Part One: Abortion and its Defenders: From Weimar to the Bay

Margaret talks with Samantha McVey about the syndicalists who ran a network of 200 clinics in Weimar Germany and the feminists who defended Roe-era clinics in California.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that not everything that people
have done in history is bad. Sometimes people do good things,
usually against the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kildoy,
and with me today is my guest Samantha McVay.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hi, you're host of the also stuff related podcast Stuff
Mom never told you. Very good.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I am a host of that show. How are you?
It's been so long?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I know it has been way too long. I'm okay.
I had a lot. Everyone's like, this bitch hasn't been
on me. I'm this bitch hasn't been on the show
for like weeks because I took a vacation, and so
now I'm back and I love it.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I feel like I've been at the beginning. I was
at your first episode, which wasn't supposed to happen because
but then we had that whole like the world is
awful and Rob Wade shot down essentially, and I was on,
and then I felt like I came back on not
too long after. I feel like it's a yearly thing,
and I loved that tradition because I get to see
you at least once a year, which is not enough.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
But it's I'm I'm glad I get to see you
at all, and that is Zoom is the main way
I came with my friends. I have a totally normal
social life on the mountain that I live on. Uh,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
What, I'm in Atlanta and I don't get out either,
so it's okay, yeah, fair, I'm with you.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, I like having the excuse. You know. It's like
I used to like traveling in countries where I didn't
speak the language, partly because I could just like sit
at dinner with like ten people around and have no
idea what NAMEE was talking about. But I like understood
why I felt left out. Whereas when I go sit
at a table with like ten people and everyone speaking
this language I speak, I'm like, it's cool, I don't

(01:49):
know how to socialize this.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Fine, Yes, that's the awkwardness of being at either situation
gives me anxiety either way, So I'm like, why why
just stay at home? Just stay at home?

Speaker 1 (01:59):
That's fair? Well, also with us on this Zoom call
is the one and only producer I've ever had on
this show, and I won't hear any word otherwise. Scharene
sure y, Hi Markt Hi, Samantha.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Wow, I love this trio.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, Sarine, It's been also a very long time, and
I feel like we're also on a timeline because I
believe the first time we met it was around February before,
right before the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
You're not wrong. It was in twenty nineteen. I'm pretty
sure it was twenty nineteen, but I'm not sure what
the month was. Yeah, it's a pretty yearly interaction. You'll
only exist once a year.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
That's okay, that's the way I like it. Please don't know.
I'm a year except for that one time a year,
and hopefully it's for good shows like these.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, I think you'll like this this week's episode.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I think I think this is a Samantha episode.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
I'm excited. I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, I'm so excited. Whenever you say that, I get
so excited because I know, first of all, you know me,
and I love that bit of me. And then also
because with all the world being awful, I loved to
hear what you're going to tell me because I know
there's some badass people, but I'm going to be so
excited about that.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Is the main thing that I hold on to with
the fact that everything is awful is that the types
of people that I talk about on the show are
still here, and people become those people when bad things happen.
One of our cool people is Danel, our audio engineer.
I nice Hi Hi Daniel. Everyone's to say hi to Danel.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Sorry for cat raises.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, sorry for all they editing. Our theme music was
written for us by unwoman, So saman the last time
we had you, not last time, the first time we
had you on. We talked about abortion access and it
was right before the house of cards called Roe v.
Wade fell down. That should not have been a house
of cards because the Democratic Party never did anything to
short up since it's precarity has been and continues to

(03:53):
be one of the only ways they can get anyone
to vote for an outdated capitalist party that essentially no
one under the age of forty actually supports true story.
That's my I like it.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
I'm over forty, but I also am.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Too, honestly.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
We talked about the Jain Collective, primarily a group of
women in Chicago who, coming out of socialist feminist traditions,
set up a network that provided illegal abortions safely for years.
We talked about a bunch of other abortionists. During the
era of illegality in the United States, no one writes
the word abortionists. I have a feeling I'm using like
a word that people aren't supposed to use. I think

(04:28):
you're supposed to say abortion providers, because like abortionists is
like a bad word. But I'm kind of like, whatever,
it shouldn't be a bad word. It's people who provide. Like,
that's great.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Exactly you say. I don't know if I've ever heard it,
but I like that you're saying it. Okay, great, it
might be maybe it's just old timey. I hope it's
just old timey. If you're listening and you are an
abortion provider and don't want to be called an abortionist,
I'm kind of sorry. I actually am sorry, because I
think you're doing something incredibly brave and important. Anyway, this week,

(04:58):
I've got two more stories for you about two different
places and times. Vymar Germany, which was the brief period
where Germany was a republic between World War One and
the rise of the Nazis, and then those decades in
the US, the brief golden era of the US when
the US is a republic, you know, when when abortion

(05:18):
was legal in all fifty states in.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
The United States.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Oh got cha. I was like that what when? Oh?

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Okay, yeah, I like it between Roe v. Wade and
the now Yeah the now. Yeah. So we're gonna talk
about vymar Germany. We're gonna talk about California, two places
that punk's write songs about. I have no other connections
to draw between these two places. Good connection, both have
punk No. Vymar Germany, well, they were pretty punk anyway whatever.

(05:44):
Bymar Germany Okay, okay, bymar Germany was a wild place,
like do you know much about I don't know how
cultural zeitgeist vymar Germany is.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Like, yeah, I would not know. I do not know,
And I'm right for those because I'm like who win when?

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, okay, let's go. So this is the era of
like Cabaret, like that movie. This is the era of
like Weimar. Germany was a really wild place in one
of the most interesting times and places in history. It
was incredibly progressive and incredibly politically engaged in all kinds
of directions, and it is, you know, basically nineteen twenties Germany.

(06:26):
It's nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. Okay, everyone was
fucking starving, and everyone was fucking traumatized. They had just
lost this war that they shouldn't have been in, and
it's kind of their fault, but wasn't What wasn't like
the random german on the street's fault, you know, right right,
and during the nineteen twenties, so it's like famous for
all the like well cabaret culture and all the like

(06:48):
decadent art type stuff that's happening in a collapsing society, right,
But there's also this wild political fighting going on between
anarchist communists, social democrats, monarchists, and fascists. Like all of
these different groups are like, no, I'm going to be
in charge. Now, I'm gonna be in charge, and they're
all getting into fights in the street about it. Culture

(07:09):
was blooming. You have the first LGBT research center and
gender affirming care facility in Western history, including like the
first gender a firming surgeries for trans women and things
like that which happened at the Institute for Sex Research,
which if people want to hear more about, they can
go and listen to our episode about gay resistance to Nazis.

(07:30):
We talk all about that place and time. It's real
neat except for the fact that I think this is
a little bit more commonly known. You know how like
all the famous photos of Nazis burning books, all of
those photos are of them burning books about transness basically,
and like LGBT stuff because they torched the world's first

(07:52):
LGBT resource center. Anyway. Yeah, that's the fun part of
like all of histories, is a dance between action and
reaction and like positive and negative forces, and like I
hate to think of things dualistically, but there's like bad
stuff and there's people who fight the bad stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's almost like they went too far to the left
or to good and they had to ricochet all the
way to bad, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Which is what I'm afraid is what's happening right now
in the units.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
I just want to say, I feel like we're playing
we're playing that out they play out right now.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
In the US. So yeah, basically, they're like and everywhere,
what do you mean gay people can get married and
we let like people of other you know, races and
ethnicities like co exist peacefully. Can't have that? How dare you?
It was in its way, The Viimar Republic was in
its way, very progressive society, but the laws hadn't necessarily
caught up yet with society's viewpoints. Birth control and abortion

(08:44):
were both illegal. Abortion was illegal everywhere in the Western
world at this point except for the USSR. The Revolution
legalized abortion, and then Stalin was like just kidding and
got rid of it. But during this period abortion is
legal in the USSR. And so you've always awesome folks
living in Germany. You also have clearly less awesome folks

(09:05):
who are going to take power in about ten years
and they're like, well, how do we have abortions and
talk about birth control when it's illegal? Who will do
these crimes with and for us? Elsewhere in the Western world,
at least in the US, where I've done more research
about it, the answer to who will organize crime is

(09:26):
usually organized crime right kind of famously in the US
for decades, probably at least a century, if you wanted
an abortion, you went to a mafia doctor. Even the
Jain collective, who we all love as heroes, their first
doctors were almost certainly mafia. And don't want to conjecture

(09:48):
too hard with people who are still alive. Also, we
talked about on our Stonewall episode and this is really
just this whole episode is just to like go back
and listen all these other episodes. We talk on the
Stonewall episode about how the old gay clubs were mafia
run back in the day. So like most places, the
mafia was the one providing the services that people needed

(10:10):
and were not available legally. Right, there's another group that's
really good at organizing crime. You ever heard of a
narco syndicalism?

Speaker 3 (10:19):
No, please explain?

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, Like, like one time, when I first became an anarchist,
I went and I was like hanging out with my
family and they're like, well, what do you believe? And
I was like, well, have you ever heard of syndicalism?
And everyone like turns to my grandfather, who's like the
like wise old man or whatever you know, and he
like looks really deep in thought and he rubs his
chin and he goes, Now, there's a word I haven't
heard in a very long time.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Real ominous.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah. So syndicalism, it's a worker's movement. It still exists.
Syndicalism is a worker's movement that believes in forming workers'
power through unionism, through forming unions, right, and it's as
a way to build a better society. It's like not
reformist unionism and arcosyndicalism, which is a very large branch

(11:05):
of the syndicalist movement in many countries, is the majority
of it many countries. It's not many countries, syndicalism is
more communist and arcosyndicalism believes in doing syndicalism in order
to create a society without capitalism in the state, where
like workers' councils collectively create society and fit form all
of our needs and things like that, and arcosyndicalists have

(11:25):
this like from a labor movement point of view, they
have this reputation as like the wild radicals, right, who
are a little too into direct action and they all
hate voting and shit, you know. For the rest of
the anarchist movement, they're like kind of bureaucratic and boring,
is the sort of reputation that they have because they're
very organized. Okay, so they're perfect for this role. The

(11:50):
union part gives them the organizational skills, the anarchist part
gives them the affinity for crime. So in Weimar Germany,
abortions were done by lay organizations, that is, they were
done by not doctors, not even like clinics necessarily, and
these organizations, they weren't branded as an arcosyndicalist, but their

(12:13):
leadership and their organizing principles came from that part of
the labor movement. Basically, the women and sometimes men of
the anarchosyndicalist movement were like, well, here's a need, we
know how to organize crime at large scale. That's what
we do usually it strikes and sabotage and things like that.
And then they left off the branding of like anarchism

(12:34):
and syndicalism because this was about reproductive health first and foremost.
And so they set up all these organizations and I'm
just like, I'm now off script. I'm so fucking interested
by this because there's like, well, I'll just okay, I'll
just get into it. This organization was done on a
fucking massive scale, Like I'm not I love Jaane Collective

(12:57):
right right, that's like one city and one clinic right.
In nineteen thirty alone, these lay organizations performed a million
abortions in Germany in one year.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
There was roughly one hundred and fifty thousand people in
these organizations. They worked out of two hundred locations. Wow,
there was two hundred Jane collectives right right that were
syndicated together. They were unionized together. About fifteen thousand people
were like the really active participants. I ran across both

(13:29):
the one hundred and fifty and the fifteen thousand numbers. I'm
under the impression one hundred and fifty thousand is the like
the broader overall activist support, and fifteen thousand would be
like people who are like more directly like, this is
what they do, you know, they're very active.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, yeah, they I'm a still high number, I know.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
And what they did they weren't just like, hey were
the abortion organization, right. What they did was that they
were like, hey, we're the following minor crime organization. We
are the sex education and birth control organization. We pass
out contraceptives, We hold meetings where we talk about birth control,
which is all like illegal and shit, but it's it's

(14:09):
like kind of illegal. It's like, ah, ah, you caught me.
I was given out condoms again. Ah, I'm not bad. Yeah,
but it's not really a secret that this above ground
but still a llegal organization was where people went when
they needed abortions. They also didn't charge money for abortions.

(14:30):
Oh wow, a million fucking I just for ten years,
one hundred and fifty thousand people came together to organize
the entire country's abortion service illegally, safely and free. Theyized
they used anarchist organizing principles and anarchist organizers, but they
didn't label their organization as an anarchist thing, and not

(14:52):
everyone engaged with it would have identified as an anarchist right,
And it's fucking like unknown it at least in English language.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Shit.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
I learned about this a year and a half ago
when I was actually doing research for the episode that
I did with you last time. I found the like
one sentence version that was like, oh, and by the way,
there was like two hundred clinics doing a million abortions
a year in Germany that the syndicalists were running. And
I'm like, can you can you tell me more about
this thing? That's more impressive than anything I've ever read
in history?

Speaker 3 (15:21):
That it performed over a million abortions? Yeah, how long
did they exist?

Speaker 1 (15:27):
So we'll talk a little bit about but it's like
I think that they ebbed and flowed. We're talking about
roughly nineteen twenty four to nineteen thirty three.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Wow, that long. That's pretty impressive. I know that's not
that long in real time, but in my head, for
an organization like this, with an issue like that, it
seemingly is a little longer than I would have assumed
for underground or aimation.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Like this totally, and so I spent the past year
and a half trying to find out more information about
this fucking thing. There is one seven page paper written
about it in English by Deeter Nell's called it does
not have a very entertaining name. It's called anarcho syndicalism
in the sexual reform movement in the Weimar Republic.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
I mean, it's on the nose, right right to the point.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Let's go. Yeah, Germans tend to be very literal namors.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah, okay. So we talk a lot about abortion and
birth control in this show, about people fighting for the
right to control their own bodies and their own reproduction.
What's interesting that we have to wrap our heads around
every single time we try and cover any of these issues, Like,
for example, when we try and cover like trans issues,
you can't just be like, oh, in eighteen eighty there's
this translating and mean the same thing that you mean
when you say in twenty twenty four, right, because our

(16:42):
social conceptions around these things, around sex and gender and
all kinds of things are constantly shifting, and people are
fighting for bodily autonomy, but how people frame that fight
changes over time, and it hasn't always been the same.
I'm kind of curious when in your work with like

(17:06):
because you all did, I mean, you all did a
Jane episode, And I'm just kind of curious, like how
much you when you talk about like old feminism, how
often do you have to engage in and talk about
eugenics and like how big of a problem this was
in the old feminist movement.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Right in general, when we talk about intersectionality and we
have to talk about the ugly parts of this, especially
today when we talk about white feminism and what that
looks like, and of course eugenics can be under that
as well. We kind of understand the background of planned
parenthood and the conversations we have about that because we
praise planned parenthood, but we also know that there's some ugliness,

(17:41):
as we talked about previously, yeah as well, So overall, like, yes,
we talk about the dark side of all of it,
which makes us kind of bad guys to everyone. And
I say we Annie and I who is the other
co host, because I have been called out for saying
things that they feel are offensive because they don't want
to be associated with that type of feminism when in

(18:02):
actuality it still is so when we talk about like
abortion rights, but then when we talk about sterilization against
the people women of color specifically, and what that looks
like and why they did it, people don't really want
to hear that truth because they don't want to face
the fact that, yes, this is an argument against abortion
rights in a way, not really, but it can be

(18:25):
turned to that point that we've had this many conversation,
but we have to be understanding and sensitive to the
fact that when it comes to reproductive rights, we're talking
about every part of it being right, whether it is
choosing to have a child or choosing to abort a fetus,
like those are two different things, but the same side

(18:45):
of the coin type of thing, I guess, so we
talk about it in realms of yes, we're uncomfortable because
for me, even though I'm a woman of color, I'm
also you know, very headonormative sis gender in that level.
So I have to talk about being uncomfortable when it
comes to talking about LGBTQ rights in general or any

(19:07):
queer rights in general. But like I'm now just having
this long dip about this, but because it's not simple.
It is simple, and it isn't simple when it comes
to the fact that people want to bend what they
think is their true rights or true beliefs. And now
oftentimes sometimes if you're a person who have any type

(19:30):
of privilege, then that means that you are taking advantage
you could be you're probably taking advantage of someone else
who are in the marginalized community when you do these things.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Does that make sense that yeah, no, no, no, it
makes sense because like you think that your frame with
which you understand things is the correct one and the
only one, the universal frame, especially when you are in
the like when you are in the privileged position you
are presented when you are the default of something, right
as like a as like a white person, I am

(20:02):
the default, but as a trans woman I am not
the default of that. You know. But you know what
else is really uncomfortable being supported by advertisers on an
anti capitalist show. So that thank you, Transition So here's
some of those unless you have cooler zone media, in
which case your money went directly into my dog's football

(20:23):
and you don't have to hear ads. But here they
are anyway, and we're back.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
I'm still laughing at that transition, thank you.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, Okay. So one of the things that I really
struggle with talking about kind of what you're talking about
is is that we have to talk about the unfortunate
opinions that many early birth control pioneers had about eugenics.
And we also have to talk about how eugenics wasn't
necessarily always a right wing talking point. It was an

(21:03):
everyone talking point for decades, which doesn't make it okay.
Is the thing that we you basically have this dark
half a century between Darwin is like, evolution is real,
and then people realize watching the nazis just like hammer
home what eugenics is like really about At the end
right the day, you know, that space in between is

(21:25):
full of people in the right, left and center being like,
wouldn't it be cool if we could kind of use
evolution to like make everything better? You know? And there's
this thing that happens that I've ran across while researching
this episode where people try to distance the historical eugenics movement,

(21:46):
which they will call the part that believes that only
the fittest should reproduce, and then the population control movement,
which aims to bring down the overall population through birth control,
but not in a targeted way as much as I've
ever read, and I think that that, Okay, this difference
comes after World War Two and people start making that difference.
But before then, everyone, including the people who don't want

(22:11):
to believe that they're acting racistly or ablistically or whatever,
are using the word eugenics to describe what they want,
and they meant it in a very positive way for
whatever thing that they were trying to do. And the
reason I want to talk about it is because, Okay,
so over the years, states feudal, capitalist and socialist have
all gone to great lengths to control our bodies and

(22:34):
our reproduction in whatever direction that they want. At that time,
when the USSR legalized abortion, they were the first Western
state to do so in nineteen twenty, and it was
in part because they were like, hell, yeah, we believe
in communism, inequality, and everyone's going to be able to
make their own choices, right. But a lot of it
was because everyone was fucking starving, so choosing to not

(22:56):
have kids was seen as something that you would do
in solidarity with society at large. So they wanted to
make it possible to act in solidarity with society at large.
And if that is your own decision, If someone listening
is like, I think that's too many people in the
world and they decided not to have kids, that's great.
Deciding that other people shouldn't get to have kids because
you think there's too many people in the world, or

(23:16):
the state mandates it, that's when it gets real fucking bad.
Right by the time Stalin got his claws into it,
it's not quite just like early Bolsheviks were kind of okay,
and then Stalin was a man of evil even though whatever. Anyway,
people can hear my opinion, my negative opinions about even
the regular Bolsheviks that are but whatever. By this time

(23:37):
Stalin gets his hands into things. Abortion was not only outlawed,
but incentives were put into place to encourage people to
have large families, because having lots of kids was something
you should do in solidarity with society at large, and
so the state wants to control whether people do or
don't have kids. But the lever it's using is class solidarity.

(23:58):
The lever it's using is like be you know, care
about the rest of the world right to me? You
can just cut through all this bullshit by being like, hey,
a person who's pregnant gets to decide if that's a
condition that they want to continue to have. Like that
is just the larger social conditions can influence it one
way or the other. But at the end of the day,
our bodies are choice. It's a good slogan, we can

(24:20):
stick with it. But the thing that in order to
understand these German abortion providers, and also to understand folks
were going to talk about in the sixties and seventies
coming out of like Black Power movement and all these
other kind of places, people weren't thinking about it necessarily

(24:40):
in the same frame. We have to look at things
through people's own framing, own lenses in order to understand them.
Two influences on people's framing about how they feel about
abortion are religion, which we'll talk about later, and class consciousness.
So in Weimar, Germany as its famous hedonism and all

(25:00):
this shit, but culture wasn't a political People were thinking
very consciously about what they do as it relates to
these political questions, and specifically, the question of class struggle
was like the fucking question in Europe and like the
I don't know nineteen oughts to the nazis fucking changing

(25:25):
everything in a real negative way. That's my rant. So
people tended not to see themselves solely as individuals, but
also as actors within larger social frameworks like the working
class or the communist party, or the anarchist movement, or
the fascist movement or the monarchy, whatever the fuck right.
People thought of themselves as part of a whole in

(25:47):
a lot of ways. And I'm going to quote this
German anarchist synthelist Max Winkler, who wrote in a pamphlet
as a birth control pamphlet that a union was distributing
all workers. Organizations are concerned almost exclusively with economic and
political issues. Both the parties and the unions view the

(26:07):
issue of sex as being insignificant, irrelevant. There once was
a time when it was considered unrespectable to publicly address
problems concerning sexual relations, and yet it is so tremendously
important that the sexual issue be addressed without any trace
of reticence, just as the hunger issue for hunger and
love are the two polls around which all human life

(26:28):
and drive revolve. These two issues are so closely entwined
that it is hardly possible to discuss one without considering
the other. And so this was an introduction to a
birth control pamphule that has union, the Free Workers' Unions
of Germany, was publishing in the nineteen twenties. More prominent
still than that union was a SYNDICALUS union called the
Syndicalless Women's Union, which again very literal namers. That's what

(26:52):
it was a union of You.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Knew they were.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, no, that's true. I will give them that. Like
not everything should be like Prairie Fire or whatever.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
That's the writer in you.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, I know, I know, which is funny because I
ended up naming my podcast cool People did cool stuff.
But I you know, I like that name too. I
feel like as it's a good name. Yeah, you're your
podcast name is similar enough that I think you know
where I'm coming from. You know.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Oh yeah, I think it's perfect.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah, it's a saint.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
I like it. It's cold things, cold people, let's go.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah. So the Cynicalist Women's Union. Their primary social issue
was sexual health and reproductive rights. As Milli wick Top
put it, the advancement of the intellectual development of women
could not be possible without the liberation from the slavery
of child bearing. And so how this ties into the
like this larger class consciousness question is that they were

(27:47):
pushing for a child bearing strike. They were basically it
was like a way, it was an attempt at like
a women's strike. It was attempt at I don't know,
it's complicated, and we'll get into it more in a
little bit. But first, someone to talk about Millie, because
Millie's really cool. And also I think the first person
named Millie that we've featured on this show, I like it.
This is a nice name. Goody. Milli was cool as shit.

(28:10):
She and her siblings, including another anarchist feminist birth control
activist named Rose Witcop, They made the mistake of being
born in Ukraine in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties
as Jews. So they were like, this isn't the best
time and place to be us. We don't want to
be here anymore. So when Milly was sixteen years old,

(28:35):
she moves by herself to London, worked in a sweatshop
to save enough money to get her three sisters and
her parents to London away from the pograms that were
happening in Ukraine. Like, I can't imagine me at sixteen
doing any of those things successfully. She could have quit

(28:56):
right then and been a fucking hero as far as
I'm concerned. And there's so many, you know, I mean,
obviously the world is full of these stories, but they're
all fucking amazing stories. There's people who help their families
escape from very bad situations and that is an amazing
thing to do. But she kept going. She joined a
Jewish anarchist newspaper, The Worker's Friend, which was the widest
circulation Yiddish language newspaper in England at that time, at

(29:19):
least according to one thing I read another thing. Whatever. Anyway,
I had this problem when everything's like, oh this is
the biggest, or this was the first, or this.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Was oh yeah, I'm like, That's something that we talk
about on our show a lot, because we actually have
a series about a female first type of episodes, but
we always have to put the caveat it's you don't
know who's controlling the narrative. You don't know what's been hidden,
what's not been discovered yet, and so everything's under a
caveat of what seems like a first but that could

(29:47):
change at any moment, and they are most likely other
people who've already done it, and probably people who are
marginalized and are not going to ever get credit.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Just to a reminder, no, totally. Like I've started making
the joke of every time I'm like the first time
this happened in the world, I'm like the Western world,
specifically Europe. It was the first time it happened in
Europe that we know about, that we know about, but anyway, whatever,
this wide circulation Yiddish language newspaper in England called The
Worker's Friend and it was built around a larger group

(30:17):
called the Worker's Friend Group, which was basically just people
working together to provide mutual aid and care for like
this poor immigrant, you know, anarchist worker population. She meets
this fellow named Rudolph Rocker and they hook up. They
get fake hitched, common law hitched in leftist feminist tradition
at the time, they refused to get legally married. And

(30:39):
I was very excited as soon as whenever I hear
someone like Rudolf Rocker is more famous than her, normally
other he's going to live in her shadow. During this episode,
I was very excited to notice that he's only like
three years older than her, because whenever I hear about
like oh and then this man with a beard, I'm.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Like, ah, fuck, twenty years Oh okay, no.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, no, she's like nineteen, he's like twenty two or whatever,
like except it's completely fine. I have nothing. I've learned
nothing negative about this man through his relationship with her.
He's going to be a main character of one of
these days. He's going to be mostly in the shadow
of his partner and his sister in common in law today.

(31:19):
But the time that we brought him up before was
his speeches and the anarchist unionism in the early twentieth
century in London that he promoted led to the connection
between the Irish, Catholic and Jewish working class that about
twenty years later came together to smash the ever loving
shit out of British Fascism at the Battle of Cable Street.

(31:39):
And it was directly just to retell like one of
my favorite stories in history. Basically, like, while the Irish
stock workers were starving because they were on strike, and
the Jewish textile workers had just resolved their strike. The
Jewish textile workers took in the poor starving Irish kid

(32:00):
who couldn't afford food at home, and like watched them
for like five years or like however long for the
strike to resolve. I don't I don't have this script
in front of me. And so then later when the
fascists were like, hey, Irish, you're like basically white unlike
those Jews, am I right? The Irish were like fuck you.
They fed me when I was twelve, you know, and

(32:21):
then they had like just organized together and beat the
shit out of these fascists. Anyway, I love it. And
that's how Rudolph Rocker came up last time, and it's
just one of my favorite stories. I want to tell
it every chance again.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
It's a good name to go with it too.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
I know. Rocker is like a fucking yeah, yeah, yeah,
it really is. And so he was this German dude.
He had been raised Catholic, but he learned Yiddish because
he wanted to organize as an anarchist and a lot
of places in the early twentieth century, in late late
nineteenth century and meant you learned Yiddish. I think he
did it to impress Millie, is my best guess. Yes, yes,

(32:53):
the two tried to move to New York City in
eighteen ninety eight, but they were turned away and deported
like literally back on the same ship that they came
in on, because they weren't married and refused to get married,
and they since they didn't let the state sanction their love,
they were deported. And this became this like the newspapers
and shit covered it, not in this like what the
fuck why didn't we let these people in? But instead

(33:15):
this like scandal about those fucking leftists who won't get married.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yees living in sin, Yeah, trying to pollute the states.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
What I know, I know would their sin? How care
they The main tie into Milly with this whole thing
is that later she's going to go start these unions
in Germany, the Women's Cyneclist Union and stuff. But she
lived this wild ass life. She goes back to London,
right because she's not allowed to move to the US.
She and her partner edited two Yiddish newspapers. There's The
Political Worker's Friend and then there's a more cultural one

(33:43):
called Germinal and during World War One they ran a
soup kitchen together because everyone's like just fucked and starving,
and basically anner because I've been doing food out bombs forever.
And then first her partner and then she got locked
up for opposing the war World War One. When they
got out, they were like, all right, fuck London, let's
go to Berlin. That seems kind of cool right now.

(34:05):
Right it's nineteen eighteen or so, and they're like, Berlin's
suddenly the Weimar Republic and it's really cool. They're like
they get invited to help go start in arcosiniclist unions
and they're like, that sounds like our jam. So they
do and they helped form the FOUD the Workers whatever,
blah blah blah, and Millie helped start not only Berlin

(34:27):
Women's Union but also the Syndicalists Women's Union to unite
all of the local and arcos Syndicalists women's unions. She
hung out there until nineteen thirty three when the Reichstag
fire happened, and she was like, I like, really shouldn't
be in Germany right now. It seems like a really
bad idea for me as a very prominent Jewish anarchist, right,

(34:50):
so she dipped. Her husband comes with her. I mean
it probably wasn't good for him either, but you know
he was German at least, or I mean whatever anyway,
And so they moved to an anarchist commune in upstate
New York, where they continued to be cool for decades
and just organize. After World War II, the whole commune
constantly put together aid packets for the anarchists in Germany

(35:11):
who had somehow survived the fucking war. And she lived
to be seventy eight. She died in nineteen fifty five,
and just did so fucking much. Her sister Rose stayed
in London and published anarchist feminist text about birth control
and kept getting interested for it and was cool too.
But back to Germany and the Weimar Crime ring, and

(35:33):
by that I mean back to ad break time. Now
go and we're back. We're talking about vymar Germany, all right.

(35:55):
So you have these syndicluss unions. They're distributing information about
birth control, pushing for this child burying strike basically, we
won't have kids until conditions approve. And the social Democrats
were on this too, just credit where it's due. Radicals
would write pamphlets with names like how can we promote
to the cultural decline of births as far back as
nineteen thirteen, and this pamphlet sold thirty one thousand copies.

(36:19):
And this is kind of what I'm talking about, that
framing and how it's so important to understand it from
their perspective. You know, it's sketchy and all of the
like trying to control who gets to have kids goes
really badly, but it's like worth seeing where they're coming
from about it. The ideas that birth control can be

(36:40):
a proletarian weapon because the sheer replaceability of workers and
soldiers was part of why conditions were so bad. In
a very similar way as it also was a feminist
move in which like this is like in the same
way that like workers will, the one thing we can
withhold is our labor right from the class, A lot

(37:01):
of different feminist perspectives are like, well, the thing that
we can withhold is well, reproductive labor is the most
annoying misidea mislabeled Marxist term of all times. But they
can withhold having children, which doesn't count as reproducive labor
because anyway, whatever fucking complicated as terms not written by women.

(37:24):
Clearly maybe it was I don't know, Fewer workers meant
less competition for the same jobs, and it also meant
that both women and workers felt like they had more
control if they pushed this line. I also think that
they mostly just were like, I don't want to have
kids right now, and like I kind of want a fuck,
but like, so what if we just find a way
to make that happen. And then we're like, yeah, it's

(37:46):
like for the revolution or something, am I right? And
they're like, yeah, totally, you're cute, Hans, get over here
with your mustache. And so they started getting talks left
and right, these like women's unions, right, and they're finding
that sometimes women would come and like they would join
the union just long enough to get I think you
have to be a member to come to them. So
they joined long enough to get like the free condoms

(38:07):
and the advice about how to not get kids, and
then they would dip, which is like, yeah, fair, whatever
what do you expect.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
For there for the party favors? And then they're gonna
exactly get what they need. Let me get those thanks.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, like it hasn't gone to an activist meeting for
the snacks, I mean.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Also the snacks.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, and at the beginning, there's one other group distributing
birth control, and they're not doing it for free, the
condom manufacturers or the I don't specifically know that it's condoms,
but I believe it's condoms, because again there's not a
lot of information the birth control implements or whatever, which
I assume by this point because the I have like
eight times because of the show, like looked up when

(38:48):
the condom came into common use, and it was a
while before this anyway, there were clever loopholes and laws
that said birth control could be discussed behind closed doors,
and so they would have like these closed door meetings.
But by nineteen twenty three, in nineteen twenty four, it's
no longer the businesses, and it's no longer the unions.

(39:10):
It is now these lay organizations that I was talking about.
They take over as the companies back off. They don't
actually the unions don't back off. The unions become these
lay organizations. The Free Workers of Germany founded a group
called the vsl or Association for Sexual Hygiene and Life
Reform and they were like, we swear it's a totally

(39:31):
separate group. It's totally not just our union, like we promise,
And the cops were like, no, this is quote an
association closely connected with the Syndicalists, which recruited its members
primarily from such circles, so they're not fool in anyone.
In nineteen twenty eight, the VSL and other lay organizations

(39:52):
come together and form a union of lay organizations called
the Reich Association of Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene. I
think Reich in this case doesn't mean anything sketchy, and
it stands for r V, or rather r V is
what it is abbreviated as. And this group is strictly
neutral in regards to politics and religion. But we all

(40:14):
know where it came from. And the elected chairman was
a member of the Synthicalist Union, and they ran sexual
counseling centers all over the country in more than two
hundred locations, teaching sex education, distributing contraceptives, and performing abortions.
Very few physicians in Germany at the time would fuck
with abortions. So this is why, like in a lot
of other places, it's like crime doctors, but they're like doctors,

(40:39):
or they're pretending to be doctors, or they perform the
role of doctors, but that's not there. They're not licensed
or whatever, you know. But overall in Germany, the physicians
weren't fucking with it. Either they were anti choice or
they were anti I go to jail now. And so
lay people trained in the performance of abortions. To quote
Hans Schmidtz whose parents were anarchists, and he's just like

(41:01):
describing what he saw as a kid, father was active
in the League, the local lay organization, the League for
the Protection of Mothers and Social Family Hygiene, because why
would you name your group anything other than that? Back
to the quote, Secretly the League also aided women in
getting abortions. There were several women who could be called
upon when abortion was to be performed. My mother had

(41:22):
quite a bit of experience in this and was one
of these women. Naturally, we were not allowed to be around,
but the apartment was so small and it could not
be concealed from us. A couple of times my mother
sent me to fetch doctor b. He came when there
were complications, and unfortunately for any listeners who are considering this,
running a massive crime ring does have some negative consequences.

(41:45):
Oh no, I would argue overall, it's worth I'm not
doing it anyone listening. I'm not doing it.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
Says Margaret on a major podcast.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, but anyway. A woman whose name is only given
as Albrecht so I'm guessing last name, from the Anarcho
Syndicalist Union was sentenced to three years in nineteen thirty
after this big national scandal show trial. She'd performed more
than one hundred abortions for the local chapter of the league.

(42:17):
Luis Witch got eighteen months in nineteen thirty three. I
suppose you could call it a witch trial, unless I'm
mispronouncing that name, in which case you shouldn't. The chairman
of the RV was sentenced to prison at one point.
I'm not sure how long he went to prison. And
you ever heard that depressing thing where? Okay, so like

(42:40):
the Nazis came to power, this is the main depressing thing.
They killed a fuck ton of people, right, and they
put a lot of people in these camps right famously,
and some of the people they put in were in
for being gay. And then after everyone was liberated, the
gay prisoners had to stay in jail because what they
had done was illegal before the Nazis too. You ever
heard that it's a terrible fun thing.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I had never heard that. Wait, they stayed in the
camps or they just went to a different place. I
think some people were like literally in the same place.
But they did not get free. The gay prisoners did
not get free after the liberation of And this was
true for both Soviet controlled and allied or Western wow

(43:23):
US controlled I don't know the word for the Allies,
who aren't the Soviets the capitalist powers, well they're all
capital anyway.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Whatever. So one of these abortion rights activists, these three
that I've mentioned, have gone to jay or just a
tiny percentage of it. They're the ones that this paper
is specifically. The only thing I found about it was like,
here's what the syndicalists were doing. So this is like
the three syndicalists that this guy knew. But at least

(43:53):
one of the other abortion providers or activists spent time
in Nuremberg after the war, charged with abortion and was
not freed because see what he had done, whether she
or what they had done, was a crime. But again,
million abortions a year, saving so many lives, just countless lives.

(44:16):
These women performing these abortions. They were quote no Bunglers,
according to the paper, or the paper is quoting a
person who saw it happen. They knew what the fuck
they were doing, and they did it for free and
go ahead.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
I feel like that was just like a phrase, you know,
like how he like a cool phrase they had to
say during the time. They're like, no, no, they're for real,
They're for real.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, totally, totally. I can't wait till it swings back
around again and someone is like listening and they're.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Like, no, they weren't bungling.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah, they're like. Man in early twenty first centuryone was
like that person's for real, But what they meant is
they weren't a Bungler exactly.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
I want that happened quickly.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
I feel like culture moves fast enough that it will
happen while we're alive and we'll be like, what the
fuck is happening, Get off my lawn exactly.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Like I feel that way in general. When I'm like
watching the fashions, I'm like I definitely had that dress, yeah,
absolutely in eighth grade and they're wearing that Yeah, am
I gonna do with myself.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Well, who they're already past the nostalgia for when I
as a kid, Like, they're already past nineties nostalgia, right
they are? Anyway, Like it's if anyone's listening and they're
on my own, get off it here, you damn kids.
Maybe that phrase is outdated. Who fucking knows? Probably?

Speaker 3 (45:40):
All right, wait, can't we control that says we're the
ones calling anyway?

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, yeah, we create the culture now we're anyway we
do not. Yeah, but speaking of the culture, this isn't
an ad transition. Uh. The culture that they were building
is a fascinating one. And it's one of these things
where things people are like our generation acts like it
in vented polyamory. Right. For the German and archosyndicalists, women's

(46:05):
liberation and sexual autonomy was not just a theory. They
had vivid conversations all the time, and they were also
just fucking And there were plenty of women who were like,
we believe in free love, but it actually needs to
be love. All these fucking shitty, horny men are trying
to use these political put points just to fucking run,
and we think that sucks. There were, of course also

(46:27):
women who were doing the same thing too. But it's
interesting to me because it mirrors these discussions I've read
about late sixties discourse and how HIPPI men were like
one hundred percent down with women's liberation on two specific issues,
abortion access and birth control, anything that reduced their responsibility

(46:48):
and to increase their access sexual access to women. Hippi
men were a lot less consistent about their support of
other feminist causes for some weird person surprise. So it's
just enoughing ever changes moment for me.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Yeah, I was gonna say a lot of these things
are happening today as we've seen, well, new organizations pop
up as well, but the whole like going on strike
from giving birth is actually familiar as well. But Korea
and Japan have been doing that as of late too.
That's why the birth rate and everybody's really really coodert

(47:25):
because the women have had enough. They're like, fuck this,
I don't want children, y'all don't give us enough pay,
and all you want to do is make us suffer.
We're not doing this anymore. But it's very similar to
that level. I'm like, interesting, and the government's like, please,
for the love of Jesus, will give you more money,
have a baby.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
I mean it makes sense to me. Like, I remember
my older sister is a very strong feminist. I'm very lucky.
My whole family is very very feminist. And I remember
my older sister kind of like sitting down. I was like,
I was like a young radical or something, and I
was like overpopulation. And my sister was like, did you
know that every single time you give women control of

(48:05):
their own reproductive health, the birth rate drops to a
sustainable amount. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like you
don't have to make laws around it. You don't got
to do shit. All you gotta do is give people
the right to choose about whether or not they get
to stay or get pregnant. Right. Problem solves itself, it does.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
That's why there are so many of us that are childless.
Instead we get dogs, yeah or cats.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah. I put that in for you.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
So that's like what I know about this movement. I
want there to be more. I know the sources. They
are all in German. Maybe one day I'll be able
to return to it. But all I can say is
I'm proud as fuck of the German radicals who held
down a million abortions a year, seemingly all for free
through horizontal organizing, and they didn't get preachy about it.

(48:59):
Like one of the reason is that it's hard to
know about it. It didn't people didn't even know it
was tied into the radical labor movement because they didn't
talk about it, or at least I mean, I don't know.
Maybe they didn't. They're probably insuffer maybe like German radicals.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, I think we. I do want a documentary on
this because, Yeah, a million abortiones that is phenomenal. And
the fact that they were able to be that organized
for so long with that many members, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah. And you know, also, I'm proud of I'm proud
of all the feminist, black radicals, communists and anarchists who
came together in the Bay Area to organize abortion clinics
and then defend them from organized right wing violence, which
we're going to talk about on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
I'm so excited. Hell yeah, but before we talk about that,
we should talk about you and your show me.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Yeah, I yes, so I am on a show called
us Stuff Mom never told you, which we do talk
about things like this, not the in depth history of this,
only like you cool zone media people are that cool.
We do very research based, very like nerdy based things,
including talking about Star Wars or for me, lately it

(50:16):
has been about k drama. No, I don't don't ask
why because I'm Korean and I'm trying to find myself.
But anyway, we also have a book that we published.
It was released this year. Nope, last year? Oh god,
what year is it? Twenty twenty three? Goddamn y'all. This
is where I'm like, still twenty twenty three? Yeah, no, okay, anyway,
last year we publish published.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
The future. We had published a book you can find
any of your bookstores. Is also on audible if you
want to hear Annie and myself read out a book,
which was a completely different process than podcasting that we
have learned.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
What's difficult.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
But yes, you should come and listen if you like
to hear things about intersectional femine, some nerd things, all
the good things.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Yeah, stream plugs nice, Nope, that's it. I want to
plug things. Uh, I have a god. Okay, by the
time you hear this, no, like a couple of days
after you hear this, sometime around when you hear it,
February one, twenty twenty four, we're releasing Number City, the

(51:26):
tabletop role playing game that I helped write that I've
been working on for ten goddamn years. We kickstarted it
last summer. Thanks for your help, we raise enough money
to put together a beautiful hardcover book with like embossed
silver inlay on the cover and all that stuff. And
so if you want to play a tabletop role playing
game or do what I did when I didn't have
any kids as friends as a kid, you can just

(51:49):
read it and imagine you live in that fantasy world.
But it's called pan Number City. It's published by Strangers
in the Tangled Wilderness, and it is available if you
type in Number City or Strangers in a Tangle don't.
I'm not going to give you a U are l.
No one types in URLs. Although now that Google is
turning into an abyss machine that doesn't provide useful search information,

(52:09):
maybe you are ls are going to make a comeback.
That's my plug. I'm also on substack and Twitter and
on Twitter and Instagram, and.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Samantha, did you put your handles in?

Speaker 3 (52:22):
I didn't, Yeah, I didn't. You can tell you, you
can say no, sure, you can follow our not so
active Instagram with stuff mom never told you.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Also on Twitter as well. We are very not active
on there. We kind of just let that die out
as it should have. We're also on TikTok. You can
see nerdy things on that uh stuff mom never told
you as well. I am on as McBay dot sam
on both Instagram and Twitter. Again, I'm not really active
active on there, but hey, if you want to see
pictures of my dog, come to the Instagram.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Okay, but if you make Instagram, you can make memes
that are like of your dog, and it could be
like Mom never told me not to jump up on
the counter. Oh my god, you get all the stuff
that your mom didn't. Oh that's right, I see, is
what I'm trying to Okay anyway, all right, Well I'm
clearly at the bottom of the barrel. So I'll see
you all on Wednesday. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

(53:17):
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or
check us out on the iHeartRadio

Speaker 3 (53:25):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.