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writingpuddle · 4 years ago

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The other night best friend and I (yes, that best friend) were riffing on trans Neil headcanons over the phone, but a realistic trans treatment of aftg gets dark real fast, so without further ado:

~The Mafia May Be Sexist (But It’s Not Transphobic!) AU ~

(tmmbsbintau, if you will)

Does this premise make sense? No, but if Nora can write about made up mafia sports, I can write a nonsense AU where transphobia doesn’t exist okay this is my party and ill be self-indulgent if i want to

We open with baby Neil, who was named after his maternal grandmother or smthg idk

Now lets say Neil is one of those “I always knew I was trans” kids

So even at a fairly young age he was like, nope this is wrong

For the most part his dad basically ignores him (what use is a girl to me???) but if he makes the mistake of getting in the way it’s the usual shit with knives and hot irons and basically Neil’s bog-standard Traumatic Childhood

His mom signs him up to play Exy to get him out of the house, and he loves it, because of course he does

Now tiny Neil may be terrified of his father

But remember transphobia isn’t real

So he when he’s about ten years old he tells his parents over dinner

His mom just puts her fork down and says that’s alright

But Nathan

Nathan

Nathan’s eyes start to glow

He has a son? Not a useless daughter?

He’s practically levitating with glee

And Neil, poor Neil, who has never had any positive reinforcement—from either parent, Mary, you’re not innocent in this—he soaks it up

Nathan puts both hands on his son’s—his son’s!—shoulders and dubs him Nathaniel

His son, his heir, his legacy

Mary takes one look at the possessive look in her husband’s eyes and thinks oh hell no

For the next few days Nathan absolutely showers Nathaniel with affection

He takes him to the hairdresser and buys him a whole new wardrobe, neglecting his mafia duties in order to dote upon his new son

It is possibly the happiest week of Nathaniel’s life

And then he wakes up in the night with his mother’s hand on his mouth and is given less than a minute to pack his things

Now he’s grown up in a criminal household; the notion of making a run for it isn’t exactly foreign to him

But it’s not until they’re in the car that Nathaniel realizes that his father is nowhere to be seen

Where’s dad? He asks

Shut up, his mother hisses, and slams the car into gear

From then on, he is never Nathaniel

His mother is 100% on board with his transition, but…not really anything beyond that

After all, people will be looking for a woman and a trans boy, which means Mary’s investment in Neil’s gender pretty much starts and ends with him passing as cis

She gets him all the medical treatments he needs (on the black market, since they’re on the run)—puberty blockers when he’s younger, testosterone when he’s older

But he’s never allowed to acknowledge being trans whatsoever

Not to his classmates, not to his teachers

He never gets the chance to have a queer community, or explore the nuances of his gender, because the only presentation they can afford for him to have is Masculine Cis Boy. The restriction is stifling. It’s suffocating.

Neil hates her for it

His life was, so briefly, perfect

He had his father’s love and approval for a day, a week, and he is both old enough to remember his father’s cruelty and young enough to believe that it could end

Nathan is incandescent

When he realizes what Mary has done he goes to the Moriyamas in a storm of fury

She stole my SON! He bellows

Now the Moriyama’s didn’t particularly care about Neil back when they thought he was a girl

Girls in the mafia are basically just for child-rearing, so he wasn’t a threat

So once they figure out what Nathan is talking about (this takes a sec, owing to Nathan having not previously gotten around to telling them about Nathaniel’s revelation), their first thought is that look, we might do the nepotism thing here in our family, but underlings don’t get to do the nepotism thing. Sorry, them’s the breaks

Obviously, Mary has to die—nobody’s disputing that, a woman who robbed her husband and stole his son? Only death will right that wrong—but Kengo tells Nathan that he’ll help find Nathaniel on the condition that he’s given to the Ravens upon capture

Nathan is utterly confident that his son—his son!—will perform admirably. He accepts the deal without a second thought

So they’re on the run for years and years, and Neil’s resentment towards his mother festers, but he never acts out too much, and he doesn’t contact his father

He almost does a couple times, but then he presses his hand to the iron scar on his shoulder and he can’t quite make himself go through with it

He’s sixteen when Nathan catches up with them in Seattle

There’s a shootout and Mary and Neil almost get away

But

Nathan arrives

Nathaniel! He shouts. My boy!

And Neil lurches to a stop

There is his father, walking towards him, his eyes still shining with the same fierce love and pride from when he was ten

Nathaniel, his father says. Hasn’t this gone on long enough?

Come home.

Mary is trying to drag Neil away, but he’s too fixated on his father

Can I? Neil asks. Can I really?

Of course, Nathan says. Everything is forgiven. I’ve even secured you a place on the Ravens. Didn’t you always love Exy? Come home with me, Nathaniel

Neil can barely believe it. His father is offering him everything he ever wanted. His mother has been keeping him from this, his whole life?

Why would they run?

And through this whole exchange Nathan has been getting closer, and Mary is pulling Neil back, and now he’s close enough to touch and the sound she makes is like something physical tears when she finally releases Neil and tries to flee

She isn’t fast enough

Nathan’s grin is as wide as the sun when his cleaver bites into Mary’s waist

Blood pours out

Neil screams

Mary clutches her side, staggering away, but it’s obvious she won’t make it far

Dad, no, Neil says. Don’t—

Shh, his father says. Don’t be afraid. She kept us apart all these years. She deserves to die.

And Neil—

Neil has hated his mother for most of his life

But he looks at the woman who has struggled so long to protect him—who has failed as often as she succeeded, but who fought anyway, everyday—and the man whose eyes are bright with glee at her pain

And he makes a choice

He only has a split second to see the betrayal in his father’s eyes before the pipe in his hand slams into his head and he pitches forward, unconscious

Neil does not wait to see if he survives

He grabs his mother and they run, her arm locked on his shoulder and her palm pressed to the wound on her side

Neil puts her in the passenger seat and jumps in, throwing the car in gear

You need a hospital, he says, frantic

No, she hisses, pinning a towel to her side. No hospitals

Guilt floods through him as he looks at her pale face

Sticky red handprints smear on everything she touches

I’m sorry, mom, he says, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—

Enough, she says. Drive

He drives

He drives, and drives, and he follows her instructions, and later he wouldn’t have been able to say if he actually thought she would survive; he believed it, because he had to, because he had never been without her; he knew better, because gut wounds are slow, but they are inexorable

He parks on the beach and there are tears pushing at his eyelids but he chokes them down

I’m sorry, he said, I never should have believed him. I’m sorry—

You never would have been enough for him, she says, and Neil flinches

Her hand finds his chin and she yanks him down to meet her eyes, her gaze fierce.

He never loved you, she says. He would have made you in his image, and when you failed he would have torn you apart. I would not—I would not watch him try to make my son a monster. Don’t—don’t waste it

Mom, what are you saying—

Promise me, she says

Promise you won’t go back to him

She is dying

Neil can’t refuse

He promises

She releases his face and her red fingerprints on his face burn like brands. He can feel them hours after the tears wash the blood away.

Her last few breaths are jagged as broken stones before she rattles to a stop, and Neil is alone

He burns her body and staggers out onto the road and he keeps moving, he keeps moving, because he knows if he stops he’ll shatter

His hesitation has cost him his mother’s life

But his action costs him his fathers love

In one blow, Neil broke the golden image Nathan had of his perfect son, and now all Nathan wants is to destroy him

He finds his way to Millport almost on instinct alone

He finds one of Mary’s contacts who can supply him with the hormones he needs to continue passing and squats in an empty house and speaks to none of his classmates

When the Exy team tryouts are announced, he goes, intending to only watch from a distance

Perhaps it is inevitable he’s sucked in

There is so little light in his life

Can he be forgiven for wanting one little spark?

The Foxes come for him in May, and Kevin doesn’t recognize him, because how would he? Even if they met as kids, Kevin never saw Neil post-transition

Wymack ends up telling him something about Kevin’s past and the truth about the Ravens, and Neil pales a little bit, remembering how his father had said he’d gotten Neil a place on their line-up and finally understanding why

And sometimes he looks at Kevin with blinding jealousy for the life Neil didn’t get to have, and sometimes he sees him nearly comatose with fear and drinking vodka like it’s water, and his stomach hurts thinking how cheerfully his father would have consigned him to the same fate

So canon proceeds and Neil still bitches Riko out on live TV, and Riko still manages to acquire Neil’s fingerprints

And would you believe that? The Foxes mouthy new rookie is [deadname], Nathan Wesninski’s brat?

Well, well, well

At the banquet Riko pokes and prods until Neil finally snaps, and as Dan drags the team away from the wreckage Jean grabs Neil’s arm and says, low and fast in French, You’ll meet with us later

Why the fuck would I do that? Neil demands

Because otherwise everyone will find out that the Butcher is your father

Neil can’t hide his flinch and Kevin’s eyes go wide

They flee the scene, but before they even reach Coach, Kevin is already rounding on Neil

Is it true? He croaks

Not now, Neil says

But Kevin reads confirmation in Neil’s deflection

I didn’t know [deadname] had a brother, he says

Now here is the thing

Names are obviously a touchy subject with a lot of trans people, and certainly with Neil in particular

But with everything that just happened, Neil is a bit preoccupied, and it’s been a long time since he’s associated himself with that name

Since before he stopped using it, truthfully

And so his response is out of his mouth before he can even think twice

“Who?”

Kevin nods seriously, because he is wise to the ways of mafia bosses, and it’s not exactly shocking that Nathan Wesninski had a mistress and a secret second child, especially considering his first child had been a girl

It’s several moments before Neil puts two and two together and realizes that he has inadvertently slipped through a perfect loophole

He’s failed his mother so many times, but at least this secret is still safe, and he clings to that

Neil’s gender doesn’t really affect his interpersonal relationships with the Foxes—he’s already changing out separately, so this isn’t even a whole other thing

It’s harder to hide his testosterone when he’s living in shared dorms, but he has everything in the safe and figures out the safest schedule to open it up when he’s sure Matt will be in class

Andrew finds out when they start hooking up

But remember transphobia isn’t real so it’s sort of more like Andrew goes to undo his pants and is like wait your dick is removeable? Okay.

And then he just gets on with it

So Binghamton and Baltimore happen as canon, and if Neil had ever harboured hopes that his father would forgive him and love him again, they’re broken for good when his father stalks in and sees him shivering and just grins

It is the smile of someone who has torn someone off a pedestal and is going to enjoy reducing them to dust

Nevermind that Nathan had been the one to put him on that pedestal in the first place

Stuart deus-ex-machinas us out of the maws of death and we end up back in that classic Baltimore scene with the Foxes, and they still claim him, and they still take him home

He tells them all about his mafia father and life on the run, and it doesn’t really click until later that he forgot to mention the trans thing

Not like he, you know, has to tell them, and being trans is hardly an issue in Exy since it’s co-ed, but it would probably be nice to see a real doctor instead of keep buying his hormones illegally

And moreover, he wants the Foxes to know him

So they hit the cabin in the mountains and everyone knows Neil doesn’t drink, but when Andrew pours him a shot, he takes it

Ooh, Nicky says, Is Neil about to start spilling his secrets?

Allison snorts. What secrets does he have left?

Uh, Neil says

Wait, Allison says. There’s more secrets????

Yeah, he says. Um, I’m trans

There’s a pause

Well, that’s no good, Allison said. We didn’t have a bet going on that

Everyone laughs, and Neil smiles, and he looks at the sunset and remembers his mother, and he remembers a life filled with hiding, and secrets, and loneliness

Bats swoop in the twilight beyond the cabin, and he turns towards the warmth and light inside, and he does not look back

#self indulgent trans au is self indulgent #my writing #aftg #andreil #trans neil #trans headcanons #this is actually a bit angsty be warned #i was so high on the transphobia doesnt exist part #that i forgot neils whole life is a goddamn tragedy for a seconde #tmmbsbintau

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niffin · 5 years ago

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what’s your quietest feeling?

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Rating: E

Pairing: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood

Word count: 3382

CW: mildly dubious consent, implied/referenced noncon/abuse, internalized acephobia

Other tags: trans Jonathan Sims

ao3 link

Martin opens the door to Jon's office, armed with a duster. He's procrastinating recording the statement Elias assigned him, some dusty old letter from well over a century ago - it's waited this long, it can wait some hours more. Jon hasn't spent more than fifteen minutes at a time in the Archives since he'd been cleared of murder charges, and Martin doesn't think he even notices the state of his office when he pops in there, but God knows Martin isn't doing this out of any real hope for recognition and it's basically a matter of personal pride to -

He stops halfway to Jon's desk because… Jon's in the hollow under his desk, his favorite knit blanket (Martin's thrown it over him countless times) wrapped tight around his thin shoulders, and he's just. Staring.

"Jon?" No answer. Martin hurriedly sets the duster down, then pulls the desk chair out of the way so he can kneel next to Jon without trapping him under there.

"Jon, what's wrong?" Martin can't keep a note of shrill worry from his voice. He looks Jon up and down; no visible injuries, though that hardly means anything nowadays. He checks his watch - how long has Jon been like this? This is the first time Martin's seen him in over a week, but if he's been hiding in here? He could have just returned, or been back for hours. Days. A sneak attack on the Archives? Did someone, something get to him -

Then Jon laughs hollowly, says, "I'm fine," with that old acerbic tone that used to intimidate Martin. But Martin's not scared of him anymore -

"You're not scared at all?" Jon shifts his eyes to look at Martin without moving his head. Has he slept in the past week?

"Sometimes I'm scared of you, but mostly just for you." Then Martin frowns at him, anxiety spiking when he realizes Jon's voice had filled with static. "How did you know to ask - like. Like how Elias does -" Jon grits his teeth, and Martin promptly moves on. (How long has Jon been able to do that? How much has he… heard?) "Okay, Jon, that's weird, and more than a little invasive, but right now it's more important for you to be -"

Jon stares at him with unusual intensity. He looks exhausted, and his eyes look almost black in the shadows under the desk. (Martin briefly thanks the Eye for fixing Jon's vision and rendering his glasses unnecessary. Which is the only good thing the Eye's ever done.) "You know I'm trans, right?"

Martin's train of thought is violently redirected to a new track. He involuntarily inspects Jon from head to foot, then kicks himself. It's surprising, yes, but no reason to suddenly inspect him, and now Martin has taken too long to answer. Jon hasn't blinked, expression unreadable. "Um - no, I didn't?" Come on, he knows that's not nearly enough to say when someone comes out. "Well, uh, thank you for telling me, that's, good to know - I'm cis. I think. Maybe? I chatted with Tim, a bit - sorry, this isn't about me so - um… is that? Relevant? To… whatever… this is?"

Jon's eyes flash in an instant so brief and unsettling Martin thinks it had to have been a strange shadow that made them look like they contained too many irises and pupils. "Do you still want me?"

Static permeates his voice and slips like a heavy caress into Martin's ears, throat, bones; and now Martin is very, very scared. He knows now how there's no denial or deception when Jon compels. He clamps his hands over his mouth, straining to prevent his jaw from opening. "I - I'm -"

Jon's eyes widen and he jerks towards Martin, holds his hands out in apology, caution. "I'm sorry! Don't - you don't have to answer. I didn't mean - I won't do that again."

Martin clutches at his face for another long moment, capturing those muffled half formed words, until he's sure that hungry pressure is gone, that his tongue is his own again. He lets go to suck in a heaving breath as his heart hammers away. "Jon, why -"

"I'm sorry -"

"I mean, I - actually, what I want is - is for you to be safe -"

"Martin -"

"That's normal, and e-everyone does too - more or less - "

"Listen -"

"That's it! We are all - just, so professional here, in this, workplace setting -"

"Martin, stop." Jon grabs Martin's hands to hold them still.

Martin stops, mouth hanging open, flushed to the tips of his ears. Jon has such a strange look on his face right now as they lock gazes over their joined hands. He has his answer even though he withdrew the compulsion, Jon's not stupid, but why did -

Martin doesn't get the chance to analyze it because Jon bites his lip (that's just not fair), pulls Martin's wrist towards him and. He kisses it. He brushes his full lips against the thin skin on the inside of Martin's wrist, where his veins show pale green against sandy skin. His fingers are warm and they fold so gently around Martin's, uncurl them to lay Martin's hand on his cheek where his own flush heats his skin. Jon carefully asks, "Do you want to. Have sex with me?" He presses a kiss to the base of his thumb, and his breath ghosts over it as he speaks.

No static except for the buzzing in Martin's head and everywhere Jon is touching him. His fingers move of their own volition to stroke that high cheekbone, the curling gray hair at Jon's temple, before he arrests their movement. Not before Jon notices, of course. "Are you… You’re not Jon. What did you do with the real Jon -"

"What? No! It's me." A mirthless smile passes briefly over his face. (Even in the midst of total incomprehensibility Martin can't help but marvel at the fact that he is touching the rare wonder of Jon's smile.) "Not entirely human anymore, but certainly no Stranger."

He had tried to compel him, after all. That blows Martin's theory out of the water. Martin leans back, putting more distance between them, though he can't quite make himself. Stop touching Jon. "You're… interested. In me? You, actually want to -"

Jon's face closes off. He looks away, drops Martin's hand and tucks the blanket in tighter around himself. Martin sometimes forgets how forceful his gaze can be until Jon breaks eye contact and Martin doesn't feel pierced through anymore. "Fine - you clearly don't, so just… do me a favor and don't tell -"

Martin knows there's something else going on, there has to be, God knows he's obsessed about every interaction he's ever had with Jon and concluded every time that his feelings were as far from requited as possible. And it seemed pretty apparent from casual conversation that he had just never been interested in anyone. At all. Ever. (That actually almost made his hopeless crush easier to bear, knowing that it probably wasn't entirely personal.) And the timing, and the state Jon was in when Martin came in - this entire thing makes no sense. But. Martin wants to. Maybe, this actually marks the point where Jon will let Martin help him, since he's reaching out for… Martin can't really see how sex would help anything. But he's just a little too selfish to ruin this opportunity. He seizes his panic, uses it to propel himself past the emotional walls he'd (mostly unsuccessfully) set around Jon, and says, "No, wait! That's not - um, yes. I would like to? Have s… do that. With you." Fear and excitement turn his stomach to ice.

Jon sighs in what sounds like relief, but the tension in his body ratchets tighter. Then he slides out from under the desk without further preamble to wrap his hand confidently around the back of Martin's neck and kiss him hard.

As soon as those fingers stroke against his neck surprised heat flashes through Martin's body; then their lips meet and Martin's lost. The gentle scrape of teeth along his lower lip reminds him he can reciprocate. Jon had pushed him back with the force of that kiss - Martin grabs at Jon's shirt, shoulders, to give back as hard as he's getting. His mouth tastes like cigarettes and a hint of the black tea he prefers (he never remembers to take the tea bag out when he makes it himself but Martin knows how to steep it perfectly) and it's so warm, soft skin and hard pressure, and his mouth fits just right, and he feels so sharp in his arms and determined in his kiss, and Martin traces his tongue along Jon's lip and presses it into his open mouth -

Jon breaks away, blanket sliding off his shoulders, to push closer and kiss down his jaw. His knees bracket Martin's and suddenly he's practically in his lap, and all the blood in his body drains south. Martin dizzily hauls him in the last few inches to drag his tongue down the cords in that long elegant throat, nip lightly at the curve between his neck and shoulder, breathe shuddering kisses over his scars. God, he's so beautiful, warm solid weight pressed against him, panting and shivering every time Martin touches him like he'd never been touched before.

Jon makes a soft breathless sound and holds up something in Martin's peripheral vision. He glances at it as he bites Jon's earlobe, and then sits up straight. "W-why do you have a condom - did you mean right now? Right here -"

"Now, and here - has to be - "

Martin furrows his brow; that's concerning, isn't it? "Jon, why -"

Jon fumbles the buttons of his shirt open as he demands, "Why do you ask? I can handle this, I want to -" And before Martin manages to say anything, he yanks his shirt off and tossed it across the room. Wonder and hopeless awe shove Martin's concerns firmly to the back of his mind. He wraps an arm around him to keep them close, slides his hand over his chest and the round jagged scars on it (he wonders which ones he yanked writhing worms from, blood staining his hands, the corkscrew, Jon's shirt, Jon's voice). His heart glows hot as he kisses each scar - this one is an apology. This one is a promise. This one is sorrow. This one is faith. God, Martin's head swims with want and he's tried so hard not to think about the want (Jon needs him clear headed, effective, useful; and he absolutely isn't when he's thinking about Jon by candlelight and Jon on Martin’s couch quietly reading and Jon in Martin’s bed moaning his name -).

Jon pulls hard at his jumper and Martin sways forward into it, slides his hands down for a firm grip on his thighs, and stands up. It hardly takes much effort, Jon’s so skinny. He clutches at his chest as Martin resettles him in his arms for long enough to take the three steps to the cot (with how often Jon just falls asleep at his desk, Martin’s not actually sure he remembers it’s there at all. Every time, he imagines carrying Jon there himself, with varying degrees of exasperation). Suddenly, Jon shoves at his shoulders and nearly pitches them both over. Martin drops him on the cot harder than he intended, catching himself on his elbows over him.

They freeze, staring at each other. Jon does something Martin can only call shrinking away, flattening himself against the cot as his nails dig into his shoulders. Something is wrong. Then Jon turns that convulsive clench of his hands into hauling Martin’s jumper over his head, and it and his glasses get tossed to the side; he thinks, something is wrong. Jon arches his back and now they’re skin to skin, heat pulsing through his body. His hands smooth over his soft stomach, then the fingers curl and drag their nails down his ribs; what is he supposed to do? Something is wrong and if Jon would just give him a second to think, to realize that nagging worry has turned into a klaxon in the very back of his mind, maybe he could fix it. All he can manage is a retaliatory bite on Jon’s collarbone, soft open mouth kisses over his stomach as he strokes down the length of his legs to pull off his shoes (battered old dress shoes that he's been alternating with equally battered trainers since Jane Prentiss destroyed any semblance of this being a normal job), back up to hook his fingers into his trousers and peel them off.

Martin leans back on his heels and drinks him in, sharp features, slender limbs, and bones a little too prominent (his top surgery scars and stretch marks are starkly pale, though the worms seem to have spared him somewhat. Bad luck, to be so easily marked). Jon refuses to tolerate that for more than a few seconds, squirming under Martin’s gaze before he finally lurches up to work on his jeans. His hands brush his erection and it all feels so real that dizziness strikes him dumb, stops his heart. Martin has to pull away from Jon’s insistent hands; instead drops to his knees between his legs.

Jon follows him with his gaze, wariness furrowing his brow as he asks hoarsely, “What -”

Martin kisses his hip bone, licks the elongated line of it and earns himself a yelp. So he hitches Jon's leg over his shoulder and mouths at the soft skin on the inside of his thigh, sucks on it lightly and presses his tongue into it hard. Jon jolts and whines, leg squeezing around his shoulder, and Martin agreeably licks his cunt, a broad stripe from bottom to top.

“Martin -” He does it again. Jon’s hands find their way into his hair to tug hard. “Wh - oh, fuck -” He slides his tongue between Jon’s folds, tastes him soft and delicate, satisfaction shuddering up his spine as Jon convulses, bends near in half over him. “Christ -” He flicks his tongue over Jon’s cock -

He’s violently pulled away. Jon’s still breathing hard but it almost has the timbre of panic, and his hands quiver where they’re buried in Martin’s hair. Alarm clears some of the fog from his mind. “Oh no -”

“I don’t like that. That feeling, it doesn’t -” His eyes widen further, the whites showing all around. “I don’t need it, alright? It’s fine.”

Guilt joins the alarm. “I’m sorry, I should have asked if -”

“Just - don’t worry about me, about making me -” Jon swallows hard. “The rest of it is - I want that.”

That reminds Martin, now that he can hear his thoughts. “Jon, please tell me if you don’t, if there’s anything -”

Jon’s mouth works and he leans down, enunciates every word. “I want you to fuck me.” Kisses him, sinks his teeth into Martin’s lip.

And just like that, he plunges back into single minded need. Maybe if Martin had been a better person, he could still have stopped. But the only thought that surfaces with any clarity says there aren’t nearly enough red flags to override all of Jon’s yeses, to override that.

He devours Jon’s mouth, barely gets his jeans off his hips before Jon rips open the condom packet. Their hands collide putting it on, and it strikes Martin that he would really like to hold that hand. Right after he spreads Jon’s legs open over his thighs and thrusts into his cunt. It feels… it all feels jumbled together into one utterly overwhelming whole, and his mind can’t sift out individual sensations to hold onto, though he tries. He wants to imprint everything in his memory so deep it’ll never fade. And when it comes down to it, what he’s experiencing is almost incidental to… Jon himself; how he looks (greying curls falling in his face, delicate neck arched, bottom lip caught in his teeth) and sounds (subdued moans and gasps - he had imagined Jon being a little more… voluble) and moves (tiny kisses peppered over every inch of skin he can reach, hips canted to meet Martin’s).

Martin takes Jon’s hand, intertwines their fingers, and pushes it into the cot next to his face with his next thrust. Jon makes a choked sound low in his throat and bucks his hips, his eyes closing. Then, without opening them, he unerringly grabs Martin’s other wrist. “Yes. Like that -” Pulls those hands above his head too. Martin swallows hard - holding someone down had been a tame, guiltless fantasy until it was about Jon. So it’s not a hard decision to capture both thin wrists and pin them.

Jon goes slack, face softening; then he arches violently, fighting against his grip and weight. Martin lets go - or he’s about to, when Jon says sharply, “No!” He hooks his legs around his thighs. “Don’t let me go.”

Jon matches Martin’s confused expression as they lock eyes, but it turns into a very familiar stubborn jut of his jaw. Something inexpressible wells in Martin’s chest. A not insignificant part is the conviction that this is a bad idea. Another part says that worry and stress had fallen away from Jon for that split second, and he can’t remember the last time Jon relaxed. (A third part tries to convince his heart not to read anything into it.) “I… won’t. Until you tell me to.” He tightens his grip to prove it.

Jon growls and fiercely struggles, trying to work his wrists free and nearly succeeding, heels digging and sliding on the cheap canvas. He clenches down so hard on Martin’s cock that he thinks he might come then and there. Then he visibly calms. Martin drives his hips forward hard, eliciting an unrestrained moan for the first time. That, at least, matches his fantasies perfectly. He runs his thumb over Jon’s cheek, kisses him tenderly in time with forceful thrusts (Jon had pulled away last time so he doesn’t try to slide his tongue into his mouth; that does make it easier to fill the space between them with quiet praise, gratitude, appreciation). Jon reacts beautifully. So beautifully.

It feels like an embarrassingly short time before Martin feels he’s about to come. He pauses deep inside him, panting, fingers trembling when he pushes Jon’s sweat-dampened hair off his forehead. He’d said not to worry about him, but Martin can’t help an anxious, “Jon - I’m -”

His eyes open (there’s definitely too many irises, oh God, how are there so many -) and abruptly an omnipresent scrutiny flays him down to his bones. “Look at me.”

Martin wouldn’t disobey even if he could. His voice breaks on Jon’s name and those eyes dissect him and he shatters, and he does not look away.

Next thing he realizes is that he’s crushing Jon, but he’s thoroughly, unreasonably drained. It’s nearly too much simply to force his hand to release Jon. Starts to move off him but is stopped with a hand on his shoulder. “Was it really so inconceivable that I was interested?”

Martin does not comprehend for a moment (he is unspeakably relieved to see Jon looking at him with perfectly normal eyes. Does he know that they… do that?), then catches his breath for a moment more. “I mean - yes? Certainly not in… in me. And I just, had the impression you weren’t into… anybody, that way.”

Jon’s face twists in a way he can’t interpret. “Well, there’s - there’s nothing wrong. With that. I really - and you seemed… okay, with how things were? And I never wanted to push - to push that boundary. I didn’t - I was okay. With how, with how things were.”

The question looms over them. Things are not the same. They are not the same. Is he okay with that?

Jon pushes Martin off - gently enough, but something brittle snaps in his chest. He slowly sits up, tries to control his emotions while Jon hastily gathers his clothes.

“Thank you.” Martin’s just put his glasses on and looks up to see Jon paused in the middle of yanking his shoes on, shirt buttoned wrong, looking wholly disheveled. “You didn’t have to. With me. I’m… grateful.”

Hope chokes him before Jon finishes, “I’m sorry.”

He nearly runs out the door, and Martin’s alone. Again.

“What?”

#the magnus archives #tma #do not archive #long post #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #FINE just remove all my formatting click on the damn ao3 link #fuck you tumblr

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mstigergun · 7 years ago

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Tana Reads 2017: MANY THINGS

SO MAYBE I’M BAD AT THIS UPDATING THING, but I’m pretty good at reading, and so prepare for a deluge of little reviews.

We Should All Be Feminists: +3/25

A basic primer for anyone who knows, like, nothing about feminism. It took all of 20 minutes to read. Serviceable, but rudimentary. I’m not counting this one toward my end goal. Of course, the whole thing is made more interesting by all of the controversy that’s surrounded Chimamanda Adichie regarding her statement on trans women’s experiences of oppression versus cis women’s experiences of oppression. I’d re-read it in that light, but really -- there’s not enough substance in this little book to warrant that. Especially when:

Shrill: 5/25

Writing: 5/5!

Feelings: 5/5!

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 5/5!

Overall: 5/5!!!

OH MY GOD, LINDY WEST. I’ve never read a non-fiction book that just, like, punched me right in my feelings so hard. Shrill is hilarious -- you will laugh out loud, and if you’re like me, you’ll end up reading some sections that make you pause, go back, and re-read to just marvel at the truth Lindy West is laying down. I borrowed this from the library and just devoured it, and it’s gone straight on my to-buy list because there are important ideas in here. Insights that are fucking revolutionary. This, to my mind, is feminism done right, and I put this down and felt so inspired to head out into our shitty, hostile, misogynist little world and kick so much ass.

Some days, that’s exactly what you need: motivation to keep doing you, and to refuse to let bullshit social norms and values put you in your place.

A mild warning: there’s a whole lot of discussion about rape culture in this book, as well as some pretty graphic threats made to Lindy -- but they’re familiar terrain to any woman who’s spent any amount of time online.

The Break: 6/25

Dang, though: this book. I read it in about two sittings and it is a hard and really fucking important novel.

Writing: 4/5

Feelings: 4/5

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 5/5

Overall: 4/5

So this book’s really about the experiences of indigenous women in Canada, particularly in urban spaces. It’s also about violence inflicted on indigenous women in Canada, and the resiliency of indigenous women. The Break deals with some really serious stuff and there’s a reason it comes with a trigger warning on the title page. Vermette tackles assimilation, poverty, loss of identity, sexual assault, gang violence, institutional racism, alcoholism and drug use/abuse... The characters are well-realized, the mystery is gut-wrenching, and the personal arcs of each character are compelling in their own war.

There are, to my mind, issues with pacing: we know something awful happens to a very vulnerable young girl, and then it feels as if much of the novel that follows is just... slow reactions to that, rather than actually moving the narrative forward. And I’m still conflicted about the resolution to the whole situation and how Vermette chose to create her “villain.” She’s going for the idea of, like, the legacy of sexual assault and violence against women and poverty -- how it’s all a vicious cycle that requires actual intervention from inside of the community -- but it had complicated enough implications that I was left feeling uncertain about what message was really being sent. If you’ve read Disgrace by Coetzee, it gave me a similarly unsettled ‘what is being said here and is what the author’s trying to say actually what’s being transmitted and what are the implications’ feelings.

So: timely, dark, disturbing, and fucking complicated. I’d love to hear what other people think about this one, because -- even though I read it back in April, I still don’t have it figured out.

Night: 7/25

I don’t actually want to give this one a rating, because it’s Night and I really don’t feel like evaluating a real story about the Holocaust for its narrative, or the writing, or the feelings. And Wiesel is, like Adichie, complicated.

Here’s what I will say: throughout the memoir, Wiesel explores the idea of the inadequacy of language. How it utterly fails to capture or represent the horror of what he experienced, how words ceased to have meaning, how they became broken little things and how the very telling of his experience of the Holocaust is, in essence, re-traumatizing and inadequate -- but silence is worse. And there’s a lot to be said about this idea -- the utter failure of language at actually expressing much of anything -- throughout history, but especially when dealing with trauma. I’m sure there are parallels to be drawn to Judaism and the impossibility of expressing the name of God. There are certainly parallels to, say, The Book Thief and so much literary theory. Basically, the idea of when language fails and under what circumstances is really compelling, so that’s one thematic strand I found especially interesting.

Which is to say that maybe it’s easier to engage with that than with the actual details of Wiesel’s experiences which are, as I’ve said, really beyond the scope of language. So it all comes back around.

Anne of Green Gables: 8/25

Writing: 4/5

Feelings: 5/5

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 4/5

Overall: 4/5

idk how I hadn’t read this before, but I was so thoroughly shamed by both my wife and my mother-in-law that I became a good Maritimer and settled in and read Anne, and let me tell you -- it has aged very well. I was familiar with the story, because of course I was, having seen both the 80s television show and also a play in Charlottetown, but this novel is something else, friend. It’s really, really exceptional. The writing itself is stellar and the characters are fantastic and the plot is so... small? And yet it’s everything? I’m reminded, I guess, of My Neighbour Totoro, in which there’s no Big Bad -- it’s just about kids and life and the day-to-day that’s also magical.

Anne is an amazing protagonist, the setting feels like home, and I love how everything is so different and simultaneously the same (the politics are especially hilarious and eternal, basically). Anne’s romanticism and optimism, her refusal to be told she’s less than because of her circumstances or because she’s a girl -- like, yes. YES, all of those things. And although people have been shitting on the newest adaptation, I’ve got to say -- I love it (so far!). It’s made me cry like an absolute baby and I appreciate the added texture and darkness, because that’s all there on the page. It’s just implied instead of being explored, and I think Anne’s trauma only makes her idealism more remarkable. And that’s what I think about that!

Bonus points: A+ heroine, Canadian touchstone, and giving me a billion Anne of Green Gables references from now into forever (see: wow those blossoms are beautiful, i shall have to call that tree ~snow queen~ and this walk is simply the most romantical, i just can’t help it now)

A Closed and Common Orbit: 9/25

Writing: 4/5

Feelings: 5/5!

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 5/5

Overall: 4.5/5

THIS BOOK. Okay, so it popped onto my radar because of the Hugos, and a number of queer reviewers said that they love Becky Chambers. I’d been meaning to read the first book in this series, The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, but never got around to it. But then this one came around and my library had it in and it can stand on its own merits, and so I scooped it up.

Friends, sometimes the right book comes into your life just when you need it -- and this book did that for me. I started reading it ahead of a very difficult and tense family situation, and this book -- which focuses on found family, building meaning, and, like, serious sunshine for the soul -- helped me through some ugly, messy stuff. It was a balm.

Other benefits: fascinating alien cultures, a lived-in universe (if you like Mass Effect, you will like this!), queer folks and relationships and fascinating relationships to gender, AIs with feelings, people finding each other and making families because found families are the best, etc., etc., etc. My only quibbles are around a few minor pacing elements, but I devoured this and let it soak into my soul in the best possible restorative and healing way. The way it balances a past narrative with the “present” and two very distinct point of views is masterful.

Read this book.

Hag Seed: 10/25

Writing: 3/5

Feelings: 1/5

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 2/5

Overall: 3/5, because Atwood

So this is basically a retelling of The Tempest, of which I am vaguely and distantly fond, and of course it’s Atwood so there are some interesting narrative elements going on. That being said, the whole book felt more like a... sort of narrative that’s mostly a study guide that a professor put together to help you understand The Tempest. Case in point: after the climax, there’s about 20 pages of each character doing an analysis of the person they played in the production so -- study guide. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t interesting. It was just laboured, and so I give this one a big old shrug.

Parasite: 11/25

Writing: 2/5

Feelings: 1/5

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 2/5, but only because I wanted to finish it before the eBook got called back to the library!

Overall: 2/5

WELP.

You know, once upon a time, I read Mira Grant’s Feed, and I loved it. It made me cry, I bolted my way through the whole thing, and I put it down feeling like I’d just witnessed something masterful.

This book is the opposite of that, and I don’t know if there are many reading experiences worse than picking up a book by an author you think you love and being thoroughly, thoroughly disappointed. I guessed the big “reveal” literally in the first 20 pages (seriously, and I am The Worst at guessing plot twists, okay). The characters are one dimensional. There isn’t a plot: there’s exposition. And exposition. And people telling people things. And so on and so forth. No one’s actions are believable, everything is ridiculous, and it made me angrier and angrier the deeper into the narrative I got.

There are only two redeeming characteristics to this novel: 1. Don’t Go Out Alone, an in-text children’s story book told in verse that’s creepy and compelling in the small snippets we get and I would have rather read that than finished this book, and 2. Beverly, who is a Good Dog.

UNBONUS POINTS: All the gays die.

(Well, one guy apparently dies, but then we learn that he’s secretly alive and also a tapeworm-villain, so. Yeaaaaahhhhh.)

The Thief: 12/25

Writing: 4/5

Feelings: 5/5

Stay Up Too Late Factor: 5/5

Overall: 4/5

I was feeling really put-out after reading two mediocre books in a row, and starting and not finishing a whole bunch of others (did not finish list coming soon!), but then I picked up The Thief and --

Beautiful.

It’s a tight narrative that starts out pretty slow, told from the perspective of Gen, who is, predictably, the thief in question. Do yourself a favour: don’t Google this book or this character, because you will spoil some really magnificent details for yourself (I learned this the hard way and have apparently spoiled some major revelations coming down the line in subsequent books -- from the title of the Wiki entries alone! gdi, internet).

In fact, there’s not much I want to say about the plot, because it’s worth just reading and enjoying as it all unfolds. Gen is the best sort of narrator: incredibly compelling and funny, with such a distinct and delightful voice that you'll find yourself totally enamoured. This is quasi-medieval, although there are guns, and it’s set in a parallel to the ancient Mediterranean. Little myths are peppered throughout, and they’re delightful.

I read this in about two sittings, and now I’m into the second book in the series. My only quibble is that there really aren’t any prominent female characters in this book, although that’s fixed in a very compelling way in the second book (and likely beyond). The cast is super small -- five, including our narrator! -- but I still don’t see why one of the other four couldn’t have been a lady. But Gen is so layered and compelling and the narrative is so fantastic that I really didn’t mind -- just this once.

Want to see what I'm reading, failing to finish, or completing but forgetting to review over here? I’m on Goodreads!

#tana reads in 2017 #book review

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teachanarchy · 8 years ago

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A few weeks ago, I got there. Peak liberalism. The moment I accepted that contemporary liberal politics are anathema to progress, social change, or, heaven forbid, economic change. Not just in terms of my own personal politics (that peak was reached years ago), but in terms of any political movement. This realization was a long-time coming. I never believed in Obama’s smiling message of hope, nor in Clinton’s starch-stiff entitlement to my support at the tail end of a career built on allowing the Right to dictate the parameters of American values. I still remember NAFTA and still work in a post-Clintonian era of neoliberal capitalism. And while I have inherited an inter-generational distrust of Democrats and liberal organizations, the peak liberalism I have reached lately is a rejection of the horizontal in-fighting popular of the center-leftish base.

I’ve gone through my own personal experimentation with liberalism’s identity-centered calling cards. When you’re trans, Queer, disabled, breaking free of public school indoctrination, and just beginning to understand class relations in the world around you, liberal identity politics offer power–the power to demand attention, to shut down conversation, to center yourself, and to be untouchable in your politics, along the same identity criminal code used to reduce Obama’s critics to “racists,” and Clinton’s to “sexists.”

I did my fair share of seizing power from those around me. At times, perhaps I was justified. But over time it became abundantly clear that these politics are a dead end. The decline in my health forced me to realize that solidarity is necessary. Allies are necessary. If I intend to survive, I cannot be too rich for good intentions and people unlike me who want to help. And in the eggshell world of identity politics, I’m one mistake, or one incorrect visual assumption about who I am away from losing whatever security this “community” purports to offer.

Reading Audre Lorde further helped contextualize liberal identity politics. Her speech Learning from the 60s isn’t the only analysis of early liberal identity sectarianism that should give pause to anyone serious about changing the world, rather than just pointing out its flaws.

My experience of peak liberalism however, comes at a time when my return to the public university system has led me to witness a new generation of angry young Queers repeating the same tired politics I engaged in a decade ago, which are in fact the same tired politics Lorde and others have been critiquing since before I was born. Somewhere along an infectious and arguably ableist resistance to understanding the necessity of solidarity politics, a moral myopia developed.

And when I stumbled upon a self-righteous Facebook argument about whether white cis gays or trans women of color have it “worse” in Chechnya’s death camps, I realized I’d had enough. The original poster called out the media for failing to center the voices of the most marginalized being tortured and executed in the camps, because apparently barely escaping with your life alone isn’t enough to raise the otherwise notably cautious ire of American college students.

It got worse. Others commented to decry that the media even covered the story while non-incarcerated Black trans women in the U.S. (who aren’t being directly murdered by their families) face violence everyday. Another rushed to post clapping emojis in response, adding that their professors don’t even ask for everyone’s pronouns before class–an act that was literally described as “violence.” The media was decried for not treating these topics equally. One, the rounding up, imprisonment, torture, and murder of Queer people. Two, the obliviousness or apathy of U.S. academia to some of its students’ desire to vocalize the pronouns they use before class. Both, under liberalism, acts of violence that require equal media time.

I tried typing out several responses, but ultimately gave up because, I mean, my god, the problem is the existence of death camps, not who is in them. And how do we even weight different experiences? Why do we even need to? Can we not oppose one state’s death camps and another’s structural injustices all at the same time? Is it okay for gay men to be rounded up, imprisoned by the state, shocked, starved, and murdered by their families just because someone else by some standard may have it worse somewhere else in the world? Or, more bluntly, is it okay for gays to be murdered since on the other side of the world an American student is experiencing the inconvenience of being misgendered in a private liberal arts college classroom? Even if the media is distorting the demographics of people in the camps, what does arguing that point or correcting that misinformation even accomplish? What did derailing reports on gay death camps accomplish for trans students or Black trans women in the U.S., or anywhere at all?

Where antiracist efforts in the U.S. were galvanized by U.S. fights against Nazis abroad following WWII (Taylor, 2016, p. 32), contemporary U.S. liberals can’t even muster a negative fuck to give about concentration camps without first ranking the prisoners by worth to a gaggle of college students halfway around the world, delighting in the privileges afforded them by Western imperialism.

Reeling from this gay-hating Holocaust denialism, I found myself asking how did we get here? Surely, at some point, these politics made sense. But somewhere along the way, whatever radicalism these politics held has become ensnared in the quagmire of endless one-upping privilege checks and ah-ha! call-outs, the intersectionality of indivisible identity narratives, and a campus-centering, politic-esque performance of activism thoroughly neutered by lack of discernible strategy, goals, or even radical values.

Concerns over “disproportionate” incarceration have replaced prison abolition, just as the “right” to military service replaced disarmament. In the course of editing this piece, the sheer toxicity of this culture I once actively contributed to hit me again and again. I encountered a feminist advocating the sexual assault of men to “level the playing field.” When it was brought to her attention that men are already raped, her concern was exposed to not really be sexualized violence but the fact that women are “winning” with regard to being raped. I think her choice of words is apt. For all the denials to the contrary, these are oppression Olympics. Rape, death camps, and other atrocities don’t matter. Who is winning does. The recognition that identity essentialism fails to capture lived experience or challenge the indiscriminate maw of society is rebuked in favor of an unspoken, unassailable, and frankly insane sectarian rule book we’re all already too late in learning.

And what can we show for it? The persistent fear of reporting violence and a reliable lack of community support because one is the wrong identity to be on the receiving end? Another ten years of crowd-sourcing survival expenses, no closer to revolutionary change than Sylvia Rivera clawing her way to that stage in 1973, and still shouting the same things? Is anyone listening? Is anyone benefiting?

How many years of the same mantras about centering must we endure, how many Queer people must revert to the closet, how many must die from violence and preventable disease, and how long must we ignore the plight of us all exploited in this global cancer called capitalism before we name the failures of liberal politics and try something different instead? It is not enough to simply outgrow these politics and hope others do as well. If leftists are to engage with liberals, we must be willing to name and challenge the toxicity, absurdity, and de-radical nature of their politics.

I write with around twelve years of experience in student, community, and workplace activism, including various supporting organizer roles. And the following essay explores the problems I see with liberal and identity-centered politics.

Intersectionality creates new identity classes.

Kimberlé Crenshaw is credited with conceptualizing intersectionality in her 1989 essay Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics to highlight the limits of civil rights legislation based on sex and race.

Essentially, Crenshaw asks us to imagine the intersection of two streets. For the purposes of her metaphor, they can be abstractly thought of as racial discrimination and sexual discrimination. Black women, positioned in the intersection, may experience injustice from all directions, but it is difficult if not entirely impossible to place responsibility on a single street for the harm done to them. Rather, their position within the intersection is the critical context for understanding the injustices they face.

To illustrate this metaphor, Crenshaw wrote on the 1976 case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors where five Black women sued General Motors over employment discrimination, yet were unable to effectively argue their case since the discrimination they faced did not occur clearly on the basis of race (i.e. affecting Black men too) or sex (i.e. affecting white women as well). Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality gave a name to this type of experience which Black women had already been describing for generations.

In her article, Black Feminism and Intersectionality, Sharon Smith writes:

“After Crenshaw introduced the term intersectionality in 1989, it was widely adopted because it managed to encompass in a single word the simultaneous experience of the multiple oppressions faced by Black women. But the concept was not a new one. Since the times of slavery, Black women have eloquently described the multiple oppressions of race, class, and gender—referring to this concept as ‘interlocking oppressions,’ ‘simultaneous oppressions,’ ‘double jeopardy,’ ‘triple jeopardy’ or any number of descriptive terms.” (source)

The April 1977 statement by the Combahee River Collective demonstrates that what could retroactively be described as intersectional politics pre-dates Crenshaw’s essay. In it, a Marxist politic is identified as informing intersectional and identity-oriented work.

“We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.” (source)

Has an intersectional analysis succeeded in confronting or dismantling either “the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism,” “patriarchy,” or any number of other targets identified by subsequent social justice movements?

In 1982, Audre Lorde presented her talk Learning from the 60s at a Harvard University celebration of Malcolm X, in which she highlighted a misplaced horizontal anger arising in activist movements:

“In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those closest to us who mirrored our own impotence.

Similarly, in her article The Politics of Identity, Sharon Smith writes:

“As the experience of the 1960s shows, it is not necessary to personally experience a form of oppression to become committed to opposing it. Yet the central premise of the theory of identity politics is based on precisely the opposite conclusion: Only those who actually experience a particular form of oppression are capable of fighting against it. Everyone else is considered to be part of the problem and cannot become part of the solution by joining the fight against oppression. The underlying assumption is that all men benefit from women’s oppression, all straight people benefit from the oppression of the LGBT community, and all whites benefit from racism.” (source)

And in his article The Limits of Antiracism, Adolph Reed Jr. comments on a shift in the targets of antiracist activism between the Civil Rights Movement and later waves of identity-oriented work, including those that inspired and followed Crenshaw’s conceptualization of intersectionality:

“Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of ‘prejudice’ or ‘intolerance.’ (No doubt this shift was partly aided by political imperatives associated with the Cold War and domestic anticommunism.)” (source)

In comparison to the Combahee River Collective’s statement (above), later movements are notably hostile to Marxism. Reed Jr. continues:

“I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics. It’s not clear to me what drives it because it takes the form of snide dismissals than direct arguments. Moreover, the dismissals typically include empty acknowledgment that ‘of course we should oppose capitalism,’ whatever that might mean. In any event, the tenor of this anti-Marxism is reminiscent of those right-wing discourses, many of which masqueraded as liberal, in which only invoking the word ‘Marxism’ was sufficient to dismiss an opposing argument or position. […].

This sort of thing only deepens my suspicions about antiracism’s status within the comfort zone of neoliberalism’s discourses of ‘reform.’ More to the point, I suspect as well that this vitriol toward radicalism is rooted partly in the conviction that a left politics based on class analysis and one focused on racial injustice are Manichean alternatives.” (source)

And Asad Haider likewise notes the erasure of communists of color from liberal identity sectarian framing of Marxism as “white”:

“Obviously it offends me if someone includes me in a list of white socialists who don’t care about race or something like that. These people who accuse me of being white, I want to know where they were when I was detained at the airport or harassed after 9/11. It would’ve been nice to have them there to say ‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s a Marxist so we consider him white.’ But that didn’t happen. Despite the fact that identity politics is supposed to be about everyone’s experiences, it completely erases my own experiences of racism and it distorts the views I’ve formed to understand those experiences.

But what I really think is offensive is the erasure of all these figures from history—people of color—who took up Marxism and were engaged in a struggle for the freedom of every person. It’s just unacceptable to wipe them out of history the way white supremacy did and the way the mainstream political discourse tries to do. You know, a lot of people perpetuating identity politics are wearing sweatshirts about Assata Shakur and invoking the Black Panthers—but all of these people were communists. To now wear a shirt that says ‘Assata Taught Me’ and then talk about how all socialists are white—it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.” (source)

The erasure Haider describes is informed by the impotence of liberal identity sectarianism. Despite an oft-cited inspiration in the intersectional analysis articulated by Crenshaw, the Combahee River Collective, and others, in practice, intersectional activists have been unable to escape inviolable and discrete hierarchies of identities. As such, Karl Marx’ maleness and whiteness are all that is necessary for anticommunist liberals to reduce the collaborative efforts of people across identity groupings into the most egregious sin an activist can make. These politics serve imperialism, and are not the allies of any leftist movement.

In discussing Betty Friedan and bell hooks’ theories on intersectionality, Eve Mitchell writes on the preponderance of sub-identities these politics have produced in her essay I am a Woman and a Human: a Marxist Critique of Intersectionality Theory:

“hooks is correct to say that basing an entire politics on one particular experience, or a set of particular differences, under capitalism is problematic. However, intersectionality theory replicates this problem by simply adding particular moments, or determinant points; hooks goes on to argue for race and class inclusion in a feminist analysis. Similarly, theories of an ‘interlocking matrix of oppressions,’ simply create a list of naturalized identities, abstracted from their material and historical context. This methodology is just as ahistorical and antisocial as Betty Friedan’s.” (source)

The separatism so hated when engaged in by second-wave women’s libbers and TERFs is the essential structure of intersectional liberal identity politics. Now instead of being limited to white or cis women’s womanhood, liberalism proposes a cornucopia of womanhoods (“identity politics on steroids” in the words of Crenshaw), discrete and destined to individualism, unable to cooperate or even understand one another across an ocean of perpetually unexamined oppressive matrices. Intersectionality, though originally a critique of the limits of identity politics, can now be widely observed as a justification for identity politics, having been thoroughly appropriated (or perhaps a better word is colonized?) by liberalism (Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics?).

We remain trapped by intersections, unwilling or unable to examine the geographic bounds of the society they exist in–the whys, or any how regarding an escape–instead devoted to the micro-analysis of identity. In this sense, (neo-?)intersectionality is a fractal phenomenon. It is useful for identifying the particulars of the structures that oppress us, yet in practice, so far seems unable to direct our movement against these structures.

The dimensions of these identities are arbitrary.

Liberal identity politics are premised on false dichotomies–cis or trans, straight or gay, white or Black, man or woman, etc. One category is deemed privileged and innately discriminatory or even “violent” towards the category opposite it, if not out of biological necessity than by passively benefiting from society’s structural barriers. In this theory, interpersonal violence and social oppression happen because we are these marginalized categories and others are oppressive identities, and not due to the powerlessness of either’s material conditions expressed in convenient channels availed by capitalism (Wolf, 2009, p. 238-239).

But between those binaries of identity are a multitude of others not even best thought of as existing in the middle of a spectrum between the two false poles liberal identity politics name. In regards to sexuality for instance, would bisexuals or pansexuals be the middle of the spectrum between heterosexuals and homosexuals? And what about asexuals? Furthermore, as experienced expressly by trans people and people who become disabled later in life, these categories are not static, but are moved to or even through during the course of one’s life. Does one’s status as oppressor or oppressed move with these transitions? And if so, can momentary identity truly serve as an indicator of whether one is oppressed or oppressor? Reality complicates these politics.

Consider the idea of “white Hispanic” or “white Latinx” people. Among Latinx people, it is not even clear what “white Hispanic” means (Saenz-Alcántara, Who and What the Hell is a White Hispanic?). The use of whiteness vs. other racial categories also varies geographically, which Hector R. Cordero-Guzman suggests is due to the social constructiveness of race as encountered culturally:

“Race is important, and racism and colorism are pernicious. They negatively impact the lives of many. As a biological concept, race is meaningless, but as a sociological concept it is extremely powerful. Since it is a sociological construction, however, race is a contextual and situational concept that can also be fluid and dynamic for many populations. People’s biological make-up does not change over time but their conceptions of themselves and where and how they fit in evolving racial classification schemas can be influenced by many factors and can change depending on context and reference point.” (source)

Liberalism has no capacity for identities to be read conditionally or situationally. If one’s “whiteness” varies sociologically over geographic and cultural bounds, how can one’s experience be classified across the strictness of liberal identity hierarchies?

Furthermore, who benefits from creating this cultural phenomenon of a “white Latinx” class (while giving no similar focus to Afro-Latinx or other Latinx people)? To some, simply being “white Latinx” (whatever that means) is to be part of racist oppression. For instance, non-Black Latinx people acknowledging police violence against Latinx people is sometimes called “anti-Black violence” and a “distraction” from the movement for Black lives, rather than fertile ground for a larger movement against the police state. I have also experienced discussion of the ethnic white-washing of mixed race or Latinx people described as a “derail” from “real” racism, which presumably is only experienced by certain people of color, or people of a certain degree of color. These discussions mirror the racial essentialism of the Civil Rights era (noted by William García in his article White Latino Racism on the Rise), but with a more focused hierarchy within the diversity of Latinx people alone.

Again, who benefits? Given the rising growth of Latinx people as a whole, dividing the largest non-white voting bloc in the U.S., and arbitrarily conferring a status of quasi-white on some of these populations ensures continued racialized frustrations that may well serve to prevent more unified political resistance against U.S. imperialism. This surplus value of whiteness arbitrarily assigned to some Latinx people mirrors the larger function of white privilege W.E.B. Du Bois wrote on in Black Reconstruction. Essentially, white privilege works to create a false consciousness of superiority in difference, dissuading “white” workers from working class unity. Today it seems likewise accurate to observe that “white privilege” shuts down dialogue of antiracist or other identity sectarian movements including or even working with white-passing and some mixed race folks.

In A Marxist Critiques Identity Politics, Asad Haider also describes this:

“The idea was that white skin privilege was actually harmful to white people, because despite the fact that they were granted some advantages over black people, they ended up even more entrenched in their condition of exploitation precisely by accepting these advantages. As a result, they did not build a movement across racial boundaries to fight their common oppression. The fact that the idea of white privilege is used today to show why we can’t possibly unify—that’s a reversal of the core idea.” (source)

Similarly, consider the Spanish government’s sudden romanticization of Sephardic Jews, expelled from the country in the 15th century yet still speaking Spanish or Ladino because of a love for the people who threatened them with death if they didn’t convert or leave. The Spanish state’s decision to extend citizenship rights to Sephardic Jews (who can prove their ancestry and love of Spanish culture), but not Muslims expelled from Al-Andalus serves to undermine global solidarity between diasporic Muslim and Jewish communities whose common treatment over the last several centuries is a potential source of unity threatening the imperial powers that be who gain more from perpetuating the occupation of the Middle East, fragilizing Jewish survival, and turning Muslim autonomy into a monstrosity to be warred against.

Both Jews and Muslims occupy simultaneous positions in imperial society as “white” and “not-white.” For instance, Middle Easterners in the U.S. are considered “white” on official census data, but rhetoric around the occupation of the Middle East and “threat” of Islam emphasizes their Brownness to justify imperial expansion and interpersonal violence. Jews likewise are generally considered “white” by default to liberals, but “not-white” by white supremacists. Liberal racial dynamics are insufficient to understand the nuance of how whiteness, Brownness, religion, and otherness are manipulated by the state to exploit and colonize both peoples, and perceived interpersonally as justification for conflict. To liberals, Jewish people, defaulted to white for convenience, are the victims of anti-Semitic hate crimes because of their religion, even when white supremacists target them because of their race. What informs anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic prejudice? Is it racism? Are “white” Muslims and Jews, Hispanics and Middle Easterners, victims of racism, or its perpetrators? The conditional context of race eludes the severity demanded by liberal identity analyses where one is either-or, oppressor or oppressed, oppressed by race or religion, but not in an intersectional way permitted to cross-over the boundaries of either. As such, these politics objectify Brown, multi-ethnic, mixed race, Muslim, Jewish, and other non-white/non-Black people whose experiences of racism are conjured for the illusion of solidarity but white-washed upon specificity to experience.

So too, consider the false dichotomy between cis and trans. If we accept the basic premise that cis people identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and trans people do not, where do feminists fit into this equation? Where does any man or woman rejecting any part of the gender roles assigned to them? What amount of resistance or questioning qualifies one as trans? Is simply existing as a gender outside a Western binary dynamic enough?

People whose experiences of gender thrive outside of the capitalist binary or a clear-cut transition between binary options also undermine an easy identity division of cis from trans. Plenty of straight people along with tons of gays and lesbians who wouldn’t consider themselves trans could all be understood to reject parts of the gender assigned to them. Gender policing affects everyone who visibly falls out of the expected conventions–not just people who identify as trans. Interestingly, while activists frequently read me to be a cis man, my femme-of-center Queerness never seems to escape the notice of straight people I encounter outside activist circles.

I first vocalized my objection to the gender I was assigned at birth in 1992. The 25 years that have so far followed that coming out have involved a lot of experimentation, trauma, power, self-actualization, and dramatic changes. Yet as often as I hear intersectional activists insist that no trans person ever has cis privilege or is ever a gender other than what they say they are, these are precisely terms applied to me when my transness is summarily erased, misgendered, or displaced by the cursory assumptions of “people-centered” intersectional activists. When these folks insist for example all trans women have always been women, the implication is that either my experience as a trans woman or as a cis man or as an agender person is irrelevant or false. It’s pushing the fake gender trope further down the line to people whose trans experiences fall outside more mainstream narratives. I have been a trans woman, a cis man, an agender adult, and a genderqueer child.

What matters more though than narrative inclusion is that a constructed capitalist norm of gender permeates the Western imperial world. How we relate to gender is a secondary concern at best to the fact that a system constructs the way we are permitted to relate to it and the difference of experience we live through because of how we relate to gender. Building on Andrea Dworkin’s analysis in Woman Hating, on the other side of capitalism, trans self-actualization is possible. Under capitalism, our abilities to express ourselves, identify, and change are limited by profit-maximizing culture.

Despite constant proclamations (often based on fictional statistics about average trans lifespans) that trans femmes face transphobic and misogynist violence in addition to more structural obstructions, there is an unacknowledged expectation that trans femmes must perform gender in a certain way before they are permitted recognition on those terms. I don’t wear makeup and I like my beard, but as “cis-passing” as identity police would like to rank me, neither how I choose to identify or how they assess my identity has the power to cis-pass me through the interpersonal violence and structural bullshit life in this capitalist system affords me.

And when does any Queer-basher ever stop to inquire about preferred pronouns or to clarify whether we self-identify as white or multi-ethnic, gay or Queer, trans or gender non-compliant before threatening or actually attacking us? Are they that polite to you? They have never been that polite to me or anyone I know. So are we attacked for the jobs we work? Our immigration status? Our sexual orientation? Our gender identity? Or maybe our gender expression?

If the answer is that we exist in the intersections of all of those identities, then logically can we conclude that some shifting along those identity spectrums still results in similar experiences? And if that’s the case, does ending this violence or ending structural oppression necessitate a hyper focus on specific identity sub-groupings, or does broader solidarity make more sense? For instance, if Queer-hating murderers in Chechnya don’t give a fuck if we’re trans or gay or pansexual and genderfluid, should it matter to us? If Christians in North Carolina don’t give a fuck if we’re trans or gay or pansexual and genderfluid, should it matter to us?

Likewise, the structural obstructions we encounter: lack of adequate healthcare, a work or school day and environment structured around an assumed able-bodied norm, coerced gendering by the state, inability to acquire goods and service where workers are paid fairly for their labor, etc. occur in more material terms than our intellectual identity or dis-identity as disabled, trans, or whatever else. Identity is rendered irrelevant to vigilantism against non-conformity and failure to be subsumed within the available social parameters. Yet we’re conditioned to believe dismantling capitalism, which defines these parameters, is either irrelevant or at best a secondary concern to ending our identity-based oppressions.

The cultural capital assigned to these identities is hierarchical, and totally absurd.

Visit any college campus protest, and the local activist performance troupe will inevitably feature at least one speaker leading crowds in a rousing recitation of their favorite mantra: especially trans women of color. When not the lyric of a pop song stuck on generational repeat and regurgitated by every non-trans women of color to demonstrate their profound goodness, this mantra gets translated into an act of centering, that is, at best passing the speakers’ mic to actual trans women of color, or at worst, derailing any other discussion of oppression to prioritize their specific experience and criticize movements and community organizing for failing to do this already. This line has been used so frequently, and in terms of actual practice, been made so goddamn meaningless, I know at least one group of trans women of color who made it into a drinking game nearly a decade ago.

The mantra is meaningless because in at least a decade of trans-centering, it is yet to end interpersonal violence against trans women or structural oppression faced by any trans person. We continue to crowd-source our healthcare and other survival expenses–no closer to a sustainable solution than we were in the Bush years (either of them), yet perpetually damselled by the same activist performers reflexively quick to accuse everyone else of seeking “ally points.”

Additionally, the factors that comprise especially trans women of color–gender identity, gender, and race–are arbitrarily limiting. Why are these three factors alone mentioned? Ask and you will probably be told that it is because trans women of color are the most marginalized people (or voices, or bodies–it seems like we rarely get to be people anymore).

This logic side-steps a few considerations. First, it speaks to economic conditions only indirectly. The city I live in for instance, sits in the county with one of the worst child hunger rates in the country. Layoffs and retail closure have created a perpetual cycle of unemployment and poverty here as long as I have been alive. Yet these conditions elude the liberal understanding of most marginalized. Do trans women of color deal with unemployment, homelessness, and hunger? I’m trans, I have, and I think it’s obvious that most of us do at least for some part of our lives. But centering any trans person neither centers these conditions nor proposes a solution directly related to them. This is not the failure of the individual. Ask me to speak as a trans person, and I probably won’t speak about hunger, homelessness, or unemployment either. These are the failures of selective identity-centering politics. And when the trans people being centered are 18-22 year old American college students with campus meal plans, an inability to qualify for need-based financial aid, and the economic confidence to pursue a private school’s liberal arts degree, is it really fair to say we’re talking about the most marginalized people?

What about being disabled? A sex worker? A minimum wage worker? An immigrant? A single parent? A trafficked worker? Anyone down supply chain from Western imperial markets? Who benefits from the silent hierarchy of centered identities? Is this ranking system useful to dismantling structural oppression off-campus or around the world?

It is virtually impossible to live a Western life not buttressed in some way by the economic exploitation of workers both here and abroad. And given the way race and sex are not clear indicators of oppressed vs. oppressor in light of this system of exploitation, is it not our capitalist class relations more broadly than our skin color or sex specifically that define this power dynamic?

Sweatshops routinely abuse and exploit the labor of children (along with lax environmental regulations) to produce a variety of goods we enjoy across the world. Interpersonal dynamics of race, gender, etc. are obscured by the drama between exploited and benefactor in the imperialist marketplace, bloodying us all in the dirty work of capitalism. If we choose not to do everything in our power to dismantle this economic system, if we choose to place our own oppressions ahead of or in place of those workers and communities directly exploited by this arrangement, are we not guilty of oppressing them, even if we are not the architects of capitalism, stockholders in international businesses, or necessarily enthusiastic consumers of sweatshop products?

I remember one night during the Charlotte Uprising when a march of protesters disturbed a Black man attempting to sleep on the streets. He spit in the direction of those marching and shouted something along the lines of: “I’m alive right here [or maybe: I live right here], when will my life matter?”

At another rally, speaker after speaker talked about the need for churches, teachers, and communities to open their doors to refugees and immigrants in need of protection from the threat of deportation. A group of people sleeping in a bus stop were awakened by our chants and drumming, yet few of us stopped to talk with them, and to my knowledge no doors in the community were opened to them although it was the coldest night of this past winter.

When will “trickle-down social justice” reach these folks? If not now, why? When? How can any of us with a roof over our heads, a meal today, running water, along with the freedom to voice our opinions, conceptualize ourselves as among the most marginalized either around the world or even in our own communities?

What makes gender identity, gender, and race the sole factors worth centering? And why do we have to frame our struggles against oppression on those terms rather than in economics terms? Furthermore, if we can understand that homelessness, hunger, and unemployment are all constructed material conditions borne of profit-maximizing capitalist interests and not actual deficit without necessarily experiencing them personally, why do identity politics put so much burden on those who directly experience oppression to lead movements dismantling it?

These hierarchies are often verbalized in individualist languages–one person becomes the monolithic voice for all within their identity category (see also: this phenomenon of recently out trans people appointing themselves “trans community leaders”). The concept of allies is summarily rejected. Innately, these politics benefit ableism and cissexism, pushing out solidarity in favor of a bootstraps rugged individualism disabled and trans people physically and statistically cannot survive through.

As an example, let’s assume that tomorrow the new mantra of the most cutting edge activist groups becomes especially disabled trans women of color. How many people even is that?

A recent study by the Williams Institute numbers transgender people in the U.S. at about 1.4 million, or roughly around 0.6% of the overall population. Momentarily assuming an unlikely even distribution across the 50 states (the actual study shows variance), that’s 28,000 people per state. And then assuming another unlikely even distribution across all 100 counties in North Carolina for instance, that puts about 280 transgender people in each county.

Now, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we can estimate that 13.3% are Black or African-American, 1.2% are American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5.6% are Asian, 0.2% are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 2.6% are two or more, and 17.6% are Hispanic or Latinx (although this is not considered a separate race category, so it overlaps with “white” and other categories). Together, that totals at 40.5% (included people who identify as or will be “read” as white). When applied to our 280 transgender people per county in North Carolina, that comes to about 114 people.

Next, using another study by the Williams Institute, we can estimate that 41% of transgender people primarily identify their gender as female–although the study sampling is only a few thousand people and gender is widely varied in the data. This means that if we are looking specifically for transgender women of color, we can guess there are around 47 per county in North Carolina.

Lastly, if we were to include disability in this analysis–so, only looking at disabled trans women of color–we would be down to around 4 people per county in North Carolina, using the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of 8.5% of people having disabilities.

If we accept that structural discrimination affects our politics and ability to engage in politics, who can even say if these 4 people will have the economic liberty to engage in activism, let alone be the visible “center” of a political movement? And perhaps more importantly, is the experience of oppression even an indicator of political insight, leadership skills, charisma, or strategy?

This does not mean that there are not badass disabled trans women of color out there doing critical work in the community. Nor does it mean that issues unique to disabled people, trans people, people of color, etc. are not critical to address in dismantling oppressive structures. Instead, it more vitally demonstrates that without solidarity our communities are too small to affect social change, particularly as modeled on larger civil rights movements.

In the words of the Combahee River Collective:

“Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.” (source)

Identity sectarianism under the guise of intersectionality simply relocates the hierarchies of the dominant culture, leaving us no closer to revolution or resolution.

Positive thinking does not directly address structural problems.

The obsession with identity is what made DADT repeal the LGBT+ civil rights movement’s priority in 2010. I was there when this bizarre effort became cause célèbre with the audacity to connect itself to broader worker struggles and to assert its connection somehow to reducing violence against LGBT+ people. I’m not the only total fool who swallowed the party line that we could end homophobic violence in the workplace and in the U.S. more broadly by bestowing American gays with the “right” to commit genocide for the empire.

Identity politics stranded trans people. I remember the shouts of especially trans women of color back then, but there was no politic behind it. There was no direction offered. I know that a muddled intersection of Queer people were targets of violence, but neither gasp of liberalism offered immediate aid. One side offered protest performance–young white collegiate activist after young white collegiate activist proclaimed the need for more marginalized voices to be centered and paternally protected, and critiqued everyone else for not doing so (perhaps inspiring the Democrat’s new crime bill: the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act). The other side swept in and announced that DADT repeal would be the next big issue. That was followed shortly by the campaign for marriage equality. In every direction, liberalism was convinced of its devotion to trans people, but not a goddamn face of it all offered more than words and magical thinking.

Magic words like especially, center, inclusion, and full equality diffused the material reality of a world more criminalized and more colonized. For all the civil rights advances gained, the movement still rejected a focus on the voter ID law and was unable to fend off HB2 or even depend on Democrats and national gay rights orgs to broker an actual repeal of it. The serpentine wit of capitalism still evades liberal politics. HB2 was fake-repealed over neoliberal concerns about money. DADT repeal put a fabulous progressive face on Obama’s drone genocide. The notion of “hate crimes” reoriented the police state and criminal injustice system as our friend, even as police outfitted themselves in preparation for the terror it is now commonplace to protest, and even as police and ICE colluded to deport millions.

Intersectionality failed to do more than congratulate a scholarly activist class on doing their assigned readings. And the more structural-leaning liberal side failed to offer any social change whose parameters are not dictated at the end of the day by capitalist conformity and use to the empire. Normalization and assimilation are preferred.

Intersectional activists seem to believe themselves to be more radical or outside the liberal fold, yet their politics mandate a focus solely on the identity one represents (or can position oneself as an acceptable ally to), so rather than form a broader coalition for something like universal healthcare (which is indeed outside the liberal norm), these politics narrow the LGBT+ focus to issues readily identifiable as LGBT+, for instance: the “right” to murder people for U.S. imperialism. Intersectional activists need not even name any goal–other liberals are already working to fill that void at every turn.

Identity politics, in fact, make it the responsibility of the marginalized to speak for all people like them, and to bring attention to issues relevant to their identity. So where geography or economic liberty make it impossible for one to contribute to their own liberation in this way, the movement is paralyzed between one side demanding that the marginalized lead and the other pushing for neoliberal concessions. Any work towards solidarity or on issues that de-center whatever identity class(es) is en vogue are promptly dismissed as de facto prioritization of the over-privileged, and a re-centering on cis feelings, het feelings, white feelings, etc.

Adolph Reed Jr. describes the failure of identity politics to do more than “center” certain groups of people:

“And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize.” (source)

What is anyone to do? Answer: no one knows. If you don’t show up to every poorly planned collegiate protest, your silence is violence. If you show up and dare to speak to the media or any of the other attendees scowling at you from a safe space away, your privilege is showing. Privilege is critical. We’re supposed to be analyzing it, coming to terms with it, learning about it, really, really thinking especially about it.

We’re supposed to be more inclusive, but not in a way that demographically restructures the leadership of our group specifically to be inclusive, because that’s tokenizing. We need to be in community with marginalized groups, but not in a way that seems like we’re eager to work with them just to be in community with them. We need to check in with local trans leadership on everything, but not in a way that asks them to help effectively direct everything we do. Side note: the same trans feminists who devised the aforementioned drinking game also came up with a translation for “local trans leadership.” It means: “In a few months from now, I’ll have almost been out as trans for a whole year.” Also, the trans community has never consented to leadership or appointed anyone to be our leader. Repeat for every LGBT+ organization negotiating our lives without us in the room.

Neither intersectional activists nor liberal reformists dare attack the structure of capitalism. Even when the coveted voices of trans women of color spell it out. Alyssa Pariah writes in her post The Elusive TWOC:

“I, TWOC in the flesh, do not feel the pangs of interpersonal bias or microaggressions. I’ve endured immense abuse and trauma in my past. What facilitated my healing and resilience was a materialist analysis of the world that relocated my anxiety from individuals to institutions. Namely our economic system, capitalism, and its necessity to perpetuate poverty stricken conditions and perceived scarcity that give rise any number of antagonisms I’m faced with.” (source)

Instead liberalism devotes itself to magical and positive thinking: Getting state recognition of same-sex monogamy will end violence against Queer people. Saying especially trans women of color will actually change things, just like shouting I believe in full equality transformed GetEQUAL from the group that derailed trans-inclusive civil rights goals for DADT repeal into a group that young activists sincerely believe is an “antiracist and trans-centering” national org.

Both sides are partially there. We need structural targets and goals. We need recognition of marginalized communities. The key that is missing is the connection between these two. Capitalism is the power structure that defines our oppression and that enchants the society that marginalizes us.

Vampirism in lieu of a united front is ineffective.

In his essay What Makes Call-Out Culture So Toxic, Asam Ahmad writes:

“In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.” (source)

Ahmad’s observation connecting call-out culture to the prison industrial complex is so critical because by nature, the individualist punishment inherent to these politics fails to propose radical change, such as prison abolition, preferring instead to raise concern over disproportionate treatment. In essence, disproportionate treatment rather than structural oppression becomes the key to the call-out analysis, just as the activists whose Holocaust denialism inspired this essay asserted. Liberals purport that someone is privileged or a worthy target of being called out because they unfairly receive some socioeconomic surplus value. This is the turning on each other that Lorde noted in the 60s, and the distance Reed Jr. critiques.

To leftists however, the issue must be the structural world–the prisons, the death camps, the rape culture, the criminal injustice system, imperialism, state-validated family structures, capitalism, etc.–not merely the observation that some people are affected by these structures more or less than others. That liberal identity politics and call-out culture both focus on disproportionate treatment rather than structural oppression exposes the policing and reformism at their root. Call-out culture mirrors the cultural of criminal punishment it has not yet escaped from.

Pariah continues:

“Focusing our ire on people who receive privilege instead of people who dole it out is a losing strategy for ending oppression. This idea flows from post-structuralist academic theory that sees collective struggle against domination as largely misguided; That locates interpersonal interactions as primary sites for transformation. Smells like rugged individualism to me. Tumblr has taken this heady theory, and parsed it out for disaffected users to reblog. How convenient for people in power. I imagine Goldman Sachs loves this garbage. […]. I actually want to fucking win. The TWOC you love and adore in the abstract does not think that collectively shit talking problematic individuals constitutes radical community. Concerted actions and campaigns against the power structure does. But will you help me do it?” (source)

That question sticks with me because I feel it, and I wonder the same thing. Does today’s young trans community, with all its cissexist-sumptions that erase right over who I am and who I have been since before they were born, have the good sense to learn from the mistakes myself and older generations have made, and put in the work to change things now with us? The instant gratification offered by social media–where so much of call-out culture and identity sectarianism is born and stays–is alluring. But angry Facebook posts haven’t yet in thirteen years changed the economic system that forces young trans women into survival trades or crowd-sourcing fundraisers for medical needs. Everything being taught right now as common wisdom on the performance of politics–the idea that it isn’t our responsibility to educate cis people, that we don’t need allies, that we must be centered at all times, that emotional outbursts directed at other activists are okay–who benefits from this? Step back and look. Who benefits from this complete toxicity?

I’m tired of us dying, and self-destructing, and repeating the same politics that have failed us for decades now. Are you? Will you help me do something different?

In his controversial 2013 essay, Exiting the Vampires’ Castle, late economist Mark Fisher explained his concept of the Vampires’ Castle to describe liberal identity sectarian politics:

“The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.” (source)

For the longest time, vampirism was my go to political strategy. It was a way to taste power as a trans person in particular. It was also largely a function of age. We come out of the public school system (and into a world where we have more freedom to explore transness, Queerness, and other identities) with so much conditioning about the select civil rights narratives approved by the state. And if we wind up in college or organizing with other young people, we are further subjected to liberal academia’s cultural focus.

The alienation of capitalism is at work here. But unless we question and study power, unless we study theory and history, we would never know it. Liberalism traps itself in identity–in identifying the problem, but offering no solution out of it. The result is the vampirism Fisher and so many others encounter. The vampires are different identity classes competing to be centered, to be recognized–by the state and by others. By nature, this is a reformist politic that appeals to the state and the community for aid, while offering venom and the vague promise of general social good in return.

Vampirism requires a constant outing, or constant undressing not unlike capitalist demands in the West and now in China as well, that Muslim women uncover themselves for the visual gluttony of the population. If we wish to talk on gay issues, we must constantly out ourselves as gay. If we wish to express an opinion on trans issues, we must constantly out ourselves as trans. Our identities are fragile and constantly under suspicion, especially if our politics or lived experienced de-center them.

Over the last decade, I have observed how this has materially translated to endless fundraisers for individual trans people’s living and medical expenses, but never the political follow-through to attack the economic system that necessitates either trans struggles or the more or less same struggles of other people to begin with. The imperative question is not what have you done for trans women today? but what are you doing so that ten years from now we won’t be fruitlessly asking the same question?

Perhaps there is a radicalism in collaboration as trans people, but over time that radicalism looks to me more like naming and fighting the economic system that defines the social parameters of gender in such a way that our lives are slowly extinguished in punishment for transgression. Capitalism and state regulation of gender are my issues, not cis people. And these issues additionally connect us to international feminist and men’s struggles for liberation from gendered exploitation as well.

In Sylvia Rivera’s 1973 speech at a Gay Liberation rally in New York, she even emphasizes that she is assisting imprisoned gay and lesbian people who presumably are not trans as well. Her underlying message then should be understood as one of solidarity across rather than segregated by identity. Contrary to this, in the last 13+ years I’ve observed and participated in so much horizontal vitriol directed at cis people rather than the structural locations of our oppression. This fight continues to be so personal and so embodied, with some activists even asserting transphobia is an innate, as if biological, feature of being cis. Yet the trans women of color these activists especially tokenize and objectify into a rallying cry continue to be murdered. Anti-Queer, misogynist, and racist violence persists. A binary sex system is still physically coerced by the state. We are still gendered by the state and capitalism. So many populations are affected by these issues, and here we are so warped by identity sectarianism that we would rather keep reviving a failed individualist call-out culture and TERF-esque micro-separatism than de-center ourselves long enough to build an effective coalition to achieve our mutual interests.

In the off-campus workforce, these politics are readily identified as utterly absurd. Want to know why the “white working class” doesn’t support shitty neoliberal candidates? Want to know why janitors don’t show up en masse to hear college kids bemoan the “violence” of not being asked about their pronouns before class or the difficulty of finding a “living wage” job that allows them to “follow your dreams”? Want to know why I roll my eyes and stop listening when you complain about having to work as a server because no one is hiring in your made-up interdisciplinary liberal arts field?

The answers are in the self-elevating alienation, hubris, and class denialism characteristic of liberal politics. And no, the solution is not for the working class to pay you a living wage (no less) to deliver a privilege-checking sermon on gender concepts or how all white people are racist, rendered devoid of any discernible class analysis or relationship to the economic source of exploitation faced by all workers.

With exceptions for ignorant individuals and geographic outliers that distort a wider demographic selection, the workforce is a naturally diverse climate where we work (and are exploited for the surplus value that can be derived from our labor) across bounds of ethnicity, sex, sexuality, ability, etc. Likewise, the flow of production along the supply chain carries capital across boundaries of nation and cultural identity. As such, a worker-owned world is by necessity one of solidarity across the arbitrary categories of identity and capitalist-state, rather than one where working class sub-identities are pitted against one another. Undeniably, our experiences are different in these terms, but the nature of that difference is economic, and not merely interpersonal.

As Taylor writes in Race, Class, and Marxism:

“Marxists do not deny that these differences exist, nor do we deny that oppression means the lives of some workers are actually worse than others. For Marxists, the question is the cause of the differences.” (source)

Speaking specifically as a working class disabled transqueer person, I don’t have the luxury of driving away would-be allies, being visibly femme or trans all the time, or restricting my activism to solely working on trans-specific issues. Before I get to be trans in the world, I am already disabled and dependent on medication to live. I must work to pay for that medication and for food. Most people also must work for shelter. And all of these conditions determined by capitalist class relations take place before we even get to interpersonal or structural conflicts around race, gender, gender identity, sexuality, ability, etc. My intention is not to say that race, gender, etc. are irrelevant, but rather that our class conditions precede them and are fertile soil for a solidarity that could also address identity-specific issues.

A leftist politic must seek to do more than simply identify difference where it exists. For instance, while slavery and other forms of wage theft through capitalism continue to disproportionately affect people of color and women around the world, our imaginations are weak if we stop ourselves at the goal to create more equitable exploitation. Rather, we all stand to benefit from ridding ourselves of the exploitative system all together. This goal post necessitates an analysis that goes beyond reductive analyses of workers based on identity groupings like race or sex.

By my reckoning, for too long we have embraced a timidity regarding opposition to capitalism. Leftists have embraced a limited tactic of lessening commitment to Marxist-Leninist values in exchange for appealing to burned out and exploited liberals. Potential camaraderie with isolationist or working class conservatives is abandoned in favor of the toxicity of liberal identity bickering. And those on the left who hold to an anticapitalist analysis are paradoxically the ones accused of sectarianism. The amount of political leeway granted these liberals is an essential endorsement of their capitalist denialism.

And while some choose pessimism, I choose faith that exorcising our global capitalist demons will lead to a more equitable society–post-racist, post-sexist, post-ableist, post-all the poisons capitalism has indoctrinated us with. Beyond the shadow of profit maximization, worker micro-management, resource theft, manufactured competition, and inane commodity differences, another world is possible. This world necessitates centering the working class, unity, not separatism, and an ethic of patience towards solidarity, not vampirism towards correctness. It is the most intersectional yet tangible goal post I can conceptualize, and the only way I believe it is possible to exit the mire of both liberal identity sectarianism and the structural world identity politics fail to dismantle.

I’m learning and adapting. I hope you are too.

(Re-)Sources

Lorde, A. (1982). Learning from the 60s. Reynolds, D. (2017). Chechen Authorities Tell Families: Kill Your Gay Sons or We Will. Taylor, K-Y. (2016). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Fischl, J. (2014). There’s a Rape Epidemic Happening in America That No One is Talking About Rivera, S. (1973). Y’all Better Quiet Down. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. Smith, S. Black Feminism and Intersectionality. Combahee River Collective. 1977 statement. Smith, S. The Politics of Identity. Reed Jr., A. (2009). The Limits of Antiracism. Sears, K. (2017). A Marxist Critiques Identity Politics. Mitchell, E. (2013). I am a Woman and a Human: a Marxist Critique of Intersectionality Theory. Flanders, L. (2017). No Single-Issue Politics, Only Intersectionality: An Interview with Kimberlé Crenshaw. Wolf, S. (2009). Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Saenz-Alcántara, C. (2014). Who and What the Hell is a White Hispanic? Cordero-Guzman, H. R. (2014). When Latin American Racial Hierarchies Meet North American Racial Classification Schemas. Moreno, N. (2016). To All Non-Black Latinx: Distracting People from BLM is Anti-Black Violence. Garcia, W. (2015). White Latino Racism on the Rise: It’s Time for a Serious Conversation on Euro-Diasporic Whiteness. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Gomez, A. (2016). Hispanic Vote Will Reach Record High in 2016. Bedar, R. (2015). Sephardic Places: Loss & Memory Chow, K. (2017). For Some Americans of MENA Descent, Checking A Census Box is Complicated Dworkin, A. (1974). Woman Hating. New York, New York: Penguin Books Quora. What is the Life Expectancy of Trans People? Gutierrez, B.M. (2011). Hunger Study Calls Area Worst in U.S. Williams Institute. (2016) How Many Adults Identify as Transgender in the United States? U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts Williams Institute. (2014). Suicide Attempts Among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults. Forbes, D. (2010). Not Bashful in Asheville Williams Institute. (2013). The Potential Impact of a Strict Voter Identification Law on Transgender Voters in North Carolina Pariah, A. (2016). The Elusive TWOC Ahmad, A. (2015). What Makes Call-Out Culture So Toxic. Fisher, M. (2013). Exiting the Vampires’ Castle. Hunt, K. (2017). Why China is Banning Beards and Veils in Xinjiang. Taylor, K-Y. (2011). Race, Class, and Marxism. Wolf, S. Unite and Fight? Nair, Y. (2013). Undocumented: How an Identity Ended a Movement. Haider, A. (2016). Passing for Politics. Dragonowl, L. (2015). Against Identity Politics. Volcano, A and Rogue, J. (2013). Insurrections at the Intersections: Feminism, Intersectionality and Anarchism. Smith, S. (2015). Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books Feminist Fightback: Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics? Myerson, J. (2017). Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs. Emperor Saturn. (2017). Intersectionality is Impossible Under Capitalism. Emperor Saturn. (2017). The Left Needs MORE White Men, More Everyone–Millions More. Emperor Saturn. (2017). Class and Identity Must Become Identical. Emperor Saturn. (2016). The Intersectional Working Class. Emperor Saturn. (2016). Class is More Intersectional Than Intersectionality. Emperor Saturn. (2016). Yes, I Can Debate You: Workers Aren’t Just “Allies.” Smith, S. (1994). Mistaken Identity: Can Identity Politics Liberate the Oppressed? NPR. (2017). Anti-Semitic Incidents Up 86% Compared with Same Time Last Year Kivel, P. (1998). I’m Not White, I’m Jewish, BUT I’m White. Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You Walters, S. D. (2017) Academe’s Poisonous Call-Out Culture. Hetti, T. (2017) Call-Out Culture is Toxic and Problematic. Nichols, J. (2015). Latinos and Black Americans Have an Enemy–And it’s Not Each Other. Wildermuth, R. (2017). Against Liberals. Dr. Bones. (2016). I Apologize in Advance. Mohandesi, S. (2017). Identity Crisis.

#liberalism #ideology #identity #identity politics #race #gender #class #sociology

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