Cracked Ivory

 The Will to Change is often recommended as a text that addresses men's concerns in feminist movements and elucidates how men benefit from participation in feminism. At least, that's the popular conception of the work. Emma and Talia discuss whether that's actually the case, whether anyone reads or at least comprehends the books they recommend, and the continued efforts of post-second wave feminists to deprioritize women's liberation in women's movements.Sources:bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, 2004Talia Bhatt, Political Heterosexuality, or: The Tragedy of Feminism, 2026 Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Naomi Wolf's public descent into conspiracy theorist and statistically-impaired provocateur set off many discussions on the widespread distrust of experts and the importance of science communication. Even so, we were urged not to downplay the importance of her book The Beauty Myth and its relevance to modern feminism.So Talia and Emma will be doing just that. What does the book that bolstered Wolf's reputation as a feminist pioneer have to say? Let's have a look.Sources:Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, 1990Sarah Ditum, Naomi Wolf is not a feminist who became conspiracy theorist – she’s a conspiracist who was once right, 2014 Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Talia and Emma discuss one of the worst-written books they've had to cover: Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. It is considered a landmark text of the so-called third wave of feminism, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Given that it kicked off queer theory, it certainly got a few things wrong. Join us as Talia walks Emma through the good, the bad, and the paradigm-shifting aspects of Judith Butler's seminal work.Sources:Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Emma and Talia are once more joined by Isaac (he/they/ze) to ask a straightforward and simple question: what went wrong after the Trans Tipping Point? How did we go from an optimistic, promising future of shifting cultural tides and legal victories to the embittered, vicious, and cruel reactionary backlash to trans existence? To find the answer, they must look as far as three decades back, trying to grapple with years upon years of anemic advocacy, liberal apathy, and epistemic neglect. Cracked Ivory premieres season two by laying out a roadmap for future episodes on the topic of the third wave of feminism, and how it failed.Sources:The Trans Dandy, The Anti-Trans Tipping PointThe Trans Dandy, The Trans Policy CrisisContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Talia and Emma make a podcast about their podcast. They discuss the trials and triumphs of season one, talk about the planning and production process, answer listener questions, and go over future plans for season two. Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

For the season one finale, Talia and Emma are joined by a very special guest: Julia Serano, transfeminist and author of Whipping Girl! They discuss the pervasive problem of orientalism and transmisogyny in academic disciplines, the history of discomfort with trans healthcare being laundered through pseudointellectual rationalisation, and the recurrent discourses that have tried to pit conformist "transsexuals" against radical "transgenders". Sources:Serena Nanda, Neither Man Nor Woman, 1990 Serena Nanda, Gender Diversity, 2000Julia Serano, Whipping Girl, 2007Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem, 2025 Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Talia locks Emma and Beth (she/her) into a call so she can ramble at them about lesbian feminism and feminist history for hours (again). She goes over the history of Michfest, the sin for which all lesbians must now answer, whether or not we attended the bloody thing or were even in the US while it was happening. In discussing the transfem-exclusionary policy of only admitting "womyn born womyn", the three of them reckon with the politics of separatism, class, race, and why it's important to not fuck the people you're protesting against.Sources:Michelle Tea, Transmissions from Camp TransMinnie Bruce Pratt, S/HeJocelyn Macdonald, Setting the Record Straight About MichFestContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Emma and Talia bring you an interview with the one-third of the bestselling author of The Hades Calculus Maria Ying, about lesbian futurism, not-so-feminist Greek myth retellings, and how the past is a foreign country (so you can be orientalist about it)! They are joined by Callisto Khan (she/her, @callistokhan.bsky.social) to discuss the Gunmetal Olympus series and the upcoming The Persephone Effect, out this January!Pre-order the sequel to The Hades Calculus, The Persephone Effect here or here.Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Initially, this episode was intended to be exclusive to Patreon. However, given its subject matter, we decided to instead release it to early access and then publicly. Happy holidays!For the Patreon companion episode, Emma, Talia and Lucy dive into Max Robinson's misguided nostalgia tour of the second wave's worst offerings. Robinson attempts to pen a sequel to Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire that talks about how we can choose to escape patriarchy if we all just try hard enough, how people transition because they think "FTMs" are taken more seriously than women, and how to run a detransition cult.Sources:Max Robinson, Detransition: Beyond Before And After, 2021.Ky Schevers, Statement about Lane Lloyd - https://kyschevers.medium.com/statement-about-lane-lloyd-1f8d4d67137bSarah Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Towards New Value, 1988.Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

In this very special episode of Cracked Ivory, Emma traps Talia and Lucy Kartikasari (she/they/he, luckartikasari on TikTok) on a call and subjects them to Abigail Shrier's opinions on transition, teenage sex, and race. Irreversible Damage is a fear-mongering screed combined with a how-to child abuse guide aimed at the parents of young trans children, a manifesto stating plain that children owe their parents not merely their lives and future earnings, but their very bodies and sex, neither of which can be tampered with under the heterosexual regime. We examine how this misbegotten suburban tantrum dehumanizes trans and detrans people alike, treating us as surgically mutilated sterile wretches rather than humans with dignity and free will.The most distasteful part of the episode starts at 54:09 and ends at 1:00:56.Sources:Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Crazy Seducing Our Daughters, 2021Talia Bhatt, 'Racebending' and 'Womanface': Discussing Social ConstructsContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

On this special episode of Cracked Ivory, Talia and Emma invite Jude Doyle (he/they) to discuss his new book, Did I Leave Feminism? They talk about the manufactured antagonism between feminism and queerness, how Western trans theorists talk about race and gender, recuperative readings of the second wave, and more!Did I Leave Feminism? is out now everywhere books are sold.Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Today, Talia and Emma dissect The Transsexual Empire, a foundational text for the modern gender-critical movement. They discuss the history of radical lesbian feminism, the embattled discourse over trans women's place in it, and the way trans-exclusionary 'radfems' codified a feminist pretext for rank bigotry.Sources:Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (don't buy it; don't read it, but if you do, you know where to not buy it)Finn Enke, Collective Memory and the Transfeminist 1970s: Towards a Less Plausible History: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/5/1/9/133890/Collective-Memory-and-the-TransfeministSandy Stone, The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto: https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/trans-manifesto.pdfKy Schevers, Statement About Lane Lloyd: https://kyschevers.medium.com/statement-about-lane-lloyd-1f8d4d67137bContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Is there a difference between trans men and butch lesbians? Are non-transitioning queer people like refugees? And most importantly, HOW MUCH SEX ARE THEY HAVING IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM? This episode, Emma and Talia are joined by Isaac (The Trans Dandy, he/they/ze) to discuss Jack Halberstam's psychedelic experience Female Masculinity, a work of queer theory with a truly unearned reputation as 'representative' of the transmasculine experience. Find Isaac at: https://substack.com/@transdandyAdditional special thanks to our newest Cum Laudest Patron, Lava Monster, who had the impeccable timing of joining the exact moment Emma exported the finalised audio.Sources:Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Anniversary Edition: https://www.dukeupress.edu/female-masculinity-twentieth-anniversary-editionContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Talia and Emma are joined by May Peterson (she/her, goddessblade.bsky.social) to discuss the sizzling and steamy world of M/M romance fiction and ask: Does having critiques of M/M media make you racist?! A single Tumblr callout post that somehow managed to become an academic paper snowballs into a discussion on identity politics, transfeminine erasure, and the anti-intellectualism inherent to a discursive environment that relies more on vibes than actual arguments when discussing not merely fandom, but topics as important as politics, bigotry, and art.Sources:Sam Aburime, The influence of transphobia, homonationalism and anti-Asian prejudice: Anti-BL attitudes in English-speaking fandoms: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378234729_The_influence_of_transphobia_homonationalism_and_antiAsianprejudice_Anti-BL_attitudes_in_English-speaking_fandomsBetween Scylla and Charybdis: https://lysistrata327.substack.comContact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

For the first episode of Cracked Ivory, Talia and Emma are joined by legal historian and queer feminist of color Kay (who can be found at dihya-bint-neyth.bsky.social on Bluesky) to discuss Kimberlé Crenshaw’s oft-cited yet sparsely-read theory of intersectionality, along with its implications for masculinity studies, critics of feminism, and Ben Shapiro’s fear of bottoming.Sources:Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclfIntersectionality Wars: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discriminationIntersectionality and Masculinity Studies: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18902138.2024.2376445#d1e115Crenshaw on police violence against Black women: https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/kimberle-crenshaw-who-coined-term-intersectionality-police-violence-against-black-womenClose Encounters of Three Kinds (Crenshaw 2010): https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2865/Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co

Talia Bhatt and Emma Zakharuk unveil their evil lesbian radical transfeminist agenda: to end both Manhood and Discourse with a single podcast. 'Cracked Ivory' is an examination of popular feminist discourses and the scholarship (both good and very, very bad) that spawned them! Coming soon to wherever you get your podcasts.Contact usSupport the showFind more of Talia at taliabhatt.comFind more of Emma at dolphindiaires.carrd.co