9. Nazi Punks Fuck Off, Pt 2: Claude Cahun
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2018
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As you know, we're not a fan of Nazis. In part two of our (what will very likely be ongoing) series on badass Nazi-fighting queer anti-fascists we discuss the genderqueer, surrealist artist and Nazi resistance fighter Claude Cahun! Teen love to stepsisters to lifelong partners in art and resistance? Lovers literally saving each others lives more than once? Taking a break from sunbathing and walking their cat on a leash in middle age to spread anti-fascist propaganda and lower morale among the invading German forces? Gender is a performance, what? Classic Claude Cahun (and Marcel Moore)! So say it with us again, "Nazi punks, fuck off" this time with surrealism.
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
2:19 – Content Warnings
4:05 – Historical Context: Dreyfus Affair and 'New Women' in France
9:13 – Who Were They? Bio Time
23:22-28:32 – Fun Segment: Word of the Week
1:00:14 – Why Do We Think They're Gay?
1:17:51 – Pop Culture Tie In
1:19:01 – How Gay Were They?
1:24:57 – Closing and Where to Find us Online
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle and bees that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. My name is Gretchen and I'm Lee. |
| 0:33.1 | And in this episode, this is the second part of our two-part episode, Nazi punks fuck off. |
| 0:39.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:39.8 | And today we are going to be talking about Claude Cahoon, the surrealist, genderqueer, anti-fascist Nazi fighter and my wife, husband, everything, spouse of the week and forever. |
| 0:55.4 | We're still fired up from the last episode. |
| 0:58.1 | Oh, man. |
| 0:59.1 | And this is our part two, and it's really exciting because they led a really, really super |
| 1:04.7 | cool life, and Lee has fallen in love a little bit, just a spidge. |
| 1:09.4 | Right, right. |
| 1:10.1 | I mean, I'm falling in love, and I didn't take the lead in research on this episode, and I'm reading through and being like, oh, my God. They sound fucking amazing. Yeah, sometimes we, like, write 30-page outlines, and it's just, like, me and Gretchen both going crazy on a Google Doc. And this time, like, we each on our own separate parts, |
| 1:29.4 | like for Magnus Hirschfeld and for Cloud Cahoon, wrote like 15 pages on their own. |
| 1:34.9 | So we were originally going to fit these two into one episode. Can you believe that? |
| 1:40.9 | That's why this is a two-part episode instead of one. |
| 1:44.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:45.4 | We have a lot of feelings about awesome people who, you know, bash Nazis. |
| 1:49.8 | Right. |
| 1:50.5 | There's a reason why we recently coined the phrase Gavenclaw. |
| 1:54.2 | Because we're big gay nerd Ravenclaws and we can't stop writing like 15 page articles on people even though |
| 2:03.0 | neither one of us are in grad school anymore yeah or at all can I just retroactively like get |
| 2:10.0 | myself a degree from doing this I feel like we kind of deserve to have one we're doing all of the |
| 2:15.5 | work for it probably more work than lots of grad students do. Oh, man. So yeah, so continuing the discussion from |
| 2:22.9 | last, last episode, we're going to be, you know, dealing with some, some heavy topics like |
... |
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