Dictatorship of the Queer

Queer Power

Far too often people do not seek the liberation of queer people, only our assimilation. Gay assimilation is the mainstream LGBT rights movement, but it does not go far enough. If all we do is assimilate, we are still subject to the power and domination of the gender class system. We aren’t free, just folded into the existing system of oppression and domination.

And it’s dangerous, too. Assimilation provides gender with the chance to escape its final end. If gender can assimilate gayness, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender people, and all other modes of queerness, it will become flexible and accommodate for the forces driving it towards its end. If we assimilate, gender might never end.

But liberation cannot be found within the context of existing systems of power. If we simply turn to the state, to capitalist businesses, to patriarchal marriage, and call for us to be included, we will never be free. Doing so only perpetuates state power, capitalist power, and male power. But we must create queer power.

Nor can that liberation come through imposing identities upon people. There is no benefit to our liberation and the abolition of the gender system to prevent someone who’s identity is rooted in a different gender system or who finds joy in their queer identity from identifying in that way. As has been discussed previously, it is the base we are concerned with, not the identities in the superstructure.

Queer power is separate from the existing institutions. We declare our difference, unashamed and proud. We don’t join their projects. We don’t participate in their systems. We don’t increase their power. In its place, we must make our own!

This means creating queer organizations and institutions. Counterpowers to the dominant patriarchal class system. These allow for us to provide people with what they need for transition, including providing HRT drugs, supporting victims of sexual assault, empowering women outside of the system, and ultimately providing spaces to be different, to escape the domination of gender.

It’s important that these institutions don’t recreate the sexual violence that enforces gender. This is difficult, but necessary. We cannot allow sexual abusers or sexual assault to creep its way into our spaces. Queer power means safety from sexual assault and abuse. These things empower and enforce patriarchy, so we have no place for them.

Pink Terror

Patriarchal behavior is an act of violence. Violence is what it practices. We cannot oppose that through passivity and non-violence. Queer power needs violence to destroy gender. A sustained terror against those who seek to enforce gender and prevent gender’s death, a pink terror, is a necessity in the revolution against gender.

We find no allies in the state or the capitalist class. The cops and corporations are our enemies, not our allies. Indeed, Pride finds its roots in riots against the police. We have only ourselves to rely upon for our own liberation, not the institutions of violence that already exist. We must destroy gender on our own terms, not on theirs.

This means that the queer organizations and institutions we build for queer power must be militant, armed organizations. It’s not enough to provide a space outside of patriarchy, we must arm ourselves to defend those spaces and to render an assault upon the overarching structures of power that seek to enforce gender upon us. This means that our queer organizations must be, or include, queer militias to fight against the structures of power.

These queer militias provide us with a framework to fight against sexual assault, too. Queer militias can provide protection and justice where the state will not to women and queer people. This is especially true of those most vulnerable. Sex workers often cannot turn to the police to report sexual assault against them. Their work is illegal, so they risk punishment for the sex they were having, even if it was rape. Indeed, often the sexual assault they experience comes from the police themselves. Queer militias provide them with a way to deal with sexual assault.

This can also provide queer people with a framework for fighting against misgendering and deadnaming. When people continuously and knowingly use the wrong pronouns and names for others, it is a form of violence against them. Doing so frequently leads to self-harm and sometimes suicide by queer people. As such, we need to defend and back other queer people up. Such violence against queer people cannot go unanswered and cannot be acceptable. But we should keep proportional responses in mind. Misgendering doesn’t warrant murder.

Bash Back

Gender won’t go down without a fight; a counter-revolution will appear to tear us down. Against the gender accelerationist movement, movements will develop to defend, or even regress, gender. Historically, revolutionary movements often find themselves followed by fascist movements rejecting the call for the new world and seeking a rejuvenation of the present one through rebirth. These fascist movements embrace hypermasculinity and seek to exacerbate the domination of masculinity over society.

Here we find our clearest enemy, and the new fascist movements of the present will react to our accelerationism with reaction and counter-revolution. Here the queer militias will be needed to defend the revolution against advancing reaction. Conflict will inevitably get bloody and we’ll fight in the streets as needed to shut down the counter-revolution and ensure our victory.

These new movements won’t be our only opponents. The forces of liberalism defending the present state of things will see us as a threat as much as the advancing fascists will, and their opposition will be just as brutal. Cops will oppose us in force, and we’ll need force to defend our gains, protect the revolution, and advance our victory.

Victory At All Costs

We cannot stop part way or allow for our defeat. Gender means the domination of all and sustained violence against women and queer people. We cannot allow for our defeat and our eyes must be upon victory. This isn’t merely a choice, it’s a necessity.