One Year on Substack
Writing the upside-down, plus Pride Myths & Recs
Welcome to this month’s Myths & Recs, a (usually) short-form post where I share what I’ve been digesting, and nuggets of insight or information I think will be relevant to my readers.
This time I want to highlight what a blessing this first year of writing on Substack has been, and update my readers on what the focus of this newsletter will be going forward. Since it’s Pride Month, I’ve added some extra material on queer issues at the end.
Let’s dive in.
As of mid-June, it’s been officially one year since I started writing on Substack. The biggest myth that was busted for me was the fear that no one wanted to read about queer anarchy or deep adaptation to climate collapse. In fact, over 500 people have signed up to receive this newsletter in their inbox. I could not be more grateful.
I've recently revamped my About page and intro post to reflect a shift in focus — or rather, to clarify what my focus here is.
Originally, this newsletter was called "Anarchy, Emergence, Love" because those are the three spheres through which I see and understand the world. The point of my writing is to show how they work together.
The problem was I couldn't articulate how they work together except for my conviction that they do. But recently I distilled the "upside-down" image: all the systems currently decimating the biosphere (capitalism, climate change, patriarchy, etc) have taken hold of aspects of our humanity and turned them upside-down. We can fix things by turning them right-side up again. That’s the through-line that connects all the disparate topics I write about, so you’ll see this language used more explicitly from here on.
For example, anarchy is seen by many as a purely negative project: the absence of rule, or the dismantling of authority. While those aspects are important, anarchy is also the presence of order, and the establishment of systems — just of another kind. What kind exactly? One that resembles ours if turned upside-down. So we make decisions through affinity groups and federations instead of governments, and we resolve conflicts through practices of transformative justice instead of through courts and prisons.
In the same way, technology in service of capital is rapidly destroying the foundations of human life on this planet. We are presented with a false choice between accelerating technological progress, which will somehow solve the problems it perpetuates, and regressing into barbarism, which is suspiciously described like Hobbes’ state of nature, a life that’s “nasty, brutish, and short.” In fact, there are a host of potential futures before us, made possible by the fact that we can choose how technology develops, and for what purpose. A right-side up use of our tool-making skills would look like renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, regenerative instead of conventional agriculture, a free and open-source information economy instead of giant tech monopolies, and science designed for public instead of state or corporate interests.
Finally, the way we treat our bodies is really backwards. What I mean is that, from a very young age, we train our children to ignore their internal cues in service of external demands. Boys learn to repress their emotions, girls their desires and opinions. School regiments kids’ lives in preparation for the office and the barracks. The nuclear family is designed to be isolated from community, and parents, especially mothers, bear the resulting burdens. The flavor of Christianity now ascendant reinforces the moral lessons the state needs its citizens to internalize: patriotism, productivity, purity. Lastly, corporations and their advertisers use our knowledge of human psychology to manipulate us into wanting and buying and doing things we don’t need. The amount of waste this generates, both material and in wasted time and attention, is egregious.
None of this is necessary. We can use our knowledge of the human mind to heal our hurts and repair our social fabric. We can use our sacred traditions to remind us of our interconnection, of the sanctity of all life. We can make love not war.
This is what it means to overturn the upside-down.
Here are some of the top posts I’ve written this year that I’m also pretty proud of:
Looking ahead, I’m trying something new: a seasonal focus on one of the three spheres, anarchy, emergence, and love, that I conceptualize as red, green, and blue respectively. Starting with this Pride Month post, I’ll be spending a couple months in the Blue sphere.
This post from back when I started gives a sense of what that encompasses:
Next up, here are some queer offerings from Instagram:
Leanne Yau from @polyphiliablog talks about polyamory as a “queer-adjacent practice”:
The reason why I say polyamory is a “queer-adjacent practice” is because being attracted to and forming relationships with multiple people is not inherently queer in itself (see cheating/polygamy) but practicing it intentionally is a direct challenge to the cisheteropatriarchy… it can be practiced in a way that is, politically speaking, queer as bell hooks defines it, “not who you're having sex with but being at odds with everything around it.”
Non-monogamy also has very deep roots in queer history and culture: Brenda Howard, the “mother of Pride,” was bi and polyam, and it is still very common for queer people (especially gay men) to be in open relationships, partly because gay marriage was not legal for a long time.
@homocommunist draws pull quotes from “Against Equality: Queer Revolution Not Mere Inclusion”:
The history of gay marriage is now used to overwrite all of queer history, as if marriage is all the queers ever aspired to.
Today, capitalism does not seek to exclude gays and lesbians — instead, it seeks to integrate them into its structure of exploitation as long as they don't upset the status quo.
A queer radical critique of gay marriage exposes how capitalism structures our notion of “family” and the privatization of the socal relationships we depend on to survive.
Jersey Noah writes about masculinity and Palestine from a trans male perspective:
What always stood out to me is that it's often those most villainized by society, like Arab men, who openly hold affection for other men.
We watch as Palestinian men pull their neighbors from rubble… and dance with the terrified children. All while these men are demonized and villainized… While in reality, the Zionists who deliberately fabricate these misconceptions of Palestinian and Arab men, are the actual extremists… who fear embracing other men, who are threatened by the fact that trans men are, in fact, “real” men.
The reality is that manhood and masculinity are far too expansive and beautiful for the borders and blockades of Zionism and white supremacy.
Finally, some pieces by the artist @_heretic_ceramics:
Thank you for reading Anarchy Unfolds. This publication is entirely reader-supported, and will always be ad-free. Each subscription helps grow the networks we need to overturn the upside-down. If you value this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’m always grateful for your time and attention.
I resonate with these goals so much, as they’re what I’m trying to breakdown through my Substack as well (in my own ways haha). It’s truly refreshing finding others who want to do the same! Congratulations on one year, and I wish for an even more fruitful year ahead of you 💚