需要（在政治方面）有「做點事」的感覺不小心的話會讓你很容易被利用

When I was a child, autonomous organizing was out of the question for me as someone who grew up in an abusive family. Even after becoming an adult, my parents would not let me go outside on my own, and when they did I not only had to do it according to their schedule, but also couldn't associate with people they did not approve of—that is to say, anybody whose goal wasn't to succeed “like normal” under the colonial, white supremacist, capitalist system was off limits. If I wanted to mess with politics, it could only be for helping me to get into a good school or into a good job. So for most of my life, social media was the only place I was active politically. It socialized me into reductive and antagonistic terms of engagement, and I was always looking to follow the accounts that yelled the most at the most people, thinking that those who always lost their temper at the drop of a hat over any amount of social injustice, no matter how small, were the one who were most committed to criticizing society. And as soon as someone got angry at me, I compulsively forced myself to change my mind.

小時候，做自治的組織行動對在虐待性家庭長大的我是絕對不可能的事。甚至是成年了之後，我的父母都不會讓我自己出門，而且出門的時候不僅要按照他們的時間，也不能跟他們不接受的人結交—也就是說，任何目的不是在殖民、白人至上主義的資本主義系統之下得到「正常」成功的人都禁止入生。要搞政治，必須只能為了幫助我進好學校或是找到好工作。因此，大半輩子 SNS 是我唯一有積極參與政治的地方。它的社會化讓我習慣簡化性和對抗性的互動標準，而我一直都在尋找最會罵最多人的帳戶去追隨，以為最常為了不管多麼大小的社會不公發脾氣的人就是最投入社會批評的人。而且一當別人生氣，我就強迫自己馬上改變意見。

I told myself it wasn't fawning, it was refusing to tone police. I bought into the functionally abusive form of accountability called “deference politics,” because I didn't think I was qualified to do anything but to defer. I had no political principles, because I did not think I had the ability to arrive at “the correct” political principles, because I had no political self-esteem. I did not think I was allowed to think or do anything unless it was perfectly correct according to everyone else's standards of social justice or die, because I did not think I deserved to have autonomy.

我跟自己說這不是在討好，這是在拒絕管制語氣。我完全相信了作用是虐待的「服從政治」問責模式，因為我認為除了服從我什麼都沒資格去做。我沒有政治原則，因為我認為自己沒有能力找到「正確」的政治原則，因為我沒有政治的自我肯定。我認為除非是完全符合大家的社會正義標準的話我什麼東西都完全不能去做完全不能去想，因為我認為自己沒有資格擁有自治力。

This isn't an inspiring story about how I reached complete recovery. This is a story about how many times I broke myself for other people to get to where I'm at.

這不是我如何得到完全康復激勵人心的故事。這是我為了別人破壞自己多少次才能到現在的地步的故事。

When I escaped from home and started autonomously organizing offline, I had sort of this idealized image of the local organizing scene, because in comparison to the community of deference politickers I left, it seemed so perfect online. In my heart, I thought: “I failed to be perfect for the deference politickers, but I can try being perfect here.”

當我逃出家之後開始在線下參與自治組織的行動，我對當地的組織圈子有點理想化的印象，因為跟我離開的服從政治活動家的社群比，他們在網路上看起來很完美。心裡想：「為了那些服從政治活動家我失敗做出完美，但在這裡做出完美可以再去試。」

I fall in love with my first project. The comrades there aren't perfect, but for the first time, I feel like I'm Doing Something. I join my first affinity group, and pretend I'm okay that they're almost all white, pretend this isn't a reproduction of the white supremacist conditions of this white-dominated city, pretend that I never grew up militantly refusing to befriend white people after my mom told me a white doctor made fun of her accent, pretend I can be perfectly normal about all this for them. Because all we have is each other. Because besides them I have nobody else.

我愛上了弟一個項目。那裡的同志確實不完美，但我第一次感覺到自己在「做點事」。我加入了第一個同寅組織，假裝他們幾乎全部是白人不是個問題、假裝這不是這白人主導的城市的白人至上狀態的再生產、假裝自從我媽媽跟我提過白醫生嘲笑她的腔之後我從來沒有好鬥地拒絕跟白人做朋友、假裝為了他們我能把這當作是完全的正常。因為我們唯一擁有的就是彼此。因為除了他們我誰都沒有。

I fuck up with my first project. I find out my affinity group may have accidentally helped one homeless comrade rob another in camp. Even though my affinity group says it's a problem for the camp to solve, I insist on confirming the truth and making amends, and talk to the camp about it with a comrade outside the affinity group. It turns out to be a misunderstanding, but the comrade accused of stealing ends all contact with me afterwards. I do not forgive myself for this result. I ban myself from working with both the camp and my affinity group forever. I'm back to having no one again.

我搞砸了第一個項目。我發現我的同寅組織可能不小心幫了一個無家可歸的同志在營地偷了別人的東西。雖然同寅組織說這是營地人該解決的問題，我堅持要確定真實和給予補償，跟同寅組織外的同志一起去跟營地人談一談。結果是誤會，可是被控告偷東西的同志跟我斷聯。得到這樣的結果我無法原諒自己。我永遠禁止自己跟營地人和我的同寅組織合作。我回到完全沒有別人的生活。

And then I have a psychotic break. I delete or leave all my social media accounts because I'm afraid of what I'll say to other people. This lasts for about an year. And when I come back to social media, I'm completely raw. Every interaction terrifies me. If I can't even trust my basic perception of material reality, how can I trust my perceptions on a social and political level? But I learn to live without that trust. Because all I have is myself. My damned-to-be-imperfect self.

然後我的思覺又突然失調。因為害怕自己會對別人說的話我刪掉或離開所有的 SNS 帳戶。這樣的狀態大概持續了一年。然後當我回到 SNS 的時候，感覺是完全的刺痛。每一個互動都讓我害怕到不行。如果我連物質現實的知覺都不能信任，怎麼能信任自己對社會和政治的觀念？但我學會在沒有那信任的狀態之下繼續生活。因為我唯一擁有的只有自己。我注定無法完美的自己。

I fall in love with my second project. It's even more glorious than the first. It drives me crazy in all the right ways. And it connects me to new comrades and a third project I fall in love with. For the first time, I even get close enough to some of those comrades to call them friends. And just when I think it will last, everything blows up in my face in quick succession. I civilly try to tell Comrade-friend 1 not to use the term “narcissistic abuse” because it's Cluster B sanism, and when I express my sadness over 1's refusal to stop using it, 1 weaponizes my own personality disorder against me and accuses me of symptomatically demanding perfection. Comrade-friend 2 and I fall into a student-mentor dynamic, in which 2 acts as my guide to the local organizing scene. 2 starts telling me how a bunch of comrades I'm one to two degrees of separation from are or are covering for abusers, rapists and the like. And even though all of the accusations are true, even though I always want to hear those warnings, by the time I'm done distancing myself from those people, I have almost no one left but 2.

我愛上了第二個項目。比第一個項目還要更榮美。它讓我發了最對的瘋。而且它也讓我接觸到新的同志和第三個被我愛上的項目。我第一次跟其中一些同志們親近到能說他們是朋友。然後正當我認為能在這樣的狀態繼續過下去，就碰到了一個又一個的失算。我很客氣地跟同志朋友 1 號說不要用「自戀型虐待」這一詞，因為是對 B 型人格疾患的精神障礙歧視，而當我向 1 號對停用的拒絕表示悲傷，1 號利用我自己的人格障礙來批評我說我是根據症狀性地在要求完美。同志朋友 2 號和我開始了學生和導師的動態，之中 2 號作為我的當地組織圈子嚮導。2 號開始告訴我一大堆我有一到二度分隔的同志自己是或是在幫忙掩護虐待者、強暴者等等。雖然那些控告全都是真的、雖然那些警告我一直都會想聽，當我和那些人疏遠完之後，身邊就快要只剩下 2 號了。

One day, when 2 is breaking the news to me about another rapist-abuser, we have a fight. 2 accuses me of being an abuse apologist, over details I refuse to share publicly. And I'm aware this means some people will think this means I'm selectively redacting details to make it look like I'm not really an abuse apologist. And I'm aware that preemptively adding that disclaimer also looks performative. I don't expect you to take my side. I'm not telling this story because it's right, I'm telling it because it's true.

有一天，當 2 號在跟我說另一個強暴和虐待者的消息，我們吵起了架。 2 號指責我是虐待辯護者，細節我不願意公開分享。我也知道這樣會讓某些人認為我是在有選擇地刪減內容為了要讓自己看起來不是虐待辯護者。也知道先發制人地加上那個免責聲明會看起來很操演性。我不指望你跟我站在同一邊。我說這個故事的原因不是因為正確，而是真實。

So 2 and I stop working together. And I'm obsessive about trying to figure out whether or not 2 was right to call me an abuse apologist. I'm an abuse survivor. I need to have solidarity with other survivors. It's personal. But I can't force myself to agree with 2. And I hate myself for it. And then 2 gets accused of being a sexual predator. And others come forward with stories of being abused by 2. And then I think about all the other things I could say about 2 that I won't in public that made me question why I wanted 2's approval so much, why it felt like I was nothing when 2 left. And then I hate myself even more, for having been played.

因此 2 號跟我不再一起合作了。而且我一直不停地試圖搞清楚 2 號說我是虐待辯護者到底有沒有錯。我自己是虐待倖存者。我必須跟其他的倖存者團結一致。是私人恩怨。可是我就是逼不了自己跟 2 號同意。我也為此痛恨自己。然後 2 號被指告是性掠奪者。然後其他人跑出來說有被 2 號虐待。然後我開始想到其他我能但是拒絕在公開的地方說關於 2 號的事，讓我懷疑當時為什麼那麼要 2 號的讚賞、為什麼 2 號走了之後讓我覺得自己什麼都不是。然後我又再次痛恨自己，因為自己被耍了。

A comrade invites me to join another project. And I do not fall in love with it. But I stay, thinking the love might come, eventually. It doesn't. It is the most disorganized, white, liberal, reformist, and politically toothless “autonomous” project I have ever been on, and I was a fool to think my influence would have changed anything. I thought work would be the only place where I'd routinely be the only person in the room with a problem, politically. I was not expecting that treatment from people who insisted I was their comrade. “Comrade”—that word didn't mean a damn thing anymore. To them, a “comrade” was someone they could use. A body on the ground. A vessel to be sacrificed for The Cause. Not someone who struggled by their side with shared affinity. “Affinity” didn't mean a damn thing anymore. “Affinity” for them really just meant affection—and affection meant “we like you, do things that we like, or we're going to treat you like you don't exist.”

一位同志邀請我加入另一個項目。我並沒有愛上它。可是我決定待下來，想說愛可能會慢慢出現。但沒有。它是我參與最毫無計劃、最白、最自由派、最改良派和最沒有政治權力的「自治」項目，而且認為我的影響能改變任何這些東西是我在傻。我以為只有工作才會是我一直要當房間裡唯一有政治方面問題的人的地方。想不到堅持說我是他們的同志的人會那樣對待我。「同志」—那一詞變成了死都沒有意思。對他們來說，「同志」就是有用的人。現場現的身。為了偉大的事業能被犧牲的寄託者。不是在身邊一起鬥爭，跟他們有共同的同寅的人。「同寅」變成了死都沒有意思。他們「同寅」的意味只不過是感情—而且感情的意味是：「我們喜歡你，繼續做出我們喜歡的東西，不然我們會把你當作是空氣。」

The day I finally quit that crew, I went on a pilgrimage back to the place where I fell in love with my first project. It has an abandoned water tower, with a long ladder you climb down into total darkness. I remember back then, the first time I went down there with my affinity group, I was so afraid. It was just so overwhelming, not being able to see what was ahead of you, even with a flashlight. But this time I was not afraid. I knew what to expect from the dark. This time I went down alone, and made it all the way to the back of the water tower. And when I made it to the back, I turned around out of curiosity, and witnessed how the sunlight still streamed down from the top of the ladder, realizing that from this angle, the water tower was actually not that dark on the inside. I realized that was what autonomous organizing had felt like for me—how I felt so trapped by all the things that overwhelmed me, that I forgot to look at how far I'd come.

我終於退出那群人之後的那一天，我去訪問愛上第一個項目的地點。那裡有個被遺棄的水塔，裡頭有長長的梯子讓你爬下去進入完全的黑暗。我記得那時候，跟我的同寅組織第一次爬下去，害怕得不得了。就是連有了手電筒都看不見前面有什麼東西，超不能忍受。可是這次我不怕。我知道黑暗會是怎麼樣。這次我自己下去，完全走到水塔的最後面。然後走到後面時，我好奇地轉過來，目擊到陽光從梯子的最上面還是能照得下來，發現從這個角度來看，水塔的裡面其實不太暗。我發覺這就是參與自治組織行動給我的感覺—感覺一直被忍受不了的事情困住，困到忘了看看自己已經走了多遠。

Quitting the project I could not love suddenly freed up so much time for me. I filled it ravenously with things that kept my daggers drawn. It wasn't because I needed to Do Something. It was because, for the first time in my life, I was never clearer about the specific things I wanted to do. I understand, when my options for “comrades” in this city are more often than not people who weaponize “affinity” to discipline you into following their radical or reactionary “autonomous” party line, “all we have is each other” feels like a hostage situation. And I now understand, if what I actually want is revolution, then to let these people make me feel ashamed for wanting more is unprincipled behavior.

退出我愛不上的項目突然讓我奪回了很多時間。我貪婪地用劍拔弩張的事把空填滿。不是因為自己需要「做點事」。是因為這是我生活中第一次那麼徹底地明白自己特別想要做的事。我了解，當我在這個城市中能選擇的「同志」往往都是利用「同寅」來規訓你遵循他們的激進或反動的「自治」路線的人，「我們唯一擁有的就是彼此」感覺就是挾持人質。我現在也了解，如果我真正要的是革命的話，讓這些人讓我因為想要更多而感到羞恥是沒有原則的行為。

Because revolution is not about you coming across as correct—as palatable—to “the masses” or to your comrades in “the cadre.” Revolution is about actually ending the social and material conditions of domination and exploitation that organize the world. And to move with principle is to move with militant clarity on that matter—even if you have to move alone. And to ask that clarity of your comrades is not demanding perfection. It is asking for the bare minimum of revolution. And if revolution is not your bare minimum—if all you want is just to be Doing Something, and to be cheered on for doing that—I am not going to be your enabler. Because god knows I have already enabled myself too much.

因為革命需要的不是讓「群眾」或在「幹部」中的同志感到你的正確—你的可接受性。革命需要的是在實際上結束組織世界的主宰和剝削性的社會和物質狀態。按照原則來行動也就是行動的時候要按照好鬥性的清晰思路去搞懂那件事—就算剩下能行動的人就只有你。而要求你的同志們擁有那樣的清晰思路不是在要求完美。是在要求革命的最低限度。而如果革命不是你的最低限度—如果你唯一要的只是來「做點事」然後被鼓勵—我不要當你的縱容者。天曉得我已經自我縱容了太多次。

an activist, a defender, a crusader of human rights, “your comrade” i'm not your comrade i'm not putting my body on the ground for you for your numbers for your fiction of holy struggle i will not die a martyr for i further no holy cause but as the total apostate which i really am— for the revolution is not a pious event but the most godless of processes and who are you to fucking pray for me?

死都別說我是

什麼活動家、什麼人權保護者、 什麼鬥士、「你的同志」 我不是你的同志 我在現場現的身 不是獻給你 獻給你的人數 獻給你謊稱的聖戰 死後我成不了烈士 因為我推不動聖潔的事業 其實我就只能當的是 十足的叛教者— 因為革命 不是虔誠的事件 而是最無神的過程 而你 到底是憑什麼資格 為我祈屁禱？

written in response to this call for submissions

對此徵選公告的回應

“As I stated, the Western military experts admit that the mechanized establishment guard must outnumber the attacking worker by ten to one. What they cannot afford to admit is that even with this numerical superiority they cannot win [...] At ten to one, we still enjoy a strategic, military superiority if we are attacking, because they must defend so many different points vital to the order and continuity of their life-support system, all at the same time. The points to be protected will always outnumber the units who are available to protect them.”

—George Jackson, Blood in My Eye

「如上所述，西方軍事專家承認機械化當權派的警衛隊人數必須是進攻勞動者的十倍。他們擔負不起承認的是就算是擁有數量方面的優勢他們完全贏不了 [...] 在十比一的比例之下，如果我們進攻還是能享有戰略性、軍事方面的優勢，因為他們必須守護那麼多對他們生命維持系統的秩序和持續必不可少的的不同地點，而且要同時守護。必須保護的地點永遠會超過可以保護它們的小隊。」

—喬治·傑克遜，《眼露凶光》

The first time I shoplifted, I was scared as shit. To calm myself down, I kept repeating George Jackson's words like a mantra in my head: The points to be protected will always outnumber the units who are available to protect them. The points to be protected will always outnumber the units who are available to protect them. The security guards couldn't check every aisle at once. There were so many security cameras, I was nothing but a humanoid blur on their screens. I acted like a regular shopper, just browsing for things to buy, while moving nonstop like a shark to avoid the fate of being caught. And I got away. And I couldn't believe it was that easy.

第一次商店行竊的時候，我心裡著急得很。為了讓自己靜下來，我像在唸咒語一樣在心裡中一直重複喬治·傑克遜的話：必須保護的地點永遠會超過可以保護它們的小隊。必須保護的地點永遠會超過可以保護它們的小隊。保安人員不可能一次巡查每一個通道。監視攝影機那麼多，我在它們的螢幕上只不過是個模糊的人形點。我假裝自己是個普通的購物者，只是在看看能買的東西，同時像鯊魚一樣不停地移動，避免被抓到的命運。我就那樣溜走了。簡直不敢相信，真的是那麼簡單。

When I got home, I went back to my Buddhist altar, and turned to face my Siddartha Gautama statue with a sense of guilt. There are five basic precepts in Buddhism that even laypeople have to follow, and I just violated the second one, which was not to steal. Should I even be keeping the altar up anymore? Supporting illegalism and other people's illegalist praxist was one thing, but how could I have the nerve to do it myself and still keep saying I'm Buddhist?

到家的時候，我回到自己的佛壇，愧疚地面對我的釋迦牟尼調像。佛教連在家眾都要遵守的基本五戒，之中我違犯了第二個不偷戒。這樣的話，我是該把佛壇拆下來嗎？支持非法主義和別人的非法主義實踐是一回事，但自己去幹的話，哪來有臉皮繼續說自己是佛教徒？

Well, what kind of political conditions does that kind of Buddhism create? As a Buddhist, do you problematize me for being a thief that steals necessities I cannot afford, or the capitalists for robbing the proletariat of access to those things? As a Buddhist, are you obligated to ignore that the bourgeoisie have hegemony over laws and social norms that govern theft and ownership, and to pretend that the exploiters and the exploited steal under the same conditions? Are you enlightened for refusing to kill the cop in your head (killing violates the first precept, after all)?

啊那種佛教會創造什麼樣的政治狀況？作為佛教徒，你要問題化的是偷買不起必需品的我，還是剝奪無產階級對那些東西的使用權的資本主義者？作為佛教徒，你必要忽略資產階級對管理偷竊的法律和社會規範的霸權，假裝剝削者和被剝削者偷竊的情況一模一樣嗎？拒絕幹掉心裡警察是表示無上正覺的事嗎（殺生不是違犯第一戒嗎）？

What does a Buddhist politically achieve by personally refusing to steal (or kill oppressors)? Reality is not a sutta governed by Buddhist principles—by refusing to take what we need and dying like martyrs, we will not prefigure the ruling class and their lapdogs into dāna and mettā, let alone anarchy and communism. Every commodity you buy fuels the death machine that is capitalism. A cop is not going to care how clean your conscience is before they shoot you. To take the five precepts as universally applicable moral guidelines at face value, and to let the praxis of transcendent spiritual liberation take precedence over the praxis of destroying hierarchical power dynamics and ending the historical material conditions that created them is counterrevolutionary. To me, it is meaningless to believe in a religion that aims for all beings to be free from suffering if the world continues to reproduce systems that create preventable suffering for classes of oppressed people in fact. The only thing that would give it meaning is a religious commitment to changing that world.

佛教徒個人拒絕偷竊（或擊殺壓迫者）的話會得到什麼樣的政治效果？現實不是取決於佛教理論的契經—我們不會以拒絕奪取需要的物品像烈士死去的方式預示統治階級和它們的走狗表現出佈施和慈觀，更不用說無治和共產。每個購買的商品是為資本主義這死亡機器添加的燃料。對你開槍的警察不會管你有沒有天理良心。把五戒信以為真地當作是普遍適用的道德指導方針，並且讓超越宇宙靈性解放的實踐比消滅等級制度的權力動態和結束製造那些動態的歷史物質條件的實踐變得更重要是反革命性的行為。對我來說，如果世界在實際上繼續再生產為被壓迫階級的人製造可阻止的痛苦的系統，對一個目標是讓一切眾生脫離痛苦的宗教有信仰完全沒有意義。唯一能讓它有意義的是虔誠改變那世界的承諾。

So yes, I have the nerve to keep calling myself a Buddhist. I have the nerve to turn breaking the second precept into a religious ritual I regularly observe, because I know ownership isn't politically neutral, and my faith obligates me to take a side, and to accept the karma of that decision. I am not afraid of being reincarnated in Naraka for these transgressions. By the end of a militant life in the human realm, I hope the wardens in hell will be afraid of me.

所以沒錯，我有臉繼續說自己是佛教徒。我有臉把違犯第二戒當作是一種定期舉行的宗教儀式，因為我知道物主身分不是政治中立的事，而我的信仰強使我決定自己站在哪一邊，並且接受決定的果報。我不怕因為這些違反投生奈落。在人間好鬥地過完一生之後，我希望心裡著急的會是地獄裡的獄卒。

Hope you're all ready to discuss chapter 3 (And the previous ones as well for those newcomers). We will meet at 5:30PST on November 25th at the regular link. Talk to ya soon!

Continuing down this trail we will convene on October 21st at 6pm PST to discuss chapters 1 and 2 of Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani. We are keeping it short so that we can do a close reading of the text, and the invite more people to join. If you're interested in participating you can reach out to bugs for a link.

pdf

For some reason or another, the reading group has crawled out of the muck once more.

We will be reconvening on September the 23rd at 6pm Pacific, in an internet call, to discuss Friedrich Nietzsche's text Beyond Good and Evil. The format is unspecific, as are the reading criteria. Get your dice out and Nietzschemanteion your way through the text, or begin your rigorous studies at once!

Reach out to bugs for the meeting link.

I keep seeing some people bring up an argument along the following lines: we should support certain states because they provide critical material support to anti-imperialist or anti-colonial (or looking back in time, antifascist) resistance, and because there is no other alternative for resistance forces to gain that level of material support, it is a betrayal of solidarity to criticize supporting these states.

我一直看到某些人提出類似這樣的論點：我們該支持某些國家，因為它們為反帝國主義或反殖民主義（或回首過去，反法西斯主義）的抵抗提供關鍵性的物質支援；再說，因為抵抗組織沒有其他的辦法取得那種程度的物質支援，批評這些國家的支持是團結的背叛。

As an anti-statist, I cannot help but feel averse to this kind of argument. But is this a justified reaction? Perhaps it's really me being unrealistic, but how do we determine what reality is? Perhaps the answer is: stop being an existential armchair revolutionary, unless you can immediately solve the material problems of the resistance, which are real at every angle, then shut the fuck up.

身為反國家主義者，我不得不對這種論點感到反感。可是這是有道理的反應嗎？或許我是真的不切實際，可是我們如何判斷什麼是實際？或許回答是：不要再繼續當思考存在的足不出戶革命家，除非你現在能解決抵抗組織千方萬確的物質問題，不然你給我閉嘴。

I do not dispute the fact that resistance forces have no other alternative to obtain the kind of material support that states can currently provide. I will also not dispute my inability to immediately solve the problem. What I do dispute is the refusal to question what relying on the state for material support does for resistance in the name of being realistic. The state is not a neutral political tool that any class or camp can use to carry out its own agenda—it is a hierarchical tool designed to reproduce a social order where one class maintains power over others. Under this structure, material support from the state is coercive to resistance in nature. It forces resistance forces to align with the interests of patron states or lose material support; it compromises resistance by making it synonymous with securing power against political enemies, and makes it open to appropriation.

我對抵抗組織沒有其他辦法取得目前國家能給的物質支援這部分沒有爭議。我也不會去爭自己能解決問題的無能。會爭的是為了實際而拒絕疑問依賴國家的物質支援會對抵抗有什麼樣的影響。國家不是任何階級或陣營能用來執行自己的計畫的中立政治工具—它是個製造等級制度的工具，設計目標是再生產維持一個階級對其他階級行駛權力的社會秩序。在這種結構之下，來自國家的物質支援對抵抗有高壓性。抵抗組織被強迫要跟贊助國家的利益保持一致，否則失去物質支援；等同於獲取對抗政治敵人的權力是被損害的抵抗，能被挪用的抵抗。

The threat of the state to resistance is not some far-off hypothetical situation in the future. Its limiting effects are here, developing now. To call this threat assessment unrealistic, to dismiss it as ideological anarchist drivel, is to reveal what kind of reality you wish to ultimately create. It is a reality where Power is not abolished. It is a reality where Power is still treated as a representation of the masses' power—like Arya Zahedi says, it will not be a real anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, or anti-fascist reality, but a spectacle of these resistance forms.

國家對抵抗的危脅不是什麼遙遠未來的假設情況。它的限制效果現在就在場，正在被發展。要說這個威脅評估不切實際，把它當作無治主義者的胡說而不去考慮，是顯示出你最後希望創造的現實是什麼。在這個現實之中，治權並不會被廢除。在這個現實之中，治權仍然被當作是群眾權力的代表—就跟 Arya Zahedi 說的一模一樣，這不會是個真正反帝國主義、反殖民主義或反法西斯主義的現實，反而會是這些抵抗形式的景觀版本。

Thus, the so-called betrayal to solidarity of this kind of anti-statist position is a spectacle as well—a spectacle of solidarity. But my goal will never be to prove that my perspective on reality is the one that is actually correct. No, I am simply asserting again that the realities we want are not aligned, and accepting that in certain realities I must be the enemy. But to me, what's ultimately most important is not how justified it is for others to regard me as an enemy, but to realize the end of all systems organized by maintaining the power of one group over another, and to recognize when the means and ends have diverged to an unacceptable point.

因此，這樣反國家立場對團結所謂的背叛也是個景觀—是團結的景觀。但我的目的絕不是要證明我對現實的視角才是正確的。不，我只是要再次聲明我們想要的現實並不一致，並且接受在某些現實之下我必要有的敵人身份。但對我來說，最後重要的不是別人對我的敵視有沒有道理，而是實現所有靠維持一群相比另一群有更高權力組織的系統的結束，並且認識目標跟手段差異的發展到什麼地步能算是過分。

Perhaps the counterpoint is: you are incapable of making this recognition. Because you're outside the country of resistance, because you haven't done enough reading, and you should just defer to so-and-so opinion which represents the correct perspective. I could read a hundred articles, and I could listen to a million people, but I can't stop thoughts from entering my brain. I cannot force myself to produce an agreement that does not exist, and if that's the issue—that I cannot disagree as an autonomous being, because this use of my autonomy is incorrect—then the problem is even bigger.

或許反駁是：你沒有本事做出這種認識。因為你是在抵抗之國的國外、因為你讀的資料不夠，所以你該遵從某某某代表正確視角的意見。我可以讀一百個文章，可以聽數到百萬人說的話，但我無法阻止進入腦海的思想。我無法強迫自己產生出不存在的同意，而且如果問題是出在這裡的話—如果問題是我不能以自治實體的身份做出爭議，因為那會是錯誤的自治使用—那麼毛病就變得更大了。

I believe that it is not a coincidence that statist talking points—regardless of whether they come from the multipolarity of authoritarian communists or the militarism of anarchists—weaponize deference politics to protect their unassailability. At the heart of this unassailability is a contempt for autonomy, a vanguardist tendency to treat autonomy as an obstacle to effective resistance. To a vanguardist, everyone is an enemy, because everyone has the potential to go against the program of what resistance should be. People are to be managed: we must stop them from thinking, saying, or doing anything that goes against our program, which represents effective resistance.

我認為國家主義的論據—無論來自威權共產主義的多極體系或是無治主義的軍國主義—把遵從政治作為保護無可辯駁的武器不是偶然。在這無可辯駁的中心是自治的蔑視，是先鋒主義的傾向，把自治當作有效性抵抗的妨礙物。對先鋒主義者來說，大家都是敵人，因為大家都有違反抵抗該是什麼的綱領的能力。人民需要的是管理：我們必須阻止他們想、說或做出違反代表有效性抵抗的綱領的事。

Let me question it again: what kind of reality do you people actually want? Do you want a liberated world, or a world where you monopolize the terms of liberation? In your reality, does everyone have revolutionary potential, or is the ability for effective revolt only limited to a certain kind of group? Do you want to end your enemies, or the world that created them? What possibilities does your antagonism foreclose?

我再疑問一次：你們到底要的是什麼樣的現實？你們要的是解放的世界，還是解放條件被你獨攬的世界？在你的現實當中，是大家都有革命的能力，還是有效性的反抗能力只限於某一群人？你要消滅的是敵人，還是製造他們的世界？你的敵意排除了什麼可以發生的事？

The limitations imposed on resistance by State and Capital are the starting point, not the ending point. If resistance forces lack a means, we don't have to defend the states that provide them or dismiss the forces that accept them—we can support the development of means that don't rely on states, especially in moments of lull in resistance. Instead of condemning anti-statism as an unrealistic expectation for resistance, why not redouble our efforts to materially end the reality of the state's hegemony? Unless that really isn't what you want. Unless what you ultimately want is just the victory of people on your side by any means necessary, regardless of ends. Unless you can accept no other reality besides one in which your side's the victor. Unless this is all liberation will ever truly mean.

國家和資本對抵抗制定的限制是起點，不是終點。如果抵抗組織缺了渠道，我們不必為提供渠道的國家做辯護或對接受的組織不予理會—我們可以協助不依賴國家的渠道的發展，特別是在抵抗間歇的時刻。與其譴責反國家主義是對抵抗不切實際的憧憬，不如加倍努力在物質方面上結束國家霸權的現實？除非那真的不是你想要的改變。除非你最後只是想利用一切的手段讓你方的人得到勝利，目標完全不管。除非是你方當勝者之外，什麼現實都無法接受。除非這永遠會是解放能真正的意義。

The last of my notes from my review of chapter 2

the technological developments that objectively tend to eliminate work must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity, because labor is the only creator of commodities. The only way to prevent automation (or any other less extreme method of increasing labor productivity) from reducing society's total necessary labor time is to create new jobs. To this end the reserve army of the unemployed is enlisted into the tertiary or “service” sector, reinforcing the troops responsible for distributing and glorifying the latest commodities at a time when increasingly extensive campaigns are necessary to convince people to buy increasingly unnecessary commodities.

the vast majority of people are still forced to take part as wage workers in the unending pursuit of the system's ends and each of them knows that they must submit or die. The reality of this blackmail—the fact that even in its most impoverished forms (food, shelter) use value now has no existence outside the illusory riches of augmented survival—accounts for the general acceptance of the illusions of modern commodity consumption. The real consumer has become a consumer of illusions. The commodity is this materialized illusion and the spectacle is its general expression.

I finally looked at the end notes today and wondered why the text didn't reference any of them, but they read like it's ok to check in before/after I read the chapter. I welcome comments without spoilers, here if possible or at my Mastodon (Hometown) account, @mu@ni.hil.ist (https://ni.hil.ist/@mu).

The “commodity has ... [turned] the whole planet into a single world market.” (15)

Within natural economies, the emergence of a commodity sector represented a surplus survival. Commodity production ... implies the exchange of varied products between independent producers.... [W]herever it encountered the social conditions of large-scale commerce and capital accumulation, it took total control of the economy. [A] constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities ... ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival—but only in such a way that the same problem is continually regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator.

In 2018 on tumblr I wrote an essay called “Breaking Down the Term 'Voidpunk.'” In that essay, I explored the different connotations behind “void” and “punk,” and attempted to describe how “voidpunk” as a new term mixed those connotations together, and how to extrapolate praxis from that mixing. The main points of the essay roughly went like this:

• “Void” has an implication of nihilism
• “Punk” has a history of individualistic rebellion against society
• “Void” + “Punk” implies “human” is a concept based in nothing, and instead of performing “humanity,” why not rebel against society by personally identifying with your lack of humanity—which is a response generated by Western-centric understandings of humanity and rebellion
• Voidpunk as a concept is primarily concerned with how beings viewed as “not human” due to dehumanizing marginalization should deal with the society that dehumanizes them
• At the time I identified 4 types of praxes: misanthropy (going against society (if I had written this now, I would have said anarchism's anti-social or anti-civ), perhaps even wishing for the annihilation of the human race), solitude (acting like a hermit and minimizing social interaction), adaptation (following your own ideas instead of those imposed by society to determine how you associate), and speculation (actively investing your energy into changing society, perhaps even to the point of treating society as a means to an ideological end)
• Voidpunk was defined by a characteristic of recognizing that the self and society were irreconcilable, because the basic function of society was to create alienation
  

2018 年我在 tumblr 上寫了一篇文章，〈分析「空虛龐克」這一詞〉。在那文章之中，我探索了「空虛」和「龐克」隱含的不同意義，試圖描述「空虛龐克」的新詞如何把那些意義混合在一起，並且從這樣的混合如何推斷出實踐。文章的主要內容大概是這樣：

• 「空虛」有虛無主義的意味
• 「龐克」有叛逆個人主義的歷史
• 「空虛」+「龐克」的意味就是「人」是憑空捏造的概念，與其「人性」的表演，不如叛逆在個人方面上認同自己缺乏的人性—而這種反應是對人和反抗以西方為中心的認識創造出來的
• 空虛龐克的概念主要關注的是因為剝奪人性的邊緣化被視為「不是人」的生物該如何處理自己跟剝奪祂們人性的社會的關係
• 當時我確定了四種實踐：厭世（反社會（如果現在寫，我會說無治主義的反群、反文明），甚至希望人類被消滅）、獨居（像隱士般把社交互動降到最低）、適應（按照自己，而不是社會強加於的想法來安排交往）、臆想（積極投入精力改變社會，甚至把社會當作是實現主義的手段）
• 空虛龐克的特點就是自我跟社會無法化解的意識，因為社會基本的功能就是製造疏離

At the time, the creator of voidpunk as a concept roughly gave me the following response: “If you don't resonate with voidpunk because of your background there's no need to identify as voidpunk. Voidpunk isn't something meant to be used to harm other people.” Later, in 2019, the creator then made a post that said:

1. There is no one “right” or “wrong” way to be voidpunk. There is no voidpunk flag, there is no specific voidpunk aesthetic, there are no rules to voidpunk.

2. There is no deep meaning behind the term “voidpunk”. It was literally coined just because it sounded cool. You can ascribe meaning to it if you like, but at the end of the day, voidpunk is not necessarily about a “lack” of anything and does not have any specific look or feel to it.

當時，空虛龐克的概念創造者對我文章的反應大概是：「如果因為自己的背景不跟空虛龐克有共鳴就不必認同自己是空虛龐克。空虛龐克不是利用來傷害別人的東西。」後來，在 2019 年，創造者又 po 了新貼文說：

1. 當空虛龐克沒有「對」或「錯」的方式。沒有空虛龐克旗幟、沒有特別的空虛龐克美感、沒有空虛龐克的規則。

2. 「空虛龐克」這一詞沒有更深的意義。杜撰的原因只是因為聽起來很酷。想要的話可以自己歸因意義，可是不管怎麼說，空虛龐克不是關於什麼東西的「缺乏」也沒有任何特別的式樣或感受。

In short, the message is “I think your type of critique doesn't matter to voidpunk at all.” Well, that's fine. After all, I'm a rebel, I'm not after respect from others, but overturning the fate of the world. When I wrote “Breaking Down the Term 'Voidpunk,'” my goal wasn't to persuade the creator of voidpunk, but to express my own sentiments within the aromantic community, hoping to find resonance from other members. The me now who has long left that aromantic community has complicated feelings about voidpunk. On one hand, voidpunk inspired a kind of nonhumanistic ethos within me, which went on to permeate much of my later works of fiction. On the other hand, there's the creator's apathy towards this kind of ideological development and the majority of voidpunks on tumblr only treating voidpunk as an eye-catching aesthetic that at most has an important backstory about marginalization. Can I détourn voidpunk? No—do I need to détourn voidpunk? The thing is I'm really not that interested. Forget about voidpunk—I'm more interested in discussing what I took away from voidpunk.

總而言之，意思就是說「我覺得你這種批評對空虛龐克完全沒有意義。」好，沒問題。畢竟我是造反者，我要的不是別人的尊敬，而是革除世界的天命。當年我寫〈分析「空虛龐克」這一詞〉的原因也不是為了說服空虛龐克的創造者，而是為了在無浪漫傾向的社群之中說出我自己的感想，希望能找到其他成員的共鳴。現在早已離開那無浪漫傾向社群的我對空虛龐克有複雜的感覺。在一方面上，空虛龐克在我心中引發了一種非人類主義精神，而那非人類主義的精神滲透了我許多後來的虛構作品。在另一方面上，有了創造著對這種主義發展的冷漠和大部分在 tumblr 上把空虛龐克只當作是引人注目，頂多有關於邊緣化的重要故事背景的美感。可以異軌空虛龐克嗎？不—有需要異軌空虛龐克嗎？事實上我沒有太多興趣這麼做。忘了空虛龐克吧—我比較有興趣討論的是從空虛龐克得到的資訊。

At this point in time, if I were an academic, I would coin a horrible new phrase: “post-voidpunk.” Instead of doing that, I'd rather use language that's more distanced from voidpunk, since my demands are out of alignment with voidpunk's lack of demands. Earlier I used the term “nonhumanistic” to describe what I was doing. Now I want to discuss its implications.

到了這個段落，如果我是學者的話，我會新杜撰一個恐怖的詞：「後空虛龐克」。與其這樣的做法，我寧可利用跟空虛龐克有更多隔離的用語，畢竟我的要求跟空虛龐克缺乏的要求不一致。之前我利用「非人類主義」這一詞來形容我在做的事。現在我想說明一下非人類主義的意味。

“Nonhumanistic” comes from “humanism,” which Richard Ninmo in “The Making of the Human: Anthropocentrism in Modern Social Thought” defines as the doctrine of humans as “the measure of all things” in the world. It not only treats humans as exceptional beings, but also humanity as a universally generalizable condition. In Post-colonial Studies: Key Concepts, Ashcroft et al. criticize universalism / universality for “offer[ing] a hegemonic view of existence by which the experiences, values and expectations of a dominant culture are held to be true for all humanity.” In colonialism, the so-called universal humanity of the colonizer is used as the standard by which colonized people are judged. However, historically the response of many anticolonial thinkers was not to reject humanity, but to criticize the falseness of the colonizer's humanity in favor of recovering a true, decolonized humanity. In “Anti-colonialism and Humanism,” Ndindi Kitonga brings up Frantz Fanon's description in Black Skin, White Masks of the “new humanism” created through the process of disalienation, Steve Biko's “true humanism” only attainable after the successful collective resistance of Black people against racism, Es’kia Mphahlele's African humanism against Western hegemony and white supremacy, as well as Michael Onyebuchi Eze's Ubuntu philosophy as examples.

非人類主義源自人文主義，被 Richard Ninmo 在〈人類的製作：現代社會思想中的人類中心主義〉之內定義為人類當作是「一切事物的尺度」的學說。它不僅把人當作是獨特的生物，還把人性當作是普遍能泛泛而談的狀態。在《後殖民主義：關鍵概念》之中，Ashcroft 與其他作者批評普遍主義 / 普遍性「提供了一種對存在的霸權視角，之中一個主宰文化的經驗、價值觀和期望被當作是所有人的事實。」在殖民主義之中，殖民者所謂普遍的人性被利用來當估量被殖民人的標準。然而，在歷史上許多反殖民思想家的反應不是拒絕人性，而是批評殖民主義人性的虛假，為了要奪回真實，去了殖民化的人性。在〈反殖民主義與人文主義〉之中，Ndindi Kitonga 有舉出 Frantz Fanon 在《黑皮膚，白面具》之中形容去異化過程會創造出來的「新人文主義」、Steve Biko 認為需要黑人成功集體對抗種族歧視之後才能得到的「真人文主義」、Es’kia Mphahlele 反西方霸權跟白人至上主義的非洲人文主義以及 Michael Onyebuchi Eze 烏班圖哲學思想的例子。

In the face of humanism's contradicting lineages, my nonhumanism is a posthuman intervention. The goal of posthumanism is to transcend the human / nonhuman(-coded) binary. My nonhumanism is also influenced by anarchism and communism: in my stories, nonhuman characters are often insurrectionaries, revolutionaries, martyrs, and proletarians dominated or exploited by the state, colonialism, and imperialism. I don't literally use the human / nonhuman(-coded) binary as a way to explore the problem of speciesism; “human” and “nonhuman” to me are actually mere representations of dominator / exploiter / dominated / exploited, images of them spectaclized by the medium of fiction. To transcend the human / nonhuman(-coded) binary is then to transcend the classes of dominator / exploiter / dominated / exploited, creating a new society that has abolished class. The purpose of my nonhumanism was for agitprop in support of a classless society, so its praxis was always clear from the start—a praxis not of self-identity or self-expression, but of collective organization against the status quo of hierarchy and capitalism. Not no rules, but no rule—and absolutely reflecting the status quo's lack of liberation.

面著人文主義相互矛盾的世系，我的非人類主義是一種後人類主義的介入。後人類主義的目標就是超越人 / 非人（編碼）的二元。我的非人類主義也受到無治主義與共產主義的影響：在我的故事和遊戲之中，非人角色通常是被國家、殖民主義和帝國主義主宰或剝削的叛亂者、革命家、烈士和無產階級者。我並不確實地利用人 / 非人（編碼）二元來探索物種歧視的問題；「人」和「非人」其實對我來說只不過是主宰者 / 剝削者 / 被主宰者 / 被剝削者的代表，是他們被虛構的中介景觀化的圖像。要超越人 / 非人（編碼）的二元也就是超越主宰 / 剝削 / 被主宰 / 被剝削的階級，創造廢除階級的社會。我的非人類主義的目標就是為了無階級社會的宣傳鼓動，因此它從一開始就有清楚的實踐—不是自我認同或自我表現的實踐，而是集體組織對抗等級制度和資本主義現狀的實踐。不是沒有規則，是沒有統治—而且絕對地反映在現狀中缺乏的解放。

That having said, even though the lineage of my nonhumanism does include voidpunk, it's impossible to truly compare the two on a political level. Voidpunk never had any political goals, and its creator and users also never attempted to graft any political program onto it. And why should they have? Does everything really have to be weaponized to attack hierarchy and capitalism? Do you really have to ask everyone to make revolution the only goal in their life and treat everyone like a useful corpse? No, you really don't!

話說如此，雖然我的非人類主義的世系有包括空虛龐克，兩種概念無法在政治方面上真正地比較。空虛龐克本來就沒有什麼政治目標，它的創造者和利用者也並沒有試圖把什麼政治綱領移植到概念的身上。而且他們為什們有必要那麼做？難道所有的東西都必須變為攻擊等級制度和資本主義的武器嗎？你是一定要要求大家把革命當作是人生唯一的目標，把大家都當作是有用的屍體嗎？完全沒必要！

Confucius says, “When three are walking together, I am sure to find teachers among them.” I practice low theory. I think there are absolutely new liberatory praxes to be found amidst the hellscape of social media. “I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.” Voidpunk was one of those teachers that ended up having more qualities I wanted to avoid rather than follow—but I would be remiss not to acknowledge it for what it taught me. In the wise words of Ariana Grande, “Thank you, next.”

子曰：「三人行，必有我師焉。」我實施低情境理論。我認為在社交媒體的人間地獄之中確實能找到新的解放性實踐。「擇其善者而從之，其不善者而改之。」空虛龐克算是我師之中要改比要遵從的還要多—但不承認它交給我的知識就是失禮。用 Ariana Grande 明智的話來說：「謝謝，下一位」。

I'm driving down the highway as some music blasts from the car stereo. It envelops the moment, suffusing each thought and gesture with self-evident meaning. The thought strikes me: do I rely on music to believe, fully, in a moment? to let it signify something real? Has the formative experience, perhaps, of the film score—accompanying some choreographed emotional arc—left me dependent on the swell of an orchestra or DJ to invest a feeling with wholeness? Certainly the spectacle has captured our recognition of the real in other ways. “It was like a movie,” people reflect about their most vivid impressions of the world. If a sunset manages to be “picturesque” and a humorous blunder “cartoonish”, do my felt intensities aspire to being “soundtrackish”?

After living with this thought for a while, another idea cuts through me. Maybe, instead, we retain in our bones a time when the leaves rustling against the soft trace of the sky, the throngs of swifts in their listing and swooping, the marsh frogs belching, the raven creaking riddles, the brook laughing across boulders, the choral whirr of myriad insects—when all these voices conspired to buoy our hearts along their course. Maybe we remember when the world itself sang to us, when no feeling passed through us unaccompanied by the beating heart of the land.

Eight species of forest bird finally vanished from Hawaii last year. They took their songs with them. Those creatures who move across the earth travel in fewer numbers, their havens dwindling. If the spring has fallen silent, if the stampede of civilization chases the gods from the land, what song is left to us?

The world we were born into still hums its tunes if we can listen; it sings with fewer notes. The brook still glistens downhill, the wind scrapes gusting across the snowbound hill, the coyote chatters and whoops melancholy thrill into my heart. My shoes crunch rhythms through the frozen meadow. Your sensuous body still stretches bowed across the thrumming string of the world. The rocks cry out. Go forth silent and sing you the world a song of creation.

The following text is my reportback from Bash Back! 2023, simultaneously published here and submitted to Bash Back News, where I hope it will be published soon. There are more than a few references that might be obscure to folks who weren't there, who don't know some of the pertinent lore. I hope that that does not diminish the value of the piece to the wider readership.

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On the sunny afternoon of Sunday, September 10, 2023—the third day of the Bash Back! network’s physical and psychospiritual reconstitution in Chicago, Illinois—it felt nearly all of us fags, dykes, freaks, and all combinations thereof, alongside however many theyfabs with cis boyfriends in tow, had assembled on the shore of Lake Michigan just west of Montrose Harbor on the breakwater.

How can I describe the scene? How much should I? Everything is already fading into memory, but a few images remain in sharp focus. Two smiling and naked women with dicks, big teeth and big laughs, standing and talking and drying in the Sun just to the side of where people are jumping into the rough water of the lake. Later, another trans woman, wearing nothing but a covid mask over her face, up close and personal with the fucker who had not only decided to film the scene with his smartphone, but who had insisted on keeping it up when he’d been told to stop.

Personally, I was nervous about getting naked, and I had my reasons. I pushed myself and did it anyway, jumping into the water—a little cold and a little rough for my liking—but when I got out, I was fairly quick to put my swim trunks back on, to conceal my dick and my butt. It had nothing to do with body shame; it had to do with society. The Montrose Harbor breakwater is not a sanctioned clothing-optional space. There is, in fact, no such public space anywhere in Chicago. (Mere days before the convergence, on September 4, the city government had affirmed as much, removing a sign at Loyola Beach to the north that had declared it a “nude beach”.)

Most other people didn’t get naked either, but there were a lot of naked titties, and those are legal in the state of Illinois, if various infographics on the internet are to be trusted. Exposed groins and butts, however, are definitely not legal. Where we were located is at a remove from the city as such, its police-patrolled streets and the great masses of its cop-calling good citizens—yet in broad daylight, with sight lines and cell phones and passers-by, it was not quite enough for me to feel safe. Or rather, comfortable, which is an overlapping emotional affect to be sure. This, despite the fact that I know that I could have been naked as hell in that crowd, out of the water as much as in. For all the inter-participant drama that the weekend generated, I don’t think it’s likely that my loose pecker was going to elicit much more than an eye roll from even the most prudish of attendees. And weather-wise, it was a perfect day for it.

Unfortunately, the police continue to exist.

What happened has already become legend. The blood dripping down the smartphone guy’s forehead. The mistake of clemency, when his phone was tossed inland (with a remark of “go fetch!”) instead of propelled lakeward with speed. When fuckface came back a bit later with some cops in tow, one person was put in handcuffs briefly, but eventually all members of the anti-fun brigade backed off without arresting anyone. It was a good time. Or, a victory? Or at least better than a lot of us would normally expect. People continued to chill, to drink, to laugh. But, there’s at least one sad aspect, which is that instead of a maximum six to seven people (out of nearly two hundred) being naked at a given time in the water or out of it, that number went all the way down to zero. This amounted to something of a buzzkill, given what was still only the mere inching towards free bodies in the air and sunlight that had been in evidence a few minutes before the ruckus started.

I don’t know how many people would have needed to get naked in order for me, the nudist blog guy, to feel a bit better doing so myself and staying that way, rather than spending my brief time naked in the relative obscurity of the lake water. But I think there is a number. The threshold to reach would have been a bit higher up still, for me to feel comfortable stepping away and walking my bare feet on the grassy embankment, navigating through the dense crowd of people, to where my friends were seated. Going to where the barbeque was—or hell, maybe approaching some new folks and trying to start a conversation, would have been still another step up. And how about ditching my clothes for the rest of the evening?

I have no pretense to being anything but a relative coward when it comes to potential friction with the state and/or just with other people who I expect are better at fighting than I am. I don’t especially like rowdy or hairy situations, e.g. Ryan Harvey’s concern trolling article from 2009 (title: “Are We Addicted to Rioting?”) was never written about me. Really, it’s for the same reason that I don’t like rough water. To put it succinctly, danger alarms me. A cool thing about a lot of anarchists, however, is that danger doesn’t seem to alarm a lot of them nearly half as much—and I’ve always thought that was pretty cool, personally!

A side effect of this relative ambivalence towards danger, however, is that we sometimes do stuff that pisses each other off. That is why a white-passing, girl-passing (something something) got jumped and at least two of her locs cut off earlier on Sunday. She probably knew, in 2023, that some people would have strong opinions about her hair. The two that jumped her definitely knew that a lot of people involved in the convergence wouldn’t think their action was very cool. Anarchists, typically, don’t call the cops—not on other anarchists, and not anyone else. But that means we have to resolve our conflicts with one another in other ways. Is it surprising that when most of us don’t know each other and a lot of us have pretty strong expectations of what other anarchists should be doing and how they should behave, things sometimes get a little fighty?

The reason that, even as the nudist blog guy, my nudity was brief and confined to the waterfront, is that I was at least a little concerned about my dick being in proximity to, and at eye level with, strangers. Anarchist faggot strangers they may have been, and as I said earlier, I deem it unlikely anyone would even say anything, let alone get physical. But apart from my fear of what might happen if the police came, there was still an inkling that, as with masks and veganism and which people are too shitty to be allowed to come to the warehouse rave—and of course the most urgent issue of our generation, white dreads—anarchists are not on the same page about nudity, e.g. when and where it is appropriate, when and where it is not.

Can I share with you, though, that I regret it? That I didn’t live out that other timeline, where events played out exactly the same way, but I was more fully the anti-civ give-no-fucks and (provided the correct ambient conditions) fully naked queerdo I am at heart.

In this alternate history, the mêlée still breaks out a little bit later, but this time, my scandalous exposed penis, and any other nudity that my own had inspired up to then, is part of the reason why. I would probably still hang back from the action, maybe even a bit further back—but well-impressed by the aforementioned naked go-getter with the covid mask, and knowing that the cops wouldn’t be around for a while at least, I might have been able to talk myself down from putting on clothes too quickly. Things necessarily get more speculative when we think about buddy returning with the cops, but never mind that. Even thirty more minutes of not wearing clothes, which would have weighed me down and made me sweat, would have made a sweet afternoon even sweeter. To be as naked as I (often) want to be—not while I was writing a reportback in the safe space of my nudity-optional anarchist household, but while adjacent to anarchist history’s unfolding in dangerous outdoor space, in a moment that would matter to me later and to other people later—would have been a special treat indeed.

I had, by Sunday, heard about trans girls’ place in the holy war—one between insurgent but frightened right-wing Christianity and its allies, on the one hand, and between, well, us, which is to say queers and anarchists and perhaps adherents of an altogether different, necessarily antagonistic “religion”. The spiritual stuff was heady and I’m not sure I buy it. But I saw that big smile on the one whose face was turned to me, like Baphomet with breasts and transfemme cock, glowing in the Sun and looking happy and in danger and being normal. It was beautiful, but something that our enemies would wish to snuff out, to make ontologically impossible and physically unrealizable; and something that trans-inclusive blue America still treats as terribly excessive, a violation of a norm that needs regulating. The logic in the dominant culture is that exposed penises are antennae radiating psychic violence, that women must be at all times presentable, and that transness is pitiable when it isn’t pathological. Simply by existing, the nude comrade Baphomète-in-Chicago, radiant by the water, nullified that culture in that moment, at that location. (Sorry for turning you into a metaphor, sister! Usually I’d ask for your consent for that kind of thing, but I don’t know who you are.)

Now, of course, I’ve turned it up a notch or two from how I really feel. One of the takeaways from the convergence is that fags are dramatic, so I’m playing my part. Like the Suck Cock Not Covid cohort, the ungrateful hyenas, Flower Bomb, and the crypto-Maoists, I have an agenda.

In the little attention economy of the geographically dispersed Bash Back! network and its supporters—now overlapping with many North American anarchist scenes, from at least Montréal in the northeast to the Bay Area in the southwest, from Pacific Northwest towns and cities to denizens of the Weelaunee Forest—it seems like the best move is ALWAYS to turn up the emotional pitch. Use the word “eugenics” in your graff. Lift the cut locs above your head and shout “And I’d fucking do it again, bitch!” Ask a presenter if they are “even an anarchist” for not wearing a mask. I don’t know what the anarcho-nudist equivalent is, but I guess I could argue that jumping into the lake with clothes on is cowardice; that there should have been ostentatious public nudity from day one (what if even three or four people were naked during Flower Bomb’s workshop in the cemetery across the street from the venue when that guy came over and asked about shutting it down?); that privacy is basically a fake idea and really only the concern of liberals with generally vermin-free fixed addresses; that radlibs are at least twice as tolerable when they are nudists; that a lot less energy should be spent worrying about saying the right thing and more priority given to making sure that everyone’s junk is getting enough fresh air; and that this is, bar none, THE THING that everyone needs to talk about. (Civil war in ‘24? Never heard of her!)

There is no time like the present, with that weekend in September still fresh in our minds and rumours of regional convergences in circulation, to get nudism on the priority list and nudity on the dance floor.

I want to think of Bash Back! as harbingers of something better than this world. Additionally, I get the impression that, in theory if not in practice, a lot of us are ready (if not eager) to see more of our friends get as naked as they want to be, when they want to be, where they want to be. By no means do I think this is actually more important than, like, anything else. If anything, compared to a Serious Issue (let us gravely bow our heads and Think on Them), I would acknowledge nudism as, like, maybe not quite as important. But we had orgies, we had games, we had squats, we had expropriated cans of caffeinated fizzy beverage. In other words, we had good shit, and I think it’s fair for us to want even more.

It’s apparent enough that most of what happened in Chicago in September was at the behest of a core group of only seven organizers who taxed themselves to the very limits—and despite the fuck-ups (do you know that 17 trainhopping teenagers starved to death because there was no food on the Monday?), I think things were pretty good, overall. But, improving the conditions of our lives (which includes relieving as many people as we can in the overlapping scenes of our subculture of their wretched anxieties, their most Victorian of sensibilities, and their dead weight of cotton-polyester blend) not only makes us less alienated, and more dangerous as a result, it’s also more or less what all of this is supposed to be about. You don’t have to be an egoist or whatever to include yourself in the category of what you are fighting for. Thinking through how to expand the option of nudity for participants at our events, and navigate competing interests and preoccupations in our messy dramatic camp with (and hey, this is just me) as little violence and suffering as possible, is of a piece with other problems like how to make our parties cooler, how to make our drugs safer, how to distribute hormones for as cheap as free, how to turn down the notch a bit on shrill and outraged while turning it up on self-confident and slutty.

Anyway, personally speaking, I’m ready for some new kinds of drama: whether white nudity is allowed on Stolen Native Land; just what level of FUCKED UP it is when someone unconsensually inhales unfiltered pit stink from the biggest naked oogle in the room; bitching out the organizers because they didn’t prioritize shower facilities in their event planning. I think—to use the watchword coming out of Chicago—it would be generative.

Down with civ. Shed the armour. For anarchy, experimentation, and freedom in all domains.