November 3, 2025 • 55 mins
Margaret talks to Gabriel Dunn about the gender deviants of the ancient world and how basically nothing ever changes.
Sources
https://arkeonews.net/getting-to-know-matar-kubilea/
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/56909/what-is-the-difference-between-galli-and-metragyrtai
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Epigram%20History%20and%20Examples.htm
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/boadicea/
https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/539632/d6348aa09f4510eb5704b6da501f9e7d.pdf
https://www.oldest.org/culture/civilizations/
https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/ancient-mesopotamian-transgender-and-non-binary-identities
https://www.apsu.edu/philomathes/MattinglyPhilomathesONLINE2023.pdf
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media Clout and welcome to cool People did cool stuff.
You're the weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's people trying to do good things, or when there's
bad things happening, there's podcast hosts who get lost in
two thousand, three thousand year old history out of desire
to experience anything other than the fascistic world we live in.
(00:23):
I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I am the
aforementioned person, but I also have a guest this week.
My guest this week is Gabriel Dunn, host of two
hundred and twenty four Natural Shocks. It's something like that, right.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, it's one thousand natural shocks. It couldn't just be
the twenty twenty four because it kind of goes, you know,
it's ongoing. It wasn't like wow, and in twenty twenty
five we healed.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Oh I picked a random number. I accidentally picked ay
the year.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Can I just say, just on the record, I'm so
excited to be I'm so I want your audience to
know I have listened to probably eight straight hours of
this show at one point when I'm working. Yeah, it's
gonna be real wild for me to have you talking
at me, and so I don't know if your audience
(01:15):
is like used to like cool, chill academic people, but
I shall simply not be that.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
All right, that's great, and if you want to hear us,
have another conversation. I was on a thousand natural shocks. Yes,
people can go listen to me talking about anarchism, which
is something I never do otherwise and rare treat. Yeah,
we also have a producer, but she's not here, but
her name is Sophie and she's great. And we also
(01:42):
have an audio engineer named Eva hi Eva hi Eva.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I also know that Sophie always says, hello, Magpie, you
invited a crazy fan here.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
You should have done it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I know this is my own fault. And our theme
music is written for us by unwem Okay. So last
week I researched the Druids because it was spooky week
and I wanted to read about the philosophers of the
ancient Celts, mostly because I was like, I wanted to
know what was true and what wasn't. And the big
takeaway was that we don't know. We don't know what's
true and what isn't. But I wound up reading as
(02:17):
much as I could about their like gender and shit,
there's like lady Druids that almost never talked about, but
there's only a little bit of information out there. But
I started thinking, Gabe, okay, do you ever get annoyed
when people are like, hey, I want to have you
on my podcast. I want to talk about a trans thing,
so you'd be perfect for it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I had been out for approximately one week and the
Sundance Channel asked me to come on and do a
panel to talking about trans film, and I was like,
I have been trans for simply one week.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, just drop you right in the fire.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Honestly, I have sis friends who know more than I do.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, honestly say but but now I know a little
more than I did, because you know, people have been
saying things like, oh, trans people, I've always been here,
and you've been like, yeah, yeah, totally, I get it.
And then they're like there were trans priestesses in ancient
Rome and they were held as more sacred because of
how they were transgender. And I was like, mmm, baby,
(03:12):
I don't know everything. And people say about the far
past is like wish thinking, and it's a compelling story.
And anytime there's a compelling story. I don't want to
dive into it because I like this story. Well, this
week I dove into exactly that story. Oh okay, we
are going to talk about trans priestesses in ancient Rome.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Wow, okay, this is very exciting. Are they real? Don't
spoil it. Okay, they're real.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
They're so real, and they are so actually trans. It's
not just a unit culture. It's like, it is recognizably
transgender women who are holy attendants to a goddess with
a thousand different names.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Oh my god, please, somebody made this movie, right, I
haven't seen it.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
If not, here we go.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So there's only one part of the sentence that I
read above about them that's wrong. The trans priestesses of
ancient Rome were only considered more sacred by some people.
They were actually, and this will sound familiar to you,
ostracized by society and then a legal limbo between male
and female. What yeah, they like? Just to skip ahead
(04:23):
in my own script, they weren't allowed to get married
because in order to get married, you have to be
a man or a woman, right, And they couldn't inherit
property because you have to be a man or a
woman to inherit. But it's like, oh, sorry, it's law
says only men or women can inherit property.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And we cannot change the law.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, that's right. We're not Rome the inventor of modern law.
I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's so interesting to me, even when it's the positive
of and these trans.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Priestesses were revered by all.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It's kind of like, Okay, it feels very what's the like,
it feels very fetishy or something. Yeah, it feels like
and they were beloved for their like it's sort of like, yeah,
maybe some people liked them, some people didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, and they like they made noise music and they
got stuck doing sex work. So they're just the cliche
trans women. Three thousand years.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Ago, were they programming computer?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Probably that fucking you know that like ancient Roman mathematics
machine they found in the ocean at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
fuck it. If someone told me it was one of
these ladies, I would not be surprised.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, what's the ancient Roman equivalent of David Lynch?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, they have that fucking I don't want to cover her.
At some point there was like some emperor of Rome
that was trans. But that's not what I looked up.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is thrilling.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah so, but they were the holy priesthood of one
of the most important gods in the Roman State religion.
But they're origins which lay outside of Rome are even
more ancient, and we don't know one hundred percent their origins,
but we know like some of it goes to Greece
and then Phrygia and then possibly Okay, the oldest urban
(06:11):
civilization in the world is sumer and Sumerians lived thirty
five hundred years ago and also possibly longer than that
the whole like who lived to hear exactly when thing
is really annoying And there's people who are listening who
know way more about this than me. But the Sumerians
had fucking gender deviant priests.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Like way back the original Yeah the city er you
are right, the one that means original, Like people use
the word er to be like, oh the er city,
the er right to being the original.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, had fucking we have really genuinely always been here,
you and I and okay, I'll get into it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
This is the thing is that like all of this
stuff is very recent and made up. It's like how
people think oh, we can't exist without and it's like
baby ice was made in two thousand and three, Like
there's like, oh, well, gender's always been this way, and
it's like.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, no, and it's kind of like as far as
I could tell, and there's some other people who'll know better,
but as far as I could tell us kind of
Greece and Rome's fault that we have these like specific
gender roles that like Western civilization teaches.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Oh, they were hypocrites. This is so shocking.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah, you're going to be really surprised by this
is a hypocrite from Oh, these probably there's probably a
Greek man named Hippocrates or something. I don't know. My
Latin teacher in high school let us cheat, and I
didn't learn any Latin. I took three years of it.
The oldest written language in the world is Sumerian, and
so it first started getting written in about thirty two
(07:43):
hundred BCE. In that language, there is poetry about how
their greatest god, the goddess Anani, could trans people's genders,
and that was one of her most important roles.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Why to what end?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
We don't one hundred percent know that part.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
She was like big day of transing the people that
worship me.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Oh what for don't know, I don't know. Gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They just woke up feeling that way.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, I don't know. They line up outside the temple
and I gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. If someone was like, why did she become trends,
I'd be like, man, I don't know, exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I always say, like performing like a passion play to
sist people where you're like you have to lay out
like how much this is like painful for you, and
like you really can't deal with No, it's just I
just chose to.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, I know totally. It was like it didn't seem
like a choice when I was a kid, and then
it became a choice, and I was like, that's the
choice I want to make exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I always say, it's so funny to me that like
friends from high school are allowed to age and have
changing bodies and have children, and they're allowed to like
go gray blah blah blah. Everybody looks different, but somehow
the way that I look different is somehow wild.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Right totally, as if like half those people aren't taking
tea blockers are just on their scalp for their hair,
thank you, Like no, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Don't worry about it. Nobody looks the same as they
did at twenty five. Don't worry about what I did.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I know.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And also them, they're like, oh, teenagers making permanent decisions,
and you're like, yeah, you know what decision? You make?
This permanent every single decision, right, And like, I don't know.
It is pure random luck that I didn't get a
worse stick in poke when I was a kid, you know,
like hundred percent. Anyway, I am avoiding. I'm procrastinating saying
(09:34):
the name of this cult of priestesses because I don't
know how to pronounce it, even though I actually looked
it up since it's not French. I actually bothered to
look it up. And the problem is is that the
golly or gallet or Galli is spelled and pronounced in
different ways. There's both the Greek, there's the Roman, and
(09:55):
also specifically it is gendered in different ways. And I,
like I said, sure, didn't learn anything in Latin, so
I'm going to go with the goli, which is g
A L L A E cute. And I don't know
there was a cult called the Galley or the Goli
(10:16):
in Rome and before that in Greece, and before that
in Phrygia, which is in western Anatolia it's now Turkey,
And they worshiped a mother goddess, one of the more
important ones. And they were trans as fuck, not just
men cross dressing, not just eunuchs. But they were fulfilling
a sort of third gender position in society, similar to
third genders and trans situations all over the world. And
(10:38):
they worshiped the god Sibylly under a fuck ton of
different names. Just these cultures are so syncretic, so it's
like there's versions of Sibylly that are also Rhea. There's
meter and matter and Materire and all this other stuff.
Classic trans, I know, just changing their name whenever they
(10:58):
go to a new country, they're like, oh, I'm actually
named Hummingbird here. Like, look, we know you're non binary.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And we have to respect it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I know, I know. We just put our heads down
and say, yes, your name is Flywheel.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You're gonna get hate mail from some non binary person
who is named Hummingbird and their partner Flywheel.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I know. But you know what, I love both of you.
I'm so proud of you living your Best Life, Flywheel,
and Hummingbird. So that's who we're going to talk about
this week, and first we're going to talk about Sumer.
Sumer is the oldest known civilization by some standards, or
the oldest known urban civilization by other standards, and because
(11:40):
sometimes urban is necessary to count a civilization. It is
a region in what's now Iraq. And I don't want
to get into the weeds about where people think the
Sumerians came from, because the weeds about where classical era
and antiquity people came from, those are weeds that people
spend their careers.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You have fote everyone knows.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, they actually came from UFOs. Yeah totally. Sumer
was around from roughly fifty five hundred BCE to eighteen
hundred BCE, so it's around for a long as time,
way longer than Oh, I don't know the American experiment,
which only lasted two hundred and fifty years. That died
in twenty twenty six. And I'd say rest in peace
if I was going to say.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Rest in peace, and then I stopped myself.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, totally. Oh, watching the White House get torn down
and be like this is bad. I don't want to
watch the parts of the White House get torn down
by someone that I hate.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I wanted to get torn down by someone that
I love.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, exactly. I wanted to become the place where we
all start having collective decision made.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Someone was like, this is maybe bad and if it is,
cut it, but someone was like, wow, Trump finished the job.
The nine to eleven hijackers couldn't.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, anyway, I don't even disagree with whatever. It's fucking
nightmare world we live in. You all live in the future.
Maybe it's only next week's future, but maybe it's the
far future. Who knows, But we live in the future.
To Sumer. Sumer had some gods. The most important one
was Anana or a Nani, who merged into the later ishtar.
(13:11):
Who's the one I had like more heard of? Right?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Anana was the queen of heaven and Anana could build
and destroy. Anana was the god of sex and war
and of changing people's genders. Her high priestesses of whatever
gender will get that lived in er the Erth City,
and in twenty three hundred BCE, a high priestess of
Anana named Enna Duwana wrote a hymn and part of
(13:38):
that hymn is to destroy, to build, to lift up,
to put down. Are yours anana to turn man into woman,
woman into man? Are yours anana that is so metal,
is not subtle.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
That is so cool?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I know, Oh my god, I know. Put it to
throw pillow baby, put it in my house.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah fuck yes.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Some trans womin right now is like anana. That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Actually, I know. It's probably three different trans women solo
black metal projects, and you know what, I'll listen to
two of them.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I commit to the third.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, awesome. Her priests were gender non conforming and also
in multiple directions, but not necessarily. It wasn't like Sibley,
who we're gonna talk about later, had like a transculta
of trans women. Anana is more like there's just stuff
non conforming happening with the gender of her priests. Anana
(14:38):
herself often changed her followers sex. There was like the
performers of one of her festivals were raised as girls
and then women, but then they were handed spears as
though they were men. There's all kinds of myths about
her changing people's genders. There's a statuette of a singer
with female characteristics and a male name or non sha
(14:59):
and it is dedicated to a nana. And so these figurines,
as best as I can tell, they're not like what
I would have assumed, Like these figurines were kind of
like of specific people by and large in this era.
So it was like, here's someone named Ernance who was
a singer, who was probably an afab person with a
male name, and we made them a doll. Yeah, exactly,
(15:23):
people make dolls of people.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. And then there's the gala or the ga la
because it's written in cuneiform and so it's often written
in academic articles as like all caps ga lak. But
I'm going to call them the gala just to make
it really confusing because later I'm gonna talk about the galley.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But pay attention, guys. Yeah, start taking notes now and
the gala. And this is a fucking cool thing that
we need to somehow bring back. I don't know how
we're gonna I don't want to start in a new religion.
That's the problem with any of this.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
These gala are the lamentation singers. They are the priestesses
who sing her holy wrath and sorrow, and at first
they're all CIS women because there's this dialect called emmy cell,
which is the specific dialect in that language for women
who are speaking for female gods. So it's like I
(16:21):
am talking god talk, right, this is so cool. I know,
I got really excited about this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
This is so cool.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Oh, the singers of the lamentations continue, we are that
as well.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah. And then men, I guess started joining the Gala,
and they took on women's names, and they spoke in
the divine dialect of women goddesses. And people can't necessarily say, like,
vis are trans women the way that we can later
say about the Gully, because we know a lot more
about the social function and stuff, right. The Gala were like,
(16:54):
well we know this much, right, And these priestesses of
whatever gender whatever, they were well thought of. They took
care of the sick and the poor, and there were
sistant trans women alike or whatever the fuck. I don't know,
men and women alike. I don't really care. Also, there
was something that the Gala were specifically known for represented
in art, and that is fucking men in the ass.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I was literally about to be like big fat asses.
I was literally about to make like a joke like that,
and then that was true.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
There's a lot of writing about how the Gala priests
priestesses loved dudes buttholes, and wow, it's that's notable because
later assumptions about trans women have us all as bottoms
and it's not true.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
It's certainly not true.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
You spend enough time in subculture and you don't think that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But they always think that. You know, trans men are bottoms.
Gay trans men or bottoms, and I'd like to represent
that they are not.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
No, uh, it takes a certain a certain spirit to
decide to come out as trans in a culture that
wants to kill you.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Well, then it doesn't take a certain spirit to be
a bottom. I'm not talking shit.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, but it's the CIS women butchers who are bottoms exclusively,
and everyone knows.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That we're fine tails out of school.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
They're gonna lock us up because they're gonna be like,
you guys, can't be telling Sis people this stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I know. Well, if you're listening, Anana has made you trans.
And what's interesting here with the Gala consumer is there's
no evidence that these folks were changing themselves physically. There's
no evidence that they castrated themselves. There's an implication that
they didn't because they liked fucking dudes in the bottom,
although you know who knows you can still do that
(18:37):
if you want. But it is possible that they were
castrating themselves. This is like a time and place where
Unichs are a thing and stuff, you know, but their
gender is changing, and various pieces of art indicate that
it wasn't just the Gala who are non conforming an
ancient sumer. But do you know what will also transgender?
(18:59):
Is it products and services? That's right, I don't know
by what means, but the very next ad you hear
is responsible for the corruption of the youth in the
United States.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It's Jumba Casino.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I know too much about this show.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And here's that, and we're back and so all across
what gets called the Near East but might be better
term Southwest Asia, there's culture after culture practicing some form
of divine transgenderism or whatever the fuck you want to
call it. Some historians, although I think they're outliers, they
(19:40):
were at least outliers in two thousand and five when
I read the piece that I read that talked about this.
The most was an academic paper in the show notes
that talked about this. Historians, at least in two thousand
and five mostly didn't think that there's a direct through
line from the Gala consumer to the Galley in Rome,
and the similarities in names is generally assumed to be
(20:02):
a coincidence. But historians have been like, well, if it
was a through line, this is what it would look like. Okay,
But there are certainly a bunch of goddesses in the
ancient you know, Southwest Asian world who had gender nonconforming priestesses.
Most of these gods were specifically associated with wildness and nature,
(20:26):
and most of them were known to incite a sort
of divine madness into their followers. Go on, I know, no,
this is a whole, big part of it, Like, okay,
whole trans women are crazy bitches thing which I will
neither confirm nor deny. Wow. But notably and importantly, these
various goddesses in Southwest Asia weren't necessarily even though there
(20:48):
are earth goddesses of wilderness and nature, they are not
necessarily goddesses of fertility. And modern paganism has this unfortunate tendency.
At least the stuff I've scene to sort of claim
that there's this simple divine feminine at work, often represented
by the Greek goddess Gaya, who is the mother Earth
(21:09):
figure sure, and in this Mother Earth is like kind
and feminine and into fertility. H And when I researched
Slavic gods for a different project that I don't have
my notes in front of me because it was a
band with a friend who is from that region of
the world, I found that goddesses of fertility tended to
be not very peaceful or nice in at least Slavic culture.
(21:33):
And again, it might be lots of places, it's the
only place I can speak to.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I mean, they always tie sex to war a lot,
like a lot it's times, you know, fertility whatever. But yeah,
sex and war are kind of mostly tied together.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Death and rot and sex are incredibly intertwined in our psyche,
and I think that's cool as shit. But these Near
East goddesses of the earth, at least some of them,
they were goddess of the earth and nature and wilderness,
but not fertility. And unlike Gaya, who was a goddess
(22:06):
of fertility and whatever. One source I read included the
Hindu goddess Bakura Mata as one of these sort of
gods of nature, et cetera, from this kind of region,
and she's not maternal at all. In some versions of
the world. She cut off her breasts because she wanted
nothing to do with sex is one of the things
about her.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, yeah, no, right, yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Uh that's like when cis women friends of mine are like, ugh,
you know, I hate boobs or whatever. My aunt's always like,
oh they're so I'm like, get rid of them.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, you just get rid of them.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Stop complaining.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, it turns out your secondary sex characteristics are very
mutable if you know the right thing.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, you get rid of them if you don't want them.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah. The number of people I know who don't have
nipples anymore, you can, just to be clear, if anyone
doesn't know, you can keep your nipples. But the number
of people I know who are like, man, I didn't
even want that part either.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I Oh my god, Margaret.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I So I was at my top surgery and I'm like,
it's the morning of the doctor's like drawing where things
are gonna go whatever, and he's like, where do you
want me to place the nipples? And I was like,
where do I want you to place the nipples? Where
are you placing them? He was like, oh, people have
different you know. Sometimes people want a mail chest, sometimes
they want them in more. Sometimes they don't want nipples
at all. That's like a trend for the young people.
(23:21):
And I was so thrown off. I literally went, oh, no,
I'll just have like regular millennial nipples.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Please. You got them millennial nipples, just.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Sort of the boring millennial nipples. Please.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
They didn't tattoo freckles on your face while you're under.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Right, exactly? I wake up, I have those star acne stickers.
I'm like, how did this hapend?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, so clearly there's representations of a lot of secondary
sex characteristics being changed. I am not going to talk
very much in this episode about how Hindu gods tie
into this. The answer is that they kind of do.
In the Hezra of South Asia do tie into this,
this legally distinct third sex that, in a simplistic way,
(24:05):
you could say is a transfeminine culture. And in North
India the Heesra tend to be followers of Bekuramata. Okay,
but again, not an expert at all. It just I
want to acknowledge that there is a tie there without
pretending like I'm a scholar of that yet, because I
slowly will piece me, I'll find my way through all
of history. So there's a lot of gender nonconformity in
(24:28):
South and Southwest Asia, probably elsewhere. But this is where
I'm gonna talk about right now. And this brings us
to Phrygia. I literally didn't know Phrygia as a place.
I just knew it was a scale of music.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Oh I'm finding out right now that it's both.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, it is both.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
What did you come into this knowing about Phrygia place
or music or neither?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Zero, that's the first time I've ever heard this word
in my life.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, it's phrygi a Nope, would have never got there. Yeah.
So sumer is not an Indo European culture, at least
from language point of view. A lot of the cultures
that I've talked about lately have been Indo European cultures,
which is this language and legal structure that reached all
(25:16):
the way from Ireland to India. Oh, and so that's
why there's weird overlaps linguistically and legally between literally Ireland
and India, and so Sumer is not Indo European. The
next folks we're talking about, the Phrygians. They are the
closest language to Ephrygian is Greek.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
They lived in Western Anatolia, which is again Turkey, way
back in the day. And once again I'm not going
to touch though. Where did they come from? How did
they get their debate with a ten foot or three
thousand year pole. Like most people we talk about, they
weren't really a single culture or language, but a general
(25:53):
grouping of various folks. They're similar enough for people to
call them Frygians, and the main into them culturally, at
least by name, is the Phrygian mode of music, which
I like music theory, but not enough to try and
wrap my head around the three different Phrygian modes to
explain all of them on air. It is halfway between
(26:14):
major and minor sounding Okay, the what are they making this?
What are they using? Just insurance that they make Yeah, okay,
so this actually gets into I don't know enough about
the history of music theory yet, but for example, a
way of playing a Phrygian mode is if you sit
in front of a piano and you plus only white
keys from D to D instead of okay, like C
(26:36):
two C is C major. A to A is a
minor with no sharps or flats, just all white keys.
D to D is what I would have called d Dorian,
but Dorian Phrygian or related modes. But there's also a
million types of Phrygian. But so what that means is
that some of the intervals sound major and some of
them sound minor, and it gets at this kind of
(26:58):
like kind of beautifully disc thing and this style of music,
this mode was considered wild and untamed and warlike by
the Greeks, and this idea that the Phrygians represent like
a wild, untamable people. This is like the main orientalism
(27:20):
that is going to tie into this story. Whereas like
British people in the eighteenth century were like Greece, that's
the orients. Fuck yeah, people in ancient Greece were like Phrygia.
Holy shit, I think, And at least in terms of
this is going to tie into the goddess worship that
I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Okay, okay, I'm following.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
The most famous Phrygian is probably King Midas, who the
guy turns everything. Like literally about that guy, Yeah, literally,
one of the there's gonna be a part of the
story that happens in Midas City.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Did he was that real?
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I don't know shit about him. I'm sure he didn't
turn things into gold. I feel reasonably confident about that,
but I do not know shit about him. They had
a main god, the Phrygians. They called her the Stone
Mother or matar kublea mother Earth.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
That's coolest shit too.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely, and she sort of predates the arrival
of the Phrygians. I think she was kind of like
the god of the area when the Hittites who were
there before the Phrygians. Yeah, we're doing their thing. And
the Stone Mother is the god of nature. She protects
young girls and also cities. In Phrygia, she's usually shown
(28:33):
with birds of prey, but occasionally she's shown with lions.
And that's important because both Anana is shown with lions
and later Sybilly, who is the Stone Mother but in
Greece and Rome is going to get lions again as
a symbol, but the Phrygian one is much more of
(28:53):
a bird of prey kind of lady.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So in terms of.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Their lives revolving around these gods. Are they praying to them?
Are they sacrificing to them? Is everybody? It's always interesting,
like how independently the idea of gods just like.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Pops up in so many different places, in so.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Many different places, Like they're like, my goodness, you know what,
we're all thinking, there's gotta be something up there.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I am still trying to work my way through how
I feel about this. I feel like I've been trying
for a couple of years now to better understand the
development of religion, especially as turns into monotheism and stuff
like that. Yeah, I am under the impression that overall
in this area, you're gonna have basically like towns have
(29:40):
like their god. Yeah, like, oh, this is our god
and it's often physically represented by like an idol or something. Later,
there's gonna be a physical representation of Mattair that's going
to go to Rome and that's gonna be a big
important thing. Okay, So it's kind of like and I
don't know how this relates to matt or Anana, but
there'd be like kind of like, oh, we're gonna go
(30:00):
capture our enemy's mascot in football.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Okay, okay, okay, interesting, Okay, that makes it make more sense.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And I am interested in how because this is where
the religions that dominate about half the world come from.
We tend to think of religion in these contexts, but
you also see like animism and like pantheism and all
of these other things. And then just like total other
ways of understanding religion in different places, like I don't
(30:29):
know a ton about a lot of different places, but
I know that like pagan Finland didn't really have gods
the way that like the Germanic gods of like Norway
and shit were like hello, I am God, man, I
have a hammer right right In Finland, it was like
everything is God. I don't know if you're talking about
that bear over there. We're really into bears over here,
you know. And and then you get a lot of
(30:51):
places that are like, no, we're much more interested in
like local spirits, like there's a spirit to this river,
and you better appease it to get what you want.
There's just so many differ ways of understanding it, and
I don't totally understand. I don't. This is my way
of saying I don't know how the Phrygian saul God
and God's.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It's just interesting to be like, there's got to be
some bigger thing and maybe we'll give it some accoutrement. Yeah,
and we'll say it has a name, and it's just
very interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I think that we all try to come up with
metaphors by which to understand unknowable things. Yeah, and different
cultures are gonna have different metaphors that make sense to them.
And I think certain cultures, a lot of cultures are
gonna be like the metaphors like a lady we can't see,
you know, yeah yeah, And in other places the metaphor
(31:39):
is going to be like math or I don't know,
like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's again my best bet. But okay,
we don't know a ton about the worship of Mater
in Phrygia, specifically as relates to gender variants. She is
the one who's going to have a trans cult soon,
(32:01):
but there is tentative evidence that she was always down
with the teaselers, and I actually wrote teestlers into the
script and then I was like, ah, whatever, I'm not
dealing with this. The main evidence we have that there's
probably gender variants before besides the fact that like kind
of why wouldn't there be, because it's a big part
of her culture. As soon as she crosses over right
(32:22):
into Europe proper, there's two figurines of her worshippers, and
again these are like probably representations of specific people. And
one is ivory and one is silver, and they represent
two specific people. And one of them has breasts and
hips and is shown with two children, and the other
one is in silver, is dressed identically in rich feminine
clothes but has no breasts and narrow hips and still
(32:45):
has no beard. And there are some statues that are
beardless boys, but this one is features that are like
mature to distinguish it from like young boy statues. So
it is a beardless adult male where in women's clothes.
Who is a worshiper of Mater?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
You know about the saints, there's like that saint. He's
called Wilgefortis.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh yeah, the one in my head is called Wiggles
because I can never remember.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And that I left so hard because I was researching that,
and I left so hard because it was like they
thought maybe someone just made like a really bootlicious carving
of Jesus, and people were like, whoa, this Jesus is
asked is way too fat.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
This has got to be a different thing.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
So then they were like, oh that's not that's not
fat ass Jesus, that's wilgefortis totally different person transmit.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
That's totally different important. Yeah. Oh that's not yasified Jesus.
That's a different thing.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah. No, It's so interesting, how like, because cultures use
symbols to represent, like, you know, like the fucking like
bathroom signs right, like right, you know, because I'm like, wow,
plenty of people like because you can look at this
and be like, ah, I know plenty of you know,
cis women who have narrow hips and no breasts right right,
and like you're like, yeah, but it's an art representation
(34:03):
and so like much like when I had a beard
but was wearing a skirt, I was not expected to
use the drawing of the person with the skirt in
terms of what bathroom to use. That was always my argument.
When I was a little aggressive crosspunk in women's clothes,
I was like, well, that one has the drawing of
me on it.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
That's so good. That's so good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And so this silver statue of a priestess who's I'm
just gonna call priestess whatever. Yeah, wearing women's clothes. She's
presented as calm and collected, and since she's made of
silver and wearing rich garb, it's likely that she has
a high status in society. And both of these things,
being calm and being high status are specific notable differences
(34:51):
from the later galley in the West, because the later
galley in the West are like crazy ladies who are
ecstatic and are also like ostracized by society. So there's
this kind of implication, like if you read between the
lines of the stuff I'm reading, I think one of
the things that they're saying is that once these priestesses
make their way to the West, they have to be
(35:11):
seen as like crazy women, right, And because Greece and
Rome are substantially more patriarchal cultures, and so to like, okay,
like why would a man give up? Like, y'all, people
can understand, of course, someone wants to be a man,
that's the good gener but someone wanting to be the
bad gender must be fucked in the head.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Sure, you know, yeah, And that has changed so significantly.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I'm so glad. Nobody feels that way anymore.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, no, that'd be a nightmare world for everyone of
all five main genders. I don't know, whatever, it's so
cool that we got rid of that. Yeah, yeah, gender
is a prison anyway. Also in Midas City in western Phrygia,
there's an art motif that wasn't common anywhere else but
this one place. And it would be two figures of
(35:59):
indeterminate sex who are side by side, probably as Matar's
as attendants. Oh and so it's like possible that this
town might have had this burgeoning non binary you know,
cult thing going on.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
It might not, oh like that those would be depictions
of actual people.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, potentially, but it that one, you know, we don't know, right.
And also in Frigia, she probably had a specific attendant
named Attis or that was the name of a priest class.
And we'll talk more about Adis later, but before we
talk about Atis or Greece, what I want to talk
to you about. You used to run a podcast about
(36:39):
saving money, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yes? Why?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Well, if you want to do well financially, you could
do no worse than buying everything. That is No, this
is a lie. I can't even finish the sentence we
have no control over our advertisers.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It's not always things that are advertised something. It's just like, hey,
here's an idea. Have you thought about it?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And then you're like, oh, I'm so glad someone paid
for that.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I know, like potatoes. Is that what you're trying to
get at? Like the idea of a potato?
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Just something like that where it'll be like, you know,
the ad will just be what do they call it?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Awareness ads? Oh yeah, I really liked. For a while
I was getting on cool Zone media. I was getting
a lot of ads for like go to the woods
with your family and friends, which I think was paid
for by monsters, not metaphorical one, but literal ones who
want to kill people in the woods. Again, not people,
but like shimeras and stuff, you know, the people who
the balls, monsters and stuff. Who else would pay for
(37:35):
an ad to go to the woods besides the creepy
things that live in the woods that want to kill
people who go in the woods.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I thought, I was like monster energy, drink peop No, no, yeah,
unless actually big monster is this?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, well apparently we have to go to ads, so
we will ruminate on this no more and we're back.
So Fridgie is pretty tied into Greece. Greek is that's
likely his closest language cousin. By the sixth century BCE,
matar worship starts showing up in Greece, but her name changes.
(38:10):
She's not Matar or meter like she was before, which
emphasized the mother part of her name, like stone mother.
Now she's Kaibelli, which is going to become Sibilly in Rome.
And I'm just gonna use Sibylly from here on out
because it's the only one I'm certain about the pronunciation of.
And Sibylly is coming from the stone part of her name.
(38:30):
The Greeks give her a Greek spin, and specifically a
kind of orientalist spin now, like she was already about
the untamable wilds, but now she's like the fucking wild lady,
specifically associated with ecstatic dancing uh, which is like where
you like lose your mind to the music. Mm hmmm.
And she's given a Yeah, she's given a tympanum, which
(38:53):
is a little hand DRUMI hold in one hand and
you play it ok. And this was never associated with
her in Phrygia, but it harken back to the Hittites
and is specifically associated with ecstatic dancing. So I think
it's basically been like, oh yeah, those crazy Easterners, they're
like crazy and wild with their hand drums. So she
(39:13):
has a hand drum, now, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Okay, So the idea was was ecstatic dancing seen as
like a little bit scary.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yes, absolutely, And also ecstatic dancing was associated with self wounding,
self castration, and being wild and uncontrolled and changing your gender.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I mean, listen, if the shoe fits, I know, I know,
I'm problem with this, If the sandal fit, yeah, huh,
I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And if the other party you doesn't want to fit,
it doesn't fit and you want to get rid of it.
So at the same time, she also gets a more
urban side of her, and she becomes the god of
cities as well as of the wild. And this is
probably basically like Greek. I'm always terrified to use the
word elites. Anthropologists use the words elites all the time
to describe the powerful people in society, but obviously there
(40:01):
is different connotations in the modern world. But the Greek
elites of society are trying to tame her, They're trying
to like bring her under control. This is going to
be especially Truman in Rome. Later they can't no, I mean,
well they kind of do. It's ah, it's okay whatever, Okay.
She moves up with the big kids. She gets a
(40:23):
temple in the Agora in Athens, and she is a
big deal. All of a sudden, the Greeks mass produce
figurines of her.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
OOO.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And in these figurines she's sitting down on a throne
held up by two lions, just probably not a conscious
reference to Anna. And she has that hand drum in
her hand. And the oldest written hymn about her says,
this isn't a trance thing, It's just a wildness thing.
To the Mother of all gods, To the Mother of
all gods and human beings, sing to me, clear toned muse,
(40:55):
the daughter of the Great Zeus. The resounding of rattles
and timpana, and the roar of flo please her, and
clamor of wolves and flashing eyed lions, the echoing mountains
and the wooded valleys. And thus rejoice you and all
goddesses who join together in song. Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So she just like comes over and becomes like the
main pop giry.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, and kind of in like a way where it's
like coming up from the streets.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Right, Yeah, she's not a nepo, but well she's Deuced's.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Daughter, I guess, yeah, but they kind of add that later, right, right,
What was that about? Well, part of it is that
like they're gonna this whole idea, Like when I was
a kid, I loved like books of like this is
all the gods of Greece or whatever.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Right of course you wear trans yeah, yeah, love that shit.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Did you also like Asian Egypt?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, uh huh, but mostly castles, but yeah, I did
have that Pyramids book. Those books will tend to lay out,
at least the ones for kids will tend to lay
out like here's the family tree, here's what each of
these things is, as if there's a definitive answer. But
if you actually look, and this is true for the
Norse gods as well, and I suspect it's true for
lots of places, but I've only kind of looked about
(42:08):
Greece and the Germanic Norse gods. But these are large
places over the course of thousands of years, okay, and
it's going to change constantly, And so like Sibilly is
like she's somehow the mother of all gods and the
daughter of a god like in just that one hymn,
(42:28):
and like she's going to be other gods at different times,
and they're all going to change names with each other,
and shit.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
It's like a daytime soap opera.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yes, yeah, you just gotta get with whatever family tree
they've got at that moment.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, and I think between clamor of wolves and uncontrolled music,
she would have fucking loved black metal.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, she sounds dope.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I mean they're describing her like they're pleading for her
like help and favor, but they're all so scared of her.
Yeah yeah, I mean, like I think that's kind of God. Yeah,
classic God. But she is in contrast with the other
big Greek mother goddess, Gaya, whose actual name is gay
(43:14):
Wow is ge but it's pronounced gay and wow Guia.
At least at one particular time that this is being
talked about, Gaia is like fields covered with cows and
obedient children and fertility and wealth, while Meter is more
about wilderness than fertility or obedience and so like which
(43:35):
way Western woman tradwife or wild motherfucker? Yes, Oh my god,
it's the same dichotomy that has existed forever.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
And right wing women want to hold on to femininity
as docile or whatever the fuck. And it's something that
has come up a couple times on this show that
medieval European misogynistic view of women differs from the modern
misogynistic view of women, which I think started with the Victorians.
Now people talk about women as like meek and docile
and indecisive or whatever. The medieval conception of is that
(44:08):
we are fucking wild and uncontrollable and violent and uncivilized.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
And these are both misogynistic stereotypes and I like the
old one better.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, it's so interesting because the idea is that like
men are sort of painted that way in like a
positive They're like, these are the traits I need to
be a politician, yeah, or a CEO or like a
military general.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Just has to make the tough decisions.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, And like if a woman possesses that, then that's
like their original personality that was bad.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I know, it's like you ate the apple and so
it's your fucking fault forever.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, it's like how pink used to be.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
A Yeah, totally, totally everything is gonna switch constantly, and like,
there's this thing that came up. I did an episode
about mutual aid, and.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Hm, I listened to it.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, and so in it I talked about how Kerpawk Cain,
you know, the biologist who sort of discovers mutual aid
in the same way that Darwin discovered competition both like
evolutionary biologists. And this dude Huxley who's the grandfather of
the good Huxley, eldest, bad Huxley, whatever, middle Huxley is like, oh,
(45:25):
some people are taking Darwinism and thinking we should all
fuck each other over. I'm going to take Darwinism and
say we must fight against our animal nature and become civilized,
and we must learn how to control our base instincts.
And that scene is the modern dichotomy. And like masculinity,
right is the like, oh, you're an animal underneath, but
(45:48):
you can contain it in your suit. Yeah, And Kroppawkin
comes in swinging, being like, hey, do you know what
animals actually do more? They like take care of each other.
So y'all just like built a shitty dichotomy where they
didn't he to be one and we should actually right
be the uncivilized thing, but the good uncivilized thing where
we take care of each other.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Right, like trad wife, It's like, okay, interesting, what tradition
are we Yeah, totally, what tradition are we following? Is
it the one where everybody used to cook for each other?
Like just wondering, No, it's not that one.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, yeah, totally. So Sibilly is now in Greece, and
the impression I get is she's popular among the people
but criticized by the elite. I'm not one hundred percent
certain on that. That is my inference based on a
bunch of different texts. Okay, there's no known written records
by any of her trans priests, so we only have
almost everything we know about her trans priests because our
(46:39):
priests are trans. But we'll get to that soon. They
might not have started off trans, but they're definitely gonna
end up trans. We have people talking shit and satirizing.
It's basically people thrown around the teesler constantly.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
That's how we know they exist.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, it'd be like if the only thing that people
knew about modern trans culture was like Fox News.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, or they go dig up years from now and
all they find is JK Rowlings Twitter.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, exactly like I said, Fox News and uh oh,
I wish you would live up to the JK and
just be kidding.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Or wish you would be rolling down a here.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
And if y'all made it fifty six minutes into this podcast,
I hate listen. That's your bit for it and I
support it. So the first of her followers to get
accused of being gender deviance starting in the fourth century BCE,
at least the shit talk started then are the metro gearts.
And the metro gearts. I try to find the pronunciation
(47:36):
like a lot of the shit and failed because this
is some like shit that people don't.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
It's lost to time.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who studies ancient Greek would be
able to put together the pronunciation of it, but there's
not Like I usually look up words and then find
the YouTube videos of how to pronounce it right. And
there's not enough people talking about the metro gearts these days.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I know their name, those who collect for the mother,
and they are basically like sketchy beggar priests who live
off of charity. One person referred to it as like
parasitic charity. Ah, they're basically like the dang lazy hobo preachers.
Why don't they get a job?
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Aka?
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Like also, what Jesus and his fucking followers? Did you know?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
I was about to say so Jesus. Yeah, it's like
the fine line between Jesus and Charles Manson.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, all of Jesus' followers turned into Charles Manson, and
so these itinerant preachers the metro gets might have been
cross dressers, or they might have been like further trands,
like later the Galley where because they could pass as
what was called nurses and accounts use the usually feminine
word for nurses when they call them this in order
to gain people's trust and swindle them into giving them alms.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Oh no, another thing that we keep doing.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, last episode in this episode are just the nothing's
ever changed. Every time I read about the past, I'm
just like, uh, oh we've done is add new bad stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
It's hard because then I start to think, especially now
with like fighting fascism, I start to be like, Okay,
well this thing that they did worked, so maybe we
should just do that, And then it's like, no, there's
a million factors that make it that you can't do that.
But then I'm like, Okay, well, so something's gonna happen
(49:22):
where we come out the other side of this in
some way that I'm not currently thinking of.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and because.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
It happened in the past, so it's the hope of
that and also the absolute despair of that.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, when we think about like what it took to
stop European fascism in the nineteen forties, right, I.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Guess it has to happen again. I don't know what to.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Tell you unless we stop it before then you know.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
That happened.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Ever, Yeah, I actually do think time after time you
get these like right wing movements that pop up and
start getting power and do get squashed successfully. I don't
know about ones that I've gotten this far. I have heard,
and I don't have the evidence for this because I
haven't heard the whole argument. I've heard some thinkers some
writers talk about how in order to get fascism off
the ground, you need a certain amount of like you
(50:10):
need to hit escape velocity. You need a lot of momentum,
right otherwise you stall out. And these people are arguing,
and if you're listening to the future, this is going
to sound either hopelessly naive or like, yeah, nope, totally.
These people are arguing that the Trump administration is stalling out,
that the current fascist movement.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
The instinction burst right.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Oh, I don't know the phrase.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
It's like my friend was telling me she works with kids,
and it's the thing where the kid throws a massive
tantrum right before they're tuckered out. It's like things get
like really elevated and then it's a bubble.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah, because it's like and if it reaches escape velocity,
ll do the next stage. You know. But they actually
are getting a lot of pushback right now from like
most people in this country, including people that I like
disagree with politically about most fine details, you know, are.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Just like what's going on?
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Like when Tucker Carlson starts saying one or two sentences
that make sense, I'm.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Like, what's happening?
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, it's we.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Don't gotta like everyone. No, And he's still gonna be
guillotined later. He's not getting out of anything, Tucker Crosson,
don't listen to this.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Everything's gonna be fine, Everything's fine.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
I always liked the guillotine as a symbol because I
thought we all knew that the guillotine report was a
symbol that we used ironically only because yes, because there's
a symbol that contains its own contradiction, because we all
look at history and are like, ah, that got out
of hand, and the people who used it died by it.
And so I was like, yeah, the guillotine. It's like
a way of saying we're so angry, we're willing to
do something dumb. And then I look around, I'm like, oh,
everyone just like earnestly wants to bring back the guillotine. Fuck,
(51:48):
we're so cooked.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah, or the people that it's against think it's going
to be some literal guillotine that is brought out, and
it's like, no, sorry to say.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
I do like the song Guillotine by the Coup. I
don't know it all listened to it. The chorus is
we got the guillotine, you better run, and it's people
dressed up like a Wizard of Oz pushing a guillotine
through Oakland. There is the video It's fucking sick.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Boots Riley fucking knows what's up anyway, And so okay,
you have the metro Gearts. We don't know if their
trans are willing to just be kind of gender deviant.
We know way more about what they started getting called
and who they became later the galley, and we're going
to talk about the galley on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Oh my god, we didn't even get to the galley.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
This is how the show works. One episode is context,
and then which is I don't do this on purpose.
I write everything I can about the thing, and then
I go through and I find the halfway mark and
cut it and it always works out. We're half as context.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Anyway, that's what I got so far, And you got
any thoughts or things you want to plug.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
I love this of hearing about this. I love that
this is the topic. I love everything about the last hour.
I'm delighted. And I have a substack called one thousand
Natural Shocks. It's also the name of the podcast, A
thousand Natural Shocks colon a Bad with Money podcast. Margaret
was a guest true and it's mostly about surviving a
(53:20):
capitalist hellscape and being overwhelmed. And it used to be
a financial education podcast. But what happened was we started
the first episode in twenty sixteen and I said, wow,
I wonder what you know a bank actually does? And
then the years have gone by and now I'm like,
I think we have to burn everything down.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
It truly went from.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Capital l liberal to full anarchists over the course of
like nine years.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
So start at the beginning. I become trans in the
middle of it.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
It's really a lood journey. Fuck yeah, all right, Well
I have a substact too. It's Margaret Kilsoy do substec
dot com. I post about a lot of stuff. My
most recent post is right, this was called how Metal
is the Past, and it's me trying to figure out
exactly how true all of these things that people say about,
you know, human sacrifice and all of this wild stuff
(54:10):
about the past is. And yeah, I talked about a
lot of stuff over there, and you can find it,
and most of it's free, and if it's not, it's
because it's personal. And if you want to read my
personal stuff, you have to pay me, and that seems
like a fair deal. But the podcast is free. But
if you want the podcast and you're like, oh, I
wish the podcast wasn't free and I wish it had
no ads, you can subscribe to Cooler Zone Media And
that's like what I just said, but I had too
(54:33):
much sugar today, So I'm gonna hang up. It's not
hanging up.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
I'm a subscriber. Fuck yeah, I recommend fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
All right, see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 4 (54:44):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. More podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit
our website goal Zonemedia dot com, or check us out
on radio, app, a podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Being your have been
Cool Media Clout and welcome to cool People did cool stuff.
You're the weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's people trying to do good things, or when there's
bad things happening, there's podcast hosts who get lost in
two thousand, three thousand year old history out of desire
to experience anything other than the fascistic world we live in.
(00:23):
I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I am the
aforementioned person, but I also have a guest this week.
My guest this week is Gabriel Dunn, host of two
hundred and twenty four Natural Shocks. It's something like that, right.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, it's one thousand natural shocks. It couldn't just be
the twenty twenty four because it kind of goes, you know,
it's ongoing. It wasn't like wow, and in twenty twenty
five we healed.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Oh I picked a random number. I accidentally picked ay
the year.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Can I just say, just on the record, I'm so
excited to be I'm so I want your audience to
know I have listened to probably eight straight hours of
this show at one point when I'm working. Yeah, it's
gonna be real wild for me to have you talking
at me, and so I don't know if your audience
(01:15):
is like used to like cool, chill academic people, but
I shall simply not be that.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
All right, that's great, and if you want to hear us,
have another conversation. I was on a thousand natural shocks. Yes,
people can go listen to me talking about anarchism, which
is something I never do otherwise and rare treat. Yeah,
we also have a producer, but she's not here, but
her name is Sophie and she's great. And we also
(01:42):
have an audio engineer named Eva hi Eva hi Eva.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I also know that Sophie always says, hello, Magpie, you
invited a crazy fan here.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
You should have done it.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I know this is my own fault. And our theme
music is written for us by unwem Okay. So last
week I researched the Druids because it was spooky week
and I wanted to read about the philosophers of the
ancient Celts, mostly because I was like, I wanted to
know what was true and what wasn't. And the big
takeaway was that we don't know. We don't know what's
true and what isn't. But I wound up reading as
(02:17):
much as I could about their like gender and shit,
there's like lady Druids that almost never talked about, but
there's only a little bit of information out there. But
I started thinking, Gabe, okay, do you ever get annoyed
when people are like, hey, I want to have you
on my podcast. I want to talk about a trans thing,
so you'd be perfect for it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I had been out for approximately one week and the
Sundance Channel asked me to come on and do a
panel to talking about trans film, and I was like,
I have been trans for simply one week.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, just drop you right in the fire.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Honestly, I have sis friends who know more than I do.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, honestly say but but now I know a little
more than I did, because you know, people have been
saying things like, oh, trans people, I've always been here,
and you've been like, yeah, yeah, totally, I get it.
And then they're like there were trans priestesses in ancient
Rome and they were held as more sacred because of
how they were transgender. And I was like, mmm, baby,
(03:12):
I don't know everything. And people say about the far
past is like wish thinking, and it's a compelling story.
And anytime there's a compelling story. I don't want to
dive into it because I like this story. Well, this
week I dove into exactly that story. Oh okay, we
are going to talk about trans priestesses in ancient Rome.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Wow, okay, this is very exciting. Are they real? Don't
spoil it. Okay, they're real.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
They're so real, and they are so actually trans. It's
not just a unit culture. It's like, it is recognizably
transgender women who are holy attendants to a goddess with
a thousand different names.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Oh my god, please, somebody made this movie, right, I
haven't seen it.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
If not, here we go.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So there's only one part of the sentence that I
read above about them that's wrong. The trans priestesses of
ancient Rome were only considered more sacred by some people.
They were actually, and this will sound familiar to you,
ostracized by society and then a legal limbo between male
and female. What yeah, they like? Just to skip ahead
(04:23):
in my own script, they weren't allowed to get married
because in order to get married, you have to be
a man or a woman, right, And they couldn't inherit
property because you have to be a man or a
woman to inherit. But it's like, oh, sorry, it's law
says only men or women can inherit property.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And we cannot change the law.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, that's right. We're not Rome the inventor of modern law.
I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
It's so interesting to me, even when it's the positive
of and these trans.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Priestesses were revered by all.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It's kind of like, Okay, it feels very what's the like,
it feels very fetishy or something. Yeah, it feels like
and they were beloved for their like it's sort of like, yeah,
maybe some people liked them, some people didn't.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, and they like they made noise music and they
got stuck doing sex work. So they're just the cliche
trans women. Three thousand years.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Ago, were they programming computer?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Probably that fucking you know that like ancient Roman mathematics
machine they found in the ocean at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
fuck it. If someone told me it was one of
these ladies, I would not be surprised.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, what's the ancient Roman equivalent of David Lynch?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, they have that fucking I don't want to cover her.
At some point there was like some emperor of Rome
that was trans. But that's not what I looked up.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is thrilling.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah so, but they were the holy priesthood of one
of the most important gods in the Roman State religion.
But they're origins which lay outside of Rome are even
more ancient, and we don't know one hundred percent their origins,
but we know like some of it goes to Greece
and then Phrygia and then possibly Okay, the oldest urban
(06:11):
civilization in the world is sumer and Sumerians lived thirty
five hundred years ago and also possibly longer than that
the whole like who lived to hear exactly when thing
is really annoying And there's people who are listening who
know way more about this than me. But the Sumerians
had fucking gender deviant priests.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Like way back the original Yeah the city er you
are right, the one that means original, Like people use
the word er to be like, oh the er city,
the er right to being the original.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, had fucking we have really genuinely always been here,
you and I and okay, I'll get into it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
This is the thing is that like all of this
stuff is very recent and made up. It's like how
people think oh, we can't exist without and it's like
baby ice was made in two thousand and three, Like
there's like, oh, well, gender's always been this way, and
it's like.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, no, and it's kind of like as far as
I could tell, and there's some other people who'll know better,
but as far as I could tell us kind of
Greece and Rome's fault that we have these like specific
gender roles that like Western civilization teaches.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Oh, they were hypocrites. This is so shocking.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah, you're going to be really surprised by this
is a hypocrite from Oh, these probably there's probably a
Greek man named Hippocrates or something. I don't know. My
Latin teacher in high school let us cheat, and I
didn't learn any Latin. I took three years of it.
The oldest written language in the world is Sumerian, and
so it first started getting written in about thirty two
(07:43):
hundred BCE. In that language, there is poetry about how
their greatest god, the goddess Anani, could trans people's genders,
and that was one of her most important roles.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Why to what end?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
We don't one hundred percent know that part.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
She was like big day of transing the people that
worship me.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Oh what for don't know, I don't know. Gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They just woke up feeling that way.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, I don't know. They line up outside the temple
and I gotta do it.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. If someone was like, why did she become trends,
I'd be like, man, I don't know, exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I always say, like performing like a passion play to
sist people where you're like you have to lay out
like how much this is like painful for you, and
like you really can't deal with No, it's just I
just chose to.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, I know totally. It was like it didn't seem
like a choice when I was a kid, and then
it became a choice, and I was like, that's the
choice I want to make exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I always say, it's so funny to me that like
friends from high school are allowed to age and have
changing bodies and have children, and they're allowed to like
go gray blah blah blah. Everybody looks different, but somehow
the way that I look different is somehow wild.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Right totally, as if like half those people aren't taking
tea blockers are just on their scalp for their hair,
thank you, Like no, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Don't worry about it. Nobody looks the same as they
did at twenty five. Don't worry about what I did.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I know.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
And also them, they're like, oh, teenagers making permanent decisions,
and you're like, yeah, you know what decision? You make?
This permanent every single decision, right, And like, I don't know.
It is pure random luck that I didn't get a
worse stick in poke when I was a kid, you know,
like hundred percent. Anyway, I am avoiding. I'm procrastinating saying
(09:34):
the name of this cult of priestesses because I don't
know how to pronounce it, even though I actually looked
it up since it's not French. I actually bothered to
look it up. And the problem is is that the
golly or gallet or Galli is spelled and pronounced in
different ways. There's both the Greek, there's the Roman, and
(09:55):
also specifically it is gendered in different ways. And I,
like I said, sure, didn't learn anything in Latin, so
I'm going to go with the goli, which is g
A L L A E cute. And I don't know
there was a cult called the Galley or the Goli
(10:16):
in Rome and before that in Greece, and before that
in Phrygia, which is in western Anatolia it's now Turkey,
And they worshiped a mother goddess, one of the more
important ones. And they were trans as fuck, not just
men cross dressing, not just eunuchs. But they were fulfilling
a sort of third gender position in society, similar to
third genders and trans situations all over the world. And
(10:38):
they worshiped the god Sibylly under a fuck ton of
different names. Just these cultures are so syncretic, so it's
like there's versions of Sibylly that are also Rhea. There's
meter and matter and Materire and all this other stuff.
Classic trans, I know, just changing their name whenever they
(10:58):
go to a new country, they're like, oh, I'm actually
named Hummingbird here. Like, look, we know you're non binary.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And we have to respect it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I know, I know. We just put our heads down
and say, yes, your name is Flywheel.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
You're gonna get hate mail from some non binary person
who is named Hummingbird and their partner Flywheel.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
I know. But you know what, I love both of you.
I'm so proud of you living your Best Life, Flywheel,
and Hummingbird. So that's who we're going to talk about
this week, and first we're going to talk about Sumer.
Sumer is the oldest known civilization by some standards, or
the oldest known urban civilization by other standards, and because
(11:40):
sometimes urban is necessary to count a civilization. It is
a region in what's now Iraq. And I don't want
to get into the weeds about where people think the
Sumerians came from, because the weeds about where classical era
and antiquity people came from, those are weeds that people
spend their careers.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You have fote everyone knows.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, they actually came from UFOs. Yeah totally. Sumer
was around from roughly fifty five hundred BCE to eighteen
hundred BCE, so it's around for a long as time,
way longer than Oh, I don't know the American experiment,
which only lasted two hundred and fifty years. That died
in twenty twenty six. And I'd say rest in peace
if I was going to say.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Rest in peace, and then I stopped myself.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, totally. Oh, watching the White House get torn down
and be like this is bad. I don't want to
watch the parts of the White House get torn down
by someone that I hate.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I wanted to get torn down by someone that
I love.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, exactly. I wanted to become the place where we
all start having collective decision made.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Someone was like, this is maybe bad and if it is,
cut it, but someone was like, wow, Trump finished the job.
The nine to eleven hijackers couldn't.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, anyway, I don't even disagree with whatever. It's fucking
nightmare world we live in. You all live in the future.
Maybe it's only next week's future, but maybe it's the
far future. Who knows, But we live in the future.
To Sumer. Sumer had some gods. The most important one
was Anana or a Nani, who merged into the later ishtar.
(13:11):
Who's the one I had like more heard of? Right?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Anana was the queen of heaven and Anana could build
and destroy. Anana was the god of sex and war
and of changing people's genders. Her high priestesses of whatever
gender will get that lived in er the Erth City,
and in twenty three hundred BCE, a high priestess of
Anana named Enna Duwana wrote a hymn and part of
(13:38):
that hymn is to destroy, to build, to lift up,
to put down. Are yours anana to turn man into woman,
woman into man? Are yours anana that is so metal,
is not subtle.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
That is so cool?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I know, Oh my god, I know. Put it to
throw pillow baby, put it in my house.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah fuck yes.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Some trans womin right now is like anana. That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Actually, I know. It's probably three different trans women solo
black metal projects, and you know what, I'll listen to
two of them.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
I commit to the third.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, awesome. Her priests were gender non conforming and also
in multiple directions, but not necessarily. It wasn't like Sibley,
who we're gonna talk about later, had like a transculta
of trans women. Anana is more like there's just stuff
non conforming happening with the gender of her priests. Anana
(14:38):
herself often changed her followers sex. There was like the
performers of one of her festivals were raised as girls
and then women, but then they were handed spears as
though they were men. There's all kinds of myths about
her changing people's genders. There's a statuette of a singer
with female characteristics and a male name or non sha
(14:59):
and it is dedicated to a nana. And so these figurines,
as best as I can tell, they're not like what
I would have assumed, Like these figurines were kind of
like of specific people by and large in this era.
So it was like, here's someone named Ernance who was
a singer, who was probably an afab person with a
male name, and we made them a doll. Yeah, exactly,
(15:23):
people make dolls of people.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Oh that's nice.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. And then there's the gala or the ga la
because it's written in cuneiform and so it's often written
in academic articles as like all caps ga lak. But
I'm going to call them the gala just to make
it really confusing because later I'm gonna talk about the galley.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
But pay attention, guys. Yeah, start taking notes now and
the gala. And this is a fucking cool thing that
we need to somehow bring back. I don't know how
we're gonna I don't want to start in a new religion.
That's the problem with any of this.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
These gala are the lamentation singers. They are the priestesses
who sing her holy wrath and sorrow, and at first
they're all CIS women because there's this dialect called emmy cell,
which is the specific dialect in that language for women
who are speaking for female gods. So it's like I
(16:21):
am talking god talk, right, this is so cool. I know,
I got really excited about this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
This is so cool.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Oh, the singers of the lamentations continue, we are that
as well.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah. And then men, I guess started joining the Gala,
and they took on women's names, and they spoke in
the divine dialect of women goddesses. And people can't necessarily say, like,
vis are trans women the way that we can later
say about the Gully, because we know a lot more
about the social function and stuff, right. The Gala were like,
(16:54):
well we know this much, right, And these priestesses of
whatever gender whatever, they were well thought of. They took
care of the sick and the poor, and there were
sistant trans women alike or whatever the fuck. I don't know,
men and women alike. I don't really care. Also, there
was something that the Gala were specifically known for represented
in art, and that is fucking men in the ass.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I was literally about to be like big fat asses.
I was literally about to make like a joke like that,
and then that was true.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
There's a lot of writing about how the Gala priests
priestesses loved dudes buttholes, and wow, it's that's notable because
later assumptions about trans women have us all as bottoms
and it's not true.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
It's certainly not true.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
You spend enough time in subculture and you don't think that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But they always think that. You know, trans men are bottoms.
Gay trans men or bottoms, and I'd like to represent
that they are not.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
No, uh, it takes a certain a certain spirit to
decide to come out as trans in a culture that
wants to kill you.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Well, then it doesn't take a certain spirit to be
a bottom. I'm not talking shit.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, but it's the CIS women butchers who are bottoms exclusively,
and everyone knows.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That we're fine tails out of school.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
They're gonna lock us up because they're gonna be like,
you guys, can't be telling Sis people this stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I know.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I know. Well, if you're listening, Anana has made you trans.
And what's interesting here with the Gala consumer is there's
no evidence that these folks were changing themselves physically. There's
no evidence that they castrated themselves. There's an implication that
they didn't because they liked fucking dudes in the bottom,
although you know who knows you can still do that
(18:37):
if you want. But it is possible that they were
castrating themselves. This is like a time and place where
Unichs are a thing and stuff, you know, but their
gender is changing, and various pieces of art indicate that
it wasn't just the Gala who are non conforming an
ancient sumer. But do you know what will also transgender?
(18:59):
Is it products and services? That's right, I don't know
by what means, but the very next ad you hear
is responsible for the corruption of the youth in the
United States.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It's Jumba Casino.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I know too much about this show.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And here's that, and we're back and so all across
what gets called the Near East but might be better
term Southwest Asia, there's culture after culture practicing some form
of divine transgenderism or whatever the fuck you want to
call it. Some historians, although I think they're outliers, they
(19:40):
were at least outliers in two thousand and five when
I read the piece that I read that talked about this.
The most was an academic paper in the show notes
that talked about this. Historians, at least in two thousand
and five mostly didn't think that there's a direct through
line from the Gala consumer to the Galley in Rome,
and the similarities in names is generally assumed to be
(20:02):
a coincidence. But historians have been like, well, if it
was a through line, this is what it would look like. Okay,
But there are certainly a bunch of goddesses in the
ancient you know, Southwest Asian world who had gender nonconforming priestesses.
Most of these gods were specifically associated with wildness and nature,
(20:26):
and most of them were known to incite a sort
of divine madness into their followers. Go on, I know, no,
this is a whole, big part of it, Like, okay,
whole trans women are crazy bitches thing which I will
neither confirm nor deny. Wow. But notably and importantly, these
various goddesses in Southwest Asia weren't necessarily even though there
(20:48):
are earth goddesses of wilderness and nature, they are not
necessarily goddesses of fertility. And modern paganism has this unfortunate tendency.
At least the stuff I've scene to sort of claim
that there's this simple divine feminine at work, often represented
by the Greek goddess Gaya, who is the mother Earth
(21:09):
figure sure, and in this Mother Earth is like kind
and feminine and into fertility. H And when I researched
Slavic gods for a different project that I don't have
my notes in front of me because it was a
band with a friend who is from that region of
the world, I found that goddesses of fertility tended to
be not very peaceful or nice in at least Slavic culture.
(21:33):
And again, it might be lots of places, it's the
only place I can speak to.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I mean, they always tie sex to war a lot,
like a lot it's times, you know, fertility whatever. But yeah,
sex and war are kind of mostly tied together.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Death and rot and sex are incredibly intertwined in our psyche,
and I think that's cool as shit. But these Near
East goddesses of the earth, at least some of them,
they were goddess of the earth and nature and wilderness,
but not fertility. And unlike Gaya, who was a goddess
(22:06):
of fertility and whatever. One source I read included the
Hindu goddess Bakura Mata as one of these sort of
gods of nature, et cetera, from this kind of region,
and she's not maternal at all. In some versions of
the world. She cut off her breasts because she wanted
nothing to do with sex is one of the things
about her.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, yeah, no, right, yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Uh that's like when cis women friends of mine are like, ugh,
you know, I hate boobs or whatever. My aunt's always like,
oh they're so I'm like, get rid of them.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, you just get rid of them.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Stop complaining.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, it turns out your secondary sex characteristics are very
mutable if you know the right thing.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, you get rid of them if you don't want them.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah. The number of people I know who don't have
nipples anymore, you can, just to be clear, if anyone
doesn't know, you can keep your nipples. But the number
of people I know who are like, man, I didn't
even want that part either.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I Oh my god, Margaret.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I So I was at my top surgery and I'm like,
it's the morning of the doctor's like drawing where things
are gonna go whatever, and he's like, where do you
want me to place the nipples? And I was like,
where do I want you to place the nipples? Where
are you placing them? He was like, oh, people have
different you know. Sometimes people want a mail chest, sometimes
they want them in more. Sometimes they don't want nipples
at all. That's like a trend for the young people.
(23:21):
And I was so thrown off. I literally went, oh, no,
I'll just have like regular millennial nipples.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Please. You got them millennial nipples, just.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Sort of the boring millennial nipples. Please.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
They didn't tattoo freckles on your face while you're under.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Right, exactly? I wake up, I have those star acne stickers.
I'm like, how did this hapend?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, so clearly there's representations of a lot of secondary
sex characteristics being changed. I am not going to talk
very much in this episode about how Hindu gods tie
into this. The answer is that they kind of do.
In the Hezra of South Asia do tie into this,
this legally distinct third sex that, in a simplistic way,
(24:05):
you could say is a transfeminine culture. And in North
India the Heesra tend to be followers of Bekuramata. Okay,
but again, not an expert at all. It just I
want to acknowledge that there is a tie there without
pretending like I'm a scholar of that yet, because I
slowly will piece me, I'll find my way through all
of history. So there's a lot of gender nonconformity in
(24:28):
South and Southwest Asia, probably elsewhere. But this is where
I'm gonna talk about right now. And this brings us
to Phrygia. I literally didn't know Phrygia as a place.
I just knew it was a scale of music.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Oh I'm finding out right now that it's both.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, it is both.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
What did you come into this knowing about Phrygia place
or music or neither?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Zero, that's the first time I've ever heard this word
in my life.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, it's phrygi a Nope, would have never got there. Yeah.
So sumer is not an Indo European culture, at least
from language point of view. A lot of the cultures
that I've talked about lately have been Indo European cultures,
which is this language and legal structure that reached all
(25:16):
the way from Ireland to India. Oh, and so that's
why there's weird overlaps linguistically and legally between literally Ireland
and India, and so Sumer is not Indo European. The
next folks we're talking about, the Phrygians. They are the
closest language to Ephrygian is Greek.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
They lived in Western Anatolia, which is again Turkey, way
back in the day. And once again I'm not going
to touch though. Where did they come from? How did
they get their debate with a ten foot or three
thousand year pole. Like most people we talk about, they
weren't really a single culture or language, but a general
(25:53):
grouping of various folks. They're similar enough for people to
call them Frygians, and the main into them culturally, at
least by name, is the Phrygian mode of music, which
I like music theory, but not enough to try and
wrap my head around the three different Phrygian modes to
explain all of them on air. It is halfway between
(26:14):
major and minor sounding Okay, the what are they making this?
What are they using? Just insurance that they make Yeah, okay,
so this actually gets into I don't know enough about
the history of music theory yet, but for example, a
way of playing a Phrygian mode is if you sit
in front of a piano and you plus only white
keys from D to D instead of okay, like C
(26:36):
two C is C major. A to A is a
minor with no sharps or flats, just all white keys.
D to D is what I would have called d Dorian,
but Dorian Phrygian or related modes. But there's also a
million types of Phrygian. But so what that means is
that some of the intervals sound major and some of
them sound minor, and it gets at this kind of
(26:58):
like kind of beautifully disc thing and this style of music,
this mode was considered wild and untamed and warlike by
the Greeks, and this idea that the Phrygians represent like
a wild, untamable people. This is like the main orientalism
(27:20):
that is going to tie into this story. Whereas like
British people in the eighteenth century were like Greece, that's
the orients. Fuck yeah, people in ancient Greece were like Phrygia.
Holy shit, I think, And at least in terms of
this is going to tie into the goddess worship that
I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Okay, okay, I'm following.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
The most famous Phrygian is probably King Midas, who the
guy turns everything. Like literally about that guy, Yeah, literally,
one of the there's gonna be a part of the
story that happens in Midas City.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Did he was that real?
Speaker 1 (27:54):
I don't know shit about him. I'm sure he didn't
turn things into gold. I feel reasonably confident about that,
but I do not know shit about him. They had
a main god, the Phrygians. They called her the Stone
Mother or matar kublea mother Earth.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
That's coolest shit too.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely, and she sort of predates the arrival
of the Phrygians. I think she was kind of like
the god of the area when the Hittites who were
there before the Phrygians. Yeah, we're doing their thing. And
the Stone Mother is the god of nature. She protects
young girls and also cities. In Phrygia, she's usually shown
(28:33):
with birds of prey, but occasionally she's shown with lions.
And that's important because both Anana is shown with lions
and later Sybilly, who is the Stone Mother but in
Greece and Rome is going to get lions again as
a symbol, but the Phrygian one is much more of
(28:53):
a bird of prey kind of lady.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So in terms of.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Their lives revolving around these gods. Are they praying to them?
Are they sacrificing to them? Is everybody? It's always interesting,
like how independently the idea of gods just like.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Pops up in so many different places, in so.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Many different places, Like they're like, my goodness, you know what,
we're all thinking, there's gotta be something up there.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I am still trying to work my way through how
I feel about this. I feel like I've been trying
for a couple of years now to better understand the
development of religion, especially as turns into monotheism and stuff
like that. Yeah, I am under the impression that overall
in this area, you're gonna have basically like towns have
(29:40):
like their god. Yeah, like, oh, this is our god
and it's often physically represented by like an idol or something. Later,
there's gonna be a physical representation of Mattair that's going
to go to Rome and that's gonna be a big
important thing. Okay, So it's kind of like and I
don't know how this relates to matt or Anana, but
there'd be like kind of like, oh, we're gonna go
(30:00):
capture our enemy's mascot in football.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Okay, okay, okay, interesting, Okay, that makes it make more sense.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And I am interested in how because this is where
the religions that dominate about half the world come from.
We tend to think of religion in these contexts, but
you also see like animism and like pantheism and all
of these other things. And then just like total other
ways of understanding religion in different places, like I don't
(30:29):
know a ton about a lot of different places, but
I know that like pagan Finland didn't really have gods
the way that like the Germanic gods of like Norway
and shit were like hello, I am God, man, I
have a hammer right right In Finland, it was like
everything is God. I don't know if you're talking about
that bear over there. We're really into bears over here,
you know. And and then you get a lot of
(30:51):
places that are like, no, we're much more interested in
like local spirits, like there's a spirit to this river,
and you better appease it to get what you want.
There's just so many differ ways of understanding it, and
I don't totally understand. I don't. This is my way
of saying I don't know how the Phrygian saul God
and God's.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
It's just interesting to be like, there's got to be
some bigger thing and maybe we'll give it some accoutrement. Yeah,
and we'll say it has a name, and it's just
very interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I think that we all try to come up with
metaphors by which to understand unknowable things. Yeah, and different
cultures are gonna have different metaphors that make sense to them.
And I think certain cultures, a lot of cultures are
gonna be like the metaphors like a lady we can't see,
you know, yeah yeah, And in other places the metaphor
(31:39):
is going to be like math or I don't know,
like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's again my best bet. But okay,
we don't know a ton about the worship of Mater
in Phrygia, specifically as relates to gender variants. She is
the one who's going to have a trans cult soon,
(32:01):
but there is tentative evidence that she was always down
with the teaselers, and I actually wrote teestlers into the
script and then I was like, ah, whatever, I'm not
dealing with this. The main evidence we have that there's
probably gender variants before besides the fact that like kind
of why wouldn't there be, because it's a big part
of her culture. As soon as she crosses over right
(32:22):
into Europe proper, there's two figurines of her worshippers, and
again these are like probably representations of specific people. And
one is ivory and one is silver, and they represent
two specific people. And one of them has breasts and
hips and is shown with two children, and the other
one is in silver, is dressed identically in rich feminine
clothes but has no breasts and narrow hips and still
(32:45):
has no beard. And there are some statues that are
beardless boys, but this one is features that are like
mature to distinguish it from like young boy statues. So
it is a beardless adult male where in women's clothes.
Who is a worshiper of Mater?
Speaker 2 (33:04):
You know about the saints, there's like that saint. He's
called Wilgefortis.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh yeah, the one in my head is called Wiggles
because I can never remember.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And that I left so hard because I was researching that,
and I left so hard because it was like they
thought maybe someone just made like a really bootlicious carving
of Jesus, and people were like, whoa, this Jesus is
asked is way too fat.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
This has got to be a different thing.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
So then they were like, oh that's not that's not
fat ass Jesus, that's wilgefortis totally different person transmit.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
That's totally different important. Yeah. Oh that's not yasified Jesus.
That's a different thing.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Yeah. No, It's so interesting, how like, because cultures use
symbols to represent, like, you know, like the fucking like
bathroom signs right, like right, you know, because I'm like, wow,
plenty of people like because you can look at this
and be like, ah, I know plenty of you know,
cis women who have narrow hips and no breasts right right,
and like you're like, yeah, but it's an art representation
(34:03):
and so like much like when I had a beard
but was wearing a skirt, I was not expected to
use the drawing of the person with the skirt in
terms of what bathroom to use. That was always my argument.
When I was a little aggressive crosspunk in women's clothes,
I was like, well, that one has the drawing of
me on it.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
That's so good. That's so good. I love that.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And so this silver statue of a priestess who's I'm
just gonna call priestess whatever. Yeah, wearing women's clothes. She's
presented as calm and collected, and since she's made of
silver and wearing rich garb, it's likely that she has
a high status in society. And both of these things,
being calm and being high status are specific notable differences
(34:51):
from the later galley in the West, because the later
galley in the West are like crazy ladies who are
ecstatic and are also like ostracized by society. So there's
this kind of implication, like if you read between the
lines of the stuff I'm reading, I think one of
the things that they're saying is that once these priestesses
make their way to the West, they have to be
(35:11):
seen as like crazy women, right, And because Greece and
Rome are substantially more patriarchal cultures, and so to like, okay,
like why would a man give up? Like, y'all, people
can understand, of course, someone wants to be a man,
that's the good gener but someone wanting to be the
bad gender must be fucked in the head.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Sure, you know, yeah, And that has changed so significantly.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I'm so glad. Nobody feels that way anymore.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, no, that'd be a nightmare world for everyone of
all five main genders. I don't know, whatever, it's so
cool that we got rid of that. Yeah, yeah, gender
is a prison anyway. Also in Midas City in western Phrygia,
there's an art motif that wasn't common anywhere else but
this one place. And it would be two figures of
(35:59):
indeterminate sex who are side by side, probably as Matar's
as attendants. Oh and so it's like possible that this
town might have had this burgeoning non binary you know,
cult thing going on.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
It might not, oh like that those would be depictions
of actual people.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah, potentially, but it that one, you know, we don't know, right.
And also in Frigia, she probably had a specific attendant
named Attis or that was the name of a priest class.
And we'll talk more about Adis later, but before we
talk about Atis or Greece, what I want to talk
to you about. You used to run a podcast about
(36:39):
saving money, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yes? Why?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Well, if you want to do well financially, you could
do no worse than buying everything. That is No, this
is a lie. I can't even finish the sentence we
have no control over our advertisers.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It's not always things that are advertised something. It's just like, hey,
here's an idea. Have you thought about it?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And then you're like, oh, I'm so glad someone paid
for that.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
I know, like potatoes. Is that what you're trying to
get at? Like the idea of a potato?
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Just something like that where it'll be like, you know,
the ad will just be what do they call it?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Awareness ads? Oh yeah, I really liked. For a while
I was getting on cool Zone media. I was getting
a lot of ads for like go to the woods
with your family and friends, which I think was paid
for by monsters, not metaphorical one, but literal ones who
want to kill people in the woods. Again, not people,
but like shimeras and stuff, you know, the people who
the balls, monsters and stuff. Who else would pay for
(37:35):
an ad to go to the woods besides the creepy
things that live in the woods that want to kill
people who go in the woods.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
I thought, I was like monster energy, drink peop No, no, yeah,
unless actually big monster is this?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, well apparently we have to go to ads, so
we will ruminate on this no more and we're back.
So Fridgie is pretty tied into Greece. Greek is that's
likely his closest language cousin. By the sixth century BCE,
matar worship starts showing up in Greece, but her name changes.
(38:10):
She's not Matar or meter like she was before, which
emphasized the mother part of her name, like stone mother.
Now she's Kaibelli, which is going to become Sibilly in Rome.
And I'm just gonna use Sibylly from here on out
because it's the only one I'm certain about the pronunciation of.
And Sibylly is coming from the stone part of her name.
(38:30):
The Greeks give her a Greek spin, and specifically a
kind of orientalist spin now, like she was already about
the untamable wilds, but now she's like the fucking wild lady,
specifically associated with ecstatic dancing uh, which is like where
you like lose your mind to the music. Mm hmmm.
And she's given a Yeah, she's given a tympanum, which
(38:53):
is a little hand DRUMI hold in one hand and
you play it ok. And this was never associated with
her in Phrygia, but it harken back to the Hittites
and is specifically associated with ecstatic dancing. So I think
it's basically been like, oh yeah, those crazy Easterners, they're
like crazy and wild with their hand drums. So she
(39:13):
has a hand drum, now, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Okay, So the idea was was ecstatic dancing seen as
like a little bit scary.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yes, absolutely, And also ecstatic dancing was associated with self wounding,
self castration, and being wild and uncontrolled and changing your gender.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I mean, listen, if the shoe fits, I know, I know,
I'm problem with this, If the sandal fit, yeah, huh,
I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And if the other party you doesn't want to fit,
it doesn't fit and you want to get rid of it.
So at the same time, she also gets a more
urban side of her, and she becomes the god of
cities as well as of the wild. And this is
probably basically like Greek. I'm always terrified to use the
word elites. Anthropologists use the words elites all the time
to describe the powerful people in society, but obviously there
(40:01):
is different connotations in the modern world. But the Greek
elites of society are trying to tame her, They're trying
to like bring her under control. This is going to
be especially Truman in Rome. Later they can't no, I mean,
well they kind of do. It's ah, it's okay whatever, Okay.
She moves up with the big kids. She gets a
(40:23):
temple in the Agora in Athens, and she is a
big deal. All of a sudden, the Greeks mass produce
figurines of her.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
OOO.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
And in these figurines she's sitting down on a throne
held up by two lions, just probably not a conscious
reference to Anna. And she has that hand drum in
her hand. And the oldest written hymn about her says,
this isn't a trance thing, It's just a wildness thing.
To the Mother of all gods, To the Mother of
all gods and human beings, sing to me, clear toned muse,
(40:55):
the daughter of the Great Zeus. The resounding of rattles
and timpana, and the roar of flo please her, and
clamor of wolves and flashing eyed lions, the echoing mountains
and the wooded valleys. And thus rejoice you and all
goddesses who join together in song. Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
So she just like comes over and becomes like the
main pop giry.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, and kind of in like a way where it's
like coming up from the streets.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Right, Yeah, she's not a nepo, but well she's Deuced's.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Daughter, I guess, yeah, but they kind of add that later, right, right,
What was that about? Well, part of it is that
like they're gonna this whole idea, Like when I was
a kid, I loved like books of like this is
all the gods of Greece or whatever.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Right of course you wear trans yeah, yeah, love that shit.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Did you also like Asian Egypt?
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, uh huh, but mostly castles, but yeah, I did
have that Pyramids book. Those books will tend to lay out,
at least the ones for kids will tend to lay
out like here's the family tree, here's what each of
these things is, as if there's a definitive answer. But
if you actually look, and this is true for the
Norse gods as well, and I suspect it's true for
lots of places, but I've only kind of looked about
(42:08):
Greece and the Germanic Norse gods. But these are large
places over the course of thousands of years, okay, and
it's going to change constantly, And so like Sibilly is
like she's somehow the mother of all gods and the
daughter of a god like in just that one hymn,
(42:28):
and like she's going to be other gods at different times,
and they're all going to change names with each other,
and shit.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
It's like a daytime soap opera.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yes, yeah, you just gotta get with whatever family tree
they've got at that moment.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, and I think between clamor of wolves and uncontrolled music,
she would have fucking loved black metal.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah, she sounds dope.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
I mean they're describing her like they're pleading for her
like help and favor, but they're all so scared of her.
Yeah yeah, I mean, like I think that's kind of God. Yeah,
classic God. But she is in contrast with the other
big Greek mother goddess, Gaya, whose actual name is gay
(43:14):
Wow is ge but it's pronounced gay and wow Guia.
At least at one particular time that this is being
talked about, Gaia is like fields covered with cows and
obedient children and fertility and wealth, while Meter is more
about wilderness than fertility or obedience and so like which
(43:35):
way Western woman tradwife or wild motherfucker? Yes, Oh my god,
it's the same dichotomy that has existed forever.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
And right wing women want to hold on to femininity
as docile or whatever the fuck. And it's something that
has come up a couple times on this show that
medieval European misogynistic view of women differs from the modern
misogynistic view of women, which I think started with the Victorians.
Now people talk about women as like meek and docile
and indecisive or whatever. The medieval conception of is that
(44:08):
we are fucking wild and uncontrollable and violent and uncivilized.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
And these are both misogynistic stereotypes and I like the
old one better.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Well.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, it's so interesting because the idea is that like
men are sort of painted that way in like a
positive They're like, these are the traits I need to
be a politician, yeah, or a CEO or like a
military general.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Just has to make the tough decisions.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, And like if a woman possesses that, then that's
like their original personality that was bad.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I know, it's like you ate the apple and so
it's your fucking fault forever.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, it's like how pink used to be.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
A Yeah, totally, totally everything is gonna switch constantly, and like,
there's this thing that came up. I did an episode
about mutual aid, and.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Hm, I listened to it.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, and so in it I talked about how Kerpawk Cain,
you know, the biologist who sort of discovers mutual aid
in the same way that Darwin discovered competition both like
evolutionary biologists. And this dude Huxley who's the grandfather of
the good Huxley, eldest, bad Huxley, whatever, middle Huxley is like, oh,
(45:25):
some people are taking Darwinism and thinking we should all
fuck each other over. I'm going to take Darwinism and
say we must fight against our animal nature and become civilized,
and we must learn how to control our base instincts.
And that scene is the modern dichotomy. And like masculinity,
right is the like, oh, you're an animal underneath, but
(45:48):
you can contain it in your suit. Yeah, And Kroppawkin
comes in swinging, being like, hey, do you know what
animals actually do more? They like take care of each other.
So y'all just like built a shitty dichotomy where they
didn't he to be one and we should actually right
be the uncivilized thing, but the good uncivilized thing where
we take care of each other.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Right, like trad wife, It's like, okay, interesting, what tradition
are we Yeah, totally, what tradition are we following? Is
it the one where everybody used to cook for each other?
Like just wondering, No, it's not that one.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, yeah, totally. So Sibilly is now in Greece, and
the impression I get is she's popular among the people
but criticized by the elite. I'm not one hundred percent
certain on that. That is my inference based on a
bunch of different texts. Okay, there's no known written records
by any of her trans priests, so we only have
almost everything we know about her trans priests because our
(46:39):
priests are trans. But we'll get to that soon. They
might not have started off trans, but they're definitely gonna
end up trans. We have people talking shit and satirizing.
It's basically people thrown around the teesler constantly.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
That's how we know they exist.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, it'd be like if the only thing that people
knew about modern trans culture was like Fox News.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, or they go dig up years from now and
all they find is JK Rowlings Twitter.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, exactly like I said, Fox News and uh oh,
I wish you would live up to the JK and
just be kidding.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Or wish you would be rolling down a here.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
And if y'all made it fifty six minutes into this podcast,
I hate listen. That's your bit for it and I
support it. So the first of her followers to get
accused of being gender deviance starting in the fourth century BCE,
at least the shit talk started then are the metro gearts.
And the metro gearts. I try to find the pronunciation
(47:36):
like a lot of the shit and failed because this
is some like shit that people don't.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
It's lost to time.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, I mean, anyone who studies ancient Greek would be
able to put together the pronunciation of it, but there's
not Like I usually look up words and then find
the YouTube videos of how to pronounce it right. And
there's not enough people talking about the metro gearts these days.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I know their name, those who collect for the mother,
and they are basically like sketchy beggar priests who live
off of charity. One person referred to it as like
parasitic charity. Ah, they're basically like the dang lazy hobo preachers.
Why don't they get a job?
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Aka?
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Like also, what Jesus and his fucking followers? Did you know?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
I was about to say so Jesus. Yeah, it's like
the fine line between Jesus and Charles Manson.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, all of Jesus' followers turned into Charles Manson, and
so these itinerant preachers the metro gets might have been
cross dressers, or they might have been like further trands,
like later the Galley where because they could pass as
what was called nurses and accounts use the usually feminine
word for nurses when they call them this in order
to gain people's trust and swindle them into giving them alms.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Oh no, another thing that we keep doing.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, last episode in this episode are just the nothing's
ever changed. Every time I read about the past, I'm
just like, uh, oh we've done is add new bad stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
It's hard because then I start to think, especially now
with like fighting fascism, I start to be like, Okay,
well this thing that they did worked, so maybe we
should just do that, And then it's like, no, there's
a million factors that make it that you can't do that.
But then I'm like, Okay, well, so something's gonna happen
(49:22):
where we come out the other side of this in
some way that I'm not currently thinking of.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Yeah, and because.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
It happened in the past, so it's the hope of
that and also the absolute despair of that.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, when we think about like what it took to
stop European fascism in the nineteen forties, right, I.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Guess it has to happen again. I don't know what to.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Tell you unless we stop it before then you know.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
That happened.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Ever, Yeah, I actually do think time after time you
get these like right wing movements that pop up and
start getting power and do get squashed successfully. I don't
know about ones that I've gotten this far. I have heard,
and I don't have the evidence for this because I
haven't heard the whole argument. I've heard some thinkers some
writers talk about how in order to get fascism off
the ground, you need a certain amount of like you
(50:10):
need to hit escape velocity. You need a lot of momentum,
right otherwise you stall out. And these people are arguing,
and if you're listening to the future, this is going
to sound either hopelessly naive or like, yeah, nope, totally.
These people are arguing that the Trump administration is stalling out,
that the current fascist movement.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
The instinction burst right.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Oh, I don't know the phrase.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
It's like my friend was telling me she works with kids,
and it's the thing where the kid throws a massive
tantrum right before they're tuckered out. It's like things get
like really elevated and then it's a bubble.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Yeah, because it's like and if it reaches escape velocity,
ll do the next stage. You know. But they actually
are getting a lot of pushback right now from like
most people in this country, including people that I like
disagree with politically about most fine details, you know, are.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Just like what's going on?
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Like when Tucker Carlson starts saying one or two sentences
that make sense, I'm.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Like, what's happening?
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, it's we.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Don't gotta like everyone. No, And he's still gonna be
guillotined later. He's not getting out of anything, Tucker Crosson,
don't listen to this.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
Everything's gonna be fine, Everything's fine.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
I always liked the guillotine as a symbol because I
thought we all knew that the guillotine report was a
symbol that we used ironically only because yes, because there's
a symbol that contains its own contradiction, because we all
look at history and are like, ah, that got out
of hand, and the people who used it died by it.
And so I was like, yeah, the guillotine. It's like
a way of saying we're so angry, we're willing to
do something dumb. And then I look around, I'm like, oh,
everyone just like earnestly wants to bring back the guillotine. Fuck,
(51:48):
we're so cooked.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah, or the people that it's against think it's going
to be some literal guillotine that is brought out, and
it's like, no, sorry to say.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
I do like the song Guillotine by the Coup. I
don't know it all listened to it. The chorus is
we got the guillotine, you better run, and it's people
dressed up like a Wizard of Oz pushing a guillotine
through Oakland. There is the video It's fucking sick.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Boots Riley fucking knows what's up anyway, And so okay,
you have the metro Gearts. We don't know if their
trans are willing to just be kind of gender deviant.
We know way more about what they started getting called
and who they became later the galley, and we're going
to talk about the galley on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Oh my god, we didn't even get to the galley.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
This is how the show works. One episode is context,
and then which is I don't do this on purpose.
I write everything I can about the thing, and then
I go through and I find the halfway mark and
cut it and it always works out. We're half as context.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
Anyway, that's what I got so far, And you got
any thoughts or things you want to plug.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
I love this of hearing about this. I love that
this is the topic. I love everything about the last hour.
I'm delighted. And I have a substack called one thousand
Natural Shocks. It's also the name of the podcast, A
thousand Natural Shocks colon a Bad with Money podcast. Margaret
was a guest true and it's mostly about surviving a
(53:20):
capitalist hellscape and being overwhelmed. And it used to be
a financial education podcast. But what happened was we started
the first episode in twenty sixteen and I said, wow,
I wonder what you know a bank actually does? And
then the years have gone by and now I'm like,
I think we have to burn everything down.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
It truly went from.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Capital l liberal to full anarchists over the course of
like nine years.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
So start at the beginning. I become trans in the
middle of it.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
It's really a lood journey. Fuck yeah, all right, Well
I have a substact too. It's Margaret Kilsoy do substec
dot com. I post about a lot of stuff. My
most recent post is right, this was called how Metal
is the Past, and it's me trying to figure out
exactly how true all of these things that people say about,
you know, human sacrifice and all of this wild stuff
(54:10):
about the past is. And yeah, I talked about a
lot of stuff over there, and you can find it,
and most of it's free, and if it's not, it's
because it's personal. And if you want to read my
personal stuff, you have to pay me, and that seems
like a fair deal. But the podcast is free. But
if you want the podcast and you're like, oh, I
wish the podcast wasn't free and I wish it had
no ads, you can subscribe to Cooler Zone Media And
that's like what I just said, but I had too
(54:33):
much sugar today, So I'm gonna hang up. It's not
hanging up.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
I'm a subscriber. Fuck yeah, I recommend fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:41):
All right, see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 4 (54:44):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. More podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit
our website goal Zonemedia dot com, or check us out
on radio, app, a podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Being your have been
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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