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A non-exhaustive list of cruel, corrupt, and extreme actions taken by Republicans of late.

With so many overlapping global crises happening at once, and Democrats in charge of the Presidency and Congress, it's especially hard to keep track of all the ways the US GOP continues to radicalize. This is partly by design. The cascade of oppressive laws and disinformation from Republican legislators and media is meant confuse and overwhelm. The following is a list of GOP and related far right news worth your attention.

  • Jamelle Bouie, Ezra Klein, Jane Coaston and Lulu Garcia-Navarro discuss how the GOP fringe took over American politics for the New York Times.
  • Gabriel Rosenberg, Duke Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, wrote a Twitter thread about how the latest "groomer" panic is categorically different and more violent than what we've seen before.
  • Writer Jude Doyle does a deep dive into the growing connections between anti-trans feminists and the far right. “It’s a grim irony that, by insisting on a ‘feminism’ without any trans women in it, TERFs have wound up constructing the tool by which fascists aim to destroy feminism altogether.”
  • Roxanna Asgarian writes in NY Mag about how Texas became the most virulently anti-trans state in America, including directing the state’s child-welfare agency to conduct abuse investigations of parents who provide their children gender-affirming care.
  • For the Editorial Board, Mia Brett writes about how Republicans are close to legalizing child marriage in Tennessee. 
  • Also in the Editorial Board, John Stoehr speaks with NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray about Ginni and Clarence Thomas and how their relationship affects perceptions about the Supreme Court's legitimacy. 
  • The editorial board of the Boston Globe wants the January 6 Committee to subpoena Ginni Thomas already.
  • Elie Mystal argues in The Nation that post-Roe, Republicans are coming for marriage equality next.
  • Gerren Keith Gaynor interviews Preston Mitchum about the harm to Black LGBTQ youth of the "Don't Say Gay" Laws.
  • The Oregon GOP is running three QAnon and Proud Boy candidates. 
  • Trump admitted to speaking to key Republican figures at the time of the riot on 1/6. Greg Sargent argues that Merrick Garland should use this admission to launch a full investigation into Trump's communications that day.
  • Speaking of which, there are 7 hours missing from Trump's phone records that day. Historian Tim Naftali writes in The Atlantic that Trump can't just erase history like Nixon did.
  • On the bright side, the DOJ plans to investigate the boxes of records Trump illegally brought with him to Mar a Lago.
  • The Child Tax Credit expiring is pushing voters towards the GOP. Meanwhile the GOP plus Joe Manchin are why it expired in the first place.
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What has the radicalized GOP been up to?

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    [post_content] => LGBT groups across the Middle East and North Africa rely on social media for networking, information, and empowerment. Now police are exploiting the platforms to arrest & detain them, often destroying their lives. 

Sarah Hegazy, an Egyptian queer feminist, raised a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo. Rania Amdouni, a Tunisian queer activist, protested deteriorating economic conditions and police brutality in Tunis. Mohamad al-Bokari, a Yemeni blogger in Saudi Arabia, declared he supported equal rights for all, including LGBT people.

The common thread in these cases is that all three were identified in social media posts, which allowed their governments to monitor their online activity and target them offline. What happened afterward ruined their lives.

In Sarah Hegazy’s now infamous photo she is hoisted on a friend’s shoulders, smiling elatedly as she waves a rainbow flag at a 2017 performance in Cairo by Mashrou’ Leila, the popular Lebanese band whose lead singer is openly gay. The photo was posted on Facebook and shared countless times, garnering thousands of hateful comments and supportive counter-messages in what became a frenzied digital debate.

Days later, the Egyptian government initiated a crackdown. Police arrested Hegazy on charges of  “joining a banned group aimed at interfering with the constitution,” along with Ahmed Alaa, who also raised the flag, and then dozens of other concertgoers. In what became a massive campaign of arrests against hundreds of people perceived as gay or transgender, Egyptian authorities created fake profiles on same-sex dating applications to entrap LGBT people, reviewed online video footage of the concert, then proceeded to round up people on the street based on their appearance.

Hegazy spoke about her post-traumatic stress after she was released on bail. She had been jailed for three months of pretrial detention, during which police tortured her with electric shocks and solitary confinement. They also incited other detainees to sexually assault and verbally abuse her. Fearing re-arrest and a prison sentence, she went into exile in Toronto, where, on June 14, 2020, she took her own life. The 30-year-old woman ended her short farewell note with the words: “To the world, you’ve been greatly cruel, but I forgive.”

Rania Amdouni was on the front line during the country-wide demonstrations in Tunisia that began in January 2021, protesting economic decline and rampant police violence. People who identified themselves as police officers took her photo at a protest, posted it on Facebook, and captioned it with her contact information and derogatory comments based on her gender expression.

Soon after, her profile was flooded with death threats, insults—including from a parliament member—and messages inciting violence against her. When police harassment extended to the street—outside restaurants she frequented and near her residence—she tried to file a complaint. At the police station, officers refused to register her complaint, then arrested her for shouting.

Tunisian security forces also targeted other LGBT activists at the protests with arrests, threats to rape and kill, and physical assault. LGBT people were smeared on social media and “outed”—their identities and personal information exposed without their consent. The offline consequences were catastrophic—people lost their jobs, were expelled from their homes, and even fled the country.

Amdouni was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine. Though released upon appeal, she reported suffering acute anxiety and depression as well as continued harassment online and in the street.

Mohamed al-Bokari traveled on foot from Yemen to Saudi Arabia after armed groups threatened to kill him due to his online activism and gender non-conformity. While living in Riyadh as an undocumented migrant, he posted a video on Twitter declaring his support for LGBT rights; this prompted homophobic outrage from the Saudi authorities and the public. Subsequently, security forces arrested him.

He was charged with promoting homosexuality online and “imitating women,” sentenced to 10 months in prison, and faced deportation to Yemen upon release.  Security officers held him in solitary confinement for weeks, subjected him to a forced anal exam, and repeatedly beat him to compel him to “confess that he is gay.” Al-Bokari is now safely resettled, with outside help, but remains isolated from his community and cannot safely return home.

Across the Middle East and North Africa region, LGBT people and groups advocating for LGBT rights have relied on digital platforms for empowerment, access to information, movement building, and networking. In contexts  in which governments prohibit LGBT groups from operating, activist organizing happens mainly online, to expose anti-LGBT violence and discrimination. In some cases, digital advocacy has contributed to reversing injustices against LGBT individuals. But governments have been paying attention, and they have a crucial advantage—the law is on their side.

Most countries in the  region have laws that criminalize same-sex relations. Even in the countries that do not—Egypt, ironically, is one of them—spurious “morality laws,” debauchery and prostitution laws are weaponized to target LGBT people.

When I was documenting the systematic torture of LGBT people in Egypt’s prisons, the targeting pattern was unmistakable: Egyptian authorities relied on digital evidence to track down, arrest, and prosecute LGBT people. People who had been detained told me that police officers, unable to find “evidence” when searching their phones at the time of arrest, downloaded same-sex dating apps on their phones and uploaded pornographic photos to justify keeping them in detention. The cases I documented suggest a policy coordinated by the Egyptian government online and offline, to persecute LGBT people. One police officer told a man I interviewed that his entrapment and arrest were part of an operation to “clean the streets of faggots.”

In recent years, government digital surveillance has gained traction as a method to quell free expression and silence opponents. Concurrently, the application of anti-LGBT laws has extended to online spaces—regardless of whether same-sex acts occur—chilling even the digital discussion of LGBT issues.

The consequences of digital surveillance and online discrimination spiked for LGBT people just as the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdown measures closed down groups that had offered safe refuge, diminished existing communal safety nets, threatened already dire employment and health access, and forced individuals to endure often abusive environments.

In Morocco, a campaign of “outing” emerged in April 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ordinary citizens created fake accounts on same-sex dating apps and endangered users by circulating their private information, alarming vulnerable groups. LGBT people, expelled from their homes by their families during a country-wide lockdown, had nowhere to go.

Activist organizations in the region play a significant role in navigating these threats and responding to LGBT people’s needs, regularly calling upon digital platforms to remove content that incites violence and to protect users. Yet in most of the region, these organizations are also hobbled by intimidation and government interference.

In Lebanon, for example, a gender and sexuality conference, held annually since 2013, had to be moved abroad in 2019 after a religious group on Facebook called for the organizers’ arrest and the cancellation of the conference for “inciting immorality.” General Security Forces shut down the 2018 conference and indefinitely denied  non-Lebanese LGBT activists who attended the conference permission to re-enter the country. The crackdown signaled the shrinking space for LGBT activism in a country which used to be known as a port in a storm for human rights defenders from the Arabic-speaking world.

These are not isolated incidents in each country. When state-led, they often reflect government strategies to digitalize attacks against LGBT people and justify their persecution, especially under the pretext of responding to ongoing crises. It is no coincidence that oppressive governments in varied contexts across the region are threatened by online activism — because it works.

Exposing these abusive patterns highlights the urgency of decriminalizing same-sex relations and gender variance in the region. Instead of criminalizing the existence of LGBT people and targeting them online, governments should safeguard them from digital attacks and subsequent threats to their basic rights, livelihoods, and bodily autonomy.

Meanwhile, digital platforms have a responsibility to prevent online spaces from becoming a realm for state-sponsored repression. Corporations that produce these technologies need to engage meaningfully with LGBT people in the development of policies and features, including by employing them as engineers and in their policy teams, from design to implementation.
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‘Clean the streets of faggots’: governments in the Middle East & North Africa target LGBT people via social media

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    [post_content] => Turkish podcasts that host frank conversations about sexuality are smashing taboos and filling information vacuums. 

If her medium were television or radio, Hazal Sipahi would not be permitted to host her weekly program about sexuality in Turkey.

Thanks to podcasts, which have not yet fallen under the control of the country’s notoriously strict broadcasting rules and regulations authority, Sipahi’s audience gets to listen to “Mental Klitoris” every week.

“I wouldn’t be able to call a ‘penis’ a ‘penis’ on a traditional radio frequency,” said the 29-year-old doctoral candidate from Bursa Province, in northwestern Turkey.

Each week on her show, she discusses issues like sexual consent and positions, sex toys, health, abuse, gender, preferences, and pleasure. Her approach, Sipahi said, is “minimum shaming and maximum normalization of sexuality.”

“Sexuality has always been a favorite subject I could easily talk about,” she said. It is not, however, a subject she could discuss freely outside her social circle. In Turkey, the pervasive attitude toward open discussions about sexual intimacy and sexuality is still very conservative. Turkish schools do not provide any sex education besides the biological facts.

[caption id="attachment_2959" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Hazal Sipahi, host of the podcast "Mental Klitoris."[/caption]

When she was a child growing up in provincial Turkey, Sipahi said, sexuality was only discussed in whispers; but as soon as she could speak English, she found an ocean of sexuality content available on the internet.

“I searched for information online and found it, only because I was curious,” she said. “I also learned many false things on the internet, and they were very hard to correct later on.”

For example, Sipahi explained, “For so long, we thought that the hymen was a literal veil like a membrane.” In Turkey there is a widespread belief that once the hymen is “deformed,” a woman’s femininity is damaged, and she somehow becomes less valuable as a future spouse.

“Mental Klitoris” is both Sipahi’s public service and her means of self-expression. She uses her podcast to correct misunderstandings and disinformation, to go beyond censorship and to translate new terminology into Turkish.

“I really wish I had been able to access this kind of information when I was around 14 or 15,” she said.

More than 45,000 people listen to Mental Klitoris, which provides them with access to crucial information in their native tongue. They learn terms like “stealthing,” “pegging,” “abortion,” “consent,” “vulva,” “menstruation,” and “slut-shaming.” Sipahi covers all these topics on her podcast; she says she’s adding important new vocabulary to the Turkish vernacular.

She’s also adding a liberal voice to the ongoing discussion about feminism, “Which became even stronger in Turkey after #MeToo.” She believes her program will lead to a wave of similar content in Turkey.

“This will go beyond podcasts,” she said. “We will have a sexual opening overall on the internet.”

Inspired by contemporary creatives like Lena Dunham (“Girls”), Michaela Coel (“I Might Detroy You”),  Tuluğ Özlü, an Istanbul native, says her audience’s hunger to hear a conversation about sexuality is unmissable.

In 2020, Özlü launched a weekly talk series called “Umarım Annem Dinlemez,” (“I Hope My Mom Isn’t Listening”). With over a million listeners, it is now the third-most popular podcast on Spotify Turkey. It’s mostly about sex.

[caption id="attachment_2980" align="alignleft" width="413"] Tuluğ Özlü[/caption]

Asked to describe how she feels when she crosses the barriers created by widely shared social taboos about human sexuality, Özlü, who lives in Istanbul’s hip Kadikoy neighborhood, answered with a single word: “Free.”

“It makes me feel I’m not obligated to keep it in, and it makes me feel free,” she says. “As I feel this, I scream."

In one episode of her podcast, she discussed group sex with Elif Domanic, a famous Turkish designer of erotic fetish lingerie. In another, the topic was one-night stands.

Özlü brings prominent actresses on air, as well as her friends. Once she invited her mother on the program. The two engaged in a frank discussion about sexuality—in what was surely an unprecedented event in Turkish broadcasting.
Rayka Kumru is a sexologist, sexual health communication and knowledge translation professional who was born and raised in Istanbul and now lives in Canada. She had the rare good fortune to be raised in a home where questions about sex were, to some extent, answered openly. She says she has made it her mission to provide information about the subject in a straightforward, compassionate and shame-free manner. The lack of access to information about sex and sexuality in her native country, Kumru said, was “unacceptable.” [caption id="attachment_2977" align="alignleft" width="541"] Rayka Kumru[/caption] Kumru said one of the current barriers to freedom in Turkey was the lack of access to comprehensive sexuality education, information and skills such as sex-positivity, critical thinking around values and diversity, and communication about consent. She circumvents that barrier by informing her viewers and listeners about them directly. “Once connections and a collaborations are established between policy, education, and [particularly sexual] health, and when access to education and to shame-free, culturally specific, scientific, and empowering skills training are allowed, we see that these barriers are removed,” Kumru explains. Otherwise, she says, the same myths and taboos continue to play out, making misinformation, disinformation, taboos, and shame ever-more toxic.
Sukran Moral has first-hand knowledge of Turkey’s toxic discourse on sexuality since she first achieved public recognition in the late 1980s, first as a journalist and writer and later as an artist, sparking heated debates. One of her most infamous pieces of work is an eight-minute video installation called “Bordello,” in which she stands on Zurafa Street, the historic location of Istanbul’s brothels, wearing a transparent negligee and a blonde wig, while men leer at her. She said that one of Turkey’s largest newspapers at the time, Hürriyet, labeled her a “sex worker” after that performance. Moral moved to Rome to escape death threats; she stayed there for years. [caption id="attachment_2982" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Şükran Moral[/caption] When it comes to female sexuality, Moral said, Turkey’s art scene is still conservative. “There’s self-censorship among not only creators, but also viewers and buyers, so it’s a vicious cycle.” Part being an artist, particularly one who challenges the position of women, she said, is seeing a reaction to her work. “When art isn’t displayed,” she asked, “how do you get people to talk about taboos?” Turkish academia also suffers from a censorship of sex studies. Dr. Asli Carkoglu, a professor of psychology at Kadir Has University, said it was not easy finding a precise translation for the English word “intimacy” in Turkish. “There’s the word ‘mahrem,’” she said, but that term has religious connotations. The difficulty in interpretation, she explains, illustrates the problem: In Turkey, intimacy has not been normalized. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) have many times expressed  support for gender-based segregation and a conservative lifestyle that protects their interpretation of Muslim values. Erdogan, who has has been in power since 2003, has his own ways of promoting those values. “At least three children,” has long been the slogan of Erdogan’s population campaign, as the president implores married couples to expand their families and increase Turkey’s population of 82 million. “For the government, sex means children, population,” Dr. Carkoglu explained. Dr. Carkoglu believes that sex education should be left to the family, but “when the government acts as though sexuality is nonexistent, the family doesn’t discuss it. It’s the chicken-and-egg dilemma,” she said. So, how do you overcome a taboo as deep-rooted as sexuality in Turkey? Carkoglu believes that that the topic will have to be normalized through conversations between friends. “That’s where the taboo starts to break,” she said. “Speaking with friends [about sexuality] becomes normal, speaking in public becomes normal, and then the system adapts.” But for many Turks, speaking about sexuality is very difficult. Berkant, 40, has made a living selling sex toys at his shop in the city of Adana, in southern Turkey, for the past two decades. But he said that he’s still too embarrassed to go up to a cashier in another store and say he wants to buy a condom. “It doesn’t feel right,” he said, adding he doesn’t want to make the cashier uncomfortable. He is seated comfortably at his desk as we speak; behind him, a wide selection of vibrators are arrayed on shelves. Berkant and his older brother own one of three erotica shops in Adana. Most of their customers are lower middle class; one-third are female. “Many of them are government workers who come after hearing about us from a friend,” he said. The shopkeeper said female customers phone in advance to check whether the shop is “available,” meaning empty. He said he often refers women who describe certain complaints to a gynecologist. “I see countless women who are barely aware of their own bodies,” he said. Dr. Doğan Şahin, a psychiatrist and sexual therapist, said that the information women in Turkey hear when they are growing up has a lot to do with their avoidance of discussions about sex, even when the subject concerns their health. [caption id="attachment_2971" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] Advertisement for men's underwear in Izmir, Turkey.[/caption] Men don’t really care whether the woman is aroused, willing or having an orgasm, he said. Unless the problem is due to pain, or vaginismus, couples rarely head to a therapist, he adds. “[Women who grew up hearing false myths] tend to take sexuality as something bad happening to their bodies, and so, they unintentionally shut their vaginas, leading to vaginismus. This is actually a defense method,” he told The Conversationalist. “They fear dying, they fear becoming a lower quality woman, or that sex is their duty.” While most Turkish women find out about their sexual needs after getting married, the doctor says that, based on research he completed about 10 years ago, men tend to fall for myths about sexuality by watching pornography, which plants unrealistic fantasies about sex in their minds. “Sexuality is also presented as criminal or banned in [Turkish] television shows. The shows take sexuality to be part of cheating, damaging passions or crimes instead of part of a normal, healthy, and happy life.” He recommends that couples talk about sexuality and normalize it. Talking is crucial, and so is the language used in those conversations. Bahar Aldanmaz, a Turkish sociologist studying for her PhD at Boston University, told The Conversationalist why talking about menstruation matters. “A woman’s period is unfortunately seen as something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden,” she said. (According to Turkey’s language authority, the word “dirty” also means “a woman having her period.”) “There are many children who can’t share their menstruation experience, or can’t even understand they are having their periods, or who experience this with fear and trauma.” And this is what builds a wall of taboo around this essential issue, the professor says. It is one of the issues her non-profit organization “We Need To Talk” aims to accomplish, among other problems related to menstruation, such as period poverty and period stigma. Female hygiene products are taxed as much as 18 percent—the same ratio as diamonds, said Ms. Aldanmaz. She adds that this is what mainly causes inequality—privileged access to basic health goods, the consequence of the roles imposed by Turkish social mores. “Despite declining income due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a serious increase in the pricing of hygiene pads and tampons. This worsens period poverty,” Aldanmaz says. She offers Scotland as an example of what would like to see in Turkey: free sanitary products for all. During Turkey’s government-imposed lockdown in May 2021, several photos showing tampons and pads in the non-essential sales part of markets stirred heated debates around the subject, but neither the Ministry of Family and Social Services nor the Health Ministry weighed in. “We are fighting this shaming culture in Turkey,” Aldanmaz says, “by understanding and talking about it.” [post_title] => Sexually aware and on air: Beyond Turkey's comfort zone [post_excerpt] => Turkish podcasts that host frank conversations about sexuality are smashing taboos and filling information vacuums.  [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => sexually-aware-and-on-air-beyond-turkeys-comfort-zone [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:14:02 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:14:02 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=2949 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Sexually aware and on air: Beyond Turkey’s comfort zone

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    [post_content] => The combination of jokes and storytelling has become a potent weapon in the culture wars

With “Nanette,” her critically acclaimed 2018 Netflix special, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby inspired an international conversation about the purpose of comedy. During her hour-long monologue, filmed in front of a rapt audience at the Sydney Opera House, Gadsby challenges the idea that comedy is an effective means of dealing with controversial issues. In theory, she explains, comedy creates a connection through laughter; but in practice, it undermines serious discussions and perpetuates toxic norms.

Gadsby grew up lesbian and gender non-conforming in ultra-conservative Tasmania, where homosexuality was legalized only in 1997. Humor was her defence mechanism against fear and shame, but it also kept her from thriving. She has come to realize, she explains in “Nanette,” that the price of self-deprecating humor is her dignity. “I put myself down in order to seek permission to speak,” she says.

Storytelling succeeds where jokes fail, says Gadsby. They can provide answers by integrating marginalized voices in a three-dimensional way that is not just a setup and a punchline, but an arc with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  “What I would have done,” she said, “to have heard a story like mine, to feel less alone, to feel connected.” She adds: “This is bigger than homosexuality; this is about how we conduct debate in public about sensitive things.”

Comedy and storytelling

Several comedians and writers have embraced the challenge of creating films and television series that combine jokes and storytelling to catalyze and reflect new norms. “Booksmart,” a hilarious and charming new film directed by Olivia Wilde, brings marginalized voices into the mainstream and normalizes them. The film replaces the conventional teen rom-com device of shy boy and awkward girl with two socially awkward teenage girls, best friends, one of whom is straight and the other a lesbian. The girls don't bother to correct the impression of their performatively liberal parents, who believe the girls are romantically involved. On the eve of their high school graduation, they decide to misbehave radically for the first time in their bookish lives, which leads to a series of hilarious misadventures. The girls are precocious and they live in Los Angeles, but they are highly relatable and possess an age-appropriate innocence that transcends their coastal elite status. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” an ingenious comedy that has as its protagonist a woman who is obsessed with a man she dated as a teenager, explores mental health seriously and unflinchingly rather than playing it for laughs. It works because the plots are hilarious and the characters compelling. The show manages to combine brilliantly written comedy and story development with a serious agenda — and on mainstream cable television. Premium cable channels have also been taking some chances with programs about the lives of social groups that were all-but unknown on mainstream television just a few years ago. HBO’s “Insecure,” for example, presents the lives of 20-something middle class African-American women. Star Issa Rae mines her own life in the series, set in Los Angeles. She works for a non-profit while Molly, her best friend since they were undergraduates at Stanford, is a corporate attorney. The series follows Issa’s foundering relationship with a live-in boyfriend, Molly’s awkward dating life, their career hurdles, and all the other universal agonies of fumbling toward adulthood — but presented through a lens that focuses on the unique aspects of the African-American experience in a white-majority society. If the series were about white women, “Insecure” would be a cliché. But because it’s about black women whose life experiences are as recognizable as that of Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of “Broad City,” it is revolutionary. “Crashing,” by and with Pete Holmes, and also on HBO, takes on comedy. Holmes’s character, based on a version of himself, is a white, Christian comedian pursuing his career in New York City’s less-than-earnest comedy scene. In this context, Holmes is the marginal one. Viewers gain a visceral understanding that there is no such thing as “normal,” and that diversity is what makes us human. As he struggles to make it, Holmes finds himself crashing on the couches of comedians who have achieved a degree of fame and financial success; this is a plot device that brings cameo appearances by pretty much everyone in the business — a true comedy nerd’s delight. “Crashing,” has taken on serious issues, such as addiction — with an amazing performance by veteran comic Artie Lange, who has struggled with addiction for decades. The series includes episodes with angry male comics who refuse to adapt to evolving social mores, as well as new female and non-white voices. “Crashing” was not renewed for a fourth season, which is a real loss for the broader conversation about comedy, especially about its changing landscape. The show upends the notion that sensitivity to new voices and old tropes will spell an end to “funny.” Instead it challenges the older guard to be more creative and opens the conversation to those that have been marginalized, which is a lot of very funny people. But scripted comedy and the traditional comedy set do pose limitations that underscore Hannah Gadsby’s central points. The characters are ultimately fictional, even if they are relatable and represent more diversity. They reflect real concerns, but they they don’t live beyond the page on which they are written.

Unscripted and stand-up comedy

One of the reasons the stand-up comic seems to offer truth, is that she stands there as herself, connecting with her audience through a combination of vulnerability and sharp insights. Comics tend to be quite open about their personal struggles and often draw on them for material. But the stand-up set is usually a well-honed combination of jokes and short stories. With “Nanette,” Hannah Gadsby shows that comedians now have a much broader range of options in which they can present their work. Comedy seems to have found its value as storytelling. “Nanette” is one example of this form, but podcasts seem to be the perfect storytelling platform.

Comedy and the podcast

Podcasting has helped the golden age of comedy to flourish. It also offers perhaps the most intimate ways of experiencing entertainment, as a one-on-one experience between the listener and the podcaster. In the case of podcasts hosted by people who allow the listener into their personal lives, a long-lasting bond is created. “My Favorite Murder,” a true-crime podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff, a veteran comic and writer, and Georgia Hardstark, a Cooking Channel personality and food writer, embodies the way in which comedy can be a valuable storyteller, a medium for serious conversations, and a means to connect. They achieved this unintentionally, as a result of tapping into the zeitgeist. The format is simple: in each episode, the hosts take turns telling the story of their “favorite murder” – stories that have fascinated them and fed their obsession with true crime, ranging from Jon Benet Ramsey to the Golden State Killer. The retellings are not especially well-researched, with Hardstark and Kilgariff openly relying on Wikipedia, or episodes of true crime shows. The hosts also often mispronounce places and names, and sometimes have a tenuous grasp of history or basic geography. It is their very frank awareness of their ignorance, and their openness to being challenged, that taps into the vulnerability and empathy through which they connect — both to one another, and to their audience. Kilgariff and Hardstark have also arrived at their podcast with baggage they are willing to unpack. The two discuss their past substance abuse, eating disorders, failure to thrive in conventional settings (neither has a college degree), dysfunctional relationships, watching a parent succumb to Alzheimers, and ultimately, the way both have achieved growth through years of therapy. And it is clear they are sharing themselves in a way that they think will be valuable to others. Since its launch in 2016, the podcast has soared in the charts, sold out live shows nationally and internationally, and has a cult following of fellow “Murderinos.” Their fans are mostly women, who make up the vast majority of true crime fans. There are as many true crime podcasts as there are comedy podcasts, but with this combination, their talent and chemistry, and ability to connect through their own stories, the duo have captured a perfect medium for an audience that seemed urgently hungry for it. Their new memoir, “Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered,” is an even more candid extension of the themes they have spoken about on the show. And they have bared themselves even more-so, to everyone’s benefit. The podcast has received thousands of emails over the years with fans expressing deeply personal reasons for feeling connected to and by the show. Between full episodes, MFM releases mini-episodes, with the hosts reading out a select few “Hometown Murders” sent in by listeners (really any true crime story that the listener has some kind of personal connection to). Almost invariably, the listener explains at the end of the show why it touched her, and expresses gratitude. One listener, who is a sex worker, told the hosts that they are “angels for trying to contribute to the [conversation around] the frequent mockery and stereotyping of violence against sex workers;” another wrote, after telling a story about her dad’s role in helping end a hostage situation, that “I am so grateful for the way you ladies talk and are so open about mental illnesses, it was (my dad’s) own bipolar disorder that led to the end of his life and I’ve always felt a stigma around his disease and death like it was an anomaly and isolate thing when really it’s everywhere and I appreciate your willingness to start an honest conversation;” and one woman wrote in to tell a story and thank them for, “helping this junior lawyer with long hours and unbelievable professional self-doubt.” In the interest of total disclosure, I once wrote them myself with a hometown story and thanked them for sharing themselves in the way they do. They were my loyal and constant companions who kept me feeling connected to the world when I was laid off from my job. Comedy has certainly grown to include more storytelling, and deeper excavations than throwaway punchlines. It helps that comedians often come equipped with a wide array of dysfunctions they are happy to discuss. Hannah Gadsby was right to question the value of comedy if it was used only as a means of defusing tension. But the medium seems to be expanding. It is becoming an avenue for serious conversations, and for a wider variety of us to connect.  Hannah Gadsby is returning this summer with a new special, “Douglas, we may well get a new verdict from her as well. It will be on Netflix in 2020. 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Comedy’s role as a catalyst for social change