queer(?), male(?), feminist(?) (happy birthday blog)

above: all the way from helsinki, finland: another wonderful piece of artwork from my friend jenny.

This blog turned one year old today. As birthdays are often a time for many to reflect upon changes, I find myself doing the same.

I will attempt to present thoughts in the form of questions; questions without definitive answers, but perhaps to map out some the landscapes i could explore and possibles routes i could take.

What does it mean to be a queer feminist anarchist within a society in which the general populace and my everyday life will read me as ‘white,’ ‘heterosexual’ ‘male’?

What does it mean to be a queer ‘male’ who has not explored physical intimacy with another male-bodied person?

What does it mean to be a ‘male’ feminist when i presently spend nearly all of my ‘everyday’ (civilized) life in non-feminist spaces, when nearly all my day-to-day, face-to-face relationships with people are non-feminist?

Notice that i use many of these terms parenthetically. This is an intentional attempt to encapsulate their simultaneous social construction and social reality, and also the fact that these terms are not of my choosing, and i am subject to them. Thus, queer might be a label that i identify with, or choose for myself, but my own private label does not negate the fact that i have lived in a society that has told me i am ‘male’ or ‘white’ unrelentingly for two and a half decades, with all the privileges and psychological dysfunction that goes along with such labels.

I ask the above questions both because i feel the need to reaffirm my commitment to feminist and queer politics and i also wish to challenge others to write explicitly from this position. A google search for ‘queer primitivist’ reveals my name as the third listing (and first pertinent to the topic at hand). A search for ‘queer rewilding’ reveals the first three results to be related to me. A search for ‘feminist rewilding’ reveals my name for the first two listings. I do not mention this to show off but rather to point out that there is a gap to both anarcho-primitivist and feminist writings and practices, at least on the internet anyway. A new acquaintance recently wrote to me, “I am looking for women’s voices but cannot find them, I want my sisters to help me along and guide me, and men to let women guide them as well. That is really the key in overcoming patriarchy, from my point of view.” In many ways, i agree with this observation, especially when accounting for what the rewilding scene looks like over the internet (if the internet and rewilding are not considered contradictions in terms).

I also ask these questions because i desire to become more reflexive of my politics of location. My ‘race’ ‘class’ and ‘gender’ positionalities, along with countless other axes (ability, geography, appearance, for instance) of social life that i occupy have contributed to a very specific perceptual framework that i write from and through. This framework is necessarily partial, incomplete, and there is no sense in pretending that it is anything but. As i grow into this life, i want to resist the urge to universalize my political values or experiences and project them onto others. I have encountered a significant amount of radical thought at a relatively young age. With each new liberatory discovery, i habitually become over-zealous or passionate which is often read as ego or arrogance — when it is anything but. My intentions remain true.

I invite any further dialogue centered on these questions that i raise, and will continue writing on these topics myself. Onto the second year of blogging…