S1 E9: Fighting Intellectual Sexism with Elle Cooney [Rerelease; New intro]

This is a long one, y’all. But it’s a real one too.

This is a rerelease from Season 1 of Stone Butch Disco. Rachel’s intro explains its relevance to SBD’s past, present, and future theory aims. If you’re interested in supporting the pod, (THANKS AND—) please join us on Substack rather than Patreon! We’re in the process of permanent relocation.

In this episode from 2022, Rachel talks to femme lesbian writer and theorist Elle Cooney. They cover:

• Pride in the word “female”

• Centering women in thought

• The co-construction of femme and butch lesbian identities

• Femme lesbian specificity

• Female masculinity as a nameable category (and other important nameable categories)

• Online validation seeking and its challenge to free discourse

• Queer identity games as “giving up”

• Holding firm against the intellectual sexism that silences diversity of thought around “gender,” namely from female voices (and how queer theory/modern academic movements erased “female” as a subject position)

• The male gaze’s bedfellow relationship to trans ideology

• Why male femininity is treated differently than female masculinity

• How femmes, too, get taken in by trans ideology (more on this subject from upcoming guest Jamie Reed)

• Why “nonbinary trans masculine” people so often despise butch lesbians

• Attempts to avoid being associated with mean people (which, probably, stopped us short of telling the whole truth and nothing but it in 2022)

• The ass-suffocating patriarchy of “party favor shorts”

And much more…

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Music, via Epidemic Sound:

• ”Glad It’s Over,” White Bones

• ”Get Outta My Face,” Wanda Shakes

• ”Postapocalyptic Funk,” SINY

• ”Pep Talk (Clean Version),” Xavy Rusan