New Polity

Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the continuity of our current transgender moment with the pattern of origin stories found in the ancient myths—and how the Genesis narrative serves as a polemic against the anthropology of primal androgyny. Live Q&A Scheduled for May 31 at 2pm: https://youtu.be/DvfjhuShVVA Ask a Question on Discord to jump to the front of the line (note that more details...

This is the end of Gender—Ivan Illich's book, that is. Join as Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell wrap up with Illich's best chapter yet, including a critique of capitalism and how to build a gendered world.

Holy Spime blocks! Today, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell venture further into Illich's gendered domains, exploring an older world of gendered tools and spaces, and musing on how these worlds manifest (or don't) today.

Are today's traditional gender roles really traditional? In this episode, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss Illich's description of the gendered world of pre-modernity and why stay-at-home moms are as lonely as ever.

The regime of sex, the reign of gender, a cynical take on capitalism and sexism, and shadow work of the 1950's house wife's... join in for all this and more as Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss chapters 1 & 2 of Ivan Illich's provocative text, "Gender."  If you're late to the game, catch up on the reading with the pdf link here:  https://debate.uvm.edu/asnider/Ivan_Illich/Ivan_I...

Blessed Easter to you! No long podcast in honor of this great solemnity, but we'd like to invite you to join our second "Politics of Gender Book Club." Follow along by reading the first three chapters of "Gender" by Ivan Illich (buy the book [https://amzn.to/3OgDlgl], or you might be able to find the pdf online [https://debate.uvm.edu/asnider/Ivan_Illich/Ivan_Illich_Gender.pdf]).

Thomas doesn't comment on modern gender theory—directly. But in this podcast, Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell explore how Thomas' notion of "human law" (combined with the brilliant insight of Ivan Illych on modern gender) help us grasp how our primordial task to image God as creative "world-builders" manifests the realm of gender.

Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell return for more gender trouble—but this time, gender trouble for the liberal project. The goal is to make all genders equal and free before the law, so we begin with liberalism’s first task: the creation of an equal legal definition.

New Polity is very excited to announce the opening of its Make Shop in Steubenville—a place where locals can get access to productive property, learn new skills, and receive business support in selling what they make. Mike Sullivan, local contractor and former president of Catholics United for the Faith, sits down with Jacob Imam to discuss the shop as well as a few ideas about work and...

Small farming is a living critique of industrial capitalism, a rebellion against tyrannies established through widespread fear of and the presumption of scarcity . . . and a tasty way to live. Shawn and Beth Dougherty discuss—and romanticize!—their garden of Eden against the ideologies of modernity.

Politics is from the land. Farmers and authors Shawn and Beth Dougherty stop by the New Polity office to discuss why Catholics need to get serious about restoring the family farm.

Queer theory is all about the search for one's authentic sexual identity and the freedom to express it—or is it? Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss the conclusions of Butler's queer theory and the ultimate aim of its political project.

Whoever controls the narrative, controls the truth. So can "constructing a new narrative" actually liberate oppressed identities? Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell explore the Butlerian critique of gender structuralists to find out.

Gender is a social construct. And so is sex. And so is everything else. Maria Brandell and Marc Barnes finish the first chapter of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and try to show the difference between academic postmodernism and the naive identity politics of popular transgender and queer identity construction.

Feminism can't figure out what women are, at least not without excluding someone. Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell explicate Judith Butler's troubling of feminism in the second part of their book club on Gender Trouble.

Join Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell's book club on Judith Butler's queer theory classic, "Gender Trouble." Part I features a look into the text's backdrop, postmodernism—and its unexpected confirmation of Catholic doctrine.

Marc Barnes and Maria Brandell discuss how their dissatisfaction with both sides of the gender debate led them to take a closer look at the Catholic theological tradition.

In this final episode of the Politics of Tyranny, Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes attempt to tie together the many techniques of tyrants into one, comprehensive package: war. All tyranny is the expansion of the state of war into places of peace for the sake of private gain.

Population control isn't just in the forced sterilizations and genocides of tyrannical regimes. It is wherever people subordinate the human good of procreation to the punishments and rewards of the regime. We're all eunuchs now, say Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes.

Marc Barnes, Andrew Willard Jones, and Jacob Imam riff on Christmas—Santa Claus, God-Kings, Caesar's birth, how Herod died, why Jesus was born among animals, and more.

Tyranny makes fear the basis of a social order, and technology promises to assuage that fear. Learn about the technology of tyranny from Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes.

It's easy to recognize a tyrant. It's hard to recognize a good rebellion. Still, rebellion is a moral obligation for Christians under tyrannies. Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes discuss why, and how you can begin the hard work of rebellion, starting with martyrdom and ending in war.

The Kingship of Christ is paralleled in the Queenship of Mary. Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam spend this Feast of the Immaculate Conception reflecting on Mary, our Queen.

For freedom we've been set free, right? So how can freedom be a tool of a tyrant? Spend the next hour with Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes to find out.

The myth of equality is a tactic for hiding the deployment of tyrannical power. Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes unpack this assertion in today's episode.