
Speaker 1: gay rights starting to really move forward in significant ways.
Speaker 1: And uh so there's a lot of um, even kind
Speaker 1: of into the early nineteen thirties, some pretty interesting things
Speaker 1: that are happening in German society and like the mainstream
Speaker 1: elements of it. There's a film called ma Chin in
Speaker 1: Uniform in nineteen thirty one, which is the first like
Speaker 1: positive portrayal of lesbians in Western cinema. Um. Like thirty
Speaker 1: one is like again we're talking like right before uh
Speaker 1: Z the nazis kind of kind of come around. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's these like this this this police commissioner
Speaker 1: that we chatted about earlier. I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the people who's most interesting to me. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: to Hirshfeld a bit in in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: this this guy is named Leopold von Muerscheite Wholsheim. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get that right. But he's a
Speaker 1: big part of when we talk about gay Berlin, particularly
Speaker 1: during the Weimar years. Even though he's like during what
Speaker 1: while the Kaiser's in, He's why gay Berlin really happens
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Um. And it's in part
Speaker 1: because like he decides to stop cracking down on on
Speaker 1: gay people. Um. And like he's not gay, although his
Speaker 1: boss is, which is part of like what makes it easier. Um.
Speaker 1: For him to do this, and there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of debate about why he does this because he's not
Speaker 1: like a gay rights activist. Some people say that it's
Speaker 1: because is um he's worried that like gay people will
Speaker 1: become politically radicalized by the Reds and so if you
Speaker 1: stop cracking down on them, they won't go communists like that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like debate about like why he
Speaker 1: does this. Um. He's also there's a number of things
Speaker 1: that he like, he takes a lot of data on
Speaker 1: on gay people in Berlin, and he does this on everybody.
Speaker 1: He's a big data guy. So it's not particularly uh
Speaker 1: um harmful in his era, but it's some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that he gathers will be used by the Nazis
Speaker 1: later um, which is kind of a broader thing about
Speaker 1: like the wisdom of not letting the government get access
Speaker 1: to this like he has he founds a department of
Speaker 1: Homosexuals in eighteen eighty five that like lists the people
Speaker 1: that they know are gay, and and again like this
Speaker 1: is all so it's really a complicated thing that's that's
Speaker 1: happening here because he's not he's not this like thoroughly
Speaker 1: sympathetic figure. He's doing a lot of stuff that's that's
Speaker 1: weird and that will later have negative outcomes. But he's
Speaker 1: also by ending police persecution of gay people, um, at
Speaker 1: least in an organized way, really allowing gay culture to
Speaker 1: to blossom um in Berlin. Uh. And it's it's it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read another quote from that New Yorker article here.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, Mr scheid Holsenheim took a fairly benevolent
Speaker 1: attitude towards Berlin's same sex bars and dance halls, at
Speaker 1: least in the better healed parts of the city. He
Speaker 1: was on cordial terms with many regulars, and none other
Speaker 1: than Odious Strindberg testified in his autobiographical novel The Cloister,
Speaker 1: which evokes the same sex costume ball at the Cafe Nationale.
Speaker 1: And this is a the police inspector and his guests
Speaker 1: had seated themselves at a table in the center of
Speaker 1: one end of the room, close to which all the
Speaker 1: couples had to pass. The inspector called them by their
Speaker 1: Christian names, and some and some of the most interesting
Speaker 1: among them to his table. So he's kind of like
Speaker 1: going on safari like among the gay people in Berlin.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of weird. It's it's weird in
Speaker 1: a lot of way. Um, But he's also one of
Speaker 1: the things he does is he provides police help to
Speaker 1: gay people who are being blackmailed and like threatened withouting, um.
Speaker 1: And he'll even like counsel them on how to handle it,
Speaker 1: Like he provides like counselors and stuff. And he does
Speaker 1: this in part because like he's worried about, um, them
Speaker 1: committing suicide because they're being blackmailed, which is like a
Speaker 1: real problem in Germany in a bunch of other places. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this guy, like why this police commissioner winds up
Speaker 1: killing himself kind of in the early nineteen hundreds, I
Speaker 1: think because he wound up getting found to be taken
Speaker 1: bribes from some millionaire who gets in a lot of
Speaker 1: legal trouble for raping somebody. So again, he is a
Speaker 1: sketchy dude, but he's also like because he's he's got
Speaker 1: this weird almost like voyeuristic fascination with gay people, um,
Speaker 1: and some legitimate because there are legitimate humanitarian concerns. He's
Speaker 1: really worried about people committing suicide as a result of blackmail.
Speaker 1: So he's one of these figures we don't talk about
Speaker 1: enough in history where it's like the overall outcome of
Speaker 1: this guy's at work is pretty positive, but he does
Speaker 1: it for this like really confusing mix of reasons. He's
Speaker 1: just a very strange figure in history. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting looking at him, like like comparing him to
Speaker 1: like if you look at like what the US is
Speaker 1: doing in the fifties, right where there's this whole thing
Speaker 1: about like gay people are getting are gonna get are
Speaker 1: getting blackmailed, and the you know, the the US, the
Speaker 1: entire U S Security state loses his mind and becomes
Speaker 1: convinced that like these people are all going to become
Speaker 1: Soviet agents and you know, and instead of like doing
Speaker 1: counseling that there's the thing that they do is they
Speaker 1: they do the Lavender Scare and they start purging every
Speaker 1: gay person they can find from the entire US government.
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, it's it's it's interesting that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a guy in like late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds like like literally ruled Bay Monarch Berlin,
Speaker 1: and his policies are enormously better than like anything you're
Speaker 1: going to see for like half a century. He's he
Speaker 1: is way more woke on on this than like any
Speaker 1: New York police officer for a century today, upped up
Speaker 1: to the present day. In a lot of way, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about Magnus Hirschfeld a bit. Um. Hirshfield
Speaker 1: is very influenced by Ulrich, the guy we started the
Speaker 1: story with. His first like publication on the matter is
Speaker 1: called Sappho and Socrates and eight nineties six, which is
Speaker 1: again it's a story of a gay man who gets
Speaker 1: coerced into marriage. So this like uh, and who commits
Speaker 1: suicide as a result. So there's like a big with
Speaker 1: both um, you know, his police commissioner, with Hirshfeld, with
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are becoming activists in this period.
Speaker 1: A big part of why is, for one reason another
Speaker 1: the suicide rate among gay people, um, which is a
Speaker 1: huge problem today for for trans people in particular. And
Speaker 1: this is what it's interesting, like that that Utah governor
Speaker 1: you know, made the announcement today that like he's vetoing
Speaker 1: this trans sports ban in Utah, and he specifically cites
Speaker 1: like the suicide rate among trans people is so like
Speaker 1: high and it he could not morally conscience doing anything
Speaker 1: that would like make these kids feel othered and likelier
Speaker 1: to commit suicide. I mean, okay, well let's let's let's
Speaker 1: let's not go that far. He he he was, he
Speaker 1: was willing, He was willing to do the commissions. She
Speaker 1: just wasn't willing to do a full band. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying the the justification he gets for what he's
Speaker 1: doing is like, um, is the rate of suicide attempts
Speaker 1: among trans people. Um. Not to like whitewash that guy
Speaker 1: or utah. Like again, we've been doing this whole week's episodes,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting that you get um again, It's just
Speaker 1: kind of like the the issue for a long time
Speaker 1: has been that when you like other people and make
Speaker 1: it dangerous for them to be who they are openly,
Speaker 1: they will kill themselves. Um, a lot of them will.
Speaker 1: And that's that's a thing that is even by very
Speaker 1: problematic people in Germany in the eighteen nineties, folks recognize that,
Speaker 1: like this is a huge issue. UM. So yeah, Hirschfeld
Speaker 1: um starts this first organization that's like gay rights organization. Um.
Speaker 1: And he also is doing like a huge amount of
Speaker 1: of research. Um. He is fall again, he's following in
Speaker 1: l Rick's footsteps, he too believes that that homosexuality is congenital, right,
Speaker 1: it's something you're born with, as opposed to like a
Speaker 1: choice people make because of Dvans or whatever, which is
Speaker 1: still the big fight that we're having to this day.
Speaker 1: And he's also like, it's hard to there's a lot
Speaker 1: that like you can criticize about Hirschfeld scientifically and a
Speaker 1: lot of the research he does, among other things, there's
Speaker 1: like difficulty with like control groups and actually like being
Speaker 1: the kind of scientific sort of detachment that is necessary
Speaker 1: to study that. There's like critiques of his of his
Speaker 1: research that are valid, But one of the he's he's
Speaker 1: really like, it's wild how far ahead of the curvey
Speaker 1: is because one of the things that Hirschfeld introduces is
Speaker 1: the idea that sexuality is a spectrum um where there's
Speaker 1: what he calls sexual intermediaries between male and female. Um.
Speaker 1: He doesn't believe that like those are even particularly useful
Speaker 1: terms that sexuality kind of like it it again, that
Speaker 1: it's a spectrum, which is this thing that we are
Speaker 1: just now really starting to have good wider, kind of
Speaker 1: ranging conversations about today. Um Dan Hirschfeld is very much
Speaker 1: like kind of utopian and his belief that if you
Speaker 1: can scientifically study and understand where homose, like what homosexuality is,
Speaker 1: and that it is an innate characteristic, that people will
Speaker 1: stop being bigoted against gay folks right like his his
Speaker 1: belief is that science will end prejudice, um, just because
Speaker 1: the German people are so scientific and like they'll have
Speaker 1: to accept this if I could just like prove it
Speaker 1: with enough rigor, which is heartbreaking, heartbreaking that he was
Speaker 1: very very wrong. Um, And yeah, there's a number of
Speaker 1: things that are like really worth kind of within sort
Speaker 1: of the because he's not he's kind of come down
Speaker 1: now as this sort of um like saint like hero
Speaker 1: of the gay rights movement for good reason. But that
Speaker 1: does tend to flatten the fact that within his his
Speaker 1: day and within kind of the gay culture in Berlin
Speaker 1: in particular, there were a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: frustrated with him for a lot of reasons. Um, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of So there's this there's this split
Speaker 1: in gay culture in this period of time between um,
Speaker 1: gay men who are seen as more effeminate and what
Speaker 1: are called the masculinists, um and the masculinists they are
Speaker 1: not all or even mostly Nazis, but all of the
Speaker 1: gay Nazis are what you'd call masculinists, right, who are
Speaker 1: like I'm not having like like like I am so
Speaker 1: manly that the only person I can have sex with
Speaker 1: as a man, right, Like that I'm flattening even that
Speaker 1: quite a bit. But like you have guys like um
Speaker 1: Ernst Rome, who is the head of the Brownie Shirts
Speaker 1: and is is a is a gay Nazi and is
Speaker 1: like that's that's a significant, not an insignificant chunk of
Speaker 1: the Nazis. They will get murdered in the Night of
Speaker 1: Long Knives. And it is interesting that that Rome was
Speaker 1: outed by anti fascists. Yeah, he sure, like two years
Speaker 1: before he was murdered, and it was it was, it
Speaker 1: was he was specifically outed to so division within the
Speaker 1: Nazi party. Yes, and that does like also just playing it,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're you're talking about like, you know,
Speaker 1: people having debate over whether it's okay to out somebody,
Speaker 1: um if they you know, are part of that organization's right.
Speaker 1: That was something we mentioned previously and yeah, just like
Speaker 1: an interesting historical tidbit. Yeah, and it's it's um so
Speaker 1: uh again among like one of the things that the
Speaker 1: masculinists are doing is like a lot of them are
Speaker 1: married to women, and they're they're actually fine with this
Speaker 1: because again they think that like, well, you still need
Speaker 1: to like procreate and have Like no, it's not even
Speaker 1: all just about being having like a beard or whatever
Speaker 1: you wanna call it. Some of it is just like
Speaker 1: this attitude that you have a responsibility to make more
Speaker 1: Germans for the fatherland. But like then when it comes
Speaker 1: to it's kind of like the Greeks, they were not
Speaker 1: wildly dissimilar concepts, and a lot of the masculinists ideologically
Speaker 1: are wrapped up in the work of Max S. Turner
Speaker 1: Um and in fact, like the Self Owners that first
Speaker 1: gay magazine that was I was like, oh, that sounds
Speaker 1: like Start's egoism. Yeah, yes, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: that going and we we we again. I went to
Speaker 1: at some point provide a lot more detail on this
Speaker 1: because it's it's all fascinating, um. But there there are
Speaker 1: these big sort of like this big split, and there's
Speaker 1: he gets a lot of ship from the masculinists for
Speaker 1: because he also studies lesbians heavily, Like there's a decent
Speaker 1: chunk of the gay male population in Berlin who's against
Speaker 1: the research in the medical practice he's doing to help
Speaker 1: trans people, who was against his research on lesbians because
Speaker 1: they're like, well, this is this is the fight, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're the ones who were being legally cracked down
Speaker 1: on or whatever like. Um. So there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: like different cleavages and fractures kind of within the community
Speaker 1: at this time in Hirschfeld is not universally beloved and
Speaker 1: there are people kind of within the gay community who
Speaker 1: have a lot of issues with him. Um And I
Speaker 1: just think it's important to note that because we often
Speaker 1: do again kind of flattened things, because the Nazis flattened things, right,
Speaker 1: because these were all it was all the same to them,
Speaker 1: um and and we often flatten them in a different
Speaker 1: way to where like, yeah, you've got this guy and
Speaker 1: he's the he's the hero of the of the of
Speaker 1: gay ber Lynd and he's this like thoroughly positive. No,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who hated him for
Speaker 1: like all these different reasons because this was uh, these
Speaker 1: like all people had a million different kind of fractures
Speaker 1: and ideologies sort of running within Um what what someone
Speaker 1: who was not looking in from the outside, would have
Speaker 1: just called gay Berlin, you know. Um. And yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: this all falls apart or is is cracked down horribly
Speaker 1: when the Nazis come to power. Um, Hirshfeldt is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of some of them, I mean, all of
Speaker 1: the very earliest research on like what it is to
Speaker 1: be transgender, and he is performing surgery on like gender
Speaker 1: operations on on trans people for the very first time. Um.
Speaker 1: And and that gets all kind of destroyed in in
Speaker 1: May of nineteen thirty three, which is about three months
Speaker 1: after Hitler becomes Reich's chancellor. Uh, Nazis sack hirshfeldt Institute
Speaker 1: for Sexual Science. They burn its library. Um, they go
Speaker 1: after a lot of of of his of the people
Speaker 1: he had been working with an on are killed, others
Speaker 1: have to flee. Um. Hirschfeld is thankfully out of the
Speaker 1: country on tour when the Nazis rise to power and
Speaker 1: just you know, doesn't come back. Um he sees he
Speaker 1: watches his institute get burned and all of his his
Speaker 1: research get burned, and a newsreel in Paris. Uh and
Speaker 1: he dies the next year. Um. Yeah, So that's the
Speaker 1: that's the the broad details of kind of the story
Speaker 1: of this early period, um of of the birth of
Speaker 1: kind of like a lot of our our legal fights
Speaker 1: around you know, gay rights, and like the birth of
Speaker 1: kind of Western gay identity, like this is where it
Speaker 1: comes from. And and uh yeahum, there's a lot that's
Speaker 1: important and understanding this. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: points that gets made in Gaberlin. We often see the
Speaker 1: Weimar years is this kind of inevitable march towards fascism,
Speaker 1: And the reality is that there was fifth something years
Speaker 1: of of incredibly progressive movements on on gender and sexuality. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, even outside of gay rights, just in
Speaker 1: terms of like attitudes towards democracy and attitudes towards the
Speaker 1: nature of like the state, that we're very progressive and
Speaker 1: very powerful and very popular. Um. And they do get
Speaker 1: you know, it's important to understand both that like the
Speaker 1: Nazism was not inevitable, the regressivism and the violence and
Speaker 1: the the the like, that kind of flattening of human
Speaker 1: life under the fascists was not an inevitable progression for Germany. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's equally important to understand that like a tremendous
Speaker 1: so much progress had been made in German culture by
Speaker 1: the period of time when the Nazis rise and it
Speaker 1: does get wiped out, you know, it does not recover
Speaker 1: right away. It's still recovering now still um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the groups of people when when the Allies
Speaker 1: liberate the concentration camps, we don't free imprisoned people. They
Speaker 1: go back to prison because what they were doing was
Speaker 1: still seen as criminal. If you have the is the
Speaker 1: pink triangle, you don't just get out because the Nazis
Speaker 1: because you were in a concentration gap with these other people,
Speaker 1: because the alleys to a large extenter like well that
Speaker 1: was it was okay for them to punish those people. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That's the story. And another interesting thing is like kind
Speaker 1: of on the same note, is that if you look
Speaker 1: through all old German war photography from World War Two,
Speaker 1: you will actually see a higher than average rate of
Speaker 1: men cross dressing inside photos. Now, there's always cross dressing
Speaker 1: during war is not uncommon, especially during performances for like
Speaker 1: theater and stuff, um, because there's not as much women around.
Speaker 1: But specifically comparing like the documentation and of the Nazis
Speaker 1: and all of all of the German soldiers, there was
Speaker 1: like yeah, absolutely higher than average amount of of people
Speaker 1: comfortable cross dressing, despite you know, being a soldier for
Speaker 1: the Nazis. Uh it is. And it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing in terms of how how some of
Speaker 1: those kind of more advanced us and sexuality still carried over,
Speaker 1: um at least like in terms of like gender presentation
Speaker 1: among you know, even even if you fear among this
Speaker 1: genocidal group who's imprisoning gay people by the hundreds of thousands. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it just it just it just it just it
Speaker 1: just like kept happening. Yeah. It also sort of points
Speaker 1: to just like how bad everywhere else was also. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's yeah, Berlin just got so progressive that even
Speaker 1: when suppressed, there was enough like stuff there that things
Speaker 1: could kind of there was there was still there was
Speaker 1: still a bit there's still a bit of some remnants. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean and it still it got it did
Speaker 1: get horribly obliterated, and and we're still recovering now in
Speaker 1: terms of our views and medical knowledge on like gender
Speaker 1: and you know, social contructs, um, susuality, you know, all
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. Um. But yeah, the German
Speaker 1: law code that made homosexuality illegal, Um, again after it
Speaker 1: was briefly more okay than it had been. Doesn't get
Speaker 1: repealed until Yeah. I mean a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of sodomy laws do not get repealed until the nineties,
Speaker 1: and a lot of cases they're actually still around, we
Speaker 1: just don't enforce them, like a lot of this a
Speaker 1: lot of laws that are actually just still just hanging out.
Speaker 1: Texas had anti sodomy laws on the book until a
Speaker 1: two thousand three Supreme Court case invalidated all sodomy laws. Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's why there's something They're still in the books,
Speaker 1: but they but they're now invalid. Yeah, esecute people. Um
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Feld was pretty based though, so it was
Speaker 1: fucking rix some pretty based this really interesting stuff. And
Speaker 1: then that's why we wanted to talk about this is
Speaker 1: to kind of show the historical background and show like
Speaker 1: there's a precedent for all of the same stuff happening before. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's ways people have fought fought against
Speaker 1: it back then who didn't necessarily succeed, but also did
Speaker 1: have a lot of progression in a lot of like
Speaker 1: views socially on these types of topics. You know, you
Speaker 1: just need to make sure that you're also very very
Speaker 1: aware of of the rise of fascism and being also
Speaker 1: counter that as well, because they can just do so
Speaker 1: much damage in such a shorthort amount of time, despite
Speaker 1: you know, fifty years of progress. Yeah. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I think understanding the fragility of everything that exists
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I mean that there's this is
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of the sort of American mythosis, right,
Speaker 1: is that like the moral arc of the unit firs
Speaker 1: bence towards progress, then everything is getting better. And that's
Speaker 1: not true. Nope, it's not like every every everything good
Speaker 1: that you see in this world is there because people
Speaker 1: fought for it was, Yeah, and if they lose it
Speaker 1: all goes away. Yeah yeah, we we we absolutely could
Speaker 1: go back. It's like you have that I mean, he
Speaker 1: back pedaled, but you have that Republican uh legislator who
Speaker 1: was like, um, making comments about how he didn't think
Speaker 1: the state should be forced to honor interracial marriages. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, there's people who want to go
Speaker 1: back on all of that stuff, and they could do it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even and it doesn't matter. I like when
Speaker 1: people criticize kind of like some of the the attitudes
Speaker 1: we have, the fear we have towards this, Especially on
Speaker 1: on the subreddit, I've seen people be like, well, look,
Speaker 1: these are not popular laws, and it doesn't matter. They
Speaker 1: weren't they were, they weren't as popular. They weren't like
Speaker 1: necessarily all that popular in in in Germany, you know
Speaker 1: when someone like a lot of the thing not specifically
Speaker 1: even talking about what was done to gay people, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that were done by the
Speaker 1: Nazis were not necessarily popular. It doesn't matter. What matters
Speaker 1: is power, And this like plays into how like what's
Speaker 1: is worth focusing on on electoralism and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: these laws obviously aren't being uh pushed as far in
Speaker 1: blue states because there's not enough electoral power there. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we can flip Texas blue if
Speaker 1: we will. It into being like, there's so many other
Speaker 1: cultural factors that are keeping red states red, and yes,
Speaker 1: of course, ability suppression, all of those things, gerry mandering,
Speaker 1: all these things are contributing factors. But the overall political
Speaker 1: bent of those states right now seems to be pretty
Speaker 1: firm because there's so many people invested in maintaining that power.
Speaker 1: So when we complain about kind of how electoralism is
Speaker 1: not often a super reliable solution to securing these things
Speaker 1: over the long stretches of time. It's more kind of
Speaker 1: talking about that because even though we have you know,
Speaker 1: democrats and power in the executive ranch, and they you know,
Speaker 1: make statements about trying to secure things, they make, they
Speaker 1: make some gestures, they follow through, and those things is
Speaker 1: always so minimum and so bare um, and there's it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's the thing that like Trump was
Speaker 1: able to do so much um and now we have
Speaker 1: Biden so less willing to use executive powers. Is the
Speaker 1: same thing that like like with with with Obama and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, when the Senate would refuse to put
Speaker 1: through any any candidates, Obama technically had the power could
Speaker 1: because the Senate refused to do to do their job.
Speaker 1: There is a very strock argument that Obama could just
Speaker 1: put someone into the Supreme Court because of the failure
Speaker 1: of what the Senate was doing was specifically doing a
Speaker 1: thing that meant because they were not doing the job
Speaker 1: at all, that he can't get he can't get fully
Speaker 1: put through and we so we could have that could
Speaker 1: have happened and Obama just didn't because you know, you
Speaker 1: want to play, You want to be the good guy,
Speaker 1: like you want to be the person who follows the rules.
Speaker 1: But the other side doesn't care about that. They're not
Speaker 1: playing a genuine game. They're not following the rules. They're
Speaker 1: doing whatever they can to win. So this this isn't
Speaker 1: about being plugged into lefty Twitter. I get almost I
Speaker 1: get almost none of my takes from lefty Twitter. I
Speaker 1: get them from like reading, reading stuff and thinking about
Speaker 1: how electoralism affects all of these issues and where to
Speaker 1: focus my attention because no matter what I say or
Speaker 1: what I do, that's not going to affect whether Texas
Speaker 1: is blew a red. Yeah, and there's this I think
Speaker 1: like one of the things that is an argument against Obama,
Speaker 1: you know, intervening in that way is like, well, that
Speaker 1: would have created precedent that would have like further centralized
Speaker 1: executive power and could have been used by their refused
Speaker 1: to do their job. Yeah, but you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: look at what we got, Look at the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: that we have, which now has a six to three
Speaker 1: bent conservatively. No, there was just another fucking shadow ruling
Speaker 1: today that was about jerrymandering and god I Wisconsin. Um,
Speaker 1: one second, I'll look it up. But yeah, like you're
Speaker 1: you're getting like we're we're already living through that scenario. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like like in this I meantime terms of
Speaker 1: centraliation to power, like Obama claimed the legal authority to
Speaker 1: kill any man, woman, or child, regardless of their citizenship
Speaker 1: as as a US citizen, without trial the moment they
Speaker 1: left the United States, Like that that is that is
Speaker 1: the that is the authority that he claimed, like when
Speaker 1: you know, in order to introder to run the drone
Speaker 1: assassination program. And it's yeah, so like at that point,
Speaker 1: like yeah, okay, we we we literally have a person
Speaker 1: who can go I'm going to press a button and
Speaker 1: kill you, like like we might centralize me. Probably, it's
Speaker 1: just I mean, it's it's not even a centralization because
Speaker 1: it was specifically within the context of the Senate not
Speaker 1: doing their job. Um. And it kind of all places
Speaker 1: into like it seems like Democrats are more politically successful
Speaker 1: when they're losing, Like it seems like they want the
Speaker 1: other side to be in power because that's when they
Speaker 1: actually do things politically than when they have power. They're
Speaker 1: just so scared to use it that they don't even
Speaker 1: do anything to really people that much. And and I
Speaker 1: mean this is the other thing is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Democrats like like most of the their actual constitute,
Speaker 1: like they have they have two constituencies, right, they have
Speaker 1: like you know, they have the people they're passing tax
Speaker 1: breaks for, and then they have a bunch of they
Speaker 1: have a bunch of consultants. And the consultants like the
Speaker 1: thing that they care about is campaign donations, right, because
Speaker 1: that's how they get paid. And yeah, hey, guess what
Speaker 1: happens when you're in power. Oh, people don't give you
Speaker 1: any people don't give you much money. That this is
Speaker 1: this is this is a problem to progran into in
Speaker 1: the eighties. They get more power when they're they get
Speaker 1: more money when they're not in power because then they're
Speaker 1: trying to organize to get in power. But then once
Speaker 1: they're in there, it's like, oh, wow, you're not really
Speaker 1: using the same power capabilities that the other side does
Speaker 1: when they're in charge, and they're all willing to play
Speaker 1: dirty politically, and we and for some reason that Democrats
Speaker 1: are not that kind of like they don't like this
Speaker 1: something like they don't actually care about any of this stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: The stuff is useful for them in terms of fundraising, right,
Speaker 1: but it's like, yeah, I don't know, like they they
Speaker 1: don't like if if every trans person in the United
Speaker 1: States was killed, right, the Democrats would be sad for
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then they wouldn't move on. Like
Speaker 1: it's not that's that's that's not a thing that if
Speaker 1: you're in a hard blue state, we know, what's more
Speaker 1: important than actually voting for supportive like this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff is actually just giving trans people money like that
Speaker 1: is going to have much more of a positive political effect.
Speaker 1: Is just give trans people money. Whenever you see a
Speaker 1: go fund me for a trans person, donate to that instead.
Speaker 1: That's gonna have a much more uh lasting effect than
Speaker 1: voting if you're in you know, New York or if
Speaker 1: you're in Oregon, right, because like that those states are
Speaker 1: they're they're gonna be blue. That's always gonna happen, um.
Speaker 1: But other states like uh like I Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama,
Speaker 1: like these are gonna be red states like there's and
Speaker 1: as much as we would be nice if yeah, if
Speaker 1: Democratic senators and and people in the House were in
Speaker 1: there instead, then yeah, these trans pips probably wouldn't be
Speaker 1: happening as much, but that's not gonna happen. So if
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen, we should focus on other
Speaker 1: ways to do that politically. And yeah, sure fixing jerymandering
Speaker 1: will be great, but I don't think you need me
Speaker 1: to tell you that anyway. We should Probably that's that's
Speaker 1: probably more or less aisode that is as I will
Speaker 1: I will, I will plug next week if similar similar
Speaker 1: on a similar train for for kind of talking about
Speaker 1: queerness and fascism um, which yeah, we are. We are
Speaker 1: planning it to a two parter, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: going to be extensive deep dive into explaining the curious
Speaker 1: case of Nazi catboys and grisons, Garrison says. We as
Speaker 1: if any of the rest of us had any choice
Speaker 1: in this, Garrison Garrison forced this on us through violence. Yes,
Speaker 1: but yes, we will be talking about this, which kind
Speaker 1: of touch us on some similar topics in terms of
Speaker 1: like gender and sexuality and how it intersects with politics
Speaker 1: and how there can be you know, seemingly contradictory claims
Speaker 1: that you know, game Nazis and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So similar, similar train will be kind of discussing that
Speaker 1: and how that works. Um. But yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: end of trends week. Honestly at this point that's we're ending.
Speaker 1: As we're ending it. I'm kind of more optimistic than
Speaker 1: I what than I than I was when we started
Speaker 1: trans weak um, in terms of like watching kind of
Speaker 1: how some some of these bills have played out, how
Speaker 1: some of them were not We're not fully carried through. Um,
Speaker 1: there is protests and stuff being organized. I know for March.
Speaker 1: I believe it's March thirty one, which is a trans
Speaker 1: Day of Visibility. There's gonna be protests in a lot
Speaker 1: of conservative states. Um, I know there's gonna be let
Speaker 1: me let me actually let me check because I know
Speaker 1: there's there's gonna be there's gonna be multiple, multiple things happening,
Speaker 1: and I will I'm gonna be trying to I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to be in Idaho next next week for that
Speaker 1: because there's going to be a protest in Boisy, which
Speaker 1: I think Boise, Idaho, that's the place. But there's gonna
Speaker 1: be Yeah, there's gonna to be events in Austin, Tallahassee, Montgomery. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I will look up tear it Up dot
Speaker 1: org for events. For info on all of the events
Speaker 1: at different at different in different states. For for trans
Speaker 1: Day of Visibility March March one, and Yeah, be gay,
Speaker 1: do crime, Yeah, throw bricks at transphobs, Yeah, all that stuff.
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