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Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? Hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Learn more: www.badgayspod.com

Bad Gays

He was a a thug, a bully, and a murderer who made himself a British popular hero. He was a friend of Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, and he once said, “I’m homosexual but I’m not a poof”. We use the deplorable story of Ronnie Kray to explore class, crime and postwar British attitudes towards homosexuality. A content note: this episode contains frank discussions of childhood sexual abuse; as such, listener discretion is advised. 

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SOURCES:

Campbell, Duncan. "The Selling of the Krays: How Two Mediocre Criminals Created Their Own Legend." The Guardian, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/03/the-selling-of-the-krays-how-two-mediocre-criminals-created-their-own-legendlegends

Kray, Ronnie. My Story. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1993.

Pearson, John. Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins. London: Arrow Books, 2011.

Pearson, John. The Profession of Violence. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Episode 8: Ronnie Kray

Gertrude Stein is remembered as a novelist, playwright, poet, and, art collector –– and the hostess of a Paris salon that gathered the cream of interwar modernism, including Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Matisse. A semi-open lesbian, her books include Q.E.D., one of the earliest English-language lesbian novels, and Tender Buttons, a book of poems full of allusion to lesbian sexuality. But in the last years of her life, as a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France, Stein sustained her lifestyle as an art collector and ensured her safety through the protection of powerful Vichy government officials – part of a pattern of involvement in far-right, antisemitic, and fascist politics. 

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SOURCES:

Johnston, Georgia. The Formation of 20th-Century Queer Autobiography: Reading Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Hilda Doolittle, and Gertrude Stein. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007.
Malcolm, Janet. “Gertrude Stein’s War.” The New Yorker. June 2, 2003. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/gertrude-steins-war.
Pavloska, Susanna. Modern Primitives: Race and Language in Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Reissue edition. Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications, 1997.
———. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Wineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Lincoln: Combined Academic Publishing, 2008.
 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Gertrude Stein

For a time, one of the world's most famous rock stars – singer of stadium rock anthems that still signify foot-stomping machismo – existed as an avatar of the most exuberant, feared, liberation-era forms of homosexuality: going from a 1970s long hair in skin-tight leotards cut to the navel to a Castro clone with a handlebar moustache who wore fisting T-shirts in his music videos. If the legacy of Mercury and his music often seems to smooth his work, and that of his band, Queen, into a sort of middle-aged, KISS FM everyday normality, here we lean into the contradictions of the charismatic man and the nuances of queer life in the 1970s and 1980s. 

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SOURCES

John Harris, “The Sins of St Freddie,” The Guardian, January 14, 2005, sec. Music, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jan/14/2

Jim Hutton and Tim Wapshott, Mercury and Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1995); Lesley-Ann Jones, Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury (London: Touchstone Press, 2012)

Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne, Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury (London: Weldon Owen, 2016)

“Remembering Queen’s Infamous 1981 Tour of South America,” Remezcla (blog), accessed February 8, 2022, https://remezcla.com/features/music/we-remember-queens-infamous-tour-of-latin-america/

 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Freddie Mercury

available with easy shipping to both sides of the Atlantic.
 
On this month's episode of Extra Bad Gays, we discuss Luigi Mangione, who has now been charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier this month. How do some assassins become folk heroes? Why is there such a groundswell of support for Mangione? Is it just because he's really hot? (He's really hot.) For the full story, and the charming Gaggony Guncles segment that concludes the show, subscribe on Apple or Patreon.

Extra Bad Gays December 2024: Luigi Mangione, Folk Hero? (Trailer)

From almost the first season of the show, we’ve been tantalised by stories of the Burmese gangster Olive Yang. Now, to open season 8, we have their story: Olive was a lesbian — or possibly transmasculine — gangster born royal in 1927 British colonial Burma, who when first married off to a man threw a pot of their own urine at him to prevent the marriage from being consummated. They ran away from polite society, dated actresses, ran opium, were involved with the CIA, and helped negotiate settlements between ethnic groups. 

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SOURCES:

Paluch, Gabrielle. The Opium Queen: The Untold Story of the Rebel Who Ruled the Golden Triangle. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023.
 

Scott, James C., ed. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale Agrarian Studies Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner

Olive Yang

Today's episode profiles a very bad bisexual: the lawyer, soldier and society favourite, Tom Mitford. But the idea of featuring Tom is partly a ruse. This will be not just a profile of Tom himself, but of his whole family, and especially his six siblings, the famed Mitford Sisters, whose intense, often conflicting relationships have become something of an obsession for English culture - and not always a very healthy one. They embody so much about the English elite: eccentric, vicious, often listless and desperately sad. We also promise to you, as has become a theme of the podcast, some DBNs - Disturbingly British Names. And an indescribable cover of Right Said Fred by Jessica Mitford and Dr. Maya Angelou, on both voice and kazoo.

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SOURCES:

Lovell, Mary S. The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family. New edition. Abacus, 2002.
 
Mitford, Jessica. Hons and Rebels. New York Review Books Classics. New York: New York Review Books, 2004.
 

Mitford, Nancy. The Pursuit of Love. First Edition. New York: Vintage, 2010.

 

Mitford, Nancy. Love in a Cold Climate. 1st edition. Vintage, 2010.
 

Mosley, Charlotte, ed. The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters. UK ed. edition. Fourth Estate, 2012.

 

Thompson, Laura. The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Tom Mitford

A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama featuring 90 androgynous twinks disporting themselves in the nude in a fantasia of the four seasons, devotee of Adolf Hitler, founder of a new religion, and poet: it's Elisar von Kupffer.

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.

Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

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SOURCES:

Marhoefer, Laurie. “Queer Fascism and the End of Gay History.” NOTCHES (blog), June 19, 2018. https://notchesblog.com/2018/06/19/queer-fascism-and-the-end-of-gay-history/.
 
Marhoefer, Laurie. “Was the Homosexual Made White? Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany: Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany.” Gender & History 31, no. 1 (March 2019): 91–114. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12411.
 

Miller, Ben. In Search Of Lost Time: Primitivist Homomythopoetics and the Self-Invention of the White Gay Man. (Dissertation: Freie Universität Berlin, 2024).

Miller, Ben. “Rejecting the Klarwelt: How Elisàr von Kupffer Complicates Queer History.” In To Be Seen: Queer Lives 1900-1950, edited by Miriam Zadoff and Karolina Kühn, 62–75. Munich: Hirmer, 2023.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Elisar von Kupffer

For today’s episode, I we take you into the murky world of the Washington foreign policy elites, and one of its murkiest characters, a man named Albrecht Muth. Who is Albrecht Muth? Well, that’s another question entirely. He claimed to be a dashing German aristocrat and married into Washington's foreign policy elite. The shocking truth became one of official Washington's biggest mysteries...

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.

Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

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SOURCES:

Alexander, Keith L. “Albrecht Muth, 49, Convicted of Murder in Death of Socialite Wife Viola Drath, 91.” Washington Post, January 16, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/muth-found-guilty-of-murder-in-death-of-socialite-wife/2014/01/16/5a942d9e-7ecd-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html.
 
Foer, Franklin. “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” The New York Times, July 6, 2012, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath-georgetowns-worst-marriage.html.
 
Meredith Somers. “Drath Murder Case Exposes Bizarre Lifestyle of Georgetown Couple.” The Washington Times. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/24/drath-murder-case-exposes-bizarre-lifestyle-of-geo/
 
Martin, Adam. “The Odd Behavior of a Husband Arrested for a D.C. Socialite’s Murder.” The Atlantic (blog), August 17, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/unfortunate-behavior-husband-arrested-dc-socialites-murder/354256/.
 
The Daily Beast. “Inside D.C.’s Socialite Murder,” September 8, 2011. https://www.thedailybeast.com/socialite-murder-viola-drath-and-albrecht-muths-tumultuous-marriage/.
 
“Upon Reflection: Albrecht Muth and Viola Drath - Washingtonian,” February 27, 2012. https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/02/27/upon-reflection-albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath/.
 
Washington City Paper. “Viola Drath’s Cultural Legacy: A Look at the Works of a Murdered D.C. Writer,” August 25, 2011. http://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/423666/viola-draths-cultural-legacy-a-look-at-the-works-of-a-murdered-d-c-writer/.
 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Albrecht Muth

Today's episode profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque legal battles over the title to various compounds to prove it––who also financially supported trans research, gay history, and dolphin ESP. Reed Erickson forged his own path in a difficult world and his life helps us understand two connections that were crucial for the developing gay and trans liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s: sexology and the New Age. 

Today's episode of our podcast was recorded before the 2024 United States Presidental election. Given yesterday's executive orders, discussion of the anti-trans backlash and fighting transphobia are more important than ever. Today, please consider contacting Trans Lifeline if you need support, or donating if you are able. 

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SOURCES:

One From The Vaults, on Reed Erickson: https://soundcloud.com/onefromthevaultspodcast/oftv-5-the-trans-howard-hughes

Making Gay History, on Reed Erickson: https://makinggayhistory.org/podcast/reed-erickson/

Bello, Ada. “Reed Erickson, Pioneering Transgender Activist and Philanthropist, 1917-1992.” Outhistory. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/erickson/essay.
 

Devor, Aaron, and Nicholas Matte. “Building a Better World for Transpeople: Reed Erickson and the Erickson Educational Foundation.” International Journal of Transgenderism 10, no. 1 (October 12, 2007): 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1300/J485v10n01_07.

 
Devor, Aaron, and Nicholas Matte. “ONE Inc. and Reed Erickson: The Uneasy Collaboration of Gay and Trans Activism, 1964-2003.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 179–209.
 

Gill-Peterson, Jules. A Short History of Trans Misogyny. London: Verso, 2024.

Gill-Peterson, Jules. Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Lewis, Abram J. “I Am 64 and Paul McCartney Doesn’t Care: The Haunting of the Transgender Archive and the Challenges of Queer History." Radical History Review 120 (Fall 2014), 13-34.

Nunn, Zavier. “Trans Liminality and the Nazi State.” Past & Present 260, no. 1 (August 2023): 123–57. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac018.

Reed Erickson

The Crown Prince of Iraq, Abd Al-Ilah, ruled the country as a prince regent on behalf of his nephew, from 1939-1953 - although not interrupted. A member of the powerful Hashemite dynasty, Al-Ilah was also an authoritarian antisemite who once took refuge on a British naval ship called the HMS Cockchafer. A dandy, he charmed MP Chips Cannon into writing: "We are very intimate …I never can resist a Regent.”

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.

Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

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SOURCES:

Bloch, Michael. Closet Queens: Some 20th Century British Politicians. London: Little, Brown UK, 2016.
 
Channon, Chips. Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3): 1943-57. Penguin, 2025.
 
Cole, Juan. “Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century” 23 (n.d.).
 
Draper, Morris. Interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, February 27, 1991. https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Draper,%20Morris.toc.pdf.
 
Finnie, David. Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait’s Elusive Frontier with Iraq. London: I.B. Tauris, 1992.
 
Hashimoto, Chikara. The Twilight of the British Empire: British Intelligence and Counter-Subversion in the Middle East, 1948–63. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
 
Mansfield, Peter, and Nicolas Pelham. A History of the Middle East: Fifth Edition. Updated edition. New York/N.Y: Penguin Books, 2013.
 
Schwartz, Adi. “The Adas Affair.” Tablet Magazine, December 9, 2022. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/adas-affair-jews-iraq.
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Abd Al-Ilah

Not a huge amount is known about Pacchierotto, a sodomite who was convicted and publicly humiliated in Florence, Italy, in 1486, but his story tells us much about the changing fortunes of sodomites at the time, and the important role they played in the politics of the time. In this special episode, Huw talks to Max Fox, editor of Christopher Chitty's Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System about Florentine sodomy in the Renaissance, and Chitty's groundbreaking new book.
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Sources:
 
Chitty, Christopher, Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System, Duke University Press, 2020
 
Rocke, Michael, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, Oxford University Press, 1996
 
Online Digital Map: Flynn, Aidan, Sodomy and The City: Mapping Fear, Surveillance, Sexuality, and Punishment, University of Toronto, 2018 https://utoronto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=590a95cd059240388f003c49cd722dc9
 
Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola. [A cura di] P. Villari [e] E. Casanova. Con nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita, https://archive.org/details/sceltadiprediche00savo

Pacchierotto and Florentine Sodomites (with Max Fox)

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