Outward: The Women's House of Detention

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3.8 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This month Bryan, Christina, and Jules explore the intersection of queer life and incarceration. How has America’s prison-loving penal system shaped our history and present, and how does that experience get channeled—or not—into the culture we make and consume? The hosts are joined by Hugh Ryan, author of the new book The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, which uses one infamous mid-century institution in New York’s Greenwich Village to return the overlooked lives of incarcerated women and transmasculine folks to our collective story, and to make a stirring case for prison abolition as a queer issue. Then they discuss how prison shows up in pop culture—and whether they’re entirely comfortable with those fantasies. Items discussed in the show: Selling Sunset Two recent articles on phalloplasty: “How Ben Got His Penis,” by Jamie Lauren Keiles in the New York Times, and “My Penis Myself,” by Gabriel Mac in New York Original Plumbing “Madison Cawthorn Thrusting His Naked Body on Another Man’s Face Doesn’t Tell Us Much About His ‘Gayness,’ ” by Bryan in Slate Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, by Jane Ward The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, by Hugh Ryan When Brooklyn Was Queer, by Hugh Ryan Huey P. Newton’s 1970 speech on the women’s liberation and gay liberation movements Chained Heat 2 Orange Is the New Black Gay Agenda Christina: Great Freedom Jules: The Vice series Transnational Bryan: From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium, by Justin Elizabeth Sayres This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, and welcome to Outwards, Slate's podcast about queer culture, politics, and anything else the LGBTs are getting
0:22.1	up to these days.
0:24.0	I'm Brian Lauder.
0:25.1	I edit Outward.
0:26.6	And I'm Jules Gil Peterson, your resident historian.
0:31.0	And I'm Christina Cotarucci, a senior writer at Slate.
0:35.0	Hi, everybody.
0:36.1	All right.
0:36.6	On this month's show, we're looking at the intersection
0:39.7	of queer life and incarceration. How has America's prison-loving penal system shaped our
0:45.6	history and present, and how does that experience get channeled or not into the culture we make
0:50.6	and consume? We'll start off with the inspiration for the episode. Here Ryan's new book,
0:55.6	The Women's House of Detention, A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, which uses one infamous
1:00.7	mid-century institution in New York's Greenwich Village to return the overlooked lives of incarcerated
1:05.3	women and transmasculine folks to our collective story, and to make a stirring case for prison
1:10.4	abolition as a queer issue.
1:13.3	Then we'll discuss how prison shows up in the gay imagination today and whether we're
1:17.7	entirely comfortable with how those fantasies look. As always, we'll have your updates to the
1:23.3	gay agenda and a round of pride and provocations, But before we get to those, we have a special
1:29.3	favor to ask. We met recently to do a little spring cleaning on the show, and one of the
1:34.4	things we agreed that we wanted more of going forward was to hear more of your voices.
1:40.6	So next month, we'll be introducing a new segment that I'll be dedicated to you.
	...

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