213 Comments

This episode is cliteral violence.

Expand full comment

I can’t seem to find where, though.

Expand full comment

Just like Moynihan!

Expand full comment

Some time back, after a lady friend and I randomly read the list of side effects for an over-the-counter medication, we agreed that the best name for an all-female punk band would be “Menstrual Disturbance”. “Cliteral Violence” is now a close second.

Expand full comment

"Cliteral Violence" will be the name of their LP.

Expand full comment
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 2, 2023

I'll go on the record and say a vaginoplasty vulva is not a female one. Mediclit lady is odd and not a great spokesperson, but she is right.

Expand full comment

Yeah- I'm actually shocked that would even be controversial.

Expand full comment

I'm shocked you're shocked. I mean, I saw a Reddit comment today that said that women loving women-only lesbians were just something terfs invented on Tumblr in the 2010s. Not much shocks me anymore.

Expand full comment

Since the whole point of the project was to show what natural no surgery vuvlas look like it makes no sense to show surgical replicas of vulvas.

It actually has nothing to do with trans, because she wouldn't show real but "rejuvinated" vulvas either.

Also its just so obvious that a surgical replica of a vulva is not the same as a real functioning organ. I feel like the entire society is being gaslighted! We KNOW they aren't them same, but half of the USA thinks we have to pretend that we think they are the same. And if you don't you need to be shunned. Lose your job, put on a burlap sack and head out of town to re-education camp.

Expand full comment

I saw a meme the other day that read:

A surgeon will take a scalpel and says "I will now create a vagina" and then he will proceed to make a hole that can only be used for sex, and will perform none of the other functions of a vagina, nor be connected to any of the organs a vagina is connected to, and the world will say "behold, a woman." This is a perverse misogyny.

Expand full comment

Honestly disgusting when you describe it this way

Expand full comment

That's why euphemisms like "bottom surgery" and "gender affirming care" are used, to obscure the details of what's actually occurring.

Expand full comment

It’s so ridiculous. I’m so tired, y’all.

Expand full comment

Same. Yet I will never concede.

Expand full comment

I know. I KNOW. It's like arguing that an artificial limb is the same as a real limb.

Expand full comment

Don’t confuse the dark recesses of the internet with 50% of the USA.

Expand full comment

You mistyped 90 percent lol

Expand full comment

Please tell me this was.a 13 year old. I am guessing they think that lesbians married men because they liked dick. Not. Well. Being closeted.

I actually wonder what percentage of lesbians are into post op trans women

And what percentage are into prep op or non op trans women.

Expand full comment

Sexual attraction being what it is I’d imagine it’s as tiny a percentage as that of straight men who’d actually partner with a trans woman.

The vast majority simply would not. Some would say they would, but mysteriously never do. A small minority do…..but secretly feel a little odd about it and are trying to prove their open mindedness, and a tiny, tiny minority actually do and have a healthy relationship.

No rigorous research here, just what I see.

Expand full comment

I'm guessing it had to be someone very young.

>I actually wonder what percentage of lesbians are into post op trans women

And what percentage are into prep op or non op trans women.

You do? Really? No, you don't. C'mon. I'll go with zero to none.

Expand full comment

My instinct is to say that of course lesbians are inherently not into dick

But then I read a whole thing on I think autostraddle by a trans woman teaching a class on lesbian sex. And how a penis can be part of it. And regular lesbians attended.

And there are the trans women in relationships with actual lesbians

So it must be at least kind of a thibg

Expand full comment

Nuh-no. They lose their Lesbian Card. If a vegetarian decides to start eating meat, can they still say they are a vegetarian? Words have definitions.

Expand full comment

I think this begs the question of if they’re their lesbians or bi.

If a man has a sexual relationship with a pre-op trans woman….is he straight?

I got a 100 dollars for what just about 100% of heterosexual men who don’t sleep with people with penises would say.

Expand full comment

Strap-ons are popular so it doesn’t surprise me. And some folks really do fall in love and figure out the rest later. Dating is a frontier I think people just need to keep away from politics because nobody can realistically be pressured to romantically entertain a person just because they’re of a marginalized group.

Every dating app documentary I watched spent time on who wasn’t getting matched because of “discrimination” and it’s so obvious that it’s a lost cause. At most you can make a super niche app for a group like All Asian Men or something.

Expand full comment

"by a trans woman teaching a class on lesbian sex"

Of course. This is the conversion therapy (well, "class" not therapy) they're all talking about, except it's the same shitty kind that affects actually gay people.

Expand full comment

"I actually wonder what percentage of lesbians are into post op trans women

And what percentage are into prep op or non op trans women."

They're called bisexuals.

Expand full comment

Right? I mean. I guess the logic is that trans women are women. Women are females. Therefore trans women are females.

Expand full comment

That's the "logic"

Expand full comment

It just gets worse and worse

Expand full comment
Apr 2, 2023·edited Apr 2, 2023

I can't remember if it was here to Twitter where I saw a screenshot of a TIM from Reddit asking about the positioning of the neo-vag bc it's more forward than on real women (of course they used that dumb word "cis"). The distance between the neo-vag (ha, autocorrect stopped correcting me with "new-bag"), and the anus is all off -- real term being "anogenital distance." They can whine all they want about the fauxlabia, but none of it is accurate.

They can hate & dilate. (Heard this as a specific version of cope & seethe for TIMs).

Also, yeah, that lady is odd. I used to follow her and got annoyed with something a year ago (or I was tired of all the clit-specific content) and unfollowed.

Expand full comment

So many pink-haired manga avatars on Twitter telling gay men that we are problematic for not wanting to date trans men who have had bottom surgery. As if a phalloplasty is some magic bullet that will make them have actual, attractive and functioning penises. Not to mention male bodies are still very different too.

It's as if we have a generation of virgin activists whose only knowledge of sex and attraction comes from what they've read online from other virgin activists.

Expand full comment

That was a perfectly acceptable response to Katie from whoever this lady is -- y’all did laugh at her. I don’t think she was threatening Moose. And also I personally think it’s entirely fair for people who spend their days endlessly tormenting others online to not expect that their identities should stay anonymous. The snark subs are evil, I mean genuinely genuinely disturbing and evil. I’m a nobody and I’ve been targeted before for saying something nice about the wrong influencer (the sub posted my picture after i did and it was extremely scary.) The posters feel emboldened to say and do whatever they want. There should be no expectation of anonymity if you are making someone’s life a living hell.

Expand full comment

Also want to add that I don’t think Katie understands these subs. They aren’t just a bunch of people saying somewhat mean things. Generally they whole point is in fact to run a targeted harassment campaign against people they see as problematic. Influencers will get and lose sponsors the day of because the sponsors will be hounded by the redditors. They critique every single moment of these people’s lives and dig up all the information they can find about them. They often essentially digitally or IRL stalk them. It’s seriously deranged.

Expand full comment

The whole question of anonymity that Katie and Jesse got into I feel is besides the point: it never should have reached the point where the target of the harassment needed to take matters into her own hands. Reddit administrators exist, they respond to concerns relatively quickly, and they should be expected to shut down harassment no matter who it’s targeted at. Reddit isn’t a small website any more, it should be talked about in the same breath as places like Facebook and Twitter who have also dealt with these problems.

Expand full comment

I also think the comparison to Kiwifarms is off. I’ve read a bunch of stuff on KF and, with very few exceptions, there’s no contemplation or endorsement of real-world fuckery of the sort that seems to have been openly endorsed on Reddit (maybe I’m mistaken about that part - maybe it was all behind the scenes). I’m not saying they’re nice on KF, or that people don’t freelance-harass based on information there, but they do seem to draw a line.

Expand full comment

I don’t know what’s worse--the twelve antisemitic jokes Katie managed to cram into one episode, or the casual penis-hate. As a gay Jew, I found it all very triggering. But what else should I expect from a podcast steeped in white supremity and toxic masculinacy?

Expand full comment

White supremity!

Expand full comment

That should be a new item of merch.

Expand full comment

Agreed! I was yelling at the top of my lungs in the car, while frothing at the mouth “the world is full of beautiful penises!”

Expand full comment

I haven't managed to listen to the episode yet, and now I'm scared.

Edit: Oh. Oh no.

Now I know what Justin Whang (the only Twitter account I occasionally look at) meant by "pussy phrenologist".

Expand full comment

It’s a doozy for sure, filled with shadenfreude, vengeance, and genital judgment. Proceed with caution but by all means proceed!

Expand full comment

Follow up question: Were your windows down? Because I'm laughing...

Expand full comment

It was a beautiful spring day, so the windows were absolutely down!

Expand full comment

I saw one just this morning, in the shower!

Expand full comment

Best ever comment on any BarPod episode, Benjy. Too bad I'm a homophobic Brit in France or I'd be straight round to yours with beers.

White supremity and toxic masculinacy are worth messing with my future autocorrect, just for the joy of typing them.

Expand full comment

Had me in the first half, etc

Expand full comment

Yet again we hear Jesse and Katie talk about the BARpod Reddit but never a peep about the commenters on Substack, who actually pay to comment (a sure sign of quality).

Silence is violence, I've been told. ;-)

Expand full comment

I noticed it, too. Fucking cheapskates get all the love.

Expand full comment

Freeloading SWINE.

Expand full comment

If nothing else, vulvagate has maybe taught people that the part they can see isn't called a vagina.

Expand full comment
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023

All worth it, then!

(An educated friend of mine once posted about teaching her daughter during potty-training that she pees through her vagina. It really surprised me, but then I realized that nothing in my formal education had taught me otherwise. I think I learned the correct explanation at an early age from my mom, then got the details later from the many human anatomy illustrations in books in our house. If you didn't have that type of mom or those sorts of books, you might easily make that mistake.

ETA: I did take AP biology, which I assume included the correct info, but I'm probably not alone in having forgotten a lot of what I crammed for the exam!)

Expand full comment

I’m embarrassed to say I only learned the correct names on Mumsnet, after I was pregnant. My parents raised us to say front bottom, so it’s maybe not surprising my knowledge of anatomical terms is pretty poor.

Expand full comment

I'm even more embarrassed to say I learned correct names from Orange is the New Black's Sophia/Laverne Cox explained it to everyone! I was steeped in perimenopause and on my way to the big show (full menopause)!

Expand full comment

That hurts.

Expand full comment

I did not have that kind of parent and never had any public school education on parts/vocab much beyond vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes. I was probably in my mid twenties before I ever learned, tbh. Now my kids use correct terminology, much to the dismay of our southern families (and some friends) who would much prefer a toddler talking about their "privates" and "girl parts" than their vulva or labia.

Expand full comment

Love your Substack handle!

Expand full comment

For incels, the “part they can’t see” is apparently called “the woman”.

Expand full comment

Unimportant to the story but still worthy of mention is that Brandon Sanderson is a) one of the most prolific modern authors of fantasy, the dude churns out content relentlessly, and b) has successfully created original fantasy worlds, not just derivations of Tolkien’s (itself derivative, which is not a knock, he made the genre what it is, and I adore him). If you like fantasy I highly recommend Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series.

Expand full comment

Also, he finished "The Wheel of Time" series after Robert Jordan died. (Will be do the same for "A Song of Ice and Fire"?!)

(Even though I've read the first seven books, like, six times each, eight and nine probably two or three times each, I've only read ten and eleven once each, and have never gotten around to finishing the series. Thank you streaming services for ending my ability to read.)

Expand full comment

Sanderson can be our sweeper, moving in to close things out. Maybe he’ll help Rothfuss with the King Killer chronicle.

Expand full comment

He’s like a super hero whose power is to always have an emotionally appropriate response to any event.

Expand full comment

Not as flashy of a superpower as many others, but substantially more valuable in my estimation

Expand full comment

I would love to have it.

Expand full comment

Thank you for the recommendation! I just added them to my library wait list.

Expand full comment

Try Mistborn also! (Just my problematic opinion but I think women tend to like that more that Stormlight Archive)

Expand full comment

Really? That’s interesting, why do you think that is?

Expand full comment

Stormlight is fantastic but Wheel of Time is the Goat. Tolkein is the original but Robert Jordan & Sanderson perfected the genre.

Expand full comment
Apr 2, 2023·edited Apr 2, 2023

I see the article as a kind of old-school hipster take. High fantasy has had an amazing gain in popularity in mainstream culture since the LOTR movies 20 years ago. I think the author was trying to find a contrarian take, as in "yeah actually this is just dorky nerd shit." Maybe he sensed a moment where the Amazon series, including the Wheel of Time, weren't quite the smashes that were anticipated, and felt it was the time to pounce. Then again, "Honor Among Thieves" seems to be having a pretty decent opening weekend.

Expand full comment

Old-school hipsterism feels like a solid assessment of it, but it also felt like regular old elitism at times, which is sort of weird given that the writer talks about how much money Sanderson makes. The disdain of dorky nerd shit was definitely palpable, but it also had this attitude of "look at these middle of no where rubes" that was additionally off-putting.

Expand full comment

You say potato, I say potahto. What else is hipsterism than cultural elitism? I guess there's still a certain amount of disbelief that fantasy is a popular and successful genre.

Expand full comment

Ok, but "you are incapable of picking your own pussy out of a lineup" is an amazing insult.

Expand full comment

Completely awesome insult!

Expand full comment

I might not be the first to say this, but I was kind of annoyed about J & K hemming and hawing about the shooter's pronouns. This shouldn't even be a consideration worthy of any matter of discussion. She murdered innocent children and staff trying to protect those children. F her pronouns. If they can't even say "ordinarily I'd be respectful of pronouns but this person didn't respect the lives of 3 children, 3 adults, and any number that will forever be traumatized by that day" -- it's pathetic.

Women in the UK are being forced to use their rapists' preferred pronouns instead of the ones you'd associate with a dick-wielding human, which is insane. The hand-wringing about the Nashville shooter isn't much better.

Expand full comment

I thought that was odd too, since Katie had refused to give a previous trans sex offender the courtesy of their pronouns and for the very reasons you mentioned. Its interesting.

Expand full comment

People who troll online should fully expect to receive the same treatment in return. There's no such thing as a one-sided weapon. I have no sympathy for the subreddit users who went after Madia and then cried when their own tactics were used against *them*.

Heat and kitchens, glass houses and stones.

Expand full comment

Most blades are only sharp on one side.

Expand full comment

I'm reminded of this great piece from 2014 in which Kathleen Hale went after one of her Goodreads trolls: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/18/am-i-being-catfished-an-author-confronts-her-number-one-online-critic

Expand full comment
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023

Pooh. First post I am listening while walking my little angel rescue dog. (I do not like saying she is a rescue dog but I mention it due to the story about the vanlife chick). Anyway .I wish Katie were a little less sarcastic. The first Twitter story - so Wired did a mean story about a fantasy author. What does Twitter have to do with it? And why were they mean?

Hell's Kitchen really is the new Chelsea. So fucking gay.

The homeless in NYC - there are many now with serious mental illness threatening people. Huge problem on the UWS.

The labia lady (perfect, ha) - if she IS targeting black ob/gyns, I wonder if it is because they work with African immigrant populations, which are more likely to do female circumcision then other groups ).

ETA: my blood pressure went up hearing the Brianna post from 2020 about the long overdue racial reckoning. That btw was when I truly thought I had lost my mind

As if Ferguson had no happened and police departments had noy made changes that DID save lives. As if nothing had happened. Ugh. Everyone in this story is distateful

Expand full comment

I remember an Amy Shumer skit about adopting shelter dogs. Every one was bragging about how pitiful their rescue dogs were and Amy adopted a dead one and was carrying it around.

Expand full comment

Yeah. It’s one of the ways the viral is shaping the irl. Everything you do is virtue signaling because social relationships have become intrinsically performative. Everything must square with everything else or you are problematic. Progressivism has always championed “difference”, but what they actually want is ideological oneness in diverse iterations. There is no room for privacy, ambivalence, or failure in the contemporary discourse. The world is plug and play.

Expand full comment
Apr 2, 2023·edited Apr 2, 2023

Although I do disagree that internet virtue signaling is truly at play in animal rescue. Animal (specifically dog) rescue has been a cause du jour among American elites since the 1920s. Perhaps the internet has introduced it to areas and populations not previously as exposed, but an affluent animal lover in LA in the 60s or Aspen in the 80s was probably just as eager to talk about their rescues.

(And living in those parts present day, I wouldn’t be so jaded as to say people’s love of underdogs is insincere. Maybe some internet influencers seem incapable of sincerity, but talking to a 65yo retiree about her rescue at the park is one of the good, warm things left.)

Expand full comment

Good point that it didn’t start with the internet. I finally accepted the reality of virtue signaling when I noticed that half the people on my neighborhood blog would say “my rescue dog” rather than “my dog”.

Expand full comment
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023

Ha. Yeah. It is always oh is yours a rescue? Blah blah blah

Expand full comment

Yes. Think of the long, convoluted narratives any liberal who actually went to a breeder (even an ethical one--not some mill)....blah blah blah....

Expand full comment

I think it is better to get a dog via via rescue. But it Is a lot of work. So if people get their dogs from a breeder I totally get it. Also. The rescue thing...people act like you or they are some kind of hero. It just makes me uncomfortable.if that makes sense

Expand full comment

Emily Yoffe had a good column a decade ago about how a lot of rescue groups take gatekeeping to the extreme and make it really hard for people to adopt rescue pets. I get that they want to make sure the pets go to a good home, but some of the examples in the story are crazy.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/01/animal-rescue-want-to-adopt-a-dog-or-cat-prepare-for-an-inquisition.html

Expand full comment

As I go through my phase where my rejection of academic feminism seems like leaving a cult, I remember a moment when I became part of Great Dane Rescue (its infancy) while steeped in grad school postmodern notions of the self. I was doing home checks for potential placements and thought about how that didn't quite jive with attitudes towards mothers (my blip thought was wow--we are expecting more of these future dog owners than mothers).....where the problem lies is something I'm finally trying to untangle now, years later!

Expand full comment

Perfection.

Expand full comment

That fact that you use the subjunctive mood makes me want to deify you.

Expand full comment

Admit it - you teach Latin or something.

Expand full comment

That's hilarious! Alas, no :). Comp Lit & Core in the English department. I just have to give a shoutout to a baller high school French teacher (yep--even in the 80s in South Carolina)!

Expand full comment

Every time I step on the subway there’s some homeless asshole there. Every time!

Expand full comment

Hearing that Jesse dresses like a Peanuts character is going to have me giggling all day. That image will be permanent in my mind and nothing is going to overwrite that.

Expand full comment

I imagine Jesse walks from his home to the local pizza shop all slow and slumped over, like George Michael walking home after getting dumped

::plays 'Christmastime Is Here' on piano::

Expand full comment

I immediately heard the Vince Guaraldi music in my head.

Expand full comment

damnit, now I do, too. I’m gonna be whistling that for hours now…

Expand full comment

I'm also doing the dancing so my evening is full.

Expand full comment

I’m on the homeless lady’s side here. Did she go a little far in response? Possibly. But John Wick did too. John Wick did too.

Expand full comment

A *fucking* peeincil.

Expand full comment

Your Russian accent is impeccable

Expand full comment

Spacibo. :)

Expand full comment

Yeah, but John Wick didn't run over his own dog and then lie about it to get sympathy and money.

She's not the most awful person in this story, but she sounds pretty awful.

Expand full comment

If I remember the first episode correctly, it was the ex-husband who dui-ed over the dog, not Brianna.

Expand full comment

As always, Keanu Reeves is an aspirational figure, not one you can perfectly imitate.

Expand full comment

So, more evidence that social media turns people into characters from Lord of the Flies?

Expand full comment

Lord of the flies was written for a reason. And it was long before social media. People are people, social media just gives them another place to be shitty

Expand full comment
Apr 3, 2023·edited Apr 3, 2023

If I remember correctly: With that story, William Golding was trying to argue that boys are uniquely sadistic compared to the gentler, fairer sex. Except I think he's completely wrong about that. Boys are just more physically violent.

Expand full comment

Yes, of course, I'm not a technological determinist, just being a bit cheeky ;-)

Expand full comment

Can we discuss how Madia’s story is a modern day retelling of Euripides’ Medea?

Expand full comment

Hahaha. A very postcmodern one. Though I do not think anyone killed the dog to punish the spouse. I do not know that her husband is much of a Jason character

Expand full comment

Team: G-Spot DOES exist but requires technology to access.

Expand full comment

Ladies, my name is technology. (Cheesy eyebrow wiggle)

Expand full comment