Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that not everything that people
Speaker 1: have done in history is bad. Sometimes people do good things,
Speaker 1: usually against the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kildoy,
Speaker 1: and with me today is my guest Samantha McVay.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hi, you're host of the also stuff related podcast Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom never told you. Very good.
Speaker 3: I am a host of that show. How are you?
Speaker 3: It's been so long?
Speaker 1: I know it has been way too long. I'm okay.
Speaker 1: I had a lot. Everyone's like, this bitch hasn't been
Speaker 1: on me. I'm this bitch hasn't been on the show
Speaker 1: for like weeks because I took a vacation, and so
Speaker 1: now I'm back and I love it.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've been at the beginning. I was
Speaker 3: at your first episode, which wasn't supposed to happen because
Speaker 3: but then we had that whole like the world is
Speaker 3: awful and Rob Wade shot down essentially, and I was on,
Speaker 3: and then I felt like I came back on not
Speaker 3: too long after. I feel like it's a yearly thing,
Speaker 3: and I loved that tradition because I get to see
Speaker 3: you at least once a year, which is not enough.
Speaker 1: But it's I'm I'm glad I get to see you
Speaker 1: at all, and that is Zoom is the main way
Speaker 1: I came with my friends. I have a totally normal
Speaker 1: social life on the mountain that I live on. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: What, I'm in Atlanta and I don't get out either,
Speaker 3: so it's okay, yeah, fair, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like having the excuse. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: I used to like traveling in countries where I didn't
Speaker 1: speak the language, partly because I could just like sit
Speaker 1: at dinner with like ten people around and have no
Speaker 1: idea what NAMEE was talking about. But I like understood
Speaker 1: why I felt left out. Whereas when I go sit
Speaker 1: at a table with like ten people and everyone speaking
Speaker 1: this language I speak, I'm like, it's cool, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to socialize this.
Speaker 3: Fine, Yes, that's the awkwardness of being at either situation
Speaker 3: gives me anxiety either way, So I'm like, why why
Speaker 3: just stay at home? Just stay at home?
Speaker 1: That's fair? Well, also with us on this Zoom call
Speaker 1: is the one and only producer I've ever had on
Speaker 1: this show, and I won't hear any word otherwise. Scharene
Speaker 1: sure y, Hi Markt Hi, Samantha.
Speaker 2: Wow, I love this trio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sarine, It's been also a very long time, and
Speaker 3: I feel like we're also on a timeline because I
Speaker 3: believe the first time we met it was around February before,
Speaker 3: right before the pandemic.
Speaker 2: You're not wrong. It was in twenty nineteen. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure it was twenty nineteen, but I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: the month was. Yeah, it's a pretty yearly interaction. You'll
Speaker 2: only exist once a year.
Speaker 3: That's okay, that's the way I like it. Please don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm a year except for that one time a year,
Speaker 3: and hopefully it's for good shows like these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you'll like this this week's episode.
Speaker 2: I think I think this is a Samantha episode.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. I'm excited.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so excited. Whenever you say that, I get
Speaker 3: so excited because I know, first of all, you know me,
Speaker 3: and I love that bit of me. And then also
Speaker 3: because with all the world being awful, I loved to
Speaker 3: hear what you're going to tell me because I know
Speaker 3: there's some badass people, but I'm going to be so
Speaker 3: excited about that.
Speaker 1: Is the main thing that I hold on to with
Speaker 1: the fact that everything is awful is that the types
Speaker 1: of people that I talk about on the show are
Speaker 1: still here, and people become those people when bad things happen.
Speaker 1: One of our cool people is Danel, our audio engineer.
Speaker 1: I nice Hi Hi Daniel. Everyone's to say hi to Danel.
Speaker 2: Sorry for cat raises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry for all they editing. Our theme music was
Speaker 1: written for us by unwoman, So saman the last time
Speaker 1: we had you, not last time, the first time we
Speaker 1: had you on. We talked about abortion access and it
Speaker 1: was right before the house of cards called Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade fell down. That should not have been a house
Speaker 1: of cards because the Democratic Party never did anything to
Speaker 1: short up since it's precarity has been and continues to
Speaker 1: be one of the only ways they can get anyone
Speaker 1: to vote for an outdated capitalist party that essentially no
Speaker 1: one under the age of forty actually supports true story.
Speaker 1: That's my I like it.
Speaker 3: I'm over forty, but I also am.
Speaker 1: Too, honestly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about the Jain Collective, primarily a group of
Speaker 1: women in Chicago who, coming out of socialist feminist traditions,
Speaker 1: set up a network that provided illegal abortions safely for years.
Speaker 1: We talked about a bunch of other abortionists. During the
Speaker 1: era of illegality in the United States, no one writes
Speaker 1: the word abortionists. I have a feeling I'm using like
Speaker 1: a word that people aren't supposed to use. I think
Speaker 1: you're supposed to say abortion providers, because like abortionists is
Speaker 1: like a bad word. But I'm kind of like, whatever,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be a bad word. It's people who provide. Like,
Speaker 1: that's great.
Speaker 3: Exactly you say. I don't know if I've ever heard it,
Speaker 3: but I like that you're saying it. Okay, great, it
Speaker 3: might be maybe it's just old timey. I hope it's
Speaker 3: just old timey. If you're listening and you are an
Speaker 3: abortion provider and don't want to be called an abortionist,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of sorry. I actually am sorry, because I
Speaker 3: think you're doing something incredibly brave and important. Anyway, this week,
Speaker 3: I've got two more stories for you about two different
Speaker 3: places and times. Vymar Germany, which was the brief period
Speaker 3: where Germany was a republic between World War One and
Speaker 3: the rise of the Nazis, and then those decades in
Speaker 3: the US, the brief golden era of the US when
Speaker 3: the US is a republic, you know, when when abortion
Speaker 3: was legal in all fifty states in.
Speaker 1: The United States.
Speaker 3: Oh got cha. I was like that what when? Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I like it between Roe v. Wade and
Speaker 1: the now Yeah the now. Yeah. So we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about vymar Germany. We're gonna talk about California, two places
Speaker 1: that punk's write songs about. I have no other connections
Speaker 1: to draw between these two places. Good connection, both have
Speaker 1: punk No. Vymar Germany, well, they were pretty punk anyway whatever.
Speaker 1: Bymar Germany Okay, okay, bymar Germany was a wild place,
Speaker 1: like do you know much about I don't know how
Speaker 1: cultural zeitgeist vymar Germany is.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I would not know. I do not know,
Speaker 3: And I'm right for those because I'm like who win when?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let's go. So this is the era of
Speaker 1: like Cabaret, like that movie. This is the era of
Speaker 1: like Weimar. Germany was a really wild place in one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting times and places in history. It
Speaker 1: was incredibly progressive and incredibly politically engaged in all kinds
Speaker 1: of directions, and it is, you know, basically nineteen twenties Germany.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. Okay, everyone was
Speaker 1: fucking starving, and everyone was fucking traumatized. They had just
Speaker 1: lost this war that they shouldn't have been in, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of their fault, but wasn't What wasn't like
Speaker 1: the random german on the street's fault, you know, right right,
Speaker 1: and during the nineteen twenties, so it's like famous for
Speaker 1: all the like well cabaret culture and all the like
Speaker 1: decadent art type stuff that's happening in a collapsing society, right,
Speaker 1: But there's also this wild political fighting going on between
Speaker 1: anarchist communists, social democrats, monarchists, and fascists. Like all of
Speaker 1: these different groups are like, no, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: in charge. Now, I'm gonna be in charge, and they're
Speaker 1: all getting into fights in the street about it. Culture
Speaker 1: was blooming. You have the first LGBT research center and
Speaker 1: gender affirming care facility in Western history, including like the
Speaker 1: first gender a firming surgeries for trans women and things
Speaker 1: like that which happened at the Institute for Sex Research,
Speaker 1: which if people want to hear more about, they can
Speaker 1: go and listen to our episode about gay resistance to Nazis.
Speaker 1: We talk all about that place and time. It's real
Speaker 1: neat except for the fact that I think this is
Speaker 1: a little bit more commonly known. You know how like
Speaker 1: all the famous photos of Nazis burning books, all of
Speaker 1: those photos are of them burning books about transness basically,
Speaker 1: and like LGBT stuff because they torched the world's first
Speaker 1: LGBT resource center. Anyway. Yeah, that's the fun part of
Speaker 1: like all of histories, is a dance between action and
Speaker 1: reaction and like positive and negative forces, and like I
Speaker 1: hate to think of things dualistically, but there's like bad
Speaker 1: stuff and there's people who fight the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: It's almost like they went too far to the left
Speaker 2: or to good and they had to ricochet all the
Speaker 2: way to bad, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Which is what I'm afraid is what's happening right now
Speaker 1: in the units.
Speaker 3: I just want to say, I feel like we're playing
Speaker 3: we're playing that out they play out right now.
Speaker 1: In the US. So yeah, basically, they're like and everywhere,
Speaker 1: what do you mean gay people can get married and
Speaker 1: we let like people of other you know, races and
Speaker 1: ethnicities like co exist peacefully. Can't have that? How dare you?
Speaker 1: It was in its way, The Viimar Republic was in
Speaker 1: its way, very progressive society, but the laws hadn't necessarily
Speaker 1: caught up yet with society's viewpoints. Birth control and abortion
Speaker 1: were both illegal. Abortion was illegal everywhere in the Western
Speaker 1: world at this point except for the USSR. The Revolution
Speaker 1: legalized abortion, and then Stalin was like just kidding and
Speaker 1: got rid of it. But during this period abortion is
Speaker 1: legal in the USSR. And so you've always awesome folks
Speaker 1: living in Germany. You also have clearly less awesome folks
Speaker 1: who are going to take power in about ten years
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, how do we have abortions and
Speaker 1: talk about birth control when it's illegal? Who will do
Speaker 1: these crimes with and for us? Elsewhere in the Western world,
Speaker 1: at least in the US, where I've done more research
Speaker 1: about it, the answer to who will organize crime is
Speaker 1: usually organized crime right kind of famously in the US
Speaker 1: for decades, probably at least a century, if you wanted
Speaker 1: an abortion, you went to a mafia doctor. Even the
Speaker 1: Jain collective, who we all love as heroes, their first
Speaker 1: doctors were almost certainly mafia. And don't want to conjecture
Speaker 1: too hard with people who are still alive. Also, we
Speaker 1: talked about on our Stonewall episode and this is really
Speaker 1: just this whole episode is just to like go back
Speaker 1: and listen all these other episodes. We talk on the
Speaker 1: Stonewall episode about how the old gay clubs were mafia
Speaker 1: run back in the day. So like most places, the
Speaker 1: mafia was the one providing the services that people needed
Speaker 1: and were not available legally. Right, there's another group that's
Speaker 1: really good at organizing crime. You ever heard of a
Speaker 1: narco syndicalism?
Speaker 3: No, please explain?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, like one time, when I first became an anarchist,
Speaker 1: I went and I was like hanging out with my
Speaker 1: family and they're like, well, what do you believe? And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, have you ever heard of syndicalism?
Speaker 1: And everyone like turns to my grandfather, who's like the
Speaker 1: like wise old man or whatever you know, and he
Speaker 1: like looks really deep in thought and he rubs his
Speaker 1: chin and he goes, Now, there's a word I haven't
Speaker 1: heard in a very long time.
Speaker 3: Real ominous.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So syndicalism, it's a worker's movement. It still exists.
Speaker 1: Syndicalism is a worker's movement that believes in forming workers'
Speaker 1: power through unionism, through forming unions, right, and it's as
Speaker 1: a way to build a better society. It's like not
Speaker 1: reformist unionism and arcosyndicalism, which is a very large branch
Speaker 1: of the syndicalist movement in many countries, is the majority
Speaker 1: of it many countries. It's not many countries, syndicalism is
Speaker 1: more communist and arcosyndicalism believes in doing syndicalism in order
Speaker 1: to create a society without capitalism in the state, where
Speaker 1: like workers' councils collectively create society and fit form all
Speaker 1: of our needs and things like that, and arcosyndicalists have
Speaker 1: this like from a labor movement point of view, they
Speaker 1: have this reputation as like the wild radicals, right, who
Speaker 1: are a little too into direct action and they all
Speaker 1: hate voting and shit, you know. For the rest of
Speaker 1: the anarchist movement, they're like kind of bureaucratic and boring,
Speaker 1: is the sort of reputation that they have because they're
Speaker 1: very organized. Okay, so they're perfect for this role. The
Speaker 1: union part gives them the organizational skills, the anarchist part
Speaker 1: gives them the affinity for crime. So in Weimar Germany,
Speaker 1: abortions were done by lay organizations, that is, they were
Speaker 1: done by not doctors, not even like clinics necessarily, and
Speaker 1: these organizations, they weren't branded as an arcosyndicalist, but their
Speaker 1: leadership and their organizing principles came from that part of
Speaker 1: the labor movement. Basically, the women and sometimes men of
Speaker 1: the anarchosyndicalist movement were like, well, here's a need, we
Speaker 1: know how to organize crime at large scale. That's what
Speaker 1: we do usually it strikes and sabotage and things like that.
Speaker 1: And then they left off the branding of like anarchism
Speaker 1: and syndicalism because this was about reproductive health first and foremost.
Speaker 1: And so they set up all these organizations and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I'm now off script. I'm so fucking interested
Speaker 1: by this because there's like, well, I'll just okay, I'll
Speaker 1: just get into it. This organization was done on a
Speaker 1: fucking massive scale, Like I'm not I love Jaane Collective
Speaker 1: right right, that's like one city and one clinic right.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty alone, these lay organizations performed a million
Speaker 1: abortions in Germany in one year.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 1: There was roughly one hundred and fifty thousand people in
Speaker 1: these organizations. They worked out of two hundred locations. Wow,
Speaker 1: there was two hundred Jane collectives right right that were
Speaker 1: syndicated together. They were unionized together. About fifteen thousand people
Speaker 1: were like the really active participants. I ran across both
Speaker 1: the one hundred and fifty and the fifteen thousand numbers. I'm
Speaker 1: under the impression one hundred and fifty thousand is the like
Speaker 1: the broader overall activist support, and fifteen thousand would be
Speaker 1: like people who are like more directly like, this is
Speaker 1: what they do, you know, they're very active.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they I'm a still high number, I know.
Speaker 1: And what they did they weren't just like, hey were
Speaker 1: the abortion organization, right. What they did was that they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, we're the following minor crime organization. We
Speaker 1: are the sex education and birth control organization. We pass
Speaker 1: out contraceptives, We hold meetings where we talk about birth control,
Speaker 1: which is all like illegal and shit, but it's it's
Speaker 1: like kind of illegal. It's like, ah, ah, you caught me.
Speaker 1: I was given out condoms again. Ah, I'm not bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not really a secret that this above ground
Speaker 1: but still a llegal organization was where people went when
Speaker 1: they needed abortions. They also didn't charge money for abortions.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, a million fucking I just for ten years,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand people came together to organize
Speaker 1: the entire country's abortion service illegally, safely and free. Theyized
Speaker 1: they used anarchist organizing principles and anarchist organizers, but they
Speaker 1: didn't label their organization as an anarchist thing, and not
Speaker 1: everyone engaged with it would have identified as an anarchist right,
Speaker 1: And it's fucking like unknown it at least in English language.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 1: I learned about this a year and a half ago
Speaker 1: when I was actually doing research for the episode that
Speaker 1: I did with you last time. I found the like
Speaker 1: one sentence version that was like, oh, and by the way,
Speaker 1: there was like two hundred clinics doing a million abortions
Speaker 1: a year in Germany that the syndicalists were running. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, can you can you tell me more about
Speaker 1: this thing? That's more impressive than anything I've ever read
Speaker 1: in history?
Speaker 3: That it performed over a million abortions? Yeah, how long
Speaker 3: did they exist?
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little bit about but it's like
Speaker 1: I think that they ebbed and flowed. We're talking about
Speaker 1: roughly nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 3: Wow, that long. That's pretty impressive. I know that's not
Speaker 3: that long in real time, but in my head, for
Speaker 3: an organization like this, with an issue like that, it
Speaker 3: seemingly is a little longer than I would have assumed
Speaker 3: for underground or aimation.
Speaker 1: Like this totally, and so I spent the past year
Speaker 1: and a half trying to find out more information about
Speaker 1: this fucking thing. There is one seven page paper written
Speaker 1: about it in English by Deeter Nell's called it does
Speaker 1: not have a very entertaining name. It's called anarcho syndicalism
Speaker 1: in the sexual reform movement in the Weimar Republic.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's on the nose, right right to the point.
Speaker 1: Let's go. Yeah, Germans tend to be very literal namors.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So we talk a lot about abortion and
Speaker 1: birth control in this show, about people fighting for the
Speaker 1: right to control their own bodies and their own reproduction.
Speaker 1: What's interesting that we have to wrap our heads around
Speaker 1: every single time we try and cover any of these issues, Like,
Speaker 1: for example, when we try and cover like trans issues,
Speaker 1: you can't just be like, oh, in eighteen eighty there's
Speaker 1: this translating and mean the same thing that you mean
Speaker 1: when you say in twenty twenty four, right, because our
Speaker 1: social conceptions around these things, around sex and gender and
Speaker 1: all kinds of things are constantly shifting, and people are
Speaker 1: fighting for bodily autonomy, but how people frame that fight
Speaker 1: changes over time, and it hasn't always been the same.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious when in your work with like
Speaker 1: because you all did, I mean, you all did a
Speaker 1: Jane episode, And I'm just kind of curious, like how
Speaker 1: much you when you talk about like old feminism, how
Speaker 1: often do you have to engage in and talk about
Speaker 1: eugenics and like how big of a problem this was
Speaker 1: in the old feminist movement.
Speaker 3: Right in general, when we talk about intersectionality and we
Speaker 3: have to talk about the ugly parts of this, especially
Speaker 3: today when we talk about white feminism and what that
Speaker 3: looks like, and of course eugenics can be under that
Speaker 3: as well. We kind of understand the background of planned
Speaker 3: parenthood and the conversations we have about that because we
Speaker 3: praise planned parenthood, but we also know that there's some ugliness,
Speaker 3: as we talked about previously, yeah as well, So overall, like, yes,
Speaker 3: we talk about the dark side of all of it,
Speaker 3: which makes us kind of bad guys to everyone. And
Speaker 3: I say we Annie and I who is the other
Speaker 3: co host, because I have been called out for saying
Speaker 3: things that they feel are offensive because they don't want
Speaker 3: to be associated with that type of feminism when in
Speaker 3: actuality it still is so when we talk about like
Speaker 3: abortion rights, but then when we talk about sterilization against
Speaker 3: the people women of color specifically, and what that looks
Speaker 3: like and why they did it, people don't really want
Speaker 3: to hear that truth because they don't want to face
Speaker 3: the fact that, yes, this is an argument against abortion
Speaker 3: rights in a way, not really, but it can be
Speaker 3: turned to that point that we've had this many conversation,
Speaker 3: but we have to be understanding and sensitive to the
Speaker 3: fact that when it comes to reproductive rights, we're talking
Speaker 3: about every part of it being right, whether it is
Speaker 3: choosing to have a child or choosing to abort a fetus,
Speaker 3: like those are two different things, but the same side
Speaker 3: of the coin type of thing, I guess, so we
Speaker 3: talk about it in realms of yes, we're uncomfortable because
Speaker 3: for me, even though I'm a woman of color, I'm
Speaker 3: also you know, very headonormative sis gender in that level.
Speaker 3: So I have to talk about being uncomfortable when it
Speaker 3: comes to talking about LGBTQ rights in general or any
Speaker 3: queer rights in general. But like I'm now just having
Speaker 3: this long dip about this, but because it's not simple.
Speaker 3: It is simple, and it isn't simple when it comes
Speaker 3: to the fact that people want to bend what they
Speaker 3: think is their true rights or true beliefs. And now
Speaker 3: oftentimes sometimes if you're a person who have any type
Speaker 3: of privilege, then that means that you are taking advantage
Speaker 3: you could be you're probably taking advantage of someone else
Speaker 3: who are in the marginalized community when you do these things.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense that yeah, no, no, no, it
Speaker 1: makes sense because like you think that your frame with
Speaker 1: which you understand things is the correct one and the
Speaker 1: only one, the universal frame, especially when you are in
Speaker 1: the like when you are in the privileged position you
Speaker 1: are presented when you are the default of something, right
Speaker 1: as like a as like a white person, I am
Speaker 1: the default, but as a trans woman I am not
Speaker 1: the default of that. You know. But you know what
Speaker 1: else is really uncomfortable being supported by advertisers on an
Speaker 1: anti capitalist show. So that thank you, Transition So here's
Speaker 1: some of those unless you have cooler zone media, in
Speaker 1: which case your money went directly into my dog's football
Speaker 1: and you don't have to hear ads. But here they
Speaker 1: are anyway, and we're back.
Speaker 3: I'm still laughing at that transition, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay. So one of the things that I really
Speaker 1: struggle with talking about kind of what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is is that we have to talk about the unfortunate
Speaker 1: opinions that many early birth control pioneers had about eugenics.
Speaker 1: And we also have to talk about how eugenics wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily always a right wing talking point. It was an
Speaker 1: everyone talking point for decades, which doesn't make it okay.
Speaker 1: Is the thing that we you basically have this dark
Speaker 1: half a century between Darwin is like, evolution is real,
Speaker 1: and then people realize watching the nazis just like hammer
Speaker 1: home what eugenics is like really about At the end
Speaker 1: right the day, you know, that space in between is
Speaker 1: full of people in the right, left and center being like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be cool if we could kind of use
Speaker 1: evolution to like make everything better? You know? And there's
Speaker 1: this thing that happens that I've ran across while researching
Speaker 1: this episode where people try to distance the historical eugenics movement,
Speaker 1: which they will call the part that believes that only
Speaker 1: the fittest should reproduce, and then the population control movement,
Speaker 1: which aims to bring down the overall population through birth control,
Speaker 1: but not in a targeted way as much as I've
Speaker 1: ever read, and I think that that, Okay, this difference
Speaker 1: comes after World War Two and people start making that difference.
Speaker 1: But before then, everyone, including the people who don't want
Speaker 1: to believe that they're acting racistly or ablistically or whatever,
Speaker 1: are using the word eugenics to describe what they want,
Speaker 1: and they meant it in a very positive way for
Speaker 1: whatever thing that they were trying to do. And the
Speaker 1: reason I want to talk about it is because, Okay,
Speaker 1: so over the years, states feudal, capitalist and socialist have
Speaker 1: all gone to great lengths to control our bodies and
Speaker 1: our reproduction in whatever direction that they want. At that time,
Speaker 1: when the USSR legalized abortion, they were the first Western
Speaker 1: state to do so in nineteen twenty, and it was
Speaker 1: in part because they were like, hell, yeah, we believe
Speaker 1: in communism, inequality, and everyone's going to be able to
Speaker 1: make their own choices, right. But a lot of it
Speaker 1: was because everyone was fucking starving, so choosing to not
Speaker 1: have kids was seen as something that you would do
Speaker 1: in solidarity with society at large. So they wanted to
Speaker 1: make it possible to act in solidarity with society at large.
Speaker 1: And if that is your own decision, If someone listening
Speaker 1: is like, I think that's too many people in the
Speaker 1: world and they decided not to have kids, that's great.
Speaker 1: Deciding that other people shouldn't get to have kids because
Speaker 1: you think there's too many people in the world, or
Speaker 1: the state mandates it, that's when it gets real fucking bad.
Speaker 1: Right by the time Stalin got his claws into it,
Speaker 1: it's not quite just like early Bolsheviks were kind of okay,
Speaker 1: and then Stalin was a man of evil even though whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: people can hear my opinion, my negative opinions about even
Speaker 1: the regular Bolsheviks that are but whatever. By this time
Speaker 1: Stalin gets his hands into things. Abortion was not only outlawed,
Speaker 1: but incentives were put into place to encourage people to
Speaker 1: have large families, because having lots of kids was something
Speaker 1: you should do in solidarity with society at large, and
Speaker 1: so the state wants to control whether people do or
Speaker 1: don't have kids. But the lever it's using is class solidarity.
Speaker 1: The lever it's using is like be you know, care
Speaker 1: about the rest of the world right to me? You
Speaker 1: can just cut through all this bullshit by being like, hey,
Speaker 1: a person who's pregnant gets to decide if that's a
Speaker 1: condition that they want to continue to have. Like that
Speaker 1: is just the larger social conditions can influence it one
Speaker 1: way or the other. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: our bodies are choice. It's a good slogan, we can
Speaker 1: stick with it. But the thing that in order to
Speaker 1: understand these German abortion providers, and also to understand folks
Speaker 1: were going to talk about in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: coming out of like Black Power movement and all these
Speaker 1: other kind of places, people weren't thinking about it necessarily
Speaker 1: in the same frame. We have to look at things
Speaker 1: through people's own framing, own lenses in order to understand them.
Speaker 1: Two influences on people's framing about how they feel about
Speaker 1: abortion are religion, which we'll talk about later, and class consciousness.
Speaker 1: So in Weimar, Germany as its famous hedonism and all
Speaker 1: this shit, but culture wasn't a political People were thinking
Speaker 1: very consciously about what they do as it relates to
Speaker 1: these political questions, and specifically, the question of class struggle
Speaker 1: was like the fucking question in Europe and like the
Speaker 1: I don't know nineteen oughts to the nazis fucking changing
Speaker 1: everything in a real negative way. That's my rant. So
Speaker 1: people tended not to see themselves solely as individuals, but
Speaker 1: also as actors within larger social frameworks like the working
Speaker 1: class or the communist party, or the anarchist movement, or
Speaker 1: the fascist movement or the monarchy, whatever the fuck right.
Speaker 1: People thought of themselves as part of a whole in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And I'm going to quote this
Speaker 1: German anarchist synthelist Max Winkler, who wrote in a pamphlet
Speaker 1: as a birth control pamphlet that a union was distributing
Speaker 1: all workers. Organizations are concerned almost exclusively with economic and
Speaker 1: political issues. Both the parties and the unions view the
Speaker 1: issue of sex as being insignificant, irrelevant. There once was
Speaker 1: a time when it was considered unrespectable to publicly address
Speaker 1: problems concerning sexual relations, and yet it is so tremendously
Speaker 1: important that the sexual issue be addressed without any trace
Speaker 1: of reticence, just as the hunger issue for hunger and
Speaker 1: love are the two polls around which all human life
Speaker 1: and drive revolve. These two issues are so closely entwined
Speaker 1: that it is hardly possible to discuss one without considering
Speaker 1: the other. And so this was an introduction to a
Speaker 1: birth control pamphule that has union, the Free Workers' Unions
Speaker 1: of Germany, was publishing in the nineteen twenties. More prominent
Speaker 1: still than that union was a SYNDICALUS union called the
Speaker 1: Syndicalless Women's Union, which again very literal namers. That's what
Speaker 1: it was a union of You.
Speaker 3: Knew they were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's true. I will give them that. Like
Speaker 1: not everything should be like Prairie Fire or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's the writer in you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know, which is funny because I
Speaker 1: ended up naming my podcast cool People did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: But I you know, I like that name too. I
Speaker 1: feel like as it's a good name. Yeah, you're your
Speaker 1: podcast name is similar enough that I think you know
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from. You know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think it's perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a saint.
Speaker 3: I like it. It's cold things, cold people, let's go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Cynicalist Women's Union. Their primary social issue
Speaker 1: was sexual health and reproductive rights. As Milli wick Top
Speaker 1: put it, the advancement of the intellectual development of women
Speaker 1: could not be possible without the liberation from the slavery
Speaker 1: of child bearing. And so how this ties into the
Speaker 1: like this larger class consciousness question is that they were
Speaker 1: pushing for a child bearing strike. They were basically it
Speaker 1: was like a way, it was an attempt at like
Speaker 1: a women's strike. It was attempt at I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, and we'll get into it more in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But first, someone to talk about Millie, because
Speaker 1: Millie's really cool. And also I think the first person
Speaker 1: named Millie that we've featured on this show, I like it.
Speaker 1: This is a nice name. Goody. Milli was cool as shit.
Speaker 1: She and her siblings, including another anarchist feminist birth control
Speaker 1: activist named Rose Witcop, They made the mistake of being
Speaker 1: born in Ukraine in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: as Jews. So they were like, this isn't the best
Speaker 1: time and place to be us. We don't want to
Speaker 1: be here anymore. So when Milly was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: she moves by herself to London, worked in a sweatshop
Speaker 1: to save enough money to get her three sisters and
Speaker 1: her parents to London away from the pograms that were
Speaker 1: happening in Ukraine. Like, I can't imagine me at sixteen
Speaker 1: doing any of those things successfully. She could have quit
Speaker 1: right then and been a fucking hero as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. And there's so many, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the world is full of these stories, but they're
Speaker 1: all fucking amazing stories. There's people who help their families
Speaker 1: escape from very bad situations and that is an amazing
Speaker 1: thing to do. But she kept going. She joined a
Speaker 1: Jewish anarchist newspaper, The Worker's Friend, which was the widest
Speaker 1: circulation Yiddish language newspaper in England at that time, at
Speaker 1: least according to one thing I read another thing. Whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I had this problem when everything's like, oh this is
Speaker 1: the biggest, or this was the first, or this.
Speaker 3: Was oh yeah, I'm like, That's something that we talk
Speaker 3: about on our show a lot, because we actually have
Speaker 3: a series about a female first type of episodes, but
Speaker 3: we always have to put the caveat it's you don't
Speaker 3: know who's controlling the narrative. You don't know what's been hidden,
Speaker 3: what's not been discovered yet, and so everything's under a
Speaker 3: caveat of what seems like a first but that could
Speaker 3: change at any moment, and they are most likely other
Speaker 3: people who've already done it, and probably people who are
Speaker 3: marginalized and are not going to ever get credit.
Speaker 1: Just to a reminder, no, totally. Like I've started making
Speaker 1: the joke of every time I'm like the first time
Speaker 1: this happened in the world, I'm like the Western world,
Speaker 1: specifically Europe. It was the first time it happened in
Speaker 1: Europe that we know about, that we know about, but anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: this wide circulation Yiddish language newspaper in England called The
Speaker 1: Worker's Friend and it was built around a larger group
Speaker 1: called the Worker's Friend Group, which was basically just people
Speaker 1: working together to provide mutual aid and care for like
Speaker 1: this poor immigrant, you know, anarchist worker population. She meets
Speaker 1: this fellow named Rudolph Rocker and they hook up. They
Speaker 1: get fake hitched, common law hitched in leftist feminist tradition
Speaker 1: at the time, they refused to get legally married. And
Speaker 1: I was very excited as soon as whenever I hear
Speaker 1: someone like Rudolf Rocker is more famous than her, normally
Speaker 1: other he's going to live in her shadow. During this episode,
Speaker 1: I was very excited to notice that he's only like
Speaker 1: three years older than her, because whenever I hear about
Speaker 1: like oh and then this man with a beard, I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, ah, fuck, twenty years Oh okay, no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, she's like nineteen, he's like twenty two or whatever,
Speaker 1: like except it's completely fine. I have nothing. I've learned
Speaker 1: nothing negative about this man through his relationship with her.
Speaker 1: He's going to be a main character of one of
Speaker 1: these days. He's going to be mostly in the shadow
Speaker 1: of his partner and his sister in common in law today.
Speaker 1: But the time that we brought him up before was
Speaker 1: his speeches and the anarchist unionism in the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century in London that he promoted led to the connection
Speaker 1: between the Irish, Catholic and Jewish working class that about
Speaker 1: twenty years later came together to smash the ever loving
Speaker 1: shit out of British Fascism at the Battle of Cable Street.
Speaker 1: And it was directly just to retell like one of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories in history. Basically, like, while the Irish
Speaker 1: stock workers were starving because they were on strike, and
Speaker 1: the Jewish textile workers had just resolved their strike. The
Speaker 1: Jewish textile workers took in the poor starving Irish kid
Speaker 1: who couldn't afford food at home, and like watched them
Speaker 1: for like five years or like however long for the
Speaker 1: strike to resolve. I don't I don't have this script
Speaker 1: in front of me. And so then later when the
Speaker 1: fascists were like, hey, Irish, you're like basically white unlike
Speaker 1: those Jews, am I right? The Irish were like fuck you.
Speaker 1: They fed me when I was twelve, you know, and
Speaker 1: then they had like just organized together and beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of these fascists. Anyway, I love it. And
Speaker 1: that's how Rudolph Rocker came up last time, and it's
Speaker 1: just one of my favorite stories. I want to tell
Speaker 1: it every chance again.
Speaker 3: It's a good name to go with it too.
Speaker 1: I know. Rocker is like a fucking yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. And so he was this German dude.
Speaker 1: He had been raised Catholic, but he learned Yiddish because
Speaker 1: he wanted to organize as an anarchist and a lot
Speaker 1: of places in the early twentieth century, in late late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and meant you learned Yiddish. I think he
Speaker 1: did it to impress Millie, is my best guess. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the two tried to move to New York City in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety eight, but they were turned away and deported
Speaker 1: like literally back on the same ship that they came
Speaker 1: in on, because they weren't married and refused to get married,
Speaker 1: and they since they didn't let the state sanction their love,
Speaker 1: they were deported. And this became this like the newspapers
Speaker 1: and shit covered it, not in this like what the
Speaker 1: fuck why didn't we let these people in? But instead
Speaker 1: this like scandal about those fucking leftists who won't get married.
Speaker 3: Yees living in sin, Yeah, trying to pollute the states.
Speaker 1: What I know, I know would their sin? How care
Speaker 1: they The main tie into Milly with this whole thing
Speaker 1: is that later she's going to go start these unions
Speaker 1: in Germany, the Women's Cyneclist Union and stuff. But she
Speaker 1: lived this wild ass life. She goes back to London,
Speaker 1: right because she's not allowed to move to the US.
Speaker 1: She and her partner edited two Yiddish newspapers. There's The
Speaker 1: Political Worker's Friend and then there's a more cultural one
Speaker 1: called Germinal and during World War One they ran a
Speaker 1: soup kitchen together because everyone's like just fucked and starving,
Speaker 1: and basically anner because I've been doing food out bombs forever.
Speaker 1: And then first her partner and then she got locked
Speaker 1: up for opposing the war World War One. When they
Speaker 1: got out, they were like, all right, fuck London, let's
Speaker 1: go to Berlin. That seems kind of cool right now.
Speaker 1: Right it's nineteen eighteen or so, and they're like, Berlin's
Speaker 1: suddenly the Weimar Republic and it's really cool. They're like
Speaker 1: they get invited to help go start in arcosiniclist unions
Speaker 1: and they're like, that sounds like our jam. So they
Speaker 1: do and they helped form the FOUD the Workers whatever,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and Millie helped start not only Berlin
Speaker 1: Women's Union but also the Syndicalists Women's Union to unite
Speaker 1: all of the local and arcos Syndicalists women's unions. She
Speaker 1: hung out there until nineteen thirty three when the Reichstag
Speaker 1: fire happened, and she was like, I like, really shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in Germany right now. It seems like a really
Speaker 1: bad idea for me as a very prominent Jewish anarchist, right,
Speaker 1: so she dipped. Her husband comes with her. I mean
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't good for him either, but you know
Speaker 1: he was German at least, or I mean whatever anyway,
Speaker 1: And so they moved to an anarchist commune in upstate
Speaker 1: New York, where they continued to be cool for decades
Speaker 1: and just organize. After World War II, the whole commune
Speaker 1: constantly put together aid packets for the anarchists in Germany
Speaker 1: who had somehow survived the fucking war. And she lived
Speaker 1: to be seventy eight. She died in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: and just did so fucking much. Her sister Rose stayed
Speaker 1: in London and published anarchist feminist text about birth control
Speaker 1: and kept getting interested for it and was cool too.
Speaker 1: But back to Germany and the Weimar Crime ring, and
Speaker 1: by that I mean back to ad break time. Now
Speaker 1: go and we're back. We're talking about vymar Germany, all right.
Speaker 1: So you have these syndicluss unions. They're distributing information about
Speaker 1: birth control, pushing for this child burying strike basically, we
Speaker 1: won't have kids until conditions approve. And the social Democrats
Speaker 1: were on this too, just credit where it's due. Radicals
Speaker 1: would write pamphlets with names like how can we promote
Speaker 1: to the cultural decline of births as far back as
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, and this pamphlet sold thirty one thousand copies.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of what I'm talking about, that
Speaker 1: framing and how it's so important to understand it from
Speaker 1: their perspective. You know, it's sketchy and all of the
Speaker 1: like trying to control who gets to have kids goes
Speaker 1: really badly, but it's like worth seeing where they're coming
Speaker 1: from about it. The ideas that birth control can be
Speaker 1: a proletarian weapon because the sheer replaceability of workers and
Speaker 1: soldiers was part of why conditions were so bad. In
Speaker 1: a very similar way as it also was a feminist
Speaker 1: move in which like this is like in the same
Speaker 1: way that like workers will, the one thing we can
Speaker 1: withhold is our labor right from the class, A lot
Speaker 1: of different feminist perspectives are like, well, the thing that
Speaker 1: we can withhold is well, reproductive labor is the most
Speaker 1: annoying misidea mislabeled Marxist term of all times. But they
Speaker 1: can withhold having children, which doesn't count as reproducive labor
Speaker 1: because anyway, whatever fucking complicated as terms not written by women.
Speaker 1: Clearly maybe it was I don't know, Fewer workers meant
Speaker 1: less competition for the same jobs, and it also meant
Speaker 1: that both women and workers felt like they had more
Speaker 1: control if they pushed this line. I also think that
Speaker 1: they mostly just were like, I don't want to have
Speaker 1: kids right now, and like I kind of want a fuck,
Speaker 1: but like, so what if we just find a way
Speaker 1: to make that happen. And then we're like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like for the revolution or something, am I right? And
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, totally, you're cute, Hans, get over here
Speaker 1: with your mustache. And so they started getting talks left
Speaker 1: and right, these like women's unions, right, and they're finding
Speaker 1: that sometimes women would come and like they would join
Speaker 1: the union just long enough to get I think you
Speaker 1: have to be a member to come to them. So
Speaker 1: they joined long enough to get like the free condoms
Speaker 1: and the advice about how to not get kids, and
Speaker 1: then they would dip, which is like, yeah, fair, whatever
Speaker 1: what do you expect.
Speaker 3: For there for the party favors? And then they're gonna
Speaker 3: exactly get what they need. Let me get those thanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it hasn't gone to an activist meeting for
Speaker 1: the snacks, I mean.
Speaker 3: Also the snacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at the beginning, there's one other group distributing
Speaker 1: birth control, and they're not doing it for free, the
Speaker 1: condom manufacturers or the I don't specifically know that it's condoms,
Speaker 1: but I believe it's condoms, because again there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of information the birth control implements or whatever, which
Speaker 1: I assume by this point because the I have like
Speaker 1: eight times because of the show, like looked up when
Speaker 1: the condom came into common use, and it was a
Speaker 1: while before this anyway, there were clever loopholes and laws
Speaker 1: that said birth control could be discussed behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: and so they would have like these closed door meetings.
Speaker 1: But by nineteen twenty three, in nineteen twenty four, it's
Speaker 1: no longer the businesses, and it's no longer the unions.
Speaker 1: It is now these lay organizations that I was talking about.
Speaker 1: They take over as the companies back off. They don't
Speaker 1: actually the unions don't back off. The unions become these
Speaker 1: lay organizations. The Free Workers of Germany founded a group
Speaker 1: called the vsl or Association for Sexual Hygiene and Life
Speaker 1: Reform and they were like, we swear it's a totally
Speaker 1: separate group. It's totally not just our union, like we promise,
Speaker 1: And the cops were like, no, this is quote an
Speaker 1: association closely connected with the Syndicalists, which recruited its members
Speaker 1: primarily from such circles, so they're not fool in anyone.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty eight, the VSL and other lay organizations
Speaker 1: come together and form a union of lay organizations called
Speaker 1: the Reich Association of Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene. I
Speaker 1: think Reich in this case doesn't mean anything sketchy, and
Speaker 1: it stands for r V, or rather r V is
Speaker 1: what it is abbreviated as. And this group is strictly
Speaker 1: neutral in regards to politics and religion. But we all
Speaker 1: know where it came from. And the elected chairman was
Speaker 1: a member of the Synthicalist Union, and they ran sexual
Speaker 1: counseling centers all over the country in more than two
Speaker 1: hundred locations, teaching sex education, distributing contraceptives, and performing abortions.
Speaker 1: Very few physicians in Germany at the time would fuck
Speaker 1: with abortions. So this is why, like in a lot
Speaker 1: of other places, it's like crime doctors, but they're like doctors,
Speaker 1: or they're pretending to be doctors, or they perform the
Speaker 1: role of doctors, but that's not there. They're not licensed
Speaker 1: or whatever, you know. But overall in Germany, the physicians
Speaker 1: weren't fucking with it. Either they were anti choice or
Speaker 1: they were anti I go to jail now. And so
Speaker 1: lay people trained in the performance of abortions. To quote
Speaker 1: Hans Schmidtz whose parents were anarchists, and he's just like
Speaker 1: describing what he saw as a kid, father was active
Speaker 1: in the League, the local lay organization, the League for
Speaker 1: the Protection of Mothers and Social Family Hygiene, because why
Speaker 1: would you name your group anything other than that? Back
Speaker 1: to the quote, Secretly the League also aided women in
Speaker 1: getting abortions. There were several women who could be called
Speaker 1: upon when abortion was to be performed. My mother had
Speaker 1: quite a bit of experience in this and was one
Speaker 1: of these women. Naturally, we were not allowed to be around,
Speaker 1: but the apartment was so small and it could not
Speaker 1: be concealed from us. A couple of times my mother
Speaker 1: sent me to fetch doctor b. He came when there
Speaker 1: were complications, and unfortunately for any listeners who are considering this,
Speaker 1: running a massive crime ring does have some negative consequences.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I would argue overall, it's worth I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it anyone listening. I'm not doing it.
Speaker 3: Says Margaret on a major podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but anyway. A woman whose name is only given
Speaker 1: as Albrecht so I'm guessing last name, from the Anarcho
Speaker 1: Syndicalist Union was sentenced to three years in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: after this big national scandal show trial. She'd performed more
Speaker 1: than one hundred abortions for the local chapter of the league.
Speaker 1: Luis Witch got eighteen months in nineteen thirty three. I
Speaker 1: suppose you could call it a witch trial, unless I'm
Speaker 1: mispronouncing that name, in which case you shouldn't. The chairman
Speaker 1: of the RV was sentenced to prison at one point.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how long he went to prison. And
Speaker 1: you ever heard that depressing thing where? Okay, so like
Speaker 1: the Nazis came to power, this is the main depressing thing.
Speaker 1: They killed a fuck ton of people, right, and they
Speaker 1: put a lot of people in these camps right famously,
Speaker 1: and some of the people they put in were in
Speaker 1: for being gay. And then after everyone was liberated, the
Speaker 1: gay prisoners had to stay in jail because what they
Speaker 1: had done was illegal before the Nazis too. You ever
Speaker 1: heard that it's a terrible fun thing.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I had never heard that. Wait, they stayed in the
Speaker 2: camps or they just went to a different place. I
Speaker 2: think some people were like literally in the same place.
Speaker 2: But they did not get free. The gay prisoners did
Speaker 2: not get free after the liberation of And this was
Speaker 2: true for both Soviet controlled and allied or Western wow
Speaker 2: US controlled I don't know the word for the Allies,
Speaker 2: who aren't the Soviets the capitalist powers, well they're all
Speaker 2: capital anyway.
Speaker 1: Whatever. So one of these abortion rights activists, these three
Speaker 1: that I've mentioned, have gone to jay or just a
Speaker 1: tiny percentage of it. They're the ones that this paper
Speaker 1: is specifically. The only thing I found about it was like,
Speaker 1: here's what the syndicalists were doing. So this is like
Speaker 1: the three syndicalists that this guy knew. But at least
Speaker 1: one of the other abortion providers or activists spent time
Speaker 1: in Nuremberg after the war, charged with abortion and was
Speaker 1: not freed because see what he had done, whether she
Speaker 1: or what they had done, was a crime. But again,
Speaker 1: million abortions a year, saving so many lives, just countless lives.
Speaker 1: These women performing these abortions. They were quote no Bunglers,
Speaker 1: according to the paper, or the paper is quoting a
Speaker 1: person who saw it happen. They knew what the fuck
Speaker 1: they were doing, and they did it for free and
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 3: I feel like that was just like a phrase, you know,
Speaker 3: like how he like a cool phrase they had to
Speaker 3: say during the time. They're like, no, no, they're for real,
Speaker 3: They're for real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, totally. I can't wait till it swings back
Speaker 1: around again and someone is like listening and they're.
Speaker 3: Like, no, they weren't bungling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like. Man in early twenty first centuryone was
Speaker 1: like that person's for real, But what they meant is
Speaker 1: they weren't a Bungler exactly.
Speaker 3: I want that happened quickly.
Speaker 1: I feel like culture moves fast enough that it will
Speaker 1: happen while we're alive and we'll be like, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is happening, Get off my lawn exactly.
Speaker 3: Like I feel that way in general. When I'm like
Speaker 3: watching the fashions, I'm like I definitely had that dress, yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely in eighth grade and they're wearing that Yeah, am
Speaker 3: I gonna do with myself.
Speaker 1: Well, who they're already past the nostalgia for when I
Speaker 1: as a kid, Like, they're already past nineties nostalgia, right
Speaker 1: they are? Anyway, Like it's if anyone's listening and they're
Speaker 1: on my own, get off it here, you damn kids.
Speaker 1: Maybe that phrase is outdated. Who fucking knows? Probably?
Speaker 3: All right, wait, can't we control that says we're the
Speaker 3: ones calling anyway?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we create the culture now we're anyway we
Speaker 1: do not. Yeah, but speaking of the culture, this isn't
Speaker 1: an ad transition. Uh. The culture that they were building
Speaker 1: is a fascinating one. And it's one of these things
Speaker 1: where things people are like our generation acts like it
Speaker 1: in vented polyamory. Right. For the German and archosyndicalists, women's
Speaker 1: liberation and sexual autonomy was not just a theory. They
Speaker 1: had vivid conversations all the time, and they were also
Speaker 1: just fucking And there were plenty of women who were like,
Speaker 1: we believe in free love, but it actually needs to
Speaker 1: be love. All these fucking shitty, horny men are trying
Speaker 1: to use these political put points just to fucking run,
Speaker 1: and we think that sucks. There were, of course also
Speaker 1: women who were doing the same thing too. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me because it mirrors these discussions I've read
Speaker 1: about late sixties discourse and how HIPPI men were like
Speaker 1: one hundred percent down with women's liberation on two specific issues,
Speaker 1: abortion access and birth control, anything that reduced their responsibility
Speaker 1: and to increase their access sexual access to women. Hippi
Speaker 1: men were a lot less consistent about their support of
Speaker 1: other feminist causes for some weird person surprise. So it's
Speaker 1: just enoughing ever changes moment for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say a lot of these things
Speaker 3: are happening today as we've seen, well, new organizations pop
Speaker 3: up as well, but the whole like going on strike
Speaker 3: from giving birth is actually familiar as well. But Korea
Speaker 3: and Japan have been doing that as of late too.
Speaker 3: That's why the birth rate and everybody's really really coodert
Speaker 3: because the women have had enough. They're like, fuck this,
Speaker 3: I don't want children, y'all don't give us enough pay,
Speaker 3: and all you want to do is make us suffer.
Speaker 3: We're not doing this anymore. But it's very similar to
Speaker 3: that level. I'm like, interesting, and the government's like, please,
Speaker 3: for the love of Jesus, will give you more money,
Speaker 3: have a baby.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense to me. Like, I remember
Speaker 1: my older sister is a very strong feminist. I'm very lucky.
Speaker 1: My whole family is very very feminist. And I remember
Speaker 1: my older sister kind of like sitting down. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like a young radical or something, and I
Speaker 1: was like overpopulation. And my sister was like, did you
Speaker 1: know that every single time you give women control of
Speaker 1: their own reproductive health, the birth rate drops to a
Speaker 1: sustainable amount. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like you
Speaker 1: don't have to make laws around it. You don't got
Speaker 1: to do shit. All you gotta do is give people
Speaker 1: the right to choose about whether or not they get
Speaker 1: to stay or get pregnant. Right. Problem solves itself, it does.
Speaker 3: That's why there are so many of us that are childless.
Speaker 3: Instead we get dogs, yeah or cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I put that in for you.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: So that's like what I know about this movement. I
Speaker 1: want there to be more. I know the sources. They
Speaker 1: are all in German. Maybe one day I'll be able
Speaker 1: to return to it. But all I can say is
Speaker 1: I'm proud as fuck of the German radicals who held
Speaker 1: down a million abortions a year, seemingly all for free
Speaker 1: through horizontal organizing, and they didn't get preachy about it.
Speaker 1: Like one of the reason is that it's hard to
Speaker 1: know about it. It didn't people didn't even know it
Speaker 1: was tied into the radical labor movement because they didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it, or at least I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they didn't. They're probably insuffer maybe like German radicals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we. I do want a documentary on
Speaker 3: this because, Yeah, a million abortiones that is phenomenal. And
Speaker 3: the fact that they were able to be that organized
Speaker 3: for so long with that many members, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, also, I'm proud of I'm proud
Speaker 1: of all the feminist, black radicals, communists and anarchists who
Speaker 1: came together in the Bay Area to organize abortion clinics
Speaker 1: and then defend them from organized right wing violence, which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. Hell yeah, but before we talk about that,
Speaker 1: we should talk about you and your show me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I yes, so I am on a show called
Speaker 3: us Stuff Mom never told you, which we do talk
Speaker 3: about things like this, not the in depth history of this,
Speaker 3: only like you cool zone media people are that cool.
Speaker 3: We do very research based, very like nerdy based things,
Speaker 3: including talking about Star Wars or for me, lately it
Speaker 3: has been about k drama. No, I don't don't ask
Speaker 3: why because I'm Korean and I'm trying to find myself.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we also have a book that we published.
Speaker 3: It was released this year. Nope, last year? Oh god,
Speaker 3: what year is it? Twenty twenty three? Goddamn y'all. This
Speaker 3: is where I'm like, still twenty twenty three? Yeah, no, okay, anyway,
Speaker 3: last year we publish published.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: The future. We had published a book you can find
Speaker 3: any of your bookstores. Is also on audible if you
Speaker 3: want to hear Annie and myself read out a book,
Speaker 3: which was a completely different process than podcasting that we
Speaker 3: have learned.
Speaker 1: What's difficult.
Speaker 3: But yes, you should come and listen if you like
Speaker 3: to hear things about intersectional femine, some nerd things, all
Speaker 3: the good things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, stream plugs nice, Nope, that's it. I want to
Speaker 1: plug things. Uh, I have a god. Okay, by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this, no, like a couple of days
Speaker 1: after you hear this, sometime around when you hear it,
Speaker 1: February one, twenty twenty four, we're releasing Number City, the
Speaker 1: tabletop role playing game that I helped write that I've
Speaker 1: been working on for ten goddamn years. We kickstarted it
Speaker 1: last summer. Thanks for your help, we raise enough money
Speaker 1: to put together a beautiful hardcover book with like embossed
Speaker 1: silver inlay on the cover and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: so if you want to play a tabletop role playing
Speaker 1: game or do what I did when I didn't have
Speaker 1: any kids as friends as a kid, you can just
Speaker 1: read it and imagine you live in that fantasy world.
Speaker 1: But it's called pan Number City. It's published by Strangers
Speaker 1: in the Tangled Wilderness, and it is available if you
Speaker 1: type in Number City or Strangers in a Tangle don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give you a U are l.
Speaker 1: No one types in URLs. Although now that Google is
Speaker 1: turning into an abyss machine that doesn't provide useful search information,
Speaker 1: maybe you are ls are going to make a comeback.
Speaker 1: That's my plug. I'm also on substack and Twitter and
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram, and.
Speaker 2: Samantha, did you put your handles in?
Speaker 3: I didn't, Yeah, I didn't. You can tell you, you
Speaker 3: can say no, sure, you can follow our not so
Speaker 3: active Instagram with stuff mom never told you.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Also on Twitter as well. We are very not active
Speaker 3: on there. We kind of just let that die out
Speaker 3: as it should have. We're also on TikTok. You can
Speaker 3: see nerdy things on that uh stuff mom never told
Speaker 3: you as well. I am on as McBay dot sam
Speaker 3: on both Instagram and Twitter. Again, I'm not really active
Speaker 3: active on there, but hey, if you want to see
Speaker 3: pictures of my dog, come to the Instagram.
Speaker 1: Okay, but if you make Instagram, you can make memes
Speaker 1: that are like of your dog, and it could be
Speaker 1: like Mom never told me not to jump up on
Speaker 1: the counter. Oh my god, you get all the stuff
Speaker 1: that your mom didn't. Oh that's right, I see, is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to Okay anyway, all right, Well I'm
Speaker 1: clearly at the bottom of the barrel. So I'll see
Speaker 1: you all on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on.
Speaker 2: Cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or
Speaker 2: check us out on the iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.