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Bad Gays

A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? Hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Learn more: www.badgayspod.com

Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first husband Peter Allen to her diabolical fourth husband David Gest. Liza learned on her (and our) mother Judy Garland's knee how to survive by appealing to gay guys. Gay guys used Judy, then Liza to self-fashion. None of it is particularly healthy, and yet we love it so. Our main source for this episode was Liza's new memoir, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This!, and Cameron's newsletter Cooked, with monthly essays and regular music playlists for pop culture obsessives, can be found here.
Support our work by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple, and get an extra monthly episode!

Special Episode: Liza Minnelli's Bad Gays

The final episode of our saga: Mandelson's fall from grace in the aftermath of Keir Starmer's election first as leader of the Labour Party and then as one of Britain's most rapidly unpopular Prime Ministers.
Can't get enough Mandelson? Subscribe now to Extra Bad Gays to hear our subscriber-only followup discussion with James Butler of the LRB and Juliet Jacques of Suite 212.
Mandelson knows too much, understands too much, to be left out of the equation. It’s because he’s sly and underhanded and deceitful that people need him, because it’s a political system that works on those qualities. This is court politics; it’s what Mandelson is a master of, it’s what Epstein was a master of, it’s what Trump is a master of: the informal power of relationships.
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SOURCES:
Mandelson and the making of New Labour, Donald Macintyre
Mandy: The Unauthorised Biography of Peter Mandelson, Paul Routledge
Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT Education, Paul Baker
Tory Pride and Prejudice: The Conservative Party and homosexual law reform, Michael McManus
The Rivals : the intimate story of a political marriage, James Naughtie
Bloody Nasty People, Daniel Trilling
Clampdown: Pop-Cultural wars on class and Gender, Rhian E. Jones
1997: The Future That Never Happened, Richard Power Sayeed
Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and the New Seriousness, Joe Kennedy
https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/lord-mandelson-lord-speakers-corner/
https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2011-12/volume-3/issue-7-open-theme/the-long-road-to-repeal-the-labour-party-and-section-28
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jan/25/mandelson.labour6
https://ntouk.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/wilsons-white-heat-of-technology-speech.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/media-the-dirty-world-of-mr-punch-1187016.html#:~:text=Last%20week%20an%20internationally%20famous,then%2Downers%2C%20United%20Newspapers.
https://jennifrazer.com/mandelson-judaism-lord-levy-jc-dad/
https://johnmajorarchive.org.uk/1993/10/08/mr-majors-speech-to-1993-conservative-party-conference-8-october-1993/
https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/lord-mandelson-lord-speakers-corner/
https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2011-12/volume-3/issue-7-open-theme/the-long-road-to-repeal-the-labour-party-and-section-28
https://www.newsweek.com/one-bonk-and-youre-out-181768
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jan/25/mandelson.labour6
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/03/mandelson.labour2
https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/12/23/peter-mandelson-boris-johnson-bum-boys-about-homophobic-attack/
https://petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/outing/catalyst/
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/public-attitudes-section-28
https://www.gryklaw.com/https-www-gryklaw-com-lgbt-history-month-coming-of-age-same-sex-relationship-immigration-rights/
https://www.theguardian.com/century/1990-1999/Story/0,,112756,00.html
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/see-epsteins-full-birthday-book-with-alleged-personal-messages-from-trump-clinton-and-others
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdr6yjzkvx6o
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/630399.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/nov/17/northernireland.guardianleaders
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68079300
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/peter-mandelson-why-its-taken-me-27-years-to-marry-the-love-of-my-life-3gx8cfgs5
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/lgbtq-hubs/trans-hub/gender-recognition-act-2004
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2007/05/10/the-great-performer-leaves-the-stage
https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/extras/lgbt09.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/13/mandelson-lords
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/13/mandelson-gayrights
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/oct/25/corfu-rothschild-russia-osborne-travel
https://www.politico.eu/article/mandelson-backed-by-commission/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/22/former-trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-offered-help-putin-russia
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article384041.ece
https://www.scotsman.com/news/italian-shoe-magnate-steps-forward-to-sponsor-spruce-up-for-colosseum-1693900
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/over-330000-excess-deaths-in-great-britain-linked-to-austerity-finds-study
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/29/politicalcolumnists.gordonbrown
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/benefits-dwp-cuts-conservatives-austerity-cap-b2956620.html
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour/peter-mandelson-firm-lobbies-tiktok-shell-water-labour-3409771
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2012/03/labour-party-within-progress
https://labourlist.org/2013/06/falkirk-clp-placed-in-special-measures-over-selection-allegations/
https://labourlist.org/2017/02/mandelson-i-am-working-every-day-to-bring-down-corbyn/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/27/mandelson-and-mcsweeney-a-partnership-forged-on-winning-and-crushing-the-labour-left
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-labour-leadership-election-abolish-tuition-fees-nationalisation-396843
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmers-not-driving-the-train-confessions-of-his-inner-circle-mq2kbg39x
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/14/who-is-josh-simons-labour-mp-andy-burnham
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/06/labour-thinktank-close-to-morgan-mcsweeney-allegedly-paid-firm-to-investigate-journalists
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/27/mandelson-and-mcsweeney-a-partnership-forged-on-winning-and-crushing-the-labour-left
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/20/labour-minister-falsely-linked-journalists-to-pro-kremlin-network-in-emails-to-gchq
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/28/keir-starmer-leadership-labour-leader-left
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/20/appointment-peter-mandelson-new-uk-ambassador-to-us-divides-labour-mps
https://archive.progressivebritain.org/2013/06/27/no-more-falkirks/
peterchrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b13135cdd628b29e3495f8/V1_FINAL.pdf
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26086390-jeffey-epstein-50th-birthday-book/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/16/revealed-mandelson-failed-vetting-but-foreign-office-overruled-decision
https://www.ft.com/content/fdf7afe9-9ad3-4325-8843-f590dcdd7e57?syn-25a6b1a6=1
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/ties-peter-mandelson-jeffrey-epstein.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn82elvzpz7o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9el4dw0z3o
https://archive.ph/uWXFn
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrjd2kxw2lo
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00764113.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/peter-mandelson-epstein-swear-ambassador-trump-b2693376.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/starmer-confirms-he-knew-mandelson-kept-epstein-ties-after-prison-term
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/11/peter-mandelson-declines-to-apologise-for-association-with-jeffrey-epstein
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jeffrey-epstein-peter-mandelson-emails-b2914283.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/ties-peter-mandelson-jeffrey-epstein.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/starmer-confirms-he-knew-mandelson-kept-epstein-ties-after-prison-term
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/05/how-epstein-scandal-shaken-british-government-peter-mandelson
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/06/peter-mandelson-election-labour-insiders
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/20/peter-mandelson-a-timeline-of-his-appointment-as-uk-ambassadorto-the-us
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx26yz7kxzo
https://www.ft.com/content/fdf7afe9-9ad3-4325-8843-f590dcdd7e57?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode 6

Today we are reaching the next to last chapter––for now!––of the Mandelson story.
Listen to the sixth and final episode now by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon.
As we are recording this, on 18th May 2026, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is facing a potential leadership challenge and a collapse in legitimacy following two major crises, both of these the responsibility of Peter Mandelson; one, directly, the other a consequence of the changes of which Mandelson has been the driving force of for almost 40 years. The first crisis is Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States, despite his having failed a Foreign Office vetting procedure, and the fallout of that once Mandelson was outed as a close long-term friend of the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, to whom it’s alleged he passed sensitive government and financial information while in power. The other is the complete decimation of Labour in the recent local elections, and in elections for the Welsh and Scottish devolved assemblies, which saw the party lose close to 1500 local council seats and, in Wales, lose a century-long winning streak as the country’s largest party. In today’s episode we’ll talk about Mandelson’s journey from MP to peer to Ambassador, and we’ll also discuss how his enormous influence over that time, usually behind the scenes, has led to a Labour Party and indeed the two party system itself on the edge of total collapse.
 

Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Five

Peter Mandelson has been the definitive comeback kid of British politics, and it’s impossible to ever rule out his return.
Listen to Episode Five right now and get Extra Bad Gays every month by subscribing on Patreon!
Today, we will learn why he got that reputation as we look at Mandelson in power. The Millennium Dome, a Y2K fever dream! His public outing! A wider cultural shift in attitudes towards gay men, one which contributed to the idea that poofs were everywhere at the top of society! Resignations, and returns!










 
 

Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Four

This week, on Mandelson: A Homosexual History, we cover the 1992 UK election and the birth of New Labour.
Subscribe on Patreon to support our work and stay a week ahead on this miniseries!
If Huw's Margaret Thatcher wasn't enough to turn your stomach, try his John Major on for size. Neil Kinnock loses the 1992 election. John Smith becomes leader of the Labour Party, flanked by two feuding up-and-coming reformers named Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Peter Mandelson buys a lovely home in Notting Hill with questionable financing, and sets himself to defeating Clause IV once and for all. The exciting but fundamentally reactionary Cool Britannia cultural moment helps us understand how tentative New Labour were about rocking the cultural boat. Their victory in 1997 was more about stasis than change.
 

Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Three

Subscribe on Patreon to hear Episode Three now, get our monthly Extra Bad Gays episodes, and stay a week ahead on the miniseries.
Last week we looked at Mandelson’s early years, and his move from a flirtation with Marxism to being firmly on the right of the Labour Party. We also discussed the left-right split in the Labour Party, and how, in the 1980s, that became a full blown civil war. This week, it's time for the 1987 General Election, and for the paranoid homophobia of late-Eighties Britain: section 28, sleaze, AIDS panic, and tabloid hell.

Mandelson: A Homosexual History -  Episode Two

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to hear Episode Two of Mandelson: A Homosexual History now, and to stay a week ahead as the miniseries continues.
They call him the Prince of Darkness. Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last forty years. He's a spin doctor, a sometime minister, and a networker whose downfall through the Epstein files now threatens the survival of the British government. This miniseries examines his gay life and times, tracing the collapse of mass politics, the emergence of neoliberalism, and the political history of homosexuality in the UK, from decriminalisation to Section 28, from Sleaze to Gay Marriage. A Faustian story, Mandelson: A Homosexual History plays out on a world-historical scale, but at its heart is driven by the failures and compromises of greed and lust. In Episode One, we trace the emergence of Mandleson’s career in the Labour Party, and the formation of the networks of power that would help hollow out British social democracy in the years of Thatcher and Blair. 

Mandelson: A Homosexual History–Episode One

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!
 
Daniel Dunglas Home always knew he wasn't like the other boys. Not because he was gay, but because, while they were out on the sports field playing rugby, he was communicating with the dead. Despite being a huge celebrity in Victorian England, today Home is almost unknown. In this special episode, academic and novelist Avery Curran talks to Huw about one of the most significant mediums of 19th century Spiritualism, and what his life and reputation can tell us about gender and sexuality in high society at the time.
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SOURCES:
 
Heyday of a Wizard - Jean Burton

 
The First Psychic - Peter Lamont
 
Experiences in Spiritualism with DD Home - Viscount Adare
 
‘Very hot indeed’: Intimacy between men in Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr. D. D. Home  - Avery Curran, Journal of Victorian Culture
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

 

Special Episode: Daniel Dunglas Home

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!
Live from Helsinki, we close out our season with Tom of Finland, the man who advertised the concept of gay masculinity to gays becoming men. Originally his illustrations were controversial because of his graphic depictions of gay sex, of sodomy and cocksucking and fisting in a pre-liberation, pre-internet age. Today, things have changed so much you can buy Tom branded products in department stores like Selfridges, and books of his drawings in Barnes and Noble. But at the same time, his representations of Black men and of Nazi aesthetics have drawn new criticisms, even while the fisting and piss and cock-sucking have become perfect home decorations. And the influence of his work on gay male sex cultures, on ideals of queer masculinities, and especially on leather scenes, remains enormous and contested.
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SOURCES:
F. Valentine Hooven III, Tom Of Finland: His Life And Times (St. Martin's, 1992)
Arnie Kantrowitz, Swastika Toys, in Leatherfolk, edited by Mark Thompson, pp. 193–209.


Hunter Scott,  “Facing Sameness: Reconsidering the Radicality of Tom of Finland.” InVisible Culture 36, https://doi.org/10.47761/494a02f6.262a8f58.


 
Carta Monir, "Morally Erect," Lux Magazine, https://lux-magazine.com/article/tom-of-finland/
https://worldcrunch.com/in-the-news/tom-of-finland-double-life-of-the-gay-icon-who-changed-a-nation/ 
https://www.myhelsinki.fi/visit/lgbtqia-in-helsinki/tom-of-finlands-helsinki/
https://kunstkritikk.com/the-cult-of-iconified-homosexuality/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Tom of Finland

William Beckford, who was born not in Bath but in London in 1760, is someone for whom property, in every sense of the word, was the defining factor in his life. He was a novelist, a member of parliament, a collector of art, antiquities, and books, a travel writer, and a builder of great palaces; he regarded himself as a man of culture, but he made his cultural qualities known by buying and building things. And he could afford to buy and build things - ridiculous things - because he was rich, extraordinarily rich, richer than we can possibly imagine. So all his status, his legacy, the thing that made him who he was, came from his wealth, and his wealth came from another form of property he owned: chattel slaves. And that wealth also enabled him to pursue troubling relationships with boys.
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SOURCES
James Lees-Milne, William Beckford (Compton Press, 1976)
J. W. Oliver, The Life of William Beckford (Oxford University Press, 1932)
Guy Chapman, William Beckford (Scribner, 1937)
Caroline Stanford, Beckford’s Tower History Album (National Trust)
A number of essays on Rictor Norton’s website about him including “The Fool at Fonthill” https://www.rictornorton.co.uk/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.


William Beckford

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!
Live from Sheffield DocFest, it's E. M. Forster: who in his 91 years of life was one of Britain’s most successful novelists. He was raised in a climate of Victorian propriety so extreme he went to university without understanding human reproduction, and then fell in with a secret society known for alternative thinking and "aggressive" homosexuality. Italy — and later India — represented paradises of freedom and liberation in comparison to the cramped, horrid Edwardian upper middle classes. Erotic contact with the working-class/brown Other was the waters of Lourdes for this uptight Englishman, who was never able to transcend his own position.
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SOURCES
Wendy Moffat, E. M. Forster: A New Life (Bloomsbury, 2010).
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-man-out-of-time-e-m-forsters-a-passage-to-india-at-100-and-the-legacies-of-colonialism-236324
https://www.varsity.co.uk/features/25279
http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/cambridge_apostles_S.pdf
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/06/forster-love-story/
https://variety.com/2017/film/global/james-ivory-why-wont-u-s-actors-do-nude-scenes-starting-with-call-me-by-your-name-stars-1202581485/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/23/man-with-a-past
https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/diversity/lgbt-history/fwwhomosexuality/forster-fww/#
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/17/e-m-forster-my-policeman
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n01/alan-hollinghurst/poor-dear-how-she-figures
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Toibin-t.html
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

E. M. Forster

It's never too late to give the gift of Bad Gays this holiday season: invite a friend or loved one into our community at https://www.patreon.com/badgayspod/gift
This month, we discuss Christmas spirit, the cancellation of the Netflix Marines drama Boots and the death of homonationalism, and then take a Gaggony Guncles question from a listener who needs to hear that He's Just Not That Into You.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays December 2025

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!
Another episode down under: Andrew George Scott is best remembered to history as the enigmatic “Captain Moonlite”, and the story of his short but eventful life is a fascinating tale of personal conscience, colonialism, and criminality. Born in Ireland, he was taken by his family to New Zealand, became a military man, attempted to become a priest, robbed a bank, toured as an inspirational speaker, held up a sheep station, and requested to be buried in the arms of his lover. 
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SOURCES:
Paul Terry, In Search of Captain Moonlite: Bushranger, Conman, Warrior, Lunatic (Allen & Unwin, 2013)
Stephan Williams, The Wantabadgery Bushrangers: A Partial Study (Popinjay Publications, 1991)
https://www.themonthly.com.au/november-2015/essays/queer-bushranger
https://queergoldfields.au/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

Captain Moonlite

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!
The place: Queensland, Australia; a state just recovering from decades of rule by "hillbilly dictator" Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a petty authoritarian with a reputation for brutal homophobia and the even more brutal repression of street protest. The time: the late Eighties, at the height of the AIDS epidemic and public fear about queers and blood. The woman: Tracey Wigginton, a deeply disturbed woman from an abusive background who committed a horrifying crime. The media saw a potential scandal, and created one: it was easier to believe lesbians are vampires than to believe in the endemic nature of family abuse and violence in our society.
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SOURCES:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265940376_Biting_the_hand_that_breeds_the_trials_of_Tracey_Wigginton
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/paroled-lesbian-vampire-killer-tracey-wigginton-will-get-away-with-lies/news-story/d7f1890bf3cb800c110a63d9afae6573
 https://www.9news.com.au/national/queensland-news-vampire-killer-tracey-wigginton-facebook-posts/09282693-2a38-4a28-b774-e4e13ce75528
Wiggington, Tracey. "A perspective on long term imprisonment." Hecate, vol. 28, no. 1, May 2002, pp. 163+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A90137673/LitRC?u=fub&sid=summon&xid=a75e4729. Accessed 6 Aug. 2025.
 
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/paroled-lesbian-vampire-killer-tracey-wigginton-will-get-away-with-lies/news-story/d7f1890bf3cb800c110a63d9afae6573
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/lesbian-vampire-killer-who-drank-victims-blood/news-story/09102844937bc5d7f8ae57a6ecaa7d23
 
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crime-and-justice/the-dark-secrets-of-queenslands-lesbian-vampire-killer/news-story/f06485d6f4bedf7aff10c6d0cc0493de
https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/data/UQ_266021/UQ266021_OA.pdf?Expires=1754556877&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJKNBJ4MJBJNC6NLQ&Signature=RiTUjU3wloJ5ID8FOocSjpBlGCjqSx3tWOlsGk-yjs6t97RfzrIL12lmEqpNzte66K4qvtNWannQlBkdGFt3fpxYMX6BfAPVooV0jWn9XIbe8mtv7dlNoMlY8qlGP12i3ys2cjGijliWW~FlUbT49K78sSDqF2s07VLL2B-joR7iV5IM2SDPzz~mPK9P1GtWClFsA32y3nD7zDGD01owIidTuQEq5iG4eVdJBsdd0Ttam40sGbLnpxE5KH1chiHdDLUn9L7ysMnsfUuU-iFb7LFOuRRFVIRGEP0xfMR7WMKLw-WAJuzldNop789xaNYyIfoohViG7F2D3LeMxrzdZg__
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/shock-revelation-in-brisbanes-infamous-lesbian-vampire-killing/news-story/ac7ebac0af6c24f5a97d73d200078a38
https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/new-book-reveals-six-personalities-of-vampire-lesbian-killer/news-story/d41b346be98738676f41b52717a3f721
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/crime-week-dark-secrets-of-australias-lesbian-vampire-murderer/news-story/83ed596770511fa459c4a7feab36ce1c
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/lesbian-vampire-killer-who-drank-victims-blood/news-story/09102844937bc5d7f8ae57a6ecaa7d23
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Tracey Wigginton

With apologies for the delay, it's your episode of Extra Bad Gays for November of this year. We start by breaking down Ben's fight with a gay underwear brand, Huw's writing residency in an abandoned Austrian castle, and the Netflix series Boots: come for the homonationalism, stay for the shower scenes. Then we premiere our new Gaggony Guncles theme song and tackle a listener question about the ethics and practice of tourism.
For the full episode, subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays November 2025: Tourism House Down Boots

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Today we’re discussing a strange and compelling figure, the photographer Angela Calomiris. We can start at the end of her life, as a denizen of Provincetown, the little resort at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts that has long been a haven for LGBTQ people. Angie had a reputation as a formidable figure in the town as a tough, and not always fair, businesswoman. She had made good money through some stiff deals. But she was also regarded as generous, if eccentric, by others. Yet behind Angie’s role as a local doyenne, she trailed a dark secret about her life as a young photographer in New York. How did Angela end up in Provincetown, and why was the mere sight of her name enough to induce horror in a fellow photographer? In today’s episode, we’ll discuss Angela’s life of FBI collaboration, naming names, secrets and lies.
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Lisa Davis, Undercover girl : the lesbian informant who helped the FBI bring down the Communist Party (Imagine, 2017)
Lisa Davis, The Spy Who Came in from the Closet https://glreview.org/article/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-closet/
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare (Chicago University Press, 2004)
Mason Klein, The radical camera : New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 (Yale University Press, 2011)
Carol A. Stabile, The Broadcast 4: Women and the Anti- Communist Blacklist (Goldsmith's Press, 2018)
Sophia Starmack, The rise and fall and P’town rebirth of Angela Calomiris https://eu.wickedlocal.com/story/provincetown-banner/2017/05/18/the-rise-fall-p-x2019/4502034007/
Veronica A. Wilson ‘I chose the values I regarded as American’: Sexuality, ethnicity, and FBI informant Angela Calomiris https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/lwish/tcc/2021/00000020/00000020/art00005
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, and its use is under the principles of fair use for purposes such as commentary, criticism, and parody. All rights belong to the respective copyright holders.
 

Angela Calomiris

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Today's subject, Jacob Israël de Haan, wrote one of the first gay dutch novels. "What is it that I long for," he asked. "The sanctity of Israel or an Arab male prostitute?" Born in 1881 in the Netherlands, he was assassinated by the Haganah paramilitary at the age of 42 in Palestine, having moved there to establish Zion, and then having turned on the Zionist project because of its treatment of the Arabs. His love of young Arab men was both a source of scandal and a very troubling source of evolving solidarity.
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SOURCES
https://archive.ph/wkF8y#selection-1069.0-1074.0
https://www-literatuurgeschiedenis-org.translate.goog/teksten/pijpelijntjes?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_5/critical_urgencies/giebels.htm
https://www.gerthekma.nl/ewExternalFiles/Jacob Israël de Haan. Pederast poet between Amsterdam and Jerusalem.pdf
https://rabbidunner.com/assassination-in-the-holy-city/#_edn12
https://glreview.org/article/article-964/
https://archive.ph/wkF8y
https://www.the-low-countries.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/TLC_24_Chronicle_WASSING_NASSAU.pdf
https://www.the-low-countries.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/TLC_24_Chronicle_WASSING_NASSAU.pdf
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jacob-de-haan-political-poet
https://glreview.org/article/article-964/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/haan-jacob-israel-de
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/c9843d1e-4703-45eb-a317-4de724d686a1/The multiple lives of Jacob Israel de Haan.pdf
https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/Jacob Israel de Haan - A Queer and Lapsed Zionist in Mandate Palestine.pdf
 

Jacob Israël de Haan

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Let us take ourselves back to a very exciting time: we’re talking London, at the turn of the 18th century. The city is the largest in Europe, and growing - it’s passed the half a million mark and by the end of the century will have doubled. Crime was rife, and getting worse. The law was administered by a pay-to-play criminal justice system: and today's subject, Charles Hitchen, got rich playing both sides while touring through London's infamous "molly houses," back rooms of taverns or gin houses, where queer men could meet, cruise, and even fuck. These developed a much richer culture, with their own slang, faux marriage rituals, and drag performances including a queen giving birth to a wheel of cheddar cheese.
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SOURCES:
Gerald Howson, Thief-Taker General: Jonathan Wild and the Emergence of Crime and Corruption as a Way of Life in Eighteenth-Century England (Routledge, 1985)
Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century (Verso, 2006)
Rictor Norton, The Georgian Underworld, https://rictornorton.co.uk/gu00.htm.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, and its use is under the principles of fair use for purposes such as commentary, criticism, and parody. All rights belong to the respective copyright holders.

Charles Hitchen

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Many people in our audience will have seen Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, an exploration of Black and Latinx ball culture in New York City. One of the film’s primary interview interlocutors is Dorian Corey, who is one of the film’s most quotable characters. Corey's life helps us explore the history of drag from balls for enslaved people in the 1870s to today. And did you know that Corey knew, during all those serene interviews in Paris Is Burning, that the man she had murdered in self-defense and not trusted police to handle it (would you?) was mummified in the closet behind her. 
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SOURCES
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19931218/1737662/deceased-drag-show-star-leaves-mummy-mystery-behind-in-closet
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning
https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5381/2016/06/16101213/hooks_paris-is-burning.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html
https://www.swervmagazine.com/entertainment-2/pioneers/
https://queermusicheritage.com/drag-pearl.html
https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2005/The-Gay-30S/
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/drag-queen-slave-ball/ 
https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/the-legendary-hamilton-lodge-ball-home-at-the-rockland-palace-dance-hall-in-harlem/
https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/queens-and-queers-rise-drag-ball-culture-1920s
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935316?seq=1
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning
https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/08/dorian-corey-1937-1993-performer.html
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. 

Dorian Corey

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Today's episode is about three very different men and how their lives overlapped. The first was a pioneering rock and roll musician who stunned audiences with his fast-paced hits in a quite macho rock world: a huge influence on musicians from Elvis and The Beatles to James Brown, Prince, Patti Smith, Andre 3000, and more. It was a very eclectic mix and he lived an equally fast-paced private life off stage. The second man was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher from the deep south of the United States who preached about sin. The third person was a young Black queer man thrown out of his home by his domineering pastor father in the late 1940s who became a drag performer under the name Princess LaVonne, performing in clubs and for traveling medicine shows and dressing in capes and turbans, singing obscene songs about anal sex while cruising bathrooms for sexual contacts with men. These were all one and the same man: Richard Wayne Penniman, better known by his performing name, Little Richard.
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SOURCES
 

Abdurraqib, Hanif. "What Little Richard Deserved." The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-little-richard-deserved
Freeman, Scott. "Remembrance: How Little Richard Invented Rock'n'roll in Macon, Georgia." ArtsAtlanta. https://www.artsatl.org/remembrance-how-little-richard-invented-rock-n-roll-in-macon-georgia/
Little Richard: I Am Everything. HBO, dir. Lisa Cortes 
Little Richard, Live in Paris, 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TWclEcASU&themeRefresh=1
Nyong'o, Tavia. "Too Black, Too Queer, Too Holy." The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/12/too-black-queer-holy-why-little-richard-never-truly-got-his-dues-turbaned-drag-queen-sexual-underworld
Smith, Jami.  "The Drag Queens Who Helped Little Richard Invent Rock And Roll." https://www.songsthatsavedyou.com/p/drag-queens-who-helped-little-richard

White, Charles. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock  (Da Capo Press, 1994)
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, and its use is under the principles of fair use for purposes such as commentary, criticism, and parody. All rights belong to the respective copyright holders.

Little Richard

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon for the full episode.
It's Extra Bad Gays LIVE! from Helsinki, where we discuss Donald Trump–our first straggot President–and his pardoning of George Santos. Then, Ben plugs an upcoming queer leftist novella you'll probably love, freshly translated into English. And two questions from gay guys in their forties invite the Gaggony Guncles to reflect on sex, desire, and the number homophobia has done on our psyches. Cruise carefully, catamites!
Smalltownnovella:
https://uglyducklingpresse.org/product/smalltownnovella/
 

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays October 2025

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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays August 2025

Today, we welcome music writer Hannah Pezzack to talk about the experimental electronica band Coil – namely, its two frontmen and only consistent members: vocalist Geoff Rushton, who performed under the stage name John Balance, and Peter Christopherson, nicknamed “Sleazy." At the heart of it all was an intense interest in the occult: in magic, alchemy, and esoteric symbolism. But just as central was their homosexuality: a queerness expressed through sexualised violence, the taboo, bodily fluids — blood, sweat, and scat — and an obsession with self-annihilation.
Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to join the community of subscribing members who make episodes like this possible, and get our monthly chat show about gay culture and politics!
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SOURCES:
 
Hayes Hampton. The Invocation of the Black Sun: Alchemy and Sexuality in the Work of Coil, in Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns Volume I – Twisted Roots (Durham, UK: Wyrd Harvest Press, 2018)
 
David Keenan. England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground, Revised and Expanded Edition (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023; originally published 2003)
 
Cormac Pentecost. Man is the Animal, zine issues 1–4, (Temporal Boundary Press)
 
Genesis P‑Orridge. Nonbinary (New York: Abrams Press, 2022)
 
Nick Soulsby. Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations with Coil (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023)
 
Spencer Sunshine. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (London: Routledge, 2024)
 
Cosey Fanni Tutti. Art Sex Music (London: Faber and Faber, 2017)
 
“AN INTERVIEW WITH COIL (Harvest History Month Pt. I),” conducted by Malahki Thorn, Heathen Harvest (originally published 1 April 2004), https://4ibrecords.com/2014/03/05/an-interview-with-coil-harvest-history-month-pt-i/
 
Hannah Pezzack on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hanapezzack/?hl=en 
Hannah Pezzack on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hannah-pezzack 
Many thanks to Alina Valentina and Ruben Verkuylen for their invaluable technical assistance.
Gratitude to Elina Tapio (who first introduced me to Coil!) and Marco Segato – both part of eoobe – for keeping the spirit of John and Sleazy alive through their music: https://eoobe.bandcamp.com/ 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.


Special Episode: Coil (with Hannah Pezzack)

For full episodes of Extra Bad Gays, subscribe on our Patreon or directly through Apple Podcasts. Join our community of nefarious nellies and help support the show!

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The Second: Touring, Representation, and Gaggony Guncles

Join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts for special episodes and more!
 
Have you ever wondered who the sexual link between Edward Carpenter and Allen Ginsburg was? Wonder no more, and meet Gavin Arthur: grandson of US President Chester Allan Arthur, astrologer, sexologist, Irish Republican, sometime Communist, sometime Democrat, Haight-Ashbury hippie rabble-rouser, and chaotic bisexual. Our guide to his life is longtime friend of the show Maurice J. Casey, historian and author of Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals.  This episode is based on research carried out as part of the Queer Norther Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation project at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. If you have a moment, do fill out their survey.
 
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SOURCES:
 
Maurice J. Casey, ‘”I want to be to Ireland what Walt Whitman was to America”: Esotericism and Queer Sexuality in an Irish Social Circle, 1890s-1920s’, History Workshop Journal: https://academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbaf004/8096618?searchresult=1

Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives, New York, 2012

Philip Longo, ‘Between the Sheets: Gavin Arthur’s Sexual Circulation’, in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, ed. Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander, London, 2022, pp. 140–7

Martin Murray, ‘Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur and the Circle of Sex’, Walt Whitman Quarterly 22: 3, 2005, pp. 194–8: https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/wwqr/pdf/anc.00943.pdf

The 1930 film starring Gavin Arthur and Charlotte Arthur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_(1930_film)
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.
 

Special Episode: Gavin Arthur (with Maurice Casey)

This is just a trailer! For the full episode, join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.
 Weird Vibes Pride Month, nefarious nellies! What is this Pride Month's vibe? Who is its target audience? We're confused. How do we build power as queer movements hollowed out by corporate sponsorship appear to crumble? Then, we mourn the late, great Edmund White before turning to our now-standard Gaggony Guncles segment, in which a listener writes in with an exciting bisexual dilemma.
 

Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The First: Weird Vibes Pride, Edmund White, and Bisexual Dilemmas (TRAILER)

We're coming to a city near you! Berlin on June 7, Sheffield June 20, and Bath June 22! 
Tickets and info: badgayspod.com/live

Come See Us Live!

This month, it's all about a fantastic reader question about the sex we cannot have. What do we learn from it? How do we think about it? What can it teach us? Please keep sending your Gaggony Guncles questions to us: emailbadgays[at]gmail[dot]com. 
And for the full segment, and to support the show, subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.
 

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays - The Sex We Cannot Have

Today we welcome Michael Huldt, host of Worm From Home, an environmental history podcast focused on East London, to discuss the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Born in Berlin in 1769, he would travel the world amassing a wealth of botanical, geological, and human knowledge. Working in Europe, Russia, and South America, Humboldt became a pioneer of Western environmental thinking, breaking with contemporary scientific norms to forge an interconnected, ecological view of the world that still resonates today. His life was one of illuminating contradictions, and he is a fascinating figure for thinking about the creation of new concepts of 'Nature'  as racial capitalism was in its ascendancy - a vocal anti-slavery advocate, who was personal friends with Thomas Jefferson; an early European proponent of the idea that colonial extraction created massive environment destruction, who also forged a career through that colonial infrastructure; and a man with many famous friends whose very private - and homosexual - private life is still shrouded in mystery and historiographic embarrassment. 
Support our show and enjoy monthly extra episodes! Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.
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SOURCES
https://www.andreawulf.com/about-the-invention-of-nature.html
 
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pioneering-maps-alexander-von-humboldt-180973342/
 
https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/antarctica-2/people-in-antarctica/alexander-von-humboldt/
 
https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/explore/alexander-von-humboldt/the-sensual-humboldt-is-yet-to-be-discovered
 
https://qnews.com.au/on-this-day-january-6-von-humboldt-tainted-love/
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Special Episode: Alexander von Humboldt (with Michael Huldt)

Subscribers to our monthly "extra" show get to hear advice segments that we, (hopefully) charmingly refer to as the Gaggony Guncles. Here's last month's sample–for one or two juicy questions and thoughtful answers each month, plus conversations about the latest in queer history, culture, and politics, subscribe at Patreon.com/badgayspod or on Apple Podcasts.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays Gaggony Guncles

Today’s subject, Jacques de Molay, was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, or to give them their full title, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Ever since their dissolution, the Knights Templar have been associated with all sorts of apparent manifestations - of occultism, of shadowy transnational powerbrokers, as the Guardians of the Holy Grail or whatnot. Today we’re going to steer away from these fantastical theories, because the reality of the Templars is far more interesting.
Support us on Patreon and listen to our subscriber-only show EXTRA BAD GAYS.
Check out our merch!
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SOURCES:
Michael Barber, A New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Dan Jones, Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Land (New York: Viking, 2019)
Dan Jones, The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors (New York: Viking, 2007)
Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes (New York: Schocken Books, 1984)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.
 
 
 


Jacques de Molay

Adele Spitzeder, born into operatic royalty, washed up when she tried a career on the stage: so instead, she started accepting bank deposits for 10% monthly interest, and paying old customers with new customers' money. In three years, she  amassed deposits of 38 million Gulden, or the equivalent of more than 500,000,000 euros: the world’s first Ponzi scheme. Attempts to squirrel away some money by smuggling it with her girlfriend went about as well as expected. 
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:
“Adele Spitzeder.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://www.literaturportal-bayern.de/themen?task=lpbtheme.default&id=697.
“Betty Vio – Biographische Informationen aus der WeGA.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/de/A008536.html.
“‘Die Zehn Gebote Der Adele Spitzeder’, Bild 1 von 14 | MDZ.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10999593?q=%28adele+spitzeder%29&page=1.
“Digitale Bibliothek - Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum.” Accessed February 18, 2025. https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0006/bsb00067974/images/index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&id=00067974&seite=1000.
Dokumentation, Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon und biographische. “Spitzeder, (Johann) Josef.” Text. ISBN 978-3-7001-3213-4. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003. https://www.biographien.ac.at/oebl/oebl_S/Spitzeder_Josef_1794_1832.xml.
Freiberger, Harald. “Geld - Adele Spitzeder und ihr Schneeballsystem.” Süddeutsche.de, November 11, 2017. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/schneeballsystem-es-begann-in-der-au-1.3743735.
“Germany - Metternich, Unification, 1815-71 | Britannica,” February 18, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/The-age-of-Metternich-and-the-era-of-unification-1815-71.
Schumann, Dirk. “Der Fall Adele Spitzeder 1872: Eine Studie Zur Mentalität Der ‘Kleinen Leute’ in Der Grübderzeut.” Zeitschrift Für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 58, no. 2/3 (1995): 991–1025.
Spitzeder, Adele. Geschichte meines Lebens. Stuttgarter Verlagscomptoir, 1878.
Zeno. “Lexikoneintrag zu »Spitzeder-Vio, Betty«. Damen Conversations Lexikon, Band 9. [o.O.] ...” Accessed February 18, 2025. http://www.zeno.org/DamenConvLex-1834/A/Spitzeder-Vio,+Betty.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. Image via.
 

Adele Spitzeder

 She was an industrialist, a lesbian, a landlord, a traveler, a businesswoman, a womanizer, a butch, a snob, a pioneer of gay marriage, a Tory. She was the original Tory girlboss, and19th century English diarist who coined such terms as "grubbling," for mutual masturbation. Ey up love, been grubbling? She was, of course, Anne Lister.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:
Caroline Gonda and Chris Roulston, eds., Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’ (Cambridge, United Kingdom New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2025)
Jill Liddington, Female Fortune: The Anne Lister Diaries, 1833–36: Land, Gender and Authority: New Edition (Manchester University Press, 2022)
H. Whitbread, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840 (New York: New York University Press, 1992)
“Packed With Potential,” https://www.packedwithpotential.org/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Anne Lister

Today we profile Larry Kramer, the writer and AIDS activist. Kramer took space, took credit, operated in the world with tremendous privilege, and was somewhere between actively and passively misogynist and racist. But politically effective people are not always as we imagine them. We document Kramer's exclusions and blind spots, and explore how his hatred and fear of gay male sex culture, one that predated the AIDS epidemic, made his political work less effective; his gay male supremacism that led actual gay men to constantly disappoint him; and his prefiguring of a moralizing social media politics understanding rhetorical maximalism as the proof of radicality. We address Kramer as one of his narrators addressed his stand-in in the first volume of his last novel, The American People: “You fuckster! You are so fucksome. I love you very much.”’
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:
Larry Kramer, Faggots, reprint edition (New York: Grove Press, 2000)
Larry Kramer, “March 27, 1983: 1,112 and Counting,” Los Angeles Blade: LGBTQ News, Rights, Politics, Entertainment (blog), May 27, 2020, https://www.losangelesblade.com/2020/05/27/march-27-1983-1112-and-counting/
Larry Kramer, TheNormal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (New York: Grove Press, 2000)
Ben Miller, “Larry Kramer’s Great Expectations,” Literary Hub (blog), June 11, 2020, https://lithub.com/larry-kramers-great-expectations/
Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc, 2021)
Michael Shnayerson, “Kramer vs. Kramer | Vanity Fair,” Vanity Fair | The Complete Archive, accessed February 4, 2025, https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1992/10/kramer-vs-kramer
“Larry Kramer’s Anger Is Essential in Historic ‘Plague’ Speech,” accessed February 4, 2025, https://www.advocate.com/news/2020/5/27/larry-kramers-anger-essential-historic-plague-speech
Jane McAlevey on How To Organize for Power,” Current Affairs, April 20, 2019, https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2019/04/jane-mcalevey-on-how-to-organize-for-power.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Larry Kramer

In this month's subscriber-only episode, we examine some recently discovered diaries from Unity Valkyrie Mitford, odious sister of the odious Tom. How precisely was her brother supposed to be a devoted Nazi but "not an anti-semite?" Only British journalists can tell. Then, we discuss Trump's executive orders in the context of lavender scares past and present before diving into a slutty advice segment about a woman dating two gay guys. She's confused! So are we! Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts for the full story.

TRAILER -  Extra Bad Gays:  Extra Bad Gays January 2025: Unity Mitford, Lavender Scares, and Gay Guys With Girlfriends

The Crown Prince of Iraq, Abd Al-Ilah, ruled the country as a prince regent on behalf of his nephew, from 1939-1953 - although not interrupted. A member of the powerful Hashemite dynasty, Al-Ilah was also an authoritarian antisemite who once took refuge on a British naval ship called the HMS Cockchafer. A dandy, he charmed MP Chips Cannon into writing: "We are very intimate …I never can resist a Regent.”
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:

Bloch, Michael. Closet Queens: Some 20th Century British Politicians. London: Little, Brown UK, 2016.
 
Channon, Chips. Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57. Penguin, 2025.
 
Cole, Juan. “Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century” 23 (n.d.).
 
Draper, Morris. Interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, February 27, 1991. https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Draper,%20Morris.toc.pdf.
 
Finnie, David. Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait’s Elusive Frontier with Iraq. London: I.B. Tauris, 1992.
 
Hashimoto, Chikara. The Twilight of the British Empire: British Intelligence and Counter-Subversion in the Middle East, 1948–63. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
 
Mansfield, Peter, and Nicolas Pelham. A History of the Middle East: Fifth Edition. Updated edition. New York/N.Y: Penguin Books, 2013.
 
Schwartz, Adi. “The Adas Affair.” Tablet Magazine, December 9, 2022. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/adas-affair-jews-iraq.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Abd Al-Ilah

Today's episode profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque legal battles over the title to various compounds to prove it––who also financially supported trans research, gay history, and dolphin ESP. Reed Erickson forged his own path in a difficult world and his life helps us understand two connections that were crucial for the developing gay and trans liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s: sexology and the New Age. 
Today's episode of our podcast was recorded before the 2024 United States Presidental election. Given yesterday's executive orders, discussion of the anti-trans backlash and fighting transphobia are more important than ever. Today, please consider contacting Trans Lifeline if you need support, or donating if you are able. 
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SOURCES:
One From The Vaults, on Reed Erickson: https://soundcloud.com/onefromthevaultspodcast/oftv-5-the-trans-howard-hughes
Making Gay History, on Reed Erickson: https://makinggayhistory.org/podcast/reed-erickson/





Bello, Ada. “Reed Erickson, Pioneering Transgender Activist and Philanthropist, 1917-1992.” Outhistory. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/erickson/essay.
 


Devor, Aaron, and Nicholas Matte. “Building a Better World for Transpeople: Reed Erickson and the Erickson Educational Foundation.” International Journal of Transgenderism 10, no. 1 (October 12, 2007): 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1300/J485v10n01_07.


 
Devor, Aaron, and Nicholas Matte. “ONE Inc. and Reed Erickson: The Uneasy Collaboration of Gay and Trans Activism, 1964-2003.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 179–209.
 

Gill-Peterson, Jules. A Short History of Trans Misogyny. London: Verso, 2024.
Gill-Peterson, Jules. Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Lewis, Abram J. “I Am 64 and Paul McCartney Doesn’t Care: The Haunting of the Transgender Archive and the Challenges of Queer History." Radical History Review 120 (Fall 2014), 13-34.

Nunn, Zavier. “Trans Liminality and the Nazi State.” Past & Present 260, no. 1 (August 2023): 123–57. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac018.

Reed Erickson

For today’s episode, I we take you into the murky world of the Washington foreign policy elites, and one of its murkiest characters, a man named Albrecht Muth. Who is Albrecht Muth? Well, that’s another question entirely. He claimed to be a dashing German aristocrat and married into Washington's foreign policy elite. The shocking truth became one of official Washington's biggest mysteries...
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:

Alexander, Keith L. “Albrecht Muth, 49, Convicted of Murder in Death of Socialite Wife Viola Drath, 91.” Washington Post, January 16, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/muth-found-guilty-of-murder-in-death-of-socialite-wife/2014/01/16/5a942d9e-7ecd-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html.
 
Foer, Franklin. “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” The New York Times, July 6, 2012, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath-georgetowns-worst-marriage.html.
 
Meredith Somers. “Drath Murder Case Exposes Bizarre Lifestyle of Georgetown Couple.” The Washington Times. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/24/drath-murder-case-exposes-bizarre-lifestyle-of-geo/
 
Martin, Adam. “The Odd Behavior of a Husband Arrested for a D.C. Socialite’s Murder.” The Atlantic (blog), August 17, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/unfortunate-behavior-husband-arrested-dc-socialites-murder/354256/.
 
The Daily Beast. “Inside D.C.’s Socialite Murder,” September 8, 2011. https://www.thedailybeast.com/socialite-murder-viola-drath-and-albrecht-muths-tumultuous-marriage/.
 
“Upon Reflection: Albrecht Muth and Viola Drath - Washingtonian,” February 27, 2012. https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/02/27/upon-reflection-albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath/.
 
Washington City Paper. “Viola Drath’s Cultural Legacy: A Look at the Works of a Murdered D.C. Writer,” August 25, 2011. http://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/423666/viola-draths-cultural-legacy-a-look-at-the-works-of-a-murdered-d-c-writer/.
 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. 

Albrecht Muth

A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama featuring 90 androgynous twinks disporting themselves in the nude in a fantasia of the four seasons, devotee of Adolf Hitler, founder of a new religion, and poet: it's Elisar von Kupffer.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.
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SOURCES:

Marhoefer, Laurie. “Queer Fascism and the End of Gay History.” NOTCHES (blog), June 19, 2018. https://notchesblog.com/2018/06/19/queer-fascism-and-the-end-of-gay-history/.
 
Marhoefer, Laurie. “Was the Homosexual Made White? Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany: Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany.” Gender & History 31, no. 1 (March 2019): 91–114. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12411.
 

Miller, Ben. In Search Of Lost Time: Primitivist Homomythopoetics and the Self-Invention of the White Gay Man. (Dissertation: Freie Universität Berlin, 2024).



Miller, Ben. “Rejecting the Klarwelt: How Elisàr von Kupffer Complicates Queer History.” In To Be Seen: Queer Lives 1900-1950, edited by Miriam Zadoff and Karolina Kühn, 62–75. Munich: Hirmer, 2023.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.





 

Elisar von Kupffer

Today's episode profiles a very bad bisexual: the lawyer, soldier and society favourite, Tom Mitford. But the idea of featuring Tom is partly a ruse. This will be not just a profile of Tom himself, but of his whole family, and especially his six siblings, the famed Mitford Sisters, whose intense, often conflicting relationships have become something of an obsession for English culture - and not always a very healthy one. They embody so much about the English elite: eccentric, vicious, often listless and desperately sad. We also promise to you, as has become a theme of the podcast, some DBNs - Disturbingly British Names. And an indescribable cover of Right Said Fred by Jessica Mitford and Dr. Maya Angelou, on both voice and kazoo.
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Check out our new merch.
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SOURCES:

Lovell, Mary S. The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family. New edition. Abacus, 2002.
 
Mitford, Jessica. Hons and Rebels. New York Review Books Classics. New York: New York Review Books, 2004.
 


Mitford, Nancy. The Pursuit of Love. First Edition. New York: Vintage, 2010.



 

Mitford, Nancy. Love in a Cold Climate. 1st edition. Vintage, 2010.
 


Mosley, Charlotte, ed. The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters. UK ed. edition. Fourth Estate, 2012.

 

Thompson, Laura. The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.
 



Tom Mitford

From almost the first season of the show, we’ve been tantalised by stories of the Burmese gangster Olive Yang. Now, to open season 8, we have their story: Olive was a lesbian — or possibly transmasculine — gangster born royal in 1927 British colonial Burma, who when first married off to a man threw a pot of their own urine at him to prevent the marriage from being consummated. They ran away from polite society, dated actresses, ran opium, were involved with the CIA, and helped negotiate settlements between ethnic groups. 
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SOURCES:

Paluch, Gabrielle. The Opium Queen: The Untold Story of the Rebel Who Ruled the Golden Triangle. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023.
 


Scott, James C., ed. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale Agrarian Studies Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner



 
 

Olive Yang

available with easy shipping to both sides of the Atlantic.
 
On this month's episode of Extra Bad Gays, we discuss Luigi Mangione, who has now been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier this month. How do some assassins become folk heroes? Why is there such a groundswell of support for Mangione? Is it just because he's really hot? (He's really hot.) For the full story, and the charming Gaggony Guncles segment that concludes the show, subscribe on Apple or Patreon.

Extra Bad Gays December 2024: Luigi Mangione, Folk Hero? (Trailer)

Our new merch–evil twink energy socks, camo hats, and more–is now available with easy shipping to both sides of the Atlantic.
 
In the wake of Donald Trump's dismaying reelection to the Presidency, the most cynical consultants and commenters on both sides of the Atlantic have decided it's trans people who are to blame. We break down how ascending through the media breaks your brain––and the differences between US and UK center-left transphobia. For the full story, and the charming Gaggony Guncles segment that concludes the show, subscribe on Apple or Patreon.

Extra Bad Gays November 2024: The Transatlantic Anti-Trans Post-Election Backlash (Trailer)

Today's special guest is the researcher and museum worker Indigo Dunphy-Smith, who is bringing her expertise to the case of Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, two Edinburghian school teachers who found themselves embroiled in a sex scandal and court case in the early years of the 19th century. Their legal woes followed accusations by a pupil about sapphic goings-on at their small private school, and raised issues regarding attitudes to sex, race and colonialism in late Georgian era Scotland.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays, our monthly subscriber-only show for conversations about contemporary queer culture and advice segments from your favorite Gagony Guncles. 
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SOURCES:
 
Clerk, John, The notorious Drumsheugh Case of 1810: Miss Marianne Woods and Miss Jane Pirie v. Lady Cumming Gordon of Altyre, The Signet Library, Roughead Collection R343.1 H865

Singh, Frances B, Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming, NED-New edition, Boydell & Brewer, 2020

Rupp, Leila J, Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women, Beacon Press, 2009

Donoghue, Emma, Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668–1801, HarperCollins, 1993

Faderman, Lillian, Scotch Verdict: The Real-Life Story That Inspired “The Children’s Hour”, Columbia University Press, 1983

Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, William Morrow & Co, 1981

National Records of Scotland, Burgh Register of Sasines for Edinburgh B22/4/31
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrienn, distributed under a Creative Commons license. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie (with Indigo Dunphy-Smith)

Say hello to your new agony uncles: or is that Gaggony Guncles? A gay guy wonders if he's having enough sex! People ask about moving to Berlin. A freshly out transmasc wonders: am I becoming an evil twink? For the full story, subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS directly in Apple Podcasts or on Patreon. 

Extra Bad Gays October 2024: Meet Your New Gaggony Guncles

Today, special guest Liz Rosenfeld discusses the choreographer Jerome Robbins. Born in New York to Jewish immigrants, Robbins pursued dance and radical politics––until, under the threat of being blacklisted and exposed for his sexuality, reporting on his former comrades to the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. As one of Broadway's star choreographers, he helped define Broadway's Golden Age with striking dance theatre that integrated ballet technique into storytelling. His charisma, abuses of power, and boundary-obliterating working methods helped define an idea of choreographer-as-genius that still disfigures dance today.
Support our show by subscribing to our monthly podcast EXTRA BAD GAYS by clicking this link and visiting our Patreon or directly through Apple Podcasts.
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SOURCES:
https://www.npr.org/2011/02/24/97274711/the-real-life-drama-behind-west-side-story
https://www.dummies.com/article/academics-the-arts/performing-arts/what-was-the-golden-age-of-broadway-297863/
https://www.commentary.org/articles/terry-teachout/what-jerome-robbins-knew-that-leonard-bernstein-didnt/
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-jerome-robbins-west-side-story-un-american-activities-committee-32460/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/happy-hundredth-jerome-robbins
 
Jerome Robbins: By Himself: Selections from his letters, journals, drawings, photographs, and an Unfinished Memoir (ed. Amanda Vaill)
 
Wendy Lesser: Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance
 
Jerome Robbins - Something to Dance About, dir. Judy Kinberg

Our intro is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

Jerome Robbins (with Liz Rosenfeld)

Starting with a reading from Martin Duberman's book Stonewall about the riots that kicked off a revolution, we reflect on the history of increasing corporate involvement in Pride, some unreasonably horny Subaru ads, a Raytheon Pride slogan from this year that made both of us momentarily speechless, and the politics and ethics of engaging with corporate pride in a moment of backlash.
Enjoy this sneak preview of EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly, subscriber-only show on contemporary queer politics and culture. For the full episode and a new episode every month, click 'subscribe' on Apple Podcasts or join our Patreon by clicking here.

Extra Bad Gays June 2024: Pride From Stonewall to Subaru (Trailer)

Today's special guest is Will Tosh, Head of Research at Shakespeare's Globe, London, and the author of a new book, “Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare.” Having answered the obvious question in the prologue, the book becomes a sort of emotional biography of Shakespeare’s private life, but uses that his life and his work to ask broader questions about Elizabethan England, and especially how they understood their own sex gender system at the time. On today's special episode, we talk about one of his contemporaries, someone probably less well known but who has been deeply influential for queer writers and theatre practitioners through the ages: Christopher Marlowe.
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SOURCES:
Lukas Erne, 'Biography, Mythography, and Criticism: The Life and Works of Christopher Marlowe', Modern Philology 103.1 (2005), 28-50

Constance Brown Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)

Stephen Orgel, 'Tobacco and Boys: How Queer Was Marlowe?', GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6.4 (2000), 555-576

Christopher Shirley, ‘Sodomy and Stage Directions in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward(s) II’, Studies in English Literature 54.2 (2014), 279–296

Sydnee Wagner, 'New Directions: Towards a Racialized Tamburlaine', in David McInnes (ed.), Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury, 2020)
Our intro is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner

Christopher Marlowe (with Will Tosh)

We close out our season with the story of a dashing tomboy who was the first woman to found a British political party. The only problem: that party was the British Fascists. 
Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly conversation about queer life, culture, and politics.
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SOURCES:
Colin Cross, The Fascists in Britain (London: Saint Martin's Press, 1963)
Julie Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923-1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)
Asa Seresin, "Lesbian Fascism on TERF Island," 2021 https://asaseresin.com/2021/02/11/lesbian-fascism-on-terf-island/
Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front (London: I. Thurbis, 1998)
Edward White, "Conservatism with Knobs On," The Paris Review, December 2, 2016, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/12/02/conservatism-with-knobs-on/ 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Rotha Lintorn-Orman

Enjoy a sneak preview of EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly, subscriber-only show on contemporary queer politics and culture. For the full episode and a new episode every month, click 'subscribe' on Apple Podcasts or join our Patreon by clicking here.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays April 2024 - Tory Sex Scandals and Capote's Feud

Today’s subject had a multi-hyphenate name and a multi-hyphenate resume––, in his 55 years of life, he was an adventurer, a geologist, a spy, a dinosaur scientist, one of the founders of paleobiology, the world’s first airplane hijacker, a founder of the field of Albanian studies, a cosplay artist, and a murderer. Born in 1877 in Transylvania, the Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felsö-Szilvás may have been, except perhaps as a pub quiz answer, lost to history since his death, but in his lifetime he had an outsized impact on several scientific disciplines, central European politics and nationalisms, and, unfortunately, the man who he lived with until a murder-suicide ended both of their lives.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays, our monthly conversation podcast, to support the show!
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SOURCES:
Gëzim Alpion, “Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Ambition for the Albanian Throne,” BESA Journal 6, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 25–32
Gareth Dyke, “The Dinosaur Baron of Transylvania,” Scientific American, October 1, 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dinosaur-baron-of-transylvania/
Robert Elsie, “1907 | Baron Franz Nopcsa: The Baron Held Hostage in the Mountains of Dibra,” Texts and Documents of Albanian History, accessed April 18, 2024, http://www.albanianhistory.net/1907_Nopcsa2/index.html
Robert Elsie, “The Viennese Scholar Who Almost Became King of Albania: Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Contribution to Albanian Studies,” n.d., http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A1999VienneseNopcsa.pdf
Emily Osterloff, “Franz Nopcsa: The Dashing Baron Who Discovered Dwarf Dinosaurs,” Natural History Museum, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/franz-nopcsa-the-dashing-baron-who-discovered-dwarf-dinosaurs.html
Vanessa Veselka, “History Forgot This Rogue Aristocrat Who Discovered Dinosaurs and Died Penniless,” Smithsonian Magazine, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-forgot-rogue-aristocrat-discovered-dinosaurs-died-penniless-180959504/
Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa, NED-New edition, 1 (Central European University Press, 2014), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt6wpkrc;
"A Field Guide to the Long History of Skyjackings,” CrimeReads(blog), May 10, 2021, https://crimereads.com/skyjackings/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music is by Dj Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás

"If you have to take an beautiful enslaved convert boy from another province to become your lover, and then you fall hopelessly in love with him, and then promote him and he attains great power, do be aware than he might actually want to take your throne." Somehow, this extremely specific lesson was forgotten by two generations of rulers. Join us in a trip back to the court of 1300s Delhi for a story of love, lust, intrigue, revolution, and, in the words of a historian of the time, "the results of pampering young men and catamites."
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Indira Chatterjee, "Alienation, Intimacy and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia," in Ruth Vanita ed., Queering India: Same-Sex Love And Eroticism In Indian Culture And Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002)
Abraham Eraly, Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Penguin India, 2014)
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds., Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Indian Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah

Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8% interest on savings and in investments forty percent a year —but by the time she died in prison, they were owed a hundred and fifty five million francs. Some people even credit her spectacular swindle to the political confluence that brought Leon Blum and his popular front to power in France at the end of the 1930s. This is the fascinating tale of just how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Stéphanie Bee, "La Bancquiére des Annès Folles," Univers-L, January 11, 2020, https://www.univers-l.com/portrait_marthe_hanau.html
Janet Flanner, "The Swindling Presidente," The New Yorker, August 18, 1939, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/26/annals-of-crime
Paul Jankowski, Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Dean Jobb, "The Ponzi of Paris," CrimeReads, December 3, 2021, https://crimereads.com/marthe-hanau-paris-ponzi-confidence-woman/
Rod Kedward, La Vie en Bleu - France and the French since 1900 (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
Wilfried Knapp, France--partial Eclipse: from the Stavisky Riots to the Nazi Conquest (London: Macdonald, 1972).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner
 

Marthe Hanau

Today's episode is about England and its capacity to be deeply weird. Weget into one of England's weirdest, bloodiest, and maybe horniest moments, the English Reformation: a time of enormous tumult and violence, but also new ideas that reconfigured and reshaped the world. Today’s Bad Gay is perhaps an unlikely and unfamiliar candidate, but one whose life and loves sheds a light on that time: it’s the theologian, reformer, and Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift.

Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.

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SOURCES:
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, 38831st edition (Penguin UK, 2004)
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Archbishops of Canterbury (Tempus, 2006)
“John Whitgift History,” John Whitgift Foundation(blog), accessed March 18, 2024, https://johnwhitgiftfoundation.org/about-us/john-whitgift-history/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner

John Whitgift

Warning: this episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and workplace sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. 
Many people may have seen Maestro, a biopic about the American conductor Leonard Bernstein, a handsome and extroverted communicator. The next most famous gay Jewish conductor of the 20th century was, in many ways, Bernstein’s opposite. Neither handsome nor extroverted, he made his musical mark not as a flamboyant podium acrobat or someone who communicated with the public but as a musician’s musician. His career ended after years of rumors culminated in several serious allegations of sexual harassment and assault, including against teenaged boys. We talk about beauty and power and what it means when people who make great art also do terrible things. 
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Michael Cooper, “Met Opera to Investigate James Levine Over Sexual Abuse Accusation,” The New York Times, December 3, 2017, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/arts/music/james-levine-sexual-misconduct-met-opera.html
Michael Cooper, “Met Opera Reels as Fourth Man Accuses James Levine of Sexual Abuse,” The New York Times, December 5, 2017, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/arts/music/james-levine-met-opera.html
Michael Cooper, “James Levine’s Final Act at the Met Ends in Disgrace,” The New York Times, March 12, 2018, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/arts/music/james-levine-metropolitan-opera.html
Matt Dobkin, “Conductor James Levine Spurns Opera Gossips,” New York Magazine, January 6, 2006, https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/music/features/15494/; Malcolm Gay and Kay Lazar, “In the Maestro’s Thrall,” The Boston Globe, March 2, 2018, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/02/cleveland/cn2Sathz0EMJcdpYouoPjM/story.html
Ben Miller, “Silence, Breaking,” VAN Magazine, December 7, 2017, http://van-magazine.com/mag/james-levine-silence-breaking/
Ben Miller, “Shush Money,” VAN Magazine, May 23, 2018, http://van-magazine.com/mag/james-levine-met-opera-hush-money/
John Rockwell, “Met Opera Changes Managerial Balance,” The New York Times, July 23, 1987, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/23/arts/met-opera-changes-managerial-balance.html
Emily Saul and Ben Feuerherd, “Met Opera, James Levine Reach Settlements amid Sex Misconduct Claims,” New York Post, August 6, 2019, https://nypost.com/2019/08/06/met-opera-james-levine-reach-settlements-amid-sex-misconduct-claims/
James B. Stewart and Michael Cooper, “The Met Opera Fired James Levine, Citing Sexual Misconduct. He Was Paid $3.5 Million.,” The New York Times, September 21, 2020, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/arts/music/met-opera-james-levine.html
Anastasia Tsioulcas, “James Levine Accused Of Sexual Misconduct By 5 More Men,” NPR, May 19, 2018, sec. The Industry, https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/05/19/612621436/james-levine-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-by-5-more-men
Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein, “Legendary Opera Conductor Molested Teen for Years: Police Report,” New York Post, December 2, 2017, https://nypost.com/2017/12/02/legendary-opera-conductor-molested-teen-for-years-police-report/
Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein, “Disgraced Met Conductor’s Brother Was ‘in on the Game’: Police Report,” December 9, 2017, https://nypost.com/2017/12/09/disgraced-met-conductors-brother-was-in-on-the-game-police-report/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

James Levine

This episode has everything: a tyrannical little boy king, a dictator who wanted to overthrow the Roman pantheon and install a meteorite as the object of a new monotheism, prostitution and vestal virgins, and drowning your party guests in rose petals. We break down Elagabalus: the myth, the legend, the gender-bending icon and the searcher for the biggest dicks in the Roman Empire.
Subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Cassius Cocceianus Dio, Roman History: Books 71-80, trans. E. Cary, New issue of 1927 ed Edition (Harvard University Press, 1927)
Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volumes 1 to 6: Volumes 1-3, Volumes 4-6, Reprint Edition (Everyman’s Library, 2010)
Harry Sidebottom, The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome (Oneworld Publications, 2022)
Elijah Burgher, “Our Lady of the Latrines – Western Exhibitions,” https://westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/elijah-burgher/
Anthony Birley, trans., Lives of the Later Caesars: The First Part of the Augustan History, with Newly Compiled Lives of Nerva & Trajan, Reprint edition (Harmondsworth, Eng. ; Baltimore etc.: Penguin Classics, 1976).
Our intro music is "Arpeggia Colorix" by Yann Terrien. Our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Elagabalus

Today’s subject was an uneducated woman who was born in approximately 1880 and rose in her nearly 70 years of life from enslavement to sex work to female king. She was  a leader of her community of Enugu-Ezike in present-day Nigeria and a collaborator with British colonialism in the region. Finally removed from power by British officials and local elders because she participated in a ritual in a way that only men were supposed to, the complex life of Ahebi Ugbabe helps tell the story of the colonization and decolonization of Nigeria and of the similarities and the differences between the sex-gender systems we are used to in the contemporary west and the vast array of possibilities in those sex-gender systems throughout different human societies.
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SOURCES:
Nwando Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner

Ahebi Ugbabe

Warning: this episode contains discussions of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. 
A rare twofer this week on our show: we discuss the lives and careers of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Both frustrated writers from the North of England making their way in the repressive, damp climate of the postwar UK, they were sent to prison for defacing library books into brilliant collage art. But when Orton achieved fame and success, the pressure was too much for Halliwell to bear. And their disturbing pattern of traveling to Tunisia to abuse children casts a pall on any simple attempt to recuperate them as heroes.
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
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SOURCES:
Ilsa Colsell, Philip Hoare, and Leonie Orton Barnett, Malicious Damage: The Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013)
Prick Up Your Ears (Curzon Film Distributors, 1987)
James Fox, “The Life and Death of Joe Orton,” The Sunday Times, November 22, 1970
John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, 1st edition (Berkeley: Univ of California Pr, 2000)
Joe Orton, The Orton Diaries, Reprint edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996)
“Joe Orton,” Front Row (BBC Radio 4, August 11, 2017), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zzly6
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner
 

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell

Are you wearing the Chanel boots? Yes, we are. A white-haired, powdered, starch-cuffed petty dictator who ruled over the expanding business with an iron fist, stopping every once in a while to make a misogynist or racist public comment, Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most influential figures in the fashion industry as it shifted into late capitalist hyperdrive. Come for the racist and misogynist public comments, stay for Lagerfeld's great love, Jacques de Bascher, who may more perfectly epitomize Evil Twink Energy than anyone we've discussed on our show.
Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.
Click here to buy our book, BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY.
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SOURCES:
Christian Allaire, “The Incredible Dandy Style of Jacques de Bascher, Karl Lagerfeld’s Longtime Partner | Vogue,” Vogue, April 27, 2023, https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/jacques-de-bascher-dandy-style-karl-lagerfeld-partner
Irina Baconsky, “Jacques de Bascher: An Exhibition,” 032c, March 11, 2020, https://032c.com/magazine/jacques-de-bascher-an-exhibition
Holly Brubach, “School of Chanel,” The New Yorker, February 19, 1989, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1989/02/27/school-of-chanel
John Colapinto, “Karl Lagerfeld’s Fashion Empire,” The New Yorker, March 12, 2007, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/19/in-the-now
Brock Colyar, “The Man in an 18-Year Relationship With Karl Lagerfeld,” The Cut, February 20, 2019, https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/who-was-jacques-de-bascher.html
Daniel Harris, “The Electronic Funeral: Mourning Versace,” The Antioch Review 56, no. 2 (1998): 154–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/4613651
Beatrice Hazlehurst, “Karl Lagerfeld Depicts Hitler in Political Cartoon to Criticize Angela Merkel - PAPER Magazine,” October 12, 2017, https://www.papermag.com/karl-lagerfeld-depicts-hitler-in-political-cartoon-to-criticize-angela-merkel
Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, “Diet Book Deep Dive: The Karl Lagerfeld Diet,” Maintenance Phase, accessed February 14, 2024, https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/9898517
Anisha Mansuri, “The Met Gala: Ignoring Lagerfeld’s Islamophobia and Misogyny,” The New Arab (The New Arab, October 18, 2022), https://www.newarab.com/opinion/met-gala-ignoring-lagerfelds-islamophobia-and-misogyny
William Middleton, Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld (New York, NY: Harper, 2023)
Melissa Minton, “Karl Lagerfeld’s Most Controversial Quotes over the Years,” The New York Post, April 28, 2023, sec. Page Six, https://pagesix.com/article/karl-lagerfeld-most-controversial-quotes/
David Rakoff, Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, Reprint Edition (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006).
“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed February 12, 2024, https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/a-line-of-beauty
“King Karl,” Kids of Dada, accessed February 12, 2024, https://www.kidsofdada.com/blogs/magazine/11625457-king-karl
Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.
 

Karl Lagerfeld

Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly conversation on politics and culture, here or by clicking "Subscribe" on Apple Podcasts.
Merry Christmas! Happy holidays! As usual, we're making our contribution to family holiday entertainment with an hour-plus podcast about sodomy.
Today's program, recorded live at Podfest Berlin in October 2023, profiles two artists. We start with the gay Jewish pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon, whose story is a snapshot of the complexities of aa changing English society in the Victorian era, full of darkness, violence and repression, but lit too by a sense of a sort of waking dream of the possibilities of a rapidly shrinking world and modernising world. He was animated by those dreams, intoxicated by them, but his own desires would come into conflict with a society that was scared by these changes and would use all the tools in its power to halt them. Coming up the rear is Sascha Schneider, a German painter, sculptor, and bodybuilding instructor (does he, you know, run a bodybuilding academy?) whose work characterized both the Weimar-era masculinist gay political movement and four generations of Germans’ racist attitudes towards Native Americans. 
Enjoy! Wear headphones if Grandma is around. Season 7 drops very soon. 
To view the slideshow, click here.
SOURCES
Michael J. Cowen, Cult of the Will: Nervousness and German Modernity (State College: Penn State University Press, 2012)
Roberto C. Ferrari and Carolyn Conroy, "Simeon Solomon Two-Part Biography," Simeon Solomon Research Archive, 2000-2023, https://www.simeonsolomon.com/simeon-solomon-biography.html
Karl-May-Gesellschaft, https://www.karl-may-gesellschaft.de/index.php?seite=mininewsdetails&sprache=de&showdetail=133
Minneapolis Institute of Art, "Whatever Happened to the First Gay Art Star?" June 3, 2021, https://medium.com/minneapolis-institute-of-art/what-really-happened-to-the-first-gay-art-star-e5b830e19f86
H. Glenn Penny, Kindred By Choice: Germans and American Indians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
Erwin in het Panhuis, "Karl Mays ziemlich offen schwuler Künstfreund," queer.de, 20. September 2020, https://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=37110
 

Simeon Solomon and Sascha Schneider - Live from Podfest Berlin

What's your favorite Paul Verhoeven film? We knew you were going to say Showgirls–but we'll put in a word for his latest, Benedetta, with Charlotte Rampling acting up a storm and nuns diddling each other with dildos carved out of statues of the Virgin. Improbably, the film is based on a true story: and within it, and within its subject's life, there are important themes of power, gender transgression, sin, belief and deviance that are worth discussing in more detail. Today, we discuss the 16th century mystic nun, lesbian, possibly demonically possessed and possibly visionary heretic, Benedetta Carlini.
Our paperback is available now!
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SOURCES:

Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Reprint édition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986.
 
———. “Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini.” Signs 9, no. 4 (1984): 751–58.
 
Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, Revised and Expanded Edition. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
 
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi. Reprint edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
 
“The Word Made Fresh: Mystical Encounter and the New Weird Divine - Journal #92.” Accessed June 6, 2023. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/205298/the-word-made-fresh-mystical-encounter-and-the-new-weird-divine/.
 
Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.

Benedetta Carlini

Through the life of this 17th century Japanese shogun, we explore the role of same-sex relationships in Japanese court culture of the time, the radically different meanings of age and gender in different times and places, and a gay teen romance that ends, alas, with being stabbed to death in the bathtub. 
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SOURCES:
Louis Crompton, Homosexuality & Civilization, Annotated edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)
Koichi, “The Gay of the Samurai,” Tofugu, September 30, 2015, https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/
Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Tokugawa Iemitsu

There’s power in being the king who sits upon the throne, but also power in being the throne upon who the king sits. This was true as ever  in the court of Emperor Ai in Han Dynasty China in 22 BC. We’re going to be talking about someone who in 21 short years of life rose from a low class status to being one of the most powerful imperial officials in China – all by becoming the favorite of the Emperor. Their passion was so renowned it led to the creation of what remains a Chinese idiomatic expression for homosexuality. But we’ll also be talking about prevailing bisexuality in the Han dynasty court, the reception culture of this story both in China and outside it then and now, and how people in both China and the West have adopted this story.
Pre-order our paperback now for a free e-book!
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Howard Chiang, “Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China: Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China,” Gender & History 22, no. 3 (November 2010): 629–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2010.01612.
Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, Reprint edition (Berkely, Calif.: University of California Press, 1992)
Martin W. Huang, “Male-Male Sexual Bonding and Male Friendship in Late Imperial China,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 2 (2013): 312–31
M. P. Lau and M. L. Ng, “Homosexuality in Chinese Culture,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 13, no. 4 (December 1, 1989): 465–88, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00052053
Tze-lan Deborah Sang, “Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing’ai in Republican China (1912–1949),” in Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing’ai in Republican China (1912–1949) (Duke University Press, 2000), 276–304
James D. Seymour, review of Review of Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, by Bret Hinsch, Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 1 (1992): 141–43
Ping-Hsuan Wang, “I’m a ‘Cut-Sleeve’: Coming out from a POC Perspective,” Narrative Inquiry 31, no. 2 (July 12, 2021): 338–57, https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19088.wan
Intersections: Interview with Samshasha, Hong Kong’s First Gay Rights Activist and Author,” accessed May 15, 2023, http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue4/interview_mclelland.html.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. 
 

Dong Xian

Today’s figure is the sort of character who has been extinguished from British public life today, and maybe that’s for the best. He’s a mass of contradictions, the sort of mass that confuses the idea of an easy history of “lessons we can learn”. How did this man manage to be both an avant-garde poet and a gossip columnist, a communist revolutionary and a High Anglican devotee, a labour organiser and a lord? Or perhaps more accurately, how did he manage to inhabit all these roles with a level of seeming sincerity and honest commitment? Was he an honest man, or a devious one? A man driven by fidelity, or by treachery? Perhaps we’ll get to the bottom of it when we discuss the life of Tom Driberg, the Lord Bradwell, journalist, socialist, MP, Chairman of the Labour Party, and cocksucker.
Pre-order our book in paperback and get a free e-book!
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SOURCES:
Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions (London: Quartet Books, 1980).
Francis Wheen, The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg ; Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw (London: Fourth Estate, 2001).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. Image via.
 

Tom Driberg

Nicki Minaj once rapped: Drug Lord Griselda, I used to move weight thru Delta. She’s referring to today’s subject, la Madrina, the drug lord of the Colombian Medellín Cartel, Griselda Blanco Restrepo, the Black Widow. Born in 1943 in Cartegena, on the north coast of Columbia, she became the so-called "Queenpin," and adopted all the macho tropes of the gangster. We argue she wasn't the biggest gangster at the head of her cartel, but one of the smallest gangsters in a whole world of cartels that have worked to bring the fruits of South America’s land into the United States market, at the cost of millions of human lives.
Pre-order our book in paperback for a free e-book!
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SOURCES:
José Guarnizo Álvarez, “Colombia’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ Living in Obscurity When She Was Shot Dead,” EL PAÍS English, September 13, 2012, sec. International, https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/13/inenglish/1347536945_696771.html
Episode 2: Berner Interviews Michael Corleone Blanco (Full Episode), 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eODEHYQhKO0
Billy Corben, “Griselda Blanco: Hasta Nunca y Gracias Por La Coca,” Vice, May 9, 2012, https://www.vice.com/es/article/3b5jz8/griselda-blanco-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-cocaine
James Kelly, “South Florida: Trouble in Paradise,” Time, November 23, 1981, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,922693,00.html
Justin Vallejo, “Wild Real Life Story behind ‘Cocaine Godmother’ Portrayed by Sofia Vergara,” The Independent, April 5, 2022, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/griselda-blanco-sofia-vergara-netflix-b2051670.html.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Griselda Blanco

Warning: this episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised. 
This week, we tackle the French author André Gide, a self-styled "immoralist" who oscillated between an austere Protestantism and a sensualism he associated with the so-called "Orient," and who elevated pederasty above sodomy in a way that helps us understand the often-disfiguring influence of upper-class male sexual desires on the construction of the 20th century gay male identity.
Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!
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SOURCES:
Kadji Amin, Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History, electronic resource, Theory Q (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)
Andre Gide, If It Die . . .: An Autobiography, New Ed edition (New York: Vintage, 2001)
Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters (Vintage, 2012)
Andre Gide, The Immoralist, trans. Richard Howard, Reissue edition (Vintage, 2014)
Mary McAuliffe, Paris on the Brink: The 1930s Paris of Jean Renoir, Salvador Dalí, Simone de Beauvoir, André Gide, Sylvia Beach, Léon Blum, and Their Friends, Illustrated edition (Lanham Boulder New York London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020)
George D. Painter, Andre Gide: A Critical Biography (London: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd)
Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Reprint edition (New York: Vintage, 1994).
Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Edmund White, "On the chance that a shepherd boy...," London Review of Books, December 10, 1998, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n24/edmund-white/on-the-chance-that-a-shepherd-boy.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

André Gide

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






Ramy Khouili & Daniel Levine-Spound, Article 230: A History of the Criminalization of Homosexuality in Tunisia, available online: https://article230.com/en/article-320-eng/…
 
Marcel Gandolphe, ‘Une figure tunisienne: Mustapha ben Ismaïl’, Revue tunisienne, 144, mars-avril 1921, p.83-87 
 
Khayr al-Din al-Tunsi, Memoirs, (ed. Mohamed-Salah Mzali and Jean Pignon), Tunis, 1971.
 
 Ibn Abi Dhiaf, Ahmad, Ithaf Ahl al-zaman bi Akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'Ahd el-Aman (إتحاف أهل الزمان بأخبار ملوك تونس وعهد الأمان), (1990 edition), Tunis. 
 
Jean Ganiage, Les Origines du Protectorat français en Tunisie, Tunis, 1959. 
 
Guellouz, Masmoudi, Smida, Histoire générale de la Tunisie: t.3 les temps modernes, Tunis, 1983. 
 
Khaled el Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800, Chicago, 2005. 
 
Jocelyne Dakhlia, L’Empire des passions: l'arbitraire politique en Islam, Paris, 2005. 
 
Kenneth Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, Cambridge University Press, 2014. 
 
Abdelhamid Larguèche, Les Ombres de Tunis: pauvres, marginaux et minorités aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Tunis, 2000. 
 
Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, La sexualité en islam, Paris, 1975. 
 
Nizar ben Saad, Lella Kmar, le destin tourmenté d’une nymphe du sérail (1862-1942), Tunis. 
 
Robert Aldrich, 'Homosexuality in the French Colonies', Journal of Homosexuality, 41:3-4, 2002 
 
Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs, Chicago, 2007.







 

Sirat Mustafa bin Isma'il (سيرة مصطفى بن اسماعيل ( edited Rashad al-Imam, Tunis, 1981
 
Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.


 

Mustapha Ben Ismaïl (with Arthur Asseraf)

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

Demaría, Gonzalo. Cacería. Primera edición. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2020.
 
———. Jugos de Amor e Guerra. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, 2019.
 
Encarnación, Omar Guillermo. Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
 
Espinoza, Lucas E, and Rosalva Resendiz. “Los Secretos de La Redada de Los 41 (The Secrets of the Raid of the 41): A Sociohistorical Analysis of a Gay Signifier.” In NAACS Annual Conference Proceedings. San Jose State University, 2018.
 
Melo, Adrian. “Cadetes de San Martín | Entrevista a Gonzalo Demaría, que investiga los expedientes judiciales del conocidísimo escándalo de los cadetes.” PAGINA12, 1560903914. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/201169-cadetes-de-san-martin.
 




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

Jorge Horacio Ballvé Piñero

She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment: today’s subject caused such a scandal in her life that even its fictionalized depiction in a novel was banned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Mozart of bisexual drama, sword-fighting crossdressing opera singer Julie D'Aubigny burned through a dizzying series of lives, loves, husbands, mistresses, swordfights, operatic performances, lovers, and successes at the Paris Opera before dying in a convent in her early 30s. 
Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!
SOURCES
“Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes: Julie D’Aubigny.” In The Dublin University Magazine, 408–10. William Curry, Jun., and Company, 1854.
Blackmer, Corrine, and Patricia Juliana Smith, eds. En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera. 0 edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Carlton, Genevieve. “Meet The Sword-Fighting, Bisexual Opera Singer Who Broke All The Rules In 17th-Century France.” All That’s Interesting, March 3, 2022. https://allthatsinteresting.com/julie-daubigny.
Cuttle, Jade. “The Story of Julie d’Aubigny: The French Opera-Singing Sword Fighter.” Culture Trip, August 8, 2018. https://theculturetrip.com/france/articles/the-story-of-julie-daubigny-the-french-opera-singing-sword-fighter/.
Gautier, Theophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Translated by Patricia Duncker. Revised edition. Cambridge, London: Penguin Classics, 2005.
Giovetti, Olivia. “Women In Love.” VAN Magazine, April 9, 2020. https://van-magazine.com/mag/women-in-love/.
Harris, Joseph. Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in 17th-Century France. Tübingen: Narr Dr. Gunter, 2011.
Hoddinott, Fiona Zublin, Meradith. “The Badass Rogue Who Cross-Dressed and Dueled Her Way to Infamy.” OZY(blog), January 27, 2020. http://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-badass-rogue-who-cross-dressed-and-dueled-her-way-to-infamy/76908.
Interlude. “The Daring Criminal Swordswoman Who Became an Opera Star!” Interlude (blog), October 28, 2016. https://interlude.hk/lesbian-diva-swordswoman-julie-daubigny-aka-mademoiselle-maupin/.
Kelly Gardiner. “The Real Life of Julie d’Aubigny,” May 11, 2014. https://kellygardiner.com/fiction/books/goddess/the-real-life-of-julie-daubigny/.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality And The Mystery Of Desire. Reprint edition. London: Da Capo Press, 2001.
“Maupin, d’Aubigny (c. 1670–1707) | Encyclopedia.Com.” Accessed January 9, 2023. https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/maupin-daubigny-c-1670-1707.
Tucker, Holly. City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris. Reprint edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. Updated edition. New York: Verso, 2021.
Westby, Alan. “Julie d’Aubigny: La Maupin and Early French Opera.” The Los Angeles Public Library, June 28, 2017. https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/julie-daubigny-la-maupin-and-early-french-opera.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Julie D’Aubigny

We're starting off Season Six with George Santos, who rocketed the pathological homosexual narcissism we've spent much of our show discussing to the halls of Congress. In gay bar, there is at least one delusional queen who can't stop lying about his life. If you give him firearms and crystal meth, he turns into Andrew Cunanan. If you elect him to Congress, he turns into George Santos, who we argue is as likely as anyone else to become the first gay President of the United States.
Pre-order our book in paperback for a free E-book!
SOURCES:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/nyregion/george-santos-ny-republicans.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/27/pete-buttigieg-police-shooting-south-bend-indiana
https://gothamist.com/news/listen-george-santos-eviction-tapes-show-him-begging-to-feed-pet-fish-mulling-public-assistance
https://forward.com/fast-forward/529798/george-santos-jewish-american-republican-congress/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/george-santos-9-11-attacks-mother-lies-b2275927.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/george-devolder-santos-maga-house-candidate-in-new-york-haunted-by-gig-at-alleged-ponzi-scheme
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/nyregion/george-santos-republican-resume.html
https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/the-daily-santos-vol-7
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23520848/george-santos-fake-resume
https://patch.com/new-york/oysterbay/disabled-veteran-george-santos-took-3k-dying-dogs-gofundme
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/nyregion/george-santos-yacht.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/the-plan-for-george-santos-magas-newest-it-girl.htm 
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/03/george-santos-files-paperwork-to-run-in-2024.html
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

George Santos

Happy Christmas! It's Bad Gays Live! Relive our reading of the Jack Saul chapter – covering the life and times of the Victorian sex worker and pornographer – from our book BAD GAYS: A HOMOSEXUAL HISTORY at Foyles in London, with the inimitable Shon Faye reading out the saucy bits (maybe use headphones if you're spending today with Grandma, unless you and Grandma like joking about delicious frigging up the rear), followed by a conversation with her and the audience about the project. 
Bad Gays: Season Six - Coming January 2023!
Thanks for listening!
SOURCES:
Chandler, Glenn. The Sins of Jack Saul. Surbiton, UK: Grosvenor House Publishing, 2016.
Hyde, H Montgomery. The Cleveland Street Scandal. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976.
McKenna, Neil. Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England. London: Faber, 2014. 
Saul, Jack. The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. London: William Lazenby, 1881.
Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.
 

Jack Saul LIVE! at Foyles in London with Shon Faye

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

Magnus Hirschfeld (with Laurie Marhoefer)

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

US Tour!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Eugen Sandow (with Ruby Hann)

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

Our UK Tour! (US Coming Soon)

For white, suburban, heterosexual middle America, Jeffrey Dahmer, like AIDS, was the natural, even the righteous, consequence of homosexual promiscuity. He remains one of the exemplary constructions of the supervillain serial killer, the perfect subject of a true crime story. Today’s episode is about Jeffrey Dahmer as man and metaphor: about the phenomenon of the serial killer-monster, about the ways in which homophobia, racism, and the various true crime myths Dahmer helped reify ironically impeded his arrest and enabled his crimes, and about the twisted, slap-happy identification with Dahmer pursued by some gay men.
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SOURCES:
ABC News. “Jeffrey Dahmer Hero Charged With Homicide.” ABC News. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://abcnews.go.com/US/jeffrey-dahmer-hero-tracy-edwards-charged-homicide/story?id=14853608.
Barron, James. “Milwaukee Police Once Queried Suspect.” The New York Times, July 27, 1991, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/27/us/milwaukee-police-once-queried-suspect.html.
AP NEWS. “Dahmer Case Raises Complaints of Racism With PM-Dahmer Confession, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/6452017abebdb9eaa87e90817bf59b7e.
AP NEWS. “Dahmer Tells Judge He Blames Nobody But Himself With PM-, AM-Dahmer Sentencing, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/49045923cf0d3c1a0ffc82eda398b935.
AP NEWS. “Dahmer Tells Judge He Blames Nobody But Himself With PM-, AM-Dahmer Sentencing, Bjt.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/49045923cf0d3c1a0ffc82eda398b935.
Davis, Donald A. The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare. St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1991.
Gage, Gabriella. “True Crime’s Deceits: The Genrefication of Tragedy.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 21, 2021. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/true-crimes-deceits-the-genrefication-of-tragedy/.
Masters, Brian. The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993.
O’Brien, Brendan. “Homeless Man Who Escaped Cannibal Serial-Killer Jeffrey Dahmer Gets Prison Sentence.” National Post, January 24, 2012. https://nationalpost.com/news/homeless-man-who-escaped-canibal-serial-killer-jeffrey-dahmer-gets-prison-sentence.
Sarah McGonagall. “Did You Know? In 1991 Officer John Balcerzak Was Fired after Handing 14 Year-Old Konerak Sinthasomphone Back to the Man He Had Just Escaped from despite Two Bystanders Begging the Officer Not to. Later That Night, Konerak Was Tortured and Killed by That Same Man - Jeffrey Dahmer.” Tweet. @gothspiderbitch (blog), June 19, 2020. https://twitter.com/gothspiderbitch/status/1273785359869116421.
Toofab. “The Racist Reason White Cops Handed a Dying 14-Year-Old Back to Jeffrey Dahmer.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://toofab.com/2020/06/19/white-cops-handed-a-dying-14-year-old-back-to-jeffrey-dahmer/.
Tithecott, Richard, and James R. Kincaid. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 
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Jeffrey Dahmer

It's a dog day afternoon: today's episode profiles the bank robber John Wojtowicz, who infamously (and as memorialized in Sidney Lumet's 1975 film DOG DAY AFTERNOON) held up a bank in 1972 to pay for gender-affirming surgery for Elizabeth Eden, his trans girlfriend. Or did he? We take a look, using the story to think through 1972 as a fault line for emerging attitudes about homosexuality and trans femininity, Wojtowicz' surprising involvement in early gay liberation activism in New York City, the DOG DAY AFTERNOON phenomenon and what it says about growing distinctions between gay men and trans women and how they were represented and compensated, and the ethical complications of Wojtowicz as a figure in history and in historical memory.
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Update: 
Thanks to listener Ziz for pointing out that trans actress Elizabeth Coffey –– one of the legendary ensemble of Dreamlanders who starred in the films of extremely good gay John Waters –– was up for the role of the character in Dog Day Afternoon based on Eden and was turned down for looking ‘too feminine.’ This adds important context regarding the filmmakers’ transphobia and questions of representation and compensation in the film. 
SOURCES

Check out trans historian Zagria’s three part series on Eden and Wojtowicz, with links to some fantastic digitized primary sources at the end:
Zagria,  "Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon,” (three-part series), Gender Variance Who's Who. 
 -  https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-i.html
- https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-ii.html
 - https://zagria.blogspot.com/2020/08/liz-eden-and-dog-day-afternoon-part-iii.html
 
Check out Morgan M. Page’s show One From The Vaults, you might want to start here with her three-part series on Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries:
Morgan M Page, “OFTV 3: STAR House, STAR People,” accessed March 1, 2022, https://soundcloud.com/onefromthevaultspodcast/oftv-3-star-house-star-people-1.

Anthony Macias, “Gay Rights and The Reception of Dog Day Afternoon (1975),” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal 48, no. 1 (2018): 45–56.
Arthur Bell, “Littlejohn & the Mob: Saga of a Heist,” The Village Voice, Vol. XVII, No. 35, August 31, 1972, https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/03/11/the-bank-robbery-that-would-become-dog-day-afternoon/.
“The Boys In The Bank,” LIFE Magazine September 22, 1972, LIFE Magazine 
Garance Franke-Ruta, “The Prehistory of Gay Marriage: Watch a 1971 Protest at NYC’s Marriage License Bureau,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/the-prehistory-of-gay-marriage-watch-a-1971-protest-at-nycs-marriage-license-bureau/274357/.

Lisa Photos, “The Dog and the Last Real Man,” Journal of Bisexuality 3, no. 2 (March 1, 2003): 43–68, https://doi.org/10.1300/J159v03n02_04.
Liz Eden Papers, Collection 6, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center Archive, New York City, New York (digitized) Morgan M. Page, “It Doesn’t Matter Who Threw the First Brick at Stonewall,” June 30, 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/trans-black-stonewall-rivera-storme/.
“The Man Who Robbed a Bank for Love,” BBC News, February 16, 2015, sec. Magazine, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31457718.
Regan Reid, “Talking To the Directors Who Made a Doc About the Real Guy Behind ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’” Vice (blog), August 18, 2014, https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn3pd5/talking-to-the-directors-who-made-a-doc-about-the-real-guy-behind-dog-day-afternoon-342.
Susan Stryker, Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution second ed., (New York: Seal Press, 2008).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

John Wojtowicz

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much in the news. Until last week, she was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force, and was the first woman and the first LBGTQ person to hold the rank, Dame Cressida Dick. Today, part two of two: we discuss Dick's tenure at the Metropolitan Police, the extrajudicial murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, Dick's cynical deployment of her identity to deflect critique, the spy cops scandal, the botched investigation into gay serial killer Stephen Port, the Met's dismal record on race, and the protests that finally forced Dick out.
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SOURCES:
Ramzy Alwakeel, “I Covered Stephen Port’s Murders. I Know Cressida Dick’s Departure Isn’t Enough,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-resignation-met-police-stephen-ports-murders/
Anonymous, “Gangs Violence Matrix and Black Londoners,” Text, Mayor’s Question Time, December 10, 2018, https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2018/5242
Jason Bennetto, “We Are Still Racist, Police Chief Admits,” The Independent, April 21, 2003, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/we-are-still-racist-police-chief-admits-116145.html
Owen Bowcott and Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent, “Jean Charles de Menezes: Family Lose Fight for Police Officers to Be Prosecuted,” The Guardian, March 30, 2016, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/30/jean-charles-de-menezes-police-officers-shouldshould-not-be-prosecuted-echr
Graham Bowley, “Police Erred in Shooting in London, Report Finds,” The New York Times, August 18, 2005, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/world/europe/police-erred-in-shooting-in-london-report-finds.html
Caroline Davies, “Stephen Port Laptop Not Inspected until He Had Killed Three Times, Inquest Told,” The Guardian, October 13, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/13/stephen-port-laptop-not-inspected-until-he-had-killed-three-times-inquest-told
Vikram Dodd and Dan Sabbagh, “Daniel Morgan Murder: Inquiry Brands Met Police ‘Institutionally Corrupt,’” The Guardian, June 15, 2021, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/15/daniel-morgan-met-chief-censured-for-hampering-corruption-inquiry
Jamie Grierson and Jamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent, “Met Carried out 22,000 Searches on Young Black Men during Lockdown,” The Guardian, July 8, 2020, sec. Law, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/08/one-in-10-of-londons-young-black-males-stopped-by-police-in-may
Mark Hughes, “Seven Mistakes That Cost De Menezes His Life,” The Independent, December 13, 2008, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/seven-mistakes-that-cost-de-menezes-his-life-1064466.html
Marina Hyde, “Farewell, Cressida Dick, the Met Chief Only Interested in One Thing: Ignoring Bad Coppers,” The Guardian, February 11, 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/farewell-cressida-dick-the-met-chief-only-interested-in-one-thing-ignoring-bad-coppers
Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, “Secrets and Lies: Untangling the UK ‘spy Cops’ Scandal,” The Guardian, October 28, 2020, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/secrets-and-lies-untangling-the-uk-spy-cops-scandal
Ben Quinn, “Macpherson Report: What Was It and What Impact Did It Have?,” The Guardian, February 22, 2019, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/22/macpherson-report-what-was-it-and-what-impact-did-it-have
Alex S. Vitale, “Cressida Dick Isn’t the Problem. The Police Are the Problem,” OpenDemocracy, accessed February 22, 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/cressida-dick-metropolitan-police-alex-vitale/
“Trapped in the Gangs Matrix” (Amnesty International, May 2020), https://www.amnesty.org.uk/london-trident-gangs-matrix-metropolitan-police
“Review Identifies Eleven Opportunities for the Met to Improve on Stop and Search | Independent Office for Police Conduct” (Independent Office for Police Conduct, October 2020), https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/review-identifies-eleven-opportunities-met-improve-stop-and-search
“Stephen Port: How Met Failings Contributed to the Deaths of Three Men,” BBC News, December 10, 2021, sec. UK, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59576717.
We also encourage people listening to this episode to learn more about organizations combating police violence. Here are some organizations in the UK and around the world engaged in activist work related to this episode:
 
London Campaign against Police and State Violence http://lcapsv.net/
United Friends and Families Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/
Sisters Uncut https://www.sistersuncut.org/
Inquest  - a charity that focuses on getting truth and accountability for state related deaths https://www.inquest.org.uk/
https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/
 
Kampagne für Opfer Rassistische Polizeigewalt Berlin: https://kop-berlin.de/ 
 
Critical Resistance resources on police abolition for US listeners: https://criticalresistance.org/abolish-policing/
 
Also, follow local Copwatches on Twitter:
@HackneyCopWatch @N15Copwatch @LambethCopwatch @CopwatchSthwrk @bizziewatch @MCRcopwatch @BristolCopwatch
@KidsOfColourHQ @npolicemonitor 
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Cressida Dick (Part Two)

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

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SOURCES:
Many of the sources we used to research this episode will be cited in next week's show notes. For this week:
Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006
Moya Lothian-Maclean, “Lords of the Manor,” Human Resources, accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/human-resources/id1565249472.
Asa Seresin, “Lesbian Fascism on TERF Island,” Asa Seresin (blog), February 11, 2021, https://asaseresin.com/2021/02/11/lesbian-fascism-on-terf-island/
“‎Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder,” accessed February 15, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/untold-the-daniel-morgan-murder/id1114802610.
We also encourage people listening to this episode to learn more about organizations combating police violence. Here are four organizations in the UK related to this episode - next week we will add more resources to the show notes with similar groups in the other areas where we have the highest listenership:
 
London Campaign against Police and State Violence http://lcapsv.net/
United Friends and Families Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/
Sisters Uncut https://www.sistersuncut.org/
Inquest  - a charity that focuses on getting truth and accountability for state related deaths https://www.inquest.org.uk/


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

Cressida Dick (Part One)

For a time, one of the world's most famous rock stars – singer of stadium rock anthems that still signify foot-stomping machismo – existed as an avatar of the most exuberant, feared, liberation-era forms of homosexuality: going from a 1970s long hair in skin-tight leotards cut to the navel to a Castro clone with a handlebar moustache who wore fisting T-shirts in his music videos. If the legacy of Mercury and his music often seems to smooth his work, and that of his band, Queen, into a sort of middle-aged, KISS FM everyday normality, here we lean into the contradictions of the charismatic man and the nuances of queer life in the 1970s and 1980s. 
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SOURCES
John Harris, “The Sins of St Freddie,” The Guardian, January 14, 2005, sec. Music, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jan/14/2
Jim Hutton and Tim Wapshott, Mercury and Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1995); Lesley-Ann Jones, Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury (London: Touchstone Press, 2012)
Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne, Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury (London: Weldon Owen, 2016)
“Remembering Queen’s Infamous 1981 Tour of South America,” Remezcla (blog), accessed February 8, 2022, https://remezcla.com/features/music/we-remember-queens-infamous-tour-of-latin-america/
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Freddie Mercury

A very special opera queen episode profiling an opera queen gone wrong: the Italian opera and film director (of 1968's famous Romeo and Juliet) who fought fascists as a partisan in the hills over Florence, mingled with Visconti and Cocteau and Marais and Chanel, and directed Callas in many of her mid-career triumphs before beginning to harden his style from lush realism to a celebration of set decoration above all. Zeffirelli, born at a time when the last composers whose works still fill the grand opera repertory were dying, faced, like all practitioners of the operatic arts in the 20th century, a choice between making living theatre or dead, ten-ton museum pieces. He chose the museum-piece approach and in so doing did tremendous artistic damage.
CONTENT WARNING: THIS EPISODE DISCUSSES CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE AND RACIST LANGUAGE.
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See Callas in Tosca in 1964 here.
See Leontyne Price's costumes for Antony and Cleopatra here and  here.
See Zeffirelli's MET Opera Turandot set here.
See Waltraud Meier sing the Liebestod here.
SOURCES:
Duane Byrge, “Franco Zeffirelli, Oscar-Nominated Director for ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Dies at 96,” The Hollywood Reporter (blog), June 15, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/franco-zeffirelli-dead-romeo-juliet-920639/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Opera: ‘Falstaff’ Staged by Zeffirelli; New Production of the Met Is Magnificent; Bernstein Conducts —Colzani in Title Role,” The New York Times, March 7, 1964, sec. Archives, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/07/archives/opera-falstaff-staged-by-zeffirelli-new-production-of-the-met-is.html
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
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Franco Zeffirelli

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

Visit www.badgayspod.com for an episode archive, a link to pre-order our book, and more information about the show.
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SOURCES:
B. R. Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York: New York University Press, 1995)
David Cordingly, Women Sailors and Sailors’ Women: An Untold Maritime History (Random House, 2001)
Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2012)
Charles Johnson and David Cordingly, A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (Guilford, Conn: Lyons Press, 2010)
Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn, Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997)
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Second edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013)
Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011)
Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2013)
Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Verso Books, 2014)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Anne Bonny

The "Eulenberg Affair," a series of media scandals about homosexual behavior at the highest levels of the German Imperial court, dragged on in the press for years as it made and broke careers in journalism, sexology, and the court while helping define both Imperial Germany’s relationship to masculinity and the emerging homosexual emancipation movements. Plus drag ballet, Wagnerists, extremely racist paintings, songs about roses, and moustaches with names.
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SOURCES:
SOURCES:
Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Vintage, 2014)
Miranda Carter, “What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire
Norman Domeier, “The Homosexual Scare and the Masculinization of German Politics before World War I,” Central European History 47, no. 4 (2014): 737–59
Norman Domeier, “Scandal & Science – The Power of Sexology in the Eulenburg Affair, 1906-1909,” n.d., http://www.hist.ceu.hu/conferences/graceh/abstracts/domeier_norman.pdf
Martin B. Duberman, Jews, Queers, Germans: A Novel/History, Seven Stories Press first edition (New York ; Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2017)
John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany, trans. Terence F. Cole, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Alex Ross, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (New York: Picador Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)
Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Theory and History of Literature, v. 22-23 (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. 
The 15-second clip of "Monatsrose" by Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg is sung by tenor Marcel Wittrisch with orchestra and organ conducted by Bruno Seidler-Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq2XXG8JRNU
 

Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg

This Nazi diplomat was assassinated by the Jewish activist Herschel Grynszpan –– and his death became a pretext for the murderous pogroms of Kristallnacht. Grynszpan's lawyer, the flamboyant anti-fascist Vincent de Moro-Giafferi, pioneered in this case what was perhaps the first –– and only morally good –- use of some version of a 'gay panic' or ‘gay blackmail’ defense. But was vom Rath actually gay?
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SOURCES:
Jonathan Kirsch, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris, First Edition (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2013)
Museum of Jewish Heritage, The Forgotten Life of Herschel Grynszpan, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLl_iK1xiiE;
Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990).

Ernst vom Rath

The eccentric inheritor of an enormous oil fortune and gender non-conforming-lesbian-trans man (we'll talk about it!) who dated Marlene Dietrich, raced speedboats, and turned their private Bahamian island into a domain over which they ruled over native people with an iron fist while allowing themselves and their guests every possible eccentricity and pleasure. All this accompanied by their lifelong companion: a foot-tall leather doll named Lord Tod Wadley.
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SOURCES
Michael Craton, A History of the Bahamas, 3rd ed (Waterloo, Ont., Canada: San Salvador Press, 1986).
Kate Summerscale, The Queen of Whale Cay (New York: Viking, 1998).
“Obeah: ‘Magical Art of Resistance,’” Early Caribbean Digital Archive (blog), September 2, 2018, https://ecda.northeastern.edu/home/about-exhibits/obeah-narratives-exhibit/
Tom Cheshire, “Boss of the Bahamas,” The Rake, accessed December 20, 2021, https://therake.com/stories/icons/joe-carstairs/.
Zora Neale Hurston, “‘Bahamain Obeah’ (1931),” Bahamian Fragments: Bits and Pieces from the History of the Bahamas, accessed December 20, 2021, http://www.jabezcorner.com/Grand_Bahama/Ten%20Ten/hurston1.htm
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Joe Carstairs

Francis Bacon was an artist whose radical generosity teetered on the edge of self-obliteration –– and he sometimes pulled others over the edge with him. Many of our listeners will be familiar with Bacon’s work, or at least would recognise his idiosyncratic style if they saw it; sweeps of fleshy paint across black fields of colour, portraying contorted, mangled bodies, racks of hanging meat, and the iconic screaming mouth. But Bacon is almost as famous for the way he lived his life: his raucous partying, brutal barbed tongue, and love of boozing made him an emblem of London’s bohemian Soho scene. What linked his work and his life was an obsession with violence, something that he knew intimately. 
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Daniel Farson, The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993)
John Maybury et al., Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Biography, Drama, Romance (BBC Films, British Film Institute (BFI), Arts Council of England, 1998)
Michael Peppiatt, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2019)
Richard Curson Smith et al., Francis Bacon: A Brush with Violence, Documentary, Biography (IWC Media, 2017)
David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, Third edition (New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2016).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Francis Bacon

Not a huge amount is known about Pacchierotto, a sodomite who was convicted and publicly humiliated in Florence, Italy, in 1486, but his story tells us much about the changing fortunes of sodomites at the time, and the important role they played in the politics of the time. In this special episode, Huw talks to Max Fox, editor of Christopher Chitty's Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System about Florentine sodomy in the Renaissance, and Chitty's groundbreaking new book.
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Sources:
 
Chitty, Christopher, Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System, Duke University Press, 2020
 
Rocke, Michael, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Oxford University Press, 1996
 
Online Digital Map: Flynn, Aidan, Sodomy and The City: Mapping Fear, Surveillance, Sexuality, and Punishment, University of Toronto, 2018 https://utoronto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=590a95cd059240388f003c49cd722dc9
 
Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola. [A cura di] P. Villari [e] E. Casanova. Con nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita, https://archive.org/details/sceltadiprediche00savo

Pacchierotto and Florentine Sodomites (with Max Fox)

The crimes, trial and execution of Utah citizen and devout Mormon Arthur Gary Bishop seemed to be the manifestation of many of both the public fears and moral panics of the United States in the 1980s. 'Stranger Danger', pornography, homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse became the focus of heated public debate and new religiously-inspired political organisations such as the Moral Majority. Huw is joined by David Eichert, a PhD candidate studying international law, sexual violence, gender and sexuality, to discuss Bishop, his relationship with his Mormon faith, and wider social attitudes towards his crimes.
Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and more.
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SOURCES:
Carlisle, Al, The Mind of the Devil: The Cases of Arthur Gary Bishop and Westley Allan Dodd, Carlisle Legacy Books, 2020
Petrey, Taylor G., Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism, University of North Carolina Press, 2020
Nathan, Debbie and Snedeker, Michael, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, iUniverse, 2001
Strub, Whitney, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right, Columbia University Press, 2013
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

Arthur Gary Bishop (with David Eichert)

On the (in)famous author of the George Miles cycle, The Sluts, and many other classic works of radically transgressive gay fiction. Joining Ben to tackle Cooper's work–as challenging to traditional notions of identity-driven and self-consciously pretty gay fiction as it is to the hetero mainstream–is Diarmuid Hester, a radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and an authority on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance. He is based at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is the author of the acclaimed new critical biography of Cooper, Wrong.
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SOURCES:
Cooper, Dennis. The Sluts. New York: Da Capo Press, 2004.
Cooper, Dennis. The George Miles Cycle. Five novels, information available here: http://www.dennis-cooper.net/georgemiles.htm.
Hester, Diarmuid. Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper. Iowa City: The University of Iowa Press, 2020.
Dennis Cooper's blog.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Dennis Cooper (with Diarmuid Hester)

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

Colvin, Kelly Ricciardi. Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944-1954: Engendering Frenchness. London ; New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Doyle, Jack. “How a Pioneering Lesbian Became the Nazis’ ‘Hyena.’” OZY, May 25, 2015. http://test-2017-elb-web-us-west-2.aws.ozymandias.com/flashback/how-a-pioneering-lesbian-became-the-nazis-hyena/40366.
Kessler, Martin. “Violette Morris: Pioneering Female Athlete Turned Nazi Spy.” WBUR, February 24, 2017. https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/02/24/gestapo-hitler-book-anne-sebba.
Mansky, Jackie, and Maya Wei-Haas. “The Rise of the Modern Sportswoman.” Smithsonian Magazine, August 18, 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rise-modern-sportswoman-180960174/.
Papirblat, Shlomo. “Sporting Champion, Feminist Icon, Nazi Spy? The Extraordinary Life of Violette Morris.” Haaretz.Com. Accessed December 21, 2020. https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium-sporting-champion-feminist-icon-nazi-spy-the-crazy-life-of-violette-morris-1.6869492.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008.
FemBio: Frauen.Biografieforschung. “Violette Morris.” Accessed December 21, 2020. https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/violette-morris/.
 


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

Violette Morris

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

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

Honig, Harvey Hilbert. “A Psychobiographical Study of Camilla Hall.” Loyola University of Chicago, 1979. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1788.
Lauters, Amy. “On Camilla Hall.” Amy Lauters On Everything (blog), September 3, 2020. https://amylauters.com/2020/09/03/on-camilla-hall/.
Matusitz, Jonathan Andre, and Elena Berisha. Female Terrorism in America: Past and Current Perspectives. Contemporary Terrorism Studies. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2020.
 

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

Camilla Hall

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

Johnston, Georgia. The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography: Reading Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle, and Gertrude Stein. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007.
Malcolm, Janet. “Gertrude Stein’s War.” The New Yorker. June 2, 2003. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/gertrude-steins-war.
Pavloska, Susanna. Modern Primitives: Race and Language in Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Reissue edition. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 1997.
———. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Wineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Lincoln: Combined Academic Publishing, 2008.
 

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

Gertrude Stein

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

Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Vintage, 2018.
Cook, Andrew. Prince Eddy: The King Britain Never Had. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009.
Cook, Matt. London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hyde, H. Montgomery. The Cleveland Street Scandal. New York: Coward McCann, 1976.
 

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

Prince Albert Victor

Born in a violent and difficult childhood in the American South, Truman Capote would rise to the highest levels of literary celebrity, praise, and fame: even joining the highly-exclusive jet set of 1960s and 1970s high society. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas. But Capote would be pursued by demons throughout his life – alcoholism, other forms of addiction, and crippling self-doubt which would end up leading him to destroy his own social reputation. 
Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon.
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SOURCES:

Als, Hilton. “The Shadows in Truman Capote’s Early Stories.” The New Yorker, October 13, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-shadows-in-truman-capotes-early-stories.
Capote, Truman. Answered Prayers. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
———. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1993.
———. In Cold Blood. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
———. Other Voices, Other Rooms. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. Illustrated edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.

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

Truman Capote

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

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

Bernard, Emily. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White. 0 edition. Yale University Press, 2013.
Holmes, David G. “Cross-Racial Voicing: Carl Van Vechten’s Imagination and the Search for an African American Ethos.” College English 68, no. 3 (2006): 291–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/25472153.
Sanneh, Kelefa. “White Mischief.” The New Yorker, February 17, 2014. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/white-mischief-2.
White, Edward. “The Making of an American.” The Paris Review (blog), May 14, 2014. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/05/14/the-making-of-an-american/.
———. The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. 1st edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Woolner, Cookie. “‘Have We a New Sex Problem Here?’ Black Queer Women in the Early Great Migration.” Process: A Blog for American History (blog), October 24, 2017. http://www.processhistory.org/woolner-black-queer-women/.
 



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

Carl Van Vechten

The composer Benjamin Britten was a central figure of 20th century music; and the national composer that Britain had been searching for since the death of Henry Purcell in 1695. He never shook his Communist and pacifist sympathies –– even as he rose to the highest levels of elite British cultural production. A fervent pacifist, antinationalist, and homosexual –– with a deep, complex, and troubling love of children –– Britten, through the strength of his music and through the nation’s desire to have a musical hero of its own, became an utterly unlikely national celebrity. 
Content warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual attraction to children.
Visit our website at badgayspod.com for an episode archive, T-shirts, and a link to our Patreon.
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SOURCES:

Bridcut, John. Britten’s Children. Main edition. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Britten, Benjamin. Peter Grimes. London: BBC, 1969. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MyBUetbE38&t=1705s.
Conlon, James. “Message, Meaning and Code in the Operas of Benjamin Britten." Hudson Review LXVI, no. 3 (Autumn 2013). https://hudsonreview.com/2013/10/message-meaning-and-code-in-the-operas-of-benjamin-britten/.
Kildea, Paul. Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century. Allen Lane, 2013.
Ryan, Hugh. When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019.
 


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

Benjamin Britten

This is a story of sex, death and political malfeasance that will make Teddy Kennedy look like Anne of Green Gables. It has everything you’ve come to expect from a Bad Gays story about the English upper classes — psychosexual repression, violence, class prejudice, hypocrisy, the brutality and cheapness of life at the heart of the political system, and plenty of people named things like Rupert, Auberon and Emlyn.
=Content warning for child sexual abuse in the early parts of this story=
But as ridiculous and kinky as the fruity rulers of Britain are, the story is darker than that. This story is also about the way the law is impervious to the informal networks of power in the British establishment, and how homosexuality was subject to a series of double standards, tolerated in the powerful but suppressed in the ordinary citizen, practiced in private and denied in public. Today we’re discussing the life of a man whose sexuality stole his chance at power, the MP and leader of the Liberal Party, the Right Honorable Jeremy Thorpe.
Visit our website at badgayspod.com for t-shirts, our Patreon, and an episode archive.
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SOURCES:

Bloch, Michael. Jeremy Thorpe. London: Time Warner Books, 2004.
 
Freeman, Simon, and Barrie Penrose. Rinkagate: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 1996.
 
Preston, John. A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies, and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment. Illustrated edition. New York: Other Press, 2016.
 
Thorpe, Jeremy. In My Own Time: Reminiscences of a Liberal Leader. Edited by Duncan Brack. London: Politico’s Publishing Ltd, 1999.

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

Jeremy Thorpe

This "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love" rose to stardom playing "classical music without the boring parts" and didn't need to stay in the closet because he wore its entire contents. How could he become an emblem of Middle American family entertainment? The United States of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was undergoing enormous social change –– the Civil Rights Movement, the Summer of Love, Women’s Lib, the Stonewall Riots, Gay Liberation, and the beginning of the AIDS movement –– and Liberace was an entertainer who appealed to precisely those parts of the country who sought to resist those changes. Hated by classical music critics, he was beloved by audiences precisely because of the openness of his secret and the way he performed a kind of minstrel act that nevertheless won him fame, riches, and glory. 
 
Visit our website for Patreon, T-shirts, and an eopside archive.
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Gabler, Neal. “Robert Harrison’s Scandalous Confidential Magazine.” Vanity Fair, April 2003. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2003/04/robert-harrison-confidential-magazine.
Liberace Music Video & Entrance 1981, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dioRwB4RvrQ.
O’Connor, Pauline. “Mapping the Many Razzle-Dazzle Homes of Liberace.” Curbed LA, May 24, 2013. https://la.curbed.com/maps/mapping-the-many-razzledazzle-homes-of-liberace.
Pyron, Darden Asbury. Liberace: An American Boy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Rechy, John. “Randy Dandy.” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2000. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-06-bk-65295-story.html.
Thorson, Scott. Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace. Head of Zeus, 2013.
 

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

Liberace

Season 4 –– ! –– with apologies for socially-distanced audio quality. Today's victim was a British colonist and mining magnate who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. An ardent white supremacist – no matter what revisionist historians and the right-wing press claim – he rose from being a sickly child to having a near-complete domination of the world diamond market. Come for the "private secretaries," stay for the Big Hole. 
Visit our website for t-shirts, an episode archive, and a link to our Patreon.
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SOURCES:
Aldrich, Robert. Colonialism and Homosexuality. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2003.
Brown, Robin. The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes' Plans for a New World Order. London: Penguin Books, 2015.
Jourdan, Philip. Cecil Rhodes: His Private Life By His Private Secretary. London: Bodley Head, 1911.
Rotberg, Robert I. The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.