Genderfringe: Radical Queer Reading Group

Saturday November 13th, 2021 2-4 pm

“To be free from governance entails being free from gender. Being free from gender entails being free from categorization, normalization, and exploitation of governance.” – Lena Kafka

Genderfringe is a queer anarchist reading group and a place to explore nonstandard understandings of gender and sexuality with aim toward eliminating identity itself.

Through theory, literature, and personal workbook-style exercises, the group will explore marginalized concepts of gender, including gender outside neoliberal conceptions of trans and cis bodies. Our aim is to offer each other tools to expand our understanding of how gender works materially, so that we can each apply our own agency to how we live within or outside this structure of oppression.

Genderfringe will meet once monthly for six months, beginning Saturday, July 10th 2-4 pm and continuing on second Saturdays of the month, to discuss offered readings. Further discussions will happen in the group Discord server.

To sign up and be added to the mailing list, visit tinyurl.com/genderfringe

Meetings will be in person at Yes We Cannibal and will include Zoom participants from around the world.

We’ll want to note from the start that “No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive” by Lee Edelman is assigned for the last session and is book-length, for anyone who wants to start it early: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lee-edelman-no-future. All other session reading lists focus on essay-length pieces and are intended to be more easily read in a month’s time. 

JULY
Introduction – Anti-Identity

• Gender Nihilism: an Anti-Manifesto: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alyson-escalante-gender-nihilism-an-anti-manifesto
• Gender Nihilism by Alys Rowe: https://automaticwriting1.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/gender-nihilism/
• “Against Articulation” by Ausonia Calabrese: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ausonia-calabrese-against-articulation
• “Dude, Where’s My Phallus?” chapter from The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Judith Halberstam (pdf)
• “Are You Perfectly Gendered?” checklist from My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein (pdf)
  • Pair w May Peterson’s tweets on “compulsory manhood” to balance out of datedness re: AMAB experience:
  • https://twitter.com/maidensblade/status/1381507568858718217?s=20 
  • https://twitter.com/maidensblade/status/1249368942910550017?s=20

 

AUGUST
Against Equality/Against Neoliberal Gender

• “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” by Isabel Fall: https://archive.is/oXDEt
  • “What’s the harm in reading?” – article describing response to Fall: https://theoutline.com/post/8600/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter-moralism
  • Various copies of Attack Helicopter if needed: https://twitter.com/AbrahamHanover/status/1217471249393127424?s=19

• “Homosexuality and Fascism” chapter from The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Judith Halberstam (pdf)
• “Loving Capitalism? Gay Marriage & the Beast of Assimilation” by Manish Vaidya: http://ghadar.insaf.net/November2005/MainPages/GayMarriage.htm
• “Gay Marriage’s Economic Underside” by Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/gay-marriages-economic-underside/

• “What do you like about your identity?” questions from My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein (pdf)

 

SEPTEMBER
Gender as Civilization/Containment of the Monstrous

• “Against the Gendered Nightmare” (parts 3-7) by baedan: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/baedan-against-the-gendered-nightmare 
• Arming Negativity: Towards the Queerest Attack by Flower Bomb: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/flower-bomb-arming-negativity-towards-the-queerest-attack
• Wrestling With Gender (pdf)
• “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” by Susan Stryker: https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Stryker-My-Words-to-VF.pdf
• Toward the Queerest Insurrection: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mary-nardini-gang-toward-the-queerest-insurrection

• “Gendered/Transgendered” checklist from My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein (pdf)

OCTOBER
Love and Desire

• “Join The Resistance: Fall in Love” by CrimethInc: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-join-the-resistance
• P. 92-108 of the “Fuck Your Gender” chapter from My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein (pdf)
• “Gender as the Shape of our Relationality” IG post & part 2 in comment by @queernature https://www.instagram.com/p/COqfZW1ApWF/?igshid=v38mu72ec29h
• Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor (p. 29-33 and p. 66-71) (pdf)
• T4T Podcast, Episode 3, guest Kama La Mackerel reading her poem “Zom Fam” from her book of the same name. Reading begins at time mark 1:34:30
  https://t4t.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-3-kama-la-mackerel

• Piece from Detransition, Baby?

 

NOVEMBER
Solidarity

• Ch. 26, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg,  https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/
• “It’s All About Class” by Tommi Avicolli Mecca from That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (pdf)
• “Communization and the Abolition of Gender” by Maya Andrea Gonzalez: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/maya-andrea-gonzalez-communization-and-the-abolition-of-gender
• An Obituary for Identity Politics by Flower Bomb: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/flower-bomb-an-obituary-for-identity-politics
• An Insurrectional Practice Against Gender: http://anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2012/02/insurrectional-practice-against-gender.html
• “The End of Genderqueer” by Rocko Bulldagger in Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (pdf)

 

DECEMBER
No Future, Nothingness

• “Queer Revenge” by Nova Ishtar Daggers-Drawn: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nova-ishtar-daggers-drawn-queer-revenge
• Towards an Insurrectionary Transfeminism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-towards-an-insurrectionary-transfeminism
• “Musings on Nothingness” by baedan: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/baedan-musings-on-nothingness
• “No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive” by Lee Edelman: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lee-edelman-no-future (LONG)

• Kate Bornstein’s “Your last gender transition” questions (pdf)