Knowledge runs down.

“Anything that says ‘manifesto,’ just stay away,” my brother says. “Back away slowly.”

I have been ranting about Females.

He is right. If my goal was to be pleasant and relaxing for my family to be around, not getting “riled up” by manifestos could help.

Andrea Long Chu says a manifesto is “too serious to be taken seriously.” And, paradoxically, “its call to action is just that: a call, not an act, desire spilling over the lip of the text like too much liquid” (p. 20).

She claims that Females is not a manifesto. “I thought at first of writing this book … in the style of a manifesto,” she writes. “Short, pointed theses, oracular, and outrageous.”

Andrea’s urge to be outrageous marks “a preference for indefensible claims, for following our ambivalence to the end, for screaming when we should talk and laughing when we should scream” (p. 20-21).

Although Andrea’s writing is frequently bizarre and undecipherable, at least for me, I feel she is a kindred spirit who has been told she is being too loud at least as much as me.

After viewing a play, she says that her friends, “let me rant. They had come to expect this kind of behavior from me. Feminism, they thought.”

“This kind of behavior” is what I am also known for.

Even on the holidays when my mother supposes I should be creating a warm and non-controversial environment in which my grandparents, uncle, and cousin can spout ignorant, sexist and oppressive ideologies.

Being an insufferable feminist is a slur. It’s a threat, too, of isolation. “You can’t sit with us if you make us think too hard, or be too conscientious,” it says.

I take pride in challenging people – it is one of my favorite activities. And it does make me exhausting, even to myself sometimes. But it’s the truest way I know to be myself.

Does Andrea think being true matters?

She seems to endorse a hypothetical world in which gender is meaningless, in which art is nothing, really. Because there is no femaleness AKA capitulation to the desires of another. So there can be no “gender” or “art” because these depend upon desirousness to another.

The man who disappointed me with his distaste for Andrea’s bizarre approach to philosophy took issue with the idea of no more art. “Expression is important,” he said.

I agree… but Andrea’s not saying self-expression is not important or valuable or even “good.” I think she would argue that it’s all female, though. There is no such thing as expression for ourselves – only objectifying ourselves for the desires of others.

Is that bad or okay or good or just true and immovable, Andrea?

(I am here being female in desiring for Andrea to tell me what to think rather than answering this question for myself.)

Females is certainly provocative.

And I do hope to answer this and other questions for myself, Andrea. See? Approve of me being less female please… oh no, look I’m being female again.

Is the lesson a Buddhist one? (And here I mean the lesson I am attempting to draw out, not one that Andrea intended because I don’t think she did intend a moral takeaway.)

Buddhism teaches that attachment creates suffering and one should try to be less attached. Certainly that includes attachment to how one is viewed by others. Is attachment the same as femaleness?

Ah, this is what man-who-disappointed was gesturing at when he brought up intimacy. Is intimacy inherently female? To be intimate with someone, do you have to sacrifice to their desire?

If we are all female, are we always being female or is it an underlying condition that only applies sometimes?

If I am trying to deeply learn something because I am delighted by learning, but I have also received positive external feedback for learning new things in the past, can I learn something in a non-female way? Where I am not doing it for external validation?

The benefit of stark, radical writing is there is a lot to push against. You can’t simply agree and move on. There are layers and idiosyncrasies to dissect.

I started listening to an episode of the podcast The Dig where Andrea Long Chu discusses a project to analyze Sex and the City. She refers to the series as a “bad object.”

A bad object is one that does not hide its messaging – there aren’t deeper layers to unpack (it initially seems) and it is a “guilty pleasure” kind of experience. The creators don’t seem to have a social or political or academic agenda, just an economic or fanciful one.

All my favorite writing takes bad objects and takes them seriously. The silliness of Teen Wolf is just as worthy of deeper analysis as the serious social analysis of Parasite.

A manifesto is a good object and a bad one. It is silly in its seriousness. It says what it means right on the surface, and can’t help but create depth and nuance in what it doesn’t say.

(I love Andrea for her extensive use of italics.)

A manifesto is like a teenager. It thinks it knows what is real and true, but in its passionate adherence to that truth, it overlooks other truths and often base reality.

Teenagers are often mocked for their emotional reactivity, impulsivity, and the gravity with which they approach every moment. But I love to live in that age. I still think I’m both more and less capable of serious thought than I truly am. I still take too much in earnest and am cynical at the wrong times.

Is this why I love reading and writing diaries? Teenagers can’t help revealing themselves in everything they do. They aren’t yet practiced at hiding their motives, fears, and insecurities.

Somehow I missed out on attaining that adult skill of superficial chit chat and being less than who you are.

Sometimes I notice myself trying, and am ashamed. In the end, the truth about me always comes out, though, like reading my diary to everyone I interact with.

I have both valorized or condemned that feature of my mind. In general, I think it makes me a better person.

What would Andrea have to say about the concept of a “better person”?

Ah, there I go again.

Love and italics, Jordie

P.S. I bet trans theory would help me understand why using a different name on here and in kink allows me to feel more like myself when I write.

It is disappointing to discuss your ideas with someone else.

Especially if you care about their opinion… which for me, is anyone and everyone. Not that I care about their opinion over mine, I think. But I try to take their thoughts into account and enmesh them with my own.

My poor memory means I get caught in their ideas and forget my own. Until later, when I am baffled at the tenor and track of our conversation and regret that I was not more firm in my own ideas. (How female of me.)

My family tells me I talk too much, talk over them, talk too loud.

But on dates I listen a lot. I spur them on with a pointed question and sit rapt. They [word for giving a speech that’s got a slightly negative vibe but I can’t remember rn] and I absorb and absorb. Eventually, I interpret.

Because I can’t sense my own emotions in the moment, I don’t realize until after they’ve gone that I am disappointed. They didn’t get what I was saying, or understand how I wanted to discuss the topic.

Today I went on a date with a very smart and philosophical history queer. We’ve been sending voice memos back and forth on queerness and sexuality and kink and ADHD.

I brought a book up – to be fair he hasn’t read it. I did my best to summarize the fantastical and strange ideas and asked, open-ended, “What do you think of that starting point?”

“I hate it,” he said. Then we talked at length about the mathematical and physical basis for reality and the metaphysical idea of one integrated “soul” that he uses to conceptualize life.

I didn’t understand what he was saying, sometimes. Other times I disagreed. It was an enjoyable exchange.

When we came back to the book, he, fairly, said he couldn’t say much without having read the thing. But what he did say was disappointing. He didn’t get what the author is going for. He didn’t understand how strange it was, which is fair, since he hasn’t read it.

Even though I know his opinion shouldn’t account for much, I find myself – in a very “female” way – trying to shift my ideas aside to make room for his. Even though I disagree! And there’s every reason to qualify his thoughts with a lack of context. And even with context, maybe he didn’t get it.

I wouldn’t have gotten Females a couple years ago, and I’m not sure I get half of it now. Andrea Long Chu contradicts herself on purpose, and I get that part, at least.

Buddhism was right – desire leads to suffering. I wanted him to get it, I hoped and expected that, of anyone I knew, he might understand.

So now I’m disappointed and I suffer for it. But like, not that much. It’s not really a big deal.

—

In Chapter 2 (?), Andrea explains her thesis: “femaleness is a universal sex defined by self-negation” (p. 11). Over four narrow pages, she makes her core claims and connects them to the history of women’s movements and the idea of the word “female.” Her writing is crisp, clear, decisive. Then she ends the chapter with, “Or maybe I’m just projecting” (p. 14).

Andrea!?!?

What do you mean? You don’t actually take yourself seriously? In this very serious book about the seriously important ideas of gender and power?

This choice makes more sense as you settle into her writing tone and come to understand the framing device: the wild, contradictory and horrifying play Up Your Ass by Valerie Solanas. Andrea loves Valerie, and her style references the crass and rude founder of SCUM (society for cutting up men).

Valerie is outrageous and too serious to take seriously, which is exactly what Andrea endeavors to do. And she takes herself and her idea seriously, even when she is stretching the logic of the concept of female to the extreme.

Andrea also doesn’t ask or answer questions that I want to hear about: If everyone hates being female, is there a way to stop being female? Is there a way to stop hating being female? Does Andrea recommend either effort?

But she explains that – the manifesto is a call to action, not action itself. It is serious and unserious, and not to be taken seriously. And, although she doesn’t name it as such, Females is a manifesto in its own right.

Love and my tongue in your cheek, Jordie

First, some definitions, without which nothing will make sense:

Femaleness is a universal sex defined by self-negation, against which all politics, even feminist politics, rebels. Put more simply: Everyone is female and everyone hates it (p 11).

female[:] any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another (p 11).

And some core ideas:

Femaleness, while it hurts only sometimes, is always bad for you (p 11).

Femaleness is not an anatomical or genetic characteristic of an organism, but rather a universal existential condition, the one and only structure of human consciousness. To be is to be female (p 12).

Everyone is female, but how one copes with being female – the specific defense mechanisms that one consciously or unconsciously develops as a reaction formation against one’s femaleness, within the terms of what is historically and socioculturally available – that is what we ordinarily call gender (p. 12-13).

Human civilization represents a diverse array of attempts to suppress and mitigate femaleness, that this is in fact the implicit purpose of all human activity, and most, of all, that activity we call politics (p 13).

Gender transition, no matter the direction, is always a process of becoming a canvas for someone else’s fantasy. You cannot become gorgeous without someone to be gorgeous for (p 30).

All gender is internalized misogyny (p 35).

If sexual orientation is basically the social expression of one’s own sexuality, then gender is basically a social expression of someone else’s sexuality (p 36).

To be female is to be an object (p 37).

Gender is always a process of objectification (p 38).

Gender is something other people give you (p 38).

Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you. It is therefore a quintessential expression of femaleness (p 63).

Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is (p 77).

Most desire is nonconsensual; most desires aren’t desired (p 79).

No one in their right mind would want to be female. Which, remember, is all of us (p 79).

Women may be capable of political action, by females never are (p 84).

True art would be nothing at all (p 86).

Ideas I loved and want to dig into more:

A bit may be fantastical, but the seriousness required to commit to it is always real (p 19).

…make statements not because they were accurate or provable, but simply because she wanted to (p 19).

The paradox of the manifesto … is that its call to action is just that: a call, not an act … it’s too serious to be taken seriously (p 19-20).

Castration happens on both sides (p 22).

(Penis envy!)

Gender is not just the misogynistic expectations a female internalizes but also the process of internalizing itself, the self’s gentle suicide in the name of someone “else’s desires, someone else’s narcissism (p 35).

(Catherine MacKinnon’s “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State” and her discussion on how every element of female gender stereotype is sexual.)

If identity were all there were to gender… your gender identity would simply exist, in mute abstraction, and no one, least of all yourself, would care (p 38).

You do not get to consent to yourself (p 38).

Others, sometimes grouped under the label “pro-sex,” wondered how their feminist commitments might be reconciled with genuinely pleasurable experiences of dominance and submission – not to mention, eroticism generally (p 64)

(Pleasure and Danger conference – Barnard College, 1982.)

To be female is, in every case, to become what someone else wants. At bottom, everyone is a sissy (p 74).

(Why is captioned porn so hot?)

Too often, feminists have imaged powerlessness as the suppression of desire by some external force, and they’ve forgotten that more often than not, desire is this external force (p 79).

She’s being done to. She hasn’t given her consent as much as given up consenting (p 88).

unreadable, vaguely hostile, but also weirdly passive (p 90).

Bangers:

Everyone does their best to want power, because deep down, no one wants it at all (p 25).

Through its Indo-European reconstruction, female is distant cousins with over two dozen English words, including fecund, felicity, fennel, fetus, affiliate, and effete, as well as fellatio, from Latin fellare, meaning “to suck a dick” (p 44).

Obviously, Money’s got the name wrong – by all rights, it should be the Eve Principle, given that in the fable Eve is, well, prinicpal (p 47).

Does he even know what he’s saying? (p 47).

Taken seriously, it suggests that the manosphere red-piller’s resentment of immigrants, black people, and queers is a sadistic expression of his own gender dysphoria (p 54).

Isn’t that the whole point of gender – letting someone else do your living for you? (p 55).

This reminds him of the film Fight Club, because of course it does (p 60).

Men are not men. Men are never men (p 61).

No, but who cares? (p 65).

Like all men, Jon watches porn not to have power, but to give it up (p 68).

At the center of sissy porn lies the asshole, a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed (p 76).

This is such an incomplete list of the bangers because to make them make sense, you’d have to read the book. Which you should – it’s only 94 pages.

Love and buy it from your local bookstore, Jordie

I am a walking manifesto: “Too serious to be taken seriously,” according to Andrea Long Chu, author of the (so far) excellent book Females.

My birth chart (stellion in Sagittarius, moon in Gemini) says I am a comedienne, humorous, a laugh. And I think I’m friggin’ hilarious.

But I also take things too seriously. Andrea says that’s what humor is, though!

“A bit may be fantastical, but the seriousness required to commit to it is always real. This is the humorlessness that vegetates at the core of all humor,” she writes.

I am humorless and funny as a result.

It’s true I’ve always known I’m funniest when I don’t mean to be – when I laugh along with those laughing at my earnestness.

I am too serious to be taken seriously, so I am funny. Life-long commitment to the bit, that’s me.

Love and seriousness, Jordie

You can take a quiz online to discover your dharma.

According to dharmamalas.com, I am most likely an Educator. That is my “dharma archetype.”

Turns out even Eastern philosophy has bullshit like Myers Briggs and the Enneagram.

From the description: Positive aspect = compassion. Negative aspect = lust. LMAO. Not a negative, good try tho.

Love and voracious lust, Jordie

I haven’t read Kafka’s The Trial, but Merrifield is dissecting it in “Chapter 2: A Question of Faith.”

He hypothesizes Kafka’s warning: “He doesn’t want us to accept our guilt at the behest of the bureaucratic ideology” (p. 29).

Ohhhhh, what a lesson for all of us plagued my internalized misogyny, misogynoir, and other oppressive colonialist projects.

In the margins, I jot, “would be a funny essay to connect The Trial and themes of internalized self-hatred.”

The ways we are convinced to monitor ourselves, plead guilty without fault, etc. An overlay with a “fuck the prison industrial complex” theme, perhaps.

I always think of these crossovers, but how do you actually write that essay? I have role models: Jia Tolentino, Rebecca Solnit, etc. But how do you start piecing together weird evidence into a theme and a narrative and a reasonable flow of thought?

A skill to be researched, learned, and practiced, me thinks.

Love and wow can I write when I’m avoiding grading, Jordie

Post script/Edit: Framed as a review of Merrifield’s book, but extending his argumentation in Chapter 2 to the peculiar world of the Quantified Self and bullet journaling, food tracking as ED bureaucracy and self-bureaucracy to meet internalized misogyny “requirements.” I think his ideas would apply in an interesting way here. Everyone in the field is an amateur scientist and a frequent advice (that is actually helpful!) from CBT (I think) (not Cock and Ball Torture – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is to “experiment” and try new ways of thinking without the pressure of immediate success and without completely abandoning older, more comfortable ways of thinking. I also have personal experience with the benefits and labors and harms of this genre.

TBH I could also look at how his arguments and references apply in the EA space. I have a reasonable level of knowledge and personal experience in these areas to have a good jumping off point for research and essay formation. I know what terms to search for and basic resources to reference.

I also like that I’ve never written a book review before and it would be fun to take an amateur stab at it in the spirit of the anti-professionalism book!

I should have finished the chapter before writing my last post.

Merrifield ends the chapter with a framing of Said’s take on the amateur’s role: “[amateur intellectual thought] is a sense of self-worth, an affirmation of engaged activity that hinges on an audience and a constituency. Indeed, is that audience there to be satisfied, a client to be kept happy, Said wonders, or is it there to be challenged, provoked, stirred into opposition, mobilised into collective democratic action?” (p. 16).

Aha! Yes! This is what I’m trying to do!

Maybe in the case of family, I could get audience consent before going all hyped-up provocatrice on them…

And maybe I could also have other modes of interaction…

Love and apologies to my mother, maybe, Jordie

Edward Said (إدوارد سعيد) said, “ The intellectual ought neither to be so uncontroversial and safe as to be just a friendly technician, nor should they try to be a full-time Cassandra, who isn’t only righteously unpleasant but also unheard.” (Source: recollection of speech given at Oxford, Andy Merrifield, “The Amateur,” p. 14.)

I think an old, dead postcolonial studies prof just solved my mommy issues.

My parents want me to be a friendly technician when I discuss ideas, but I keep tryna go full-tilt prophetess of doom.

Because there is doom!

But I can accept that there is a space in the middle I could inhabit.

It’s the hypocrisy, for me. When I use hyperbole, they get outraged and act like I’m accusing them of being fascists; yet when they oversimplify and cut short a legitimate discussion point, I am being obnoxious to point that out.

Their inconsistencies trigger some “injustice” emergency button and I have a hard time regulating down to non-Cassandra levels.

I may attempt to be moderate this holiday season. We will see.

Love and freedom for Palestine, Jordie

1. Run a sub-4-hour marathon
2. Publish a zine monthly
3. Post to a blog weekly or daily
4. Publish essays in legit publications
5. Complete NaNoWriMo every year
6. Exercise every day in some way
7. Be the best teacher ever
8. Write all my curriculum from scratch
9. Run complicated projects and class activities without issue
10. Complete a PhD (or two) in statistics
11. Or at least learn statistics on my own and enter Kaggle or other competitions
12. Crochet 3 cardigans for myself
13. Put on a creative multi-media art show/experience
14. Become a sexologist
15. Become a well-recognized and respected sex writer
16. Actively participate in anti-oppression activism daily
17. Never fail at anything
18. Coach volleyball
19. Write and teach an original data science course for high schoolers
20. Tutor on the side
21. Sugar without any consequences and safety issues
22. Write a fantasy novel that changes the genre
23. Read all the books in my house right now
24. Do all of this with no costs to my relationships
25. Oh yeah, for sure DM a D&D campaign in a completely homebrew world
26. Publish data analysis and research without getting a PhD
27. You see how these become more and more unhinged?
28. Less within my control?
29. Directly contradictory? (See #10, #26, #30)
30. Get PhDs in disparate disciplines and bring their methodologies together in a totally brilliant and novel way that revolutionizes the way we build knowledge bases and impacts thinkers for generations to come.
31. Author a popular smut series and make money on ebooks.
32. Okay okay… OKAY!

These dreams have to live somewhere coz they sure as hell don’t fit in my house.

It’s called being a “multipotentialite” (Emilie Wapnick).

Peace Itmi says, to succeed as a multipotentialite:

• Have a cohesive mission/framework/belief system/idea
• Go ahead and do it all now
• Prioritize
• Outsource what you can’t prioritize

(She is so cute! And peppy!)

Peace, baby, you got the ADHD*. Me, too, baby, me too.

Big ass asterisk on the armchair diagnosing of online personalities. Not a doctor, not qualified. Just a neuroqueer who is sus of your energy and vibes.

To succeed as an ADHD, I says:

• Prioritize
• Lower your expectations (an anti-perfectionism measure)
• Automate or outsource the boring shit
• Exercise (the worst and truest advice)
• Spend time in the woods
• Tape a sign to the inside of your front door that says “Keys / Phone / Wallet” (try a bright color or change the color when you start ignoring it)

Eh. Same thing. EXCEPT! I am in constant struggle against my desire to do literally everything and yet maintain low expectations.

This is not my first dream big dream list rodeo.

Learning about time has helped. It creates less rush to do it all. I can do some of it when I am 30! When I am 29! When I’m 80!

So do I continue riding the wave of my special interests? I do more but with less direction and less “production.”

Do I care to produce my interests in a way that is consumable? Recognizable and recognized? Do I bid for views and affirmation and legitimacy? Or do I continue to be illegitimate?

Can I be happy while pursuing legitimacy? Or does that spoil the anti-perfection, anti-capitalist ethic?

I have friends who are also multipotentialite and they always seem to weave their interests into some kind of external validation and accomplishment.

I used to do that! I was so good at doing that.

For me, I am proud of many things that are not recognition-based. That I did incidentally on the road to accumulating accolades.

I won a speech contest in college because I abandoned all else and rabidly worked my script and presentation. I won $$$! But my pride stems from doing it even tho I wasn’t confident I would be any good. And putting deep effort in but being genuinely dispassionate about the score at the end.

I was thinking yesterday – Danger, Will Robinson! – that I am actually an expert at many things, compared to the average person.

I am not grandma-level elite at crocheting but I am pretty dang good at figuring out patterns and producing quality pieces! (Okay, they’re often not finished but!) (Altho one holiday I did make everyone and their neighbor a scarf in a November haze of hyperfocus and work-avoidance.)

I learned how to cut hair from tutorials on YouTube and I did my own and my friend’s hair and it was good! My friend: “Cutting hair is your secret skill.”

Not actually, tho – it’s learning skills from YouTube.

Okay – truth bomb – I am using this blog to procrastinate on school stuff I don’t want to do. But it’s also in line with everything I care about! So hard to deprioritize writing because it’s an inherent good in my mind.

Do I over-explain and over-tell and not show enough? I think ‘tis a fair critique. I shall endeavor to do better.

Love and the ghost of gifted “potential,” Jordie

Her latest video, “The Feminine urge to Internalize the Male Gaze, unpacking desirability emoji I can’t think of | Khadija Mbowe,” opens with, “So I have been embracing dressing a bit more quote unquote masculine when I go out in public. But I’ve noticed, ever since I ssztarted dressing more masculinely, I don’t get as much… squeeee attention from men.” Khadija then chants I’m sorry I’m sorry as fake bombs take out her location for the crime of being an ungrateful feminist.

If there’s one thing I’ve laid my feminist chops on, its how I feel about body hair. And today, right now!, I am living my maximally rebellious life by not shaving for shit. Leg hair, on. Arm hair, glorious. Toe hairs, sprouting. Mustache, ON.

(Okay except for the dark hairs betwixt my brows – those guys get the guillotine weekly.)

BUT! When I am lying down on FaceTime, talking to me incroyable long-distance partner, you can see the shadow of the mustache hairs! On my face! And if I’m wearing glasses? And my face is all smushed against the pillow? I do not feel sexy and attractive.

Especially as I lust after his sparkling brown eyes and admire the growth of his beard since we last spoke, I feel concerned I am not giving him the same awesome sexual experience.

My greatest weakness in my dedication to being a hair-bare-ing feminist is my own desire to be HOT by a generic standard. I want random people on the street to walk by and think (but NOT SAY GOOD LORD), “Wow, I wish she were on her knees sucking my cock right now.” Or, “Wow, she would look so good in rope being forced to cum violently again and again.”

BUT! On the other hand, my brain also wishes random people would say, “Wow, what a queer lady! Is she looking at me? Does she think I’m hot? What if I asked her out?? Ugh, I want to lick the milk off her hot, hot lip hairs.”

Worse than random people on the street, I want men I go on dates with to think, “Wow, hottie. Maybe we can have deep philosophical discussions AND passionate kinky sex.”

I don’t want men to view or consider my mustache. I want women to lust after it. Enbys, ignore or favor as you wish. Just don’t talk to me about it.

It is a bit of a flag, having a mustache as a femme. It says, “Alert! Queer/alt person who won’t fuck with your sexist or transphobic bullshit!” Which is a message I favor spreading.

And 90% of the time I do think I’m hot with my lil mustachio hairs. It’s just the damn FaceTime.

Think twice about long-distance, folx. You might have an existential crisis about your morals every time you look your phone in the face.

Oh, shit. I bet someone else would have this crisis daily. I just don’t take pics of myself regularly.

Plz forgive the quality of sentence and logic. I have strep and my brain is at half-mast and I don’t have the wherewithal to edit or refine.

Love and post-nasal drip, Jordie