I’ve had some serious questions about my body’s ability to balance itself — my legs’ collective ability to carry me through space — for several months now. I cannot tell you just how long. This is partly because some capacities can fall away from you so gradually that you hardly notice them going at first: […]
This Was Fairly Trivial: A CEO’s Assassination and it’s Aftermath
Brian Thompson, CEO of health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was fired upon by a masked assailant around 6:46 a.m. on December 4, 2024 outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel where the company was set to hold an investor meeting. The shooter stepped up behind Thompson with a handgun fitted with a silencer and fired three […]
Returning Shevek to Anarres
I chose Lee Shevek as a pen name early on in this ongoing writing project, when my theoretical focus was on insurgency and counterinsurgency. Shevek is the name given to the main character in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, a book that held — and still holds — a special place in my heart and in […]
Butch Ability
Butches hold open doors. Butches arm ourselves and patrol around the local queer bars in order to protect other queer folks from bashers. Butches use power tools, build sheds, haul the heaviest furniture when our friends are moving. Butches step in and beat down predatory men. Butches protect. Butches build. Butches act. Butches serve. This […]
Gender Liberation
Every transgressive gender is a point of pressure and tension on the cissexual system. Living proof of the lie. Which is exactly why that system wants so badly to kill us. In my view, gender liberation has the potential to center the subversive possibilities of transness: bringing specific focus to the ways that trans […]
The Coercive Control of Israeli Settler Colonialism
Coercive control, a framework originally conceptualized in Evan Stark’s Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Everyday Life and widely utilized in domestic violence theory, is one that can be expanded to understand the tactics and underlying values of all forms of authoritarian control. I have argued for this in other essays and have alluded […]
Self Assertion With a Body Out of Control: Chronic Pain, Transition, and Body Modification
I have been in nonstop pain for the last five years of my life. While pain and frequent illness have been features of my lived experience for as long as I can remember, chronic pain introduced itself first through a TMJ disorder and over the years since has made itself at home in most parts […]
Leave, Or Else: Giving Ultimatums to Abuse Victims
Abuse is ubiquitous in our society, and as a result there are very few among us, if any, who have not been abused themselves or in proximity to someone else being abused. Myths about why and how abuse occurs run rampant and the ones that dominate are ones that ultimately serve in the maintenance of […]
Playing With Power: The Essential Differences Between Kink and Abuse
A frequent critique of kink, especially hard kink that utilizes physical force (ex: slapping, whipping, etc.), is that it is indistinguishable from abuse, or is itself abuse. Without a thorough understanding of the dynamics of abuse, this perspective can be difficult to impossible to adequately refute. In this essay it is my aim to offer […]
Cry Like A Fag, Scream Like A Woman
Cis men’s emotions — what they are, how they feel them, how they deal with them, what patriarchy expects from them — have been treated as a concern of feminist theory for the totality of its history. Unsurprising, as patriarchy is a system that makes successfully understanding and navigating the emotional landscapes of men a matter of vital importance […]