Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 281: Bluestockings Goes Bust

Transcript

Episode 281: Bluestockings Goes Bust · Blocked and Reported

0:02
Bye.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Katie, how are you doing?
0:12
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, I gotta be honest with you.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm fucking depressed right now.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Because you're sad the Israel-Gaza war might be coming to an end?
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely nothing to do with that.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: No, I just got my book sales.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: My total book sales.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: I have sold... Drumroll, please.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: $1,200.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: $1,200 in...
0:37
SPEAKER_00: It basically just came out.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: That includes fucking pre-sales.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: The book industry is an unbelievably harsh mistress.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: I have spent so much time doing interviews.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: doing whatever I can to sell this fucking book besides getting on TikTok,
0:54
SPEAKER_02: which I'm not going to do.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: And it has not moved the needle at all.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: Helen was completely fucking right.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: You can do a million interviews and it doesn't matter.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: It's, this is, I'm like shocked.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: I thought that this would have been like 10,000 and it's 1,200.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean, 10,000.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Somehow seems, 10,000.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: I would have been like, fuck, it's a flop.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: 10,000.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: You did not go in with realistic 10,000.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't.
1:18
There are 30 million people in this country that suffer from
1:23
the scourge of alcohol
1:24
SPEAKER_02: use disorder.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: I have a giant market for this book.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: It's literally 10% of the population.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: I know, but are they readers generally?
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Apparently not.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: Listeners?
1:33
SPEAKER_02: Are they buying the fucking audiobook?
1:34
SPEAKER_02: No, they're not doing that either.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: I told you, what do I know?
1:37
I think it'll have a long tail and be around for a while and
1:40
help a lot of people.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: But the book industry is an unbelievably harsh mistress.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of misogynistic.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Why can't an industry that... It's a dude.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a mean, ugly dude that hits you over the head with a stick.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: We had very different books.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Mine was less saleable.
1:56
I had really good placements in the Wall Street Journal and the
1:58
New York Times.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: It just didn't matter.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And then some...
2:03
idiot writes a book about oh my dog died or whatever and that
2:06
gets sells a million
2:07
cop i don't no one knows dog dying i mean that's gonna be my
2:11
next book but you are
2:12
so your your goal in starting the podcast on this downer is to
2:16
get people to feel
2:17
guilty yes that's the goal people feel fucking bad for me you
2:21
should please buy my
2:22
book i'm now i'm begging you i have gone from the promotion
2:25
stage to the begging
2:26
SPEAKER_02: stage
2:27
SPEAKER_00: The two stages of book publicity.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: I will say, given our number of paying subscribers.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what the fuck is wrong with you?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: We're calling you out because we know the vast majority of you,
2:37
SPEAKER_00: not just the majority,
2:38
SPEAKER_00: the vast majority of you have not plunked down the,
2:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it costs.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to assume $150 for a copy of your book.
2:47
1843 1843 exactly wow that's even that makes it even less
2:49
excusable yeah kindle for
2:51
the kindle it's just 13.99 this is depressing i'm upset and i'm
2:55
also because i'm in
2:56
the mood do you mind if i burn a bridge real quick i think if
3:01
you're trying to sell
3:02
more books nothing could help more than burning bridges go for
3:04
it here's the thing
3:06
people keep asking me about this so i just want to like put it
3:09
out there so people
3:10
SPEAKER_02: quit asking me about it
3:13
SPEAKER_02: I did not write a piece in the Telegraph.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: If you look at the Telegraph.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, this was kind of funny.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: It is kind of funny.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: Here's what happened.
3:21
The Telegraph,
3:22
the British paper came to me and said they wanted to do a
3:24
profile on me.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: I was thrilled about this.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: This seemed like a great marketing opportunity.
3:28
Little did I know that fucking media placement apparently
3:31
doesn't sell books.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: So I did this interview.
3:34
And then right before it came out,
3:36
they sent me the full copy,
3:38
which was weird.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: That's not something you generally supply to interview subjects.
3:42
But the extra weird thing about it was that it was written in
3:45
the first person under my byline.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: I did not write this piece.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: I didn't write it.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: I sat there for an interview and somebody else wrote it.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: I objected to this because... Because you didn't write it.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: I didn't write it.
3:56
And so we went back and forth and they agreed to put a note
4:00
that said as told to.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: That is all the way at the fucking bottom of the article.
4:04
So you have to scroll through like several thousand words of
4:08
shit I didn't write to
4:09
SPEAKER_02: see that as told to.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: But people keep telling me like, oh, I saw your article in the Telegraph.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't have an article in the Telegraph.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: I did not write an article for the Telegraph.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: The Telegraph wrote an article for me and stuck my name on it.
4:21
And worse still,
4:23
you gave up a certain other opportunity in a more respected
4:25
paper.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: Other British papers had reached out to me,
4:29
SPEAKER_02: both more respected and less respected than the Telegraph.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: And then when they found out that- What's less respected?
4:33
SPEAKER_00: The Sun?
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to mention it.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: And then when they found out that they were not going to be first,
4:39
SPEAKER_02: they decided not to do these articles,
4:42
SPEAKER_02: which is completely fine.
4:44
But yes,
4:44
I gave up other opportunities for this article that I did not
4:47
write.
4:47
And regardless,
4:48
none of it matters because none of it fucking sells books in
4:50
the first place.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to fucking kill myself.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: This is terrible.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Go buy my book.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Now that you've said you're going to kill yourself, it was nice.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: If people don't buy my book, will that work?
5:02
SPEAKER_02: Is that what it's going to take?
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Suicide baiting.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: We cover a lot of internet communities that do suicide baiting.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: You should be more vague.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Be like, I'm feeling really alone right now.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I am.
5:13
If I don't sell more copies,
5:14
I can't say for sure what's going to happen to me.
5:17
I don't know that I have enough ibuprofen in my house to
5:20
overdose,
5:21
but I will try.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: I will try.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Well,
5:23
SPEAKER_00: now that you've said you feel miserable and want to kill yourself,
5:27
SPEAKER_00: it was really great seeing you and Jana in your house.
5:32
A house that I'm not going to be able to afford because
5:34
nobody's buying my fucking book.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: People would feel less bad for you if they saw the stunning rainforest.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: You're perched on a hill on the edge of a rainforest, basically.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a temperate rainforest.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: It's not exotic.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: There's no monkeys.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's still a rainforest.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: No, you live in a beautiful place.
5:53
If I lived where you lived,
5:55
I wouldn't care about money or worldly possessions.
5:56
I would just look out every day with a cup of my local Seattle
6:00
– it's not Seattle –
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Washington coffee and just be like – and then Moose would give me kisses.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: What did you think of Moose?
6:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean Moose was – I wanted –
6:10
SPEAKER_00: I wanted Moose to be a real piece of shit.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to lie.
6:14
I wanted him to be like a fentanyl addled violent thug just to
6:19
be contrary.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Moose was an amazing dog.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: I posted a video of Moose and Moose is great.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Jana was great.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Jana cooks all this amazing stuff for us.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: You really lucked into everything.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: I've been one of the people who read your book.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: If I were you, I'd be counting my lucky stars every day.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh god,
6:39
SPEAKER_01: my house is great,
6:39
SPEAKER_01: my land is great,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: my dog is great,
6:41
SPEAKER_01: my wife is great,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: and my fucking book doesn't sell.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Woe is me.
6:46
Well,
6:46
this is Watcher Imported,
6:48
and we're going to talk about a couple of things today.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: You've got a classic bookstore meltdown,
6:55
SPEAKER_00: but before we got to that,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: unless you have anything else to complain about...
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Wait,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: let me do my own.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything to complain about...
7:02
They should make a way for you to do a red-eye flight over
7:05
across the country and not be tired.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: That's my complaint.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe we haven't figured that out.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: Most people do that.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: It's like a five-hour flight.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: I don't understand how you're like, I have jet lag.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, you flew to Nebraska.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: It's not that far.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about one time zone here.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I flew to Nebraska?
7:19
SPEAKER_01: You get my point.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: What a weird way to phrase it.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you wanted to start...
7:25
SPEAKER_00: We both want to start talking about this article.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: Why are fewer young people identifying as trans?
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Published and unheard by Eric Kaufman, right?
7:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: So this got a lot of traction online.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: Eric Kaufman is a Canadian academic.
7:38
He is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham
7:42
or it's Canada.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: So is it Buckingham or Buckingham?
7:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's actually the UK.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: He's Canadian, but it's in the UK.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was going to say that sounds like a very UK town.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: So he also has this Center for Heterodox Studies.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: And he just published this piece.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: Why are fewer young people identifying as trans?
8:04
SPEAKER_02: He published this in UnHerd.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: And it was based, largely based on data that came from the foundation.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Wait, can I break it really quick?
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: He published a book that I have and I haven't read because it's too big.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: It has too many big words for me called White Shift,
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Populism,
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Immigration,
8:20
SPEAKER_00: and the Future of White Majorities.
8:21
And it really just is about how I think white populations
8:24
specifically in Europe
8:25
SPEAKER_00: have responded to sort of mass migration.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: So he's obviously not scared of heterodox subjects.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think he made a bit of a name for himself with that book.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sort of an anti-woke type.
8:34
So he got this data from FIRE,
8:36
the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: So they do an annual survey of U.S.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: undergrads.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: They conducted the 2025 survey in May.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: There were 60,000 respondents.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: And that survey is broadly speaking about attitudes towards free speech.
8:51
But there's also,
8:52
it's a big data set,
8:53
and there's demographics data in there.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: And so Kaufman got a hold of the demographic data and
8:59
SPEAKER_02: He also got data from Brown and from Phillips Andover Academy,
9:03
SPEAKER_02: that's the prep school,
9:04
and he published this report and then he wrote a sort of like
9:07
popular take on it
9:09
SPEAKER_02: from UnHerd.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: So here's a quote from his piece in UnHerd.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: My analysis of the raw data shows that in that year,
9:15
SPEAKER_02: so that's 2025,
9:16
just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male
9:20
or female.
9:21
By comparison,
9:21
the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: In other words,
9:28
the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved
9:31
in just those two
9:32
SPEAKER_02: years.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: So Jesse, do you see the problem with those two sentences?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
9:38
the TLDR version is he said that some people are trans if they
9:43
say they don't
9:43
SPEAKER_00: identify as male or female,
9:46
SPEAKER_00: which just isn't what trans is.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
9:51
SPEAKER_00: so just to dig into it briefly,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't really understand why he did this the way he did.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: To your credit, you reached out to FIRE.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: They pointed us toward their data.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: This includes the so-called codebook.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: That basically lists how you coded your data.
10:04
So the item in question is,
10:05
which of the following genders do you most identify with?
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Identify with.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: The choices of responses were man,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: woman,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: non-binary,
10:13
SPEAKER_00: agender,
10:14
SPEAKER_00: genderqueer,
10:14
SPEAKER_00: genderfluid,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: unsure,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: prefer not to say.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: And they collapsed responses into man, woman, or gender non-conforming.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who sort of follows these issues,
10:25
SPEAKER_00: a trans guy in all likelihood is going to say he identifies as a man.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: A trans girl is going to say she identifies as a woman.
10:33
So this item does not provide us any information about the
10:36
percentage of students
10:37
SPEAKER_00: identifying as trans.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: It might be a decent proxy for the percentage of non-binary students,
10:42
SPEAKER_00: which is under the umbrella of trans.
10:45
But whether the non-binary population goes up or down doesn't
10:48
necessarily tell us
10:50
SPEAKER_00: anything about the overall population.
10:53
trans population and then this was just packaged in a very
10:56
confident way like look
10:57
at this look at this data i have yeah the headline again for
11:00
the piece was why are
11:01
fewer young people identifying as trans and that was i don't
11:05
know if he chose that
11:06
headline for unheard but he did this twitter thread that made
11:10
that made that
11:11
SPEAKER_02: argument that this was not just about non-binary this was about trans
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:16
And now the fire data only asked about identified gender rather
11:20
than biological sex
11:21
SPEAKER_00: or as they would say sex assigned as birth.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: I should say a lot of people would say sex assigned to birth.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: If you have both those items,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: you could back out and answer about the percentage of trans people,
11:30
SPEAKER_00: but they didn't do it that way.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: But you reached out to Kauffman about this, right?
11:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I said, basically, like, I don't understand this.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: How is this?
11:39
How are you reaching these conclusions about trans when the
11:42
data doesn't ask about trans?
11:44
SPEAKER_02: And he said,
11:45
SPEAKER_02: quote,
11:45
trans people would likely take a non-binary category rather
11:48
than male or female,
11:49
SPEAKER_02: in my view.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Which, no.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: No.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's now said that multiple times, both to you and publicly.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, sorry, I was at a conference with him once.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: He seemed like a perfectly nice guy.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: But this suggests, like, a real...
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Researchers make mistakes,
12:05
SPEAKER_00: and any kind of research on anything,
12:06
SPEAKER_00: there's going to be stuff you can argue about.
12:08
But do you think it's fair to say that this suggests a real
12:10
lack of knowledge on a
12:11
SPEAKER_00: basic question,
12:12
SPEAKER_00: that he thinks trans people would likely take a non-binary category?
12:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: I think that this is a...
12:18
It's not a reasonable assumption if you are,
12:22
like,
12:22
well-versed in these communities.
12:24
And look,
12:25
if they had asked specifically about biological sex,
12:28
it might be different.
12:29
But the item in question,
12:30
which of the following genders do you most identify with?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: A trans guy is going to say man.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't get it.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the category isn't male or female.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: It's man or woman.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: It's not a question about sex at all.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: And I think even if it had been male or female,
12:45
I still don't think that you could assume that trans people
12:48
would have chosen other
12:50
SPEAKER_02: or agender or non-binary or whatever.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: I think in all likelihood, many of them would have chosen male or female.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: This has come up in my reporting before.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: When the CDC and other big institutions collect this data,
13:03
they're mindful of the fact that the best way to do it is
13:05
through a two-step thing
13:06
SPEAKER_00: where you ask about – again,
13:08
SPEAKER_00: it's not my preferred term,
13:09
SPEAKER_00: but you ask sex assigned at birth and then you ask the identity question.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: You need to do both or you're not going to know what you're looking at.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: Right.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: But this claim went viral.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: Elon Musk retweeted it.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: So did Matt Walsh.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: It was covered in the –
13:22
I would say they started like openly masturbating,
13:24
like not just to retweet it.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: It was so Eric Kaufman, he tweets the start of this thread, new trans.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: And the reason the reason is because this is this is sort of evidence,
13:35
SPEAKER_02: according to them,
13:37
SPEAKER_02: that trans was a fad,
13:38
SPEAKER_02: which to be clear,
13:39
SPEAKER_02: I think is true.
13:40
But you can you cannot you cannot reach that conclusion based
13:44
on this data.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I mean, they were giddy.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, Kaufman tweets the start of his thread.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Matt Walsh, transgenderism is effectively over.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: We destroyed it.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Cluest and most decisive cultural win.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: It was this movie, all of these kids, they watched What is a Woman?
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And they were like, you know what?
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Now I know what a woman is.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: Nevermind.
14:02
Clearest and most decisive cultural win that conservatives have
14:06
ever achieved.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: I can't help but think of the Mortal Kombat, like, fatality voice.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And then Elon Musk responds,
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Rocket in his profile,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: as always,
14:14
SPEAKER_00: your work here played a major role.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I – it's just – it's this type of –
14:24
weaponized science i think with kaufman it might have been an
14:27
innocent mistake he
14:28
just wasn't familiar with this sort of survey work but they
14:31
what's interesting is
14:32
the way matt walsh and elon musk are working themselves into a
14:35
lather over this
14:36
this is the exact same thing trans activists do whenever like a
14:39
shitty new studies
14:40
release showing like oh the the treatments work great just
14:43
immediate dissemination
14:45
immediate like celebration it's just not it's not how
14:47
scientific inquiry should go
14:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:50
This was not peer-reviewed,
14:52
and it probably would not have made it through peer review.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Well... You think it would have?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: No, it wouldn't have.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: An equally shitty study from the other side would have made it.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Peer review is broken.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
15:03
Okay,
15:04
so Erin Reed,
15:05
trans activist,
15:07
she picked up on this,
15:08
of course,
15:09
which,
15:10
honestly...
15:11
SPEAKER_02: Why not?
15:12
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's a shitty workout.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: So she posted a Substack about this called fact check.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: No, there is not a new survey showing trans identity is decreasing.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: And I have to say she is correct.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: There is, in fact, not a new survey showing trans identity is decreasing.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: Did you read this, Jesse?
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
15:29
SPEAKER_00: so Erin Reed,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: generally speaking,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: is about as trustworthy on trans issues as Elon Musk is.
15:35
She's just one of the biggest disseminators of misinformation
15:39
just from the other side.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I don't I don't even know if I'd put her as high as Elon Musk.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: She obviously has a much smaller platform, but you get what I'm saying.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: So in this particular instance,
15:49
I thought it was worth giving her post a close read because I
15:53
myself was skeptical
15:53
SPEAKER_00: of Kaufman's approach.
15:55
She made a little bit of a different argument and she leaned on
15:58
a blog post
15:59
SPEAKER_00: published by a statistician named Jacob Eliason.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay, what did Eliason argue?
16:04
I guess we might as well try to make this segment a little bit
16:07
useful rather than
16:08
SPEAKER_00: just another battle in the war.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: So we'll get a little bit nerdy briefly.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Basically, she said that Kaufman failed to use survey weights.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: Okay, explain that.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: So if I survey Americans about the death penalty and my sample is not
16:20
SPEAKER_00: representative,
16:21
SPEAKER_00: maybe it'll give me a skewed result.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe I survey too many men.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: I survey 60% men, 40% women.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Men are more supportive of the death penalty than women.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: So if my sample is skewed male,
16:32
the results won't represent how Americans actually feel about
16:35
the death penalty.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Now you can adjust for this.
16:37
You can basically weigh your responses to sort of discount male
16:41
responses and –
16:44
add a slight multiplier to female responses that's a huge
16:47
oversimplification
16:48
because i don't understand the full underlying math but the
16:51
point is that's what
16:51
you're supposed to do to try to make data that isn't nationally
16:54
representative
16:54
representative and so fire says on this website it's using this
16:58
college pulse uh
16:59
polling outfit and it fire says quote college pulse rebalances
17:02
the sample based on
17:03
SPEAKER_00: a number of important benchmark attributes such as race
17:06
gender,
17:07
keep that in mind,
17:08
class year,
17:09
voter registration status,
17:10
and financial aid status.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: The sample weighting is accomplished using,
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Katie,
17:14
an iterative proportional fitting IFP process that
17:17
simultaneously balances the
17:18
SPEAKER_00: distributions of all variables.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with IFP, right?
17:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I get that.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: So Kaufman didn't, he used the raw data, rather than the weighted data.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's the critique.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: Is this actually a problem?
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but waiting it doesn't really fix anything.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I ran this by a couple folks who know more about this stuff than I did.
17:45
I also emailed Jacob Eliason,
17:47
who I think is at BC,
17:48
and he helpfully responded.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Eliason...
17:52
The problem is the weighting also weights on gender,
17:55
which is the thing being measured.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that makes it pretty complicated.
17:59
So Eliasson has this line at the end of his post or how his
18:02
post originally appeared.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about weighting here.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: That's not the end of the story.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Estimating changes in time from cross-sectional data can be challenging.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: In this case,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: since the weighting procedure itself appears to calibrate on gender,
18:15
even the resulting weighted proportions for gender identity may
18:19
reflect benchmark
18:20
SPEAKER_00: choices as much as population changes.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, so he's basically saying not waiting.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: It is bad,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: but even waiting it,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: you probably can't use this data for this response for this task.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And I emailed him that specific thing.
18:32
I was like,
18:32
so you're basically saying we just shouldn't use this data for
18:34
this.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, yeah.
18:35
And he actually updated his post with more information and we
18:38
will link to it in the show notes.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: So where does this leave us?
18:41
SPEAKER_02: Um,
18:43
I find the whole thing just like,
18:45
I might write about this because it's really depressing.
18:47
Kaufman should never have made this claim about this date in
18:49
this context.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Unheard should have published it in this form ideally,
18:54
SPEAKER_00: but it's just sort of layer after layer of bullshit.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: Then you have Matt Walsh and Elon Musk on one side.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Then you have Aaron Reid.
19:03
She says,
19:03
when corrected,
19:04
the numbers show the opposite of what he claimed.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, they don't.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Because he's saying even if you correct it,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: he said this always,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: even if you correct it,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: you shouldn't use the data in this way.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: The real answer is we don't know.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what to make of this.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: And if the non-binary population goes up or goes down,
19:22
it could mean a number of different things because there's some
19:25
theories that...
19:26
People who are thinking of detransitioning stop at non-binary
19:29
on their way out.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: In other cases, people might stop at non-binary on their way in.
19:33
I guess I was just most surprised that Kaufman repeated over
19:37
and over that he
19:38
SPEAKER_00: thinks trans people would not identify as a man or a woman,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: but as non-binary.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: It's strange.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
19:43
SPEAKER_02: and Kaufman,
19:43
SPEAKER_02: so he responded to the criticism,
19:46
SPEAKER_02: including some of Reid's criticism,
19:49
SPEAKER_02: and Eliasson,
19:50
SPEAKER_02: was that his name?
19:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:52
SPEAKER_02: And we'll post a link to that in the show notes.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: It's just bad when empirical questions are this politicized.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: It's depressing.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
20:01
SPEAKER_02: and it seems like,
20:02
SPEAKER_02: unfortunately,
20:02
SPEAKER_02: the correct answer when it comes to so much of trans issues is,
20:07
SPEAKER_02: we don't know.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And I will say, I...
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Part of this is the fault of the people who are,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:14
SPEAKER_00: pushing the fucking left-handedness graph.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, trans identification is going up.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: That must mean it's a natural phenomenon.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was always a dumb argument.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: And I actually suspect that in the long run,
20:25
SPEAKER_00: because there's – we've talked about this on the show.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: There's a huge difference between identifying as trans and having,
20:30
SPEAKER_00: like,
20:30
SPEAKER_00: gender dysphoria versus just sort of trans light.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit gender nonconforming.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm genderqueer,
20:38
but someone who's like fundamentally straight and not straight
20:41
and what we would
20:43
SPEAKER_00: call cisgender.
20:44
I bet that like as it becomes a little less trendy,
20:47
it will plateau and drop.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: I just don't think this is the data to show that.
20:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay,
20:50
I think we should go ahead and get housekeeping out of the way
20:52
before we move on to
20:53
SPEAKER_02: our main event.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: Are you okay with that?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: First of all, buy Katie's book, which is called... What?
20:59
SPEAKER_02: I want to say one more thing about that.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: This book is also,
21:02
SPEAKER_02: despite having sold 1,200 copies,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: an Amazon bestseller in multiple categories.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: Katie, I told you.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: It's broken.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: It's so fucking broken.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: It's bullshit.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: I know.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm saying.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm saying.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: People are emailing me and saying congratulations on having a bestseller.
21:15
You could sell 15 fucking copies in some of these categories
21:18
and it would be a bestseller.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: The Amazon rankings are such a scam.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
21:23
SPEAKER_00: are they scamming authors or are they scamming readers into being like,
21:27
SPEAKER_00: oh,
21:27
SPEAKER_00: this book is popular.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: You should buy it.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Probably mostly readers.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:31
Anyway,
21:31
Drink Your Way Sober,
21:32
the science-based method to break free from alcohol.
21:34
When I Googled it,
21:36
I'm seeing all your media hits as well as images in the book.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: It's a great book.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: I said so.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: If,
21:41
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:41
SPEAKER_02: all of the interviews that I've done,
21:42
SPEAKER_02: if they each sold one book because I've done 10,000 interviews,
21:47
SPEAKER_02: this would actually be a bestseller.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: What I find really depressing is that,
21:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
21:52
SPEAKER_00: a year,
21:53
SPEAKER_00: year plus from now,
21:54
we're going to be having the exact same conversation about my
21:57
book and my book,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: which,
21:58
SPEAKER_00: sorry,
21:59
SPEAKER_00: but it took way longer and way more work.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Books suck, man.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: We have a podcast.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to write books anymore.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I know.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: First and last.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: All right, continue.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Buy the book.
22:08
Visit us at blockedandimported.org where you can become a
22:12
premium subscriber and
22:14
SPEAKER_00: get a lot of extra stuff,
22:15
SPEAKER_00: including access to our community.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Also, you get access to this page where we have IRL meetup groups.
22:24
In my travels,
22:25
I was able to meet some folks in Portland and Seattle,
22:27
which was very enjoyable.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you to everyone who came out.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: What else?
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Apple Podcasts.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Read and review us there.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: I think we're at 4.6.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: We're locked in an eternal struggle between 4.6 and 4.7.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And we recently had a review that just said transphobes.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: One word.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wait.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Was it one word?
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: I want to fact check this.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: It was really important.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: You think it was more than one?
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, the title was Nope.
22:50
one star and then it just said transphobes fair anyway uh okay
22:56
do we have anything
22:56
else to say for oh blockchain reported podcast at gmail.com one
22:59
of the other perks
23:00
that you get for joining us blockchain reported.org is these
23:03
live events that we're
23:04
doing we did i did one earlier this week with joe vulpicelli
23:06
who is a is this
23:08
fascinating figure in addiction medicine and stuff like that um
23:11
is yeah a perk that
23:12
SPEAKER_02: you get for joining us so buy my book join the show please
23:16
SPEAKER_02: Let's keep this going.
23:17
SPEAKER_02: I'm hanging on by a thread here, folks.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, buy the book.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Katie, let's get to the meltdown.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Okay, today's main story is much requested.
23:26
Anytime some kind of like anarchist cafe or communist shoe
23:30
cobbler is in the news,
23:31
SPEAKER_02: we get a million emails about it.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: This was no exception.
23:33
And our story takes place on the Isle of Manhattan at the famed
23:38
feminist bookstore,
23:38
SPEAKER_02: Blue Stockings.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, have you ever been to Blue Stockings?
23:42
SPEAKER_00: I have not.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: When I hear Blue Stockings, I think Helen Lewis's Substack.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, newsletter.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: Which people should subscribe to, not least of which because it's free.
23:52
I've also never been to the bookstore,
23:54
but I do have some experience with feminist bookstores.
23:57
So I worked at Asheville's most famous feminist bookstore,
24:01
Malaprops,
24:02
in college.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: And I have to say, it was really not like
24:05
This the Portlandia sketch where you have Fred Armisen and
24:08
Carrie Brownstein
24:09
playing these very dowdy middle aged feminists who own a
24:12
bookstore and would shame
24:14
SPEAKER_02: customers for buying books by men.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: Did you ever see that sketch?
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: So Malaprops wasn't like that because people fucked.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: At least when I worked there, very high in the lesbian drama quotient.
24:27
SPEAKER_02: Lots of romance and subsequent breakups and starring out of the store.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: Much more L-word than Portlandia.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Although,
24:33
SPEAKER_02: fun fact about Portlandia,
24:34
SPEAKER_02: so the bookstore in that sketch was called Women and Women First.
24:38
And it was filmed in a real feminist Portland bookstore,
24:41
a place called In Other Words.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: And the bookstore actually stopped allowing them to film there in 2016,
24:47
SPEAKER_02: in part because they said that Fred Armisen playing a woman was,
24:51
SPEAKER_02: quote,
24:51
SPEAKER_02: trans antagonistic and trans misogynist.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: And also because there were no black people on the show.
24:57
SPEAKER_02: Of course, it's Portland.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: So there were no black people.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: So it's true to life.
25:01
Did you ever storm out of the bookstore or cause someone to
25:05
storm out of the bookstore?
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Both.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: Many times.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I read your book.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: You had some wild years.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get back to Manhattan.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: What happened with blue stockings?
25:13
SPEAKER_02: We will get there.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: But first, the history.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: Excuse me, the her story.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: So Blue Stockings Women's Bookstore,
25:19
SPEAKER_02: that's what it was originally named,
25:21
SPEAKER_02: was founded in 1999 by 23-year-old Catherine Welsh.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: And it was never just a bookstore.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: It was always a political project.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: And because this was 1999,
25:31
Welsh announced the bookstore's opening in a zine called Book
25:35
Your Own Fucking
25:36
SPEAKER_02: Life.
25:36
SPEAKER_02: Quote, hey, riot girl.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: Hey, Riot Girls.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: Does it say Grizz?
25:42
SPEAKER_00: Grizz.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: That's an I, not an I. Riot Grizz?
25:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: Feminists, women of color.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: That's W-O-M-Y-N.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: Queers, freaks, and friends.
25:51
Check out NYC's Only Women,
25:53
again with a Y,
25:54
Women's Bookstore and Vegan Cafe.
25:56
collective run with a punk anarchist tilt book zines music and
25:59
performances by for
26:00
about women and we're trans inclusive we can order any book for
26:04
you if you want
26:05
your stuff distro send us a sample no promises but we're legit
26:08
diy exclamation
26:09
point exclamation point exclamation point there's a lot of um
26:12
women with the y here
26:13
SPEAKER_00: i feel like we haven't seen that in a while
26:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: so that term arose in the 1970s with second wave feminism,
26:18
SPEAKER_02: particularly popular with the era's rad femmes and lesbian separatists.
26:22
This was sort of a fuck you to the patriarchy,
26:24
you know,
26:24
we aren't women,
26:25
we're women.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't work so well on the radio.
26:28
But because it was associated with rad...
26:31
But the reason just to take the word man out of women?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, yeah.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Or woman?
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes,
26:35
SPEAKER_02: but because it was associated with radfems and lesbian separatists,
26:39
SPEAKER_02: it was tainted during the gender wars,
26:42
particularly due to its association with the Michigan Women's
26:45
Music Festival or
26:46
SPEAKER_02: Mishfest.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: Mishfest was found in the 1970s.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: They used that spelling.
26:50
And Mishfest was really the early scene or a early scene of the
26:53
turf wars because
26:55
SPEAKER_02: of its women born women policy.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: A trans woman was kicked out in like 1991.
27:00
This later gave rise to a separate protest festival kind of
27:03
thing that would be
27:04
SPEAKER_02: held outside the gates of Mishfest.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: It was called Camp Trans.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And this was on Ronson's podcast, right?
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: John talked about this.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: There's a good episode about it.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: I actually think it was pretty collegial at the time.
27:15
SPEAKER_02: Like I have friends who would go to both Mishfest and Camp Trans.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: But the whole thing finally shut down in 2015 in part over this conflict.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: And today's gender abolitionists are much likely to use women with an X,
27:28
SPEAKER_02: W-O-M accent,
27:29
SPEAKER_02: than women with a Y.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: No,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: pronounce it the way it's spelled.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: Women with a Y,
27:34
which is somehow even dumber and I think is less common today
27:37
than it was in like
27:39
SPEAKER_02: 2018.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: You don't see it very much today.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: No, the X, I mean, Latinx you can at least pronounce or Latinx.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: Kind of.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: The X mid word is just excruciatingly annoying.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Dumb.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying that as a man.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling women how to spell women.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: Are you a man or a Mexican?
27:58
SPEAKER_02: How do you say that?
27:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Mexican.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: Regardless, blue stockings was always meant to be intersectional.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: It was for all women, including ones who happen to be males.
28:08
So this was a radical comma feminist bookstore,
28:11
not a radical feminist bookstore.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: So reading from an early mission statement,
28:16
SPEAKER_02: quote,
28:16
SPEAKER_02: recognizing the links between oppressions,
28:18
SPEAKER_02: our goal is to be trans,
28:20
SPEAKER_02: trans inclusive,
28:21
SPEAKER_02: multilingual,
28:22
SPEAKER_02: open to all sexualities and spiritualities,
28:24
SPEAKER_02: intergenerational and to challenge racism,
28:26
SPEAKER_02: classism,
28:26
SPEAKER_02: ableism,
28:27
SPEAKER_02: ageism and sizism.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: I doubt they're open to all spiritualities.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, probably not like radical Islam.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: Ultra Orthodox Judaism?
28:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes, probably not Orthodox Judaism or like Southern Baptist.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: Muslim, I don't know.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Because they're brown.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: Mostly brown.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what happened?
28:45
SPEAKER_00: How did we get to the conflict?
28:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're going to get there.
28:47
But what this meant in practice was that this bookstore
28:52
appealed to mostly educated
28:54
SPEAKER_02: political lesbians.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: But from the start, it was a cool place for a certain kind of New Yorker.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'd never heard of it.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: They hosted book readings, film night.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: You never heard of it?
29:05
SPEAKER_00: I must have heard of it, but I'm not sure I did.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm not cool.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm not cool.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: No one's invited me to like cool book readings.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: You're not cool.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Why am I doing this podcast with you?
29:14
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
29:16
SPEAKER_02: So they hosted book readings,
29:17
SPEAKER_02: film nights,
29:18
SPEAKER_02: lesbian knitting meetups,
29:19
SPEAKER_02: brainstorming sessions about street harassment,
29:22
SPEAKER_02: stuff like that.
29:23
And initially it operated as a volunteer run collective,
29:26
but there were workers who
29:28
So I have a 2002 job ad that gives you an idea of what Blue
29:32
Stockings was like.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: Jessie, will you read this?
29:34
Blue Stockings Women's Bookstore and Collective is now hiring
29:37
for three part-time
29:38
SPEAKER_00: staff positions,
29:39
SPEAKER_00: 15 to 20 hours a week,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: $12 an hour.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Wait, I want to see $12 an hour in 2002.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: $21.61 an hour.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: All right.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, this is 2002, $21 an hour.
29:55
There were still...
29:55
That is much more that I made at the lesbian bookstore in
29:58
Asheville in 2002.
29:59
And it's not like New York was cheap back then,
30:01
but there were still like...
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
30:04
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to slide them for that,
30:06
but that's – Hiring for three part-time staff at a volunteer
30:10
collectively-run
30:11
SPEAKER_00: women's bookstore and cafe.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Responsibilities include book selling,
30:14
SPEAKER_00: cafe work,
30:15
SPEAKER_00: administrative duties,
30:17
SPEAKER_00: attending weekly staff meetings and monthly collective meetings.
30:20
One person will be in charge of either book ordering events and
30:22
outreach or
30:23
SPEAKER_00: volunteer coordination,
30:24
SPEAKER_00: commitment and interest in book selling a must –
30:26
previous experience in bookselling or literary knowledge
30:28
spanish or chinese
30:29
language applause must be committed to ideals of mission
30:32
statement women of color
30:33
transgendered people and older women strongly encouraged to
30:36
apply that's an
30:37
interesting artifact transgendered people i think that would be
30:40
considered
30:41
offensive now it would yeah yeah so that was the vision but
30:45
sadly the dream didn't
30:46
last in part thanks to osama bin laden what yes why does he
30:51
keep popping up in
30:52
SPEAKER_00: these meltdown stories what did he do i
30:54
SPEAKER_02: Jessie, so much for never forget.
30:56
SPEAKER_02: So after 9-11, the Manhattan retail sector was hit especially hard.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: Blue stockings started to go into debt and the collective broke up.
31:05
So in early 2003,
31:07
founder Catherine Welsh sold the business,
31:10
but the story doesn't end there.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: That would be a very disappointing bar pod episode.
31:14
At the time,
31:15
blue stockings was bought by people who believed in Welsh's
31:18
vision and
31:19
And in May 2003,
31:20
a fresh collective was formed and the store reopened under new
31:24
management.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: The new incarnation of Blue Stockings was a little different though.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: So it kept the name,
31:30
SPEAKER_02: which I should mention Blue Stockings,
31:31
SPEAKER_02: that's a reference to literary women of the Victorian era,
31:35
SPEAKER_02: but they dropped the women's bookstore part.
31:37
And the second incarnation was less about women and feminism
31:41
and more a grab bag of
31:42
SPEAKER_02: social justice issues.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: And this time men were welcome.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: And I don't just mean men who think they are women.
31:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
31:48
it always seemed like it was a grab bag of social justice
31:51
issues that called itself
31:52
SPEAKER_00: a women's bookstore.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: It was more explicit, though.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Who were the new owners?
31:57
SPEAKER_02: Their names were Brooke Lehman and Hitomi Matarisi.
32:00
The New York Times did a report on this new incarnation,
32:03
and they noted that Ms.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: Lehman,
32:05
SPEAKER_02: 30,
32:06
SPEAKER_02: was,
32:06
SPEAKER_02: quote,
32:06
a founder of New York's Direct Action Network and a faculty
32:09
member at the Institute
32:10
SPEAKER_02: of Social Ecology in Plainville,
32:13
SPEAKER_02: Vermont.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: And Ms.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: Matarisi, 27, makes puppets and other art for activists.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: That's so pure.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I make puppets.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: And other art for activists.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: So that's 2003.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: So these two took over.
32:27
And you might assume that Blue Stockings did not have a
32:31
particularly sustainable
32:32
SPEAKER_02: business model,
32:33
SPEAKER_02: but it did somehow stay afloat through the 2008 financial crisis.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: They survived the gentrification of the Lower East Side.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: They survived Amazon.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:41
How much of their capital came from sales rather than from
32:44
their parents?
32:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: But there were some hiccups along the way.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: So in 2015, for instance, the place was physically falling apart.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: The Village Voice, RIP, published an article that began...
32:58
SPEAKER_02: Walk into Blue Stockings,
32:59
the radical feminist bookstore and activist center on the Lower
33:01
East Side,
33:02
SPEAKER_02: and you'll still be greeted with the boundary-pushing text,
33:04
SPEAKER_02: conversations,
33:05
SPEAKER_02: and vegan treats that have made it a countercultural landmark.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: But take a closer look,
33:10
SPEAKER_02: and you might notice that half the track lighting doesn't work,
33:12
SPEAKER_02: the outside awning is faded,
33:14
SPEAKER_02: and the floors are starting to give.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: Quote,
33:16
SPEAKER_02: we are a DIY space,
33:18
SPEAKER_02: and we've actually done a lot of our own construction,
33:21
SPEAKER_02: explains Sarah Ole,
33:22
SPEAKER_02: a collective member,
33:23
SPEAKER_02: but we're not professionals.
33:25
So at that time,
33:26
they launched a crowdfunding campaign to make these repairs to
33:29
the space.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: This got a lot of buzz, including in that Village Voice article.
33:34
SPEAKER_02: And this crowdfunding campaign was supported by,
33:36
SPEAKER_02: at the time,
33:37
SPEAKER_02: sort of hot counterculture celebs like Pussy Riot and Janet Mock.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: So they made around $35,000 for repairs.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: The term collective member, what does that mean?
33:46
SPEAKER_02: Volunteer, basically.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: So at that point,
33:48
SPEAKER_02: they were fully staffed by volunteers,
33:50
but they called themselves a collective due to their
33:52
non-hierarchical structure.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: This definitely cuts down on labor cost.
33:57
But that Village Voice article says that their rent at the time
34:00
was $11,000 a month.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
34:02
they were determined to stay in that location rather than doing
34:05
what other
34:06
SPEAKER_02: businesses did,
34:07
SPEAKER_02: which was move to Brooklyn because they wanted to fight gentrification,
34:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:11
SPEAKER_02: one social justice bookstore at a time.
34:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: So 2016 was good to them after Trump was elected.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: You know,
34:18
SPEAKER_02: this happened with a lot of nonprofits like Planned Parenthood,
34:21
SPEAKER_02: the ACLU,
34:22
because supporting these kinds of organizations was seen as the
34:25
resistance.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: Same with the Great Awakening.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: That was good for for blue stockings.
34:30
This was a business that had pivoted to social justice causes
34:33
very early in its history.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: It had been trans inclusive back in 1999 at the very beginning.
34:37
SPEAKER_02: So
34:39
SPEAKER_02: They were OG annoying, not bandwagon annoying.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: And Blue Stockings had spent 20 years preparing for that moment.
34:46
And so during the kind of happy woke years,
34:49
Blue Stockings leaned into this.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: So they started a monthly abolitionist book club.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: They embraced fad activism,
34:56
SPEAKER_02: sex positive feminism,
34:58
and they rebranded as a safe space for members of all kinds of
35:01
marginalized groups.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: The moment was really right for them.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: You
35:04
You know,
35:05
it's sort of easy to forget in light of everything that has
35:07
come since.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: But,
35:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
35:09
there was a briefly this robust wave of feminism in the US or
35:13
at least one type of
35:14
SPEAKER_02: feminism around Me Too.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: And Blue Stockings was certainly a part of that and benefited from that.
35:20
And this is just one small,
35:22
small example,
35:23
but I think it's a bit of a symbolic one.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: So Jesse, you remember who Moira Donegan is, right?
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Guardian columnist.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: And she was the organizer of the shitty media men list,
35:37
which was this list of men in media who had allegedly done
35:42
shitty things to women.
35:43
And it was sort of – it was pretty fraught because there were
35:46
some big names on there.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: And in many cases, the charges were vague.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: And anonymous.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: And anonymous.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: And Maura became –
35:55
SPEAKER_00: I think she had like a sort of entry level job in media at the time,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: but she became famous as a result.
36:00
And I think since around that time,
36:02
I could be getting the timeline mixed up.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: She's been a columnist at The Guardian.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and she was later sued by Stephen Elliott.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: They ended up settling.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: But in 2019, Vice did a profile of Donegan, and it included this passage.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: The journalist writes,
36:17
SPEAKER_02: "'A few days later,
36:18
SPEAKER_02: we met at the feminist bookstore Blue Stockings on the Lower East Side of
36:21
SPEAKER_02: Manhattan,' her suggestion.
36:23
SPEAKER_02: "'I was frightfully early,
36:24
so I bought Margaret Atwood's The Testaments and watched a
36:27
store employ hawk female
36:29
SPEAKER_02: condoms for all genders,' she clarified."
36:32
So that was Blue Stockings,
36:33
a bookstore that sold female condoms for all genders.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: They also had art shows and events.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: And Jesse, I put a photo here in our notes.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: I want you to describe what you're seeing and then read the caption.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: So this is from a performance art event in 2019.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a woman in like a sort of shiny neon blue...
36:56
SPEAKER_00: What's a leotard?
36:57
SPEAKER_00: I was going to ask you if it's a leotard.
36:59
SPEAKER_02: But it's a leotard, but it like goes all the way down her arms.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: One of those long sleeve leotards.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: And she's squatting in front of a cake in the first photo.
37:10
And then she smashes the cake and looks like dollar signs come
37:13
out unless people
37:14
SPEAKER_00: are throwing money at her.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Dollar bills.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Seems very porny and male gaze focused.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: It looks like she has sat on the cake and destroyed it.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
37:23
I can't tell if the dollars were baked into the cake or if
37:27
people threw dollars at
37:28
SPEAKER_00: her as she did it.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: It's hard to tell because they're all covered in cake.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: They're very messy.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: They don't look like fresh dollars.
37:35
But even if they'd been freshly minted,
37:37
they'd be covered in...
37:38
Right,
37:39
you're saying it'd be.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: As she crouches down into a raised child's pose,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: dressed in a metallic blue bodysuit,
37:45
SPEAKER_00: platform heels,
37:45
SPEAKER_00: and a long black ponytail,
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Di tops...
37:51
SPEAKER_00: I guess her name...
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Underscore Di...
37:53
SPEAKER_02: Her name is Di.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dot, dot, dot.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Di tops off her performances with live singing,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: most often sad love songs,
37:59
SPEAKER_00: while she crushes her handmade cakes,
38:01
SPEAKER_00: styled in bright...
38:03
pink and blues if i was there i would be so sad like i i would
38:07
have eaten that you
38:07
want to eat it uh let them sit on cake professional cake sitter
38:11
professional cake
38:12
sitter lindsey die on art that is one job that ai cannot take
38:16
well you know another
38:17
job she had is uh professional cake sitter lindsey die on art
38:21
camming naturally and
38:22
SPEAKER_00: the decriminalization of sex work also naturally by uh
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Abigail, Peña, blah, blah, blah.
38:29
SPEAKER_02: So unfortunately,
38:29
the cake sitting came to a crashing halt by the thing that
38:33
destroyed most retail
38:34
SPEAKER_02: businesses all over the world,
38:35
SPEAKER_02: at least briefly,
38:37
SPEAKER_02: the COVID-19 pandemic.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: We could not afford to sit on cake.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: If we had any cake back then, we had to hoard it or eat it.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: We couldn't sit on it.
38:44
SPEAKER_02: You had to do it on Zoom.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: You had to do it on Zoom.
38:46
SPEAKER_02: So activism moved online,
38:48
SPEAKER_02: in-person events were canceled to stop the spread of the virus,
38:51
unless the event was a massive protest because the real
38:53
pandemic was racism,
38:55
SPEAKER_02: you remember.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: And as you can probably guess,
38:58
most of the core blue stocking audience was in no hurry to
39:01
return to business as
39:02
SPEAKER_02: usual after the pandemic.
39:04
And I'm generalizing here,
39:05
but there is obviously some correlation between politics and
39:09
masking.
39:10
And my guess is that shoppers,
39:12
the sort of typical blue stocking shopper was probably
39:15
more likely to be COVID cautious than the shoppers of,
39:18
say,
39:19
Bass Pro Shops.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: You're really reaching and stereotyping there, Katie.
39:24
SPEAKER_02: So Malaprops,
39:25
SPEAKER_02: the feminist bookstore that I worked at during college,
39:27
they were still acting like it was 2020 well after everyone
39:30
else had gone back to
39:31
SPEAKER_02: normal,
39:31
SPEAKER_02: like actively discouraging people from going to the store.
39:34
I think that you had to show ID to get into the store until
39:36
like a year ago.
39:37
Portland and Seattle,
39:39
the number of outdoor maskers was like...
39:41
You saw it?
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: This is sort of its own subculture now.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: So in 2020,
39:46
Blue Stockings was finally forced to relocate from their
39:49
original home at 172 Allen
39:51
SPEAKER_02: Street.
39:52
SPEAKER_02: They moved to 116 Suffolk Street.
39:54
SPEAKER_02: This was due to issues with the old space.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is like five blocks.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: It's all the same.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: It's close.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: Very small part of the neighborhood.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: So the route was going up.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: The building was fall apart.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: They moved.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: It was still, but yes, it was still on the Lower East Side.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: So they opened the new space in April 2021.
40:11
And the move was also a chance for Blue Stockings to not just
40:15
relocate physically,
40:16
SPEAKER_02: but to reimagine how they operated.
40:18
Every good blocked and reported story has at least one and
40:21
hopefully more reimaginings.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: We love reimaginings.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: So at that point,
40:25
they had been volunteer run and they were moving to a worker
40:29
cooperative model.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: We are reimagining in the direction of capitalism.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: So read this from their website, Jesse.
40:35
Organized workplaces spaces create the conditions to realize
40:38
collective power while at work.
40:40
This is why we've chosen to formalize our two decade plus
40:43
collectively run
40:44
SPEAKER_00: volunteer formation into a worker owned cooperative.
40:48
taking lead from the traditions of black communists and leftist
40:51
organizing in
40:52
SPEAKER_00: Harlem and the radical Borinquin organizations of Loisada.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, like Loisada.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: So this is like a lot of sort of Puerto Rican speak.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: It's Spanglish.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: Yes, but... They spelled Loisada wrong.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's sort of funny...
41:10
SPEAKER_00: To attribute worker-owned cooperatives to just,
41:13
SPEAKER_00: like,
41:13
SPEAKER_00: black copies,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: where there's,
41:15
SPEAKER_00: like,
41:15
SPEAKER_00: this very much older socialist...
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
41:18
SPEAKER_00: anyway.
41:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is Marx Erasure.
41:21
In that language,
41:22
so Loisada,
41:23
that's Puerto Rican Spanglish for Lower East Side.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: Bordaquin, that's Puerto Rican.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: That's the Puerto Rican term for Puerto Rico.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: This is a little, like, white people calling North America Turtle Island.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't know who authored it.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm a wild guess here.
41:38
SPEAKER_02: Regardless, it is very much a signal of a certain type.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:42
And they also said that they were going to remove the
41:44
hierarchical strata of bosses
41:46
SPEAKER_02: and managers and allow...
41:47
SPEAKER_02: Oh,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: okay.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: So we could just have the episode there.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: We know what happened.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: And they were going to allow workers to,
41:54
SPEAKER_02: quote,
41:55
SPEAKER_02: self-determine and assess growth setbacks and needs authentically.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: This sort of reminds me of schools that let students grade themselves...
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Your only assignment is to create bead necklaces.
42:07
And then you get to tell us at the end of the semester how many
42:10
bead necklaces you
42:11
SPEAKER_00: made and cakes you sat on.
42:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: So the volunteers also wanted to start getting paid.
42:16
And then,
42:16
you know,
42:17
this is understandable,
42:18
but obviously comes with some drawbacks.
42:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, for instance, staying in business.
42:22
I definitely have sympathy for anyone who is putting in hours
42:26
and wants to get paid for them.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: Like, it's a for-profit enterprise.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: Blue Sockings was never non-profit.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:31
It's very weird to volunteer to work for free for something
42:34
that is in theory
42:34
SPEAKER_02: making the boss money.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: But this company doesn't ever seem to have turned a profit.
42:38
So it's not like,
42:39
you know,
42:39
putting in shifts at the Barnes and Noble for funsies.
42:42
And there's this kind of weird and uncomfortable truth that
42:46
working for small
42:47
SPEAKER_02: businesses,
42:49
you often give up wages in exchange for a clout or prestige or
42:53
to seem cool among
42:55
SPEAKER_02: your friends.
42:56
SPEAKER_02: The same is true of working in media.
42:57
SPEAKER_02: And that's a trade-off that only some people can afford.
43:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:00
But how do they even plan to pay their workers given that this
43:04
was not a profitable business?
43:05
So they announced a membership program so people could pay a
43:08
monthly donation to the store.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: The tiers range from community comrade.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: So that was a $2 a month donation.
43:15
SPEAKER_02: And at the top for $500 a month, you could become a glucose guardian.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't know why.
43:21
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: And that would get you discounts and access to events.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: So this is, roughly speaking, the Substack model.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: They launched a Substack, but without a newsletter.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes, pretty much.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Actually, they probably had a newsletter as well.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: Probably.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: So they open up in the new space,
43:36
SPEAKER_02: they start this worker-owner structure,
43:38
SPEAKER_02: and the mission expands.
43:39
So they started operating mailbox services for asylum seekers
43:43
and migrants with no
43:44
SPEAKER_02: fixed addresses,
43:45
and they began to focus more and more on the twin problems of
43:49
homelessness and drug
43:50
SPEAKER_02: addiction.
43:51
They also started distributing Plan B,
43:53
so that's the medication that prevents pregnancy.
43:56
So they sort of just dabbled in also being a pharmacy and a
43:59
mailbox provider sort of?
44:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: And Plan B, so that's over the counter.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: It's different from the abortion pill or Plan C.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: Now,
44:07
SPEAKER_02: as an aside,
44:08
SPEAKER_02: an anarchist collective in Bremerton,
44:09
SPEAKER_02: where I just moved from,
44:11
SPEAKER_02: they broke up over an internal debate about providing Plan C,
44:15
SPEAKER_02: the abortion pill,
44:16
SPEAKER_02: at their storefront,
44:17
SPEAKER_02: which is not legal.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: Can't do that.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: Plan B is legal.
44:20
SPEAKER_02: Plan C is not legal.
44:22
Word to the wise,
44:23
do not distribute prescription medicines at your anarchist
44:25
bookstore.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Who was on the pro side of that?
44:28
SPEAKER_00: What did they think was going to happen?
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: This could be an episode.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: You know,
44:32
SPEAKER_02: I thought about it being an episode,
44:33
SPEAKER_02: but it's mostly like the episode would mostly consist of us reading very
44:37
SPEAKER_02: increasingly angry Facebook posts at each other.
44:39
SPEAKER_02: I just don't think it would be that interesting.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: So you're saying it would be a great episode.
44:43
So by late 2023,
44:44
Blue Stockings was facing its biggest problems since 9-11.
44:49
SPEAKER_02: It turns out that the move to the new store just didn't really work out.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: Like instead of being welcome to the neighborhood,
44:54
Blue Stockings was being threatened with eviction because of
44:58
its policy of handing
44:59
out fentanyl test strips and overdose kits and doing Narcan
45:02
training and providing
45:03
SPEAKER_02: sharps containers for used needles.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: So what were the issues with this?
45:07
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
45:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, the neighbors hated it, basically.
45:10
So the blue stockings program had been approved by the New York
45:13
State Department of
45:14
SPEAKER_02: Health,
45:14
but it was not popular with the neighbors because opioid users
45:18
knew this was a safe
45:19
SPEAKER_02: space and they started to congregate there.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: And then drug dealers knew that opioid users were hanging out there.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: And so what you got,
45:25
SPEAKER_02: according to the horrible NIMBYs next door,
45:28
SPEAKER_02: was something of an open air drug market.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: How dare they?
45:32
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it also sounds like something that could happen.
45:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:36
So there was a change.org petition from local residents called
45:39
Save Suffolk Street,
45:40
SPEAKER_02: quoting from that.
45:42
SPEAKER_02: As longtime business owners,
45:43
SPEAKER_02: residents,
45:44
SPEAKER_02: workers,
45:44
SPEAKER_02: and friends of Suffolk Street,
45:46
we are writing to express concern about Blue Stockings
45:48
Cooperative Bookstore's harm
45:49
SPEAKER_02: reduction initiative.
45:51
SPEAKER_02: Active drug deals happen on our block.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: The sidewalks are not well lit.
45:54
We have been chased on our street while walking our dogs,
45:56
hit with pipes,
45:57
and spat upon.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Jesus.
46:16
There is a direct correlation to their arrival on our block and
46:19
this sharp level of
46:20
SPEAKER_02: degradation.
46:21
SPEAKER_02: So that petition only got 78 signatures.
46:24
And there was also a dueling change.org petition called Keep
46:27
Blue Stockings
46:28
SPEAKER_02: Cooperative Bookstore Accessible to All.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: Quote,
46:31
SPEAKER_02: by signing this petition,
46:32
SPEAKER_02: you're standing up for inclusivity and equal access to knowledge for all,
46:36
SPEAKER_02: no matter their hygiene level,
46:37
SPEAKER_02: economic status,
46:38
SPEAKER_02: or relationship to drugs and alcohol.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: This is so fucking condescending.
46:44
You don't think that the junkies were going in there to get
46:47
books while they were
46:47
SPEAKER_02: also using the bathroom?
46:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of noble savage thing where like,
46:52
SPEAKER_00: no matter their hygiene level or relationship to drugs and alcohols,
46:56
SPEAKER_00: is that really what's going on?
46:57
SPEAKER_00: Like the strong out junkies are coming in because they just want to read.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just, it's not a realistic.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing this, you said the other one got 78 signatures.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:10
SPEAKER_02: The second one got 1400.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: Of course it did.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: So the New York Post also covered this saga.
47:16
They published a piece called Woke NYC Bookstore Lures Hordes
47:20
of Strung Out Junkies.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: Very catchy.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: It's a perfect New York Post story.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: And that article,
47:25
it paints a pretty bleak picture of people doing drugs in
47:28
public right outside the
47:29
SPEAKER_02: store and then shuffling into blue stockings and immediately,
47:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:32
passing into the bathroom for 15 minutes and then eventually
47:35
coming out and passing
47:36
SPEAKER_02: out on the doorstep.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: Here's one quote.
47:38
A building superintendent who's worked for 29 years on the
47:41
block said he's been in
47:42
SPEAKER_02: altercations with some of the addicts,
47:43
SPEAKER_02: with one brandishing a handgun at him and another threatening him.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: Your blood will spill.
47:48
SPEAKER_02: Quote,
47:49
SPEAKER_02: we have to deal with this 24-7 and our lives are at stake now,
47:52
SPEAKER_02: said the man who wished to remain anonymous for fear of his safety.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: When residents such as 66-year-old Medin in Sulaco,
47:59
SPEAKER_02: who's lived on the block since 1997,
48:01
SPEAKER_02: have voiced their concerns,
48:02
SPEAKER_02: they are told they are entitled.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: It sounds about right.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: This is like the normal... Yeah.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's almost like a town gown type of thing.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: Like you can see like the radical activist types who can afford to keep a
48:14
non-profitable bookstore afloat telling the local residents
48:19
who've been there a
48:20
SPEAKER_00: long time like they're entitled for not wanting,
48:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
48:24
SPEAKER_00: open drug use everywhere.
48:25
SPEAKER_02: Right.
48:26
You saw you see this very commonly Seattle to people who are
48:30
upset that the parks
48:32
SPEAKER_02: and this isn't as much of a problem now,
48:34
SPEAKER_02: but it was during COVID and in the in the later years,
48:37
SPEAKER_02: you would go to parks and the parks were homeless encampments.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: That was it.
48:40
Like you could not use them to go fucking throw your Frisbee or
48:43
other whatever
48:44
SPEAKER_02: people want to do.
48:45
And people who complain about this were evil NIMBYs because
48:48
they wanted to use the
48:50
SPEAKER_02: public facilities that their taxpayers pay for.
48:52
Yeah,
48:52
I'm trying to better think through – the Lower East Side is
48:56
interesting.
48:56
I think this part of it is a little bit more residential and a
48:59
lot of the sort of
49:00
SPEAKER_00: clubbier drug kid stuff is north of there.
49:04
But the idea that all these residents just hadn't seen open
49:08
drug use on Lower East
49:09
SPEAKER_00: Side,
49:09
SPEAKER_00: part of me is a little skeptical of that.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: But I guess –
49:13
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
49:14
One neighbor said that he'd never seen anyone taking heroin
49:16
before Blue Stockings moved in.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: This is a neighborhood I've spent a lot of...
49:23
SPEAKER_00: time in because my grandma lived down there.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: I would sometimes stay at her place.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: And like there's definitely like rough around the edges.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, sorry, open heroin use.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not something you'd see.
49:33
But this is also corresponding with a time when open air drug
49:37
use is on the rise everywhere.
49:39
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what the criminalization laws are in New York.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: I do know in places like Seattle and in Portland,
49:47
open air drug use was just you could you were not going to get
49:50
arrested if you were
49:51
SPEAKER_02: shooting up fentanyl on the street.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
49:53
SPEAKER_00: if you take the BART in from SFO,
49:57
SPEAKER_00: there's literally a sign that's like,
49:58
SPEAKER_00: if you see someone using drugs on this train,
50:00
SPEAKER_00: here's the number to call a social worker.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, they're pretty explicit about it.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: So it's if you see something, say something to a social worker.
50:06
SPEAKER_00: To a social worker, yeah.
50:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: So some of the neighbors did fight back.
50:27
an actor who lives a few buildings away pour water from a tea
50:30
kettle out of his
50:30
windows onto the street below blue stocking staff had already
50:33
called 3-1-1 on
50:34
carpenter multiple times in the preceding months after seeing
50:37
him throw various
50:37
items including ice packs and bricks at people outside his
50:40
building bricks yeah
50:42
that's what it says this time they worried he was pouring hot
50:44
water onto people and
50:45
called 9-1-1 carpenter said that the water in the kettle was
50:48
cold and intended to
50:50
SPEAKER_02: clean vomit off his stoop
50:51
but he did not confirm or deny whether he had thrown anything
50:54
else out the window.
50:55
He has lived in his nearby ground floor apartment for six years
50:59
and says that since
50:59
SPEAKER_02: the bookstore has opened,
51:00
SPEAKER_02: he sees 90% more unhoused people and drug users on Suffolk,
51:03
SPEAKER_02: some of whom block the entrance to his building while they're using.
51:07
SPEAKER_02: I want it to get the fuck away from me, he said.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: I don't want it.
51:09
SPEAKER_02: I don't accept it.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't tolerate it.
51:11
SPEAKER_02: Go somewhere else.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: Like a NIMBY.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: I have many questions about this.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: Including like...
51:18
SPEAKER_00: blue stacking stuff tells this outlet curbed he threw bricks at people,
51:23
SPEAKER_00: which like,
51:23
SPEAKER_00: if he's throwing bricks at people,
51:26
SPEAKER_00: he should go to jail.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious about the sourcing on that.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: But then Carpenter did deny.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: I think people don't
51:33
SPEAKER_00: When I lived in D.C.,
51:34
we had a passed out lady in the entranceway to our house once
51:37
and we called the
51:38
SPEAKER_00: D.C.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: cops and they're like, there's nothing we can do.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: We're busy with other stuff.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: It's really unpleasant.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: And this idea that if you don't if you don't like public disorder,
51:46
SPEAKER_00: you don't care about homeless people or drug addicts.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: It's just a dumb idea,
51:51
especially in like a place where like the lower side where
51:53
everyone's living on top
51:54
SPEAKER_00: of one another.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: You should have hired her to be your guard.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: This is your stoop now.
52:00
SPEAKER_00: So,
52:00
SPEAKER_00: but how much can we say,
52:02
SPEAKER_00: you said,
52:03
you pointed out that this all occurred at a time when public
52:07
disorder in New York
52:08
SPEAKER_00: and elsewhere seemed to be on the rise.
52:09
Do you have a sense of how much of it we can blame on blue
52:11
stockings anyway?
52:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:12
I don't,
52:13
but that was the perception from the neighbors was that this
52:16
was their fault.
52:18
SPEAKER_02: And Blue Stockings, you know, their mission was explicit.
52:21
SPEAKER_02: They wanted to be a safe space for marginalized people,
52:25
SPEAKER_02: and that includes crack addicts and junkies.
52:28
SPEAKER_02: They were giving out Narcan.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: They were giving out test strips.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: They were bringing these people into the space.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: So mission accomplished.
52:34
SPEAKER_02: And in a way, I commend them for that.
52:35
SPEAKER_02: You know, so many social justice groups are deeply classist.
52:40
Like their idea of marginalization is like women who identify
52:44
as non-binary.
52:45
But they were attracting actually really marginalized people,
52:50
drug addicts and homeless people.
52:52
SPEAKER_02: And obviously, this population comes with some challenges.
52:56
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't want it on my block,
52:58
SPEAKER_02: but it does show an actual commitment to the cause,
53:00
SPEAKER_02: even if it destroyed the area for everyone else.
53:03
SPEAKER_02: Tradeoffs.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
53:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious,
53:06
the people who work at the bookstore and especially the people
53:10
who own it,
53:11
SPEAKER_00: if they're going back,
53:11
what kind of neighborhoods they're going back to and how they
53:14
would feel if this
53:14
SPEAKER_00: was in their neighborhood.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure how much credit to give them.
53:17
SPEAKER_02: Okay,
53:17
so let's fast forward to January 2025 when Blue Stockings'
53:21
landlord issued a notice
53:22
SPEAKER_02: giving the store 15 days to clean up its act.
53:26
SPEAKER_02: Specifically,
53:27
SPEAKER_02: the landlord wanted Blue Stockings to stop its,
53:30
SPEAKER_02: quote,
53:30
SPEAKER_02: unauthorized use of the premises as a medical facility,
53:33
SPEAKER_02: which is a reference to the Narcan situation.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: Some of the articles I read indicate that the same landlord,
53:39
SPEAKER_02: it's a company called Penn South Capital,
53:41
SPEAKER_02: they own blue stockings and many of the apartments around it.
53:44
So the landlord was essentially acting in the interest of their
53:47
other tenants.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: They were probably sick of getting calls.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: So this got quite a bit of media attention.
53:54
SPEAKER_02: And one of the worker owners,
53:55
SPEAKER_02: Raquel Esposande,
53:57
she gave her side of the story in an interview with a
53:59
newsletter called Happy
54:00
SPEAKER_02: Dancing.
54:02
SPEAKER_02: And as she tells it, the problem was NIMBYs.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: So here's a quote from that.
54:06
One of the stipulations they had was for us to stop giving out
54:08
Narcan and free
54:09
fentanyl test strips because they consider that us being a
54:12
medical facility,
54:13
SPEAKER_02: which isn't true in any legal sense.
54:16
SPEAKER_02: Narcan is as legal as Tums.
54:18
SPEAKER_02: It's something you can get completely over the counter.
54:20
SPEAKER_02: You don't need a prescription.
54:21
You don't need a doctor involved,
54:23
which is why we can give it out here through a state program.
54:25
SPEAKER_02: We get it from the state to give it out for free,
54:28
and we're all properly trained in dispensing it and training
54:30
others how to use it.
54:32
SPEAKER_02: Now,
54:32
SPEAKER_02: you might quibble with this,
54:33
SPEAKER_02: like if the staff needs to be trained on dispensing Narcan,
54:37
SPEAKER_02: it doesn't quite fall into the same category as Tums.
54:41
SPEAKER_02: But it is true that Narcan is not a controlled substance.
54:44
SPEAKER_02: It's a nasal spray.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
54:44
SPEAKER_00: not only that,
54:45
but the goal is to have Narcan readily available anywhere
54:47
someone might OD.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: Right.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: So it's a nasal spray.
54:49
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to like shoot anybody up.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: It's totally over the counter.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: No medical license required.
54:55
SPEAKER_02: Anyone can buy it, carry it, give it away.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: And in some places you can get it from vending machines.
55:00
So I personally think that calling this bookstore an unlicensed
55:03
medical facility is
55:04
SPEAKER_02: a stretch,
55:04
SPEAKER_02: even though I'm sympathetic to the neighbors,
55:06
because I also do not want to walk out my front door and see
55:09
people shooting up.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: But over the next months,
55:11
SPEAKER_02: Blue Stockings was focused on these legal issues,
55:14
SPEAKER_02: which meant that they had less time to dedicate to minor matters such as,
55:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
55:18
SPEAKER_02: buying and selling books.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: So in June of 2025,
55:22
the worker owner team announced they had not been able to buy
55:25
any books for around
55:26
SPEAKER_02: nine months.
55:27
They started a GoFundMe,
55:28
and they raised about $50,000,
55:30
but that wasn't enough.
55:31
SPEAKER_02: They were now $100,000 in debt to publishers and book distributors,
55:35
and they were relying on charitable book drives that were
55:38
organized by friends of
55:39
SPEAKER_02: the store to get any kind of new stock at all.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: So the Gothamists covered this.
55:43
They said that the store had its shelves stacked with the
55:45
covers facing out to give
55:47
SPEAKER_02: the illusion of full shelves,
55:48
SPEAKER_02: when in reality,
55:50
SPEAKER_02: this bookstore-come-homeless shelter was actually running out of books.
55:53
SPEAKER_02: So they tried to raise more money.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: Their goal was $150,000.
55:55
And,
55:56
you know,
55:58
Blue Stockings was probably fortunate to have such a long
56:01
history.
56:02
SPEAKER_02: People were fond of the bookstore from the early days.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: They were often happy to donate.
56:07
SPEAKER_02: It was an institution, right?
56:08
SPEAKER_02: But the GoFundMe and the book drives weren't enough.
56:11
And on September 22nd of this year,
56:14
Blue Stockings abruptly announced that they were closing and
56:18
And despite all of its problems over the years,
56:20
this announcement came as a surprise.
56:22
SPEAKER_02: It was business as usual until mid-September.
56:26
The store was planning a strategy session on how to fight for
56:29
reparations.
56:30
SPEAKER_02: And six days later, the dream was dead.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: So Jesse, please read this announcement they posted on Instagram.
56:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
57:03
It would be unfair to the blue stockings community at large to
57:05
keep the storefront
57:06
open as needed as radical spaces are and be unprepared and
57:10
unresourced for future
57:11
SPEAKER_00: crises and abruptly shutter.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: It's time to sunset, transition on our terms and envision new chapters.
57:17
So they blame the cost of rent,
57:18
utilities,
57:19
and of course,
57:19
their racist and classless neighbors.
57:21
SPEAKER_02: But there were also hints of drama behind the scenes.
57:24
SPEAKER_02: Here's another quote.
57:25
This decision comes after these shared failures of multiple
57:28
cohorts to come to
57:29
consensus around the guiding principles and practices Blue
57:32
Stocking should embody
57:33
to move forward as a worker-owned cooperative that serves as a
57:36
radical bookstore,
57:37
SPEAKER_02: cafe,
57:37
SPEAKER_02: and community event space.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: As you will see, a lot of this writing is super fucking oblique.
57:42
SPEAKER_02: They do not just spell shit out.
57:44
But the team announced that they would allow people to maintain
57:47
their ongoing memberships.
57:48
They were going to keep the GoFundMe going until December to
57:50
pay off the store's
57:51
SPEAKER_02: debts and attempt to compensate the staff.
57:54
SPEAKER_02: And the GoFundMe paid signs off as in love and rage,
57:57
SPEAKER_02: which incidentally is exactly how I signed my Valentine's Day cards.
58:01
SPEAKER_02: So Blue Stockings was closed effective immediately.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: But then it took a somehow more dramatic turn.
58:07
The following day,
58:08
a new Instagram post appeared from the same Blue Stockings
58:12
account.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, please read this.
58:14
SPEAKER_00: So at the top is from Blue Stockings NYC.
58:17
At the top it says,
58:18
screenshot immediately in case the crackers – I haven't seen
58:21
that.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: It's a great word.
58:25
SPEAKER_00: Sort of slur in a while.
58:27
Screenshot immediately in case the crackers who fired us delete
58:29
this message.
58:30
A message from the exclusively brown POC stewards wrongly fired
58:34
from B-stocks –
58:36
SPEAKER_00: Blue Stockings,
58:36
SPEAKER_00: I guess – yesterday.
58:38
We,
58:38
the melanated stewards who've been holding B-stocks down all
58:42
this time –
58:43
SPEAKER_00: We'll be holding a press conference at 12 p.m.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: on Thursday,
58:47
SPEAKER_00: 925,
58:48
September 25th at 116 Suffolk Street in front of the bookshop
58:52
community hub that we
58:53
SPEAKER_00: are officially locked out of to answer questions,
58:56
SPEAKER_00: talk with community,
58:57
SPEAKER_00: and relay next steps.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: We, the workers, did not post a statement y'all are sharing.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: Believe queer and trans BIPOC.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: Support us.
59:04
So as predicted,
59:06
this post was soon removed from the Blue Stockings account.
59:10
SPEAKER_02: So it seems that multiple parties had keys to the Instagram at that time.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: And then someone went to the comments and posted this.
59:16
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, read this.
59:18
This is J underscore SG23 from a current worker steward who is
59:22
one of three people
59:22
SPEAKER_00: keeping the shop going for the last year.
59:25
Definitely not an owner because the legal owners flexed their
59:27
violent legal force
59:28
by making this decision with no input from three of us that had
59:31
been holding it
59:32
SPEAKER_00: down.
59:32
SPEAKER_00: A couple of clarifications.
59:34
This decision was not made with any of the three brown folks
59:37
currently stewarding the space.
59:39
They were notified of this sun setting this morning and most
59:41
access was revoked.
59:43
SPEAKER_00: Passwords changed.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: They probably are working to revoke access.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: Now,
59:46
the stewards have reached out through multiple avenues to see
59:48
if they can legally
59:49
take over the business to keep it going and holding on hope
59:51
that this bears out.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: The folks who decided to shut it down haven't been...
59:55
SPEAKER_00: A lot of Xs.
59:56
The folks who decided to shut it down haven't been involved for
59:58
the past year and
59:59
very unaware of all the behind-the-scenes work we've been doing
1:00:02
to get us in a
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: sound place,
1:00:03
SPEAKER_00: including turning into a multi-stakeholder cooperative.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: This was an extremely violent move,
1:00:08
and these legal owners are casting it as a tough decision by
1:00:11
all when that's not
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: the case at all.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_02: So this is where things get very confusing.
1:00:16
And to muddy the waters further,
1:00:18
the same Blue Stockings account later posted this.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_02: Read this one, Jesse.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, our main Instagram account is still compromised.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: Our sunset crew consisting of current worker owners,
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: former worker owners,
1:00:29
and former staff still don't have mobile IG access to make
1:00:32
account changes.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is getting complicated.
1:00:35
We recommend following our backup account at Blue Stockings
1:00:37
Bookstore for updates
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: until we're able to regain the account fully.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_02: Okay, read the first comment under that.
1:00:43
Can you please start using a little less cryptic wording when
1:00:46
sharing updates?
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: No one understands what's going on or who is running either account.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_00: As someone who cares deeply for this space,
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: I know we all want clarity on who is handling next step.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: We all do want clarity on who is handling next step.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it appears that there were two competing groups there.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_02: The worker owners,
1:01:03
so the people remaining from the group that originally turned
1:01:06
Blue Stockings into a
1:01:07
SPEAKER_02: cooperative back in 2021,
1:01:09
SPEAKER_02: they actually own the place.
1:01:11
And the worker workers,
1:01:12
who call themselves worker stewards,
1:01:14
they don't actually own the place.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to call them worker workers.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_02: The worker workers were still manning the front lines.
1:01:20
And while the worker owners seem to be pretty burned out on
1:01:23
this whole project,
1:01:25
Everyone involved with this is a they them,
1:01:27
which makes it even more confusing.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just going to misgender them.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_02: So one of the worker worker owners, it was Raquel Esposande.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: She's doing the rounds of media during the initial eviction drama.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_02: She's a literal blue haired they.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: The other remaining worker owner was Merlin Sable, also a they.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_02: Jesse, this is the one picture I was able to find of Merlin.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_02: Please describe this.
1:01:49
Um,
1:01:49
wearing a mask,
1:01:51
um,
1:01:52
a shirt about people who have died on Rikers Island in 2022.
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_02: And it's hard to tell completely behind her mask,
1:01:59
but it appears as though both the worker owners were white or
1:02:04
white passing while
1:02:05
SPEAKER_02: the worker workers were POC.
1:02:08
And it was the worker workers who wrote that screenshot
1:02:10
immediately post on
1:02:11
SPEAKER_02: Instagram before their access was revoked.
1:02:14
They referred to the worker owners closing the store as white
1:02:17
violence and
1:02:18
SPEAKER_02: So this starts to spread online.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_02: Someone posts a screenshot.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_02: It starts to go viral on Twitter.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_02: The press starts covering it.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_02: People start emailing us.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_02: But people were confused, like, what the hell is going on here?
1:02:27
SPEAKER_02: The communication is very oblique.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_02: Luckily,
1:02:30
SPEAKER_02: the worker workers,
1:02:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:02:31
they were going to hold that press conference on September 25th
1:02:34
outside the store.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_02: We actually sent a listener to go record it for us.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_02: But unfortunately, it was raining and all the speakers were masked.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_02: So the audio was just extremely muffled.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_02: I feel bad.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: Bad.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: we did throw a little money their way,
1:02:46
but this was a listener who like at the last minute really did
1:02:49
us a solid.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: So I feel bad that the conditions were so bad for recording.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: Not their fault.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_02: We could not hear a thing.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_02: And so, but there were photos.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_02: It looks like there were about a dozen people there.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_02: Maybe most of them had umbrellas.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_02: So the photos of the event are basically just,
1:03:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:03:04
SPEAKER_02: people standing in the rain with umbrellas.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_00: So people who could afford umbrellas, meaning they're super rich.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_02: And the press conference was covered by this blog, East Village Grieve.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_02: So we do have some sense of what went down.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_02: And mostly it was the worker workers speaking,
1:03:18
SPEAKER_02: saying that they had been blindsided by the decision to close the store,
1:03:21
SPEAKER_02: that the worker owners had no real involvement with it,
1:03:24
SPEAKER_02: and that the lockout was a form of violence.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_02: And they accused the, quote, evil owners of white fragility.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: No doubt.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know what happened.
1:03:34
i'm sure there could have been communication issues but like
1:03:37
it's violence to stop
1:03:39
you from coming to work at a job where your owners might not
1:03:41
have enough money to
1:03:42
pay you right is like it was their preference to just keep
1:03:45
working and then
1:03:46
probably not get i guess i'm confused i think that would be
1:03:48
violence too that would
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: also be violence
1:03:50
SPEAKER_02: So there was an article about this in Publishers Weekly,
1:03:53
and that article says that Merlin and Raquel said the worker
1:03:57
owners had taken a
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: step back due to disability and stress.
1:04:01
And the other thing is the worker workers claim that they had
1:04:04
tried to legally take
1:04:05
SPEAKER_02: over the ownership of the business.
1:04:07
The worker owners said that the worker workers never got their
1:04:10
shit together and
1:04:11
that attempts to get the worker workers onto the legal
1:04:14
ownership documents just
1:04:15
SPEAKER_02: failed.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_02: So one of the worker owners said,
1:04:18
SPEAKER_02: quote,
1:04:18
finances were really bad and the people who were making the
1:04:21
decisions in the
1:04:22
SPEAKER_02: bookstore were not taking it seriously.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_02: For instance,
1:04:24
SPEAKER_02: they said members of the store's book subscription service,
1:04:27
which brings in $10,000 each month and is a key part of keeping
1:04:31
the store going,
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: have not received their books for the past two months.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_02: Even though they took on that responsibility, they did not fulfill it.
1:04:37
So the worker owners said that when they tried to meet the
1:04:40
worker workers,
1:04:41
SPEAKER_02: the worker workers refused.
1:04:43
SPEAKER_02: Quote,
1:04:43
the situation had become so dire with the prospect of
1:04:46
defaulting on next month's
1:04:47
rent and having to scrape together the funds to make payroll
1:04:50
that the two co-owners
1:04:51
SPEAKER_02: decided they had to close the store.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_02: It's true they were not part of the final decision,
1:04:56
SPEAKER_02: which is not in keeping with the values of the worker cooperative,
1:04:58
SPEAKER_02: as Passande acknowledged,
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: but it was,
1:05:01
SPEAKER_02: like we said in the post on the website,
1:05:02
SPEAKER_02: the absolute last resort.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_02: So,
1:05:06
SPEAKER_02: In one corner,
1:05:07
we have the two official owners whose names are on the lease
1:05:10
and who can't pay the
1:05:11
SPEAKER_02: rent and who are white.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_02: And on the other,
1:05:13
SPEAKER_02: we have the POC,
1:05:14
SPEAKER_02: so really South Asian,
1:05:16
SPEAKER_02: worker workers who have just lost their jobs with no warning.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_02: If you ignore the racial aspects,
1:05:22
SPEAKER_02: which just like don't seem that relevant here,
1:05:24
this is a story about a business failing and the owners being
1:05:28
unable to keep it
1:05:29
open any longer because their rent is $12,000 a month and their
1:05:32
employees didn't
1:05:33
SPEAKER_02: fulfill their duties to keep-
1:05:36
allegedly to keep uh to keep the money coming in so it appears
1:05:41
that the owner's
1:05:41
biggest fuck up seems to be not like not telling them
1:05:44
beforehand which is obviously
1:05:45
very shitty management so that's the basics none of that really
1:05:49
seems to be in
1:05:50
SPEAKER_02: doubt but this is where things get even dumber so
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: After all this,
1:05:56
a former Blue Stockings worker worker named Al posted on
1:06:00
Instagram that she
1:06:02
experienced an anti-black culture during the three years she
1:06:05
worked at Blue
1:06:06
Stockings and that the anti-blackness wasn't coming from the
1:06:09
worker owners,
1:06:10
SPEAKER_02: but from her fellow worker workers.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_02: And so Jesse, read this post.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: I have broken my body and given my blood,
1:06:17
sweat and tears to blue stockings in the almost three years
1:06:20
I've worked here.
1:06:21
I've had so many life affirming experiences and my review is
1:06:23
always this is the
1:06:24
SPEAKER_00: best and worst place I've ever worked.
1:06:26
I was tokenized the minute I started working here as your first
1:06:28
black worker and
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: the only active sex worker on staff.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_00: I took it in stride.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: I was threatened to be raped, killed and beaten up and took it in stride.
1:06:36
SPEAKER_00: Threatened by who?
1:06:37
SPEAKER_02: Probably the homeless drug addicts who hung out there, I would guess.
1:06:40
So while the South Asian worker workers were calling out the
1:06:45
white worker owners
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: for their racism,
1:06:47
the black worker worker was calling out the South Asian worker
1:06:51
workers for their
1:06:52
SPEAKER_02: racism.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_00: So this is a racist... What race were the...
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: presumably the homeless people chasing this person around the store.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_02: Great question.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_02: Not mentioned.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_02: Fentanyl affects all races equally.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_02: So this is a racist worker, worker, worker owner turducken.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_02: And despite,
1:07:08
SPEAKER_02: or maybe because of the worker,
1:07:10
SPEAKER_02: worker's best efforts,
1:07:12
SPEAKER_02: blue stockings is indeed closed.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_02: The sun setting process is ongoing.
1:07:17
And if you were moved by their plight,
1:07:18
good news,
1:07:19
there's a Venmo you can donate to.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_00: And the space will be filled by Jersey Mike's.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: The pot shop.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_02: Best case scenario.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it could just be like a Citibank.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_02: Citibank is a third space, a place to hang out.
1:07:31
Well,
1:07:32
also those ATM vestibules are good for people with fentanyl
1:07:37
problems.
1:07:38
SPEAKER_00: This was a very tangled story, Katie, and well told.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_02: Indeed.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Jesse.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_02: Okay, announcement.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_02: There are no new free shows for the next two weeks.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_02: We're going to run reruns.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_00: You should say why, so people don't get enraged.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_02: I am driving my dog across this giant country for the, I believe...
1:07:58
SPEAKER_02: ninth time in the last seven years.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_02: And do not email me and tell me about retrieve air.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_02: I know about it.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_02: They do not fly from where I'm going to where it's retriever.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, instead of retriever, retrieve air.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_00: It's a dog.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_00: Does the dog get to fly the plane?
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: Sorry if that's a dumb question.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_02: It's a dumb question.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_02: No, the dog gets to sit on the plane.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_02: But unfortunately, they are not flying.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_02: They do not fly from Seattle to North Carolina.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_02: So we're driving again.
1:08:27
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, no new shows for the Fremos.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_02: You will get reruns.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_02: And Fremos, however, will still be getting their shows.
1:08:33
SPEAKER_02: So if you want your fix, join us, blocksandreported.org.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think the next primo is going to be the Waffle Gazi, a.k.a.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_00: Waffle Gate, a.k.a.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_00: Waffle Eleven on Blue Sky, which is quite a tale.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to that.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_02: All right.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_02: So thank you, everybody, for listening.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_02: Please buy my book.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_02: Buy her book.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_02: Wait, you got to do the sign off.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: This has been Blocked or Imported.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_00: As always, we are produced with help from Jessica the 80s Baby.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_02: My book.
1:09:08
Thank you.