What's your favorite Paul Verhoeven film? We knew you were going to say Showgirls–but we'll put in a word for his latest, Benedetta, with Charlotte Rampling acting up a storm and nuns diddling each other with dildos carved out of statues of the Virgin. Improbably, the film is based on a true story: and within it, and within its subject's life, there are important themes of power, gender transgression, sin, belief and deviance that are worth discussing in more detail. Today, we discuss the 16th century mystic nun, lesbian, possibly demonically possessed and possibly visionary heretic, Benedetta Carlini. Our paperback is available now! ----more---- SOURCES: Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Reprint édition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986.   ———. “Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini.” Signs 9, no. 4 (1984): 751–58.   Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, Revised and Expanded Edition. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.   Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi. Reprint edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.   “The Word Made Fresh: Mystical Encounter and the New Weird Divine - Journal #92.” Accessed June 6, 2023. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/205298/the-word-made-fresh-mystical-encounter-and-the-new-weird-divine/.   Our intro and outro music are, respectively, Arpeggia Colorix, by Yann Terrien, and a tune written for us by DJ Michael Oswell Graphic Designer.

Through the life of this 17th century Japanese shogun, we explore the role of same-sex relationships in Japanese court culture of the time, the radically different meanings of age and gender in different times and places, and a gay teen romance that ends, alas, with being stabbed to death in the bathtub.  Order our book in paperback for a free e-book! ----more---- SOURCES: Louis Crompton, Homosexuality & Civilization, Annotated edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006) Koichi, “The Gay of the Samurai,” Tofugu, September 30, 2015, https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/ Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

There’s power in being the king who sits upon the throne, but also power in being the throne upon who the king sits. This was true as ever  in the court of Emperor Ai in Han Dynasty China in 22 BC. We’re going to be talking about someone who in 21 short years of life rose from a low class status to being one of the most powerful imperial officials in China – all by becoming the favorite of the Emperor. Their passion was so renowned it led to the creation of what remains a Chinese idiomatic expression for homosexuality. But we’ll also be talking about prevailing bisexuality in the Han dynasty court, the reception culture of this story both in China and outside it then and now, and how people in both China and the West have adopted this story. Pre-order our paperback now for a free e-book! ----more---- Howard Chiang, “Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China: Epistemic Modernity and the Emergence of Homosexuality in China,” Gender & History 22, no. 3 (November 2010): 629–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2010.01612. Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, Reprint edition (Berkely, Calif.: University of California Press, 1992) Martin W. Huang, “Male-Male Sexual Bonding and Male Friendship in Late Imperial China,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 2 (2013): 312–31 M. P. Lau and M. L. Ng, “Homosexuality in Chinese Culture,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 13, no. 4 (December 1, 1989): 465–88, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00052053 Tze-lan Deborah Sang, “Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing’ai in Republican China (1912–1949),” in Translating Homosexuality: The Discourse of Tongxing’ai in Republican China (1912–1949) (Duke University Press, 2000), 276–304 James D. Seymour, review of Review of Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China, by Bret Hinsch, Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 1 (1992): 141–43 Ping-Hsuan Wang, “I’m a ‘Cut-Sleeve’: Coming out from a POC Perspective,” Narrative Inquiry 31, no. 2 (July 12, 2021): 338–57, https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.19088.wan Intersections: Interview with Samshasha, Hong Kong’s First Gay Rights Activist and Author,” accessed May 15, 2023, http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue4/interview_mclelland.html. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.   

Today’s figure is the sort of character who has been extinguished from British public life today, and maybe that’s for the best. He’s a mass of contradictions, the sort of mass that confuses the idea of an easy history of “lessons we can learn”. How did this man manage to be both an avant-garde poet and a gossip columnist, a communist revolutionary and a High Anglican devotee, a labour organiser and a lord? Or perhaps more accurately, how did he manage to inhabit all these roles with a level of seeming sincerity and honest commitment? Was he an honest man, or a devious one? A man driven by fidelity, or by treachery? Perhaps we’ll get to the bottom of it when we discuss the life of Tom Driberg, the Lord Bradwell, journalist, socialist, MP, Chairman of the Labour Party, and cocksucker. Pre-order our book in paperback and get a free e-book! ----more---- SOURCES: Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions (London: Quartet Books, 1980). Francis Wheen, The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg ; Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw (London: Fourth Estate, 2001). Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. Image via.  

Nicki Minaj once rapped: Drug Lord Griselda, I used to move weight thru Delta. She’s referring to today’s subject, la Madrina, the drug lord of the Colombian Medellín Cartel, Griselda Blanco Restrepo, the Black Widow. Born in 1943 in Cartegena, on the north coast of Columbia, she became the so-called "Queenpin," and adopted all the macho tropes of the gangster. We argue she wasn't the biggest gangster at the head of her cartel, but one of the smallest gangsters in a whole world of cartels that have worked to bring the fruits of South America’s land into the United States market, at the cost of millions of human lives. Pre-order our book in paperback for a free e-book! ----more---- SOURCES: José Guarnizo Álvarez, “Colombia’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ Living in Obscurity When She Was Shot Dead,” EL PAÍS English, September 13, 2012, sec. International, https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/13/inenglish/1347536945_696771.html Episode 2: Berner Interviews Michael Corleone Blanco (Full Episode), 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eODEHYQhKO0 Billy Corben, “Griselda Blanco: Hasta Nunca y Gracias Por La Coca,” Vice, May 9, 2012, https://www.vice.com/es/article/3b5jz8/griselda-blanco-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-cocaine James Kelly, “South Florida: Trouble in Paradise,” Time, November 23, 1981, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,922693,00.html Justin Vallejo, “Wild Real Life Story behind ‘Cocaine Godmother’ Portrayed by Sofia Vergara,” The Independent, April 5, 2022, sec. News, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/griselda-blanco-sofia-vergara-netflix-b2051670.html. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.