Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

If you’re not familiar with the feminism and the GL…b…. (t?) communities then you probably don’t know that, despite talking a great deal about privilege and the dangers that arise from trust for the privileged, mainstream feminism and cisGLB have this very bad habit of trying to tell women (woc and trans women and twoc) and trans people, bisexuals and poc (and any combination) respectively, who to trust.

Your two examples for the day.

The rapist, abusing, racist and misogynist dudebro known as Hugo Schwyzer who plays the what about the menz game in disturbing fashion and the racist, cissexist and bi-hating gay dudebro known as Dan Savage.

Hugo has been busy excusing his history as an abuser, a rapist and a creeper douchebro who preys on his own students, while attacking women (especially women of color, with his rampant racism) who criticize him. It gets worse though. You see, a lot of mainstream white feminist bloggers (like Amanda Marcotte, who I have no love lost for) and sites are throwing in with him (just google searching his name can find a bunch of feminists defending him) while going after mostly the woc who criticize him.

Then there’s Dan Savage who’s busy whining about being very validly glitter bombed. And of course, the gay cis men are all up in arms about how dare trans people see him as the enemy cuz apparently we have real enemies and unreal enemies or something.

Now that you have the background all I have to say is: fuck the hell off, you privileged shits.

Not just Dan UnSalvageable (Thanks to Raven for that awesome nickname) and Hugo Shithead, who are quite obviously the most privileged shits out of the bunch here. But also the mainstream middle class white cis abled feminist fuckheads who care more about book deals and reputation and their white guy buddies than women and the fuckhead cisGL whiners who think that just cuz you’re in the community means you can never be cissexist, bi hating or racist or misogynist.

This isn’t a new thing. It’s an ongoing trend. People like those two, privileged and trying to act as spokespeople for groups they aren’t even part of or attacking those groups and then freaking out when they get called on it? Not new. Very common. Along with the inevitable defense squad, oftentimes people you would think knew better but don’t. Or if they do they don’t give a shit.

It’s bullshit. It’s privileged, useless, self serving, hateful bullshit. We know who our enemies are. Our enemies are the people who try to rob us of our humanity, whether subtly or overtly. The enemies of oppressed people of any type are the ones who center themselves, who make careers on the backs of the oppressed and avoid criticism at all costs.

The enemies are the people who do harm (like rape, slurs, etc) and then hide it or try to excuse it and erase it. The enemies are the people who attack those they are privileged over, who use their privileges to hold onto their position of power over the discourse and the community. Not just the people who fire us. Not just the people who beat up oppressed people or overtly try to deny our humanity.

Enemies come in all shapes and sizes and styles. Infiltration has never been out of the question. It’s time for you and the enemies (as real as any other) you defend to sit down and shut the fuck up. And newsflash, all this fucking time you’re spending trying to tell various oppressed people who their “real” enemies are?

Is just proving you’re one of those fucking enemies.

This is an odd impression for many reasons, not a few of which relate most to political correctness’ nonsensical application to all sorts of things and the fact that no one can fully agree on a definition for the phrase. The one element of PC that people seem to agree on the most is that it is built around the avoidance of offense (often in relation to minorities).  So the actual meat of the assumption isn’t so much that I am politically correct and more that I work to eliminate words that are found offensive by minority groups (my own and the ones of others). Mostly slurs.

Ah slurs. Amazing little linguistic fragments of nastiness, they are one of the most misunderstood elements of oppression in existence. But really, this applies to all forms of linguistics. The phrase, “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me” is the western cultural catchphrase of the almost painfully ignorant train of failure that is Statesider, Canadian and UK comprehension of how language in general (and especially the English language for us) influences the mind and determines learning. This also shows up in how rapidly reading is being pushed out of our (in the States) educational system. No doubt many other countries have similar problems in their own native tongues but I won’t presume myself judge of the severity or presence of the problem in a region, culture and language I’m less than familiar with. I’m not that kind of asshole.

For the most part, the assumption is sound when applied to the activist community. A huge portion of western feminism, western anti capitalism, the western disability rights movement, the Alphabet Soup community (and the oft forgotten trans portion of that group), western fat acceptance, western anti racism and etcetera social justice groups all tend towards addressing slurs and x-supremacist (where x is a privileged group) language in terms of offense. In order to explore this further, let’s go on a merry ride of definitions.

Slur (noun)1:

a: an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo :aspersion

b: a shaming or degrading effect :stain, stigma

Offense (noun)

2: something that outrages the moral or physical senses

This isn’t a standard post and I’m still more or less on hiatus from blogging. But I do have a question for my readers. A while back I created a page. It’s got a pretty harsh name, harsher than its actual purpose (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about well that answers my question right away, now doesn’t it?) which is to warn people if certain large scale or popular blogs have made serious mistakes and refused to apologize for or admit to them. But as we all know, “The Warning List” or the “Zero Accountability List” isn’t really going to be read by well… anyone (which really is kind of a statement on how bloodthirsty the online social justice activist community can be, including my past self, but that’s an issue I think I’ve gone over to the point of nausea on this blog by now).

Let’s go over the issues first.

As far as things go, the Shit List is very prone to inciting angry responses. People don’t like being called out for mistakes they try to hide (or don’t believe are mistakes) and especially not in a way that’s harsh (we’ll go over whether the list is so harsh that it actually can’t function later in the post) and their sell out apologists also don’t like it. For that reason I’ve gotten a LOT of enraged whining sellouts on that particular page. Including, but not limited to, tone argument dropping assholes, painfully silly people like some wildly off base jackhole who seems to think it’s racist to call out black cis women for cissexism if you’re white (which is oppression olympics to a degree of ridiculousness that I can’t even comprehend), people who LOVE MELISSA SO MUCH THAT THEY CAN’T STAND A SINGLE NEGATIVE THING ABOUT HER BEING ANYWHERE ON THE NET (I mostly delete those Shakesfail comments, because they’re like swarms of locusts, millions of the same old crop eating shit) and people telling me that I’m a mean old uppity bitch and a half.

It’s tiring fielding all this oxygen waste word vomit spraying into my comment queue and as anyone who reads my blog knows, I have a lot more pressing concerns to tire me out than wasting my time on that bullshit.

I’m also really tired of people sending me emails of blogs simply run by people they don’t like or who GASP aren’t polite about oppression or for anything unrelated to the purpose of the list. Let’s face it, if you don’t know what the list is for to the point that you think it’s some kind of personal hate list, well then you certainly aren’t being helped by it. And it isn’t helping me cuz I don’t personally hate anyone on that list. No, not Renee, cuz she did personally apologize to me (so we have no personal quarrel on my end), the reason she’s on the list at all is cuz she specifically refused to allow the apology she said to apply to all the other trans women she attacked with cissexism. No, not Melissa McEwan. That’s more a sense of contempt and perhaps even pity since she still believes we all hate her and weren’t just upset because she has no ability to apologize for eulogizing a genocidal cissexist feminist. And no, not Bil either, I actually find him to be a nice, very likeable guy. He just keeps fucking up on trans stuff is all.

It was never a personal list, if it was, it would be huge cuz there are a ton of activists I have a personal beef with for things unrelated to social justice and I wouldn’t waste space on a non personal blog for it.

And then, is the list even aptly named? Is the design of this resource even helpful or useful? Because let’s face it, calling it a shit list is a bit on edge of overdoing it. And I and others have talked a ton on how SJ does sometimes overdo it. Whether it’s the tumblr army of death descending on one privileged person, even after their apology, to light them on fire, or it’s the tendency to overuse the callout and throw in levels of nasty into it that edge into more revenge than activism, I’d say it’s really time to start analyzing all of this stuff and not ignoring any of it. That includes the early warning system. So I know, at the very least, I’m renaming the shit list to the Zero Accountability List so that my older more vicious model of social justice activism isn’t still acting like a poison for me (nuker’s bane of anger toxicity style). And no doubt the name is a source of a lot of the above confusion. Which doesn’t help anything.

I’d like to think in writing about how the call out is being abused and how a lot of the online SJ community, including myself, had been operating under a mob justice model and acting abusively, I would actually allow that analysis to affect how I handle things, but it just becomes hypocrisy with things titled like “The Shit List” on my blog. So it’s time to change that at least, in the spirit of not being a mob justice fuckwad.

A change in the name will also help make it more intuitive in a world where people just read the titles of things to glean a meaning, and therefore more likely to be used for its actual purpose of “oh hello, I should be careful at this blog cuz they’ve done bad things to people and won’t admit it”, instead of going “OH GOD KINSEY HATES ME/THEM WHYYYYYY.” (Admittedly, Melissa will probably still do the latter even if I changed it to FLUFFY BUTTERFLY HAPPY TIMES LIST OF PEOPLE WHO MADE A MISTAKE AND DIDN’T APOLOGIZE AND MAY MAKE MORE BUT ARE PRETTY AND WONDERFUL AND WE STILL LOVE THEM JUST BE CAREFUL OKIES? OKIES. And no, I won’t change it to that name, even for the hilarity. It’s too long. XD)

The final issue is whether the list is actually helping anyone or not. Let’s face it, if the entire community knows by word of mouth about when a blog makes a serious transphobic, ableist, etc (note: I don’t have racism on the list cuz that shouldn’t be listed on a white girl’s blog. If you’re a poc activist and you have a list of sites who have had accountability fails on racism and not apologized for or admitted to them, I can link you if you want. But listing them myself just centers my white ass and I would like to avoid Tim Wising people) mistake, well then what’s the fucking point of maintaining a list? Who exactly am I telling? If no one doesn’t already know then I’m not going to add some more shit to my list of things I have to do, because I do actually maintain that list. It’s work. And annoying work at that.

So what I’m asking you for, my gentle readers, is to let me know if the list has actually helped you. If I get word from enough people that the list has been helpful (or people tell me that it will help them with the name change) then I’ll continue maintaining it. But if I feel that this is not really achieving much for the work I’m putting into it, I will be getting rid of it immediately. My spoons are not high much less infinite.

I appreciate any of your input but I will be deleting any comments on this post disputing the entry of any of the blogs on the list, even if they are valid disputes (like say, someone has shown accountability for a similar incident later, displaying that their attitudes have changed on those types of fail) because that belongs on the list’s comment page itself. And if you try to troll this page I’m just gonna delete you. Y’all been warned.

~Kinsey

So, wish me healing love and luck as I take some time off to make my insides not be cut up anymore.

This post’s coherence brought you to by hydrocodone mixed with acetaminophen and several days resting.

~Kinsey

Identity.

It’s deeply personal and for the most part we go way out of our way to protect it. Not just our own but others as well. At least when identity policing and erasure isn’t going on. It’s one of those sacrosanct inviolable rules of the Alphabet Soup community (GLBTQQIAsomethingsomethingetc) that identity trumps all. Don’t police, don’t fuck with it, don’t erase, don’t demean and don’t tell people their identities are invalid.

This sacredness of identity is, for the most part, brilliant. It protects people from erasure, prevents the odious bullshit of having to explain and justify why you are who you are to every privileged piece of scumfuck who comes along. Sacrosanct identity allows us to work past the bounds of nonfunctional or bigoted language built to deny us basic self determination of who we are. It allows us to come to terms with the workings of our lives and the problems we face at our own pace and have community to fight these issues. Generally when identity is attacked, it’s attacked on bigoted bases or on derails. By treating it as sacred, that heads off those attempts at the pass, allowing identity to stay safe even when under assault from all sides. Yes, identity being sacred is helpful in many ways but it is also has one ridiculous flaw.

It doesn’t account for the fact that identity is not immune to being bigoted.

Let’s start with appropriation, both the most obvious and yet most ignored example of a bigoted identity. An identity stolen from a marginalized group by a privileged one is still an identity. For all intensive purposes, it fits the structure. Deeply personal, central to self conceptualization (who you are), defended harshly when attacked and often seen as sacred (in no small part due to the sacredness of identity in activist circles). One of the best examples of an Alphabet Soup community fuck up in the identity zone when it comes to appropriation is white people (or really anyone outside of the Native Cultures it comes from) calling themselves Two Spirit . This bigoted bullshit is defended heavily all throughout white GLBT circles, using the sacrosanct identity as the entire basis. And this defense contributes to systemic bigotry and discrimination through appropriation against the Native nations and peoples of North America from whom the concept came. It is, in fact, enabling that bigotry by allowing the damaging identity usage to persist.

There are less obvious examples, ones that are actually quite basic to the very comprehension of sexuality. For instance the sexualities within monosexuality (straight, lesbian, gay, gynephilic, androphilic, agendrephilic, androgynephilic, etc) are structured in such a way as to be mired with cissexism and binarism. The polysexual orientations are a bit more free of these issues but bisexuality is prone to similar issues in its usages more than its actual structure. These orientations, the bedrock of the Alphabet Soup community’s sexuality section, are often directly at odds with trans identities in a relationship that is undoubtedly cissexist, cissupremacist, binarist and wholly discriminatory and bigoted. And yet, the sacredness of identity is used as a basis to enable this bigotry through strawman fallacies, oppression olympics and privileged whining not just in that example but in many others (which I’ll avoid hyperlinking since they involve radscum cissexist fuckwagons and I try not to make my readership vomit blood too often).

And that’s what it comes down to. Identity is so sacred to the community that even when one particular identity is ultimately damaging and harmful, props up systemic discrimination and even directly attacks other members of the community, those elements are ignored and people will pretend that it is a simple question of accommodation or identity policing.

Let’s be entirely clear, identity policing isn’t good. But neither is propping up bigotry. So what to do? Should we drop the sacredness of identity? Ignore bigoted identities in order to protect all the others? Luckily I’m not one to subscribe to false dilemmas. Neither option is necessary. What is required is a bit more of a thinking approach. Too often identity is treated in a kneejerk approach. It is considered the ultimate trump card and is reflexively protected with no thought as to what is actually being said, the best example being Carolyn above who utterly ignored the cissexism accusations and even admitted so:

[...]In this example, according to Ms Hope, one or the other has to redefine themselves; she prefers it to be the lesbian. (I’m sure there’s some unsupportable, emotionally heated, argument about “cis[sexual/gender] privilege” in there, somewhere.) [...]

-Carolyn Ann of CaroLINES

In fact, more often than not, the painfully awful quote above being a prime example again, the bigotry issue is ignored or dismissed entirely in the debate. This occurs with even heavier intensity and higher frequency when you’re dealing with a privileged party. If you remember the link on appropriation to http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com and simply follow their tumblr for a while you’ll notice the huge numbers of white people who ignore their white privilege involved in appropriation. Similarly, cis monosexual and polysexual individuals will immediately ignore their own cis privilege involved in the damage their identities do to trans people. Same with binary individuals and nonbinary/genderqueer folk harmed by their (the binary ones) identities.

It becomes fairly obvious that many people will use the sacrosanct status of identity as a shield to protect their own bigotry or engage in apologism for the bigotry of others. And those that don’t will still follow the reflex reaction of defending identity even when that identity is hopelessly toxic and built on a giant pile of bigotry.

But if bigotry is used as a red flag in an identity discussion, allowing for this reflex of unthinking protectiveness to cease for a moment it makes it so identity being sacred is no longer a problem. When the possibility is raised that a given identity has bigotry issues, if people step back for a second and don’t go into ID IS SACRED RAAAAAAGE mode, that one serious flaw in this method of protecting identity becomes null. It is bypassed and allows us to combat the enabling of oppression through identity fully, instead of becoming enablers ourselves in our zealous (and for the most part, positive) attempts to stop identity policing.

Many of us push ourselves. Hard. The things we fight for are precious and denied us so easily, so effortlessly. The pain and suffering we face is awful. Oppression is no joke. It shatters lives. So we fight, battle, educate, speak out and work to fix society or even break it and replace it. And then at the end of the day, we take some time to rest, tend our wounds of the body, mind and soul and wait for the next fight, the next goal, the next set of ignorant people.

Well, not all of us.

There’s no doubt that pain is an element in our motivations. And for some it even becomes a dangerous driving force. With me, it’s less of a fight or flight response making every battle a pitched and dangerous one and more of an entirely different effect from the same basic causes.

It’s no news to anyone that I deal with depression and anxiety and that I have issues with self harm. I work hard not to claw myself and do other forms of physical injury to me. I also try to avoid alcohol and drug use to a self harming point. I don’t succeed every time but I try in all of those areas. I thought I took good care of myself, as well as I could, but I was wrong.

Despite my own advice otherwise, I not only engage with trolls, I’m known for tangling with them. I’ve felt the effects of Anger Toxicity more than once and no doubt the constant toll of fighting every battle I can possibly see or encounter does damage as well. I realize now that keeping myself at this state of readiness always, entering into pointless or even worthless fights (like those with trolls) and pushing myself past the point of reason or function has worsened my situation intensely.

But this isn’t just a case of activist burnout. This isn’t just a case of poor self care. This is consistent. Not isolated. A frequent and chronic issue. And I’m starting to steadily realize that I’m subconsciously doing it purposefully.

I turned activism into another way of making myself bleed.

The most dangerous self harm is the one you can justify. The one you can rationalize so well that you don’t even see it as self harm. That you see it as a necessity. I never recognized how often the pain I put myself in, the burnout, the emotional harm from the insults and attacks slung my way had the same effects, emotionally and mentally, as the clawing, the heavy abusive drinking and other methods of self harm. Recognition is definitely one of the hardest parts though. Denial defined this situation for me and now I actually have an opportunity to change this.

I’m just not sure how. The purpose of this post is twofold. One, it’s to warn you of what I’m facing and showing the signs of it so that those who are facing similar can also address it. And two, it’s to announce a hiatus, effective immediately in order to enable me to rethink how I handle activism and how I handle self care. One post remains in the queue, it will come out both here and at TSC. I will likely be on tumblr occasionally but not for activism purposes, same with twitter.

I will also take guest posts while I am gone.

Anyone can contact me using my email but I will largely be avoiding this work until I can find a way to avoid hurting myself with it. Once I do that, I’ll return and continue my activism, in improved ways.

I think this is an important first step in that. Because right now I’m stepping away from activism to take care of myself. A thing I haven’t been able to do in a very long time.

Recently I was asked to review a product from TheirToys.com Sex Toys. After all I do write about sex a lot so I am probably fairly well suited to do this sort of review. After some discussion with their representative I decided to review the Screaming O FingO from (obviously) Screaming O. Specifically the wavy textured one. The product was sent to me for free as thanks for doing the review (and for the publicity that reviews give no matter how they go, of course).

First impressions were favorable. It was compact, light and the squishy waterproof coating covered everything but the back part with the button. Built for easy hiding and quick washing, perfect for a shared home or apartment where you don’t want your flatmates knowing your sexual nature. Or at least you don’t want them having any visible evidence.

The coating was excellent in and of itself. Soft and squishy but firm past a certain point, it gave me the illusion that my fingers were just going to sink into it (but they never did). I had a little bit of trouble with the finger loop at first, mostly because it really sticks to the skin when it is stretched by pressure, but once my finger was all the way in the FingO was a snug and comfortable fit. This was when it being so light really became a giant boon. It felt like little more than a small ring’s worth of weight. Which really helped prevent both finger and hand fatigue during usage (always a concern for masturbation and sex).

The vibration itself is triggered by a small button on the back of the vibe. Pressing it in a small bit will cause it to vibrate until you remove your finger (I can’t say if that’s a feature or if I’m just bad at buttons) and pressing it in deep will click it on until you press the button again all the way. It was a bit of a low key vibration, not very strong, which had both advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage of the low vibration level was how much it cut down on the noise the FingO made. Compared to other vibrators I’ve experienced, the audibility of the FingO is a lot lower. This makes it an effective shared apartment or house sort of toy, where waking people up to the noise of vibration is usually a bad thing. The primary disadvantage is that unless you have a ton of sensitivity, it takes a lot longer and is a lot more difficult to reach orgasm using the FingO. That being said, the wavy texture really made up for the low vibration in terms of sensations. The feeling of the wave protrusions really helped to accentuate the vibration, the coating they were made from having just the right amount of flex and give for their purpose. It was very pleasurable, especially on the nipples and areolas.

So, conclusions. FingO is a lowkey, subtle and easily hidden vibe, good for endurance and while the low vibration might be a bit tougher for low sensation people, the wavy texture of the coating more than makes up for that. I was pretty impressed. Definitely worth having as a supplementary vibe and if you’ve got good sensitivity it can easily be your primary “buzzer”.

I recently read an article from Julia Serano that filled me with dismay. Not just the article itself but the whole debate about bisexuality and how no one really comprehends the actual issue.

For those who have a deep phobia of hyperlinks (or a really shitty computer, like me), it was an attempt to defend bisexuality from accusations of enforcing the gender binary. Mostly by spouting male/female essentialism (which is pretty cissexist in and of itself and hell, even sexist) and then using it as a descriptor of how there’s a difference in her treatment by society depending on her partner, which is fairly problematic since it’s pulling labeling from a heterosexist, cissexist and binarist society. Never do that. It’s a bad call.  Also, shock and awe y’all, this happens with any polysexuality, including pansexuality. It’s not a good reason under any light.

But this isn’t a fisk of her article. Because really, she’s defending bisexuality from a giant strawman fallacy dropped by her just as wrong opponents. I’ve discussed the concept of cissexism and binarism within gay, lesbian and etc labeling before but I haven’t tackled bisexuality’s rather unique situation as of yet and handled the topic in a more general fashion. So today I’m sliding on my details hat and going full steam into what about bisexuality is the binarism and cissexism issue and what isn’t.

See, the thing about bisexuality that everyone forgets (sometimes even bisexuals) is that it is a sexual orientation wherein you are attracted to two gender groups. Just two. It says nothing more than that. Bi-sexual. And in and of itself, being attracted to just two gender groups is not binarist, cissexist, sexist or anything. So bisexuality, as a simple, base level sexuality, is not in any way, shape or form, binarist or cissexist.

So where does that binarism and cissexism come into play? Because there is absolutely no doubt that there is binarism and cissexism in play in bisexuality. It comes up every day, same as with the monosexual orientations. You may think I’m contradicting myself but I’m really not. Bisexuality becomes binarist and cissexist because people structure assumptions around it, put it into positions it doesn’t belong and add things to the definition that make it a problem. For instance, Serano’s assumption that bisexual (a word about genders) is related to sex and that sex is male and female only, that is cissexist and binarist. And that poisons her usage of bisexual as a term.

Bisexuality gets run through the meat grinder of social bullshit pretty hard. People will attach the biological essentialism to it and that’s certainly bad but it gets even worse when you realize something very important about bisexuality and genders.

Bisexuality can just as easily describe an attraction to only say, agender folk and women as it can only men and women.

That’s right, bisexuality is just an attraction to only two gender groups. Any two. If I was attracted just agender folks and menz, I would be just as bisexual as Julia Serano would for being into men and women. Especially if the formulation of my attraction to agender and bigender folks was different for each of them, like hers is for men and for women. So why is this realization also a revelation about bisexuality that is unpleasant and negative? Because if you think about it a bit, you’ll notice that people equate bisexuality with an attraction to only men and women. And that is binarist. Fully and completely. Not only that, but it’s also sexuality policing. That’s right, by only associating bisexuality with an attraction to men and women you erase and police those bisexuals who are attracted to another combination of two genders. It’s not just damaging to nonbinary gender people but to other bisexuals.

Another element that poisons bisexuality, the bisexual community and the discourse of bisexuality with binarism (and actually sexuality policing as well) is the utter erasure of other forms of polysexuality. Because let’s face it, pansexuality is attraction regardless of gender. It means that any gender is in (and implicitly claims that the attractions are not different at all between genders for a pansexual). This does not cover people who are attracted to men, women and agender people or women, agender people and one type of mixed form people (two examples of trisexuality) or people who are attracted two types of mixed form people, agender people and men (an example of quadsexuality) or… well you get the idea. You see, there’s more than one sexuality between two and all/regardless. There’s three, four, five, six, etc up to the number of genders that exist. But bisexuality is essentially used as a label umbrella for all of those other sexualities (if people even acknowledge their existence, which is rare.) What happens is, instead of recognizing that biphobia is actually a form of monosexism and bisexuality one simple form of polysexuality, bisexuality replaces polysexuality as the label for non monosexual orientations and biphobia is equated to polysexuality. This erasure is destructive to these other sexualities and centers bisexuality as the only polysexual option beyond pansexuality (which many bisexuals even approach in a bigoted fashion) which creates binarism within bisexuality.

So people on both of the major sides of this debate on bisexuality and binarism are both engaging in binarism, cissexism, erasure and are just flat out wrong. Bisexuality doesn’t enforce the binary and cissexism, the erasing way it is used to mean polysexual, the way essentialism is spilled into it and the way it is policed to only be about men and women does.

And those are the problems all of us, not just the bisexual and polysexual communities, need to solve.

Ever since I started transition, ever since I even started to explore my dissonance, people have walked all over me. People have hurt me, used me, fucked me over and said horrible things about me and the other women like me.

When I started blogging, when I raised my voice approximately a year and a half ago, even more people spewed their hateful bullshit on me. And even more people spewed more subtle transmisogyny at me. Little things but they wore me down never the less.

I’ve talked about activism and some of the limitations we face IF we want to change things ourselves before. But I’m not talking about activism right now. I’m talking about survival.

Because every single time someone calls trans women drama queens or hysterical, even in jest, even to make a point, it invokes transmisogyny and it wounds us. Every time a feminist speculates about whether we should be allowed into the bathrooms of our gender it wounds us. Every time people doubt the existence of nonbinary/genderqueer people it wounds them. Every time a lesbian calls herself a lesbian when dating a trans guy who fully views himself as a man, she wounds him. Every time someone calls a trans woman a trap without express permission from her, they wound her.

Every little fucking thing that people who call themselves allies, friends, family, loved ones, whatever, every subtle transphobic, cissexist, binarist, transmisogynistic and cissupremacist these people do, it wounds one of us and sometimes all of us.

And we are asked to sit down. We are asked not to be harsh. To educate. To accept apologies, whether they’re apologetic for the actions or simply apologetic to have been caught. We’re asked to be kind. We’re asked to suck up. To appease.

Activism requires sacrifices. But we… I, can not be an activist forever. I can’t even do it most of the week. Most of the day. Most of an hour. A significant portion of the year. I can not sacrifice my dignity, my health, my well being and my safety for activism.

A lot of people in a lot of places reacted heavily to the AMO post about call outs. They believed I told them that they had to educate people. Had to be effective. Had to make change. This is wrong. When we take the torch of activism, we make change. Then we have to be effective, then we have to make sacrifices. But who says we have to take the torch of activism? And who says that even if we do, we have to take it permanently or even for long periods at a time?

No one does. Not even me.

Self care comes first. Survival comes first. And I will not sacrifice those. I understand the need for change and education. I understand the fact that without our efforts, the privileged cis majority will never ever ever not in a million years, give us the rights and social acceptance we need to be safe. But I also understand that becoming a casualty to them, catering to their ignorance, to their bullshit, to their pigheaded bigotry, is unacceptable.

It will always be unacceptable.

That is the dilemma we face. The untenable extremes are to allow cissupremacy to reign free and destroy us slowly (but survive for now) or go out in a blaze of glory as we tear it apart (destroying ourselves in the process. But it’s a false dilemma. Many of us find balance. And that’s what everyone, the cis apologists in our midst, the career Nukers, the Appeaser activists who run till they burn out, the raging radicals and various groups and blogs like ONTD_feminism, FWD, The Spectrum Cafe, Questioning Transphobia, Flip Flopping Joy, myself and many others have been having so much trouble articulating or understanding.

There are right ways to do activism (ways that work) but no one has to do activism and no one has to do it all the time. I do activism because I want to. That is the only acceptable reason. Because I want to make a difference for more trans folk than just me and only concentrating on my survival doesn’t do that. But when my survival comes up, when I am in pain or burning out, I can walk away from activism, because my survival is more important. I can take breaks. I can do things that don’t aid the cause but aid me. Because the cause is to help people like me. And if we’re all dying and being harmed for these cis fuckheads then the cause is not being upheld.

Sometimes I am not here to help the cause. Sometimes I will tell you to fuck off instead of educating you, even if you’re sincere. Sometimes I will walk away because it hurts too much and I am not your fucking vending machine.

I am human. And I hurt. And I can’t be an activist all the time for you. I can’t do it and frankly, you don’t deserve it.

I can’t.

And I fucking won’t.

And let’s be clear, if you’re just looking to kick privileged people in the face or vent and express frustration, you’re not doing activism. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it is what it is. And as an important note, since people don’t grasp this, /you don’t have to do activism/. At all. Ever. You are not required to.

And even if you aren’t doing activism, the call out can also be dangerous to other marginalized people. For instance, if you trigger an attack in someone with an anxiety disorder because you wanted to call them out, you’re being ableist and deserve the same harsh response. There is absolutely no excuse to be bigoted in a call out. None. At. All. And that is the main concentration of my post.

Let me know if there’s any other sources of confusion in the post ~KH

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I’m sure we’re all familiar with the activist community privilege or bigotry “call out”.

For those that aren’t, it is a method for either revealing privileged, bigoted or problematic behaviors to others publicly or to attempt to reveal to an individual their own mistakes and hopefully trigger some accountability. It generally involves some sort of verbal response to the actions (or written for online) that not only outlines what was done wrong but also why it was wrong, along with the expectation of some sort of retraction and even possibly an apology (I personally never ask for apologies, just retractions, because apologies often become an excuse to beat oneself up and look good through self flagellation, or alternately fauxpologies like apologizing for your target being offended, not for your actions). Call outs, structurally at least, are not conversational. They’re not really dialogue starters either. They are a public burst of information regarding a mistake made or a purposeful nasty action done and while they can trigger dialogue, they certainly aren’t a component of dialogue in and of themselves.

Call outs are a way to keep mainstream groups, individuals and small organizations on their toes about bigotry. They break the silencing that marginalized people (and sometimes the privileged people who have the basic human decency to help us/them out) are often encased in all throughout these venues and mediums. And they are exceptionally functional for dealing with entrenched privileged entitlement and bigotry, where dialogue becomes a simple derailing set of excuses or attempts to downplay the mistakes or awfulness done. Calling out is especially useful when dealing with trolls and the gotcha game players, where dialogue is a quick way to be turned into the meat to feed someone’s sadistic kicks or attempts to make an activist movement look foolish.

Calling out can be used by any activist but because of its less conversational nature it’s tougher for Appeaser archetypes to use effectively (See AMO Communication here for information on the archetypes). While Emoters and Logic Bombers will both use it equally (just with different styles) the most prominent user of the call out is the Nuker Archetype.

Now, and let’s not forget this, calling out is a tool. Like any tool it can be abused. It can be overused. And it can become broken. And as the culture of activism becomes more and more dependent upon the call out the anatomy of one has begun to evolve.

Are you starting to see where issues could arise?

Nukers alone are subject to some seriously dangerous pitfalls and you will notice that many of these pitfalls detailed in the aforelinked post are almost verbatim the same issues coming up again and again in call outs. But it isn’t the functionality of Nuker Methodology alone that is responsible for this. It’s a question of balance, which in the end was the entire reason behind writing the AMO series, to help activist communities achieve balance in methods.

Now, the anatomy of a call out is strongly linked with triggers and triggering language as well (and there has been some discussion on tumblr regarding it). I won’t go into too much depth on that, but certainly the concept of avoiding triggers often directly conflicts with the concept of calling out (as calling out is almost always a little bit confrontational and confrontation is often a major trigger for abuse survivors). A whole other post could be written about triggers in activism and the ableism of expecting people to just take it so I’ll step away from that for now.

Let’s get back to that balance thing.

A lot of people take the approach that the call out is bad because it “chases away allies.” I’m not gonna lie, I find the entire concept of an ally to be vile and revolting. Mostly because I think creating an above and beyond the call of duty label for people to just be decent human beings (which is what fighting oppression makes you) gives them more entitlement and a greater capacity to hold their efforts hostage to influence us. So certainly, while people may find call outs to be harsh, harshness is not, in and of itself, ever a good reason to abandon social activism. So the loss of “allies” (I hate that word) is really not the operative issue here and should not be concentrated on at all. Anyone who leaves social activism because someone pissed them off or hurt them from that group is a stereotyping scumbag and should indeed die in a fire. I hold by that.

So if the call out becoming the primary focus of activist culture isn’t bad because we’re jabbing “allies” then why is it? Well, look back at the Nuker pitfalls. Call outs can and often do invoke Overzealous Strike, Hypocritical Privilege Invocation and are just as subject to the risks of Bad Intel as any Nuker method (and in fact are at greater risk since they tend to be a rapid fire method, that one can do immediately, sometimes without adequate research). Just like an activist group should not only have one extreme archetype (not even mixtures), neither should an entire movement center itself around one method. And the issues go past the Nuker pitfalls. Ranging from becoming a ritualization of the call out and apology that destroys sincerity, becoming a dialogue destroying influence, being used even in situations where a dialogue is a massive necessity (and a call out would be inappropriate) or being applied in swarm fashion, creating a mob that (ironically) behaves very similarly to the power mobs that abuse and attack marginalized people. And of course, the greatest issue of all, the loss of the actual purpose of activism, to rebuild the world into something viable, in favor of only destroying it. I’ve always said to anarchists I know, “Okay, you wanna break down society completely so it can be replaced. But are you actually building anything to replace it? That’s kind of important.”

Same applies here.

If you burn down a section of rot and disease in a forest, you do actually have to replant the trees in the spots you burned, or you’re really not doing anything useful. And calling out does not involve any rebuilding. It is reactionary, a tool designed to reveal and pressure, only useful in the context of the entire repertoire of activist methods. And I mean the entire repertoire. Like creating dialogue around the call out (using the situation the call out was used for as a subject), Appeasers coming in and playing good cop to the bad cop of the caller outer, offshoot posts extending off the topic of the call out into other zones and using it to foster further dialogue, and offshoot posts discussing the topic in an abstract fashion applicable to all zones of kyriarchy.

If it is just a call out, a simple call out by itself, then you have failed in the central aim of activism. Because the aim of activism isn’t revenge. The aim of activism isn’t getting an apology. The aim of activism isn’t upsetting those in privilege (that’s just a side effect). The aim of activism is to make change. And calling out is one single, very limited tool and it cannot and will not create change on its own. We don’t try to cut down trees by shooting them with a handgun. Why are we trying to use call outs alone to fix the world?

Some of the aforelinked posts have recommended abolishing the callout. I don’t agree with that. And this is as someone who has previously made mistakes with call outs of the very type described here and been struck by those same mistakes from others. What I do recommend is that the call out be returned to its proper place. As a small level tool, part of a wide range of methods that activists use, used in conjunction with other methodologies and only used in situations where it will have the maximum impact on creating social change. I won’t deny us the tools we need to fight oppression. But I will expect those tools be used appropriately, thoughtfully and not abusively.

That shouldn’t be an unfair expectation. Or an uncommon one.

Further reading:
A collection of links on calling out and triggers at Flip Flopping Joy
NPFP: When Activism Becomes Bloodlust on RaisingBoychick