Skip to main content
Rabbles

Rabbles

By Alexander Stoffel and Felix del Campo

Rabbles is series of talks with radical thinkers and agitators who are pushing the boundaries of revolutionary queer praxis. The conversations are for anyone who wants to learn more about histories of queer social movements, and their contributions to contemporary socialist and communist politics. It aims to bridge the ever-widening gap between queer scholarly knowledge production within the academy and activist sites.

Watch the episodes on YouTube at www.youtube.com/channel/UCjb7ZA9lxji0R5stAcLaqEA
Available on
Google Podcasts Logo
Pocket Casts Logo
RadioPublic Logo
Spotify Logo
Currently playing episode

ME O'Brien on family abolition in the longue durée

RabblesMar 29, 2021

00:00
38:48
Kay Gabriel, Jules Gleeson, and Elle O'Rourke on trans liberation

Kay Gabriel, Jules Gleeson, and Elle O'Rourke on trans liberation

In this episode, Ira T., Jules Gleeson, Elle O'Rourke, and Kay Gabriel reflect on the meaning of trans liberation. They cover questions surrounding gender abolition, bodily autonomy, theory and praxis, and the communist horizon.

You can find Kay on Twitter @unit01barbie (https://bit.ly/3bRvXWT), Jules @socialrepro (https://bit.ly/3fLEZ9b), and Elle @eileanorr (https://bit.ly/3foQy76).

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

7:23 — The relation between trans liberation and communist revolution
36:20 — Gender versus gendered oppression
52:19 — Feminization
1:15:04 — What is gender abolition?

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

Transgender Marxism (Jules Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke, eds.): https://bit.ly/3hTZPpz
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, eds.): https://bit.ly/3bSS7Iq
Gender as Accumulation Strategy (Kay Gabriel): https://bit.ly/3oREdeO
Transgender Solidarity (Jules Gleeson): https://bit.ly/3yyxfjo

May 26, 202101:32:02
Piro Subrat (Parte 2). Invertidxs y Rompepatrias. Marxismo, Anarquismo y lo queer

Piro Subrat (Parte 2). Invertidxs y Rompepatrias. Marxismo, Anarquismo y lo queer

En este episodio, Piro nos cuenta la relación dialéctica entre las disidencias sexuales y de genero y las distintas tradiciones políticas de izquierda radical en el estado español. Hacemos un recorrido por su inmensa obra historiográfica Invertidos y Rompepatrias. Marxismo y Anarquismo en el Estado Español (1868-1982).

🦋 NAVEGACIÓN 🦋

4:43 — La izquierda "revive", la homosexualidad se prohíbe: Franquismo
11:17 — Poder gay, la resistencia marica y el marxismo de los años 60
19:00 — Los orígenes del movimiento LGBT al final del Franquismo
26:50 — Más allá de las identidades
34:30 — La Ley de Peligrosidad Social y la creación del sujeto político homosexual

🦋 SÍGUENOS 🦋

Twitter @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)

Apr 13, 202151:06
Piro Subrat (Parte 1). Invertidxs y Rompepatrias. Marxismo, Anarquismo y lo queer

Piro Subrat (Parte 1). Invertidxs y Rompepatrias. Marxismo, Anarquismo y lo queer

En este episodio, Piro nos cuenta la relación dialéctica entre las disidencias sexuales y de genero y las distintas tradiciones políticas de izquierda radical en el estado español. Hacemos un recorrido por su inmensa obra historiográfica Invertidos y Rompepatrias. Marxismo y Anarquismo en el Estado Español (1868-1982).

🦋 NAVEGACIÓN 🦋

1:25 — Una introducción a las condiciones que produjeron su obra
6:25 — Eugenesia, Socialismo y homosexualidad
16:56 — Primo de Rivera, el contexto revolucionario y la Reforma sexual
25:03 — Homosexualidad y Segunda Republica
29:06 — Maricas con clase o clase y maricas: El mito del barrio Chino y la Ley de Vagos y Maleantes
39:23 — El Franquismo, el gen rojo y el gen homosexual

🦋 SEGUIR VIENDO/LEYENDO 🦋

Las disidencias sexuales en la lucha de clases (Piro Subrat e Ira T.): https://bit.ly/3takGrs
De Sodoma a Chueca (Alberto Mira): https://bit.ly/3wPikk7
Un Hombre Llamado Flor de Otoño: https://bit.ly/3wQX9Oq

🦋 SÍGUENOS 🦋

Twitter @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)

Apr 13, 202149:11
ME O'Brien on family abolition in the longue durée

ME O'Brien on family abolition in the longue durée

In this episode, ME O'Brien charts the history of projects to abolish the family from Marx and Engels in the mid-19th century till today. We discuss transformations of the family under capitalist development, anti-racist critiques of family abolition, working-class solidarity, and the contradictions of prefigurative politics.

You can find all of her work at www.michelleestherobrien.com.

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

1:14 — A brief history of the working-class family
10:46 — The Black family as a source of resistance to oppression
16:55 — Family aspiration as fracturing working-class solidarity
23:28 — Queer communes and prefigurative politics
29:50 — Against functionalism

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

To Abolish The Family (ME O'Brien): https://bit.ly/3cA1QUZ
Abolish The Family! (Red May TV): https://bit.ly/2PFv0sw
Communizing Care (ME O'Brien): https://bit.ly/3w8gTNe
Kayla Puan Interview Transcript (ME O'Brien): https://bit.ly/3sAMrci

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)
Instagram @delcampofelix (https://bit.ly/36b7hpw)

Mar 29, 202138:48
Emma Heaney on cis ideology and the trans feminine allegory

Emma Heaney on cis ideology and the trans feminine allegory

In this episode, Emma Heaney talks to us about how sexology made sex cis. We cover the trans feminine allegory, the colonial roots of cisness, the dangers of mystification, and the politics of academic knowledge production.

You can find Emma on Twitter @riislover667 (https://bit.ly/3cL0Coy).

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

3:50 — How sexology made sex cis
25:00 — The trans feminine allegory in popular culture
37:30 — The trans feminine allegory in international studies
45:50 — Mystification versus abstraction
56:13 — Materialism Trans Feminism

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

The New Woman (Emma Heaney): https://bit.ly/30Wfs6h
Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson): https://bit.ly/3rZPoTs
Gender Underground (Jules Gill-Peterson): https://www.jgillpeterson.com
Black on Both Sides (C. Riley Snorton): https://bit.ly/38QjUYH
Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (Afsaneh Najmabadi): https://bit.ly/3tvcamH
Indian Sex Life (Durba Mitra): https://bit.ly/2OZbozo
With Respect to Sex (Gayatri Reddy): https://bit.ly/38RYSIY
True Sex (Emily Skidmore): https://bit.ly/3cH0wOM
The Trial Path, Impressions of an Indian Childhood and Why I am a Paga (Zitkala-Sa): https://apple.co/3qSHEBD
The Trans*-Ness of Blackness, the Blackness of Trans*-Ness (Marquis Bey): https://bit.ly/3vASakh
Where Black Feminist Thought and Trans* Feminism Meet (Kai M. Green and Marquis Bey): https://bit.ly/3lnWkaI
Thinking Black [Trans] Gender (Cameron Awkward-Rich): https://bit.ly/3bXIGYU
Transgender Marxism: https://bit.ly/3eRZWAG

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @IdaBirkvad (https://bit.ly/3ddf1eN)

Mar 18, 202101:09:22
Huw Lemmey on homosexuality, espionage & class

Huw Lemmey on homosexuality, espionage & class

In this episode, Huw Lemmey takes us on a tour through London to explore the twentieth-century world of spies and sex, crime and cruising. He discusses the class composition of British homosexuality, collusion between queers and the state's security apparatus, moral panics around sexuality, anti-communism, and more. Felix and I then have a conversation with him about this mind-bending history.

You can find Huw on Twitter @huwlemmey (https://bit.ly/2YaKzJW), subscribe to his amazing newsletter at https://huw.substack.com/, or listen to his podcast BadGays at https://badgayspod.com/.

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

2:30 — Huw's talk
41:50 — The Lavender Scare & the Red Scare
47:43 — The post-war gay and lesbian movement in the US and UK
57:38 — The Lavender Menace
1:01:05 — The class dimension of homosexuality in the post-war era
1:10:05 — Historicizing the post-war construction of homosexuality
1:22:00 — The class dimension of homosexuality today

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

Check out more of Huw's work on gay espionage at https://huw.substack.com/p/the-swallows-nest.

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)
Instagram @delcampofelix (https://bit.ly/36b7hpw)

Feb 15, 202101:44:37
Sophie Lewis on Shulamith Firestone

Sophie Lewis on Shulamith Firestone

In this episode, we talk to Sophie Lewis about Shulamith Firestone. How can her work inspire our present thinking around family abolition, the relationship between feminism and queer politics, femme- and somatophobia, and reproductive technology?

You can find Sophie on Twitter @reproutopia (https://bit.ly/3tleYUh), read more of her work at https://lasophielle.org/essay-archive, and support her on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/reproutopia.

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

1:40 — An introduction to Shulamith Firestone
17:10 — How to read radical feminist texts today
30:30 — Family abolition in the context of the sixties
41:28 — Family abolition in our contemporary context
50:48 — Tensions between the feminist and queer movement?
1:07:19 — Abolishing nature/culture
1:19:24 — Octopus-gate interlude
1:21:57 — The horizon of family abolition

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

"I think that will not be a problem": On Shulamith Firestone (Sophie Lewis): https://bit.ly/3tktZpc
Wages for Womb-Work, Polymaternalism, Critical Firestonianism (Sophie Lewis): https://bit.ly/3tqbyPT
Momrades Against Motherhood (Sophie Lewis): https://bit.ly/2YILDoz
With-Women: Grieving in Capitalist Time (Sophie Lewis: https://bit.ly/3jsN6sV
To Abolish the Family (Michelle O'Brien): https://bit.ly/36JUGtI
Kinderkommunismus (Kate Griffiths and JJ Gleeson): https://bit.ly/3cJS5nt
The Idea of Children (Madeline Lane-McKinley): https://bit.ly/39O9zgC

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)
Instagram @delcampofelix (https://bit.ly/36b7hpw)

Feb 15, 202101:34:34
Max Fox on sexual liberation and its legacies

Max Fox on sexual liberation and its legacies

In this episode, Max Fox reflects on the sexual liberation movement of the late-sixties and early seventies. We discussed the politicization of homosexuality during the sexual liberation era, the inheritances and departures from the movement's ideology, and the possibilities of sexual politics today.

You can find Max on Twitter @mxwfx (https://bit.ly/2MUazHa) or at https://www.maxfox.site.

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

1:20 — The new-found interest in the sexual liberation movement in recent years
7:45 — A ‘return to sex’ within queer writing?
29:40 — Historicizing sexual liberation
37:35 — Structural similarities between the '70s and 2010s
48:45 — Stonewall as an anti-colonial uprising
56:55 — The limits of 'normativity'
1:11:18 — Self-determination vs. self-expression

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

Sex as Cultural Form: The Antinomies of Sexual Discourse (Christopher Chitty): https://bit.ly/2Mw1l3O
Max Fox Discusses his Experience Editing Christopher Chitty's Work for Sexual Hegemony (Max Fox): https://bit.ly/36Dt619
The Dutch Disease of Homosexuality (Christopher Chitty): https://bit.ly/3jgQCpT

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)
Instagram @delcampofelix (https://bit.ly/36b7hpw)

Feb 15, 202101:33:53
Yasmin Nair on queer politics since the '90s

Yasmin Nair on queer politics since the '90s

In this episode, Yasmin Nair talks to us about developments within queer politics since the AIDS epidemic. We cover Pete Buttigieg, the non-profit industrial complex, the politics of Against Equality, far-right gays, how to think about sex politically, anti-trans violence, and the neoliberal university. 

You can find Yasmin on Twitter @NairYasmin (https://bit.ly/3pMofCs) and read more of her work at https://yasminnair.com. 

🦋 NAVIGATION 🦋

1:18 — The evolution of queer politics since the '90s
12:52 — Pete Buttigieg
17:24 — The demands of Against Equality
23:40 — What's next for the prison-industrial complex?
29:42 — The embrace of the far-right by gay men
33:30 — Is transphobia/homophobia the primary enemy?
42:54 — The politics of sex
1:04:08 — The neoliberal university and queer theory today

🦋 FURTHER RESOURCES 🦋

Against Equality: http://www.againstequality.org
Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion (Against Equality): https://bit.ly/3tpk9CD
A Manifesto (Yasmin Nair): https://bit.ly/3pIs5wt
HIV Criminalization Forum (Ryan Conrad): https://bit.ly/3aShZ5P
Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation: https://bit.ly/36IrJOR
Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility: https://bit.ly/371Woa3
Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead: https://bit.ly/2Mw94ik
The Freezer Door (Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore): https://bit.ly/3oGOtVK

🦋 FOLLOW US 🦋

Twitter @StoffelAlex (https://bit.ly/3c5Bydl) and @FelixdlCampo (https://bit.ly/368LYoH)
Instagram @delcampofelix (https://bit.ly/36b7hpw)

Feb 15, 202101:20:48