Welcome to The Lesbian Project Podcast
All the sapphic traffic - for anyone who wants more lesbian in their life
We have some big news. Welcome to The Lesbian Project Podcast, a brand new pod and videocast venture.
We are Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel. Kathleen is a former philosophy professor and writer. Julie is a journalist and feminist campaigner.
Though we differ about a lot of things - the finer points of feminism, margaritas versus negronis - through our shared public notoriety, we first became great friends five years ago, and we have laughed our way through many stressful, hilarious, agonising moments since then. (At the moment, Julie is beating Kathleen on the number of times her public talks have been protested – but only just.)
How did we become so notorious? Well, mainly because between us, we reject nearly every aspect of conventional LGBTQ+ dogma (cough, lunacy), and are both prepared to say so. We don’t believe that lesbians have penises, that asexuals are specially oppressed, that bisexual invisibility is a political problem, or that kids can know they are trans, for instance. We do believe in free speech, lesbians being female, and pronouns being grammatical.
We both believe that current LGBTQ+ activism profoundly disadvantages lesbians, nearly always lumping them in with a different group, in which they then become effectively invisible: either with gay men, bisexual women, queer women, or transwomen (or all of these at once). Earlier this year, we started our organisation The Lesbian Project, to argue that lesbians deserve research, policy, and political attention of their own.
We also think that mainstream LGBTQ+ activism is frankly an embarrassment to any self-respecting female homosexual - whether you’re a baby dyke, middle-aged, or positively ancient. This strange variety of modern-day activism wants you to shut up and smile compliantly at the heterosexual male in the dress who thinks he is a lesbian too; or better yet, make a banner in support of him - all in the supposed name of progress. It wants you to believe a lot of unevidenced nonsense about gender identity being more important than biological sex or sexual orientation - when you know you are sexually attracted only to those of the female sex, not those with a female gender identity. It wants you to suppress all your differences from the G, the B, the T, and the Q in the name of unity; to think of yourself as just another victim to be pitied by the straight world, no matter what your personal circumstance; and never, ever to say anything that might offend any of the sensitive souls in Rainbowland.
In a nutshell, LGBTQ+ activism wants you to downplay the fact you are an exclusively same-sex-attracted female with a mind of her own. And we refuse to play along.
In our new podcast, we will chat, argue, rant, and joke about everything and anything of relevance to lesbian lives. We don’t expect our listeners to agree with us, nor do we want them to. This will not be a safe space for the offence-allergic, and there will be critical thinking and debate – about sexuality, politics, history, popular culture, whether Julie or Kathleen gets the best death threats, and much more.
And though our podcast will concern lesbian lives and adjacent matters, we hope its appeal will be wider than that. LGBTQ+ activism currently has an enormous influence on national and local institutions: political parties, media organisations, police forces, NHS bodies, local councils, schools, and universities are all currently under its sway. Among other things, we will offer critique and counterpoint to whatever nonsense is presently being beamed down on high from the LGBTQ+ overlords, grounded in our respective experiences of being at the sharp end of lesbian and feminist mainstream politics (translation: constantly being called transphobic bigots for believing in biology and rights for women).
Our podcast will be a place where we can speak freely about what matters to us. We will have a direct conversation with our audience - free of algorithms and ads - and try to build a community together. But most of all, we hope to have some fun. And we hope you will join us.
Our content will be mostly free, because we want as many people to listen as possible, and we appreciate that money is scarce. But if you appreciate our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. All the proceeds from our podcast will go to fund vital work at The Lesbian Project – find out more about it here.
Paid subscribers will be able to:
receive subscriber-only posts and access to the full archive.
get subscriber-only posts in your podcast app.
post comments and join our community (all welcome).
Founding members will be able to:
receive subscriber-only posts and access to the full archive.
get subscriber-only posts in your podcast app.
post comments and join our community (all welcome).
participate in twice yearly Founding Member Zoom hangouts with Julie and Kathleen.
See you soon!
Photo credit: Eleanor Bentall. Thanks to Nicole Jones for original artwork.
Cannot adequately convey how ecstatic my 2 old dyke NYC household is to see this! Can hardly wait for the first podcast. Congrats and many, many thanks to Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, and whoever else is helping out with this endeavor, for all your good, hard, and smart work.
I want to let you know, too, that I've already been able to draw upon your paper "Lesbian Erasure in the UK" in putting together material to send to my New York State rep commenting on a piece of school legislation he has put forward, setting forth, among other things, my concerns about the definition of "lesbian" ("woman" is not defined in the legislation--I'm sure you can see the problems, below):
"The term "lesbian" means a woman or female individual whose enduring physical, romantic, or emotional attraction is to another woman or female individual."
I cited specifically to your paper--credit where credit is due, of course--and am very pleased to now be able to back that up by signing on as a founding subscriber. My comment with him is pending and, while I'm not holding my breath, your paper helped me enormously to make the best possible case I could.
Married lesbo from the west coast of Canada where the Rainbow clan is Extra condescending, & disturbingly powerful. I am so happy and Thankful that you two have embarked on this venture! Amazing!