It Could Happen Here - Imane Khelif and the Co-option of the Mexican Terfs

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Queer Zapatista network activist Eme Flores gives Mia an update about the current status of Mexico's terf movement and how they fueled the campaign against Olympic boxer Imane Khelif. Follow Emi: @Eme...AquiFlores https://pendulo.com/libro/fulgor-de-la-noche-el_337884  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:22 You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
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Starting point is 00:01:26 That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Call zone media. When, therefore, a man is told, you, your inner being, are so-and-so because your skull bone is so constituted, this means nothing else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement, the retort here would, properly speaking, have to go to the lengths of breaking the skull of the person who makes a
Starting point is 00:01:59 statement like that in order to demonstrate to him in a manner as palpable as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reality. Welcome to Ickadapit here. I'm your host, Mia Wong. That was the man himself, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, from the Phenomenology of Mind. I'm gonna go full Caesar shitpost here. Like, that's not Hegel! Oh, lovely.
Starting point is 00:02:34 And with me is, as you have just heard, is Envy Flores, a queer socialist from Mexico City who's, uh, we've had on the show before a talk about Mexican TERFs, who's worked with Zapatista Networks, and we are, once again, I think delving into the terrifying, extremely well-organized world of Mexican turfs. And I guess this is kind of a they're eating a bit of shit episode.
Starting point is 00:02:53 Oh, yeah. Which is good. We have good news in this show. Woo! Very rare occurrence. We have a little bit of good news. Yeah, also, welcome to the show. Excited to have you back.
Starting point is 00:03:04 I love it i i love the show and uh i'm happy to update because last time we left on a real sour note and this time i mean it's not exactly fantastic news but things are looking up in this specific part and i think you're gonna introduce us to a massive dolly we just got worldwide. Yeah, so we ended up not doing a full episode on this, but one of the big sort of stories for the last few weeks, and I don't know when this episode is going to be coming out, so maybe this is going to be ancient news by that point,
Starting point is 00:03:37 but the day we're recording this is like one day after the Algerian boxer, Iman Khalif, won the gold medal at the Olympics. She has been, I meanlympics she has been i mean this story has been sort of beaten to death but like she's been like accused of being a man and being like transgender and like all of this shit from a whole bunch of like i mean everyone from like elon musk to like jk rowling to megan kelly's losing her mind about i forgot she even existed until this but she's apparently around and doing this you know so so i i think people sort of know the basics of this story but there's a part of the story about sort of you know i guess we'll probably
Starting point is 00:04:17 get into a little bit of this about how a lot of this is sort of manufactured by a bunch of incredibly sore losers and like weird transphobes in a incredibly corrupt like russian ran boxing association um right right but the other side of this that has gotten absolutely zero coverage anywhere is that a huge amount of of the attacks against against her were started by the Mexican Turf Network. Yeah, and surprisingly, one of the few coverages I've seen has been in Mexican feminist news, which is part of the things that have changed since then. Mexican and Latin American feminists have realized,
Starting point is 00:04:57 oh, we fucked up, and we're trying to fix our mistakes. But sadly, I think the world suffered one of our latest mistakes yeah so can you tell us about sort of how this whole thing started which i think is like several years earlier than most people seem to really like understand i think the corruption angle that we might expand a little bit more uh that is uh the the beginning of it and I think it was a little bit Imane was in the wrong place at the wrong time let's be real she won gold, I was not betting on her winning gold, she's really good
Starting point is 00:05:32 but she's not like the buffest out there, it's pure racism and convenience that she's been labeled and targeted the way she is, because you like, you see her opponents, and they're the buffest girls I've ever seen in my life. They're incredible.
Starting point is 00:05:50 Like, every single athlete up there is amazing. And I took pictures of her and say, you're telling me this is not a man? Like, she's, like, a little bit skinny, honestly. Like, she's really tall, so she has to be skinny to compete in that way. Yeah, it's like, have you people ever seen a boxer a boxer before? It's just sort of baffling. One of the boxers that defended her, she was offended.
Starting point is 00:06:12 You're telling me that I beat Imani before, and I didn't even qualify for this year's Olympics. She's not invincible, even if this is probably her best performance. She's really strong in the spotlight. I love her. But she's not extremely muscular invincible even if this is probably her best best performance yeah she really shone under a spotlight i love her but like she's not extremely muscular or anything not that being muscular is masculine but like this was really just both racism and convenience but part of that is uh one of the first people who started complaining about this uh after the corrupt russian uh russian oligarch led boxing federation that got disqualified from the olympics yeah like again i i want to i want to pause here and
Starting point is 00:06:52 everyone like take note of this do you understand how corrupt of an organization you have to be for the fucking olympics to stop working with you like you, you have to make the Chicago fucking machine look squeaky clean for the Olympics to not work with you. Like, we're talking about every single other sport is also doing shit like this. Like, they just went too greedy.
Starting point is 00:07:18 Like, they, like, it's Russian oligarch that got into fights with people during the war in Ukraine and then didn't stop doing corrupt shit. Like, they couldn't just take a year break. They had to push. Yeah. They had to play too dirty.
Starting point is 00:07:33 So, at the end of the day, Imena got disqualified with, like, trust me, bro levels of citations for her. No one knew for a while what was the thing that disqualified her what was it hormones chromosomes vibes it turns out it's mostly vibes yeah and uh and so when when she got disqualified from uh uh not an olympic event but uh uh corrupt russian oligarch led event a former uh boxer who lost against her who's from me Mexico who sucks ass like she's really dog shit she started posting pictures of her bruises after the match and honestly she reminds me of the Italian boxer that also got her shit rocked yeah because they keep she did perform very well
Starting point is 00:08:22 Imane at the at the end when when she got gold but the the very first like matches she got were against like how did these people get here yeah like that italian boxer like this is the only time i will ever say this about something that happened in the olympics was like the italian boxer threw the worst punch i've ever seen and then instantly got punched by like the most obvious punch in the entire world in the face. It's like wait, what are you doing? How did you get here? I don't go deep into why
Starting point is 00:08:51 Brianna and Tamara suck so much ass because that would have been the episode we ended up not doing but suffice it to say like she's just not in that level. She didn't qualify for a reason this time. But and also I noticed that she was waiting to do her pro debut right now like something felt planned about all of this
Starting point is 00:09:11 yeah like she she announced that she retired from amateur boxing which you know honestly is the more legit boxing don't at me and uh she she's going pro which means she's now charging for tickets. And she announced her pro debut the same day that this whole, like, bongle started for international people watching the Olympics. Like, she very much knew that the people were going to try something. Yeah, so she's using this as, like, boxing promoting. Yeah, pretty much. Which is, like, the shadiest shit yeah boxing promoting in sinaloa which like if you know anything about mexico that's that's gonna be a couple red lights oh boy but so the the thing is why did she knew that she was gonna happen
Starting point is 00:09:58 really says a lot about how uh international turfs are operating nowadays, right? Like, I don't want to get all fucking Russiagate and, like, have my fucking persecutor body pillow like some Leafs have, but TERFs are trying to get money and influence anywhere they can, and some of them are trying to get in from Russia, right? Like, if they're already putting people in concentration camps in Chechnya,
Starting point is 00:10:23 like, they say, hell yeah, I want me some of that. And, you know, the Brits are sometimes too focused on Britain. You need something international to make the money flow down to Latin America, especially out of Spain. Spain kind of hawks it all for themselves. The first news site that took this years ago, translated it to English, is called Redox Magazine, like that that I think it's a Canadian joint Redox it's the only site I've seen in all of like the turf landscape that only publishes in English and Spanish like it's very clearly a fulcrum for like turf organizing in Latin America and in the Anglosphere and I don't't think it's a coincidence that this story broke,
Starting point is 00:11:08 quote unquote, like the first people who commented on this and like, renewed the accusations of humanity being trans was Redux. And then other like, transphobic boxing coaches from Italy and England and the United States started picking up the story but that was after like the the more diplomatically minded Mexican turfs and Spanish turfs that usually don't work together again they don't like to share listen Mexico doesn't have the best relation with Spain for obvious reasons yeah and uh but even then like as spaces for TERFs in Mexico had been closing, they're looking for funding from other places. Right. The TERF Gambit didn't work quite well in Mexico. So they're trying to look for international sponsorships.
Starting point is 00:11:56 And they thought they had hit a big one here. They had the attention of the entire world. People were sharing Brianda's photos because like again, Brianda doesn't have it's not a good boxer so she looks like a young short pretty lady that could be your barista and put her against like someone who's like a head taller that beat her ass cuz she sucks they couldn't ask for a better propaganda yeah but it really backfired when the entire world went what what? What are you talking about? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:30 But I think it worked for Mexican Terps. I think they might get like a couple of grants here and there. They're back in the radar, at least internationally. And that's why I think coming here is really important because we didn't win precisely. And we'll get to that. But at least we're in a stalemate and i think they're trying to look for either allies or honestly jobs elsewhere they might just want yeah a spot in redox magazine like to get into like be able to move to britain or shit like that yeah i think
Starting point is 00:12:57 this is something that is important about the mexican turfs which is that like unlike in the u.s where there's just this like unbelievably large pot of money that you can tap into from like the heritage foundation and like all of you sort of like right-wing think tanks it's like the funding is a lot harder to come by we we all have troubles getting funding yeah any type of small grant that would be a nothing burger in america goes a long way here right and so the far right has been really smart and pushing stuff but it hasn't really paid dividends and uh it's all gonna dry up for a while honestly especially with like how the economy is going i think uh in the age of infinite money of, like they were willing to throw more money at like a long shot bet in Brazil or Mexico. Right now, they got to bring something to the table
Starting point is 00:13:50 and they tried to bring in money and they, I think they fucking ate shit. Hell yeah. So, okay, you know what else brings something to the table? It is the products and services that put food on my table, I guess. God, the other pros of this. Here are these ads.
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Starting point is 00:14:45 more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas,
Starting point is 00:15:18 the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to
Starting point is 00:16:08 life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture
Starting point is 00:16:29 shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. So I wanted to kind of move to talking about what's been happening in the sort of Mexican feminist scene in terms of sort of what's been going on with TERF since the election of the new Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who's, I don't know, like, I think a lot of Americans, I think the conception of her is that she's like significantly further left than she actually is. You know what? I felt so much Skarren Freud when people started talking about Kamala,
Starting point is 00:17:45 like she was going to end apartheid and end the genocide. And I was like, how does it fucking feel? I got really angry at every single article. No one clocked her correctly. Both the far right and the left thought she was significantly to the left. Everyone said, oh like oh finally a feminist jewish woman and like the jewish party is gonna play a part because like i do feel we're gonna see a rise in anti-semitism in mexico a big one like i say i i feel like a birther style movement
Starting point is 00:18:16 from when obama was elected coming up and it's gonna play again i i see claudia sheenbaum uh she's not just an extension of amlo and she is i would say not further to the left than andres manuel lopez but she has less right wing things about her right it's not like she's better than amlo she's just less worse she's she because like i was like an old christian guy like i do mean christian like this is a catholic country and amlo is like i think it's he's like pentecostal or something like he's christian guy like i do mean christian like this is a catholic country and amlo is like i think it's he's like pentecostal or something like he's never uh needed like what his relatives said but he did do like weird right-wing things uh especially culturally well i mean not everywhere
Starting point is 00:18:56 right like we got hella militarized like half our infrastructure is owned by the military now which is like you can just jakarta myth buying ourselves like for free yeah and uh he goes on rants about how drugs are caused by value video games and like uh like he like for for a week tried to like say we should ban fortnite that didn't go anywhere and i think it was just because his son didn't stop playing it maybe he he overspent on the family uh credit card i don't know but like yeah he's very like he has a very christian morality and uh it's a weird fit with mexicans catholic one yeah in the weirdest way like he's very like work will like very protestant ethics guy and people didn't talk about that and now they think claudia is gonna bring like jewish ethics and no she's like way just like a mexican scientist
Starting point is 00:19:51 like professional like she's very much a scientist at least that's her self-conception and how she operates and she i think a lot of people underestimated her. They just saw her as an appendage of AMLO with no real political acumen or skill of herself. She doesn't really have a base of voters. Again, she's an academic. Her base of voters are college graduates, left-leaning college graduates, but not too left-leaning. Because otherwise you'll see, like, hey, please stop militarizing our country. you'll see like hey please stop militarizing our country and uh yeah so we we didn't expect her to to to win with like the margins that she did she won with historic margins more votes than ambla got it's just she's so fucking shrewd and this ties to the turfs because like four years
Starting point is 00:20:40 we were really worried because like we thought she was a TERF like we straight up thought she was a TERF even though she passed some of the largest like trans positive legislations in Mexico City that was more like momentum from Mexico City being like this progressive center of Mexican politics and uh like I know I participated in getting that law passed like like she wasn't happy about that she basically was trying to get some heritage foundation funded folks to sit in a table and like have a big discussion like a very centrist thing of like let's listen to both sides and it's because she had like some of the og tariffs uh from mexico like from some some of them like that started in the 70s, people who knew Janice Raymond when she was young, were literally in Morena's structure. During 2020, the women's agenda for Morena was set by TERFs,
Starting point is 00:21:33 by some of the worst TERFs, some of the most internationally well-connected TERFs too, right? And that was a huge problem. We managed to push back against that with protests, with talking to politicians, not really begging. We just, you know, that's a nice window you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. And also by my collective, we started focusing on, oh God, I don't want to say Olsen anymore.
Starting point is 00:22:01 Because since Ukraine, saying Olsen is so cringe. to say all sin anymore because like since since ukraine like saying all sins is so cringe yeah but like we started like investigating and like tracking like these people start showing up in like government positions that was really worrying yeah some of them were like very clearly affiliated with the far right but some of them were uh they came from like union jobs and shit like that or they were like they were the anarchists throwing bricks at walls like a year ago and we started seeing them get co-opted slowly and we were really scared but then i think we underestimated that claudia was playing us but she was also playing them like she is a really shrewd political operator, and she gave TERFs enough to get them to do what TERFs do best, which is break up feminist organizing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:50 So whatever Claudia could not directly co-opt to, like, get, like, leaders. There were some, like, black blocs in Mexico whose leaders, like, literally had in their LinkedIn that they were, like, doing, like, black bloc shit. Oh, my God. I know. It's incredible. had in their linkedins that they were like doing like black block shit oh my god i know it's incredible and it just gave everything away because the same person who did that had in her linkedin like a year previously that she was like an ad for uh a morena congresswoman oh my god and uh yeah i think what morena did was uh infiltrate a lot of black blocs to neutralize them because during 2020 two years after amblo got elected like mexican feminists were i would say the biggest fire in social movements in mexico like with the zapatistas getting surrounded by
Starting point is 00:23:40 state-sponsored narco cartels and stuff, they were really paralyzed, and with COVID and everything like that. A lot of other organizing got real damaged. But feminists were trying to get abortion passed, and they succeeded for most of it. But institutional feminists succeeded banning abortion, and more independent or street anarchist, socialist-based feminists, they suddenly didn't have anything to demand. So they either got cushy government jobs or they got arrested or they helped the police arrest people by being clearly just like, you know, the classic, like eight people get arrested and one of them gets out in like a week and it's like oh yeah and uh so like feminists got a rude awakening and
Starting point is 00:24:33 before they were more permissive like like cool feminists like real leftist socialists uh and queer feminists were more permissive of TERFs during like the 2016 to 2022 because they thought like we need unity within feminism we need to like get abortion passed we need to like combat both the far right and amlost conservatism and well they won and a bunch of their leaders got co-opted we have an epidemic of like feminist activists passing laws with their names like the one movement that got defeated the worst is anti-carceral feminism like forget about abolitionism in the carceral sense it's no one gave a shit about that even anarchists were trying to pass laws to like lay Olivia to scalp that's who
Starting point is 00:25:20 haven't paid child support like they really bet everything on punitivism. That's the thing that united every single segment of feminism, including rat fans and tariffs. They love putting people in jail. It's their whole entire deal. The thing is, that's the way you get co-opt someone. You just tell her,
Starting point is 00:25:41 instead of being an anarcho-punk tagging government buildings what if i just give you a shitload of money and i pay for you to go to fancy hotels in every state and like talk about how important it is that we throw your ex into a into a meat processing machine uh for like breaking up with you yeah and uh i mean i'm being glib like there's horrible shit like we had to pass a law to like give more time to people who threw acid at women's faces right but like that's already legal yeah it's already legal i don't know if it's gonna work that well especially because like i think one of the most biggest cases of like a literal trafficker just got off jail this week and uh
Starting point is 00:26:27 he he literally tortured one of mexico's biggest rat fans and it's like what did he you did this all for nothing like you're just gonna like lock up more poor people and like rich assholes are gonna walk free yeah and so yeah that was. Then it got co-opted. And just like Claudia gave us some laws for trans people, she put TERFs in government positions. We protested that. And then she dropped them. Like, she really did a...
Starting point is 00:26:57 Andy with Woody. Like, I don't want to play with you anymore. Like, once she neutralized the feminist movement, once there were like, there was no threat of escalation. She really didn't need the black, the fake black blocks. She just, you know, drop them. Yeah. And speaking of fake black blocks, you too could buy a fake black block from these products and services. Products and services.
Starting point is 00:27:31 I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing
Starting point is 00:28:12 parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.
Starting point is 00:28:52 Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again,
Starting point is 00:29:33 the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.
Starting point is 00:29:58 Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast and we are back yeah so let's get into what's been happening in kind of present day the thing that's really interesting to me about like about the way that sort of mexican turf stuff works is that they in a way that's kind i don't know american turfs kind of work like this like they really function in a very similar way to like left social movements right except that
Starting point is 00:30:51 they're like newer world social movement for evil but it's like like they have a lot of the same kind of like strengths and weaknesses that that like conventional like social movements have which i i think ties into a lot of what's going to happen to them and the fact that you can you know in in the same way that you can co-opt a social movement like they're also vulnerable to that yeah well when money dries up and like the options are stop organizing as a feminist like i cannot tell you how many lesbian separatists turfs are married and pregnant now it's like they just dropped that shit. Like, Shimon dropped them.
Starting point is 00:31:29 Like, Shimon didn't do it out of the kindness of her heart. I think she realized that this was a vulnerability. She needed to convince, like, the Jacobins of the world that she was this socialist president. Like, amblo, but even better. Now in feminist form. And she really couldn't do that if there was like this huge like people who didn't even pay attention to Mexican politics but just
Starting point is 00:31:51 JK Rowling like this was just a huge vulnerability she also didn't want this mostly to be a debate I've heard rumors and I buy them completely like that she pushed for no uh trans women being legislators in our congress because we had uh we had two before one of them sucked ass and the other one was kind of fine like just normal lefty centrist woman uh the other one was just horrible so it's honestly i'm good with it yeah i mean that that's the situation we're about to head here we're like we're gonna get our first transfer but congressman she's absolutely dog shit, like terrible Zionist. Yeah, no, they were a nightmare to work with. They consistently, I think they were just there to like waste our fucking time.
Starting point is 00:32:37 Like you would have a meeting with them. So should we like pass this legislation saying that you can have no gender on your voter ID? And that took the whole six years. Jesus Christ. And I didn't even want it. I haven't even changed my legal name. It's not my priority, but it was a lot of people's priorities. And they kind of wasted our whole community's time.
Starting point is 00:33:01 But even that was not enough. I think Shayma just didn't want the headlines like she was content for others other people to handle the quote-unquote debate she didn't want anything to do with it because she it only cost her like the reason she defended some tariffs it's that some of them were like loyal to her and that's what she wanted she wanted loyalty because she needed party loyalty to like have a tight grip on morena because what she knew she could win pretty easily she didn't need to appeal to the right or the center right and good for her like i'm an anti-electoralist but like electoralists should not fucking listen to suburban moms like who gives a shit yeah going more to the left is to a certain extent is better
Starting point is 00:33:46 electorally like just look at the numbers between paris and biden and it's just vibes it's not even like real policy but just the vibes like you don't need you don't need to listen to pan voters because they're pan voters they're not gonna vote for morena and like the the right here in Mexico is really weird because like they have this really like neoliberal view, but their culture is so aristocratic. It's kind of like what if Dems were like British Tories? Because they hate poor people. Not like Republicans hate poor people, like because they also pretend to be poor people panistas don't they lost half because shamebone really took hold of morena's structure and mobilized it to vote in a way that was unprecedented even more than amlo's votes and because like panistas just couldn't shut up about
Starting point is 00:34:35 how racist they are they were just constantly saying the most horrible shit about morena voters yeah and there were campaigns by pan saying go vote because they thought that like amlo is like a dictator because they really think that everyone is a dictator yeah everyone that's to the left of mussolini is a dictator i'm a dictator so go out and vote they thought like citizen participation is gonna destroy the amlo regime from we're gonna be back to Mexico instead of being Cuba Suela del Norte. But the thing is, when you send most of the population to vote, they're not going to vote for the most repugnant
Starting point is 00:35:15 classist people ever. And the candidate they chose was not a far-right candidate. Xochitl Galvez was an indigenous woman. They thought they were going to outflank Sheyman with that, but they didn't. She sucks at Xochitl. She's not far-right.
Starting point is 00:35:34 She used to be in PRD, which was also AMLO's party. But she was part of, like, when PAN got into power in 2000, she was the one in charge of the negotiation with the stln and she betrayed the zapatistas oh jesus christ she was not gonna get any indigenous vote like yeah so this is the first time the right does this right like pan did the fucking classic damn thing of like offering a watered-down version of the can the other candidate and they lost enormously and a lot of turfs to get back to the topic a lot of turfs bet on both of them they were really hedging they wanted to be especially more uh institutional turfs they said as long as we get a woman president we're gonna be cool yeah and that like backfired
Starting point is 00:36:17 on them yeah oh yeah like shame like i said what she cares about is loyalty she didn't care about bradfems because she believed in them just like she didn't care about rat fans because she believed in them just like she didn't care about trans people because she believed in us she wanted loyal like loyal dogs and if you are hedging your bets yeah and she wins with 60 you're not gonna see a single cent from the government yeah she kind of okay this is like this is an absolutely deranged comparison but she kind of reminds me of xi Jinping in the way that, like, the way that Xi Jinping does politics is by... Every single more energy of politics, not just fainted when you say that. No, because, like, Xi Jinping's, like, political style is sort of, you know, he's been very, very good at, like, centralizing the bureaucracy around him and sort of, like, neutralizing social movements.
Starting point is 00:37:07 I mean, this has been a classic, like, sort of long-range, like, post-culture revolution, like, Chinese Communist Party thing of, like, we need to make sure there's not street movements. We need to sort of neutralize. Yeah, it's also Amos' thing, you know? Yeah, but it's also, like, you know, Xi Jinping sort of very much is also, like,
Starting point is 00:37:23 a loyalty guy, right? He's, like, you know, he will sort of set up anti-corruption things to, like, purge right he's like you know he he will he will sort of set up anti-corruption things to like purge people who are like aren't loyal to him because that's you know that's that's the way that this kind of like centralizing politics works and it's it's really interesting that like we're seeing this with we're seeing this with the terse route was like well you guys like i'm sorry you guys weren't fucking loyal enough so like eat shit you're gonna get get anti-corruption campaigns there's people that we protest that are super close to shame on that we were really scared would get government positions and we're tariffs they didn't get
Starting point is 00:37:56 shit there's no like trans legislator but there's also no turf legislators yeah there's a world where that could have happened we would have would have been fucked. I think without our protests, like, not just the ones we organized from my colectivo, the Red de Disidencia Sexual y Degenerado, that we focused on some of the closest to Sheinbaum, but, like, every trans person knew that, like, this was
Starting point is 00:38:17 something real there. And we kind of put a stop to it, but it ended up in a stalemate. Because, again, what Sheinbaum did was defend her loyal Terps. And she moved them to positions outside of the spotlight. Honestly, more suited to their talents. Like her Terps were not really charismatic. She was trying to set them up like as influencers.
Starting point is 00:38:39 And like they just had no focus. It's no juice at all. I mean, that is a classic Terps thing. It's like just being the most juiceless motherfuckers on the planet. Absolutely. And, like, really incoherent politics. Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:38:52 Because, like, again, they were kind of, like, they're more, like, lefty in discourse. They were very nationalist, obviously. But also, like, they were hyping how feminist she was. And, like, oh oh we're gonna confront american imperialism and while at the same time like being obsessed with like british turfs so like the it was really contradictory so morena calls their movement like the 4t the 4t the fourth transformation uh which is like just i won't even get into it it's just such a fucking bizarre thing didn't oblo have the third transformation or something or was he also doing the fourth transformation oh it's like no no it's
Starting point is 00:39:29 like the the independence when we kick francis ass and then revolution those are the three oh and then okay and then the fourth is him yeah right like he's saying like i'm i'm benito juarez reborn oh god and uh yeah cringe but like it's stuck. I honestly, I use it cause like, it's such a good shorthand cause morena is so large, such, such a big word.
Starting point is 00:39:51 And, and it's also cringe cause like movimiento, regeneration, nacional, morena, which means morena means like brown skin. So, and also like virgen morena,
Starting point is 00:40:01 which is like Mexico's virgin Mary. So very cringe. Even Cuatro Terf is even less cringe. So yeah, sure, whatever. But like one of the most famous Mexican feminists started calling them the Cuatro Terf. Oh my God. That sucks. It's brilliant.
Starting point is 00:40:16 I fucking love Paqueta. So that sucked. But basically the Cuatro Terf is not out of power. Like the most ambitious ones and the most purely turfs got quick kicked out and the loyal dogs got sent to do like other jobs like they're now talking to academics about like green progressive socialism and shit like they're just doing talks in like with like 80 year old tenured professors and like that is still risky and there's we're still watching them yeah but i think shimon told them like i'm protect you, but you need to shut the fuck up.
Starting point is 00:40:45 You better not say the word trans for six years. Go nuts afterwards. You're going to have a job and you are going to have a possibility of returning, but I'm not going to help you. That's on you. And, like, honestly, at least that's a fair playing field. I'll take it. I'll fucking take it so yeah i guess like the the state of things seems to be that the deal is we're just gonna take like trans people as a political issue off the table for yeah whatever many years well i think we're we're gonna she's gonna let like states handle it
Starting point is 00:41:19 like if a trans law passes in the state she's's going to let it. And I don't think anti-trans laws are going to have a good time trying to pass. Because the right hate shit is all that. They really thought they were going to at least have a competitive edge. And no one voted for it. And again, there's a lot of terms that were more aligned with the far right. But they were not acting like it their rhetoric didn't look until a couple months ago like the rhetoric that britain or the u.s turfs uh have both types of u.s turf that i think there's we have every single type of turf here in mexico if you can think of a
Starting point is 00:41:59 type of turf we have it i think britain is mostly wine moms, and the US is both NGO freaks and, like, hippie weirdos, like, ex-anarchists, deep green resistance types, right? Like... Yeah, well, I need to draw the line here, damn it. The deep green resistance people were never anarchists. They were always weird primitivists, but, like,
Starting point is 00:42:19 Vanguard is primitivist. Yeah, I know. I love that article by Julie, who accompanied me in the last episode about someone throwing a hot dog at them it fucking rules and but yeah right like we had that like we even have like a deep resistance mexico thing yeah going on for like a couple of years so mexican turfs here that align themselves with the far right are going to see both less resources because the far right is healing some bruised egos. So the right are going to have to go full fascist, which, oh, they will. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Many such cases. Yeah. They can no longer get money from like your center right, like respectable democracy. People who are basically are just right they don't they they're they spend most of their time like just complaining about like maduro and amlo and yeah like treating like everyone's the same thing because the only thing they want is like just they want neoliberalism and i'm tired of telling them we have neoliberalism yeah like why am i just neoliberalism with a little bit of just enough like welfare state to like keep everything from blowing up so yeah this that's the
Starting point is 00:43:32 case here they ate shit they don't have money so they either have to find local fascists with which they have or they have to appeal to brits with things like the boxing scandal. Yeah, and that sort of brings us full circle to, like, I guess, literally the present day, as in, like, the time this is being recorded, where their big attempt to, like, generate a bunch of revenue for themselves and, like, bring themselves back into the spotlight has kind of blown up in their faces. Yeah, and listen, one of the few good kind of blown up in their faces yeah and listen one of the few good
Starting point is 00:44:07 parts of like uh morena's co-option of feminism is that some previously like i don't want to say controversial but like there were really a lot of campaigns to try to remove prestige from any any prominent uh trans-inclusive feminists in Mexico. Like Mexican academia and Mexican high feminism really started to go full Ratham in 2016. And it started by trying to attack any single prestigious feminist that was not a TERF. Chief amongst them is Marta Lamas, who I love her.
Starting point is 00:44:42 She's extremely lame, but I still love her because's extremely lame and but like i still love her uh because she she comes from a history of like not quite radical but not quite radical uh mexican academia that like says she'd like reformist in method radical in objectives sure sure but she at least thinks it's true and lives by it. And she's, if you want to read stuff by her, she has one of the best accounts of the history of sex work in Mexico. Fulgora en la Noche, a fantastic book, fully recommended. Yeah, we'll put a link to that in the description.
Starting point is 00:45:16 Yeah, so she got into like the mayor of Mexico City's team. She's now in Clara Brugada's team. And Clara is like the front runner for the next presidential candidate. She is not Shane Bond's team. She is now in Clara Brugada's team. And Clara is like the frontrunner for the next presidential candidate. She is not Sheinbaum's friend. So my suspicion is that Sheinbaum is keeping her terms on reserve to push back against Clara. Oh, interesting. To find another female candidate and prop her up as the feminist successor to Claudia. Or a male candidate.
Starting point is 00:45:42 and proper up as the feminist successor to Claudia. Or a male candidate. She needs feminists on her side, on reserve, to combat Clara. Clara, again, is further to live than Sheinbaum, and she doesn't come from an academic background. She comes from a grassroots, urban movement background, like the hood of Mexico City.
Starting point is 00:46:04 In turn, Brugada needs more institutional and like legit support. And Marta Lamas, while she was controversial because of TERFs smearing her, but she is Marta fucking Lamas and she is white as hell. So Clara got her in her team and now she gets to be
Starting point is 00:46:18 the chief leftist feminist in Mexico. Because like, if Claudia starts talking too much about feminism, well, she's a Google search away from, like, TERF scandals. Yeah, yeah. And Marta really pushed back against TERF influence in Morena, which I'm really thankful. Like, if you're gonna be co-opted, that's the least amount of, like, allyship you need to fucking do, right?
Starting point is 00:46:41 Yeah, yeah, you need to push the TERFs out from your, like, fucking mansion. Oh, we can push X to the left. Well, then do it. I... People love saying they want to push politicians to the left and then don't push politicians to the left. They just want to have the critic power. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:59 Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to make sure we get to before we wrap up i think wrapping up uh to the redox magazine keep an eye on like those kinds of places that are trying to connect things because you we already saw that this can spill over from mexico or brazil or korea yeah i think korea is gonna be bad yeah yeah so the thing about korea i haven't done much about we probably will at some point cover the stuff in korea um korea is having a really really sort of unbelievable sort of anti-feminist backlash but this has also had the impact of like
Starting point is 00:47:38 really empowering the radfems yeah and it's uh it's a complete catastrophe um yeah i would really advise against idealizing feminism of ben salesworth yeah do your research don't don't just accept on face value that like a face you know from a third world country is gonna be like the voice of the global south that's just not fucking true like if you hear a face of the global south it's probably because there's money behind it like yeah unless you're really deep and know your shit the the first thing that's going to show up is going to have money behind it so be really careful with other feminist movements i saw how people idealized mexican feminism not knowing just how deeply both infiltrated by the government and paid by far-right groups.
Starting point is 00:48:30 And that really backfired. Like one of the only survivors of right-leaning but left-presenting feminists that's called Brujas del Mar. Yeah. They're probably the only group that's going to survive during the Shane Bone presidency. Yeah, big turf group. Yeah. They never tried to get close to Shane Bone but also they are they never dropped the mask fully and they're one of the biggest pushers of the imanethin not the originators those are the more uh
Starting point is 00:48:56 internationally connected but they were the biggest pushers of it they have the most followers they really push the narrative they were featured in times 100 like aruci onda was times 100 from mexico so be really careful of who you think are supporting yeah because this is going to be happening i think it's it might be over for now in mexico and we i think we didn't win but maybe we can stop them from resurging in five years or so and then i think that would really seal the deal but this is going to be happening everywhere where you're going to see it a lot in like african feminist movements in south asian southeast asian feminist movements yeah you're gonna see pop up all over the world take a lesson from mexico
Starting point is 00:49:35 and uh look for trans folks over there ask them hey is this person cool yeah just the minimum due diligence before like sharing go funds man shit like please for the love of god we again a dollar goes a long way here so if even like you give something that would barely cover rent for someone in the united states that's enough to set up an organization here yeah and really fuck local politics for years to come. So, I don't know, please be careful. Yeah. So, if people want to find you and the stuff that you do that is not shit, where can they
Starting point is 00:50:11 find you? Well, I'm on XDAverything app as M.A.Q. Flores and also I have a podcast called Fresapatistas con Crema. It's a really good pun in Spanish, trust me. And I'm also trying to launch a project
Starting point is 00:50:28 that's going to be like a sort of media watchdoggy thing. Again, we're working with like scents here, so it's going to take a while. Yeah. But keep an eye out if, I don't know if you, if you want to learn more stuff about Mexico and like what's going on beyond like either far-right news like that saw shamebone in a photograph with a trans flag and freaked out
Starting point is 00:50:50 or just like people who take everything at face value and believe that shamebone is the second coming of marx so i don't know i'll try to keep folks posted because it's complicated like yeah we took us an hour to talk about even just one topic. Yeah, things complicated. Who could possibly have guessed that, you know, it's difficult to understand very convoluted political configurations. Yeah. So, yeah, for now, I'm only on X, and YouTube. Again, for Zapatistas con Crema, I stream on Twitch.
Starting point is 00:51:23 Honestly, this is going to sound... Maybe you're going to monologue this, but I really admire y'all. Honestly, both that and a little bit of envy. There's not really an ecosystem of content creation or news from a leftist perspective here. Like most of the people... Again, a lot of them also got co-opted a lot of friends I had
Starting point is 00:51:48 in independent leftist publishing and news in Mexico are now full on just morena spokespeople, or they went insane and anti-vax and now they're far right many such cases yeah
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