A Bit of Hatemail from Jaimie Hayden October 2, 2018
Posted by Summerspeaker in Despair, Queer politics.Tags: bigotry, hatemail, transphobia
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This is what it’s like being trans on the internet in 2018! Jaimie sure taught those straw men ey built a lesson! Ah, bigots!
I don’t buy you. You aren’t just repellent to others because you’re in a minority group. You’re self-hating, comically negative, and basically made of being resentful. You hate everyone else for being happy when you’re not. That’s a choice. That’s your responsibility. That’s the content of your bad character, AKA the thing it’s right to discriminate about. Plenty of people don’t respond to bad luck by being toxic. People hate you not just because your body is ugly but because your soul is ugly.
But let’s say you’re right, that it really is out of your control that other people just find you repellent and there’s nothing you can do about it. What you’re saying is you want human connection with people knowing full well it causes them pain.
Well, pedophilia is genetic. Some people are born with sexual desires they can’t fulfill without damaging other people’s lives. It’s not their fault. It’s bad luck. Well, I’m sorry. Either that pedophile has a moral obligation to accept a life of sexual frustration, or everyone else has a right to remove the danger to their children and community. There’s no way out of that.
If you’re right about yourself then you’re in the same boat. When you act like society is unfair because it’s organized so that people who feel miserable around you aren’t pushed to be around you, you’re fantasizing about people having less options about not giving you affection. And that’s pretty much like rape. Sorry, people being able to choose to be around people they like just means unlikeable people end up alone. That’s the system working. Anything else is you feeling entitled to ruin other people’s lives.
You’re basically an incel, and you need to be told something blunt. If you somehow at the same time lack every possible good thing from beauty to talent to charm to money to status to style to pride to fun to wit to kindness, then you should be rejected. That’s what not having merit means. But then I honestly have trouble believing that anyone in real life could really be as bad at everything at once as you paint yourself.
Imagine someone really existed whose body literally excreted shit from pores in the surface of their skin. Everything you touch turns to shit. Other people around them feel nauseated and ill just standing in the room with you. Well, obviously that person wouldn’t ever experience love or touch or affection. Of course they don’t. They’re a utility black hole. It’s absolutely senseless for anyone to put resources into someone incapable of being happy no matter what you do and who makes everyone else less happy just by existing.
But, like I said, I don’t buy you. I think it’s just easier for you to wallow in misery than admit you’re born less good at being deserving of anyone else’s love or respect, and your only choice is a long hard road of self-improvement to become adequate at it. It’s not fair, but the only way you’ll get anywhere is stop caring about unfairness and do the work of catch-up at being loveworthy. Knowing you might not succeed but realizing it’s your problem to succeed anyway.
If someone’s legs are broken, the person who trains themselves to walk on prosthetics and accepts working four times harder for imperfect functionality might succeed, while the person who just shouts hatred at people with functioning legs will fail. Making yourself feel better by over and over telling a moral story about how evil luckier people are is just doubling down on failure and the absolute most certain way to remain a failure for the rest of your life. Every unit of energy you throw at hating the world for being unfavourable to you is squandering resources you more than anyone else can’t afford to waste. While making you more and more unlovable and a worse and worse person.
And if you really just can’t. If the game of reality just spat out a map where there’s no way you can win this nightmare level, then you should accept that this is reality. Every human being faces that situation eventually. It’s called death. And some people go out with dignity, while other people go out whining and hating and shaming the human species with their disgraceful spectacle.
Grow some dignity. Change your life. Stop dragging everyone else down.
Jaimie does kinda have a point about how abject and impossible being genetically unlovable is. $10 says the vast majority of people (including radicals!) agree with Jaimie at the end of the day, because everyone loves eugenics. If you’re going to be a eugenicist, at least be kind enough to advocate exterminating the genetically unfit as soon as possible, so as to minimize their/our pain.
On Markets, Meetings, and Social Value October 23, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Anarchism, Feminism, Queer politics, Transhumanism.Tags: anarchism, communism, markets, meetings, transhumanism
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No political tendency offers much to unpopular/unlovable folks. Some queer, feminist, and disability radicalisms make an effort. Communisms at least theoretically want equal material nice things for everyone.
In actually existing communism to date, of course, force & attractiveness (in its various modes) tended to determine access to resources. Party insiders at every level ruled the roost.
Popularity mechanisms such as markets and meetings necessarily exclude those of us who can’t compete, who can’t please other members of the species. They’re no good for freaks, outcasts, queers, losers, etc.
For the long term, transhumanism promises the satisfaction of all desires if only via virtual reality, the ability change or eliminate one’s desires, and the ability to copy whatever the successful folks have.
If I thought I could personally win the popularity game and didn’t care about those who couldn’t, then maybe I’d be a market anarchist.
Markets and currency might constitute the lesser evil temporarily and I’m grudgingly okay with that, but only if combined with attention to those excluded and attempts at correction.
Lonely Robots: Transhumanist Responses to Unfuckability July 4, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Feminism, Queer politics, Science Fiction, Technology, Transhumanism.Tags: desire, future, queer, romance, sex
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Soon after I mentioned being genderqueer during a conversation at the Extreme Futurist Festival 2011, the person I was talking to responded, “Wow, it must be hard for you to find sexual partners!”
“Gee, thanks,” I thought. As tactless as that remark may have been, it wasn’t wrong. This piece by Meredith Talusan explores some of the dynamics involved. Unfortunately, complaining about not getting laid immediately calls to mind masculine sexual entitlement to women’s bodies. I’m not sure it can escape that established trope.
The question of who’s considered attractive and who receives affection matters, but it’s unclear what to do. Most successful folks on the left and elsewhere enjoy their social power and/or romantic/sexual attractiveness. Critiques of the status quo as making it difficult for some to realize their desires potentially unsettle the existing elite, so they’ve no interest in pushing such critiques.
It’s telling Talusan’s article centers the achievement of Jacob Tobia and Alok Vaid-Menon, taking for granted the notion that prominent folks should get dates. What about all the humans who conform to neither ideals of attractiveness nor of success?
Well, nobody cares about those losers!
Anybody who values the overall good should care, though, and some do, or at least pretend to. Transhumanism offers various theoretical easy fixes to the problems of loneliness and unfuckability, albeit with severe implementation issues and philosophical implications.
Wait, some people are poor, ugly, crazy, and/or sick? Let’s use technology to get them up to standard. We can all be sexy immortal billionaires!
A lot of transhumanists think this way.
As simplistic as this perspective is seems, the difficulty if not impossibility of conforming to existing norms indeed accounts for much of their oppressive power. Currently, the genetic lottery, money, and time determine who’s beautiful, hot, sexy, stunning, etc. If anybody could make their body match ideals of physical beauty, the advantage the genetic elite have in this regard would evaporate.
On the other hand, the normatively gorgeous don’t necessarily have the kind of sexual and romantic relationships they want, so opening access to beauty hardly seems sufficient. Additionally, what about folks who chose unpopular aesthetics? They might still find themselves undesirable despite full morphological freedom. Additionally, deprived of the genetic hierarchy, attractiveness norms could shift to become akin to fashion: “Girl, that body is so last month!”
The prospect of modifying minds quickly leads to questioning the basis of individual identity. For example, assuming I could make myself think and behave as popular and successful people do, would I want to? What about rewiring my mind to disregard social status and affection entirely? Would I still be me if I did either of those? I don’t know. Many of us stubbornly wish to remain who we imagine ourselves to be.
Matching Algorithms
Given the wide array of different desires folks have, morphological freedom by itself seems inadequate for solving the problem of loneliness and unfuckability. And of course full morphological freedom would require technological innovation and economic transformation; it’s a long way off.
However, there’s potential to make things dramatically better in the nearer term. Matching algorithms, such as featured on dating sites like OkCupid, can facilitate connections and enable romantic/sexual relationships. This ain’t necessarily that great at the moment, but the principle of aligning people’s desires, interests, etc. has promise. As big the world is, there’s probably at least a few folks somewhere whose desires match up with any given person’s at any given time.
For instance, let’s say I want to get tied up right now. I don’t know anyone who I think would be interested, but there’s a decent chance one or more of the planet’s seven and half billion humans is, especially if they had an idea of who I am and a basic level of trust. There might even be somebody my city or neighborhood.
Increasingly sophisticated digital networks can theoretically hook people up for both romantic/sexual relationships and other interactions, decreasing loneliness and improving quality of life. We already try to do this with our social media, though it’s a rather blunt instrument at present.
Certain transhumanists and others look optimistically to sexbots, predicting physical and mental health benefits. Yet, in addition to raising questions about objectification, sexbots are unlikely be able to convey the social status associated with romantic/sexual desirability. While some may eventually function as romantic partners, this wouldn’t be equivalent to human partnership unless they had human-level or above artificial intelligence and autonomy like a human. Sexbots might well alleviate the pain of unfuckability by human standards, but it’s unlikely they would completely resolve the problem. As Sherry Turkle and company argue, the prospect of sex and love with robots has the potential pitfalls. I find those concerns mostly misguided but relevant here.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality offers a number of benefits for sexual/romantic relations, whether between humans or between humans and AIs. VR makes change ones appearance trivial, eliminating that aspect of the genetic lottery. By transcending geographic limitations, VR in conjunction with matching algorithms could dramatically increase the odds of meaningful connections.
VR sexbots have the same issues as physical ones, albeit with perhaps less stigma. With or without sexual/romantic elements, VR worlds could simulate social status, as games do today. Losing oneself in VR entails similar philosophical challenges to transforming one’s psyche as described above.
Conclusion
None of the above technologies can replace the political and social project of creating a more accessible and fulfilling society, but they can assist in that project and make life more livable in any case.
Pride’s Queer Future June 27, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Anarchism, Anti-imperialism, Feminism, Queer politics, Science Fiction, Transhumanism.Tags: future, Pride, queer, SJW, Zionism
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The year is 2020.
Pride events across the United States have banned cops, corporations, Zionism, & U.S. nationalism.
Talking heads rail about intersectionality as masked queers loot banks and big-box stores.
Cishet white men approach with caution, assuming the SJW mob will rip them apart. Instead they find themselves caught up in the revolutionary fervor.
Semi-autonomous remote-controlled drones assault police cars and stations massive numbers.
Law and order breaks down. It’s chaos in the streets.
New worlds are forming.
Remembering the Pulse Massacre in 2017 June 12, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Queer politics.Tags: ex-Muslims, Islamophobia, Pulse
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I’m sharing this 2016 post from Ali A. Rizvi to highlight how ex-Muslim voices matter and how all Abrahamic scriptures are antiqueer. Various prominent ex-Muslims offer of a compelling critique of the Islamophobia discourse that appears dominant on the Western left at present. We anarchists in particular need to do better in this regard. It’s a difficult issue to navigate and ex-Muslims like Rizvi and Sarah Haider have meh politics overall, but fundamentally our sympathies should lie with apostates, blasphemers, and so on.
Pride 2017 June 10, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Anarchism, Anti-imperialism, Decolonization, Queer politics.Tags: anarchism, LGBT, Pride
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I took this during Pride events in Albuquerque today. Let’s simultaneously oppose antiqueer violence, borders, and xenophobia.
In Washington, DC, radicals disrupted the Pride celebration with banners calling attention to various forms of oppression: the police, colonial oil pipelines on Native land, and deportations.
I’d love to see more actions like this. I wish there’d been one here. There was an alternative Pride event calling out the main Pride event for being corporate. A few radicals marched in the main one, myself included, but it wasn’t like what went down in DC. We didn’t disrupt. It’s usually correct to disrupt.
Unlike last year, I refrained from disruption. I put up anarchist stickers and mostly kept my mouth shut. Despite all the hype around Donald Trump’s election and what you’d hope would be an era of intensified resistance, life goes on. Everyday concerns remain dominant for most of us.
Here’s to ever-increasing queerness in all the senses of the word. Expect the future to be even weirder than the present. If you think we’re freaks now, just wait!
Against All Authority May 14, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Ageism, Anarchism, Feminism, Queer politics.add a comment
¡Sin excepciones! No exceptions. Regardless of sentimentality, freedom means unmaking parental authority along with all other social hierarchies. The nuclear family serves as a practical and conceptual basis for oppression. I remain drawn to Shulamith Firestone’s thought in part because of how ey identified this dynamic.
Transgender Day of Visibility March 31, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Queer politics, Transhumanism.Tags: morphological freedom, transgender, transhumanism
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Here’s to the struggle against gender norms and for universal morphological freedom. Despite what some radfems claim, we ain’t even near peak trans. The future promises to be weirder than any of us can imagine.
Chelsea Manning’s Sentence Commuted January 17, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Anarchism, Queer politics, Technology.Tags: Chelsea, Manning, political prisoners
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This is a victory for freedom, justice, political prisoners queer/trans revolution, etc. The credit goes to all the folks who’ve support Chelsea Manning, not to Barack Obama. Let’s hope Obama does the same for countless other political prisoners in the next couple of days. Let’s hope to soon become so crafty that they can’t catch us and imprison us at all.
Thinking Safety after the Orlando Massacre June 12, 2016
Posted by Summerspeaker in Anarchism, Anti-imperialism, Decolonization, Feminism, Queer politics, Technology, Transhumanism.Tags: anarchism, massacre, Orlando, Pulse, shooting
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“Freedom is never very safe.”
Shevek says this toward the end of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Tyranny isn’t safe either. In the wake of today’s deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, we need to remember these principles.
Reactions to this atrocity follow predictable lines. Many progressives and leftists are warning about Islamophobia. Most liberals, along with some progressives and leftists, are blaming the National Rifle Association and encouraging state gun control. Some radicals are promoting armed self-defense for queers. Most conservatives and some liberals are blaming Muslims and beating the drums of war. Some antiqueer bigots are hailing the attack as God’s work, divine retribution.
Without question, the massacre highlights the horror of antiqueer bigotry. As with any mass killing, it stands out as a human tragedy, a site of spectacularly intense pain and loss. Because of this, the impulse toward mourning feels intuitive.
That’s not the approach I take here. Instead of prayers, I offer analysis.
While recognizing the appropriateness of mourning, I challenge it as an imperative. None of us can meaningfully mourn all of the death and suffering that happens in the world each day. Various valid responses exist, including reflection, looking at the big picture. It doesn’t necessarily make any sense that massacres like this attract more outrage than the structural violence that kills people more slowly, spread out across time and space. It doesn’t necessarily make sense that we mourn the massacres that the media tells us to and not others.
My reaction as a queer transhumanist anarchist adheres to its own predictable line: opposition to authoritarian security measures enforced through violence, whether controls on Muslim immigrants or on firearms. I likewise advocate criticism of Islam and other Abrahamic religions as part of the project of smashing straightness.
As I’ve previously written, state gun control has a racist history and enhances the power of elites. Moreover, as William Gillis argues, state regulation based on safety fundamentally conflicts with technological innovation. I don’t completely agree with Gillis, but find the broad sweep of the argument compelling.
First the state bans assault rifles; next it bans all 3D printers that could conceivably produce assault rifles. (How do they enforce these bans? With assault rifles, of course.) The logic of banning guns, of safety via state violence, tends toward totalitarian dystopia. It’s the logic of the cop wearing a pistol and body armor who’ll shoot you for possessing a knife. Perhaps enlightened progressives could somehow strike the right balance and allow for technological transformation while still reducing the odds of individuals going on murderous rampages.
I doubt it. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take. State gun control is manifestly hypocritical, unethical, and corrosive to freedom. The long-term dangers are overwhelming.
I do support nonstate efforts to reduce risks that come from the means of destruction, including firearms. Safety stands out as a hard problem for transhumanism. I plan to cover this in more detail in the future. For now, suffice it to say that I don’t want a nuclear bomb in every pot.
Banning guns is misguided. Further restricting Muslim immigration and targeting Muslims with increased security-based harassment stand out as far worse, nightmarishly oppressive prospects. Such prejudice and control run wholly counter to the principle of freedom.
With that said, despite how homonationalists tell me to join ISIS when I denounce the United States, I don’t buy into the mainstream narrative around Islamophobia. Islam, like other Abrahamic religions, contains endless oppressive elements. I don’t think there’s enough positive there to be worth salvaging, although I hold limited sympathy for Muslims/Christians/Jews/etc. who cultivate the best aspects of their religions.
I oppose prejudice against Muslims because region and culture determine religious identity more than adherence to dogma, and because anti-Muslim sentiment in the West primarily comes from imperialists, racists, and xenophobes. We should criticize and fight back those who preach oppression based on any religion or any other basis. This includes Islam.
Ultimately, I’m on the side of the apostates and blasphemers. Death to all domination!
Queering the Singularity 