Bad Gays

Latest Episodes:

Dorian Corey Nov 11, 2025

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Many people in our audience will have seen Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, an exploration of Black and Latinx ball culture in New York City. One of the film’s primary interview interlocutors is Dorian Corey, who is one of the film’s most quotable characters. Corey's life helps us explore the history of drag from balls for enslaved people in the 1870s to today. And did you know that Corey knew, during all those serene interviews in Paris Is Burning, that the man she had murdered in self-defense and not trusted police to handle it (would you?) was mummified in the closet behind her.

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SOURCES

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19931218/1737662/deceased-drag-show-star-leaves-mummy-mystery-behind-in-closet

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning

https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5381/2016/06/16101213/hooks_paris-is-burning.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html

https://www.swervmagazine.com/entertainment-2/pioneers/

https://queermusicheritage.com/drag-pearl.html

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2005/The-Gay-30S/

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/drag-queen-slave-ball/

https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/the-legendary-hamilton-lodge-ball-home-at-the-rockland-palace-dance-hall-in-harlem/

https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/queens-and-queers-rise-drag-ball-culture-1920s

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935316?seq=1

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning

https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/08/dorian-corey-1937-1993-performer.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Little Richard Nov 04, 2025

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Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Today's episode is about three very different men and how their lives overlapped. The first was a pioneering rock and roll musician who stunned audiences with his fast-paced hits in a quite macho rock world: a huge influence on musicians from Elvis and The Beatles to James Brown, Prince, Patti Smith, Andre 3000, and more. It was a very eclectic mix and he lived an equally fast-paced private life off stage. The second man was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher from the deep south of the United States who preached about sin. The third person was a young Black queer man thrown out of his home by his domineering pastor father in the late 1940s who became a drag performer under the name Princess LaVonne, performing in clubs and for traveling medicine shows and dressing in capes and turbans, singing obscene songs about anal sex while cruising bathrooms for sexual contacts with men. These were all one and the same man: Richard Wayne Penniman, better known by his performing name, Little Richard. ----more---- SOURCES

Abdurraqib, Hanif. "What Little Richard Deserved." The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-little-richard-deserved

Freeman, Scott. "Remembrance: How Little Richard Invented Rock'n'roll in Macon, Georgia." ArtsAtlanta. https://www.artsatl.org/remembrance-how-little-richard-invented-rock-n-roll-in-macon-georgia/

Little Richard: I Am Everything. HBO, dir. Lisa Cortes

Little Richard, Live in Paris, 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TWclEcASU&themeRefresh=1

Nyong'o, Tavia. "Too Black, Too Queer, Too Holy." The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/12/too-black-queer-holy-why-little-richard-never-truly-got-his-dues-turbaned-drag-queen-sexual-underworld

Smith, Jami. "The Drag Queens Who Helped Little Richard Invent Rock And Roll." https://www.songsthatsavedyou.com/p/drag-queens-who-helped-little-richard

White, Charles. The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock (Da Capo Press, 1994) Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, and its use is under the principles of fair use for purposes such as commentary, criticism, and parody. All rights belong to the respective copyright holders.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays October 2025 Oct 29, 2025

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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon for the full episode.

It's Extra Bad Gays LIVE! from Helsinki, where we discuss Donald Trump–our first straggot President–and his pardoning of George Santos. Then, Ben plugs an upcoming queer leftist novella you'll probably love, freshly translated into English. And two questions from gay guys in their forties invite the Gaggony Guncles to reflect on sex, desire, and the number homophobia has done on our psyches. Cruise carefully, catamites!

Smalltownnovella:

https://uglyducklingpresse.org/product/smalltownnovella/

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays September 2025 Sep 30, 2025

Show notes

This month on our subscriber-only show, we discuss the supposed A-Gays of Trump's Washington. Will the people working for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party get their faces eaten, or is their work paradoxically evidence that LGBT liberalism, now in its flop era, actually did deliver something on its own terrible terms? Then, we take on a Gaggony Guncles question from a listener curious how to navigate coming out to a friend who has learned to use their pronouns correctly but seems to take them as an individual exception to broader enby- and transphobia.

Join our subscriber community to support our work and hear the full episode.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays August 2025 Aug 21, 2025

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For the full conversation, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or on our Patreon.

Special Episode: Coil (with Hannah Pezzack) Aug 12, 2025

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Today, we welcome music writer Hannah Pezzack to talk about the experimental electronica band Coil – namely, its two frontmen and only consistent members: vocalist Geoff Rushton, who performed under the stage name John Balance, and Peter Christopherson, nicknamed “Sleazy." At the heart of it all was an intense interest in the occult: in magic, alchemy, and esoteric symbolism. But just as central was their homosexuality: a queerness expressed through sexualised violence, the taboo, bodily fluids — blood, sweat, and scat — and an obsession with self-annihilation.

Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to join the community of subscribing members who make episodes like this possible, and get our monthly chat show about gay culture and politics!

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SOURCES:

Hayes Hampton. The Invocation of the Black Sun: Alchemy and Sexuality in the Work of Coil, in Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns Volume I – Twisted Roots (Durham, UK: Wyrd Harvest Press, 2018)

David Keenan. England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground, Revised and Expanded Edition (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023; originally published 2003)

Cormac Pentecost. Man is the Animal, zine issues 1–4, (Temporal Boundary Press)

Genesis P‑Orridge. Nonbinary (New York: Abrams Press, 2022)

Nick Soulsby. Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations with Coil (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023)

Spencer Sunshine. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (London: Routledge, 2024)

Cosey Fanni Tutti. Art Sex Music (London: Faber and Faber, 2017)

“AN INTERVIEW WITH COIL (Harvest History Month Pt. I),” conducted by Malahki Thorn, Heathen Harvest (originally published 1 April 2004), https://4ibrecords.com/2014/03/05/an-interview-with-coil-harvest-history-month-pt-i/

Hannah Pezzack on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hanapezzack/?hl=en

Hannah Pezzack on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hannah-pezzack

Many thanks to Alina Valentina and Ruben Verkuylen for their invaluable technical assistance.

Gratitude to Elina Tapio (who first introduced me to Coil!) and Marco Segato – both part of eoobe – for keeping the spirit of John and Sleazy alive through their music: https://eoobe.bandcamp.com/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays July 2025 Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

A preview of our conversation about Mayor Pete this week. For more, subscribe at Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The Second: Touring, Representation, and Gaggony Guncles Jun 24, 2025

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For full episodes of Extra Bad Gays, subscribe on our Patreon or directly through Apple Podcasts. Join our community of nefarious nellies and help support the show!

Special Episode: Gavin Arthur (with Maurice Casey) Jun 10, 2025

Show notes

Join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts for special episodes and more! Have you ever wondered who the sexual link between Edward Carpenter and Allen Ginsburg was? Wonder no more, and meet Gavin Arthur: grandson of US President Chester Allan Arthur, astrologer, sexologist, Irish Republican, sometime Communist, sometime Democrat, Haight-Ashbury hippie rabble-rouser, and chaotic bisexual. Our guide to his life is longtime friend of the show Maurice J. Casey, historian and author of Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals. This episode is based on research carried out as part of the Queer Norther Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation project at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. If you have a moment, do fill out their survey. ----more---- SOURCES:
Maurice J. Casey, ‘”I want to be to Ireland what Walt Whitman was to America”: Esotericism and Queer Sexuality in an Irish Social Circle, 1890s-1920s’, History Workshop Journal: https://academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hwj/dbaf004/8096618?searchresult=1
Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives, New York, 2012
Philip Longo, ‘Between the Sheets: Gavin Arthur’s Sexual Circulation’, in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, ed. Jacqueline Rhodes and Jonathan Alexander, London, 2022, pp. 140–7
Martin Murray, ‘Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Gavin Arthur and the Circle of Sex’, Walt Whitman Quarterly 22: 3, 2005, pp. 194–8: https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/wwqr/pdf/anc.00943.pdf
The 1930 film starring Gavin Arthur and Charlotte Arthur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_(1930_film) Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The First: Weird Vibes Pride, Edmund White, and Bisexual Dilemmas (TRAILER) Jun 05, 2025

Show notes

This is just a trailer! For the full episode, join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

Weird Vibes Pride Month, nefarious nellies! What is this Pride Month's vibe? Who is its target audience? We're confused. How do we build power as queer movements hollowed out by corporate sponsorship appear to crumble? Then, we mourn the late, great Edmund White before turning to our now-standard Gaggony Guncles segment, in which a listener writes in with an exciting bisexual dilemma.

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