New Book! Out January, Pre-Order Now

Cover image of Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together

My new book will be out January 14, 2025!

Around the globe, people are faced with spiraling crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, genocide, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. More and more of us feel mobilized to fight back, often dedicating our lives to  collective liberation. But even those of us who long for change seem to have trouble when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power.  Many projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age. How do we divest from cultural programming that gives us harmful expectations about sex, dating, romance and friendship? How do we recover from the messed up dynamics we were trained in by childhood caregivers? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom into step with our desires for healing and connection? Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, so we can stick together while we work for survival and liberation. Pre-order through Bluestockings and get 15% off with the code F*CKED<3.

Click here to watch the webinars I did with Fireweed Collective over the last four Valentine’s Days about dismantling the romance myth, which capture some of the themes of the book.

New Interview with Them about Why I Oppose Trans Military Inclusion Advocacy

https://www.them.us/story/case-against-lgbtq-military-inclusion-explained

Just five days after being sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden signed an executive order overturning former President Trump’s ban on openly transgender Americans serving in the military. “All Americans who are qualified to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States should be able to serve,” it read, going on to argue that an “inclusive military strengthens our national security.”

Biden’s executive order, one of a flurry he signed during his administration’s first week, marked the fulfillment of one of his foremost policy proposals regarding the advancement of LGBTQ+ equality in America. More specifically, the order counteracted a 2017 directive by the Trump administration banning openly trans folks from the armed services — itself a reversal of the Obama administration’s 2016 order that paved the way for trans Americans to serve in the military without hiding their gender identity.

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Mutual aid will help us survive the Biden presidency

Roar Magazine just published this adapted excerpt from my new book.

The only thing that keeps those in power in that position is the illusion of our powerlessness. A moment of freedom and connection can undo a lifetime of social conditioning and scatter seeds in a thousand directions.

 Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Many people are feeling great relief that Trump has been voted out and are rightly celebrating the efforts so many people have undertaken to make that happen. But even as we celebrate, we must ensure we do not demobilize, hoping that the new administration will take care of our problems. Unfortunately, we can be certain that the Biden/Harris administration will not address the crises and disasters of climate change, worsening wealth concentration and poverty, a deadly for-profit health care system and racist law enforcement.

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Collaboration with Colin Kaepernick on Abolition

In case you missed it, Colin Kaepernick recently invited a bunch of abolitionist activists to write essays for a collection that his publishing platform has released over the course of the last four weeks in collaboration with Medium. The essays are really really really good–the whole collection would be a great syllabus for a class or reading group. I was honored to be included.

Stonewall Was Not a “Peaceful Protest”

For Pride 2019 and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, I wrote an op-ed for Out Magazine

Op-ed: Honor Our Stonewall Veterans by Being Your Most Queer Militant Self

The Stonewall rebellion was not a “peaceful protest.” Queer and transgender people threw shoes and bottles at cops who routinely raided gay bars, beat and raped queer and trans people. Today, under the direction of a multi-million dollar Pride industry, Stonewall is celebrated with big parades where police, the military, banks, and politicians wave rainbow flags. In some cities, the cops roll out special rainbow-painted police cars. The radical acts of rage and disobedience against illegitimate authority that erupted at Stonewall are now reflected back as a story about “progress” in which the institutions that run our lives through coercion and violence claim to be “gay friendly.” 

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My Latest Writing on Pinkwashing: The Right Wing Is Leveraging Trans Issues to Promote Militarism

I wrote this article on the dangerous ways the right is using trans people to promote right-wing security and military agendas alongside its violent backlash against trans people. Among these tactics is the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” campaign developed over a decade ago to promote a positive public image of Israel, foment anti-Muslim racism, and distract from Israel’s  brutal occupation of Palestine and apartheid regime. 

Right Leveraging Trans Issues to Promote Militarism

Excerpt: “[T]he use of a thin LGBT inclusion politics to make the Israeli or US military appear progressive is becoming a losing strategy. Resistance to pinkwashing is rising, and each controversy exposes new communities to the critique of this propaganda. A growing number of Jews in the US, especially young people, are becoming critical of Israel. The Movement for Black Lives has made its solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation clear, helping many people in the US see the connections between US and Israeli racism and state violence. Cross-movement organizing between Indigenous people in North America, including Water Protectors, and Palestine liberation activists is helping people see the links between US and Israel as settler-colonialism.”

Read the full article here.