Podcasts on the LEFT, Including some potential clarity on Charlottesville.

Bwahahahaha! Ready to be radicalized? Bored with your listening options? Want more Radical Politics in your cereal, your commute, and your alienating job? Well I know I did a few months ago, and luckily I’ve been finding them! Time to share.

Aside: Sorry I can’t keep up with posts I’m monstrously busy. Parenting, moving, demolition, selling of annoying asset, work. I need a lot of time over a few days to write a decent article, and so far I’ve got a bunch of half finished posts, but nothing worth publishing.  This, however, I can do tonight.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but here are some excellent Radical Podcasts. I lean heavily to the Anarchist line of thinking, but not all of these podcast are anarchist, many are Marxist and some avoid political labels at together. All I can say is that each of these podcasts a worth listening too even if you don’t find yourself agreeing with them.

First some specific episodes on what went down in Charlottesville. There’s a lot of bullshit on the riots, and It’s good to hear from actual people on the ground there.

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The Ex-Worker: Charlottesville – Triumph & Tragedy in the Struggle Against Fascism 

An excellent overview on hat went down and my memory fails me at least one good interview about what Antfia was doing on Friday and Saturday.

It’s Going Down IGD Podcast: Unicorn Riot on Neo-Nazis Celebrating & Planning Violence at Unite the Right and “Soft Targets”
If you want to hear about the riots from a journalist perspective, but one who was actually there, this is for you.  There are additional links in this podcast to follow as well

Feminist Killjoys, PHD: Ep 66: Stand Up & Fight Back – An Interview with Redneck Revolt

Want to learn more about those Armed Leftists at Charlottesville? An Excellent Podcast.

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Now Onto the Podcast proper. I’ll be splitting them loosely into categories to make picking some out easier.  In no particular order…

The Fun Stuff: Comedy, typically lighter subject material, or at least stranger!

Srsly Wrong: These guys are Canadian, so that’s cool for me. They do a lot of skits and faux ad in there podcasts. Very entertaining, but some very good substance as well. You want to get some family and friends Radicalized? These are some cool dudes who might just be able to do it. Episode 100 is great.

Left Coast: New and make me laugh every time. West coast the best coast? Well these fine folks make a strong case. If your ready to go on a radical journey with some funny people this is also an amazing Podcast to get started with.

Last Podcast on the Left: Warning contains Liberalism! If you need to stay tapped into what more liberal minded folk are thinking, plus the weird conspiracy nonsense coming out of the right. These guys will do you well. They also make me snort randomly on the job which is difficult to do. More entertainment then info, and a centrist bias but just worthy of being on this list. Abe Lincolns Top Hat (politics) and Sex and other Human Activities (Sex and Mental health) are good too, but not good enough to get their own entries here.

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Though Stuff: If you’re looking for the weighty stuff this is for you.

Revolutionary Left Radio: Probably my Favorite of them all. Consistently even handed (not neutral), smart and thoughtful. Very active with a new podcast every week. Rev Left Radio goes into the various different leftist ideologies, and into detailed left history. Has a gold star recommendation from me.

CrimethInc. The Ex-Worker: This Podcast was what got me started down this rabbit hole. They have a decent archive, and they recently started a weekly show “The Hotwire” which covers the news in anarchist circles. Hardcore, and some time difficult. I definitely recommend stopping in from time to time.

From Alpha to Omega: Infrequence updates, but a quality archive. Tom O’Brien is a Marxist, and get quality quests on his show every episode. Worth a try with a strong recommendation from me.

IGD It’s Going Down Podcast: Very similar news outlet to CrimethInc.  With a much more frequent history of updating. I have less experience with IGD, but they have been good over all and like CrimethInc. Are worth dropping by ever so often and downloading a few files for later.

Zero Squared Podcasts: Zero Squared is a book publisher, but they have a Podcast which goes into all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard of and pump out content for their podcast and Youtube videos. I recommend the Posadist Episode if your into some quality Satire. This also gets a quality assured recommendation from me.

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Here lies Feminism! Sex, Veganism, and Good times.

Sexplanations Podcast: The Least political of the podcast posted here. This podcast by Lindsey Doe is all about sex positivity, and sex education. Nothing like dismantling puritanism when your smashing the patriarchy am I right? Fun and Positive Episodes. If you need something Uplifting and Sex Positive Sexplinations may be what your looking for.

Feminist Killjoys, PHD: These two Academics are all about media theory. A Bit woo-ie, but self aware about it. They get into Marxist stuff every so often, and a a good place to get your feminist fix, as all good Anarchists are want to do.

Whorecast: Sex workers and Anarchist work well together, and you’ll see the connection crop up in this podcast fairly regularly, if not always directly. Very important stuff in here, and if you want to deconstruct the stigma you have towards sex work I can’t really recommend anything else! A personal failing I’m sure.

Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack!: First they are not preachy about Veganism, two they talk Marxism and Anarchy, and a very anti-capitalist, and are good feminists far as I’ve listened to them. If any of that is of interest to you (understand I recommend them as an active omnivore) then give them a try. They might be a good listen for you as well.

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Yes I listen to all of these I wouldn’t recommend them otherwise. Yes my job would be crazy boring (and alienating) with out them.

Have fun listening!

Withteeth

I’m At a Loss

I’ve been finding it difficult to come up with ideas for blog posts, which is why this blog hasn’t been very active lately. As such, I’d like to leave it up to the readers: what would you like us to write about? Would you like to know something specific about our atheism? Do you have an argument that you’d like us to address? Would you like us to discuss a particular book? Do you have any questions about Philosophy, Biology, or History? Would you like to know our stance on a particular feminist issue? Is there something else you’d like us to write on? Let us know in the comment section.

Just Thought I Should Remind You All About My Surveys

I haven’t done an update on my surveys in a while, so here it is. For those of you who don’t know about my surveys, I am trying to do a couple of independent studies for some future blog posts. The first study will be on Religious discrimination, and I will be focusing on how people view discrimination aimed at atheists vs. how they view it aimed at Christians. The second study will be on feminism’s reputation. Namely on how people perceive it’s reputation. Please help me out by doing and sharing my survey. It will be greatly appreciated. And for those of you who have already done my survey, please share it wherever you can. I would like to write those blog posts this summer.

Here is how I’m doing so far:
Religion Surveys:
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Atheists:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=vvaqodd0equ2y21474850 – 4% complete
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Christians:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=pi387nzvmo8dklc474867 – 2% complete
This survey looks at whether or not the respondent feels they have been discriminated against for their religion:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=3zolzpi3k1lwc7s470898 – 8% complete
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Atheists are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=t2k9uo23mlnmklk470896 – 7% complete
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Christians are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=85koff95iqwpme3470893 – 7% complete
Feminism Surveys:
Situations that may or may not be considered Feminist issues:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=xxiz033c05yo72v472614 – 3% complete
Are various Feminist causes helpful or hurtful for the Feminist movement?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=i8d3kq6z73ems49471695 – 7% complete
How do you perceive Feminism?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=4p48z0rwjwooxpf471689 – 7% complete
Does Feminist have a bad reputation?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=r4t8nurh0tyxvqt470762 – 11% complete
Please help me out by doing my surveys, if you haven’t already, so that I can write my posts on the responses. And please share my surveys as well.

We Seem to Have Disappeared…

Withteeth and I haven’t been posting very regularly lately, but we do have a good reason. Our conference took place on Saturday, so a lot of our time went into that. Right now we are still in the process of recovering from the insanity.

However, we haven’t forgotten about the blog. Right now we are working on a large series. The series will go as follows: First we will do an atheism 101 where we will do a comprehensive overview of everything atheism that we deem important. This is meant to create an understanding between ourselves and our readers, as well as to educate theists about the topics of atheism that they might find the most confusing, and to give new atheists or those questioning their theism the resources necessary to make an informed decision about their stance and the words needed to express their views to others. Then we will do a Philosophy 101. This series will cover a vast array of topics in philosophy that will help our readers understand where we are coming from when we discuss philosophical ideas and how your ideas can best be expressed to us. Basically, this will be another way to eliminate miscommunication between ourselves and our readers. Then we will each do two separate 101’s: History and Biology. I will be discussing what history is, why it’s important, and what historians do in order to create an understanding of how historians come to the conclusion that certain events happened a certain way. Withteeth will be discussing Biology in an attempt to express why we do not accept creationism as well as to create a mutual understanding of what certain terms mean. Then we will collaborate once again on a couple more 101’s. First we will do a Feminism 101. Again, this will be to educate our readers about certain terms and to eliminate any misunderstandings about what certain terms mean. It will also be a way to express why we are feminists and why we find MRAs and Anti-Feminists problematic. We will finish the 101 series with an LGBT 101. Again, the point will be to create a mutual understanding of terms.

Given the topics we have chosen to discuss, a number of our posts will basically be repeats of old posts, however, we feel it is important to go through those topics again. We have two reasons for doing this series: first, it ensures that we can cover those topics that we have been meaning to get to but have not yet discussed, and second, it will help us create blog posts that we can refer back to when people ask us questions or make comments that we have dealt with multiple times in the past.

This is going to be a long series. the atheism one is already over 200 pages long. As such, it will likely take us the rest of the school year to complete this series. When we’ve finished this series, I will deal with all the books that I’ve put aside. This is meant to be a foundation, so hopefully the book discussions will add to these 101s.

A Brief Commentary on Shame.

This post was, for the most part, inspired by my resent post on a robust sex education program. I found myself really jumping at what a few people said and I want to explain why: I am strongly opposed to sex shaming. More so, I find that shame is an unhelpful emotion to try to bring out in others, and it is highly misused. Now, I believe that no emotion is truly a good or bad emotion, because all emotions can lead to negative and positive results, and each has their own use.

Shame, from my experience, is an emotion which is very good at one thing: entrenching preexisting behaviors. For behaviours that we would otherwise like to avoid, such as misgendering someone, or getting drunk and embarrassing ourselves, shame can be useful as we already have the preexisting wish to avoid those behaviours. When we slip up and feel shame, it reinforces those overall positive behaviours. However, when someone is consistently doing something perceived as wrong, and it has become habitual, people try to evoke shame to get the person to change. Unfortunately, like I said, shame reinforces preexisting behaviours, so, when you shame someone about something the habitually do or like/want to do, all you achieve is making them feel bad. And, more often than not, you either have no effect on their behaviour or you entrench it even further.

When you want someone to change, you don’t want to make them feel bad. Instead you want them to reconsider their behaviours or thoughts. By shaming a person your more likely to convince them that they are a bad person, then to convince them to change their behaviour. A person will change when they stop feeling bad about themselves and are actually motivated to change their behaviour. While shaming can ultimately lead to someone picking themselves up and changing, there is no guarantee that that will happen. But there is a real risk of entrenching the behaviour even more and making it less likely that the person will change it.

Aside: It needs to be mentioned that you need to be very careful if you think you should change someone else. It’s very rare that you’ll be in a position where you can effectively change a persons behaviors. Even then you should still tread carefully. The only real time you can justify trying to change someone is when they are doing harm to themselves and others, and even with that said just because you don’t like a behaviour or think someone would be “better off” not doing it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmful. A perfect example of this is how some religious fundamentalists who basically make up excuses for why being Gay causes harm, when really it do no more harm than being strait does.

This is part of why I’m so opposed to sex shaming. First and foremost, I think that sex between two consenting adults is just fine. I may not like what they do, but that’s none of my business anyway. Secondly, shame doesn’t change behaviours. So if you want someone to take precautions or form new sexual behaviors, shaming them is counter productive. It may help those who were never inclined to do those behaviors in the first place, but we’re already not worried about those people. We are worried about those people who already have, or are inclined to having, problematic behaviours. So the last thing we want to do is shame them and entrench those behaviours.

(Small edit: I really didn’t explain what sex shaming is in this post I’ll have to write another post to make up for that, but for completeness I’ll explain some here. One of the major components of sex shaming are “slut-shaming” but I use the term as more inclusive to basically all the ways we shame people about there consensual healthy sexual behaviour. This includes sex between LGBT persons, BDSM, a whole array of fetishes. Though I think I ought to do a full post so I’ll leave it there for now.)

Video Review “Crystalina’s Testimony”

One of our commenter posted the following abstinence only video. It’s not all bad and there is some good stuff in there, but it needs a fair bit of unpacking, but it’s has basically nothing to do with sex end in and of itself, and certainty would not make any of the audience safer in regards to sex. I’ve also included a short synopses of the video for those who don’t want to tackle the whole thing.

Feel free to follow along with my play by play, and adding thing I’ve missed in the comments below! This won’t become a regular feature but I felt it was worth turning this into a post.

And for sanity, and to provide some actual sex education I’m also including a Sexplanations video for balance.

Short version: So for the first half of the talk Crystalina is talking about peer pressure and unhealthy relationships, which for her largely revolved around party, sex, alcohol, he friends, and her series of boyfriends. There is nothing wrong with that in principle, but she talks about this in as sex in trade for love, and how she could have avoided this if only she respected her body, but really what happened from my listening is she realized she did really want to have sex and party with her friends in the ways she felt she was expected too.

Worse still while she talk about all this bad relationships filled with bad communication, and misunderstanding of what she even wanted she basically say’s through the talk that when she stopped having sex everything else fell in place, but what she doesn’t emphasize was how she took control of her life, set goals, and decided what she wanted and stuck to it. That’s what I want to take from the story, but no it’s all really about not having sex, and saving your virginity for your future spouse. The important lessons are swept under the rug in favor of conflating not having sex with respecting yourself. While there is some truth of this for the speaker there is no reason to think that it will hold for every other kid learning about their sexuality. Not to mention the heteronormative theme running thorough, and the sexism buried in many of the ideas she pushes.

Now here my play by play of the video.

Warning I use a fair amount of harsh language

First she starts off talking about a story peer pressure, and what amount to emotional abuse from her younger self’s first BF. Not issue of sex, but issues of being teenagers. It is almost always a bad idea to do things just because everyone else is doing it. This is true for sex and for jumping off a roof onto a trampoline, for playing Pokémon, and half of the things we ended up doing as children. It’s always best to have your own reasons for doing things, and to aware of the consequences of the things your doing.

I also take issue with her saying we know when we are being used. This is certainly true for many of us, myself included, but we can be naive, or deluded or mislead into thinking otherwise. Next she is propagating myths about the sacredness of sex is a great way of tricking people into thinking its more then what it actually is, and that sex is amazing for everyone. Sex is different for everyone so trying to over simplify the narrative does not do the next generation any favors.

Then she pulls out the ‘I lost something that day that I’ll never get back’ card. I’m spoiled goods why bother? While I can understand why she would say it as a child exposed to a purity culture, she still seems to think it’s true to some extent. 😦

3:00 So many internalized sexist ideas bundled in here. at around 3 minute in. I’m paraphrasing here -Boys I don’t think it was your doing is wrong. I think you treated me like I deserved. I didn’t act like a lady back then, dress like a lady…-
Ya because how you act and how you dress makes it so that men don’t have to respect you or your agency. They can just fuck you when they like because your acting like a slut. That might not be what she said, but that’s what I’m hearing.

Now at 3:30 in I’m worried she’s going to continue to confuse this idea of sex and unhealthy relationships, because up till now she been talking about really unhealthy relationships. She was trading sex for love and relationship, and she and her partners where not being honest with one another. This is a bigger issue and definitely should be part of a child’s education, but unhealthy relationships revolve around bad communication, and not understanding what you want. Not around sex.

4:00 Yep slut shaming sucks hard, but it’s a cultural problem born out of the puritan culture in the 1800’s. It’s not a problem about sex, but a problem related to sex, and being a woman.

4:10 We are  once again talking about you doing something out of peer pressure and expectation of your peers not because you want to do it. Like I said before. That’s never a good idea, though it is hard to convince children and teens of this.

7:00 Awesome! Now you’re trying to live for yourself excellent. I may disagree with point here and there, but it’s your life and your calling the shots, and not letting your guilt shoot down your self-esteem so you stop even trying. That’s the take away here. Not abstinence. Oh wait the video isn’t over… damn.

7:15 Cool Jason, glad you wanted to wait till marriage and did. Though that never appealed to me. While I definitely want to know and like the people I have sex with. I am not closed to the idea of having mutually agreed sex, just for the purpose of having sex for the fun and release it brings. For me it didn’t work out that way, but again it’s about knowing what you want and aiming for it.

7:30: Yep cause your body is a gift to your man, because your his property. I’m being sarcastic, but seriously, your vagina (or any other orifice for that matter) is not just some some gift to some man (ore woman, or anyone for that matter), it’s a part of your body and you should respect yourself enough to not see a part of your body as a gift to give. She might not mean it this way, but I greatly dislike the language regardless.

7:40: Virginity is a social construct, you never actually had it in the first place. Your just more experience at sex then you would otherwise be. While I respect the comment about respecting your body. I do not respect the notion that abstaining from sex is the same thing as respecting your body. In my early twenties I was going a little bit insane from not having had any sex. Masturbation was good for tiding myself over, but the first time I had sex I felt some sustained relief from being horny. There nothing wrong with not having that problem, and I know many people who can not relate to my story, but there is not single narrative.

I knew damn well what I wanted, I knew how to be safe I respected my sexual partner while also being clear about my intentions, both those which where romantic and those which where sexual. So far this talk would do nothing for me, and would not help me or someone like me one bit.
8:49: You hopefully won’t care much about the mockery and laughter passed high school. But if you truly respect yourself, which means understanding what you want, what you need, what it important to you, and are willing to stand up for those things. Then no you won’t give a fuck about what they think because your doing what you want, and your respecting yourself, and so long as you’ve also figured out the respecting others part you’ll be good to go.

9:00 marriage and vows are not necessarily going to be that great, or that important to you. It might be, but marriage isn’t for everybody, and even if it is it might not be remotely Christian in style.

9:22 I don’t know why you’d respect every kid for being a virgin, It’s not like all of them had any choice in the matter, and what do you not respect those who have?

9:30 I know lots of people who wouldn’t trade place with you, like me and many of my friends. Why because good consensual sex where all parties communicate and take care of one another is great 🙂.

9:35 Again Virginity doesn’t really exist there no way of knowing for certain if someone is some is a virgin, soooooo. Really all you have is a lack of experience, so I guess yay for ignorance?

10:00 last story. Ya it’s a sad one, but this girl has more problems than just having sex, ya it would probably be best if she stopped having sex with boys at every party she goes too, but you need to talk to her about everything else I’ve mentioned, and purity culture isn’t necessarily going to do that. Again the moral of this story should be about respecting yourself and understanding healthy relationships, but instead we are told that having sex = not respecting ourselves, and not a single thing about safe sex is communicated EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW WE HAVE SEXUALLY ACTIVE TEENS IN THE ROOM! You’re not doing them any favors by not teaching them about safe sex at the same time.

Withteeth

A quick synopsis for my ideas on good Consent education.

Make it quick and repeat it often

Make it informative

Make it inescapable

Focus on Consent (but don’t avoid saying rape)

Make it quick

Make it from different perspectives

Tailor it to the audience where ever you can

Make it mandatory

Make it informative

Make it quick and repeat it often.

 

Obviously this doesn’t give good info on the actual how’s, though there are not shortage of skilled sex educators and film students out there. Make a hundred or so pick 15-25 of the best.

Withteeth