The Asexual Anarchist Newsletter, Vol. 1 Issue 5: Means and ends, and means vs. ends…
Howdy, folks.
I’ve spent the last couple days thinking about the means we take to justify various end goals we have. The end goal of anarchism is a free society; asexuality activism’s end goal is to elevate understanding and increase public acceptance of asexuality. The goal of political art is often to call attention to social issues, hold public figures to account, and call rank-and-file individuals to a given cause.
Political art isn’t supposed to be liked by everyone; in fact, by design, it’s supposed to be a deeply polarizing affair. There is always going to be a segment of the population who hates your piece of political art, whether it’s a comedy routine, a piece of music or some kind of art. Political content is almost always a niche market in that respect, because only folks who are looking for such content are going to bother reading the latest screed from, say, an asexual anarchist. Everyone else is going to walk past. And this is the nature of political art, forever and ever say thankya.
But one thing that tends to unify political artists with their audiences is the sense that the art being made is helping to meet their end-goals — in this case, the aforementioned calling-attention-to, holding-to-account and calling-to-action.
And so for about a week I’ve been trying to figure out what the fuck the goals are behind “The Emperor Has No Balls.”
Donald Trump is, by all accounts, a garbage poison human. The people who love him are either hopelessly enamored by his apparent wealth and status, or worse, they actively agree with his hateful, fascist politics. Despite being the center of a turd storm for the past few weeks, Trump is still sitting uncomfortably close to Clinton in the polls (and yes, that’s even counting Gary Johnson’s progress in getting support). The possibility of a Trump presidency is still a thing.
While this clear and present danger to human liberty runs unchecked, anarchists and other anti-authoritarians have been going back and forth in arguments about what to do about him. Nobody has come out with a good answer.
And so, in the meantime, we have this: several statues placed at strategic locations in several major US cities, depicting Trump naked, fat and lacking testicles.
The common interpretation of the statues, especially among anarchists, is that they depict a “The Emperor Has No Clothes” theme, showcasing the transparency of the bullshit world that Trump espouses and has promised us.
I’m gonna be That Curmudgeon and say that the Naked Trump installations weren’t particularly funny nor (at this point) original, and if this is all we have left to fight him with, we might as well just lay down and let Politics(TM) crush us once and for all.
I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.
And yet, I’ve had fellow anarchists, people who have been involved in radical projects for years and who are normally pretty compassionate, call the backlash to the fat shaming in the installations “liberal to the core” and “projecting.” I have watched the founder of (one of) the US’s oldest anarchist websites attribute the criticisms folks have of the installations to “outrage” culture and a fundamental misunderstanding of political art.
Ultimately I want to know if it’s worth creating “political art” that merely takes a really basic potshot at the most awful and dangerous political candidate, if by doing so I’ve wrapped up these other demographics into “collateral damage.” Fat people, people with micropenises, trans people — fuck em, if it means I can rehash a tired joke made months ago by the same liberals I’m deriding on Facebook for “having too many feels.”
And oh lord, there are much more poignant pieces to be made here. Why not dress one of the statues up as Mussolini and hang it in effigy? Trump in a Klan robe, setting himself on fire? Trump as a slumlord getting beat up by his fed-up tenants? I realize these ideas are about as Edgy as a third-rate Banksy scribble, but they’re much closer to showing what Trump is and what we think of him and they don’t require us to make fun of his “lack of balls” or use toxic masculinity to sock one to him.
And of course the eternal question is: what are we going to do after? After the tacky statues. After this election. How do we combat Trump and whoever comes next? How is what we’re doing helping to bring about a better world, whether that world is shaped by anarchism or not? The answers, as always, aren’t clear to me. What is clear is that I’m not going to sacrifice my basic compassion and respect for others so that I can take some cheap potshots at a carnival huckster. I didn’t become an anarchist to play Team Sports, Edgy Edition. And I sure as fuck didn’t become one to let opportunistic nihilism turn us into a mob of assholes.
BONUS HELL
Fuck the French burkini ban. There’s no link for a relevant story here, I’m just fucking steaming about this because there’s literally NOTHING about a fucking burkini that is about to threaten “western civilization,” they are literally just extra articles of fucking clothing. You wouldn’t rip a nun’s habit off their head, don’t fucking make a nice old lady take off her burkini at the fucking beach you troglodytes.
Also, STOP FUCKING WITH LESLIE JONES, YOU FUCKING TROGLODYTES.
A friend of mine shared this. It’s a pretty good read.
Kevin Carson on Killing Copyright (C4SS)
A list of things to read about asexuality, and an ensuing discussion about it.
A lot of asexuality zines. I fucking love zines.
END CREDITS
I’ve now nearly written an entire half-dozen of these! I think the last time I had this kind of productivity was when I was doing podcasting, I lived elsewhere and my job didn’t involve my brain being sucked out through my nose with a straw.
I really appreciate everyone who has read, recommended and shared these newsletters. I know I just kind of post them and move on, and I need to get better about the whole “marketing” aspect of these, but honestly right now I’m just trying to build a good, quality thing.
As always, you can send me letters and tips and shit: theasexualanarchist@gmail.com
Alternately, you can follow me on Twitter: illicitpopsicle
Or over on Tumblr, where I’m just about to hit 250 whatevers.
Cheers!
