By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

The MeToo Movement died last month. It bled out slowly as it limped to the barn. It’s hard to say who the triggerman was behind the coup de grace, but it wasn’t Joe Biden. That derelict beast is anything but a feminist and this wound was clearly self-inflicted. My guess is the artery was severed by Nancy Pelosi during a press conference when she uttered the appalling epitaph, “Joe Biden is Joe Biden.”, officially declaring the unspoken hypocrisy that certain rapists are above the law by divine right of political convenience.

Nancy is hardly the reliable feminist herself, but at that moment she appeared to be speaking for a movement that had collectively sacrificed its conscience, in some sick ritual slaughter, to the gods of partisan lesser-evilism. One by one, the majority of this grassroots movement’s leadership capitulated to these gods, responding to the testimony of their fellow survivor, Tara Reade, with a shrug at best and outright character assassination at worst. Rose McGowan seemed to stand alone again in her rage and indignation, this time abandoned by her own sisters. I feel her rage. Though this is hardly the first time the movement was ambushed by white cis-gender liberals and it probably wont be the last, I have never been more ashamed to be a feminist.

My feminism is far from orthodox. How could it be? There is nothing orthodox about me. Though my birth certificate reads male, I have long known this to be a lie. I spent the first half of my childhood happily genderless as an oblivious transgender tomboy before spending the second half shell shocked by my difference when it became undeniable during the maelstrom of a very Catholic puberty. The fear of hell chased me so deep into the closet that the splinters and spider bites became infected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Agoraphobia.

I blamed myself for years for these ailments. After all, wasn’t I asking for it? But feminism, Marxism and anarchism helped me to realize that I had been the victim of Catholic Patriarchy and led me to reject any authority capable of inflicting that kind of harm on the innocent. My complicated gender identity wasn’t the only thing that made me something of an outlier among fellow feminists. My own quirky leftist values were informed by a strange homegrown recipe brewed by the Catholic Worker Movement, the Consistent Life Ethic and the agrarian Anabaptist anarchism of my Amish neighbors. I remain highly critical of abortion and the glass ceiling commercialism of many Second Wave Feminists. I also feel a close bond with my ostracized sisters in the sex industry and could never quite stomach the way elitists like Gloria Steinem patronized any woman who didn’t fit their First World mold of the enlightened feminist.

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