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anarchismus queeren
anarchismus queeren führt nicht nur in queere und anarchistische Theorien ein, sondern zeigt darüber hinaus, wie beide Strömungen ihre jeweiligen Theorien zusammendenken können und somit für einander fruchtbar werden.
Die Bandbreite der Beiträge reicht von theoretischen Diskussionen bis hin zu persönlichen Geschichten. Inhaltlich drehen sie sich um Ökonomie, Behinderung, Politik, soziale Strukturen, sexuelle Praktiken und zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen. Die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten, die im Konzept des Queerens liegen, werden ebenso beleuchtet, wie dominante, weitestgehend heteronormative Deutungsweisen und Identitäten auf den Kopf gestellt werden.
Was bedeutet es, die Welt um uns herum zu queeren? anarchismus queeren macht deutlich, dass sich das Konzept des Queerens nicht darin erschöpft, persönliche Vorlieben in Identitätspolitiken auszubuchstabieren. Vielmehr legen die Autor*innen dar, wie die Zusammenführung anarchistischer und queerer Ansätze eine völlig neue Sicht auf die Welt ermöglicht.
»Dass sich die beiden Formen der Herrschaftskritik besonders gut zum gegenseitigem Erzeugen von Synergien eignen, zeigte sich in der Praxis schon des längeren. Die Überschneidung subkultureller Szenen, die Existenz von Veranstaltungen, Organisationen und Orten mit queeren wie anarchistischen Ansprüchen und oder Akteur_innen ist aus linkem Aktivismus lange nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die Erscheinung dieses Sammelbands ist folglich schlicht so folgerichtig wie erfreulich.« Jens Kastner, Hannahlisa Kunyik, springerin, XIX, Heft 3, Sommer 2013
Die Bandbreite der Beiträge reicht von theoretischen Diskussionen bis hin zu persönlichen Geschichten. Inhaltlich drehen sie sich um Ökonomie, Behinderung, Politik, soziale Strukturen, sexuelle Praktiken und zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen. Die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten, die im Konzept des Queerens liegen, werden ebenso beleuchtet, wie dominante, weitestgehend heteronormative Deutungsweisen und Identitäten auf den Kopf gestellt werden.
Was bedeutet es, die Welt um uns herum zu queeren? anarchismus queeren macht deutlich, dass sich das Konzept des Queerens nicht darin erschöpft, persönliche Vorlieben in Identitätspolitiken auszubuchstabieren. Vielmehr legen die Autor*innen dar, wie die Zusammenführung anarchistischer und queerer Ansätze eine völlig neue Sicht auf die Welt ermöglicht.
»Dass sich die beiden Formen der Herrschaftskritik besonders gut zum gegenseitigem Erzeugen von Synergien eignen, zeigte sich in der Praxis schon des längeren. Die Überschneidung subkultureller Szenen, die Existenz von Veranstaltungen, Organisationen und Orten mit queeren wie anarchistischen Ansprüchen und oder Akteur_innen ist aus linkem Aktivismus lange nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die Erscheinung dieses Sammelbands ist folglich schlicht so folgerichtig wie erfreulich.« Jens Kastner, Hannahlisa Kunyik, springerin, XIX, Heft 3, Sommer 2013
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 2013
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February 10, 2013
[this is a short review that may be expanded at a later date]: the worst parts of this volume (and they are legitimately wretched] is the resurfacing of anarcho-communism as a conceptual framework to understand struggles (it's not like i shouldn't expect this from AK press, but i still feel the ok with calling a dying and obsolete system odious) specifically in "Radical Queers and Class Struggle: A Match to Be Made" (Gayge Operaista) or reproducing work that has been literally done thousands of times in the queer community (specifically the queer anarchist community) while acting like it is new (queer prison abolition, polyamory, etc.). The downer to this volume is if you are versed in Queer Theory/Anarchism it will not really offer you anything new and actually sets the dial back a few years on dialogs and actively ignores relevant materials (esp. stuff from Bash Back! Queer Ultraviolence [if not the group itself], Baeden: A Journal of Queer Nihilism, Pink & Black Attack 1-6, etc.), uncharitably, you could assume that it is because such materials break with the sort of anarcho-liberal syndicalist politics of AK press as a whole, but maybe that is just cynical.
As positives: "Queer-Cripping Anarchism: Intersections and Reflections on Anarchism, Queerness, and Dis-Ability" (Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, & AJ Withers), "Straightness Must Be Destroyed" (Saffo Papantonopoulou), "Anarchy, BDSM, and Consent-based Culture" (Hexe) are all really good, although not maybe my cup of tea.
As positives: "Queer-Cripping Anarchism: Intersections and Reflections on Anarchism, Queerness, and Dis-Ability" (Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, & AJ Withers), "Straightness Must Be Destroyed" (Saffo Papantonopoulou), "Anarchy, BDSM, and Consent-based Culture" (Hexe) are all really good, although not maybe my cup of tea.
February 28, 2020
it’s difficult to rate/review anthologies bc of the nature of them. but this is pretty hit or miss — some essays I really enjoyed and made me think, while others made me deeply uncomfortable (for example, the “not-straight heterosexual cisgender woman” using the t-slur...). Some of the pieces seemed like repetition of things that’re very basic to anarcha-queer politics, while some present underrepresented ideas that I loved. I really liked the discussions of BDSM & kink as says to view and play with larger power dynamics, and I definitely liked the essay including disability as well. however, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be comfortable with the notion of “queering heterosexuality,” and i think that for now at least, cishets need to learn to stay in their place when it comes to queer politics.
June 27, 2023
when your favorite essay in a collection is the most hated/criticized by reviewers 🥴
“queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.”
content/trigger warnings; discussions of homophobia, transphobia, hiv/aids, racism, ableism, colonization, slavery, sexual violence, misogyny, sexism, legal discrimination, sex, drug use, amatonormativity, ageism, war, police, prison, ableism, medical abuse, intersex-phobia,
the concept of anarchism and what it stands for is not new to me, but i’ve never actually read a book about it, and man am i conflicted. i agree with breaking down borders, binaries, hierarchies, and opposing all kinds of bigotry and oppression. but sometimes the approach doesn’t feel realistic or practical (or even present) to me. these authors paint a picture of a utopia and the fact is that we don’t live there, so what do we do in the meantime while trying to get there? just accept that we have no social and legal standing, rights, protections, benefits, etc.? even though history has showed that we can make improvements for a better life under the currents systems in place? we should just be left floundering with zero help, all because you don’t like where the help is coming from? why can’t we accept the help while still aiming for that utopia? why does it have to be all or nothing?
and if you’re going to be slamming queer people for doing x, y, and z just to be able to survive or make their lives easier/safer, then you need to have better options for them, material ways for them to get that same survival, safety, and ease through different means. when queer people are actually fighting for their lives and creating change that is materially bettering the lives of queer people, who are you to criticize them for that just because you don’t like their approach? how are your ideas about a utopia actually improving queer people’s lived realities? you can expand their minds with “self-reflection and political analysis through an anarchist lens,” but what is that doing for their access to resources or protections, for example?
i discuss all of this again in regard to same gender marriage specifically in a bit, but before we get into that, let’s talk about the things i like, because there are lots of them. such as, the conceptualization of queer as an anti-identity and a word that can be played with, queer encompassing more than just same gender sex (such as bdsm/kink, nonmonogamy, and sex work), not creating new hierarchies and binaries or oppression olympics within the queer community, advocating not for the abolition of gender but for self-determination (including body alterations) and freedom from coercive gender assignment, embracing pleasure and autonomy and self-determination, warning against positioning the mainstream lgbt community as the “bad guys”, we must fight loudly for inclusion and self-representation, criticizing how sexuality is seen as something to be studied under a western/medical/biological model,
calling out how even in radical queer/trans spaces accepting someone’s own self-identification at face value without needing proof isn’t always put into practice, urging against dismissing popular culture as it circulates and reinforces many values that are seen as “normal” and “natural”, marriage shouldn’t be legally/economically/socially privileged above others relationships, abuse happens in every industry not just the sex industry and to act like women can’t choose to work in the sex industry but can in other industries is offensive and condescending, drawing parallels between the history of homophobia and ableism as well as the approaches and conversations of queer and disabled activists, and treating anti-assimilation as not wanting to be like “the straights” is reductive and polices queer people’s desires and identities, among other things.
and i’m just gonna leave this quote in its entirety because it’s golden:
“also at that time, people said ‘treat your lovers like friends and your friends like lovers.’ we have a lot more expectations of lovers, we do a lot more processing about where the relationship is going, negotiating space, articulating needs, setting boundaries, expressing disappointment, etc. and sometimes we forget to have fun and just really enjoy the time we have together. we can be really harsh toward lovers, perhaps because we feel so vulnerable. that’s where we need to be better friends to our lovers. with friends we’re more likely to cut them some slack, to let things be a little more fluid. no big deal if they’re late, or miss a hang-out once in a while, for example. on the positive side, with lovers, we tend to do lots of special little things for them, like cooking their favorite food, making DIY zines or bringing them some little thing when we meet, something that says, i was thinking of you, something that shows we love them. along these lines, we need to be more loving to our friends, do more special things for them, go out on dates with them, make little heartfelt presents for them expressing how much we care. be more attentive to their needs, be supportive in day-to- day ways. treat them more like lovers.”
and that quote is from my favorite essay of the bunch, which, like i mentioned, is the one everyone hates: “queering heterosexuality” by sandra jeppesen. people seem to think the author is saying straight people are queer (on the basis of being straight) or can claim queerness or queer spaces, but jeppesen explicitly warns against this. by “queering” heterosexuality, jeppesen means to subvert, challenge, or change heterosexuality and heteronormativity, to “integrate queer ideas into our practices” and support queer struggles and work as allies to end queer oppression, not “heterosexualizing or heteronormativizing queer spaces, subjectivities, identities, ideas, theories” or “perform queer identities when it is convenient and then return to our heterosexual privilege unchanged or unchallenged by the experience.” jeppesen discusses various ways of queering heterosexuality, such as denouncing gender and sexuality scripts, challenging compulsory monogamy, treating friends like lovers and lovers like friends, creating a community that embraces non-normative parenting, building mutual aid, and embracing intimacy and emotional responsibility, among a plethora of other things. these are all things everyone should support, especially queer people, but because they can’t see beyond their (incorrect) belief that jeppesen is equating heterosexuality with queerness, they dismiss it.
another reason why i connect to this essay so much (aside from it breaking the typical “criticize what people are doing wrong instead of arguing what they could be doing” approach, of course) is how it’s written. something about the writing just clicks with me and reminds me of how i write. and it’s intentional. there’s a fascinating footnote about the writing choices made (all lowercase, “improper” grammar such as fragmented sentences, etc.), and how it’s part of a history of challenging standard orthography and the way texts are produced, valued, legitimated, and circulated; such as challenging the phallogocentric domination of textual representation, challenging the privileging of written word over oral traditions, denouncing pedagogical norms imposed upon schoolchildren, and disrupting the presumed relationship of the author being dominant over the reader. i find this so interesting and would take an essay on that alone.
and of course, there are other essays i like:
• “de-essentializing anarchist feminism: lessons from the transfeminist movement” by j. rogue
• “police at the borders” by abbey volcano
• “sex and the city: beyond liberal politics and toward holistic revolutionary practice” by diana c.s. becerra
• “queering our analysis of sex work: laying capitalism bare” by c.b. daring
• “queer-cripping anarchism: intersections and reflections on anarchism, queerness, and dis-ability” by liat ben-moshe, anthony j. nocella, and a.j. withers
• “anarchy, bdsm, and consent-based culture” by hexe
and now that bit about same gender marriage that i promised:
the “gay marriage set queers back” viewpoint isn’t one i mesh with. and the essay “gay marriage and queer love” by ryan conrad is just slamming and shaming queer folks for advocating for same-gender marriage, instead of advocating for the abolition of marriage. it has the standard “wanting to marry makes you a bad, assimilationist queer who doesn’t care about true equality or queer liberation” vibe that think pieces about this always have. conrad makes a comment that i find to be really horrific, about how in the ’80s queer people were fighting for health care rights but now queer people are fighting for the opposite by “insisting only those in state-mandated relationships are worthy of health care.” i think it’s foul to fault queer people for wanting to marry in direct comparison to a time when if queer people had been able to marry, many of them would not, on top of losing their loved ones, have been shut out of their loved ones’ health care and services. and to ignore that experience playing a part in why so many queer people want to be able to marry in your “analysis” of queers wanting to marry is disingenuous.
and you might be thinking, “well if certain rights, benefits, protections, etc. weren’t exclusive to state-mandated relationships, it wouldn’t have been an issue” and sure, but that’s not the world we live in. queer people trying to survive within the system that exists, under the circumstances of their current reality shouldn’t offend people. the fact of the matter is that same-gender marriage was a more realistic goal than marriage abolition. and i don’t think marriage abolition even needs to be the goal in order to address the issues raised in this essay. if we can expand marriage to include different gender configurations, then who is to say we can’t expand it further to include more than two people or disabled people without losing their benefits? and who is to say we can’t also expand the types of relationships that are not only included in marriage (such as non-romantic/sexual relationships), but also afforded the benefits of marriage (such as long term committed partners having social and legal standing, rights, protections, and benefits without being married)?
and the entire essay feels even more gross once you reach the end where conrad acknowledges that “presently many of our material lives depend on accessing resources through the very subject of our critique” and admits to having no answer on how to reconcile that. you spend the entire essay shitting on your fellow queers for wanting to marry, knowing that it’s the only way for them gain certain resources, but you don’t have any solution to offer them? any alternative options? you can sit here writing your slam pieces, oh excuse me, having your important conversations, but that’s all you have. whereas the queers you're attacking and looking down on are actually accomplishing something, which while not perfect or universal, is better than your nothing and can actually serve as a jumping off point for more actual material action and change.
some other notes:
• i wish there had been anything in here about the education system and that disability and ableism were more consistently taken into consideration
• some terms are mis-defined, wrongly equated, replaced with questionable substitutes, or their histories are slightly inaccurate
• i’m never gonna be a gun supporter so i’m not into telling queer folks to just get guns if they want protection
• queer folks wanting to be able to marry and wanting to join the military are put on the same level
• gender and sexuality labels/categorization are once described as “repressive and violent” which i very obviously don’t agree with
• the types of relationship dynamics, with open communication, negotiating, trust, etc., that are spoken of regarding polyamory aren’t exclusive to polyamory and while polyamory is a safe haven for people who monogamy doesn’t work for and who have been made to believe it was the only option, challenging and redefining what monogamy is and can be is another beneficial approach
• one author kind of implies that most cis people are cis because they haven’t “soul searched” and they’re just “people who go along with most things” and haven’t “challenged the norms of straightness” and are “playing into the dominant order of straightness” and that those who identify as straight are “people who have suppressed queerness” and i just....what lmfao some people just are straight or cis like it’s not that deep.
“queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.”
content/trigger warnings; discussions of homophobia, transphobia, hiv/aids, racism, ableism, colonization, slavery, sexual violence, misogyny, sexism, legal discrimination, sex, drug use, amatonormativity, ageism, war, police, prison, ableism, medical abuse, intersex-phobia,
the concept of anarchism and what it stands for is not new to me, but i’ve never actually read a book about it, and man am i conflicted. i agree with breaking down borders, binaries, hierarchies, and opposing all kinds of bigotry and oppression. but sometimes the approach doesn’t feel realistic or practical (or even present) to me. these authors paint a picture of a utopia and the fact is that we don’t live there, so what do we do in the meantime while trying to get there? just accept that we have no social and legal standing, rights, protections, benefits, etc.? even though history has showed that we can make improvements for a better life under the currents systems in place? we should just be left floundering with zero help, all because you don’t like where the help is coming from? why can’t we accept the help while still aiming for that utopia? why does it have to be all or nothing?
and if you’re going to be slamming queer people for doing x, y, and z just to be able to survive or make their lives easier/safer, then you need to have better options for them, material ways for them to get that same survival, safety, and ease through different means. when queer people are actually fighting for their lives and creating change that is materially bettering the lives of queer people, who are you to criticize them for that just because you don’t like their approach? how are your ideas about a utopia actually improving queer people’s lived realities? you can expand their minds with “self-reflection and political analysis through an anarchist lens,” but what is that doing for their access to resources or protections, for example?
i discuss all of this again in regard to same gender marriage specifically in a bit, but before we get into that, let’s talk about the things i like, because there are lots of them. such as, the conceptualization of queer as an anti-identity and a word that can be played with, queer encompassing more than just same gender sex (such as bdsm/kink, nonmonogamy, and sex work), not creating new hierarchies and binaries or oppression olympics within the queer community, advocating not for the abolition of gender but for self-determination (including body alterations) and freedom from coercive gender assignment, embracing pleasure and autonomy and self-determination, warning against positioning the mainstream lgbt community as the “bad guys”, we must fight loudly for inclusion and self-representation, criticizing how sexuality is seen as something to be studied under a western/medical/biological model,
calling out how even in radical queer/trans spaces accepting someone’s own self-identification at face value without needing proof isn’t always put into practice, urging against dismissing popular culture as it circulates and reinforces many values that are seen as “normal” and “natural”, marriage shouldn’t be legally/economically/socially privileged above others relationships, abuse happens in every industry not just the sex industry and to act like women can’t choose to work in the sex industry but can in other industries is offensive and condescending, drawing parallels between the history of homophobia and ableism as well as the approaches and conversations of queer and disabled activists, and treating anti-assimilation as not wanting to be like “the straights” is reductive and polices queer people’s desires and identities, among other things.
and i’m just gonna leave this quote in its entirety because it’s golden:
“also at that time, people said ‘treat your lovers like friends and your friends like lovers.’ we have a lot more expectations of lovers, we do a lot more processing about where the relationship is going, negotiating space, articulating needs, setting boundaries, expressing disappointment, etc. and sometimes we forget to have fun and just really enjoy the time we have together. we can be really harsh toward lovers, perhaps because we feel so vulnerable. that’s where we need to be better friends to our lovers. with friends we’re more likely to cut them some slack, to let things be a little more fluid. no big deal if they’re late, or miss a hang-out once in a while, for example. on the positive side, with lovers, we tend to do lots of special little things for them, like cooking their favorite food, making DIY zines or bringing them some little thing when we meet, something that says, i was thinking of you, something that shows we love them. along these lines, we need to be more loving to our friends, do more special things for them, go out on dates with them, make little heartfelt presents for them expressing how much we care. be more attentive to their needs, be supportive in day-to- day ways. treat them more like lovers.”
and that quote is from my favorite essay of the bunch, which, like i mentioned, is the one everyone hates: “queering heterosexuality” by sandra jeppesen. people seem to think the author is saying straight people are queer (on the basis of being straight) or can claim queerness or queer spaces, but jeppesen explicitly warns against this. by “queering” heterosexuality, jeppesen means to subvert, challenge, or change heterosexuality and heteronormativity, to “integrate queer ideas into our practices” and support queer struggles and work as allies to end queer oppression, not “heterosexualizing or heteronormativizing queer spaces, subjectivities, identities, ideas, theories” or “perform queer identities when it is convenient and then return to our heterosexual privilege unchanged or unchallenged by the experience.” jeppesen discusses various ways of queering heterosexuality, such as denouncing gender and sexuality scripts, challenging compulsory monogamy, treating friends like lovers and lovers like friends, creating a community that embraces non-normative parenting, building mutual aid, and embracing intimacy and emotional responsibility, among a plethora of other things. these are all things everyone should support, especially queer people, but because they can’t see beyond their (incorrect) belief that jeppesen is equating heterosexuality with queerness, they dismiss it.
another reason why i connect to this essay so much (aside from it breaking the typical “criticize what people are doing wrong instead of arguing what they could be doing” approach, of course) is how it’s written. something about the writing just clicks with me and reminds me of how i write. and it’s intentional. there’s a fascinating footnote about the writing choices made (all lowercase, “improper” grammar such as fragmented sentences, etc.), and how it’s part of a history of challenging standard orthography and the way texts are produced, valued, legitimated, and circulated; such as challenging the phallogocentric domination of textual representation, challenging the privileging of written word over oral traditions, denouncing pedagogical norms imposed upon schoolchildren, and disrupting the presumed relationship of the author being dominant over the reader. i find this so interesting and would take an essay on that alone.
and of course, there are other essays i like:
• “de-essentializing anarchist feminism: lessons from the transfeminist movement” by j. rogue
• “police at the borders” by abbey volcano
• “sex and the city: beyond liberal politics and toward holistic revolutionary practice” by diana c.s. becerra
• “queering our analysis of sex work: laying capitalism bare” by c.b. daring
• “queer-cripping anarchism: intersections and reflections on anarchism, queerness, and dis-ability” by liat ben-moshe, anthony j. nocella, and a.j. withers
• “anarchy, bdsm, and consent-based culture” by hexe
and now that bit about same gender marriage that i promised:
the “gay marriage set queers back” viewpoint isn’t one i mesh with. and the essay “gay marriage and queer love” by ryan conrad is just slamming and shaming queer folks for advocating for same-gender marriage, instead of advocating for the abolition of marriage. it has the standard “wanting to marry makes you a bad, assimilationist queer who doesn’t care about true equality or queer liberation” vibe that think pieces about this always have. conrad makes a comment that i find to be really horrific, about how in the ’80s queer people were fighting for health care rights but now queer people are fighting for the opposite by “insisting only those in state-mandated relationships are worthy of health care.” i think it’s foul to fault queer people for wanting to marry in direct comparison to a time when if queer people had been able to marry, many of them would not, on top of losing their loved ones, have been shut out of their loved ones’ health care and services. and to ignore that experience playing a part in why so many queer people want to be able to marry in your “analysis” of queers wanting to marry is disingenuous.
and you might be thinking, “well if certain rights, benefits, protections, etc. weren’t exclusive to state-mandated relationships, it wouldn’t have been an issue” and sure, but that’s not the world we live in. queer people trying to survive within the system that exists, under the circumstances of their current reality shouldn’t offend people. the fact of the matter is that same-gender marriage was a more realistic goal than marriage abolition. and i don’t think marriage abolition even needs to be the goal in order to address the issues raised in this essay. if we can expand marriage to include different gender configurations, then who is to say we can’t expand it further to include more than two people or disabled people without losing their benefits? and who is to say we can’t also expand the types of relationships that are not only included in marriage (such as non-romantic/sexual relationships), but also afforded the benefits of marriage (such as long term committed partners having social and legal standing, rights, protections, and benefits without being married)?
and the entire essay feels even more gross once you reach the end where conrad acknowledges that “presently many of our material lives depend on accessing resources through the very subject of our critique” and admits to having no answer on how to reconcile that. you spend the entire essay shitting on your fellow queers for wanting to marry, knowing that it’s the only way for them gain certain resources, but you don’t have any solution to offer them? any alternative options? you can sit here writing your slam pieces, oh excuse me, having your important conversations, but that’s all you have. whereas the queers you're attacking and looking down on are actually accomplishing something, which while not perfect or universal, is better than your nothing and can actually serve as a jumping off point for more actual material action and change.
some other notes:
• i wish there had been anything in here about the education system and that disability and ableism were more consistently taken into consideration
• some terms are mis-defined, wrongly equated, replaced with questionable substitutes, or their histories are slightly inaccurate
• i’m never gonna be a gun supporter so i’m not into telling queer folks to just get guns if they want protection
• queer folks wanting to be able to marry and wanting to join the military are put on the same level
• gender and sexuality labels/categorization are once described as “repressive and violent” which i very obviously don’t agree with
• the types of relationship dynamics, with open communication, negotiating, trust, etc., that are spoken of regarding polyamory aren’t exclusive to polyamory and while polyamory is a safe haven for people who monogamy doesn’t work for and who have been made to believe it was the only option, challenging and redefining what monogamy is and can be is another beneficial approach
• one author kind of implies that most cis people are cis because they haven’t “soul searched” and they’re just “people who go along with most things” and haven’t “challenged the norms of straightness” and are “playing into the dominant order of straightness” and that those who identify as straight are “people who have suppressed queerness” and i just....what lmfao some people just are straight or cis like it’s not that deep.
July 27, 2023
You can check this book out (after I return it) from the LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library, or get it online FREE from the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...
One of the top ten books of 2023 I think. Usually, it takes me awhile to get through an anthology—there are such good stopping points that I just leave them for awhile and come back. This one took me three days. And busy fucking days at that! So that says something about how important this book is to me.
I’m going to go through some of the interesting and important notes I took while reading this book, organize them by theme, and then spit them out to you as a review.
To start: Research projects! Oh my god, there were so many things I tagged in this book as “Research further”. Whether it was because I wanted to learn more about a thing or fact check some information that astounded me, I marked a lot as information I wanted to know. So:
Some organizations that I want to explore: “Bash Back!”; “Black and Pink”; “Queers Without Borders”; “Gay Shame”; “Jacks of Color”; “AIDS Prevention Action League”; “The Audre Lorde Project” and “Safe Outside the System”; “Out of Control Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners”; “Pink Panthers”; “Men Against Sexism in Walla Walla Prison”; “The George Jackson Brigade”; “Rainbow Flags for Mumia”; “The Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project”; “Write to Win Collective”; “Cop Watch”.
Historic events: “The Battle of Seattle, 1999”; “Occupy Wallstreet”; “Artgasm Big Bang Party for Radical Queers”; Anti-G20 organizing in Toronto in 2010.
Idea and ideals: Renunciation of Marriage, Children as an oppressed group, Health care through marriage? How Health Care is dealt with for people with disabilities and marriage, Public “Indecency” laws and origins and the policing of queer sex, what parts of our lifestyles have been shaped by laws and what have been shaped by human nature?, Dualism and Gender, Dualism generally, Origins of Gift Economies, Abolition and a Concrete Utopia, Ressentiment, Models of Community Accountability Programs.
Books and articles: Marriage and Love by Emma Goldman; “Against Equality, in Maine and Everywhere” by Ryan Conrad; On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche; Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici; “Indigenous Feminism without Apology” by Andrea Smith; “Fantasies of an Anarchist Sex Educator” by Jamie Heckert; Anarchism and Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships, and Power edited by Jamie Heckert and R. Cleminson; “Theoretical Polyamory: Some Thoughts on Loving, Thinking, and Queering Anarchism” by D. Shannon and A. Willis; “The Conversation of the Modest” by Ursula K. Le Guin; Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred; “Unnatural Passions?: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology” by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands; “Anarchism, Geography, and Queer Space-making: Building Bridges Over Chasms We Create” by Farhang Rouhani; The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt;
People: Kuwasi Balagoon, José Esteba Muñoz
Beyond research, I also found myself itching to make a zine about Anarchism, and I think this review is a beginning for that idea. I want to focus on the ideals of anarchism, what it is, what it’s thought to be, and its freedom of thought. There really is no set definition I guess, and people can be anarchists in any way, so that’s something else for me to think of in creating a zine. I want to focus some things on Emma Goldman because there is an Emma Goldman clinic in Iowa City, but beyond that I don’t totally know where to go. I just have a lot of reading to do and thoughts to think.
Quotes came up too. Some that were so jarring that I needed to highlight them:
“So anarchists do, in fact, embody a destructive urge—an urge to end domination, to smash power over others, to destroy the means through which working people are robbed and exploited.” P. 8 in “Queer meet Anarchism, Anarchism meet Queer” by editors.
“Whereas a state-oriented LGBT politics tries to challenge the hierarchies of hetero/homo, cis/trans, while keeping the identities, queer politics might ask how the identities themselves might already be state-like with their borders and policing.” P. 66 in “Anarchy without Opposition” by Jamie Heckert
“We need to oppose the institution of state-sanctioned marriage because it strengths the nucleur family as the consumptive and reproductive unit of capitalism, not because many straight people get married.” P.120 in “Radical Queers and Class Struggle” by Gayge Operaista
“This is not to say that a completely unregulated market favors workers’ rights or autonomy, but rather that these regulations must come from the workers themselves.” P. 190 in “Queering Our Analysis of Sex Work” by C. B. Daring.
“Anarchists and abolitionists together have a responsibility to publicly oppose these types of legislation and must offer concrete alternatives that authentically strive to make our communities safer from interpersonal violence as well as systemic violence.” P. 197 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon.
“It takes more than articles, hand holding, and hand jobs to build these relationships and to create effective strategies for winning.” P. 199 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon. That whole paragraph is important.
“The actions of ACT UP, including thir creative political confrontations and advocacy for compassionate release for prisoners living with HIV/AIDS, must be shared while picking each other up on the dance floor.” P. 200 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon. We can have fun AND be activists. We just need to be a community.
“Radical access calls for a collective negotiation of needs within communities (including sign language interpretation, attendant care, physical barriers, emotional support, financial support, child care, etc.) as well as fundamental social changes that would lead to the fair and just distribution of resources.” P. 216 in Queer-Cripping Anarchism by Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and A.J. Withers.
“There seems to be a growing literature, especially in what has become to be called “green anarchism,” which focuses on self-reliance and a “return to nature.” This politic requires a non-disabled body for its ideal society.” P. 216 in Queer-Cripping Anarchism by Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and A.J. Withers.
“’Kill the Cop Inside Your Head.’ Killing your inner cop means abolishing capitalistic ways of thinking, abolishing the messages the state has fed us and we have internalized. This is a hard, painful process, and it is never fully complete. Part of killing your inner cop and dismantling internalized hierarchies is deconstructing forms of oppression you have internalized: class society, racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, ageism.” P. 228 in “Straightness Must Be Destroyed” by Saffo Papantonopoulou. This is an essay which seems to me to be very important for straight people to read.
Finally I found myself just trying to work ideals from this book into my own life and work at the LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library where I volunteer as the Outreach and Programming Coordinator. “Lessons from Queertopia” by Farhang Rouhani, “Radical Queers and Class Struggle” by Gayge Operaista, and “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon were some of the most influential in both future thought on creating spaces, as well as programming we can do to be both a group for activism and a group for safety and comfort. One question I did have was how could I make our space more accessible and open to sexual liberation? I feel as though social and political liberation make some general sense to me: we work to fight for our political ideals, while also appreciating our social statuses and identities. But Rouhani had me questioning another way to empower the queer community (which has often been associated with sex positivity and recognition), and I’m wondering now: How do I empower the queer and trans community sexually? That might be something I have to think on more, but I have at least some ideas.
There is so much more to say about this book, but here is my review. This took me about two hours to write, going back and rereading and reappreciating every section I marked and trying to make it somewhat readable. I don’t know if I did that, but I for sure appreciated the book and maybe that will come out in this review.
One of the top ten books of 2023 I think. Usually, it takes me awhile to get through an anthology—there are such good stopping points that I just leave them for awhile and come back. This one took me three days. And busy fucking days at that! So that says something about how important this book is to me.
I’m going to go through some of the interesting and important notes I took while reading this book, organize them by theme, and then spit them out to you as a review.
To start: Research projects! Oh my god, there were so many things I tagged in this book as “Research further”. Whether it was because I wanted to learn more about a thing or fact check some information that astounded me, I marked a lot as information I wanted to know. So:
Some organizations that I want to explore: “Bash Back!”; “Black and Pink”; “Queers Without Borders”; “Gay Shame”; “Jacks of Color”; “AIDS Prevention Action League”; “The Audre Lorde Project” and “Safe Outside the System”; “Out of Control Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners”; “Pink Panthers”; “Men Against Sexism in Walla Walla Prison”; “The George Jackson Brigade”; “Rainbow Flags for Mumia”; “The Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project”; “Write to Win Collective”; “Cop Watch”.
Historic events: “The Battle of Seattle, 1999”; “Occupy Wallstreet”; “Artgasm Big Bang Party for Radical Queers”; Anti-G20 organizing in Toronto in 2010.
Idea and ideals: Renunciation of Marriage, Children as an oppressed group, Health care through marriage? How Health Care is dealt with for people with disabilities and marriage, Public “Indecency” laws and origins and the policing of queer sex, what parts of our lifestyles have been shaped by laws and what have been shaped by human nature?, Dualism and Gender, Dualism generally, Origins of Gift Economies, Abolition and a Concrete Utopia, Ressentiment, Models of Community Accountability Programs.
Books and articles: Marriage and Love by Emma Goldman; “Against Equality, in Maine and Everywhere” by Ryan Conrad; On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche; Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici; “Indigenous Feminism without Apology” by Andrea Smith; “Fantasies of an Anarchist Sex Educator” by Jamie Heckert; Anarchism and Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships, and Power edited by Jamie Heckert and R. Cleminson; “Theoretical Polyamory: Some Thoughts on Loving, Thinking, and Queering Anarchism” by D. Shannon and A. Willis; “The Conversation of the Modest” by Ursula K. Le Guin; Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred; “Unnatural Passions?: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology” by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands; “Anarchism, Geography, and Queer Space-making: Building Bridges Over Chasms We Create” by Farhang Rouhani; The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt;
People: Kuwasi Balagoon, José Esteba Muñoz
Beyond research, I also found myself itching to make a zine about Anarchism, and I think this review is a beginning for that idea. I want to focus on the ideals of anarchism, what it is, what it’s thought to be, and its freedom of thought. There really is no set definition I guess, and people can be anarchists in any way, so that’s something else for me to think of in creating a zine. I want to focus some things on Emma Goldman because there is an Emma Goldman clinic in Iowa City, but beyond that I don’t totally know where to go. I just have a lot of reading to do and thoughts to think.
Quotes came up too. Some that were so jarring that I needed to highlight them:
“So anarchists do, in fact, embody a destructive urge—an urge to end domination, to smash power over others, to destroy the means through which working people are robbed and exploited.” P. 8 in “Queer meet Anarchism, Anarchism meet Queer” by editors.
“Whereas a state-oriented LGBT politics tries to challenge the hierarchies of hetero/homo, cis/trans, while keeping the identities, queer politics might ask how the identities themselves might already be state-like with their borders and policing.” P. 66 in “Anarchy without Opposition” by Jamie Heckert
“We need to oppose the institution of state-sanctioned marriage because it strengths the nucleur family as the consumptive and reproductive unit of capitalism, not because many straight people get married.” P.120 in “Radical Queers and Class Struggle” by Gayge Operaista
“This is not to say that a completely unregulated market favors workers’ rights or autonomy, but rather that these regulations must come from the workers themselves.” P. 190 in “Queering Our Analysis of Sex Work” by C. B. Daring.
“Anarchists and abolitionists together have a responsibility to publicly oppose these types of legislation and must offer concrete alternatives that authentically strive to make our communities safer from interpersonal violence as well as systemic violence.” P. 197 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon.
“It takes more than articles, hand holding, and hand jobs to build these relationships and to create effective strategies for winning.” P. 199 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon. That whole paragraph is important.
“The actions of ACT UP, including thir creative political confrontations and advocacy for compassionate release for prisoners living with HIV/AIDS, must be shared while picking each other up on the dance floor.” P. 200 in “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon. We can have fun AND be activists. We just need to be a community.
“Radical access calls for a collective negotiation of needs within communities (including sign language interpretation, attendant care, physical barriers, emotional support, financial support, child care, etc.) as well as fundamental social changes that would lead to the fair and just distribution of resources.” P. 216 in Queer-Cripping Anarchism by Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and A.J. Withers.
“There seems to be a growing literature, especially in what has become to be called “green anarchism,” which focuses on self-reliance and a “return to nature.” This politic requires a non-disabled body for its ideal society.” P. 216 in Queer-Cripping Anarchism by Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and A.J. Withers.
“’Kill the Cop Inside Your Head.’ Killing your inner cop means abolishing capitalistic ways of thinking, abolishing the messages the state has fed us and we have internalized. This is a hard, painful process, and it is never fully complete. Part of killing your inner cop and dismantling internalized hierarchies is deconstructing forms of oppression you have internalized: class society, racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, ageism.” P. 228 in “Straightness Must Be Destroyed” by Saffo Papantonopoulou. This is an essay which seems to me to be very important for straight people to read.
Finally I found myself just trying to work ideals from this book into my own life and work at the LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library where I volunteer as the Outreach and Programming Coordinator. “Lessons from Queertopia” by Farhang Rouhani, “Radical Queers and Class Struggle” by Gayge Operaista, and “Tearing Down the Walls: Queerness, Anarchism and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Jason Lydon were some of the most influential in both future thought on creating spaces, as well as programming we can do to be both a group for activism and a group for safety and comfort. One question I did have was how could I make our space more accessible and open to sexual liberation? I feel as though social and political liberation make some general sense to me: we work to fight for our political ideals, while also appreciating our social statuses and identities. But Rouhani had me questioning another way to empower the queer community (which has often been associated with sex positivity and recognition), and I’m wondering now: How do I empower the queer and trans community sexually? That might be something I have to think on more, but I have at least some ideas.
There is so much more to say about this book, but here is my review. This took me about two hours to write, going back and rereading and reappreciating every section I marked and trying to make it somewhat readable. I don’t know if I did that, but I for sure appreciated the book and maybe that will come out in this review.
June 17, 2017
I read this book. I enjoyed this book. My critical review does not mean I did not like this book. Also, this cover art is spectacular.
That said, I think this book is more for educating straight and cis anarchists or unfortunately even making straight people think they are queer. If you're already a queer and/or trans anarchist than you may not find anything new here. I felt uncomfortable as well with how much of the book was dedicated to finding ways to make cis/heterosexuality queer and the definition of queer (while they very clearly express is not the only one) is including BDSM and polyamory (and anything "different" from the "norm" which gives pretty much any cis straight person access to our identities and spaces.) As a person who has spent time around nonradical poly and kinky straight people, giving them reason to appropriate queer identity and join queer separatist spaces (which they are already doing in droves) is not something I am comfortable with. It made me wonder how many of the editors were cis people in heterosexual relationships with cis people, or how many of them knew what it was like to move throughout the world dealing with the kind of oppression the most marginalized queer and trans people deal with when I was reading the introduction. This was not what I was hoping to be my main thought while reading a book I had REALLY high hopes for.
That said, the queering heterosexuality essay, which I TRIED to read with an open mind, was very clear in saying straight people should be very careful not to appropriate queer identities or heterosexualize queer spaces. This was overshadowed by how much of the essay was focused on trying to appropriate and heterosexualize as well as- see other reviews- using slurs that aren't hers to use or reclaim. Unfortunately, all of the hetero "queers" I have met in real life seem to be more concerned about how much space they can take up and how oppressed they are by queer and trans people. I wish this book catered less towards making heterosexual/heteroromantic cis people feel queer and find ways to dodge accountability and more towards creating safer spaces and analytic tools for marginalized queer people.
Gender Sabotage, Tyranny of the State and Trans Liberation, Harm Reduction as Pleasure Activism, Queer-Cripping Anarchism, and others all made this worth buying and reading. I am glad to have it on my shelf. I just hope the focus on straight people being queer doesn't lead to even more straight people taking up queer space and pushing out the people that created it.
That said, I think this book is more for educating straight and cis anarchists or unfortunately even making straight people think they are queer. If you're already a queer and/or trans anarchist than you may not find anything new here. I felt uncomfortable as well with how much of the book was dedicated to finding ways to make cis/heterosexuality queer and the definition of queer (while they very clearly express is not the only one) is including BDSM and polyamory (and anything "different" from the "norm" which gives pretty much any cis straight person access to our identities and spaces.) As a person who has spent time around nonradical poly and kinky straight people, giving them reason to appropriate queer identity and join queer separatist spaces (which they are already doing in droves) is not something I am comfortable with. It made me wonder how many of the editors were cis people in heterosexual relationships with cis people, or how many of them knew what it was like to move throughout the world dealing with the kind of oppression the most marginalized queer and trans people deal with when I was reading the introduction. This was not what I was hoping to be my main thought while reading a book I had REALLY high hopes for.
That said, the queering heterosexuality essay, which I TRIED to read with an open mind, was very clear in saying straight people should be very careful not to appropriate queer identities or heterosexualize queer spaces. This was overshadowed by how much of the essay was focused on trying to appropriate and heterosexualize as well as- see other reviews- using slurs that aren't hers to use or reclaim. Unfortunately, all of the hetero "queers" I have met in real life seem to be more concerned about how much space they can take up and how oppressed they are by queer and trans people. I wish this book catered less towards making heterosexual/heteroromantic cis people feel queer and find ways to dodge accountability and more towards creating safer spaces and analytic tools for marginalized queer people.
Gender Sabotage, Tyranny of the State and Trans Liberation, Harm Reduction as Pleasure Activism, Queer-Cripping Anarchism, and others all made this worth buying and reading. I am glad to have it on my shelf. I just hope the focus on straight people being queer doesn't lead to even more straight people taking up queer space and pushing out the people that created it.
October 19, 2024
This book is impossible to rate, my enjoyment, personal gain, the grammar, explanations, and ideas all vary so much from essay to essay. Some essays I think I will be thinking about for years to come and I hated some of the essays. Particularly my favorites were "Anarchy Without Opposition", " Sex and the City: Beyond Liberal Politics and Towards Holistic Revolutionary Practice", and Queering Our Analysis of Sex Work: Laying Capitalism Bare". Anarchy Without Opposition was so good it may have changed the course of my life! But honesty many of the essays offered really good talking points, theories, and analysis, and even if I didn't agree with them, the take it still gave me something to think about. I do genuinely think this book was beneficial for me. I also think this book is very beginner-friendly. So say your queer person who doesn't know much about anarchism or an anarchist who doesn't know much about queer theory. The book does a good job breaking it down so don't shy away if you are unfamiliar with one of the topics like I did. This book also offered one of my favorite definitions and breakdowns of the term queer. Many other phenomenal breakdowns and definitions are also in this book that I will be referring to. But I caught typos throughout 2 of the essays, a comic included in the book was half in French with no translation, one essay featured had no capitalization, an essay is included where a cis person uses the T slur, and one of the essays provided used no sources well using incorrect terminology. Last little bone I have to pick some articles that place blame on working class folk for ignorance regarding certain topics instead of blaming the state that educated them.
July 27, 2015
For a book on queer anarchism, this was shockingly boring. Its also intensely arrogant to assert that all of these professional academics are "queering anarchism" when the anarchist movement has an extremely rich history of participation by queer and gender variant people. Then again, as one of the other commenters mentioned, this book is comprised almost entirely of workerist and platformist types... so their anarchism might need to be 'queered' a little. Also, "Queering Heterosexuality"? Really? The contribution by that guy Anthony Nocella (who got paid to speak to the FBI) is also pretty unfortunate.
February 26, 2020
This anthology can be useful for an introduction into queerness and anarchism, but some of the essays felt under-theorized, if not plainly out of touch. That being said, most were good, especially when they provided a framework for enhancing anarchist thought with queerness, crip theory, critiques of the prison-industrial complex, etc. Overall, I like the first few essays and the last few the most, and the others were ok, which is why I gave it 2.5-3 stars.
February 6, 2013
Half the essays were pretty great and critical of the notion that we can screw our way to freedom; the other half, unfortunately, exemplify some of the most obnoxious trends in radical queer politics. Of particular note is "queering heterosexuality," a rather insufferable piece written by a "non-straight-identified heterosexual" who uses the word t****y to describe some transgender people she hung out with once. There's also an essay that literally calls binary-identified transgender people counter-revolutionary (no word on how using 3rd-gender pronouns challenges State power) and the usual tedious "gay marriage is neoliberalism."
Still, this is worth reading for Gayge Operaista's "Radical Queers and Class Struggle," as well as a handful of other essays (Abbey Volcano's is pretty good). Some of the pieces I didn't agree with were still thought-provoking, and all of them link LGBT struggles to other struggles, including those against the prison-industrial complex and capitalism (although links to the latter are often tenuous). When these essays are good they're really, really good; when they're bad, they just remind me of Murray Bookchin's admonitions against "lifestyle anarchism."
Still, this is worth reading for Gayge Operaista's "Radical Queers and Class Struggle," as well as a handful of other essays (Abbey Volcano's is pretty good). Some of the pieces I didn't agree with were still thought-provoking, and all of them link LGBT struggles to other struggles, including those against the prison-industrial complex and capitalism (although links to the latter are often tenuous). When these essays are good they're really, really good; when they're bad, they just remind me of Murray Bookchin's admonitions against "lifestyle anarchism."
August 20, 2017
this book was lent to me by a friend who hadn't finished reading it yet and to be honest i'm sure if they'd finished reading it, they wouldn't have recommended it to me. it's very boring and has a section on "queering heterosexuality" which is about how if you have enough weird sex, no matter what your actual orientation, you should be able to call yourself queer. which is, you know, not true. it's not great.
March 27, 2023
It was really good! I thought I was already familiar with what it means to be queer, but these essays were really well-written. It's left me with a lot to think about, and also comforted me in some aspects. I highly recommend if you're a baby anarchist.
August 1, 2015
Some good ideas hidden among pages and pages of ramblings and personal stories
July 27, 2022
My feelings towards this book are perhaps colored by how excited I was to read it and the fact that the person who checked this book out for me when I purchased it exclaimed that this book was "really good." Nonetheless, this is my favorite piece of theory and essay collection I've read this year so far.
I think this was a solid introduction-to-anarchism-text for me. To me, the essays were accessible without diluting ideas. Ideas presented in these essays, including divesting from the struggle for marriage equality and opposing hate crime legislation, are bold and incisive for those unaccustomed to more radical queer activism. Other ideas presented in some of these essays almost seemed liberal and comprising, at first glance. Many of the authors caution people against inverting hierarchies and positioning queerness/non-monogamy/non-normative practices are superior. I appreciated that perspective because it challenges me to be self-critical and make sure that my politics are rooted in ending oppression and exploitation and not reactionary, desiring to invert hierarchies to my benefit.
The way I felt compelled to be self-critical about how I arrive to my politics and values leads me to my final point of appreciation: many of these essays presented theory in a way that inspired me to think about how I could apply them to my own life. This essay collection also left me thinking about meditation/reflection as a liberator practice and how I can approach queerness as a way to transform how I relate with others.
I think this was a solid introduction-to-anarchism-text for me. To me, the essays were accessible without diluting ideas. Ideas presented in these essays, including divesting from the struggle for marriage equality and opposing hate crime legislation, are bold and incisive for those unaccustomed to more radical queer activism. Other ideas presented in some of these essays almost seemed liberal and comprising, at first glance. Many of the authors caution people against inverting hierarchies and positioning queerness/non-monogamy/non-normative practices are superior. I appreciated that perspective because it challenges me to be self-critical and make sure that my politics are rooted in ending oppression and exploitation and not reactionary, desiring to invert hierarchies to my benefit.
The way I felt compelled to be self-critical about how I arrive to my politics and values leads me to my final point of appreciation: many of these essays presented theory in a way that inspired me to think about how I could apply them to my own life. This essay collection also left me thinking about meditation/reflection as a liberator practice and how I can approach queerness as a way to transform how I relate with others.
August 18, 2024
I honestly feel like im not the target audience for this book. I feel like this book is for people who are freshly into learning about politics in general and have JUST heard about anarchism. I also think this book is definitely for either straight people that are questioning their sexuality or trans people that are just now starting to question their gender. as someone that has been into politics for over 10 years this book was honestly extremely elementary and made me feel like I was regressing. the only essay in this book that I genuinely liked was the queering heterosexuality essay. seeing how a lot of people didn't like this essay or really understand it just goes to show how good of an essay it is. it completely makes you rethink how you view relationships and sexuality in general.
Read
June 6, 2025great intro to anarchism and queer theory. some goodies, some flops, a lot of outdated ideas if you’ve been politically active on the left the past few years. but so fun to read in a group !
May 22, 2013
Full disclosure, I know two of the editors. Much of this is very thoughtful and made me think of things I hadn't. Much of it will strike seasoned anarcha-queer readers as harmless treading of dialectic water. I am genuinely confused as to the inclusion of Sandra Jeppesen's essay, "Queering Heterosexuality" (and, as alluded to in another review, her use of the T-word). Worth a read, especially as an introduction to, err, queering anarchism.
March 4, 2020
This book can be dense despite the editor's intent to avoid this. Sometimes it becomes buried in jargon to the point that some of the essays are unreadable - but for the most part it's worth the intermittent struggle.
November 13, 2019
Some of these essays were better than others.
January 26, 2025
As is typical with essay collections covering an array of perspectives, arguments, and topics — some of these I really enjoyed and some didn't resonate with me at all.
My favourite essays with some quotes below:
Police at the Borders by abbey volcano
"this tactic of agreeing with the 'most marginalized in the room' will be used as a substitute for developing critical analysis around race, gender, sexuality, etc. This tactic is essentially lazy, lacks political depth, and leads towards tokenization."
Anarchy without Opposition by jamie heckert
"My anarchism has no straight lines, no borders, no purity, no opposites. No living things do. And I like my anarchy alive."
"The state is always a state of mind. It's putting life in boxes and then judging it in terms of those boxes, those borders, as if they were what really mattered."
"And so I go inward before going out into the world. Letting my mind grow still, I am not ruled by my thoughts. Letting my heart open, I am able to love myself and others. And if I am called to fight, to protect those under threat, let me do it with love. Because if I'm not loving, it's not my revolution."
Radical Queers and Class Struggle: A Match to Be Made by gayge operaista
"Unlike Leninists, we neither want to seize the state nor even replace it with a 'proletarian' state. We know that if classes remain after the revolution, and there is the need for a hegemonic governing body separate from the people to maintain social relations, then the revolution has failed."
"Presumptions about who is a 'true prole' and what 'true proles' are intellectually capable of both insult those who do blue-collar work, and serve to either implant anti-intellectualism into mass movements or to maintain intellectual labour as the specialized domain of academics."
"An essential component of working-class struggle on the way to destroying capitalism is to win day-to-day struggles, such as less hours, greater pay, safer and more comfortable work environments, in so much as those things reduce the amount of value the capitalist class extracts from us and can be won directly, without mediation."
"The workers are the ones with radical chains; the exploitation of the working class is the entire basis of the system we want to destroy, and it is only by identifying, struggling against, and destroying those chains that any of us can be liberated. Once we realise that we can begin to understand how stratification based on race, gender, and sexuality were built into the working class as a means of control and hyperexploitation and as a midwife to capitalism's birth."
Cripping Anarchism by liat ben-moshe, anthony j. nocella and a.j. withers
"Disabled people mark, with their different bodies and minds, the boundaries of normalcy. They serve as an ideological reminder of the fate of those who do not participate in the capitalism production."
Straightness Must be Destroyed by saffo papantonopoulou
"'Kill the cop inside your head.' Killing your inner cop means abolishing capitalist ways of thinking, abolishing the messages the state has fed us and we have internalized. This is a hard, painful process, and it is never fully complete. Part of killing your inner cop and dismantling internalized hierarchies is deconstructing forms of oppression you have internalized: class society, racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, ageism. All of these forms of oppression are part of systemic hierarchies we internalize. Everyone who is an anarchist and wants to work to create better worlds needs to work on all of these struggles within themselves as part of the larger anti-capitalist, anti-statist struggle."
content warnings:
Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, and Classism
Moderate: Ableism, Xenophobia, and War
My favourite essays with some quotes below:
Police at the Borders by abbey volcano
"this tactic of agreeing with the 'most marginalized in the room' will be used as a substitute for developing critical analysis around race, gender, sexuality, etc. This tactic is essentially lazy, lacks political depth, and leads towards tokenization."
Anarchy without Opposition by jamie heckert
"My anarchism has no straight lines, no borders, no purity, no opposites. No living things do. And I like my anarchy alive."
"The state is always a state of mind. It's putting life in boxes and then judging it in terms of those boxes, those borders, as if they were what really mattered."
"And so I go inward before going out into the world. Letting my mind grow still, I am not ruled by my thoughts. Letting my heart open, I am able to love myself and others. And if I am called to fight, to protect those under threat, let me do it with love. Because if I'm not loving, it's not my revolution."
Radical Queers and Class Struggle: A Match to Be Made by gayge operaista
"Unlike Leninists, we neither want to seize the state nor even replace it with a 'proletarian' state. We know that if classes remain after the revolution, and there is the need for a hegemonic governing body separate from the people to maintain social relations, then the revolution has failed."
"Presumptions about who is a 'true prole' and what 'true proles' are intellectually capable of both insult those who do blue-collar work, and serve to either implant anti-intellectualism into mass movements or to maintain intellectual labour as the specialized domain of academics."
"An essential component of working-class struggle on the way to destroying capitalism is to win day-to-day struggles, such as less hours, greater pay, safer and more comfortable work environments, in so much as those things reduce the amount of value the capitalist class extracts from us and can be won directly, without mediation."
"The workers are the ones with radical chains; the exploitation of the working class is the entire basis of the system we want to destroy, and it is only by identifying, struggling against, and destroying those chains that any of us can be liberated. Once we realise that we can begin to understand how stratification based on race, gender, and sexuality were built into the working class as a means of control and hyperexploitation and as a midwife to capitalism's birth."
Cripping Anarchism by liat ben-moshe, anthony j. nocella and a.j. withers
"Disabled people mark, with their different bodies and minds, the boundaries of normalcy. They serve as an ideological reminder of the fate of those who do not participate in the capitalism production."
Straightness Must be Destroyed by saffo papantonopoulou
"'Kill the cop inside your head.' Killing your inner cop means abolishing capitalist ways of thinking, abolishing the messages the state has fed us and we have internalized. This is a hard, painful process, and it is never fully complete. Part of killing your inner cop and dismantling internalized hierarchies is deconstructing forms of oppression you have internalized: class society, racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, ageism. All of these forms of oppression are part of systemic hierarchies we internalize. Everyone who is an anarchist and wants to work to create better worlds needs to work on all of these struggles within themselves as part of the larger anti-capitalist, anti-statist struggle."
content warnings:
Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Transphobia, and Classism
Moderate: Ableism, Xenophobia, and War
August 21, 2025
“The destruction of straightness would mean a world in which all of our bodies, all of our desires, all of our genders, all of our consensual sexualities, would be honored and viable. Not questioning these norms–within yourself and your relationships with others around you–is playing into the dominant order of straightness. Questioning them–regardless of the conclusions you may reach–is a revolutionary act.” – Saffo Papantonopoulou
Queering Anarchism is a fiery, challenging, and deeply necessary collection that imagines what becomes possible when queerness and anarchism are understood as intertwined practices of resistance. These essays push past the hollow promises of assimilation—the rhetoric of “equality” that asks us to fight for scraps from oppressive systems—and instead dare us to build something entirely different. Here, queerness is not a fixed identity but a verb, a refusal of normalcy, a commitment to tearing down the borders of gender, sexuality, property, and the state itself. Anarchism, too, is reframed not as chaos, but as freedom: no bosses, no prisons, no police, no coercive hierarchies—just solidarity, autonomy, and mutual care.
What I found most powerful in this collection was its insistence that liberation cannot be partial or piecemeal. Essays interrogate everything from marriage equality as a tool of state control, to the capitalist roots of the gender binary, to the policing of pleasure and the dangers of creating new hierarchies within queer communities. The authors remind us that queerness loses its radical edge when it is reduced to respectability, and that true freedom demands dismantling not just heteronormativity, but capitalism, white supremacy, and the state itself. Again and again, the essays highlight that liberation must be intersectional, expansive, and imaginative—an ongoing practice of rejecting categorization and embracing fluidity.
Reading Queering Anarchism felt like having long-buried instincts named out loud: the quiet suspicion that marriage equality was never the endpoint, the intuitive knowledge that categories of “man” and “woman” never held the fullness of our lives, the longing for love and kinship that exists outside the state’s definitions of family. Many of the essays felt like being comforted by a comrade and then handed a match to go burn down a police station. I highly recommend this one for readers longing for more radical frameworks of queer politics—this book is both a warm bowl of soup and a rallying cry to come to battle.
📖 Read this if you love: radical queer theory, abolitionist politics, and the works of Dean Spade and Mariame Kaba.
🔑 Key Themes: Autonomy and Self-Determination, Queerness as Resistance, Anti-Capitalism and Class Abolition, Pleasure and Harm Reduction, Intersectional Liberation.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Sexual Assault (minor), Child Abuse (minor), Pandemic (minor), Ableism (minor), Transphobia (minor).
Queering Anarchism is a fiery, challenging, and deeply necessary collection that imagines what becomes possible when queerness and anarchism are understood as intertwined practices of resistance. These essays push past the hollow promises of assimilation—the rhetoric of “equality” that asks us to fight for scraps from oppressive systems—and instead dare us to build something entirely different. Here, queerness is not a fixed identity but a verb, a refusal of normalcy, a commitment to tearing down the borders of gender, sexuality, property, and the state itself. Anarchism, too, is reframed not as chaos, but as freedom: no bosses, no prisons, no police, no coercive hierarchies—just solidarity, autonomy, and mutual care.
What I found most powerful in this collection was its insistence that liberation cannot be partial or piecemeal. Essays interrogate everything from marriage equality as a tool of state control, to the capitalist roots of the gender binary, to the policing of pleasure and the dangers of creating new hierarchies within queer communities. The authors remind us that queerness loses its radical edge when it is reduced to respectability, and that true freedom demands dismantling not just heteronormativity, but capitalism, white supremacy, and the state itself. Again and again, the essays highlight that liberation must be intersectional, expansive, and imaginative—an ongoing practice of rejecting categorization and embracing fluidity.
Reading Queering Anarchism felt like having long-buried instincts named out loud: the quiet suspicion that marriage equality was never the endpoint, the intuitive knowledge that categories of “man” and “woman” never held the fullness of our lives, the longing for love and kinship that exists outside the state’s definitions of family. Many of the essays felt like being comforted by a comrade and then handed a match to go burn down a police station. I highly recommend this one for readers longing for more radical frameworks of queer politics—this book is both a warm bowl of soup and a rallying cry to come to battle.
📖 Read this if you love: radical queer theory, abolitionist politics, and the works of Dean Spade and Mariame Kaba.
🔑 Key Themes: Autonomy and Self-Determination, Queerness as Resistance, Anti-Capitalism and Class Abolition, Pleasure and Harm Reduction, Intersectional Liberation.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Sexual Assault (minor), Child Abuse (minor), Pandemic (minor), Ableism (minor), Transphobia (minor).
August 29, 2022
"The differences between people have been made significant so as to promote divisions based on domination and subordination. In doing so, those differences must be(come) clear-cut - a border must be drawn between the two, creating a dichotomy so there is no confusion about who is where in the hierarchy."
Sometimes books enter your life just when you need them the most. Sometimes you lose them just when you're in the middle of an amazing chapter and you wait weeks to buy it in hopes of finding it and by the time you have it again you're completely out of it and it takes you months to finish it. Lol.
This essay collection is phenomenal. Just when the labels I stuck on myself were losing their authenticity and the boxes I built around myself were becoming suffocating, it provided me with an alternative to identity politics and assimilationist politics. The strength of this collection, and queer anarchism in general, is its range from the deeply personal to the widely systemic. It challenges all your internalized ideas of normalcy and domination, while critiquing state mechanisms, heteronormative organizations and (well-intended) activist groups holding us back from working towards the true radical queertopia we want to see. I recommend this book to anyone with background knowledge on anarchism and concepts of justice, but especially to those who have gotten lost in essentialist ideas of feminism and queerness. I truly look at the world with different eyes since queer has met anarchism, and anarchism has met queer. I do think it occasionally fails to be as accessible as it intends to be and still leans towards the academic, but getting through some of the complicated Marxist analyses and looking up confusing terms was worth it to me. As in any essay collection, some are better than others. My favourites were Police at the Borders, Gender Sabotage, and Queer-Cripping Anarchism. Borrow this from me. I want you to read it.
Sometimes books enter your life just when you need them the most. Sometimes you lose them just when you're in the middle of an amazing chapter and you wait weeks to buy it in hopes of finding it and by the time you have it again you're completely out of it and it takes you months to finish it. Lol.
This essay collection is phenomenal. Just when the labels I stuck on myself were losing their authenticity and the boxes I built around myself were becoming suffocating, it provided me with an alternative to identity politics and assimilationist politics. The strength of this collection, and queer anarchism in general, is its range from the deeply personal to the widely systemic. It challenges all your internalized ideas of normalcy and domination, while critiquing state mechanisms, heteronormative organizations and (well-intended) activist groups holding us back from working towards the true radical queertopia we want to see. I recommend this book to anyone with background knowledge on anarchism and concepts of justice, but especially to those who have gotten lost in essentialist ideas of feminism and queerness. I truly look at the world with different eyes since queer has met anarchism, and anarchism has met queer. I do think it occasionally fails to be as accessible as it intends to be and still leans towards the academic, but getting through some of the complicated Marxist analyses and looking up confusing terms was worth it to me. As in any essay collection, some are better than others. My favourites were Police at the Borders, Gender Sabotage, and Queer-Cripping Anarchism. Borrow this from me. I want you to read it.
July 1, 2022
full disclosure: i bought this because i found it in a bookstore around the time that broey deschanel uploaded a youtube video analyzing the original series of Sex and the City and i saw that there's a chapter in this book also dedicated to an analysis of the series. have i ever watched Sex and the City? no. but trust that i will always EAT UP leftist/anarchist analyses of random tv shows i have never watched in my life!
i think this is one of those nonfiction books that you happen to stumble upon at just the right moment for it to have a maximal impact. in the past few years, it's become increasingly clear about how much the State has failed everyday americans and marginalized communities. in the past month, we've seen the biggest push against numerous civil rights and protections from the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, when multiple of these justices were placed on the court by a president who lost the popular vote. and the list goes on... to the point that this book feels more relevant now than in 2012 when it was first published.
as most works of collected essays from multiple authors go, some essays can be just hit or miss. here's some of the standout chapters from this book (in my opinion):
・de-essentializing anarchist feminism: lessons from the transfeminism movement
・harm reduction as pleasure activism
・tearing down the walls: queerness, anarchism, and the prison industrial complex
・queer-cripping anarchism: intersections and reflections on anarchism, queerness, and disability
i think this is one of those nonfiction books that you happen to stumble upon at just the right moment for it to have a maximal impact. in the past few years, it's become increasingly clear about how much the State has failed everyday americans and marginalized communities. in the past month, we've seen the biggest push against numerous civil rights and protections from the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, when multiple of these justices were placed on the court by a president who lost the popular vote. and the list goes on... to the point that this book feels more relevant now than in 2012 when it was first published.
as most works of collected essays from multiple authors go, some essays can be just hit or miss. here's some of the standout chapters from this book (in my opinion):
・de-essentializing anarchist feminism: lessons from the transfeminism movement
・harm reduction as pleasure activism
・tearing down the walls: queerness, anarchism, and the prison industrial complex
・queer-cripping anarchism: intersections and reflections on anarchism, queerness, and disability
August 5, 2025
Kein Gamechanger.
Die einzelnen Beiträge im Buch waren für mich mal mehr "Hit" mal mehr "Miss". Ich hatte einen besseren Einblick in anarchistische Theorien erwartet, da davon im Klappentext die Rede ist. Es ist durchaus gelungen, die beiden Strömungen zusammenbringen zu wollen. Einige der Beiträge waren interessant, teilweise musste ich mich etwas durchkämpfen und wie viel breiter mein Horizont jetzt am Ende wirklich ist, kann ich nicht so ganz sagen. Einige Reviewende beschreiben, dass es deutlich bessere, aktuellere und weitergreifende Literatur zum Thema gibt und vieles hier nicht wirklich Mehrwert bietet. Da ich in anarchistischer Literatur bisher nicht fit bin und mit diesem Buch erst hineinstarte, kann ich das weder bestätigen noch widerlegen, es deckt sich allerdings mit meinem Gefühl aufgrund dessen, was ich ohne konkrete Literatur schon zu Anarchismus wusste. Dieses persönliche Verständnis wollte ich eigentlich mit mehr Theoriewissen untermauern, aber das ist mir mit diesem Buch nicht gelungen, soweit ich das aktuell beurteilen kann.
Vielleicht bin ich mit falschen Erwartungen in das Buch gegangen, vielleicht bin ich nicht die Zielgruppe oder vielleicht braucht es auch noch ein bisschen, bis mir weitere Aspekte klarwerden. Ich könnte das Buch aber nicht ohne weiteres empfehlen, ich würde es wenn mit der Prämisse starten, dass jede Person sich wohl individuell mit dem Buch auseinandersetzen muss.
Die einzelnen Beiträge im Buch waren für mich mal mehr "Hit" mal mehr "Miss". Ich hatte einen besseren Einblick in anarchistische Theorien erwartet, da davon im Klappentext die Rede ist. Es ist durchaus gelungen, die beiden Strömungen zusammenbringen zu wollen. Einige der Beiträge waren interessant, teilweise musste ich mich etwas durchkämpfen und wie viel breiter mein Horizont jetzt am Ende wirklich ist, kann ich nicht so ganz sagen. Einige Reviewende beschreiben, dass es deutlich bessere, aktuellere und weitergreifende Literatur zum Thema gibt und vieles hier nicht wirklich Mehrwert bietet. Da ich in anarchistischer Literatur bisher nicht fit bin und mit diesem Buch erst hineinstarte, kann ich das weder bestätigen noch widerlegen, es deckt sich allerdings mit meinem Gefühl aufgrund dessen, was ich ohne konkrete Literatur schon zu Anarchismus wusste. Dieses persönliche Verständnis wollte ich eigentlich mit mehr Theoriewissen untermauern, aber das ist mir mit diesem Buch nicht gelungen, soweit ich das aktuell beurteilen kann.
Vielleicht bin ich mit falschen Erwartungen in das Buch gegangen, vielleicht bin ich nicht die Zielgruppe oder vielleicht braucht es auch noch ein bisschen, bis mir weitere Aspekte klarwerden. Ich könnte das Buch aber nicht ohne weiteres empfehlen, ich würde es wenn mit der Prämisse starten, dass jede Person sich wohl individuell mit dem Buch auseinandersetzen muss.
March 20, 2024
As shallow as it is repetitive. There’s some good insights buried between tiresome anecdotes and re-defining of the same words. The authors are great on how x, y, z form of domination intersects and are bad, but actual pragmatic pathways out of domination fall back on the self-contradictory purity politics of anarchism, with each essay receded its supposed radicalism into liberalism or some vague and useless understanding of queerness, going so far as to “queer heterosexuality.” The ideas here aren’t all bad, though I’m certainty not an anarchist, nor do I like some of authors overly fluid descriptions of queerness, but this book lacks any in-depth analysis and most of what their is ranges between being far too anecdotal accounts or a long list of events and groups. This book is a fine starting point, but it is far too late to have itself “queered anarchism,” and that obnoxious self-importance becomes very miserable to endure through a redundant onslaught of the same arguments of intersectionality gud, queer=fluid, and gay marriage is a homonormative conspiracy to destroy real radical movements, but reform still matters I guess. Find this on the anarchist library and skip to the queer-cripping essay.
June 6, 2021
It was okay. The essays kind of ranged in quality quite a bit. There were a few that really stuck out to me--the one about crip theory and the prison complex stood out to me, as well as one touching on the evolution of capitalism a little bit. But for the most part the essays felt kind of basic and not anything new to anyone who knows the basics of queer theory or anarchist theory. Quite a few of them felt a little too much like "What about the straights?". I think there's value in discussing and analyzing straight people and how they relate to their sexuality and straightness as a construct/concept, but that's not what I'm looking for in a book about queer people.
Overall I found the harder theory stuff more interesting, but the rest of it felt too much like fluff. I figure this book is aimed more at anarchists who haven't engaged with queer thought rather than the other way around.
Overall I found the harder theory stuff more interesting, but the rest of it felt too much like fluff. I figure this book is aimed more at anarchists who haven't engaged with queer thought rather than the other way around.
January 15, 2018
I really enjoyed this one, although I've gone through it quite quickly, its one I could read again, take notes and branch out into other writings because of it.
I think the idea of being a queer anarchist feminist is something I've always been without knowing the terminology until recently. I think this could be useful reading for anyone who thinks that our current societal structures are failing people.
I think the idea of being a queer anarchist feminist is something I've always been without knowing the terminology until recently. I think this could be useful reading for anyone who thinks that our current societal structures are failing people.
January 5, 2019
It's very hard to rate/review this book. As the levels of the essays it contains are disparagingly different, where you get incredibly astute well-written, well-research essays and some really bad ones with hardly a central thesis to discuss. This book has also shed the light on how anarchism can easily slide into individual action and lifestylism, perfectly dovetailing with the individualistic capitalist logic that it claims to critique.
August 23, 2019
I enjoyed most of the essays in the book, but not everything. Some of the language surrounding gender was outdated and problematic, and the notion of queering heterosexuality just doesn’t sit right with me. Other than that I enjoyed most of the essays and they broadened my views and solidified some other stuff for me. I’d recommend it to queer people who aren’t radical in their politics yet.
February 24, 2022
A good text but pretty repetitive and a little out-dated.
It's a good text and a nice introduction to some key ideas, but a lot of the different essays tend to repeat the same talking points and are a little focused on things like the legalization of gay marriage which don't feel quite as relevant today.
It's a good text and a nice introduction to some key ideas, but a lot of the different essays tend to repeat the same talking points and are a little focused on things like the legalization of gay marriage which don't feel quite as relevant today.
December 20, 2022
All the essays are written somewhat conversationally (not academically) and none are longer than 10 pages. The first chapter is a nice and quick overview of what anarchy is and each essay that follows talks about the intersectionality of anarchy and dofferent aspects of queerness. I didn't love every piece of writing, but most of it was great and I definitely recommend this.
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