Bad Gays

• Abd Al-Ilah

  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. ----more---- 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.

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• Reed Erickson

  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.  ----more---- 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.

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  56:55
• Albrecht Muth

  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. ----more---- 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. 

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  52:52
• Elisar von Kupffer

  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. ----more---- 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.  

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• Tom Mitford

  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. Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for more from us. Check out our new merch. ----more---- 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.  

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