Bad Gays

For today’s episode, I we take you into the murky world of the Washington foreign policy elites, and one of its murkiest characters, a man named Albrecht Muth. Who is Albrecht Muth? Well, that’s another question entirely. He claimed to be a dashing German aristocrat and married into Washington's foreign policy elite. The shocking truth became one of official Washington's biggest mysteries... Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work. Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks. ----more---- SOURCES: Alexander, Keith L. “Albrecht Muth, 49, Convicted of Murder in Death of Socialite Wife Viola Drath, 91.” Washington Post, January 16, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/muth-found-guilty-of-murder-in-death-of-socialite-wife/2014/01/16/5a942d9e-7ecd-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html.   Foer, Franklin. “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” The New York Times, July 6, 2012, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath-georgetowns-worst-marriage.html.   Meredith Somers. “Drath Murder Case Exposes Bizarre Lifestyle of Georgetown Couple.” The Washington Times. Accessed January 13, 2025. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/24/drath-murder-case-exposes-bizarre-lifestyle-of-geo/   Martin, Adam. “The Odd Behavior of a Husband Arrested for a D.C. Socialite’s Murder.” The Atlantic (blog), August 17, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/unfortunate-behavior-husband-arrested-dc-socialites-murder/354256/.   The Daily Beast. “Inside D.C.’s Socialite Murder,” September 8, 2011. https://www.thedailybeast.com/socialite-murder-viola-drath-and-albrecht-muths-tumultuous-marriage/.   “Upon Reflection: Albrecht Muth and Viola Drath - Washingtonian,” February 27, 2012. https://www.washingtonian.com/2012/02/27/upon-reflection-albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath/.   Washington City Paper. “Viola Drath’s Cultural Legacy: A Look at the Works of a Murdered D.C. Writer,” August 25, 2011. http://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/423666/viola-draths-cultural-legacy-a-look-at-the-works-of-a-murdered-d-c-writer/.   Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. 

A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama featuring 90 androgynous twinks disporting themselves in the nude in a fantasia of the four seasons, devotee of Adolf Hitler, founder of a new religion, and poet: it's Elisar von Kupffer. Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work. Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks. ----more---- SOURCES: Marhoefer, Laurie. “Queer Fascism and the End of Gay History.” NOTCHES (blog), June 19, 2018. https://notchesblog.com/2018/06/19/queer-fascism-and-the-end-of-gay-history/.   Marhoefer, Laurie. “Was the Homosexual Made White? Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany: Race, Empire, and Analogy in Gay and Trans Thought in Twentieth-Century Germany.” Gender & History 31, no. 1 (March 2019): 91–114. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12411.   Miller, Ben. In Search Of Lost Time: Primitivist Homomythopoetics and the Self-Invention of the White Gay Man. (Dissertation: Freie Universität Berlin, 2024). Miller, Ben. “Rejecting the Klarwelt: How Elisàr von Kupffer Complicates Queer History.” In To Be Seen: Queer Lives 1900-1950, edited by Miriam Zadoff and Karolina Kühn, 62–75. Munich: Hirmer, 2023.   Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.  

Today's episode profiles a very bad bisexual: the lawyer, soldier and society favourite, Tom Mitford. But the idea of featuring Tom is partly a ruse. This will be not just a profile of Tom himself, but of his whole family, and especially his six siblings, the famed Mitford Sisters, whose intense, often conflicting relationships have become something of an obsession for English culture - and not always a very healthy one. They embody so much about the English elite: eccentric, vicious, often listless and desperately sad. We also promise to you, as has become a theme of the podcast, some DBNs - Disturbingly British Names. And an indescribable cover of Right Said Fred by Jessica Mitford and Dr. Maya Angelou, on both voice and kazoo. Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for more from us. Check out our new merch. ----more---- SOURCES: Lovell, Mary S. The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family. New edition. Abacus, 2002.   Mitford, Jessica. Hons and Rebels. New York Review Books Classics. New York: New York Review Books, 2004.   Mitford, Nancy. The Pursuit of Love. First Edition. New York: Vintage, 2010.   Mitford, Nancy. Love in a Cold Climate. 1st edition. Vintage, 2010.   Mosley, Charlotte, ed. The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters. UK ed. edition. Fourth Estate, 2012.   Thompson, Laura. The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters. St. Martin’s Press, 2016.   Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.  

From almost the first season of the show, we’ve been tantalised by stories of the Burmese gangster Olive Yang. Now, to open season 8, we have their story: Olive was a lesbian — or possibly transmasculine — gangster born royal in 1927 British colonial Burma, who when first married off to a man threw a pot of their own urine at him to prevent the marriage from being consummated. They ran away from polite society, dated actresses, ran opium, were involved with the CIA, and helped negotiate settlements between ethnic groups.  Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for more from us. Check out our new merch. ----more---- SOURCES: Paluch, Gabrielle. The Opium Queen: The Untold Story of the Rebel Who Ruled the Golden Triangle. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023.   Scott, James C., ed. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale Agrarian Studies Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.   Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner