It’s Division, Not Materialism
The machine agrees with your made-up categories.
The machine cannot eat or produce lived experiences.
Everyone knows this, every transsexual deals with this, and every gender expansive is beaten for this. GenAI, capitalism, fascism, and the patriarchy lack the capability to create living beings that have true lived experiences. Instead, they shape their people into hollow sacs of terms, caricatures, prompts, and generalizations. There is no expanding what the machine can produce because it has set values, set ideas, set configurations that it will mass print using the tools it has; racism, sexism, and saneism.
What nowar is naming is the system of categorizing these lived experiences, specifically within spaces that suffer from poor labeling. This is a system that Tara Knight and many others often do as a means of discussing the material conditions trans people are forced into. This system fails and backlash is consistent.
In the West, the machine first labels trans people as “transvestites”, then splits them into either the True Transsexuals category or the Classic Transsexuals category. This applies to both binary genders as well. Trans men were thought to not exist at all (because they were misgendered as lesbians and assaulted as females). Both are labeled as “disordered” regardless of their position in a gendered class. As such, trans people are viewed through a strict psychological lens until specified otherwise. Our lived experiences like sexuality, courtship, relation to gendered stereotypes, etc., those are all analyzed through the saneist ideology the machine wishes to uphold.
The machine is employing saneism as a way to dictate who gets what, why they get it, and to excuse their faulty labeling system. We do not get to just be uranian or lesbian, we must have a paraphilia — an atypical attraction to people we should not be attracted to. It is another way to call us sodomites and heathens. Furthermore, the system then blames our medicalized dysphoria for our sin — I mean our attraction — and seeks to medicate us in hopes that we no longer function. Forced sterilization, forced impregnation, forced detransition, active ignorance. It not only tells the tranny that they can’t choose for themselves but that their choice is wrong either way. Their lived experiences and the experiences they want to have do not matter, so here’s a label to make you feel better.
Sexism used by the machine can appear in many ways but most often than not it looks like intersexism and misogyny. “This is what a male’s body looks like, this is what a female’s body looks like.” And if you either cross between it, are “mismatched”, or don’t ascribe to it at all, you are a failed product. Your physical nature is wrong and it must be fixed. This is why skinny propaganda gets to so many young people gender-reared as girls because that is the image the patriarchy and every other single fascist regime attempts to instill. It is defined through control over what makes one look like a woman and what makes one look like a man. Like, of course, no girl wants to look like like a Cassie because the patriarchy does not reward girls who don’t fit the mold. The patriarchy denies women who grow up to hate the mold. If by chance, Cassie grows up to reject this mold, then her sex is questioned. If by chance, Cassie gets into sports, then her sex is exploited and she’s transinvestigated.
Cassie is intersex. She still claims womanhood, femaleness, because it’s what she wants — it is what matches her lived experiences. It is not the proximity, the gender-rearing, nor is it her attraction. It is the painting of her life through the lens of womanhood and girlhood. Now imagine if Cassie was a trans woman (perisex or not). If instead, Cassie was gender-reared through a boyhood that told her that her body was made for ruling. That her body was molded by the patriarchy to destroy, to conquer, to lead. That the “poison” in her veins means that she’s advantaged. The outrage created by the elite over a trans woman’s body is made to kill her, made to socially exorcise her, made to remove her from her lived experiences. Suddenly, every trans woman has an ulterior motive. Suddenly, she’s stealing valor from cis women. Masculinity is indirectly clutched like shiny pearls by women who show disgust at bodies that aren’t even androgen-dominant.
No longer do people get to have bodies that vary, they must be defined through the binary and through supplemental terminology like AMAB and AFAB. This is the safest way, after all. It is to designate who gets to be where, what they’re allowed to say, how they’re allowed to identify, and how safe they’ll be with each other. The machine wants you to do that, to segregate, to fight amongst yourselves about who’s box went where. About what body part signifies danger and which one is a holy temple. The machine reproduces fake spaces only one of us can enter and markets that back to us in hopes we rely on its services instead of building outwards. It tells the girls to be jealous of the boys and the boys to degrade the girls but never tells us why. We never ask.
And so when the machine finally uses racism, we don’t blink at it. We let it swallow us whole. We use debunked brain science, we use the words of racist feminists, we beg to be seen by TERFs and their ilk, and we grovel at deplorable behavior because it is all we have. Scraps. Because the machine ate everything that it could around us. Not because we couldn’t come together to create institutions, hospitals, organizations, and housing systems. It’s because we based those buildings on the divisions the machine spits back at us.
The acceptance of lived experiences over categorization is not becoming “too unique for power to describe.” The acceptance of lived experiences means that we can’t hollow ourselves for the machine. Some of us are women, men, nonbinary, freaks of nature even. The machine is trying to make sure we are the most bare bones of those facets. The machine is attempting to fill us with experiences we never had. False memories of sibling kinship we didn’t build but instead ones they instilled in us. How you treat your sisters, how you house and feed them, may very well be founded on the ideas of what the machine wants. How you reject some and accept others. How you shun other groups and welcome all else. How you speak about one section versus how you coddle to another. In the end, the machine seeks for the melting pot you created and it wants its share.
Tara Knight ’s rejection of the whole sum is based on her idea that the body predates, predicts, and protects the spirit. That without the body, there is no “true” spirit. Without the external output, the internal was never real. That without effort, it would have all been for nothing. A dead egg is then just another cis body. What she then concludes is that without analyzing material conditions in which (trans) people exist within, there is no understanding of how violence is repeated against (trans) women. Knight is explaining that people who are not (trans) women have the ability to use all of that repeated violence against them, and that should be named. No one rejects the building of language for this purpose. We reject the labeling of living experiences for this purpose.
Language itself is a material thing. It is used against black women, queer people, trans groups, disabled people, and many more. It does not matter what institution uses it first and how they use it, the moment the language becomes normalized — said language is as physical as a blade is. Categories exist in the same heartbeat as language; it is its child. A category defines what language is used against the topic. A transsexual being defined as an enemy of the state is told that they are a terrorist. What is the difference between the Administration saying it and a random person saying it? Does it suddenly mean that a random person shouting it holds no weight? That being called a racial slur only matter when you lose the right to walk into an establishment each time it is said? The language itself is part of the problem.
The machine and its employers do not care about what you call yourself. They care about what you do with that label. Pit yourself against other transsexuals and the machine spits a bunch of anti-queer bullshit at you that you reblog to the dismay of the transsexuals around you who need you to survive. They find out that their only supplier actively wants them dead because of the labels they use.
And that’s it. There are no other girls 15 minutes away willing to help, and if they could, they’re already dealing with other people. We can talk about creating safety nets and organizations and safe housing the moment we stop problems like this happening — where our personal labels seep into exclusion based on the co-opting of those labels into prerequisites.
Categories are not made equal. Divisive categories that do not speak further (by simply labeling but never analyzing) are created for the machine to eat. Collective categories like umbrella terms function to build kinship, connection, and progress us. Transsexual is a collective category made to do that, same with transgender, same with gender expansive, nonbinary, xenogender, etc. They are created because not everyone is a woman. They are created because not everyone is a man. Not everyone can find hyperspecific care or community. Some nonbinary people will be at a tgirl’s place taking estrogen and will never want to be a woman. Others will just be “trans” with body mods that make them look other-than-human all together, and they need the care you claim to build. If we keep punching down on these people because they don’t fit the prerequisites of a materially transfeminized existence, are we going to deny them estrogen?
Should it matter that someone attacks categories? The same things created to disrupt us from a connected idea of expansive freedom? Do we want freedom to live or freedom to fit in?
Do not label my lived experiences as TME/TMA, as AMAB/AFAB-behavior, as feminine, as neutral, as anything other than what I shorthand it to. Do not assume my position nor my comfort. At the end of the day, I still get those weird stares. I still have strangers ask me my gender in bathrooms. I still have people whisper about whether or not I’m a boy or girl. I still live everyday being assumed one way or the other. That is not something you can define in a box, a category. What can be confirmed is my transsexuality. The truth of my being, my material existence, and my lived experiences — is transsexuality. What organizes trans people is not a girl’s night out or a couple of article posts about womanhood, its about the collective experiences of everyone accumulating into a singular note that can be understood and used to fight back. It is collectively “Trans Rights” and not “Feminine Transsexual AMAB Rights Only” for a reason.
All these personal labels can stay between us, our ranks, our group chats and our relationships. The moment you let the machine know we categorize between ourselves for fun, the machine latches on and takes a tranny away from their community. They are sucked dry of resources, of energy, all of it used on fake discourse and propping up terminology they never even cared for. We’ve seen it happen with he/him lesbians, aroace groups, the uranian flag, the label “doll”, etc. If you want a movement to focus on a certain group, sure! But what you will not do is push everyone who is not the focus of that movement into generalized terminology to fit a narrative now built upon.. nothing.
Materialist frameworks must change as the physical reality changes, as studies approach view, as deaths start to seem never ending. And if materialism analyzes the oppressed and the oppressor through various lens, why are those lens still outdated? Until trans men start to kill women at the same rate cis men do, they should not be analyzed through privileges they don’t have. Until nonbinary people regain the right to change their gender marker to X, they should not be analyzed through cissexuality. Trans women should not be analyzed through how much transmisogyny they face on a daily basis. Materialism is not stagnant, it cannot be, it must be strong enough and flexible enough to understand from every angle.
The machine generates this fake anger to waste our time, to draw us away from building and creating. Have you ever seen a local organization that was built on the foundation of a divisive category? If the answer was Yes, what and who are they supporting? How do they function? Who do they leave out and why? Compare and contrast that to a local org running on collective categories. Look at who they accept, who is the majority, how they move and what language they use. The machine will always take its time to devour divisive language and spit it back at you because you are already much more likely to believe it than to ignore the raving about it.
Our lived experiences cannot be defined through set terms that mean to tell us who we can and cannot be, what our class is and isn’t. If we mean to destroy the machine, its tools, and their thousand faces — do we not need some form of unity? They cannot pick off the enbans if they’re just trans. They cannot pick off the TMAs if they’re just trans. They cannot come after us individually if we stand as one whole sum of unique parts and experiences. And once the machine is deconstructed, then we shall see what language we build. Only then can we argue about who has the most privilege in our social spaces because then we’ll have an entirely new system that isn’t about CIS comfort in exchange for TRANS bodies underground.
Until then, it truly is just about who is less of a dick.
…
And since Knight asked a question at the end, I want to know what has been in the works over in materialist transfeminist land. What housing has been established, what victories won in the local groups, what circles have changed their minds, what organizations launched, what physical movements kickstarted. Do you feed girls and boys like you’re the Black Panther Party or do you lobby for a vote on the basis of your gender?
What good is any of your theory if it isn’t materialist like it claims to be? Posters and PDF zines don’t count.
a black trans person is in need of better housing: https://ko-fi.com/xenvaei