Podcast Friday - Double Romeo and Fucking Cancelled on Fucking

[frandroid]

My first entry today has two episodes but starring the same person - Romeo Kokriatski. Romeo is an Ukrainian American who has been the co-host of Ukraine Without Hype for a long time. When the Ukraine war started I was listening to a lot of podcasts on Ukraine, and many of them were either too nationalist for my taste, too whiny, or weirdly lefty, or were so propagandist that they could make Volodymyr Zelenskyy blush. (I'm looking at you, BBC's UkraineCast.) I ended up sticking with Hype because Romeo and his co-host Anthony Bartaway are clear eyed while being full partisans for the Ukrainian cause. I found that Romeo published in some anarchist publication in the past but he doesn't flaunt it that much on this podcast.

So the first episode this week if from Ukraine without Hype: Episode 27: Sarah Ashton on the Situation in Kharkiv and Being "Trans at the Front"

Sarah Ashton is a trans American analyst turned journalist who was writing a book in Latvia when the war started, and then decided to drop everything to go Ukraine, and then go all the way to the front to report on the war for queer publications in the U.S. Since that interview she managed to become a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military and then get suspended from that job. But anyway, Sarah speaks about being Trans in Ukraine, which has mostly been without a hitch. She also speaks neither of the local languages, and doesn't have a fixer, so between Google Translate, rudimentary English from some Ukrainians, some German from her part and a whole bunch of gestures, she gets around to do her work. One of the interesting segments is when Romeo (who is brown-skinned) and Sarah discuss how their identities are much more of an issue in every life in the U.S. than they are in Ukraine. Romeo discusses the stratification of Russian society, where Russians sit at the top, and how that's an important thing for them but Ukraine is a lot more heterogenous. (Which makes sense where you're read some Ukrainian history...) I found Sarah's account of her time so far quite fascinating. At some point the Russians discovered Ashton's existence and decided to highlight her an example of how depraved Ukrainians are, which had the effect of significantly elevating her status on the Ukrainian side. So this episode was overall a feelgood story, until you get to the end and see what kind of fucking awful crap she's been receiving from American tankies and DSA types. So huh, yeah.

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The second Romeo episode is 136/ When War Gets Normalized, Or What's At Stake in Ukraine w/ Mariam Naiem and Romeo Kokriatski on The Fire These Times, a generally anarchist podcast. The discuss how Ukrainian identity gets taken apart by Russian society to justify the war. They discuss the issue of Russians kidnapping and adopting children, with Romeo name-dropping a book about Canada's residential schools as a resource that was relevant to understanding Russia's POV. (!!!) Romeo discusses how the war will not end until Putin is gone from Russia, resigning himself to a decade of conflict, regardless of whether Russians remain in the territory of Ukraine.

Romeo talks about his plans for the end of the war (having a child). There is one status change in Ukrainian life that will be a marker for him. Host Ayoub then discusses how some Lebanese people kind of wish they were back in the Lebanese Civil War, because back then you would make plans for what you would do when the war is over, and you were hopeful. But now there is no civil and no hope at all, in a perpetual financial crisis and political gridlock.

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Bonus episode! The podcast I love to gripe about, Fucking Cancelled, had a great guest: Talking Shit with Zachary Zane: Sex is a Huge Part of My Sexuality.

Zane is a sex educator and sex advice and non-monogamy columnist with Men's Health Magazine. Here, like in his book Boyslut, he discusses his coming into his identity as a bisexual man. An interesting part of the discussion is about sexual consent in queer sex spaces, from "Yes means Yes" super-contractual sex which has become more popular recently, to "No means no" consent which is more, huh, old school. Anyway this was a great discussion about bisexuality and consent which lit up a few bulbs in my head.

Comments

[ioplokon]

It's nice to see stuff about bi men becoming more accessible; I know a lot of bi guys and most of them are closeted. I think embracing a bi identity means working through a lot of fear of social stigma (you're 'voluntarily' stepping out of the top of the hierarchy & you can't go back), but also like....... feelings a lot of men have internalized about what it means to have sex with a man & especially what it would mean to love a man romantically. I've also always liked this essay on phallocentrism & bisexuality (Note: NSFW images at the link). But I probably have a different perspective as someone who's identified himself with lgbt/gay/queer culture since, basically, puberty vs guys who spent their formative years, and most of their time, in the straight world.

Re: consent, with the "yes means yes" model, I know there's the stereotype of like, erotic Mother May I, but I haven't really experienced that, or situations that felt super-contractual. But there's also like pretty specific stuff I dislike, so I have to initiate those kinds of conversations proactively, which I think creates a different dynamic, I think.

[frandroid]

Clementine talks about the yes means yes thing being more prevalent in some lesbian circles in particular.

Thanks for sharing that link. It put into words many thoughts I've had about this concept that I hadn't seen worded, "dick contaminates", and then went further than my thoughts had reached so far.

[ioplokon]

Right, but my partners and I always felt we were practicing the affirmative consent model? Though, tmi, I'm kind of more of a service top, so it's probably a bit more natural to work that into the eroticism of the encounter than for people who like other things. I've also found that, regardless of model, it is actually pretty difficult to communicate things like, 'please don't insult me' in ways that people actually listen to. So I think the flip side is to not blame yourself for not using the right mode or thinking if you framed things differently they would have understood and treated you better. Sometimes, yes, but often, no.

I think the next place to go on that train of thought is Julia Serano's book, Sexed Up. The first few chapters are kind of just reinventing the wheel in her framework, but the last half of the book was pretty interesting to me.

[sabotabby]

I used to follow Romeo on Twitter, so this is a good reminder to follow him on Bluesky even though he hasn't posted anything yet. Good to know he's on a bunch of podcasts as well. I find his reporting and analysis very clearheaded and thoughtful.

I felt a certain way about that Fucking Cancelled episode and the one after, which had to do with the attunement model of consent. There was a lot I agreed with—basically, that super-contractual sex is very much Not My Thing and part of the reason why I've had many times more male partners than female and nonbinary partners (and, tbh, certain types of male partners). But then there was also some things about poly which were very much not my experience, in that in progressive social circles, I think it's much more likely that you are going to be pressured into polyamory than pressured into monogamy and I wish they'd explored that more before Clementine went off on her "people are pressured into monogamy" tangent.

But this is one of the few spaces where I've heard them really explore the, er, greyer areas of consent? In that if people have inebriated sex, or unsatisfying sex, or there are communication failures, it's not the same as sexual assault just because every box wasn't ticked. Which is a very hard thing to say, separating out people's feelings of harm from whether or not they were actually harmed, or the other person should be labelled as harmful. So I appreciated them at least trying to talk about it.

[frandroid]

> greyer areas of consent

That was refreshing, yeah.