TOTW: fellas, is it queer to be gay?

TOTW: fellas, is it queer to be gay?

Topic of the Week - guest contribution by MK

"Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal."
- Toward The Queerest Insurrection

"If I'm not an anarchist, can I still be gay?"
- a twelve-year-old

An middle schooler in my life asked me a question to this effect the other day, and for this tranarchist, it kickstarted the most beautiful kind of existential crisis. Of course this tweenage organizer, who didn't use the a-word for herself, was gay—but in her possibly-ungovernable gay (and maybe queer) self, was she still practicing anarchy to some extent? Viewing the LGBTQ+ experience as anarchist praxis can imply a transcendence of Gay Rights (tm) in favor of ungoverned queerness. However, the idea that being born gay somehow makes one a queer anarchist could lead to the identity of gayness/transness being treated as synonymous with the intentional practice of queer anarchy. Meanwhile, viewing queerness and anarchy as distinct feels like a negation of the personal as political, of the ways that social hierarchies necessarily harm gay/trans communities, of lived queer ultraviolence.

Everyone and their mom knows that anarchy is inherently queer, but are gayness and transness inherently anarchic?

Is one simply gay or trans, and not queer, until they become ungovernable?

***
If you're interested in writing a guest Topic of the Week for ANews, please reach out to us via our email at: thecollective [at] anarchistnews [dot] org

There are 209 Comments

Anarchy isn't inherently queer. Straight people can also be anarchists and many of the most famous anarchists were straight.

I don't know. Queer anarchism is a specific tendency with its own emphases, but if you take queer to mean deviant, other, outside, etc. then it makes sense to put anarchy in that category. It's not all about who you wanna blow. And straightness as a category is easily problematized (as is gayness). Anarchy is chaos and so is queerness.

Interesting topic that I'll have to think more about.

Anarchy is inherently vegan tho. Carnists can't be anarchists and many of the most famous "anarchists" are carnists.

thanks for this comment. for the record when I first started talking with my friends about this "anarchism is inherently queer" I was really trying to wrap my mind around it, because the idea doesn't immediately resonate with me. and your comment made me realize that this is also true for "anarchism is inherently vegan" but I've been reflecting on that a lot too after talking about humanism and speciesism with friends and reading about the FB vs Julian Langer showdown (which I was incredulous at JL's take)

I personally would never say that anarchism is inherently anything, but what I do think is true is that if you're committed to a principle that anarchy=anti-hierarchy then yes it's necessarily vegan, and if you're committed to the principle that anarchy=attack then yes, anarchism is inherently queer (if you also think queerness=attack on identity, which I think is a pretty tenable position, even if i don't quite viscerally relate to it!)

Hi, I'm Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, an American politician and former naval officer who is currently serving as the 19th United States Secretary of Transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, I was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned me the nickname "Mayor Pete". I'm a gay American and therefore a queer anarchist.

Thanks for the kewl topic.

sad day in America when our most respected politicians have the reading comprehension of a kindergardener. the TOTW is actually saying the opposite of "gay=queer" but the woke liberal left has ruined the reasoning capabilities of our great country. #sad

*Donald Trump noises*

I think queerness is very tied to anarchy in that it is a choice to be others and treated worse by society for more freedom to be a unique person. (Yes many pieces experiences are that they feel a desire so strongly and distain so strongly that it's not really a choice. But going through transition or dating gay ppl is still an actively lifestyle one changes to).

And I think anarchy is often about lifestyle and how one lives. Making active choice to live culturally distinct from society is really what teaches one anarchy and is what anarchism is about. And I think while anarchists of the past has less info so straightness was still ingrained. I think with today's knowledge about the phantasms of cishet shit it shows an immense lack of anarchist ability to be cis or heterosexual same as not being vegan.

I see queerness as one of the many judges which tell me if anarchy is a lifestyle or just some interesting things to talk about in additional to their NPC lives.

Uhh I think the concepts are intertwined. But many gay people aren't anarchist. Ur I think queerness as a concept is so destructive to modern systems and a lifestyle antagonistic to so many humanist values that it is related.

Queerness is only sometimes anarchist. But Anarchist lifestyle allways is queer.

'I think queerness is very tied to anarchy in that it is a choice to be others and treated worse by society for more freedom to be a unique person. "

You're certainly not unique if you identify through a social category, dude. Putting labels over yourself is the reverse of unique-ness, or any non-loaded identity you may have.

Who are YOU?

Not referring to your name, that I don't wanna know. That's now what I'm asking.

In a similar angle, anarchy is not an identity.... even if some are still trying to ham-fist it as such. It's the character of relationships, or social dynamics, or at best the quality of some relations you create. Which can include your sexual (or asexual) behavior and preferences, but that's really one aspect of an everything.

These comments are so odd to me. Like identity is bad. But I still use words to talk about concepts. So usually the anti identity comment makes no sense to me. Like yeah identity bad. Still need words to talk about life tho.

Anti identity isn't a war against describing systems. Lmao

You just don't get it do you, about basic self-awareness when co-relating notions of beingness within an artificial environment and autonomous seperation from an hierarchical authoritarian system of community. *sigh* lw

Sorry nerd. U use too many big words I don't know. I literally can't understand u.

Like, I thought you said you'd read Stirner, maybe it was another commenter, but I blame Freud for polluting the concept of ego mechanistically. His fetishes were sooOoo petty and he missed the biggest fetishes of all, culturally constructed persona /identity types, huge spook hegemonies.

to 21:29: I think there is a typo in the comment you're referring to, so maybe that's why it's confusing, but the TOTW is saying that queerness is the *opposite* of identifying as a category, it is in fact that queerness is the act of refusing to be categorized. now you might say, but isn't "anti-category" just a category itself maaaaaan?" to which I would say, well isn't anarchism (the refusal to be governed) just being governed by a refusal to be governed?

so yes that's why the TOTW is interesting (or could be if people would use their imagination a a bit and try to engage in a more interesting way than complain that the anews comment section isn't solving all of their life problems)

thank you for coming to my Ted talk maaaaaan

"Queer" is one of the letters in "LGBTQ". Hence, it's not an "anti-category". It's just another identity category, and one with a pretty clearly defined and consistent series of attributes.

But ok, sure. Its for people who refuse to be categorized. So then, if I follow your logic and label myself "Queer" does that mean radlib anarchists need to stop categorizing me and judging me for my supposed "whiteness" or whatever? Does it really function as a anti-identity politics label as you suggest?

part of the point of the topic is to understand queer as not just something that refers to sexuality, this has been said in this thread (as well as the topic) multiple times. but it also rifs the context of sexuality, and should not be excised from that.

so yeah, on the most superficial level, it could be used to argue badly against being judged as a white person, but only if the white person is actively attacking racial identity/constructs. doesn't much sound like that's you, ackshully

Then WHAT then? Fuckin spit it out already. I feel like people try to keep this shit vague and wishy-washy on purpose sometimes just as a way to obfuscate the total vacuousness at the heart of this ideology.

But on the real, I pretty much know what you're going to say:

Something something... "Queer means I don't get married. Queer means I have warrants out for my arrest. Queer means I do sexwork. Queer means I shoplift sometimes. Queer means I take it in the ass. Queer means I do drugs, go to dance parties and live an activisty** lifestyle, etc."

**you might take issue with the word "activist" but wtv. Replace it with other nouns if you like: "revolutionary", "insurrecto", "insurgent furry", etc. At the end of the day it's all the same shit to me...

Anyways, so my next question becomes:

if random ass straight people fit all those criteria (having warrants, not getting married, etc) other than the gay sex, then do those straight people qualify "queer" according to your logic? If not, then why not?

queerness = whatever is in tension with the mainstream. so by definition it is, in fact, hard to define by design. in fact, it even changes over time, because what is in tension with the mainstream changes over time, which is why gayness is not necessarily queer today but was obviously very queer back when queer meant men fucking each other.

but i've been thinking about this (talking with some friends IRL about it, which is something i encourage you to try sometime!) and you're right, it is definitely is tied to sexuality and not just being different (or in tension) with the mainstream. however, 'gay sex' is not what 'queer' is about. for example, in your mind, if a trans woman has sex with a cis man, is that gay to you? and i get that the mainstream has created a narrative of the woke left and 234346 genders, but to some people it is a really real lived experience that matters to them. if you ever get the opportunity to spend some time around some queer folks maybe you will begin to understand that.

re: obfuscation, i am often a clarity enjoyer myself, but for this particular context, i think it's important to understand that when you live in tension with mainstream norms, sometimes you have enemies who don't like you, enemies who maybe even commit violence against you. and one strategy for protecting yourself if to obfuscate what you are signaling with your identity. so if you feel like people are being vague with you and obfuscating who they are and what they mean, it might be because they don't like you.

hope this clarifies.

Yeah, so, interesting when any expression of "cishet" sensibilities is being removed here, even when sarcastic. Is LGBTBBQ what is being the target of repression like we're still living in the '50s, or even the '80s? Hummms... not quite.

What when some ID pols specific group takes over the moderation of a website... aren't they not just going to repressively enforce their own views and cultural values to the rest, and demonize those they consider as heretics or the actual thought criminals?

where are you getting that anyone is saying that this TOTW is talking about LGBTQTIA+WTFBBQ being the target of oppression? this is saying the opposite--that the proloferation of deviant sexual lifestyles is the opposite of queerness because they're being captured as notions of deviance that are acceptable to mainstream cultural norms whereas queerness is specifically defined as what is in opposition to that.

c'mon I'm not even a faggot and I can put this together

"that the proloferation of deviant sexual lifestyles is the opposite of queerness because they're being captured as notions of deviance that are acceptable to mainstream cultural norms whereas queerness is specifically defined as what is in opposition to that."

All you're describing, is essentially just the phenomena of the Queerness label being actively recuperated by the Culture. How does queerness "stand in opposition to that" when virtually all of its defining characteristics and attributes are being made into yet another trendy label and marketing niche?

The only so-called attributes of queerness that are irrecuperable are those aspects that are already shared by millions of otherwise normal people who have nothing to do with gayness, or even anarchism: things like committing petty crime, for example.

"gay" means primary same-sex attraction; "queer" means wearing funny lipstick

the term queer has been stripmined of any significance, commodified into just another empty subculture for aimless kids. it's meaningless.

Well apparently it's synonymous with what thecollective think anarchy is because every article as of late is about it so.. get with the program or have your comments deleted and be forced to suck a girldick or whatever

nobody is forcing you to date trans people. we're asking for you to show us basic respect.

oh come on, bash back recently happened and it got a bunch of people excited and they're having a bit of fun with it and creating and participating in their own discourse. can't you let them have fun for awhile?

ok boomer! this isn't your grandma's queerness. maybe I can help you make sense of it: this totw is trying to say queerness is the anarchism of identity. now you might disagree with that claim, or you might think that even if this claim is true it doesn't have the result it intends, but just saying the first thing that comes to mind when you hear a word is not the same as analysis or discussion. if you want to know why the anews comments are bad it's because of lazy uninspired attempts to discuss things like this. do better!

Well, firstly I disagree with that claim, and secondly, even if the claim was theoretically true it, as you've proposed, doesn't actually work out in that way in practical application.

I say this only because, in my experience, I've never met people more obsessed with categorizing others into boxes and judging them for it than the "rad queer" folx who are supposedly above all that, according to you.

Or does it work in such a way that... the people who identify as "queer" are the special Unique ones who defy all categorization, while the rest of us just aren't special enough for the same privilege and will be boxed in and judged?

wow. can you believe how on point anews is. they can really read the room. base. who would of guessed this would be the totw?

They are so hip and with it that they even deleted comments that point it out just this morning! Base indeed

>hip
>with it
>base

haha "ok boomer"

lmao as if anyone has any obligation to" read the room" of the anews comment section. this might come as a shock, anon, but no one is here to entertain you! :kissy_face:

More predicates towards freedom! This way comrades! Our sexual preferences will be categorized and dissected until they are totally fangless and subsumed by dominant culture but we can still seem radical by doing nothing except rubbing genitals together! Wait til ppl who are really into piss come out to play, then we'll have our revolution

I know you think this is funny, but sex positivity is actually very radical...

the sad thing is that they don't even think this is funny, they are just making fun of something that the author of the totw is trying to engage with sincerely because they have nothing more interesting to say about it.

but it's their loss for missing out on having an interesting conversation!

I do think it's funny AND I don't have anything interesting to add to this discussion b/c who cares what I think? Or what anybody thinks? Please don't look for meaningful conversation on the internet

please stop wasting my time posting on the internet about how posting on the internet is meaningless. maybe go do something else, then?

Honestly, sexual identity/preferences are so fucking overrated. Can't wait for anarchy to get over this phase *yawn*.

anarchism is, sadly, once again reproducing the mainstream.....

The mainstream is not queer liberationist; anarchy is reproducing a movement that's liberatory for queer people. If you ask to erase queerness, you're not ending identity, just mandating heterosexual monogamous normalcy.

I WAS A SUICIDAL QUEER LIBERATIONIST THAT READ YOUR COMMENT ON ANEWS AND CRASHED MY ANUS INTO A GIRLDICK AND NOW MODERATE ANARCHIST NEWS DOT ORG EVERY DAY TO PREVENT OTHER ANARCHISTS FROM HAVING OPINIONS THAT ARE NOT INLINE WITH MINE

You think this was funny, but I actually was a suicidal queer. I found anarchy and it saved my life. Please try to be a respectful person, not an Internet troll.

AMEN! QUEER ULTRA VIOLENCE IS NOTHING IF NOT RESPECTFUL.

ALSO WHAT DOES " I found anarchy and it saved my life"? How did anarchy save you life? The ideas? The scene? The golf course orgies? HOW??? DO NOT BE SELFISH AND WITHHOLD POTENTIALLY LIFESAVING INFORMATION.

(And awoman)

The sense of connection to other human beings for the first time ever. Being part of a community of care. Having hope for a liberated future. Having a purpose, and other queers to share that purpose with.

YOU EQUATE ANARCHY WITH A SENSE OF HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?

QUEER ANARCHIST ULTRA VIOLENCE IS NIHILIST, BRO. HOW DOES THAT COMPUTE?

Not every queer anarchist is a nihilist. I actually think it's possible to practice anarchy in our lives & queer public space. Thanks for your concern though!

taught me that "life is meaningless"/"i have no purpose"/"i need no purpose" are three ways of saying tha same thing, that you are god and i am god and god is dead :D!

That is why nihilists don't get laid, even the gay ones at queer bashback picnics, and if not for jerking-off, would be suffering severely from orgasm withdrawal symptoms.

damn you really suck. the person replying to you was graceful and honest in their response to you, probably because they haven't been around idiots like you long enough to feel jaded enough to act like you. good on them for having the patience. I, on the other hand, would slit your tires

If you sit on your hand for a few minutes before you slit their tires it will feel like someone else it slitting them.

Also, I think you're maybe replying to the wrong comment? The one you're replying to TWICE is pretty nice and positive, actually. But be mad I guess.

jesus what a fucking asshole. do you want to collaborate with me on a bot that can spam toxic content all across this internet? because this is way more toxic than the bots that spam the n-word in online chats. together we can crush the fascist alt-right online social media! let's go, comrade!

lol i just love the way that the comments here sound like someone giving a review to the latest Game of Thrones episode, like they're watching Anarchism: the 12-part Netflix series on their computers and just want Jeff Bezos to know that they don't approve of this current recommendation that the algorithm provided them, in order to tune their experience to the kind of anarchy they want to see in the world.

sry dude, you gotta be it, not consume it!

it's not a phase. it's queer people expressing our truth, which hopefully never goes out of style.

Nobody has a problem with you "expressing your truth". Its just that we're noticing that gayness/queerness/transness has suddenly become, like, easily 80-90% of what modern anarchism preoccupies itself with nowadays.

I thought I was in the anarchist movement, not the gay rights movement.

Ultimately, technological society does not GAF about your sexual proclivities or gender expression or identity. Its all just more niche consumer identities to market to.

way to not engage in the question at all. the whole point is that queerness != gayness (and ffs it certainly doesn't mean gay rights). do you just like to hear yourself talk, or do you really have nothing better to do than shitpost on anews? you might be less of a miserable jerk if you get some other hobbies

I don't see how queerness is meaningfully distinct from gayness at all except perhaps in the manner in which it goes beyond sexual orientation to cover gender identity under its umbrella as well.\

Thats how its used in all practical and colloquial applications.

All the other stuff that gets lumped in with "queerness" in the @ community like: committing crimes, non-monogamous relationships, not getting married or having kids, doing drugs, not liking the police, etc.

These are all things that can be done by people who do and don't fall into the queer label. Infact, Most of those things (not getting married, or having kids) is a trend we're seeing in most segments of the population nowadays. Are all of those people "queer"?

It often just seems like a bunch of aimless consumer society kids with no genuine personality just latching onto some label to feel like they belong.

An actual free spirit, an actual unique person doesn't need labels like "queer" or even "anarchist". Its the absence of labels and identity categories that create the illegibility, the "terra incognita" that queerness attempts to embody.

now *this* is the comment that had me bounding down my stairs to grab my computer rather than trying to respond on my phone.

> All the other stuff that gets lumped in with "queerness" in the @ community like: committing crimes, non-monogamous relationships, not getting married or having kids, doing drugs, not liking the police, etc.

isn't the idea that it's hard to define queerness, but you know it when you see it, e.g. you see it in criminality? not that criminality=queerness, but people think they understand something, but when you ask them to explain they give examples, and the examples such, and then you troll them relentlessly on the anews comment---

no! you understand that examples != the thing bc the thing can't be captured by the examples! any anyone trying to do that capture just isn't in on the cosmic joke. but that's okay, no one is trying to exclude anyone. no one wants anything. we're all just trying to have a nice relaxing evening reading anews comments.

> These are all things that can be done by people who do and don't fall into the queer label. Infact, Most of those things (not getting married, or having kids) is a trend we're seeing in most segments of the population nowadays. Are all of those people "queer"?

at some point i'd like to raise the provocative point that in today's climate being cis is kinda queer. and that's the point--if you think of queerness as being a refusal to accept that x=y, then one might argue that cis=queer makes sense, or at least is worth talking about, if you accept the premise that queer=not captured, which is a rough way of categorizing what the totw is trying to say.

> It often just seems like a bunch of aimless consumer society kids with no genuine personality just latching onto some label to feel like they belong.

as opposed to... ? are you not captured? what isn't captured?

> An actual free spirit, an actual unique person doesn't need labels like "queer" or even "anarchist". Its the absence of labels and identity categories that create the illegibility, the "terra incognita" that queerness attempts to embody.

i am happy that you included the label 'anarchist' with the label 'queer', in that you are calling 'anarchist' a label that might make legible a tendency in the same way that 'queer' might make legible a tendency. i am an illegibility-enjoyer; however, legibility happens where it needs to and is obscured as illegibility when it needs to. so are you saying that 'illegibility' is the ultimate criterion? queerness is not trying to solve any problem (and especially not any problem related to legibility); perhaps it's trying to express that illegibility is a form of attack among multiple lines of understanding for whoever that makes sense to.

(and fwiw i didn't write this totw, i'm just impressed that it's way more sophisticated than a lot of the analysis in this thread.)

You're still giving no substance that supports a claimed pipeline, even equation, between anarchy and queerness. While these two blurry tendencies can easily intersect, have consistence to some people, they are about different aspects of social life.

It's the same as equating veganism with anarchy; it's yet another liberal trap.

Qnother extremely controversial (or could be controversial if people could breathe for a second) example is Dolezal. I have nothing to say about her specifically, but raise her in the context of what makes someone something, is it intention? will? social understanding? history (what kind of history)? who gets to decide? what are the limits (if any) of self-identification?

I myself don't actually relate to the idea that anarchy = queerness, or that anarchism is inherently queer. i am just exploring the claim the author is making and what it does/does not/could/could not mean.

According to recent articles it seems that your opinion on these matters is completely invalid until you blow a girl-dick.

you're right, a dramatic ragey shitpost on a blog said "RAWR DON'T COME TO MY ORGY CONVERGENCE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH FAGGOTS". this is definitely an assault on your ability to have other opinions.

You see, sometimes people say edgy things because whoever is offended immediately outs them as someone they don't want to be around. A litmus test, if you will.

>You see, sometimes people say edgy things because whoever is offended immediately outs them as someone they don't want to be around. A litmus test, if you will.

It cuts both ways as the edgelords out themselves as childish and insufferable, upper-middleclass blowhards

this may be shocking for the Utterly Unique Anarch (who is of course indefinable and without labels), but people use words to find each other and to express causes which are entirely their own. We all know that it is, at best, approximate and inadequate, and that the most important and deepest aspects of experience are beyond the reach of description. That's not really an argument against cultivating a shared language and locating accomplices.

The aspects of a language and terminology that becomes commodified... yes that's a thing. But other things are things too, and many people use language to further their own interests and define terms in other ways. In other words, words mean many different things to many different people.

yes, this is a great comment! we're not just living in the woods screeching uncategorizable howls and flinging uncategorizable substances, we're using language all of the time not just to define things but to relate to each other. additionally, the complexity of language/defining things allows for people to make themselves visible to others when they want to and invisible to others when they want to.

i want to avoid capture by capitalism as much as anyone, and it is actually a complexification of the way words are used rather than a simplification, that makes capture more difficult. in other words, 'uniqueness' is a de-categorization that makes your character more transparent because we all can see your motives laid bare.

So on the one hand, its all about "EVADING CAPTURE AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!", and then on the other you suddenly turn around and be like: "...actually some capture and legibility is ok, tee hee!"

like wtf??

The only thing Queer Theory is successful at "evading" is a sense of coherence.

yes, sometimes people want to avoid being understood. maybe that's why so many anews comments are so bad? it makes it completely impossible to know anything about what the anon really thinks or feels or cares about, and therefore they avoid having any of their thoughts or feelings attacked. on the other hand, sometimes people want to be recognized. like when they fill out their tinder profile with photos and clever witty quips about this or that, that signals the kind of sex they want to have. And wow! some people can do both! maybe even switch back and forth depending on what the situation calls for!

some other people can not. they just REEEEEEEEE into the night, all alone, wondering why everything and everyone is so incomprehensible to them.

None are more ensnared by Ideology than those who falsely believe to have evaded its capture.

some people speak/write more poetically, metaphorically, artistically to create a comment that creates a situation that elicits an emotion, either in an empathetic direction or in antagonism. either way it's good for thought and art!

Most ridiculous thing is kids behaving like gayness is the edgiest, most radical tendency while we had state officials and mainstream celebs being gay all in the open for decades, lol

So yeah, sadly if you live in some super-conservative hellhole in NA this still might be a struggle, but in general the Federal governments of both the US and Canada got official policies supporting LGBT people and their representations.

The POINT is that queerness has always been radical, and that we need to resist queer assimilation into the state...nobody is calling Pete Buttigieg and others like him radical, but yes, we are saying that queer anarchy is possible. <3

Ur talking to the average anews anon. Most are hopeless lost causes why basically just disagree and complain bc it's fun. They are funny people to laugh at but not fun to try to have a conversation with.

to lettuceleafer: now this is some helpful information on understanding the minds of the wild anews poster. they are often the most miserable tendency of doing nothing to contribute anything of value to anyone yet complaining that nothing is happening.

It's so nice to see someone who isn't such a jaded anews comment section dweller that they can actually try to engage sincerely. the more feedback they get that these trolls aren't worth their time, the better they can learn to do what we all do which is mostly ignore the trolls unless they're saying something so stupid it's funny.

Now kiss

*hissing animal noises and chewing sounds*

trolls ... must ... FEEED

lmao me neither. i can't wait for anarchy to get over the phase where faggots* like you think that anarchy means passively doom-scrolling on a website waiting for something to entertain you, as if your comments are a thumbs-down response on reddit or a 2-out-of-five rating of your latest applebees experience on your smartphone.

try to keep up: the point of TOTW is that queerness != sexual preferences. you might disagree but that would be so much better than your completely vacuous comment.

* i'm using the word 'faggot' here to be edgy and also keep the content relevant to the totw. you see, faggot is a slur but it's okay because i'm a faggot so i can say it. and it's also especially funny because whereas faggots are actually cool, you are not; however mainstream culture is afraid of the word 'faggot' and so they consider it to be a descriptor of a bad thing, which is clearly what i mean when i'm describing you; however mainstream culture can get fucked and only those who can keep track of multiple layers of irony can keep up! this is an invitation, not a callout.

Be as queer as you want but don't play rock music or braid your hair because black college communists (and scared allies) with rich parents might get offended.

As an ACE anarchist this entire equating queerness with wild sex, girldick and bussys is extremely exclusionary and narrow minded. It is simply an inversion of the dominant, oppressive societal trappings. STOP BEING SO FUCKING EXCLUSIONARY AND CALLING IT QUEER!

Since when was liberating the queer body Oppressive Societal Trappings? Nobody's saying that queer sexual liberation is for everyone.

LMFAO

can you read? the whole point of the totw is to divorce the idea of queerness from sexuality, and especially the anarcho-orgyism tendency, which fyi is real

(don't worry, I can tell you're being 100% sarcastic, but maybe not everyone can, so I'm just making it crystal clear to everyone have a nice day)

"can you read? the whole point of the totw is "

Maybe the TOTW author is a BAD WRITER THAT IS ToOOTALLY UNCLEAR if SO MAN anons are misreading their words??? YES.

ARE YOU MAD YOU CAN'T WRITE WELL AND THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL HOW THE CONVERSATION GOES BASED ON YOUR POOR WRITING SKILLS? Become an Anews Moderator.

BE POLITE!

This. Seems the topic author had to snarkily reply to a bunch of comments telling people that they don't know how to read because the 'TOTW is aCtUaLlY saying ...'.

Get an editor, TOTW Bro.

i am not the author, i'm just someone who is trying to clarify what the author is saying in a language that anews commenters can understand. keep seething! <3

Have you not been paying attention? "[T]he anarcho-orgyism tendency" is a product of queer-anarchists. It's a major fucking selling point for the entire tendency. You got a problem with girldick or something?

there's definitely something that the mainstream is trying to capture about "queerness" (as in weird, sex-positive sexualities), and maybe "it's a product of queer anarchists"; i am not aware of what "queer anarchists" you have in mind but i can imagine it to be so. i see all kinds of authoritarian shit "anarchists" do all of the time

We're having a fucking conversation about queerness in the anarchist space on our own terms. U mad because you can't control the discussion?

Keep coping and seething then, you petty little TOTW-managerbro.

^^^response to 03:13

Honestly, the aces of the world are at this point, probably the queerest of the queers. Queerness has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with independence of outlook. Aces are an amazing example of having the courage to step out of the societal delusion that you MUST find a partner of some sort and then spend a significant chunk of your time catering to their whims. Why should we valorize romantic partners over all others? Most anarchists don't even ever think about that hierarchy, they just assume it's hardwired or something. But at the end of the day, your friends are the ones who get you through, not your sex partner. (PS if you're a troll, go outside, touch grass and make a friend!)

All categorical identity tends to designate the individual into group conformity. Whether one identifies as gay, queer or straight this only indicates position within a socially stratified society, not individuality itself. Queer, gay or trans etc identification is only a useful tool given the circumstances, but will never succeed at summarizing an individual. Unlike queerness which will probably eventually be consumed by capitalism, personalities remain ungovernable because they remain in flux, never fixed in place long enough to be manufactured. An individual is unique beyond categorical measurement which is why I place more value in interacting with someone rather than attempting to summarize them through the confined lens of identity. Queer is no more anarchist than language is liberating.

^this anon fucks with a functional critique of identity, much respect!

Thank you!

great comment. i guess what i am grappling with is a definition of 'queer' as whatever evades capture, just as i see anarchism as whatever evades governability (thus it's never what someone says it is, but you can know it when you see it). it's interesting to me that you would say that 'personalities' are ungovernable (as opposed to queerness), what do you mean by 'personalities' and how is it different from the label 'queer'?

A personality refers to the totality of behavioral traits that are peculiar to a specific individual... NPCs who lack this totality, who possess what we might call a "personality-shaped hole" in their heart, as it were... tend to latch onto identitarian and/or ideological categories, like: "queer" and get super tribal about it; as a substitute for cultivating the true, authentic illegibility of Personhood.

So as a queer anarchist myself I recognize that while you and I have a shared understanding of what queer means - existing at odds with civilized control and order - this same word, just as anarchism or liberation and so on, if threatening enough inevitably becomes a target for pacification through capitalist and domesticating re-manufacture. There was a time when being gay was considered a threat to corporate establishments. Now it is a successful marketing tool for capitalism. Personalities (for lack of a better word) however are more resistant because unlike the dead weight of a word, they change and evolve, making them adaptable and therefore more resistant to commodification.

I don't think this means anything bc anarchism is literally copted to sell products. Hell fuckin che Guevara is co opted by capitalists to make money.

Corporations love selling products that make ppl feel punk and anti establishment. Just bc power steals the aesthetics of the concept that doesn't make the liberatory concept not challenging. Gay corpo shit isn't challenging to cishet civilization but queerness still is. And that won't change even if Amazon starts selling queer anarchist knives and apparel.

looking forward to seeing "these faggots kill fascists" on some merch tbh

but sincerely, yes corporate capture is a problem, and your comment raised the idea for me that it's especially problematic when "the youth" encounter these things and experience them as liberatory when they are in fact a product being sold to them. I think this is a completely legitimate concern; however it is inescapable, and so avoiding it only makes one more susceptible for it, kind of like how being non-violent doesn't protect you from violence it just makes it so when you do get into a fight you get your ass beat.

i guess that's what i kind of like about the 'queerness' idea (as the idea of ungovernable identity) which is that it at least plants a seed of being something that is defined as being in tension with whatever is mainstream. and i will say that "the youth" seem to understand this a lot better than people who are older (i fall into this category fyi). like everyone in these comments who are saying "YEAH BUT QUEERNESS IS JUST GONNA BE THE NEXT GAY, CHECKMATE LIBERAL" are vastly underestimating how nuanced of an understanding younger people already have of this concept. it's almost like some of the older people in these comments are bitter that they were burned in their lives by having this realization, but many younger people are already well aware of it and are fighting it, not in ways that are legible to capital and authoritarians because making yourself legible to your enemies is exactly how you get captured in the first place.

*seething

Have you really thought this position through to its logical conclusion tho?

What happens when leftwing values: feminism, anti-racism, queerness (defined here in terms of gayness + transness...), body positivity, etc. all become the mainstream position?

Pro-tip: in many places, it already has.

For example, you cannot be openly racist in:

- Hollywood
- Media
- University
- Finance
- Social Media

etc.

Therefore the "underground" position becomes: racism.

I, of course, am not saying people should be racist. I'm merely pointing to a flaw in your logic. If "queer" just means "whatever the opposite of the mainstream is", then that would make a literal white supremacist like Nick Fuentes a queer iconoclast at this point since his politics are anathema to our polite liberal social order.

...

And yeah, just for fun:

"CHECKMATE, LIBERAL!"

I don't have much to add though I fidn what you are saying to be interesting and I appreciate hearing what u have to say. It's interesting

thank you! i don't consider myself queer but I know a lot of younger people (so obviously they're all queer as fuck) and that has helped me understand to an extent, but this discourse has deepened my understanding even more and i appreciate it. i suppose having younger friends is why i also appreciate trolling and irony (when it's good, c'mon anews anons, do better!)

This was a really insightful and thorough comment; thank you. I think we agree with each other completely and so this is just an elaboration on the specific meaning of words--i guess i was trying to grapple with the idea that maybe whatever is uncapturable *is* what queerness means, and that's precisely why it doesn't mean 'gay' (because, as you said, gayness has been totally co-opted by the mainstream and now we have gay folks marching in a police-escorted Pride parade holding Lockheed Martin banners) and that's precisely why it avoids the pitfalls of a 'categorical identity' (because it just is whatever is not captured). I'm not trying to be obtuse, but as i don't identify as queer it is necessarily an abstract thought exercise for me.

i don't like the phrasing "personality" as for me that idea has been 'captured' by another tendency, a psychologizing one, but you're just using a word to describe a thing and I think we understand each other.

You can't be non-queer and an anarchist.
"Prove you're an anarchist by sucking a girl-dick or shut the fuck up".
WHY DID THE FUCKING MODERATOR SCUMS DELETE THIS IT'S DIRECTLY FROM THE FUCKING BASH BACK ARTICLE??? FUCK YOUUUR DUMBLE STANDARDS

*DUMBLE

*dumble

are you having fun, anon? it is possible, you know, to be a troll and also have fun and ALSO say something meaningful. try it!

I'm reasonably sure that no one wants*you* to suck their girldick, just saying.

I am a fucking hUge normie anarch living in the burbs, AND don't yOU freakingwell forgEt thAt! I am nOt quEer, thOooOoogh I am a tAd eccEntric!

Move out of the burbs, anon. You will likely find a larger community of like minded people in a major metropolitan area on the Coasts. Even if you're not queer you will still be surrounded by more open minded people that appreciate your eccentricities. There was a recent topic of the week on it too that may have more advice. Good luck!

I was thinking about it more and it occurred to me that maybe "personality" is trying to gesture to that which is specific to the individual. I think this is totally fine, and uniqueness is great and I am trying to escape being confined by categories as much as anyone. but sometimes people are also trying to relate to each other. like it's not *all* about avoiding capture, sometimes we want to find and be found by each other.

yeah, not to kink shame or anything but i probably wouldn't think of that as "capture"?

if you truly escape the logic of representation and commodity, you arrive back at the beginning,
just humans relating? cuz we always have? mutual benefit? but it's not weird? am i overthinking it yet?

not sure how 'kink-shaming' is relevant (and honestly kind of grossed out that you would bring up kink fyi) but yes, we're all unique; unfortunately we live in a society and some of us are trying to find each other so that we can not be alone, howling into the void of the anews comments section. furthermore, the more i interact with people like you the more i am glad that i have lots of conflictual hats and identities that make it easy to confuse y'all. sheesh.

just an old joke ... no disrespect intended

all it's showing is that your understanding of queerness is about as sophisticated as the female police lieutenant in ace ventura or the 'it puts the lotion in the basket' character in silence of the lambs. which is maybe just revealing something about your age, and that's fine, it's not a crime to be older than 20. maybe i'm just hypersensitive because if we were talking irl and you tried to relate what i was saying to sex, especially when i've said over and over and over that the totw is unrelated to sex (although perhaps you're unaware of that), i'd probably feel pretty threatened and disrespected. but it's all goods

ok ... you've repeatedly insulted me now ... for no reason. and yes, you're being hypersensitive

i'm unaware of who you are, your identity and everything else you've said because you're posting anon ... why would i have any context? i just thought your comment was insightful but now, i also think you're an asshole, albeit an insightful one!

good talk!

i'm sorry i hurt your feelings

i will most likely survive! the internet is a sewer hellscape and i come here anyway so..

i'm also an asshole so i'm in no position to judge much

As the anon of 11:30 and 13:06 (our correspondence is getting a little tricky with the influx of other commenters lol) I share the same setiments about psychiatry. Psychiatry tries to apply science to personalities as a way to control and manage it with language. But ultimately psychiatry is just more identity politics directed at domesticating behavior. My point is yes, you are correct, I am just using personality for a lack of a more accurate word. Because personalities are unique (one could argue anarchistic) in that they do not easily conform to rigidity. While labels and identity categories can, as you said, help us find one another a little more easily, I am critical of the way identity has been used to summarize people or define personality when personality is more actively anarchist than the word "anarchist" itself. So when we find each other with identity we should remember that there is so much more to learn from one another that can't be defined in terms of words. Thanks for this fun exchange of thoughts and perspectives!

thank you too! so yes, i completely agree with what you're saying re: identity. i consider the fact that capitalism is always trying to groom us into having identities with problems we need products to solve to be taken for granted. I think part of the issue (in North America especially), is that our civilized lives have literally no space to engage meaningfully with anything or anyone, and so our 'identities' are one of the only choices we get to make. it reminds me of some random comment i read back at the beginning of covid, where all of those karens and kyles were storming the applebees to protest their freedom being taken away--the comment was that because this is the only form of civic participation available to people, that's what they think 'freedom' means.

i think identity has a similar thing going on, and yes, that capitalism grooms us that way precisely to make it so that we experience it as being a real representation of something meaningful about ourselves because it's all we have (guy debord hours, who's up). and i think young people understand this

i guess maybe one way of thinking about the queerness that young people are experimenting with is that (1) this is taken for granted; even if young people aren't aware of the way capitalism domesticates us in this way, their lives have been so overly structured and commodified to the point that literally the only place to retreat is into irony on their smartphones, they have a more fluid understanding of 'what is real' and 'what is just another thing they're being forced to do', and (2) escaping that doesn't look like escaping capitalism or domestication (to flee to the woods and forget language, and live free, feral lives!) because there is no escape. everything is domesticated, everything is capitalized.

i'm not saying everyone thinks this way, but that it goes beyond 'but this is another identity that capitalism is going to use' because *everything* is that, so fighting that looks different than just negating identity. maybe another way of putting it is that it is a functional definition of identity, meaning that identity doesn't represent who you are but just a way (tool) to signal to others what your personality is (if I'm not misinterpreting you).

but yeah, an expression of the ways capitalism intentionally tries to sow concepts of freedom specifically to capture us is important and insidious and can be hard to recognize. fwiw this whole totw has gotten me interested in writing something to summarize all this!

To 16:59 perspectives and or writing like yours would be something warzone distro would be interested in publishing if interested. This type of conversational exploration of ideas rather than dull academia is much more favorable in my opinion. Signing off but thanks again for the conversation, keep up questioning everything and evaluating things for yourself!

coincidentally I'm planning on writing a summary of all of the conversation here into something worth reading. appreciate your kind words <3

*ROLLS EYES*

This definition only raises more questions:

Are wild animals inherently queer? What about plants, mountains and oceans? Are uncontacted indigenous tribes inherently queer, even the really violently patriarchal ones??

In spite of his obvious machismo and male braggadocio, does Renzo Novatore count as queer even if he was cishet? What about Jules Bonnot?

A thought experiment...

You have a Jules Bonnot-type figure, who was cishet and had kids... and then you have a 30+ childless, self-identifying "queer" non-binary starbucks barista who puts "they/them" in their Twitter Bio. Like maybe she pilfers some of the company coffee beans here and there, but lives an otherwise totally normie life.

Which one is more "at odds" with civilized order and control?

-------------------------------

I've also seen lots of toxic behavior in anarchist scenes around the gatekeeping of... "who gets to use the queer label, and who doesn't", with people (me, for example...) being aggressively told they need to "pRoVe iT!!!!!111" essentially by putting some bussy out, or sucking "girldick."

Its experiences like that and more that make it very unlikely to me that queer really means anything much beyond simply being some quirky variation of "gay".

When people talk about how queer means "ungovernable" or "against civilized order and control" or something to this effect, it really just comes off as self-aggrandizing and posturing.

The vast majority of self-proclaimed "queer" people I've ever met on both college campuses and in multiple anarchist scenes have been, when all is said and done, VERY governable, i.e: they pay rent, they work a job (typically in academia, the education system, or maybe a barista-type job, or media/entertainment, maybe nursing, etc.) or they're on benefits, or their parents support them... they obey laws that they can't get away with breaking, and they go to court when they have to, you know, just like pretty much everybody else in society.

In sum, the overwhelming majority of "Queer" people are NOT living a literal "Bonnie and Clyde" type-life, and yet, they throw around these definitions of queer that flatteringly position them as these big badass rebels that are this supposed existential threat to society -- all from the safety of their liberal cosmopolitan cities. But if, by "queer", you mean that one simply feels the TENSION of being at odds with civ... well then that would include LITERALLY EVERYBODY! For, as Freud pointed out in "Civilization and its Discontents"; literally everybody is "at odds" in some way, with social control. In light of this, I don't see why gay radicals feel the need to make a big show of their sexual proclivities and/or gender identities as if it were the edgiest, most dangerous and radical tendency to ever sweep the Earth.

The things that make queerness actually "dangerous" are precisely the things that are accessible to everyone, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.

> Are wild animals inherently queer? What about plants, mountains and oceans? Are uncontacted indigenous tribes inherently queer, even the really violently patriarchal ones??

great question! thinking more i realized that no, queerness is definitely specific to (sexual) identity but importantly it is a moving target--gayness isn't queer today but it was before, and what's queer today may not be queer tomorrow. I was reflecting on, for example, this is absolutely not true for punk--i just went to a punk festival recently and the culture was identical to what it was 25 years ago.

> In spite of his obvious machismo and male braggadocio, does Renzo Novatore count as queer even if he was cishet? What about Jules Bonnot?

I couldn't say for sure whether either were queer, since queerness was very much less visible then, so was not a matter of overt expression in terms of style etc.

> You have a Jules Bonnot-type figure, who was cishet and had kids... and then you have a 30+ childless, self-identifying "queer" non-binary starbucks barista who puts "they/them" in their Twitter Bio. Like maybe she pilfers some of the company coffee beans here and there, but lives an otherwise totally normie life.
> Which one is more "at odds" with civilized order and control?

this is great, thanks for that! actually i was surprised that my intuition is definitely the former, which has complicated my understanding about it yet again! and yes this is exactly why i think this is why the totw was great--it shows exactly why gayness is not inherently queer, and implies that there's nothing contrarian about counterculture.

> I've also seen lots of toxic behavior in anarchist scenes around the gatekeeping of... "who gets to use the queer label, and who doesn't", with people (me, for example...) being aggressively told they need to "pRoVe iT!!!!!111" essentially by putting some bussy out, or sucking "girldick."

i completely relate. it reminds me of high school, with cliques all vying for power by controlling identity so as to control who is 'in' and who is not (mean girls etc). but just because it's possible for people to use identity to gatekeep and control others, doesn't mean that a particular identity itself is the problem; this is a problem with humans (perhaps society?) it's hard to distinguish between manipulators and people with a real experience; i don't consider myself the authenticity police.

and i have also seen threats against 'cishets' for this and that i don't like it. however, i can imagine experiences with the world that justify a rage against mainstream normie culture that would make me wanna put a bomb in a hatbox and go blow up some wealthy elites. And while i don't like it, i don't think it's always coming from some malicousness that is specific to queerness.

> When people talk about how queer means "ungovernable" or "against civilized order and control" or something to this effect, it really just comes off as self-aggrandizing and posturing.The vast majority of self-proclaimed "queer" people I've ever met on both college campuses and in multiple anarchist scenes have been, when all is said and done, VERY governable

maybe? i've definitely seen that but i've seen other things, too.

> you know, just like pretty much everybody else in society.

your point is taken that (1) queerness is a little less broad than anything that is in tension with the mainstream, and (2) the more 'queerness' proliferates as anything outside of the mainstream, the more confusing it becomes about what is within and what is outside of the mainstream. however, i don't think this is specific to queerness.

In sum, the overwhelming majority of "Queer" people are NOT living a literal "Bonnie and Clyde" type-life, and yet, they throw around these definitions of queer that flatteringly position them as these big badass rebels that are this supposed existential threat to society -- all from the safety of their liberal cosmopolitan cities.

> But if, by "queer", you mean that one simply feels the TENSION of being at odds with civ... well then that would include LITERALLY EVERYBODY!

This is an interesting point, but i'm not sure that i can solve the problem that sometimes meaning and the world are paradoxical. it's a capture of incapturability i guess, just like anarchism is being governed by ungovernability.

> In light of this, I don't see why gay radicals feel the need to make a big show of their sexual proclivities and/or gender identities as if it were the edgiest, most dangerous and radical tendency to ever sweep the Earth.

ok this is a little cringe, sorry. "I'm fine with the gays, i just wish they wouldn't shove it down our throats so much!" like i don't know what circles you're involved in but you might want to get new friends (or watch new TV channels?) because I don't have this experience.

> The things that make queerness actually "dangerous" are precisely the things that are accessible to everyone, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.

this is a really strange conclusion. like wouldn't this be a good thing?

True description of identity. You wouldn't be a Stirnerian or are you more a Freudian individual?

Truly a question from the brain of a middle schooler.

As someone who also got involved in politics way too young, first of all, I really hope the young person in the anecdote can continue to grow into who they are with patience and flexibility. Presumably, they are currently 14 or younger, and the idea that they can or should be an organizer is pretty sad to me, and not just because it only really makes sense if they are in some dire situation already like being a farm worker. Youth is fleeting and the personal is political partly because so many things need to go right around a person for them to reach adulthood becoming a decent person, at all. Maybe this is just triggering me because of the casualness with which the phrase “tweenage organizer” is dropped in there (really bummed me out) and the context of the popular but problematic “youth liberation” politics (not that some of the young organizers I used to know didn’t turn out fine). I would say now that we should actually be fight for the idea that kids shouldn’t have to worry about politics, just like they shouldn’t be in cages, but actually get to be kids.

Anyway, to the main q, what about just letting things be as they are and not subsuming them into ruling abstractions, hmmm?

yikes, this comment is so bad.

> the idea that they can or should be an organizer is pretty sad to me, and not just because it only really makes sense if they are in some dire situation already like being a farm worker.

yeah? as opposed to what? like in your opinion what could a young person be doing with their time than organizing? saying dumb shit like this on anews comments?

Youth is fleeting and the personal is political partly because so many things need to go right around a person for them to reach adulthood becoming a decent person, at all.

> Maybe this is just triggering me because of the casualness with which the phrase “tweenage organizer” is dropped in there (really bummed me out)

do you want to talk about what hurt you, anon? because i'm honestly scratching my head over why it would be bad for a teenager to be doing something with their time like organizing around queer liberation

> and the context of the popular but problematic “youth liberation” politics (not that some of the young organizers I used to know didn’t turn out fine). I would say now that we should actually be fight for the idea that kids shouldn’t have to worry about politics, just like they shouldn’t be in cages, but actually get to be kids.

holy shit what in the actual fuck? kids shouldn't have to worry about politics? now this is one of the worst takes i've seen in an 'anarchist' space in a long fucking time. so what should they be thinking about, then, anon? maybe unlike you, some young people realize that a notion of "just being kids"--I can only imagine what this means to you--playing in the grass in some lawn in some suburban neighborhood in some city, sky orange and thick with smoke, parents working multiple jobs to pay their mortgage, taking 6 different medications for 12 different diagnosed mental disorders, immigrants in a camp across the street after fleeing from flooding in the neighboring country--is only a fever dream of someone who is oblivious to what's happening in the world around them.

like what the fuck are you talking about? kids shouldn't be thinking about politics?! do you hear yourself right now?

> Anyway, to the main q, what about just letting things be as they are and not subsuming them into ruling abstractions, hmmm?

yes, we should all just 'let things be what they are.' jesus what a fucking joke.

(fyi i'm not young)

"(fyi i'm not young)"
Hey brah, no need to explain, anyone who writes 10 paragraphs to reply to a comment is DEFINITELY not young.

am i supposed to be insulted by this? what i'm really insulted by is how unfunny your trolling is.

The objective definition of the word "queer" in the english language is an adjective; something that is "strange or odd". Specifically, being queer is identifying as something that does not correspond to established ideas of the norm, and is now known as an umbrella term for non-het and non-cis people. With the now implied existence of there being a "norm", and queerness being defined as deviation from the norm, I can say with confidence that queer is a term that actually changes with every revolution in identity, and is not limited to a certain identity or definition. It’s simply a deviation from the norm.
In our day and age, the abstraction of gender and sexuality as a concept has been gaining power and platform, and with the addition of technology and global communication, this idea has become massive and revolutionary and it changes the way humans interact with society as we know it. Queerness has been synonymous to gayness and transness for a while now, and it's obvious why. Fuck, same sex marriage wasn't even legal in all 50 states of America until literally 8 years ago. That's how queer being gay is. But as gayness slowly becomes the norm and companies are pumping out their pride merch every June and suddenly your grandma is talking about how she used to check out girl's asses when she was young and she never knew it meant she might have been bisexual, we are left in this grey zone—is being gay still... queer? It depends. You’ve got your average law abiding citizens who also happen to be gay, and you’ve got the faggots who want to destroy; who do you think is more queer?
Language, identity, associations and more are always undergoing changes. If we as anarchists want to redefine the term "queer" and make the word ungovernable and unmarketable, then I think we should willingly engage in discussions of identity and let it blossom and evolve into something new instead of insisting that no, the word queer will never change and in order to be queer you have to fit under a specific definition (and suck a girldick just for proof). Anarchy to me is the rejection of an enforced norm, and burning and destroying a machine that tries to group us into categories that makes us easier to govern is our prerogative. Being queer doesn’t exactly mean you're gay, and it's an important topic to think about. How do we define ourselves outside of the box that society presents to us? We can start with the word queer. Or don't. It's up to you. Anarchy!

*adverb

Probably people who call themselves gay are gay and people who call themelves queer are queer. I dont feel at all attached to queerness meaning anything subversive. I think that ship has sailed frankly.

Psychosocial and sexual deviance arent inherently linked to political deviance. And anyway… are queers or anarchists these days even deviant?

Use whatever words make you feel good. Do whatever you want. That’s what it’s all about. But if what you want is straight sex and relationships….. actually dont do that. I promise there’s more to life.

Senor, do you mind NOT using the word "deviance"? It's a word that was spawned out of moral indignation and thus it DOES have a relation to political AND religious deviance. Outside of these control mechanisms there exists NO deviance, mmkay!?
Possibly it is a heavy catholic influence which has tainted your vocabulary.

fuck the church, fuck moral indignation, fuck political and religious deviance, i'll use whatever words i want!

thanks,
senor

Yeah obviously sexual deviance used to be inherently linked to political and religious deviance. I’m arguing that it’s not anymore. I don’t think queers and/or anarchists pose any threat to the cistem at all these days, hence me saying deviance is out the window.

Great question! Super unpopular opinion here. But I'm just going to say it...

Anarchy was much more deviant and a legit social force back when it hadn't been totally subsumed by liberal/feminist identity politics that hate masculinity.

The Evidence, in general terms:

all of anarchist history up to the 1960s vs. the last 60-70 years...

But more specifically:

- the anarchist scene in Greece in 2008 pre-identity politics vs the anarchist scene in Greece now, a total shadow of it's former self, post-identity politics

- the anarchist scene in Eugene in the 90s, pre-identity politics vs the anarchist scene in Eugene in the 2000s when it got ripped apart by identity politics.

- it's also no secret why all the countries with the most militant anarchist scenes that hold some kind of pull in the balance of power with their respective states... are scenes based in countries known for having a culture of dominant, aggressive and hypermasculine men: Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, Greece, Spain, etc.

- countries with weak and ineffectual anarchist scenes on the other hand, i.e: those that have been totally captured by these life-denying, liberal identity politics of resentment, like the ones throughout Canada, the United States and Australia, for example, like to romanticize the aforementioned anarchist milieus from far away for their militancy, yet they will never approach their level of success because they are too busy essentially trying to domesticate; break the spirits of; and snuff out every last trace of masculinity in: their anarchist men. Many guys who have been through these scenes have a similar experience: of being constantly villified; scapegoated for anything and everything; never having any of your concerns taken seriously; this weird feeling like some people in the Scene were trying to instill a sense of self-hatred within you, as if being a "good person" means that you should hate yourself as much as possible for being straight or white or male, etc.

Turns out that "toxic masculinity" is actually a pretty useful resource sometimes, and really, really effective at resisting the force of the state. Who knew? lolllll

There's an African proverb related to this that goes...

"If you don't give the young men a warm place to live in the village, then they will burn the village down to feel its warmth".

Another problem with this is that the Left fails to understand that one of the biggest reasons the far right continues to gain more and more power is because the Left can't help itself from unnecessarily isolating, humiliating, alienating and pushing its own young men away... and where do they get pushed, you ask? Straight into the open arms of the far right who are more than happy to receive them, because the far right correctly understands that Angry Young Men are the primary demographic that: wages war, launches the vast majority of major rebellions, violent insurrections, criminal orgs, and just generally holds all the cards of physical force in real terms, without which no revolution would be possible in the first place.

Based on these trends, I believe that over-the-top social justice politics, and the anarchism built on them, as we know them will get wiped out in the coming years/decades. As much as I hate identity politics... I'm more worried that the coming Reaction to it will be FAR worse. Like, there is a genuine risk that the Gen Z and Gen Alpha boys growing up right now getting screeched at by aging Millenial school teachers about feminism or whatever, are going to ascend into the leadership of an authoritarian rightwing more powerful than ever before as the pendulum swings back the other way with a vengeance.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on that.

your thoughts suck.

of course things get more complicated when we recognize how all of us, even while rsisting states in one way, are also reinforcging and recreating states in other ways, as in through what is facilely known as sexism, homophobia, etc.

tld/r: how are you defining the state?

They very much align with mine and what I've been saying by comparing the latter quarter 20th century to the 1st quarter of this one in regards to @ discourse. I very much agree with their last paragraph that the conservative right will probably shape culture over the next quarter century and in turn probably play a role in driving a new left? non right radicalism. There's good news and bad news that comes from that prediction. I will not be sad to see identitarian leftism collapse but there will be fallout from it sadly. Still, dusk before dawn, that sort of thing.

lol no, "homophobia" is not the state. How can you even say that in current year with the VERY GAY biden administration?

But anyways, I define the state as an extended network of corporeal institutions (the police, the military, the congress/senate/white house, the prison system, etc etc) that work in concert to uphold the interests of the rich and the powerful.

then see my above comment. who is rich and powerful? not just individuals, but groups of people (but also individuals). how do we all uphold (despites ourselves sometimes) those people and groups?

does that muddy waters about who the enemy is, and ;make simple resistance harder to do and to recognize? yes. does that mean a weaker anarchist tendency? what is success? if you just want decentralized sexism and racism etc, then... ?

Who's rich and who's powerful depends on where and when you are. Or, what ethnicity do you think billionaires in China or Saudi Arabia are exactly?

The rich and powerful, especially today, consist of many different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, etc. So what is your point there?

And even if most CEOs are male, so what?

This one of the things about the way IDpol functions in practice that I hate the most: treating me (a random fuckin construction worker living beneathe the poverty line) as if I held the exact same amount of power/influence in society and was the exact same thing as a senator, just because we share the same class of genitalia. Breaking News: Men are not a Political Organization. It may shock you to hear this, but its not like we get together every Saturday for our weekly Patriarchy Meetings where we laugh maniacally and conspire to keep women and queers down or some shit.

But yeah, no. Most bankers are Jewish... this is objectively true, and yet that wouldn't justify an irrational hatred of jewish people everywhere, most of whom are just regular wagies like the rest of us.

Nobody lives their life as a "Macro-category". And from the way I've seen peoples "structural analysis" play out in practice, it doesn't amount much beyond holding random individual people unduly responsible for giant abstract concepts and historical events beyond their control.

no one who argues that all men (or all of any category) have thse same power as each other, has thought about things very much, or else is power brokering their own selves. or both

otoh, you don't have to be in meetings with other men to benefit from conscious and unconscious, individual and macro level power dynamics and structures.

power is complicated, which is what i started out saying in the original response. and again, why the simple enemy shit that you seem to be arguing for doesn't get at some important stuff that i, for one, want destructed.

"And even if most CEOs are male, so what?"

So this make it a phallocracy, you moron.

So what? Well, that makes it what you just said, a political organization, that DOES have Patriarchy Meetings every Saturday (i.e. the golf club, the country club, etc).

So, yeah, it's bad analysis to be treating a gender as a unified political agency. This is what liberal college kids do. But that doesn't make the political agency that is the patriarchy disappear. It's just not being addressed with the right analysis. Like Instagram liberals are still submitting to the patriarchy that runs their platforms.

Is this "phallocracy" in the room with us right now?

Frankly, 161 commebts for such a pointless TOTW about the ontology of queerness is a bit too much, don't ya think?

Yeah, the pressure of the IDPol hegemony has even squeezed into the anarchist milieu, filled it with waffling whining snowflakes, CHEESUS, EVEN THE NIHILISTS NOW ARE IDPOL!! What happened to the first Russian nihilists dressed in hessian bags and tangled hair, THE GENUINE DREADS FORMED BY THE WIND AND NEGLECT?!!

the "nihilists" done BEEN idpol'ing for the last decade or so, where've you been? Hi.
'

He's the idiot partially responsible for those tendencies.

Yes, once again, so what?

What difference does it make whether the boot on your neck is "cishet" male, female, or genderqueer? In either case, there's still a boot on your neck, you dork!

How is a CEO being male even supposed to be benefitting me, a general laborer, anyway? Is the male privilege supposed to just "trickle down" or something?

Huge L for these identitarian-obsessed liberal politics of ressentiment and equal demographic representation in the institutions of the Machine.

"What difference does it make whether the boot on your neck is "cishet" male, female, or genderqueer?"

Commenter farting above u here... I never said anything about "cishet", I talked about patriarchies, that totally *can and DID include gay males* (read: Ancient Greece and Rome, and the Catholic Church, in some way).

So... a thousands of years history of continuous patriarchy -that keeps maintaining itself despite all themeans females being kept out of the crucial centers of power. Having queens doesn't make ir any different, as monarchs are really just sacralized figures held as those "in charge" to cover up for the actual phallocratic hierarchies running the show from behind.

Want more edgy hipster claptrap, now featuring dubious acronyms to better compute? Look elsewhere in the comment section, as I don't do that.

"despite all the claims of WOKE takeover"

Women not being in key positions of power does not entail the existence of some patriarchy. It more likely is reflective of broader masculine feminine dynamics. Women don't seek overt power to the same degree as men do and they tend to have more social power as opposed to spectacular symbolic power. There hasn't been a patriarchal system in place in Western developed parts of the world for over 50 years and counting.

Systematic Hierarchy on the other hand(which includes the girl bosses as well as historical matriarchy-which feminism of course overlooks) is still very much operating 10000 years+ and counting.

Thanks for mansplaining that women are tOotally a monolith and that the patriarchy is, like, tOotally old news of oVeR 50 yEaRs, incel brah.

There are women that like a patriarchal order, there are men that are 'simps' or simp adjacent and very much like female frivolity. This has been the case for about half a century from the last quarter to first quarter of the centuries. There is no serious case to be made for any type of patriarchal system being in place.

We live in a post-patriarchy which means while patriarchy may not be old news in the historic sense, it is history at this point in regards to being an active systematic or systemic agent of modern developed leviathan.

^ and he'll just keep going like this until you realize ... troll or far-right sympathizing, libertarian adjacent, galaxy brained, shit head ... it barely matters? he thinks he's reeeal clever and he's not actually talking to you at all

Rejecting the idea of a prevailing patriarchy in existence does not make one altright or light. There are very sound reasons to reject such an assumption. There has been nothing in the past 50 years give or take that is curtailing female agency on a systematic or even systematic level. The burden is on u lot to show otherwise.

You’ll present evidence of certain power differentials but as I can easily point out there are other multifactoral dynamics at play that explain these things. You don’t have to be a galaxy brainer to get this. U Dumpy though are something of the opposite of a G-brainer.

the government passed laws making it illegal to discriminate so of course it never happens now.

same as with the Emancipation Proclamation.

I’m mean, that’s pretty open and shut unless you want to bring race and racism into it which is another thing altogether.

On a similar level there are distinctions to be made between something like patriarchy and sexism. The former has to do with curtailing female agency and seeing male agency as officially more important. That is simply not a thing in the developed world anymore.

Hey brah, points for stubborn defiant recurrence, but you can't keep this up for eternity, even Neech would expect some quitting.

>Having queens doesn't make ir any different, as monarchs are really just sacralized figures held as those "in charge" to cover up for the actual phallocratic hierarchies running the show from behind.

It's analysis like this that basically has me convinced that "Patriarchy Theory" is essentially just QAnon/DeepState for feminists.

Qanontards were a brief tendency among psychotic, ignorant reactionaries from the suburb and rural areas steered by Fedbook influencers, among other things.

Patriarchy theory is rooted in an actual analysis of history crossed with marxian theory, that is not aimed at specific conspirating groups (i.e. the Deep State Illuminati Globalist Commie Pedo-Satanists) but what is in general a tendency for males to regroup to consolidate power for themselves abd have their patriarchs run the show in succession. A tendency that was dominant in many civilizations around the world for ages, that is tied to patrilinearity and is pretty hard to deny.

The Church, big finance, STEM industry, as well as the highest echelons of the military and the state are still run by dicks, as they have for thousands of years.

Why so?

Coz dicks apparently got a very insecure relationship with POWAH. That's the nature of phallocracies.

This is where your whole 'history' analysis goes off the rails when you rely on anything that overrated hack Karl has to offer.

For one thing there is no such thing as group projectual agency. Agency only exists at the dunbar and individual level. Scaled up beyond that you leave the dynamics of agency and will and trade off towards determined expression. There is no such thing as mass male or female self-directed consolidating tendencies. What exists at the societal abstract level are structures and functions that subsume any type of self-directed will. There was never any mass conscious development of patriarchy or a ruling class.

The difference between the Marxists and the Feminists and the Qtards is really only a difference of degree. The reactionary right tends to take the belief in group agency to more absurd levels correlating with things like antisemitism. The left wing patriarchy class stuff is just the less stupid form of this.

The patriarchs don't run the show, the show runs them. Phallocracies are consequences not causes.

the only real problem with this analysis (which isn't half bad at all imo) is that it gets a bit too murky with cause and effect.

anon is right about many of the symptoms and oversimplifying the cause of the problem. the vampire ID politicians are real af, the internalized self loathing and guilt that feeds them and gives them their power over their toxic little cults is very real too BUUUT

i would argue these are diseases coming from the outside, intrinsic to the social and economic trends of late stage, neoliberal capitalism. the anomie and counter insurgency aspects of these repulsive ideologies are easily traced to their sources far, far outside whatever form anarchist culture might take.

anarchy is always a tiny marginal space, a leaky little lifeboat, buffeted by stormy seas. anon only made the mistake of giving us far more agency than we actually have, while otherwise correctly identifying a very effective means of pacification.

I dunno, maybe all the disgusted young men will go over to Trump when he promises them work and a return to masculinity. But the pendulum will swing back and it's gonna be exacerbated by climate catastrophes, famine, pandemic, fire and flood,

some of them will! and they'll be some of the greatest fools of history for it and worse!

then we all get to kill each other in the climate wars soon after! thx again capitalism!

Or, you know... we could just, as the African proverb suggests, simply give them a place to BE in our village without making them feel like scum of the earth just for having been born.

you put up with whichever mouthy little toxic shitheads you can tolerate and i'll do the same.
i'm just not that social in my grumpy old age lol

in this rather frustrating debate has been Lumpy, whose forceful commentary is infused with humanity and urgency, and reveals new possibilities for queerness and anarchy by stretching the understanding of both to their absolute limits. Future generations will come to see Lumpy as an exciting myth-maker whose message was life-affirming. Lumpy shows us that tomorrow can be better. There will never be another like him...

oh shit! need to go rethink my life because anon just invented sanctimonious snark! brb!

it's time to reject the self-improvement ideology, refuse the cult of positive thinking and stand firm.
We are only allowed to be positive, we are only allowed to be happy and anything that threatens these states of mind is considered wrong.
All that is painful, all that feels overwhelming and unbearable — whether domestically, socially, even politically and culturally must therefore be repressed,
In a culture of mandated positivity, if we are unhappy we only have ourselves to blame.

do i seem like a toxic positivity guy to you?

cuz that shit would cut me to the quick! the QUICK i tells ya!

If someone told me this was a jack Donovan quote I would believe them haha.

Counter point the super hyper masculine fighting movements all just kill each other all the time. See areas of the USA where antifa military against fascist are present. It's a bunch of assholes who u just don't wanna be around bc their solution to everyone problem is to fight.

People who think extremely toxicly masculine people are good at doing stuff very obviously have no been around a group of violent toxicly masculine men. I have and this comment is a complete joke.

Yes, actual toxic behavior is bad, man or not. I put toxic masculinity into airquotes earlier tho because the trend seems to be to conflate masculinity as such, as inherently toxic.

I don't think that a positive masculinity includes being a rude, mean, brutal or arrogant individual. In my mind, the ideal masculine archetype is like Mufasa from the Lion King or, if you like anime, Thors from Vinland Saga: someone strong, yet kind and gentle.

I'm sorry those guys were dicks to you, btw.

good nuance there imo! points to you

i've also been around plenty of violent, toxic masculinity and the million dollar anarchist question is: what's the alternative that isn't pacifism? it always gets dismissed as toxic by the rad libs no matter what, because theyre dishonest shitheads who lick boot, deep in their twisted little black hearts BUT obviously we need to be able to literally defend ourselves at the very least.

want a more concrete example? i've lost count of how many queer, trans or femme folks i've known, who are also militants, who get called "manarchists" or something equivalent, when they seriously talk about ... let's say defensive considerations

*turns and waves at the FBI agent in the room*

I think being militant is inherently terrible. Militant has some connotation of war which is terrible. Like people do violence and anarcho-soldiers wanting to do war are way different. So I think being militant is almost always terrible bc war is like the apitomey of abuse culture.

Idk, I can think of plenty of cases where feminist support murder namely the massive amount of women in jail who killed their abusive partner. I don't know any feminist who call them manarchists. It's just the wanna be soldiers who get called manarchists.

I've never been called a manarchists and I'm not a pacifist. So I think u are more conflating being non violent vs being against army soldiers.

.... i can see we aren't going to get anywhere useful with this discussion so i'll just nod and smile, k?

I mean I think that's fine. But like why bring up men then. I know very few men who who are strong but kind and gentle and not pricks. I know a decent amount of women. Men are substantially worse at being the masculine ideal ur talking about. It's more just an archetype of being a decent person. Being a decent man or whatever is fine but largely irrelevant.

Sorry I'm not trying to be an asshole I'm just kinda confused what men have to play into this, bc I don't really know any men who are like some mufasa ideal but I def can think of plenty of women and queers. So I just genuinely don't understand where being a man plays into this. I think being capable strong, gentle and kind is gender ambiguous.

We need strong toxic masculine men to bravely and firmly forge a path through the normality of genteel liberal political perversities. Nice little snowflake nerdy anarchists who ate frightened of mortal combat have no place amongst the nihilistic toxic hunks of queer strong penis waving fornicators!

someone earlier commented, in a patronizing/matronizing way that “this is not you grandmothers queer, so let me explain…” or something stupid like that. well, i want my grandmother’s queer back (at least in some ways), when it was actually transgressive and deviant to be queer, not what it mostly is today. that being said, i am completely down with bash back and what it brings, just maybe not some of the morons who opportunistically came for other stupid, identity, or authoritarian agendas.

it was me, and yes you're right that there are people today who exploit identity politics to gain social power (i.e., come to bash back opportunistically if I'm understanding you) and it's something that doesn't get enough attention in this thread. another thing that was overlooked (at least in a lot of what I said) was that capitalism is selling queer identities as a way of pacifying people into believing they are being transgressive when really they are just reinforcing identity in a way that strengthens capitalism.

I take both of these things for granted. however, #notAllQueers (this is a joke obviously). there are real people with real lives and identities (by this I mean observable signifiers of identity that affect how the world at large experiences and treats them) that force them to exist in tension with mainstream culture. and then there are people who maybe don't have these observable signifiers but "legitimately" hate identity and are trying to attack it ( legitimately is in quotes because I don't see it as my place to decide what is and isn't legitimate.) and there are also young people who have been thrown into this world and have to sort through all of this, and from afar it might seem like they're just falling for the bullshit, but sometimes i think they have a pretty sophisticated understanding that gets overlooked/misunderstood by "the olds". so I was attempting to give that aspect of it more room because I think everyone here is aware that capitalism is always trying to proliferate things it can sell.

the fact that people will exploit what is popular to gain social power is true everywhere for everything. we all know the dudebro who called himself an anarchist for a few years in his twenties because he liked rowdy violence and it got him some pussy from hot alt chicks. punk is of course another example. and yes this happens with "deviant sexual identities" and maybe it is being obtuse to assert that "queerness" isn't a part of how that's happening today. it's much more complicated to assess what's "dangerously deviant" in a world deluged with opportunities for edginess that all lead to the same reinforcement of capitalism. but this isn't specific to queerness, queerness just happens to be what the mainstream currently hopes to capture.

Nicely described conditions, yup, capitalism, I prefer to call it corporate opportunism, because I believe in benevolent individual capitalism, not Randian extravagance, but I digress, yes, queer identity is now a commodity to be exploited, lol, so predictable, trending globally for the last decade.
Legitimacy, another ugly word that needs to be erased from the spontaneously spawned event called Life, feet need to be placed back on the ground of equitable exchange without this yoke.

Also, "observable signifiers of identity that affect how the world at large experiences and treats them)" I liked that you introduced signifying as a tool of psycho-empirical analysis, The spooks must be made accountable.
I agree with your "don't see it as my place to decide what is and isn't legitimate." becAUse thAt woUld bE jUdging sOmeone On an AUthOritArian LAw!

"(at least in some ways)," This part had me wondering about your reluctance to fully embrace some of your grandmother's queerness, like, was it stressful, or violent, or the dildos, just wondering?

I'm not the author. but it seems like the author is saying that some things about the author's grandmother's queerness were good, e.g. it was legibly deviant. but it seems the author recognizes that there were some issues with queerness during the author's grandma's era, like the fact that queer folk were lobotomized and treated with electroconvulsive therapy and forcibly institutionalized and castrated and more.

so as much as I recognize that the author was probably trying to say that queerness was more problematic decades ago than it is today, I think this confuses problematic with dangerous. frankly, in the same way that I believe the author is implying the TOTW is confusing queerness with what's dangerous. like yeah your grandma's queerness was much more upsetting to normal folks, but does that mean it has more teeth than the current queerness? and how and why?

Sex may also actually improve other physical activities because it reduces stress and relaxes the entire body. Generally speaking, an active sex life is necessary to health and longevity and is acclaimed worldwide as a legendary, trained antidote to insanity, crime and many other global ills.
The world has been betrayed for 6,000 years. To survive, ACT NOW!

There's a downside brah to orgasms, it's called overpopulation, unless you make contraception free and universal, unlikely, but queer vag/dick prohibition may solve this future problem, OR JERKING OFF and queer anti-vag sex promoted emphasizing dildo-esque sexual practises.

"but queer vag/dick prohibition may solve this future problem, OR JERKING OFF..."

Ah, repression of ordinary sexuality. See how well that turned out in paet authoritarian regimes, you ultraliberal.

Everyone must be alloqed to fuck, according to their tastes, and *internalized repression* is the reason why you're pipedreaming about a yet another repressive order that bonks all the "cishets" to horny jail. Becoming moralist repressive cucks, just like your oppressors.

...oh an btw, cis horny jails are still jails. i.e. not anarchistic, but quite the opposite.

Yes, but one can still procure sex in prison, which makes them sooOoo much fun. And according to Wilhelm Reich, all the steel and mattresses accumulate orgone energy, which makes sex far more liberating in prison.

There's no such thing as gay butt rape in prison... it's all a lie set up by the Cishet Oppressors! Who btw are the ones separating genders in prisons so that hetero sex can't happen. Any talk about butt-rape is triggering and must be removed by our LGBTQ police. Just like allusions to the homo and brutally misogynist patriachies of Ancient Greece.

So true! We live in a post-buttrape society which means while rape may not be old news in the historic sense, it is history at this point in regards to being an active systematic or systemic agent of modern developed leviathan. It is simply not a thing in the developed world anymore.

I just find it interesting that glorification of prisons and their "kinky" conditions is now being allowed on an anarchist website?

That's because felons are the REAL queers, they ARE the ones who actually broke laws, what all you outside gays brag about doing sometime, but all you do is get cheeky with a petty sexual morality, not something radically queer like breaking laws and going to prison. I've done time and never had gay sex inside, just radical masturbation, and I am proudly a radical queer individualist!!

S'cuse me... in what Western country is being gay breaking the law, or a crime? What law is this breaking? Are we back to the '50s yet, or is this just your Istagram mind making you see things? Okay perhaps there's a few Bible Belt areas where it's a crime but...

Is Jamaica the West?

*geology

For the better or worst, Jamaica's nowhere representative of the Western civilization and its neolib secular culture. Find better examples and quit trolling.

Maybe future Topics of the Week could focus on something a little less superficial than identity politics, like say, OVERPOPULATION, the horrifying rise of AI (and the cavalier acceptance of it by cyborg "anarchists"), or ECOLOGICAL MELTDOWN...

YeeEees, finally a prioritized analysis about the real important issues and not these petty little snowflake anxieties about personal rituals.

I find this post triggering, remove this comment mods or else we'll have a demo and the a very moist gay orgy.

I would also like to see good @ discussion on the coming convulsions.












































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Hey brah

Hey I never said that. Quit misquoting, brah!

Add new comment