Category Archives: Sexuality and the State

Kamala Harris Is No Ally to Transwomen 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

“I have never really understood exactly what a ‘liberal’ is, since I have heard ‘liberals’ express every conceivable opinion on every conceivable subject. As far as I can tell, you have the extreme right, who are fascist racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who come right out and let you know where they’re coming from. And on the opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two points is the liberal. As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary.”

-Assata Shakur
“It’s not progressive to be soft on crime”
-Kamala Harris

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Op-ed: I’m Not Ready to Trust Kamala Harris on LGBTQ+ Issues Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Sexuality and the State

By Chase Strangio

Out

Kamala Harris has spent her career building the carceral state. She is a skilled prosecutor, a believer in punishment and prisons, and has specifically targeted trans people and sex workers in the past five years.

I believe that people can evolve but I don’t believe that Harris has or will.

For the past decade, I have worked with transgender people in prison, jail, and other sites of detention. Through this work, I was taught that there is no justice in a legal system built on chattel slavery, indigenous genocide, and the legacies of those foundational frameworks. Prisons cannot be reformed out of white supremacy nor can the legal system be expected to transform racism and anti-Blackness. I personally do not believe in prisons and I will never trust prosecutors whose job it is to send people to cages.

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Alex Morse And How Personal Victimhood Will Doom The Left Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Sexuality and the State

The gay mayor vs the SJWs. Break out the beer and popcorn. It’s interesting to see a mainstream progressive like Krystal or FDR populists like Thomas Frank pointing out what I have been saying for 20 years.

Krystal Ball gives her thoughts on the allegations against Democratic Congressional candidate, Alex Morse, and how pursuing the allegations “enables President Trump.”

Congressional candidate, Mayor Alex Morse, responds to allegations of inappropriate behavior with a college student.

The Stonewall Blues (Still Dreaming of a Queer Nation) 1

by • Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade

Exile in Happy Valley

I should be such a happy Queer, shouldn’t I? At least that’s what I’m told. After all, aren’t all the other Queer folks just so goddamn happy? The ones on TV certainly appear to be, and even the ones I know seem to agree that shit’s getting better and I suppose in many respects it is. Then why do I find myself feeling like a genderfuck Charlie Brown every July, once the parades have gone home? This year’s Pride Month seemed particularly festive, even with the much hyped specter of COVID lurking just behind every glory hole.

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Somerville, Mass. becomes first U.S. city to legally recognize polyamorous relationships 1

by • Sexuality and the State

I have long believed that a movement to formally recognize polygamy would eventually appear in the US, and here it is. Between the polyamory movement, polygamous subcultures, and immigration from cultures where polygamy is practiced, it was almost inevitable, particularly given the recognition/acceptance of same-sex marriage.

Lauren Theisen

New York Daily News

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Young People In The US Are Having Way Less Sex Than Previous Generations 1

by • Economics/Class Relations, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State

The Sexual Revolution ended up like every other trend. It got boring after a while. Interestingly, women and homosexuals are more sexually active than heterosexual men, particularly lower income men, which is probably the result of widening class divisions. It typically takes money for straight guys to get laid.

By Tom Hale

IFL Science

The age of Tinder is a strangely sexless one, apparently. Most young people in the US are having way less than previous generations, according to a new study. Not only are more adults experiencing long dry spells or totally abstaining from sex, but even the adults who are having sex are having it less often.

Published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, researchers from San Diego State University and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden surveyed the sex lives of almost 10,000 adults between 2000 and 2018.

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Why LGBT People Should Be Conservative 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Sexuality and the State

In recent years, I have noticed an increasingly greater number of people from traditional outgroups who refer to themselves as “conservative,” just as I have noticed a growing wave of right-wing anti-capitalism. Obviously, these trends reflect the current establishmentarian tendency of blending cultural integration with intensified class oppression.

By Theryn Meyer

The Daily Caller

Growing up a gender-atypical child in the politically broken and culturally fragmented country of South Africa, social acceptance and even basic tolerance was often hard to come by. Dealing with the growing pains of adolescence as an unworldly teenager is challenging enough. But doing so in the lonely corner after being shunned by everyone in the room – your family, your friends, your community, your tribe – can make life for a queer kid seem unbearable at times.

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GOP backs Gorsuch’s LGBTQ decision after conservative blowback Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Sexuality and the State

The standard left/right pathological obsession with the Supreme Court as justification for electoralism has been totally debunked. The “God Hates Fags” crowd may be pissed, but the Republican leadership and their plutocratic benefactors couldn’t care less. More wage slaves, more fodder for the imperial legions, more voters to dupe…

By BURGESS EVERETT and MARIANNE LEVINE

Politico

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Supreme Court says federal law protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Sexuality and the State

As I would have predicted. I have said before that the constant Red Tribe/Blue Tribe bickering over Supreme Court appointments is irrelevant. Contentious social issues are decided on the basis of the prevailing consensus of the dominant factions of the power elite and general managerial class. Period. The current consensus is to exploit LGBTQ people as workers, consumers, soldiers, taxpayers, voters, etc. not to “discriminate” against them in the old-fashioned pre-Stonewall sense, and to incorporate the gay liberation paradigm into the wider totalitarian humanist ideological superstructure of the state.

The performance of “conservatives” on the Court is also interesting. Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by the supposed fascist George W. Bush, sided with the majority, and Justice Gorsuch, appointed by the supposed fascist Donald Trump, actually wrote the opinion. Notice also that the dissenting Justices argued merely on textual, originalist, or procedural grounds, not moral, religious, or philosophical ones,  or on the basis of states’ rights or private property, with Justice Kavanaugh even congratulating the LGBTQ community on their victory, even if he disagrees based on abstract political and legal theory.

By Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole, CNN

Washington (CNN)Federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The landmark ruling will extend protections to millions of workers nationwide and is a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on sex did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.
The 6-3 opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Gorsuch wrote.

Speaking Queerly About Whiteness Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

White people hate to talk about race, even the supposedly woke ones. When they do, the entire conversation is almost inevitably governed by fear. With white conservatives, it’s usually the fear of being made irrelevant by darker bodies. With white liberals, it’s usually the fear of being outed as being just as scared as the conservatives they mock. I’ve never really had much trouble discussing race myself, though that does seem to get me into a lot of trouble. Identity fascinates me, probably because my own has always been so goddamn elusive. In spite of the color of my flesh, I can’t recall a time in my life where I wasn’t treated as an “Other”.

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Black Trans Protesters Are Marching for a Police Killing That Cis People Aren’t Talking About: Tony McDade Reply

by • Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State
By Tomas Navia and Sam Donnenberg
VICE

As protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd and police brutality entered their eighth night, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the historic Stonewall Inn in New York Tuesday yelling the name of another black man killed in a confrontation with police: Tony McDade.

McDade, a 38-year-old black trans man, was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida, on May 27, two days after Minneapolis police kneeled on Floyd for almost nine minutes until he couldn’t breathe. Tallahassee police said in a press release that McDade was the suspect in a local stabbing and was armed, which led to the shooting.

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A Message Written in Fire: In Defense of Social Upheaval Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Fourth Generation Warfare, History and Historiography, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

It always ends this way, you can almost set your watch to it. A glamorous soirée rambling into the wee hours of the morning in an opulent townhouse on a tony tree lined street of any given international city. The kind of event held for some obscure charity to save a species of bird that likely never existed as anything but excuse for a deceptively benevolent orgy like this. Glamorous beautiful people with household names, dressed to the nine in three-piece-suits and silk gowns that cost more than most people will see in a lifetime. Ornate ballrooms echo with the bellowing sounds of the kind of excess that only this kind of downright flammable income can afford. Senators and Wall Street bankers dry hump underage courtesans, slurping Champaign twice their age and snorting Scarface-grade amounts of the same kind of narcotics they have twelve year old children of color locked up for decades for peddling in dime bags. Obnoxious plastic debutantes force theatrical laughter at racist jokes delivered by the direct descendants of Mayflower monsters and slave drivers. The only people of color are token police chiefs dressed like ornate African dictators. The only poor people are servants and the victims of white slavery, but suddenly they become very scarce.

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Why Elizabeth Warren, Democrats are changing tune on MeToo Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State • Tags: ,

#Metoo was never anything more than a  media/corporate/Democratic Party-fueled “satanic panic” that was used to advance the interests of the left-wing of capitalism, the Democratic Party, and cultural war tribalism.  Sexual assault is a real issue and involves real crimes of aggression, but one that was merely exploited by #Metoo. The Tara Reade case shows that the #Metoo pushers were scam artists.

I tend to suspect the accusations against Biden are true. I don’t know much about the accusations of this kind against Trump, but I suspect at least some of them are true because there have been so many of them, and it just sounds like something he would do. I was more skeptical of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. As for Bill Clinton…

D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept Ryan Grim shares the backlash he’s received in response to Tara Reade, and weighs in on Elizabeth Warren’s statement that Biden’s denial to the claims are, “credible and convincing.”

Is Marriage Over? Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Manvir Singh

Aeon.Com

At 17, John Humphrey Noyes thought a lot about women. An awkward teenager with a gangly neck and slouching shoulders, he fretted over how good looks were the key to success, especially when pursuing women. And he was shy. ‘So unreasonable and excessive is my bashfulness,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘that I fully believe that I could face a battery of cannon with less trepidation than I could a room full of ladies with whom I was unacquainted.’ Little did he know that he would go on to have sex with dozens of women, fathering children with at least nine in a ten-year period.

Noyes was born in 1811. His father was a Congressman for Vermont. His mother worked to instil in her son a religious reverence, hoping that he would become a ‘minister of the Everlasting Gospel’. In 1831, her wish seemed likely to come true. Noyes, then 20, announced that he would devote himself to the service of God’s truth, and entered a seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. Rather than accepting his teachers’ doctrine, however, he became consumed with the revivalist furore sweeping the northeast like a prairie fire. He left Andover for Yale University and started an uproar when he began preaching Perfectionism, the heretical notion that a religious life must be free of sin. Argumentative and charismatic, Noyes became a local celebrity and attracted small crowds of supporters, opponents and gawkers.

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A Vote for Mayor Pete is a Vote for Assimilation 2

by • Electoralism/Democratism, Sexuality and the State • Tags: ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Once again, dearest motherfuckers, I feel obligated to reprise my roll as ‘that bitch.’ Do I really have to be the queer bummer who smashes the Buttigieg delusion? Are all the other faggot anarchists busy? Oh well, fuck it. Hand me my hammer and I’ll do what I do best, which seems to be pissing off other queer people by interrupting their increasingly statist pride parades with the stone cold inconvenience of reality. I’m really sorry darlings, but its time for some tough love. This hurts me more than it hurts you but hopefully it hurts Mayor Pete the most. Because a vote for Mayor Pete may be a vote for the first gay president, but it’s also a vote for assimilation. So, here we go.

Around the country, queer kids are getting emails and Facebook pokes from their grandparents, congratulating us collectively for producing a viable presidential candidate. We must be so proud. Maybe you are but I’m not. I wouldn’t even want a legit queer occupying that glorified porta shitter called the Oval Office, much less one who appears to have been raised by neoliberal wolves. Pete Buttigieg may be gay but he is not one of us. Pete is more vanilla than most heterosexuals. He’s the kind of queer you bring home to mom instead of your black-bear boyfriend to make your rejection of her suburban values more palatable. He’s the kind of queer who tops just so he doesn’t ruin the good linens. He’s the kind of queer who nags his boyfriend into a church marriage and a couple of adopted Guatemalans just so he has something to brag about to his soccer-mom bitch sister in the annual Christmas letter. He’s the kind of queer who has one trans friend just so he can tell his Lincoln Republican friends that he has one trans friend. He’s the kind of queer who really isn’t that queer at all. He prefers LGBTQ. He’s the new queer; domesticated, neat, house broken, a novel wonder of modern western civilization. “But he’s a sign of progressive inclusion, so what are you bitching about?”

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Episode 101 – Season 5 with Bellamy Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Sexuality and the State, Strategy • Tags: , ,

A great interview that covers many topics that are relevant to ATS such as the value of “pan-secessionism” as opposed to “world domination anarchism,”and left-wing authoritarianism. Listen here.

“Since Bellamy was here at the start of The Brilliant project it is great to check in where he is at regarding the things we are talking and thinking about. Obviously Bellamy and I have been having similar experiences in the Anarchist Space over the past few years. This episode is about some dissimilar experiences and what is next with each of us and our respective media projects.”

Only Queers Can Save the Flaming Refugees of Love: Time to Decriminalize Polygamy 1

by • Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Massacres aren’t exactly unusual in the failed narco-state of Mexico, especially since the US pushed its beleaguered southern neighbor to declare all out war on the cartels a couple of decades back. More blood irrigates the Sonora Desert than acid rain. Barely a week goes by without some horrendous Bataille-esque crime of absurdly grotesque proportions popping up on the CNN news ticker, – 16 heads found in Juarez Chucky Cheese ball-pit, no tongues or eyes – But it’s rarely enough to steal Anderson Cooper’s attention from the latest minute kink in the Ukrainegate circus. This month was different though. This month, in early November, the cartels crossed the ultimate Rubicon of corporate news hysteria. They killed a bunch of pretty white people. 9 to be exact. 3 mothers and 6 children, savagely slaughtered in what appears to be a tragic case of mistaken identity.

But as the usual yammering heads blathered on about the proven necessity for endless drug wars, and Donald Trump used the garish details to further his border jihad while he and his brown counterpart AMLO compared dick sizes, there was one detail to this story that seemed to come to no one’s attention but mine. Oh, there was plenty of coverage of the fact that these innocent victims of American drug policy were Mormon Fundamentalists, usually in the form of some off-hand detail on the way to some other asinine point. But nobody seemed to do the math, to acknowledge the very basic fact that in an age when people are so desperate to get the hell out of Mexico that they’re willing to risk losing their children to one of Trump’s immigration zoos, there are still American citizens, dual citizens to be exact, who are living in exile in this hellhole, seeking refuge from 19th Century American puritanical persecution. The cartel put the bullets in those bodies, but those bodies where put in cartel country by the American government’s ongoing war on polygamy.

The families who were shot and roasted alive in their SUV’s were part of the Mormon Fundamentalist community of La Mora. While most of this community no longer practices plural marriage, they are all descendants of polygamist families forced to flee Utah after the federal government strong armed the Church of Latter-day Saints into banning a lifestyle among consenting adults which had long been a cornerstone of their religion. To this day, all fifty states maintain bans of varying degrees of severity against polygamy and the federal government has continued to make a point of persecuting polygamist communities, often on severely flimsy evidence of child abuse, separating and, in the case of Waco, even murdering whole families in the process. Our government has made it crystal clear that they don’t approve of the way these people choose to worship and raise their families and the result has been historically devastating. Thousands live in exile. Others have been forced to seek refuge in the shadows of demented false prophets like Warren Jeffs. All because of what? People finding love in unconventional places? Where the fuck have I heard that before? And why am I the only one outside of this community who seems to care?

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Queer Power!: Because Pride is Not Enough 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Once upon a time, somewhere over the rainbow, being Queer was dangerous. We were vile leather-clad degenerates, strutting down the cracked streets of neon drenched red light districts, lipstick smeared, basted in glitter, our self-manicured claws sharper than knives, our foul tongues sharper than claws, posing, posturing, begging the devil for a bad time.

We were outlaws, pirates sailing the high deserts in long stolen Cadillacs, painting our faces like savages and pitching our battered rainbow tepees on the banks of the Salton Sea, smoking peace-pipes loaded with hash, reefer, semen, tobacco, opium, ludes, kitten heels and moldy crumbled make-up. We got so high, we fucked so hard, for so long, our tantric screams of ecstasy bouncing off the canyon walls and swelling the cul-de-sacs of the recently robbed rich, depriving them of the sleep they so desperately needed to fulfill their wretched obligations as some bloated dictator’s greatest generation, a pill-popping silent majority who couldn’t swallow a barbiturate big enough to free them from the knowledge that the moaning sodomites who ransacked their garages were their bastard kin.

We were bomb-throwing revolutionaries, marching with Panthers, torching cop cars, hurling our diseased corpses upon the machines of powerful men all but deaf to anything but the sound of our shattered bones clogging the guts of their federally funded sports utility vehicles. We were Billy Burroughs, Miss Major, Hakim Bey, Allen Ginsberg, John Waters, Leslie Feinberg, Harry Hay, Paul Goodman, Gore Vidal, Larry Kramer. We were dykes, fags, trannies, perverts, lunatics, sodomites, carpet munchers, cocksuckers, radical faeries, flaming fucking queens. We were dangerous. We were beautiful. We were Queer.

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