Summary

Frigga and Sif talk with Kate about how trans people lived through history - from ancient Rome to present.

00:00:09
Sif: Hello and welcome to the Wyrd Thing podcast. This is episode 35. 100% it is. It is 35. Tackling a very important topic that is very much the top of some people’s minds at the moment, but it’s important for us to discuss it and to be important allies, and to platform trans voices and trans people, and to make sure that they are valid, advocated for and have their voices heard. So I am joined this episode by my co-host Frigga.

00:00:45
Frigga: Hi, hi.

00:00:47
Sif: And hey, do you want to introduce yourself, please?

00:00:52
Kate: Yes, I am Kate. I am a terrible introducing myself, apparently. Um, yeah. I’m, um, 50 ish year old trans woman living in the United Kingdom. I have some association with the heathen community, and, uh, although I am myself, uh, a somewhat different, um, variety of pagan. So I have been sort of active in that society for quite some, some time. I was co-host of the Frithcast Podcast, which deals with the subject of, generally speaking, the theme of inclusive Heathenry, along with Susanne Martin. And hence this is why I think you may have invited me to participate on this, for which I thank you.

00:01:33
Sif: Amazing. Thank you very much. Now our pre chat was interesting because we did talk for a while and we could probably continue for many hours more, but I guess first off a good place to start would be would you like to talk about the history and go from there. Let’s go backwards and then go through time chronologically. Would that be….. Is that a good idea?

00:01:57
Kate: By all means. How far back would you like to go?

00:02:01
Sif: As far back as you were happy to. Wherever you feel most comfortable, go into a place of hyper fixation, if you wish. I do not mind. Anything is interesting.

00:02:11
Kate: That’s absolutely fine with me. It is a sort of something you’ll hear constantly, sort of reinforced in the what gets gets referred to as the discourse, which is that people have this, this sort of idea that trans people are a relatively new thing, that we’ve just suddenly shown up in the last sort of 10 or 20 years. And, and it’s all sort of newfangled, weird ways of looking at things and so forth. Actually, the history is, is quite, um, is quite extensive if you sort of look back. So trans people appear to have existed in one form or another for the entirety of human history, presumably before that. But the trouble with prehistory was nobody wrote anything down. But we have people that we can identify in cultures long past and all sort of all around the world and so forth, who did not or could not conform to the sort of conventional gendered expectations of, you know, the society that they were. They were part of what has changed, undoubtedly. And I’m sure we’ll get into this as we go on, is some of the terminology and some of the understanding. We certainly have a greater understanding of what it is to be transgender these days. We’ve applied terminology to it. We’ve we’ve come up with words and phrases and things that we use to describe things, because that’s what humans do. We make up, you know, labels and things that function as, as ways of summarising things. And that is something that is often relatively new to a lot of people. So it, you know, people, people sort of mistake the, the, the understanding and the terminology with us actually being a new thing. You mentioned hyper fixation, probably as a reference to the fact that I have a, a long abiding. I think it’s known as a special interest.

00:03:57
Sif: Yes.

00:03:58
Kate: In ancient Rome and particularly the sort of republic period. So. So from the the end of the monarchy in 509 BC through to the fall of the Republic at the end, with Caesar taking over and Augustus becoming the first emperor, that sort of thing. So that was in 43 BC. My dating is terrible. So that’s that’s the place that I tend to be the sort of time period that I tend to be most interested in. So, uh, around about that time, there are stories of Roman priests of particular, if I say particular cults, a cult is different from what we use the word for now. In Roman times, it was the cult of a particular god, was the structure that surrounded them, their priests, their rituals, all that kind of thing. Mhm. So you had cults of particular deities that would live in roles, gendered roles, sort of differently from what would have been the sort of the convention for society. You have stories of certain peoples in the, the area of Scythia, which would be in kind of the sort of steppe areas up in the sort of from, from Rome, sort of in the northeast sort of area in sort of Eastern Europe. They had a group of um priests or priestesses or whatever terminology would be appropriate who go through, uh, feminising processes by manipulating their hormones. So they they noticed that if, uh, if people consume bodily fluids, let’s say, from certain, you know, animals and whatever, it can affect hormones and it can it actually has a feminising effect. So that became a thing that they would do. Not going into huge detail, but because these are the things that, you know, are always sort of ah, from sort of pointed out as well. These are people who are doing similar things following apparently following similar, similar sort of impulses, similar sort of, uh, you know, like I say, there’s examples from from sort of all the way through history, sort of before that and after that. But the point being that it is not a new thing. What is new is, like I say, the labels that we put on it, and that’s where I have to do a little bit of a kind of a caveat, because one of the things that we will do is if we talk about the more recent events, I will come back and talk about Elagabalus in a minute, because that was the one I’d got lined up, and I completely just blew past that. But one of the things and it becomes relevant in that particular case, Elagabalus was, um, a Roman emperor who is possibly somebody that we would now identify as a trans woman. Always the issue with this is that we are looking back on people who did not know this terminology. So when we look back into the past, we’re looking at people who didn’t know the word transgender, what we mean when we talk about any of that, we they had a completely different set of viewpoints towards gender in general. Uh, towards sexuality and all of these things that we look at now from a particular perspective. And they would not understand that perspective or they would not have because it wouldn’t be familiar to them. So we have to be a little bit careful about applying terminology from our age to them.

00:07:03
Sif: Mhm.

00:07:04
Kate: And this goes for anybody all the way up to sort of, you know, one of the big hard and fast rules is if you cannot declare somebody else’s gender or sexual identity, you cannot. Only they can. So I can’t say I can’t point to Elagabalus and say, well, this person wanted to be identified as a lady, wanted to be referred to with the Roman equivalent of the Latin equivalent of she. Her pronouns wanted to marry a man, wanted to be known as an empress. Again, that’s a modern term. But you know the sort of equivalent back then. Mhm. But I can think to myself, well, that sounds like a trans person, but I don’t really have a right to be able to say that was a trans woman, simply because Elagabalus would not have recognised that terminology. So you see what I mean? So and it’s something we have to be careful of even, even relatively recently, in more recent times, even in the 20th and 21st centuries, if we’re talking about somebody who never actually sort of said, but what we can do is we can say, look, this is something that looks consistent with and it’s something that clearly has been happening in one form or another for a long, long time. Mhm. So you know, the idea that it’s a, it’s a new thing is um, it’s not really, not really based on anything very, very solid. Where am I going from there.

00:08:26
Sif: Wherever you want to. Oh yeah. I think people do get kind of caught up in this kind of like a lot of the discourse these days seems to be around like, oh, we’re trying to the the woke left or trying to, you know, call this person and this person, this person like transgender. And it’s just it’s just not accurate. We’re more nuanced, you know.

00:08:49
Kate: Yeah. That’s true. And it’s I think a lot of the sort of misconceptions. A lot of the standard misconceptions. So trans people are a new thing that is that’s obviously one. And as I say, I’ve rambled a lot. But we can we can expand on it or whatever or move on or whatever as you like, but other ones are that it’s a that it’s a choice, that it’s something that people just wake up one morning, I think I’ll be trans today, and then I can start like shouting at people about rights and all that kind of thing. And it’s and this is the, the, the sort of impression that you would get if you listen to a lot of the can I say right wing.

00:09:21
Sif: Yeah.

00:09:22
Kate: Um, conservative shall I say I’m, I’m not, I’m not sure what, what of sort of acceptable, you know, what’s the house style for this if you like. But you get a lot of these, these anti-trans sort of commentators and a lot of the rhetoric and whatever that pushes this idea that it’s it’s just something that we choose to do, which is something that you know. I’m sure. Again, I’m sure we’ll get into it as we go along, but we start looking at the parallels and it will become quite important is the parallels that in the rhetoric that’s being directed at trans people now and has been for the last 16, 17, 20 years, whatever the rhetoric that was directed against and still is, you know, don’t mistake me for thinking this doesn’t still happen. But the rhetoric that’s directed against gay people, lesbians, bisexual people during the peak of the sort of the 80s, the late 70s 80s, there was a peak of, of course, a moral panic directed at them. And it’s a lot of the same terminology. And it’s also one of those rhetorical talking points is that it’s a lifestyle. So, you know, this and this goes into, again, what we can we can look at, but it goes into the whole idea that it’s sinful because it’s something that we’ve chosen to do, which is not doesn’t correspond to the way things should be and the way things are prescribed and all that. And as you say, you also have the question of, you know, whether it sort of suddenly arrives and people just suddenly decide this, uh, this is what they’re going to be and whether people are pushing it on other people and all that kind of thing. So you get this idea that particularly children, because think of the children, because kids are more prone now to come out and say, hey, I have this thing about my gender that, you know, it doesn’t feel quite the there is this idea that the kids are being transformed by the trans lobby, who are going around and turning people trans and all that kind of thing.

00:11:19
Sif: And some of the parts of the kind of the conservative rhetoric that I just… it’s just baffling to me. Like, I don’t see any, any position or argument that makes any sort of sense on their side for that. It’s just, you see, is that it’s again, it kind of ties into neurodivergent as well, where you say like, oh, we’re back. In my day, there wasn’t any kind of autistic people’s like, it’s just awareness. Yeah.

00:11:45
Kate: Very much similar, a similar thing, you know, why are so many people trans these days? Why are so many people LGBTQ? Well, because for a while there it was looking as though, you know, it was more accepted and it was wasn’t considered so much of an issue and so forth. And people, you know, the we are still, you know, much, much better off than we were in that you can sort of go about in, in sort of public in society. And if it comes up in conversation, you can say, I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m trans, whatever. Well, not so much. Trans is a bit, you know, as I say, these things are still targeted. We are at a point where people can say that kind of thing, and there isn’t sort of shock, horror and trials and things. And, you know, I mean, there was a, you know, I say that a little flippantly, you know, we should remember that it’s not that long ago that being lesbian or gay, you know, was illegal in the UK. So it’s not that long ago that people would have probably found themselves and did find themselves on trial if people found out about that kind of thing. Well, now you can go out and you can say that kind of thing. And the state. Well, the most part, I have to be so careful with this because it makes if I’m not careful, it sounds like you have to try to sort of acknowledge progress that we want to try to hang on to, because that’s the thing. It’s like the the danger is that the progress that’s been made will be rolled back. So you have to sort of acknowledge that the progress has been made. But at the same time, you have to make clear that, you know, things are still not great.

00:13:14
Sif: Mhm. It’s tentative.

00:13:17
Kate: But as to why, you know, why the argument for it being a lifestyle choice. I mean I would say that the reasoning there is just if, if there is something about someone that they cannot help, you know, I mean it’s like if somebody, if it’s if say you were discriminating against somebody based on their hair colour or something like that, you know? I mean, I obviously I could say skin colour, but I don’t want to I don’t want to sort of get into actual real life racism and use it as a sort of a just a flip comparison, because that’s, that’s a whole issue that I’m not probably best placed to because I am very white, so I’m probably not. I don’t want to be sort of treading into that area and making that comparison. Uh, because I’m obviously trying to be conscious of the fact that that’s a whole set of issues of its, of its own. But, um, so let’s say, you know, you discriminate against somebody because of their hair colour or something like that. That’s something that somebody can’t help. Yeah. So you’re you’d be a bad person for doing that. But if it’s something that they’ve chosen to do well, that’s like crime, isn’t it? You know, somebody chooses to commit crime. It’s not that they’re ever forced into it by social circumstances or anything like that. So you can you can vilify criminals. Well, if trans being trans or being gay or whatever is a is a lifestyle choice. Well, you can vilify them as well, you know. So it becomes hence they need this, this, this narrative that says it’s a choice. And then you can be criticised for the choice.

00:14:44
Sif: Mhm. I know that we discussed in back in the preacher about like a sliding scale system that’s happened where back in the day there was more. The conservative was that court case, that legal case where it was trying to target LGBT kind of rights. And then it was, it was like the trans people were seen as the easier target. And we really are seeing that at the moment. Yeah. Seeing as we’re moving through history a bit, got to talk more about that.

00:15:15
Kate: And yeah, sure. So there’s this phrase people will often use because you’ll often find when when somebody is transphobic. Uh, so they’re doing a lot of transphobic rhetoric on social media or whatever it might be. You will often find that if circumstances shift a little bit, their attention shifts over. They will immediately start on, you know, anti-immigration and anti, you know, on racism and sexism, what have you. And, and somebody will always pop up and say there’s never just one bigotry. That’s the phrase there’s always it’s always a whole bundle of bigotry. But the thing is, I think that’s because they are kind of all related. And the reason I think that is because you can actually map how the current anti-trans panic, the current campaign against trans people, has sort of come about. So if you go back to the sort of the, like I say, sort of the 80s and 70s and 80s, it was very much focused on gay people. They were the they were the big concern. And like I say, a lot of the same rhetoric was happening. They were a danger, especially to children. They were a danger in public facilities. They were, you know, all that kind of thing. It was a you would you would catch diseases. And it was very much the same sort of sort of thing. And, and, and there was a great lobby, a gay lobby that was pressuring people to become gay and and all that kind of thing. So for a long time, the again, I’m going to have to just say the conservative sort of sort of campaigns and the lobbyists and whatever have been resisting moves to try to advance the rights of LGBT. I say LGBT advisedly that we’re going to talk about the tea in a minute. The big battleground, especially in in the States, was has been the same sex marriage that was their sort of big, big issue that sort of came to a head with a case called, and I have to try and pronounce it Obergefell versus Hodges. And I should know the year of that. It was I’m trying to remember the year, but it was like it was the 90s. Maybe I’m gonna have to add that.

00:17:26
Sif: Yeah.

00:17:28
Kate: This was sort of the landmark federal case. So there had been a couple of previous ones. Would, at the state level, where the right to enter into a same sex marriage was protected by law. And the conservative side were not at all happy about it. And they were they were represented by a lot of sort of, um, what became known as the religious right. So this was a and I’m not going to say Christians, I do need to make clear that this is not a Christian thing, but there is a political movement in the States who we see a lot of today who present themselves as Christians. And of course, it’s not my position, not my place to tell I’m a pagan. I’m not in a position to say whether they are or aren’t, but they present themselves as Christians, and they argue that certain things have to be done in society because it is the Christian way of doing things. And so there’s been and it really kind of took hold in the States from sort of the, the kind of the 60s, 70s onwards. Mhm. And this case, Obergefell versus Hodges, was the point where the United States federally said this right is now protected under law. And that was considered a massive win for lesbian and gay rights. But it was seen by the religious right, the conservative side as a very huge, huge defeat.

00:18:50
Sif: Mhm.

00:18:51
Kate: They knew at that point that they weren’t going to get anywhere attacking gay rights, that for at least for them at that point, at least at the moment, that was something that was a battle they lost. Yeah. And they and they knew they weren’t going to get anywhere with it, but they needed to keep the momentum going somehow, because they still have this idea that they wanted to try to pull things back to the way they felt it should be, and trans people weren’t as familiar to the public. Not so many people knew a trans person as new gay people, so they saw an opportunity there. Well, okay, let’s focus on these people instead. So they started to move their attention over to the trans community. And there had always been this connection between the lesbian, gay, bisexual segment of, of the, the LGBT sort of abbreviation and trans people because they tended to hang around the same places. And, you know, when the Stonewall riots got started and whatever, trans people were there in the midst of that and all that kind of thing. But there’s enough of a sort of difference that they they’re able to go, right. Well, we’ll just we’ll just sort of wheel these people out and say, well, look at these, look out, look at these strange, dangerous people. You want to be worrying about these people, you know, and that’s basically sort of and the great thing for them was they could they could repurpose all the rhetoric that they’d previously been using. Just needed a lick of paint, and you can point it at this new group with pretty much all the same arguments.

00:20:25
Sif: Hmm.

00:20:25
Kate: So there is this history of sort of legislative wins for the LGBT community that have advanced these rights, but it is essentially the same, the same conflict. They just they just pivot from one group to the ones that they think are more vulnerable at the moment. And if you actually go back even further, you discover that, and this is one of these things where you probably, you probably need to lead up to it a bit, because if you just throw it in, it sounds like a bit of a where did that come from? But actually, again, if you if you track back the people that are involved, the groups, the, the political currents and whatever, the, you know, all of that, you can actually trace it all the way back to segregation. Mhm. So right at the start when the US started to make progress in desegregating, they were starting to apply pressure to states and to local authorities, if you like, whatever they’re. Sort of equivalent of our sort of councils and things to start desegregating schools, libraries, you know, other public facilities and whatever. Banning that whole thing and saying, look, this is over now. We’re going to we’re not sort of going to allow this anymore. And one of the big moves that the federal government started to make was that they were going to withdraw funding from schools that refused to desegregate. Mhm. And this was one of the first things that started with the formation of the religious right. So have you heard of a guy called Jerry Falwell?

00:21:54
Sif: Vaguely, yes.

00:21:55
Kate: Yeah. He was. He was like one of the the earliest big sort of preacher type political preachers, if you like.

00:22:02
Sif: Mhm. Mhm.

00:22:03
Kate: And he’s very prominent in the sort of rise of the modern evangelical movement. But one of the main sort of currents that he was riding on was the fact that desegregation was, again, it was becoming a pressure that the conservative side knew they couldn’t resist in the end. But it was it was something that they wanted to sort of. They wanted to try to keep their base, if you like, unified. And he and not just him. I’m not like singling him out just solely. But he was very he was quite prominent. And he his movement sort of started to shift their attention over to gay and lesbian people as a sort of example of the degeneration of society. You know, the slippery slope. If we allow this, then this will happen and this will happen and it’ll all fall apart. And we’ve got to try and preserve the proper nuclear family and everything in its place. And the idea being, of course, has established over, you know, the entirety of America’s history, more or less is that God says people, different races in inverted commas are different, and that people have to be kept in their own places and all that kind of thing. So it’s sort of like moved from one. They could use the same template and just move it over here a bit.

00:23:17
Sif: Yeah.

00:23:18
Kate: Now obviously, you know, every society has had gay people, lesbians, whatever, and they’ve all had different ways of looking at them and viewing them. And it’s not always been 100% friendly. You know, some societies have been more accepting than others, but this has been the pattern from back then. So you’re sort of fight to the civil rights push to sort of desegregate over into gay rights became the big threat. Gay rights managed to run up until, like I say, up until Obergefell, and then we move on to trans rights. So it is literally one, one big sort of sequence of things with them only should have shifting targets when they realise that they’re not going to win against that one. So let’s move to this one instead.

00:24:01
Sif: Yeah, it’s been pretty alarming, obviously, as someone who is cis, but seeing how the tables have shifted in terms of Feminism and how it seems from someone just looking at it. Obviously not part of that hate movement in terms of anti-trans rhetoric, but seeing how obvious it seems to me of putting people against each other in communities that in my lifetime seemed more cohesive. Seemed like they were rallying for each other, protecting each other. And it’s been really horrifying to kind of see that the movement between the LGB and the T separation, as it were horrible, horrifying.

00:24:44
Kate: Yeah. I mean, obviously it’s difficult to to sort of attribute a particular motivation to any, any given person, but certainly there’s been a a push to try to sort of recruit. And I’m going to just I’m going to just use the sort of the trimmed abbreviations. It’s simply because it’s easier. And I’m, I’m conscious. I don’t want to be, you know, otherwise I’m going to have to be using like 300 words every time I want to try and express this. So let’s say LGB because this is the slogan, isn’t it? LGB without the T is is what they try to push. And there are people in the LGBT section of the community who are sympathetic to the argument that, you know, trans people are not part of the same thing. And we are, because, I mean, there are differences, clearly, but the what unifies the community is, is the resistance to the discrimination. Mhm. So, you know, and in that respect we are very similar. They have been lulled by this sort of rhetoric that says hey no, you’re the proper ones, these, these teas, they’re coming along and they’re trying to hang on your coattails. And, and you shouldn’t allow it because they’re dangerous, because talking point A, B, C, d and they’re actually being fed the same talking points that not that long ago were being directed against. They’re part of the community, but in many cases they haven’t encountered that or they weren’t, you know, bearing the brunt of that. So to them it’s relatively new. It’s not that it’s it doesn’t sort of fire off those. Whoa. Hang on. And they kind of seem a little bit too happy to go with it. But, you know, like I say, if you actually look at it, it is just different paint over the same thing. And it’s and it’s unfortunate when people aren’t sort of sort of seeing that you have to be again, a little bit careful not to sound like a conspiracy theorist when you say things like, there’s a lot of money in this.

00:26:35
Sif: I understand what you said, but it is with so many things. Follow the money.

00:26:40
Kate: Yeah, yeah.

00:26:42
Sif: And then you sit there flabbergasted. What is behind it?

00:26:47
Kate: There are people putting a lot of funding into getting this rhetoric out there and putting it in front of people and saying, hey, but, you know, look at this, this dangerous thing. Aren’t you worried about this? You should be worried about this. Look what they’re doing to the kids, you know, and all this kind of thing. Look what they’re doing to to sort of, you know, women’s sports and which of course is another of the the top talking points at the moment when we talk about the, um, you know, how they, they sort of shifted the rhetoric over.

00:27:17
Sif: Um.

00:27:18
Kate: When they started, um, looking at trans people as the, the sort of the scapegoats that they were going to be focusing on. One of the first sort of campaign moves they made was to try to get the public outraged about inverted commas. Again, men, by which they mean trans women, um, in women’s toilets. And this was one of the first things they pushed as a, you know, this is something you should be worried about. You know, your daughter might be in a public toilet and a man in a dress walks in, and then what are you going to do? And it fell flat the first time they tried it. It fell completely flat because of course, they didn’t take into account the fact that everybody uses toilets all the time. And people, trans people, have been using toilets according to their gender identity for longer than any of us have been alive, you know. Who knows that when that started, it’s probably always been the case. Ever since segregated toilets became a thing. And people know this, and people have been in those environments, and they’ve been using them alongside trans people for all that time. And nothing’s happened. So they tried the anti-trans movement immediately, first of all, started pushing the, you know, you’re in terrible danger if trans people come into women’s toilets. And everybody went, no, we’re not. This is something people were too familiar with. So it didn’t work because people could see the reality. And that was when they started moving on to trans women in women’s sports where they said, well, but these people are men, really. Therefore, they are faster and stronger and cleverer. And all this which very clearly, you know, raises some questions about their attitudes to start with. But that was that was what they started pushing. It’s not fair. It’s not fair if these men can come in with all their testosterone and start running and throwing things and doing various. Whatever it is sporting people do. And this was a bit more of a winner for them because most people don’t do sports. They might, you know, most people might play the odd game of, you know, on a population level. Most people don’t. Certainly don’t play professional sports. But people are very invested in professional sports. So they watch the Olympics. They watch the athletic tournaments, they watch the football. And what have the football’s, um, all of them. Um, and so people get emotionally very invested in sports, but they don’t have an awful lot of experience of actually participating in sports. So it was much more successful. And that made ground for them. So now you’ll hear that as one of the big I mean even what do I have to call him? Do I have to be respectful and call him Mr. Trump? Know him over.

00:29:59
Sif: There? Yeah.

00:30:02
Kate: Or can we just go for the corrupt criminal?

00:30:05
Sif: There we go.

00:30:05
Frigga: Yes, please.

00:30:07
Kate: Okay, fine.

00:30:08
Frigga: Don’t do him the honour of using his name.

00:30:12
Kate: So it’s one of the ones he. He’s come up with. It’s one of the one of the first ones he went to with. We’re going to make sure there are no men in women’s sport. Meanwhile, science is going. Actually, there’s no issue here. Yeah. And most of the people who are participating in sports are going. There’s never been any issue here. And most of the sporting bodies have gone. We’ve been accommodating trans people for decades. It’s fine. But that doesn’t matter because the terrible unfairness of it is a better story. And that, in turn, has shifted opinion made people more receptive to other arguments like bringing back the trans women in toilets. So that’s on the rotation as well of of rhetorical horrible.

00:30:52
Frigga: Yeah, I still am.

00:30:55
Kate: How is this possible?

00:30:58
Sif: How is it possible?

00:30:59
Frigga: It’s not.

00:31:00
Kate: I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I know you know. I do agree with you. It’s like you look at it and you think this shouldn’t work. You know, you shouldn’t be able to just get a handful of people stand up and just basically tell lies and have everybody fall for it. People should be more discerning than this, surely. We have this assumption that everybody is as interested in this, in this subject as I am. I mean, obviously I’m part of this community and I’m very sort of engaged with with what’s going on most people. You know, and this is not a criticism. Not everybody is familiar with everything. And if it’s not part of your life and you don’t know any trans people, and it’s not really been anything you’ve ever really thought about. You’re not going to know the ins and outs of all these arguments.

00:31:44
Frigga: No, but what pops up to my mind a bit is and you were sure hyper focus on Roman periods. It’s hard to say that I don’t know how to say it in English because politics seems to be entertainment.

00:32:01
Kate: Yes.

00:32:02
Sif: So entertain the people. Give them some, you know, some food and some entertainment.

00:32:07
Kate: And I’m at bread and circuses.

00:32:11
Sif: That’s what I was looking for. Yes.

00:32:14
Frigga: Yeah, no, I agree.

00:32:15
Kate: And I was perhaps being a little over charitable, I was. I was trying to come across as somebody caring and sensitive and, you know, all that kind of thing. When I say, you know, people, people can’t be expected to know everything.

00:32:27
Frigga: You know.

00:32:28
Kate: We’ve seen this pattern time and time and time again.

00:32:32
Frigga: Mhm.

00:32:33
Kate: You know, the whole structure of all our democracies, you know, America, Britain all over Europe is all based on, you know, if you’re not careful somebody can come along doing the grimmer worm taunting and feeding you nonsense into your ear. And if you’re not very, very careful, you might find yourself starting to believe it. And that is the beginning of a slope, at the end of which, not to put too fine a point on it.

00:32:59
Sif: Is Nazis the bad people?

00:33:03
Kate: Fascism?

00:33:04
Frigga: This ideology is.

00:33:06
Kate: Yeah.

00:33:07
Sif: I just read this morning a piece on a platform in the Netherlands from a broadcast thingy. If I recall it correctly, it said you can’t be pro transgender because transgender people just simply exist and always have exists. Yeah. And it was also talking about ideologies that it is turned in an ideology and it’s culture, how we how general people think.

00:33:38
Frigga: Yeah.

00:33:39
Sif: I mean, I.

00:33:39
Kate: Think there’s there’s certainly an argument that where you could say, well, human rights, freedoms, democracy, whatever these apply to people, regardless of who they are and, and all that sort of thing. So we should be able to concentrate on just upholding the rights of everyone. If you uphold these rights in principle, then they apply to everyone. And I can see the logic in that. I would agree with the logic in that to some extent. But the problem is certain people get targeted. Yeah, it’s a little bit like the um, I mean, again, I don’t want to I don’t want to step into racial issues because I’m not qualified to talk on it. But I can say, you know, from the point of view of person who’s taken an interest. I mean, one of the things that is very easy to get sort of sort of lulled into on race issues is, well, I don’t see colour.

00:34:28
Frigga: Mhm.

00:34:29
Kate: Oh yeah.

00:34:30
Sif: We shouldn’t be arguing for, for black people’s rights because everybody should have these rights. So let’s argue. I mean it’s like when Black Lives Matter is said or is invoked and the response from them is but all lives matter. And it’s like, yes, you’re right in the sense as far as it goes, there are no human lives that don’t matter. However, what is happening there is you’re taking a specific statement which is designed to oppose a current sort of systemic discrimination. And you’re saying, well, let’s let’s paper over that. Let’s sort of you kind of mitigate it. You kind of attenuating it, you’re making it quieter. So you’re saying, well, yes, but but all lives matter. And that way the message of Black Lives Matter, which, as I say, is an assertion which is designed specifically to resist anti-Black racism or racism. Let’s just say racism. You’re you’re you’re trying to drown that out in a, in a more general thing. And if you can flatten everything down, then that message is that message kind of fades away and you don’t have to deal with it anymore. So it’s like, yes, you can certainly stand for human rights for everyone and all lives matter. But you have to also stand for in particularly for the people who are being being targeted particularly?

00:35:51
Frigga: Yeah, definitely I guess.

00:35:54
Sif: Where do we want to go from here? A bit above the table. Talk. What do you want to talk about next? Um. The notes I’ve done. Rome. We want to.

00:36:04
Kate: Do Rome again.

00:36:04
Frigga: I’m quite happy to go back to Rome. Back to.

00:36:08
Kate: Rome. Please don’t. Don’t mention.

00:36:10
Sif: Rome. Don’t mention Rome. Um.

00:36:13
Frigga: Do we want to talk about the 1930s? Do we want to go back? Got Magnus, Berlin in the notes. I guess talking about more recent history with ties to, unfortunately, what we’re seeing a political return to fascism. We want to talk about the work of one individual in Nazi Germany who was making big strides in. Well, I’ll let you I’ll let you take it from from here. The, um. Yeah, the work that’s been done prior to the day is kind of language of recency. I guess that’s the better way of phrasing it. I’ll do it in post. Magic of editing.

00:36:59
Kate: Yeah. No. Yeah that’s all good.

00:37:02
Sif: So yeah you’re talking about Magnus Hirschfeld and he was a researcher into sort of human sexuality and related, uh, and gender and related areas of interest. And he was based in Berlin. He had a centre there, which was where he was doing his, his research. And it was a kind of he had like kind of like drop in centre, if you like, that. He was that he would run for the local. What we would now refer to as the local LGBT community or LGBTQ plus community. The others there who were participating in that work were doing, you know, want a better term, proper science, you know, and actually finding out what these expressions of human diversity, let’s say we’re actually sort of all about. And he built up an enormous amount of knowledge, a lot of sort of literature papers, research papers, a huge, huge resource of, of of information really pushed, sort of pushed the boundaries of understanding because I think something that a lot of people and I didn’t really appreciate it until I sort of started looking into it. And I think it’s easy to sort of not know or to lose sight of the fact that prior to the rise of the Nazis, Nazis, those Nazis.

00:38:16
Frigga: Either way.

00:38:17
Kate: So prior to to that, Berlin was kind of a pretty much a centre for sort of, you know, it was it was a really progressive society. It was very open and very, you know, sort of comparatively accepting and, and, and they had a lot of sort of places where people could, could go and, and sort of be themselves and all that kind of thing. It was, it was pretty, um, vibrant, I think, as the, the way I usually hear it sort of described is, you know, it’s just this sort of just all of human life, just in this one. This one city. And of course, when the the fascists started to, I say, people are going to shout at me for saying fascist when I’m talking about the Nazis. But I’m using the term in its general.

00:38:56
Frigga: Sense.

00:38:56
Kate: Sort of the sort of Umberto Eco kind of 14 facets of fascism and all that kind of thing, rather than the fascism of Mussolini specifically. So when the National Socialists started to gain power, that was something they had to put a stop to because that that didn’t fit into their their idea of this strictly ordered society with everything in its place and, and all that kind of thing. So Hirschfeld’s centre was actually one of the first things that was targeted. It was ransacked. It was the information, the books, the papers was all burned. It was all just just completely obliterated because it was the thing that they looked at and they went that that is what we’ve got to stop. First we’ve got to put a stop to that. So they did. And that was the groundwork. From that they started to, you know, implement more and more sort of purges of stuff and people that they didn’t like and facilities that they didn’t want and, and all that kind of thing. But like I say, I can’t point to any of Magnus Hirschfeld’s clients or associates or whatever and say that person was trans because as I say, that’s a that’s a modern term. But it’s pretty clear that, um, you know, that was who he was dealing with, whether they would have used that term for themselves or not, that was a priority because it was a single place. It was a it was a good it was a well-known place. It served as a fantastically effective signal. You know, this sort of thing is not going to be tolerated in the new order. And, and we lost a incalculable amount of knowledge and understanding and information, and it set us back decades at least. We’re still feeling it today. Because if you imagine if that hadn’t happened and all that information that he’d gathered or that his centre had gathered, had been retained and propagated and percolated around, you know, and built on, where would we be now?

00:40:57
Frigga: Yeah.

00:40:58
Sif: Horrible. It’s like the Library of Alexandria all over again.

00:41:01
Frigga: Yeah, yeah.

00:41:03
Sif: Yeah. At the very least, we could say, well, it’s not a recent phenomena. Look, we have this from the 1930s. I think just having that missing from the equation, that sort of anchor point, it’d be like, well, yeah, you know, at least for 100 years, we’ve had kind of like this, this history of research. I think that in itself is a massive loss.

00:41:25
Frigga: Mhm.

00:41:25
Sif: And to be honest, prior to having this talk with you, I was only very vaguely aware of that in the 1930s. And I consider myself quite progressive on that front. You know, it’s it’s horrible. Yeah. All of these atrocities.

00:41:40
Frigga: Yeah.

00:41:40
Kate: And like I say, I always, I always sort of feel, I guess in a, in a way, I’m a bit I can be a little bit wishy washy because I’m always being careful to try to not downplay what they did to other people, you know, to other groups. This isn’t me saying, you know, we have we had it worst. This is me saying we were there and they hit us like they hit these other groups. So the fact that we were one of the we were one of the first is an important thing to keep hold of, because while they didn’t have the influence, they came to have, the atrocities that they ended up in a position to commit were orders of magnitude greater in terms of scale. But while they didn’t have that power, they didn’t have that influence. They were still pushing the boundaries of what they thought they could get away with.

00:42:29
Frigga: Yeah.

00:42:30
Kate: We, the LGBTQ plus community, trans people as part of that, were the first group that they came for because they knew that we were the ones that were smallest, we were least likely to be, you know, people were least likely to know one of us, or at least know one of us that was willing to be open about who they were. This is the thing I would think I would highlight is the fact that, to put it in very clunky terms, they saw us as an easy target because we didn’t have a huge amount of public support. We weren’t familiar to people. People didn’t have a lot of conscious experience. People have been living alongside LGBTQ plus people all their lives. Same as they have today. You know, trans people, you might not know that you know, trans people, but because they calculated that there wasn’t going to be a huge public outcry if they targeted this place and these people and they they did it and there wasn’t. People were like, oh yeah, but it’s only, you know. And I think what we need to keep in mind is the fact that with every defeat, they have the sort of generic, regressive, Reactionary conservative element. Let’s say with every defeat they have suffered in the last century and more every time they’ve they’ve moved to what they consider to be a smaller group and started intensifying attacks on them.

00:43:47
Frigga: Yeah.

00:43:48
Kate: Until they get to one where people will just shrug and go, yeah, but it’s only them. And then once they can do that, then they start moving it up.

00:43:56
Frigga: Mhm.

00:43:57
Kate: This is why that piece of it isn’t actually a poem. It’s often presented as a poem. The Niemöller piece first they came for. Now again, this is not me trying to put myself and my community, you know, I’m not trying to sort of put us above or in front of everybody else. But what I’m saying is that’s why that works. Because they will they will do what they can get away with. And every time they get away with something, they will step it up a bit further.

00:44:20
Frigga: Yeah.

00:44:21
Kate: Yeah. And that reminds me, I had might said it before in another episode, I don’t know. And it’s not putting you in front of, of making yourself more important as the group it’s a cartoon with this standing up tiles alone like domino stones behind one another, and on the first one is written trans rights, and people will try to hold that tile standing up. And the next tile is is women’s rights. And then it’s, you know.

00:44:51
Sif: Yeah.

00:44:51
Frigga: All the other rights which are important. Yeah. Even if the smallest group within all the marginalised groups of marginalised peoples are falling down, then the next will be targeted, the next will be targeted.

00:45:05
Kate: Yes.

00:45:05
Sif: And like I say, it’s not trans rights underpin any of those other groups specifically. It’s the fact that if they succeed with that first domino, yeah, they will step up and try the next one and the next one and the next one, and sooner or later there was nobody left to speak out.

00:45:23
Frigga: Yeah, yeah.

00:45:25
Sif: I just had this, like, awful kind of metaphor, I guess, for all of this. It is like a constant attack on like a defence system, and they’re just constantly looking for the weakest link or the weakest, a weakness in the defence.

00:45:39
Kate: Yeah.

00:45:40
Sif: And then as soon as they target it, they’ll do it. And they just it just fractures along the line. And it’s horrible to think of it like that but very true. I mean, just look at the way.

00:45:49
Frigga: They’re.

00:45:49
Kate: Probing a firewall.

00:45:50
Sif: Exactly. So they’ve infiltrated. And then you just see, like like friends turn to enemies and you just think, what? What is going on here? Yeah, it’s always that. It goes back to that fear of the other. Just what is the other? It’s something that isn’t me directly, you know, and.

00:46:05
Kate: It’s anything that you can be told is dangerous because it’s different.

00:46:09
Frigga: Mhm.

00:46:09
Kate: And you say turning friends into friends and enemies and so forth. But one of the problems is not necessarily that you feel like all your friends are becoming your enemies, but it’s like you never quite sure how they feel.

00:46:21
Frigga: Yeah.

00:46:21
Kate: And it’s like, you know, you’ll see somebody that you’ve known for years and years. Nobody. Nobody here present.

00:46:28
Frigga: Alone. Just.

00:46:29
Kate: Just for the for the record. But you’ll see. You’ll see people who’ve you’ve. And I’m not going to name names. You know, this is just a general, a general thing that you will observe, you know, after a while and you’ll see somebody who post something on social media or whatever, and you’ll just.

00:46:46
Frigga: Think, what?

00:46:47
Kate: I don’t get it. Why? I didn’t realise you thought that way, you know, and it forces you to sort of recalculate. You’re like, okay, so my my network, if you like my, my associations, my friendships aren’t built on the solid ground. I thought they were.

00:47:04
Frigga: Um.

00:47:05
Kate: You know, either this person is just not thinking. I mean, you know, even that in itself, it’s like you’re not thinking about this at all.

00:47:11
Frigga: Ah, you know that.

00:47:12
Kate: That’s something I don’t understand.

00:47:15
Sif: But it happened a few times in the last few years of just recent, you know, just politics, let’s put it that way. And they’re voting in a certain direction. I’m like, why would you do that? You know you’re directly voting against your own rights.

00:47:29
Kate: Yes.

00:47:30
Sif: Silly goose.

00:47:31
Kate: And that’s your rights, but also your your interests. What is important to you?

00:47:37
Sif: Yeah.

00:47:37
Frigga: I mean, that’s housing and that’s it’s healthcare, Social security, all these things. And you’re voting against that.

00:47:46
Kate: And it’s difficult. I one of my less endearing qualities. I kind of admit it hesitantly, because it does make me sound like a horrible, horrible person. I have always had trouble. There’s a there’s a principle called Hanlon’s Razor that you may have heard of, if not by name. You’ve probably heard. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. And some people will say ignorance because it’s a bit softer than saying stupidity. But you know, the idea being that if somebody does something harmful, they probably just didn’t know better. They’d probably it probably wasn’t that they wanted to cause harm. And I’ve always had an issue with that because I don’t. Maybe I’ve just been very, very lucky, but I’ve never really met anybody I would honestly say was I thought was stupid. But the trouble is, that leaves me.

00:48:36
Frigga: With.

00:48:38
Sif: The worst.

00:48:39
Frigga: Option.

00:48:39
Kate: The conclusion that if they do something harmful, it’s probably not because they’re stupid ignorant, maybe. Like I say, that’s a bit foggy, but I do find it difficult when when when I have to look at whole communities of people, whole societies that are voting, like you say, clearly against their own interests, because somebody has fed them a line.

00:49:01
Frigga: Yeah.

00:49:01
Kate: And it’s like, are they doing it because they believed the line? And it doesn’t occur to them to fact check, and they just go with it because it feels like it’s probably right. Or are they going with it for another reason? And this is where you get into like all the stuff about, you know, in Britain at the moment, it’s very similar to how it is in the States. I mean, obviously one of the big things that MAGA is all about is, is immigration and how you’ve got to stop these people coming in and, you know, setting up in this vast, vast country with huge resources and so forth because it’s it’s taking away from proper Americans. And we have the same thing here in Britain with Stop the Boats, which is our sort of the slogan of our far right, who, uh, who are like, you know, these people who are sort of fleeing war and, and various hardships and they, they come to Britain as they are legally entitled to do under international law. They come to Britain, they claim asylum as they are supposed to. And then our government chooses not to process them, process their claims, because we’ve basically just stripped the immigration service of any sort of funding and resources to do that. So we end up with this huge, huge backlog of claims. Claimants have to be accommodated somewhere, so they get put in, uh, what’s the word? Cop gets into somebody’s somebody’s car and says, follow that commandeer.

00:50:23
Frigga: Yep. Yep.

00:50:24
Kate: So they they commandeer hotel buildings and things because they’re they suit the purpose. Convert them into immigration, immigration residence centres. And then people get told by the papers that the immigrants are being put up in five star hotels. It’s like, no, they’re not five star hotels now. You know, there’s nobody taking them room service or anything like that. But the line is put out there, the story is pushed, the narrative is pushed, and people are driven by resentment.

00:50:52
Frigga: Yeah.

00:50:53
Kate: Or why should they get this special treatment? The reality is they’re getting treated incredibly badly. But because the papers and Nigel Farage and whoever are saying, you know, are they get they get all these perks and all these benefits and dah dah dah dah dah. And people get resentful. So they vote against their own interests because, you know, the things that Farage and his mates would want to do to, for example, the health service and, you know, the deregulation they would want to introduce to make sort of, you know, rich people infinitely richer. Or if everybody else has expense, you know, all of that gets gets sort of sort of, by the way, if ever if I’m, if I’m sort of way off topic.

00:51:32
Frigga: And oh, no, shut up.

00:51:34
Kate: No, no. I do think that talking about this subject is also also really important. In the Netherlands, it’s recently or recently. It’s already for a longer period that it’s against the asylum seeker accommodations. They’re trying to spread it more around the country. So villages and cities are looking for more places to give people a shelter.

00:51:59
Sif: Yeah.

00:51:59
Frigga: And there are huge demonstrations to stop today. There was a huge demonstration. I didn’t look at the news, but there was also a demonstration of people who want to welcome refugees.

00:52:13
Sif: That’s good at least.

00:52:15
Frigga: Yeah, that’s.

00:52:16
Kate: It’s indeed what you say. It’s the rhetoric and it is constantly making us. I don’t consider myself that the victims things are taken away from us. Yeah, our traditions are taken away from us. Our houses are taken away from us. Everything is taken away from us.

00:52:35
Sif: Yeah.

00:52:35
Frigga: They want to go back to the to the Netherlands of the 50s or their romanticised.

00:52:42
Kate: Yes.

00:52:43
Sif: Image they have from how the Netherlands should be. Of course. White. And I say it’s so boring.

00:52:51
Kate: To go wildly off the deep end here. Years and years ago, I think in the 90s, sometime there was a computer game called syndicate, and it was a sort of top down running around a city in this dystopian future and lots of shooting and and all that. And it was very, very much a sort of cyberpunk, small C cyberpunk type game. And it had an opening animation that always, like, struck me as just something it up really well, because it was the idea of the game was that people were taking a drug of some description that was like they were living in like a sort of engineered virtual reality. So they were walking around the city and what they were seeing was not what was there. It was it was much, much prettied up. And it was, um, you have the main, the main character of at least of this animation sort of walking down this street and it’s all lovely sunny day. It’s, it’s, it’s trees. It’s little puppies playing in the at the side of the road and, and it’s read post boxes and you know, it was basically you sort of you kind of picture postcard 1950s version of England and, and there’s a, there’s a policeman, a Bobby on the street waving at people as they go by and generally being all sort of and uh, the main character sort of gets hacked. So the, the reality start is glitching out and they start to sort of fold up a little bit because it’s, it’s painful or whatever. And you just see this Bobby go, it’s a male character. sir. The Bobby goes. Are you all right, sir? And then it glitches out completely. And that Bobby is actually sort of some armoured face mask, you know, proper sort of stormtrooper kind of kind of cop. Just going, everybody move on, move on. I know that was a bit of a wild diversion, but it always makes me think of that because that’s the world that they want to live in is the is the thing with the I’m not going to mention the the M word. I’m not going to say matrix because I did mention the n word.

00:54:41
Sif: Sorry about that.

00:54:42
Kate: Because I know that’s kind of become a darling of the far right. So I’m not going there. But this is the world they want to live in. They want they want this, this fantasy. It never was never real. In Britain. It’s all bloody Elgar and cricket on the.

00:54:54
Sif: Lawn and.

00:54:55
Kate: All that kind of stuff. And they sort of bolt it together and make, well, if we could just get rid of these people and those people and make these people do what we want, and then everything will be like that and it’ll be lovely, and puppies will be able to play on the street, and Bobby’s will go, are you all right, sir? You know.

00:55:10
Sif: Yeah. Right.

00:55:11
Frigga: Yeah.

00:55:12
Sif: Well, I can’t help but think about how dystopian that is. I mean.

00:55:16
Frigga: Yeah.

00:55:17
Sif: It’s like it is a, like a horror movie where the horrors of the reality of the world in terms of. Well, okay, then. So what’s going to happen to all the asylum seekers, all that stuff. Like it’s, it looks picturesque and like idyllic, but then it’s horrifying. Just how to get to that point is just atrocities.

00:55:38
Kate: What do you have to do? What do you build that on? What’s the foundation of it?

00:55:41
Frigga: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:55:44
Kate: There are so many parallels I could make, so many connections I could make to The Matrix. But like I say, I don’t. I would use it except that they talk about it all the time. I’m not associating with it.

00:55:55
Sif: Which is sad.

00:55:56
Kate: It’s a shame. I love.

00:55:57
Frigga: That film, but.

00:55:58
Sif: Also considering who made it.

00:56:00
Frigga: Yes.

00:56:01
Kate: I know and what they made it for. You know what they made it to be? Yeah.

00:56:06
Sif: There’s no literacy whatsoever. Media literacy out the window.

00:56:10
Kate: Now let’s let’s take this allegory for the trans experience and. Yeah. No. Anyway, I did go off. I did go off a bit off the rails there. Sorry about that.

00:56:19
Sif: No no no don’t apologise. I think it’s really important. I think considering the way things are going, I don’t want to be entirely pessimistic about it. But I think we’re in for a rough few years, and I think it’s more important now than ever to be genuine allies and to try and fight for each other’s rights, because it’s just fucking a bit grim.

00:56:41
Kate: I think so, and I do think it’s like I said, I do think it’s fair to to keep in mind that, you know, if one benefits, we all benefit. Yeah. In, in a sense, you know, like I say, there is a universality to these these rights that we are concerned about. There is also an argument where you could say, well, you know, if you should be concerned about it, because if they can take it away from us, they can take it away from you. Yep. And that’s the basis of the, The poem, you know. Or the poem. The piece I keep saying. Niemöller. Is that how you pronounce it?

00:57:13
Sif: I’ll just say yes.

00:57:15
Kate: Okay, cool. Because he was, wasn’t he from the Netherlands?

00:57:18
Frigga: No, it was a German. It was German. Who wrote it?

00:57:21
Kate: Uh, in that case.

00:57:23
Frigga: I only know a modern version which is indeed started with the original one only uses two lines of it, and then said. I read the rest of the fucking poem.

00:57:36
Kate: I read the rest.

00:57:37
Sif: I do like that one. Yeah, I do very much respect that piece of that piece of writing, and it has a lot of truth to it. I do think it’s kind of the baseline, though. It’s the it’s the sort of bare minimum you’re doing a thing because one day they might get to you.

00:57:51
Frigga: Yeah.

00:57:52
Kate: If you’ve got nothing else, cling to that. It’s fine because one day they might get to you or somebody you care about, but it’s probably better if you can say to yourself, I’m going to fight this because those people over there that I don’t. Know anything about and I don’t. They’re not anything like me and so forth, but they still deserve their rights. That’s a better reason to be fighting. Yeah, but I’ll take anything. I’ll take whatever. Whatever. You’ve got.

00:58:19
Sif: Your motives. The motives are not important. It’s just help.

00:58:25
Kate: You know? And like. Like I said, it is all connected. How practical that is to be thinking about in the now. Yeah, we could debate that. But I do think it’s something to keep in the back of your head that it is essentially, it’s all about trying to impose a strict social order. That is, again, the inverted commas, the air quotes come out pure. It’s purity. And by that I mean it’s a society where again, I keep using the phrase everything, every, everything and everyone are in their place.

00:58:57
Sif: Mhm.

00:58:58
Kate: And it is all sort of linked but it’s linked over so much time and so much range that, like I said, it’s difficult to know how practical that is. You know, people, people deserve rights even if they’re not like you.

00:59:12
Sif: That’s it’s I was going to make a joke then about how controversial, but it actually is. And that’s kind of sad.

00:59:17
Kate: People deserve rights. Yeah, I know.

00:59:20
Frigga: It’s like.

00:59:21
Sif: A controversial. Yeah. Hot take. Oh, wait. No, actually, it is pretty hot take these days.

00:59:27
Frigga: Yeah. Um, but think of it. Is everything is that way. The social order, you know, the norm. How boring.

00:59:37
Kate: I don’t understand, I don’t, I really don’t. I mean, I suppose it’s fear. I suppose it’s fear of what’s unfamiliar and what’s unpredictable, and I don’t really get it. I mean, I, I’m not the most adventurous of people in terms of. I’ve not travelled an awful lot. I’ve not, like, visited millions of countries and there aren’t millions of countries. You know what I mean? But I.

00:59:59
Frigga: Love.

01:00:00
Kate: To go places and be surrounded by people who are different. People have different outlooks, different perspectives, different ways of doing things, you know. Yeah.

01:00:11
Frigga: Yeah. And go out of your comfort zone. Yeah. Be challenged. Make, make. Please make me think. And maybe I’m afraid. And maybe I don’t like it. That doesn’t have to withhold you from.

01:00:24
Kate: You can be a little bit nervous about things.

01:00:26
Frigga: Exactly.

01:00:27
Kate: I just don’t understand how people would want to live in. Like you say, just this. Just this tedious. Just this grey. It’s.

01:00:36
Frigga: Yeah.

01:00:37
Kate: It’s like Terry Pratchett’s auditors, isn’t it? I don’t know. I don’t know what was in his mind when he was coming up with it. I suppose it must have been something along these lines, I guess, you know, the sort of tedium of the same. So you’ve got this group of they’re not even individuals, they’re just a force of some description trying to make the universe stop doing disorder. So they want everything to be frozen in place, Nothing moving. And it’s like just another word for non-existence, isn’t it?

01:01:03
Frigga: Yeah, yeah.

01:01:05
Sif: Stagnation.

01:01:06
Frigga: Yeah. It was these kind of things I often say. I don’t understand it, and I don’t think I want to understand it.

01:01:15
Kate: That’s the thing, isn’t it?

01:01:16
Frigga: And at the same time, I think discussions like we have now are important to look at the history and how things went. Because that gives insight in where we are now. Yeah. And that’s culture is not a fixed thing or the natural order, but it’s made up by people. So that means that we can change.

01:01:44
Kate: I do think you’re right. Yeah. I think you’re right to say, you know, these these are lessons to be learned because, I mean, we’ve been through this so many times. A species, you know, just in, in, in the last sort of couple of millennia, we’ve been down this road. Time and again.

01:01:59
Frigga: And when will we ever learn?

01:02:02
Kate: When will we learn? Yeah. And it is just it’s obviously something that we are prone to as a species. And I don’t understand why. Like I say, I can only assume it’s a, it’s a fear thing or something like that. But there’s usually people around willing to exploit it, make money out of it. A lot of these, these thought leaders, let’s say, you know, these influencers on on the, the conservative like you’ve got these, um, not to name names, you Ben Shapiro’s and your, you know, your Alex Jones’s and, uh, although isn’t he, isn’t he getting bought out by The onion at the moment, it’s his channel. Which is quite fun. Yeah, yeah. Matt Walsh is all that kind of thing. And they, you know, do they believe what they’re saying or are they just making money out of it? It’s hard to know. But there’s always going to be somebody who will exploit this tendency in people. And when it, you know, when they get traction, as they seem to have at the moment.

01:03:00
Frigga: Oh set that is it. Oh no I I’m not sure is that is it in the, in the proper way. They know they are lying and they know that we know they are lying.

01:03:13
Kate: Yeah.

01:03:14
Sif: Something along those lines. And that’s what amazes me. Maybe because I’m a neurodivergent, why do people vote for lies? I will never understand.

01:03:25
Kate: I guess it’s the the happy, the happy sunny street, isn’t it? It’s it’s comfortable.

01:03:31
Sif: Yeah. Something along those lines. I mean, humankind, people we are social creatures and we can care and we are capable of so much. Can we not simply use all that for the benefit of all? As we talked in in previous podcast? But our world, I mean, for me, it’s the same year.

01:03:56
Frigga: Yeah. No, I.

01:03:57
Kate: I.

01:03:57
Frigga: I.

01:03:58
Kate: I absolutely agree. It’s it’s hard to. It’s hard to see why anybody would choose anything else. You know what we could build if we all. You know, not necessarily.

01:04:09
Frigga: Yeah.

01:04:10
Kate: You know, I’m not necessarily saying we all have to sort of march lockstep and, and you know, but but if we just I don’t know, it’s it’s hard to know.

01:04:19
Sif: Do you often think about that though, about how where we could have been if, you know, the last 200 years and a half, you know, just like, yeah, where we are. And then what? Like there’s, like this futuristic, utopian sort of thing.

01:04:35
Frigga: Going.

01:04:35
Sif: On. Brilliant.

01:04:36
Frigga: So maybe we should get to some cheerful closure.

01:04:42
Kate: Reasons to be cheerful.

01:04:43
Sif: Cheerful. Closure. Let’s go. Okay.

01:04:47
Kate: Do I have reasons to be cheerful?

01:04:48
Sif: Cheerful? Oh.

01:04:51
Kate: Uh, no. Um.

01:04:54
Sif: Yeah. Okay. Do you have any.

01:04:56
Kate: Um.

01:04:57
Sif: Do you have any cheerful. Uh, yeah.

01:04:59
Kate: I mean, nothing, nothing substantial. I can’t sort of, I don’t know, I want to sort of finish with her, but don’t worry. Keep fighting. You know, and and it’ll all be. It’ll all work out. Star Trek in the end. And I’d like to think it will. Yeah. I don’t want to sound like a greetings card. This. This too shall pass. Yeah. You know.

01:05:19
Sif: Yeah. This too shall pass. But one of my mottos is.

01:05:24
Frigga: Always.

01:05:24
Kate: Can be worse.

01:05:27
Sif: This too shall pass. And then? And then some other nonsense will come along in a minute.

01:05:33
Frigga: When I say if you look at a bigger picture.

01:05:38
Sif: Yeah.

01:05:38
Frigga: When you get overwhelmed or depressed. So bring it back to the small. What we can do for one another, being allies.

01:05:48
Kate: I think that’s one of the. One of the things is just to just to keep checking in. Just keep making sure that you, you know, you kind of I would say necessarily your, your, your network or sounds awfully formal, but you know. Yeah, just remember that you are not responsible for all of it. You know, just do your bit. Just keep it in mind and, you know, like I say it’s it’s not. Yes. It’s prominently trans people at the moment. So, you know, be nice to your trans friends. Yeah basically. But of course it’s not just us. There are other people who are in difficult circumstances at the moment. Again, you can’t you can’t rescue all of them, much as you might want to, but just, you know, be there for folk when you can.

01:06:34
Frigga: And I wish I had this magic wand and you just wish everything is gone. And what we use the magic to.

01:06:46
Kate: Yes. You see, that’s the thing. This is why I’ve always said I should never be given power. I mean, real power. Because I would make people happy. Make being the operative word. I’d be very tempted to anyway. Sorry.

01:06:59
Frigga: That wouldn’t work either.

01:07:00
Kate: No, I’d be very tempted to. To try. I would try to use it for good and it cannot be used. So I think that’s what it’s like. Galadriel said that Gandalf said I would try and turn it to good and it cannot be used so well.

01:07:15
Frigga: Maybe Galadriel as well, but it’s Lord of the rings you refer to.

01:07:20
Kate: The theme is pretty much there, isn’t it?

01:07:23
Sif: Oh, there we go. I guess I guess the concluding thought is be kind where possible. This too shall pass. Slash. You haven’t hit rock bottom yet.

01:07:34
Kate: Absolutely. Love it.

01:07:38
Sif: No.

01:07:38
Frigga: That’s me.

01:07:40
Sif: Biggest motivational talk? That you can always get lower and, um, yeah, I guess leave the world a better place. So that’s kind of a bit morbid, but because it’s implying death. But yeah, try and do our best out there at the moment.

01:07:56
Kate: You never know what what the little things you do for people will propagate out to as time goes on.

01:08:02
Frigga: Yeah.

01:08:03
Sif: Yeah.

01:08:03
Kate: Okay. Thank you for having me.

01:08:07
Frigga: It’s. It’s great to have you.

01:08:09
Sif: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Uh, we could continue. Yeah. I mean, we could continue talking for a couple of hours, but I think.

01:08:16
Kate: Once somebody tells me, tells me I can talk. I do tend to talk.

01:08:20
Frigga: That’s good.

01:08:21
Sif: Yeah. It’s been very good to have you on. Um, but, yeah. I’m safe. It’s been great. Thank you for listening. Are any of the final thoughts?

01:08:30
Kate: Nothing for me.

01:08:32
Frigga: I think I have been discouraging enough for tonight. I have to keep up my reputation.

01:08:42
Sif: More. More motivational.

01:08:47
Frigga: Now demotivating. That’s my. Expertise.

01:08:53
Sif: I never start a motivational podcast.

01:08:56
Kate: Something about kittens. Probably. By.

01:09:01
Frigga: Yeah, by.

01:09:03
Sif: Oh, dear.

01:09:05
Frigga: Okay.

01:09:05
Sif: Bye bye.