Each book volume for Sex Positivity has its own full-size PDF and blog-style book promotion (the former which you can download on my one-page book promotion for the entire series and the latter which you can access individually on my Book Promotions page). Whereas the online book promotions feature the lion’s share of the book volumes, they have up until now left out a small handful of unessential-yet-interesting paratextual documents I have since decided to include here; i.e., to be as thorough as possible, and which further clarify my process while writing and organizing said volumes (refer to “Paratextual Documents” for the more essential of the paratextual documents to this entire book series). Some of the documents only appear in my later volumes, and some appear as early as Volume One. As such, this page will also specify which (sub)volumes include which paratexts:
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
- “Two Essential Halves: Dividing Volume Two/Three in Two” (included in Volume Two/Three): A one-page explanation as to why I decided to divide Volume Two in two (re: part one’s Poetry Module vs part two’s the Undead and Demon Modules). A near-identical version is supplied for Volume Three (which I divided in two, but kept as a single document).
- “Written Backwards: A Ship of Theseus, a Gothic Castle” (included in Volume One through Three): A short document exploring how I wrote Sex Positivity backwards; i.e., in regards to my circular writing process—to writing Volume Three first, followed by my manifesto and Humanities primer (the skeleton for Volume Two, part two; re: the Monster Modules), followed by my PhD: the first book volume I published in my series, and which I published before my manifesto (followed by my manifesto, Poetry Module, and Monster Modules). To it, “Written Backwards” specifically acknowledges Bay Ryan and meeting them, hence the profound impact they had while helping me write my PhD; i.e., regarding the playful ghost Bay supplied me with, and which haunts the “castles” I returned to after raising Volume Zero under its forebears (re: I wrote them before I met Bay but would haunt them with Bay’s “ghost” when publishing them after my PhD, which Bay helped write).
- “Into the Void: Losing the Training Wheels” (included in Volume Two and Three): A small document provided after my manifesto, one meant to explain how Volume Two and Three can only reference theory (simple or complex) in smaller pieces; i.e., doing so to allow me to proceed through the material explored therein without being weighed down. In short, it expects the reader to partake in the synthesis being explored, but also reminds readers where they can find said theory in its totality.
- “Heads-Up (a brief refresher)” (included in Volume One through Three): A small section provided with the manifesto onwards, giving a few largely concepts to bare in mind, throughout; i.e., largely by reiterating the synonymous-yet-holistic nature to much of Sex Positivity‘s terminology (e.g., sex positivity vs sex coercion = canon vs iconoclasm = bourgeoisie vs the proletariat, etc), hence conversational approach to said terminology’s history and application.
- “Concerning Monsters” (included with Volume Two): A short preface to Volume Two’s modules, emphasizing the praxial and poetic value of monsters; i.e., as things to reclaim during ludo-Gothic BDSM.
- “We Are Legion: So Many Monsters, So Little Time” (included with Volume Two): A follow-up to “Concerning Monsters,” lamenting my inability to discuss all of the monsters I want to, yet likewise stressing my desire to be as broad and specific as needed across the entire Gothic spectrum.
Two Essential Halves: Dividing Volume Two in Two
We speak of Time and Mind, which do not easily yield to categories. We separate past and future and find that Time is an amalgam of both. We separate good and evil and find that Mind is an amalgam of both. To understand, we must grasp the whole.
—Isaac Asimov, foreword to Light Years (1988)
The size of Volume Two has required that I divide it in two, if only because doing so has made it easier to work with and transport. It’s still very much a single volume, but one composed of two essential halves: the usage and history of Gothic poetics. Part one provides the Volume Introduction and Poetry Module, the latter of which discusses the poetic usage of monsters versus their historical evolution; and part two supplies the Volume Conclusion preceded by twin monster modules, the Undead and Demon Modules, which invert the focus from poetry to history—i.e., focusing on the historical usage of undead, demonic and animalistic monsters. Each half will contain the usual paratextual documents (with images swapped out for each), but their unique content works in harmony and must be combined to grasp the whole of oppositional praxis, mid-poiesis. Technically this is a six-book series, but I still prefer to consider it four volumes where Volume Two has been divided in three (parts one and two, part two having two sub-volumes). But, just as the Gothic concerns manmade (Cartesian) divisions that alienate us from nature and ourselves—i.e., as black-and-white beings to battle against one another in service of elite aims; e.g., Ripley the centrist warrior-maiden defending her virtue from the Communist, intersex Medusa—we must consider how liberation occurs by subverting these dichotomies to upend worker abuse within state territories being reclaimed by us. Doubled during oppositional praxis, Ripley and the alien become things to canonize or camp. To camp canon, you will need both volume halves: the medieval (Gothic) poetry of monsters and the revived (Neo-Gothic) history of its use. Just as Ripley and the alien aren’t separate from each other, but form two essential halves torn asunder and going to combat with multiple versions of themselves, the spectres of Marx and capital haunt the same cathedral and its inhabitants across space and time; they cannot exist without each other in some shape or form. As Galatea, we can free them from Pygmalion’s mind, making each our own.
(artist: BTG Art)
Note, 8/6/2024: Due to length issues, I’ve decided to divide Volume Two, part two in two, effectively treating each module—the Poetry Module (from part one), and the Undead and Demon Modules—as its own sub-volume with its own release, but also its own online promo series (where you can download the exhibit images at full resolution): “Brace for Impact,” “Searching for Secrets,” and “Deal with the Devil.” For organizational purposes, all sub-volumes are considered part of the same volume; each module will actually have a longer page length than Volumes One and Zero, and each will feature a unique front and back cover with Harmony on it; e.g., the Poetry Module:
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
Written Backwards: A Ship of Theseus, a Gothic Castle
[…the infernal concentric pattern has] in Gothic one and the same function: to destabilize assumptions as to the physical, ontological or moral order of the cosmos [… It is like a Mandelbrot set:] finite, and yet from within we cannot reach its end; it is a labyrinth that delves ‘down’ instead of pushing outwards (source).
—Manuel Aguirre, “Geometries of Terror” (2008)
(artist: TMFD)
In light of releasing Volume One, changes to the original manuscript have led me to address a fundamental aspect of my book’s (re)construction: Sex Positivity was written backwards. For a fuller detailing of exactly how, refer to the foreword from Volume Zero, but otherwise just know that I wrote Volume Three first, followed by Volume One, Two, and then Zero. Except the writing of Volume Zero led me to reconsider Volume One as something to rewrite, simplifying my thesis in ways that I couldn’t do until there was something to simplify (that was, itself, based on a previous argument: the original manifesto). This required me expanding on Volume One to account for these changes, but also rewording older portions of it to account for synonymous terminology that, in my mind, better conveyed the manifesto’s original points; i.e., swapping out old “boards” for new ones; the new timber represents the same fundamental arguments, except it has been fine-tuned—honed for further precision and specificity than when I had initially started out. In short, my humble vessel towards the end of its journey will have had most, if not all, of its original parts replaced, while more or less resembling what it once was; i.e., a Ship of Theseus, or better yet, a “flying” Gothic castle with fresh bricks. Unlike a traditional Gothic castle, my chateau’s renovations aren’t meant to primarily confuse and overwhelm, but reconsider my own work from new perspectives in a holistic manner through the same chambers, vistas and corridors, but also bodies.
A huge part of this reorientation owes itself to my partner, Bay. His contributions led me to reconsider my own arguments—not to completely change them, but view them from different angles and vantage points. I became inspired to expand on my manifesto and crystalize it into a pure thesis, from top to bottom over and over until I felt satisfied …except this led me to revisit my manifesto, Humanities primer and praxis volume, leading to our aforementioned Ship of Theseus/Gothic castle! That’s holism for you; or, as my thesis puts it, “Returning and reflecting upon old points after assembling them is a powerful way to understand larger structures and patterns (especially if they’re designed to conceal themselves through subterfuge, valor and force). It’s what holistic study (the foundation of this book) is all about.” Alongside my other contributors, then, Bay’s presence is felt throughout the entire book, haunting it from within. Having grown and developed inside my original construction, I reflected on Bay’s haunting having joined me inside. Piece by piece, said structure changed until all the bricks were new (and stamped with Bay’s friendly influence alongside my original mark).
The same idea, then, pertains to bodies as expressed between people, with you viewing a shot of a given individual under circumstances that, while similar to before, are by no means identical. Two bodies can assume the same pose and look vastly different; the same body can adopt a previous pose and yield up exciting new discoveries. Combined with my subtle retooling (and adventuresome expansions) of Volumes One, Two and Three through a sharpened thesis and manifesto, I think the benefits of applied hindsight should speak for themselves (for a point of comparison, though, compare the manifesto to the original, unmodified blogpost). Of course, you needn’t recognize this hindsight to appreciate my work, but it does illustrate the subtleties of change amid consistent arguments that survive over time. For Communism to develop into itself, it will have to survive older changes that shift into future forms hitherto unimagined. To that, I am merely at the starting point of something grand, of which has already changed and evolved into something that, at its inception, I could scarce hope to imagine: a mighty cathedral, represented by our bodies, labor and relationships, abstracted into architectural forms and back into bodies again, but also theatrical exchanges held somewhere in between. Instead of spelling our doom, its “trauma” offers up the knowledge needed to set us free.
(artist: Doxxasix)
Into the Void: Losing the Training Wheels
“The future, once so clear to me, had now become like a dark highway at night. We were in uncharted territory now, making up history as we went along.”
—Sarah Connor, T2: Judgement Day (1991)
As we described in the conclusion to Volume Zero (“A Gay New World”), the book so far has been a series of “booster rockets”—slowly igniting their fuel to propel you into the increasingly unknown Elsewhere of a homeland-turned-foreign:
Beyond the thesis argument and its symposium, Sex Positivity takes its time—gradually launching into its complex (ergodic) arguments through concentric, staged roadmaps. Imagine a rocket launch into space: This requires multiple stages and “boosters,” meaning there’s always time to abort the launch if things get hairy (source).
Except now the rockets have launched and we’re hurling into deep space!
To that, I now want to take the training wheels off (for me as well as you) and explore the remaining volumes minus a tether while in free fall; i.e., not covering all my bases by including total theory (simple or complex) and instead looking at examples of Gothic poetics (old or current) with a checklist to keep in mind. Otherwise, if I try to include all theory each and every time, the volumes will start to feel the same, which I don’t want; but also, I want you to grow accustomed to being modular within a holistic approach that allows for intersectional solidarity while still being focused, practical and efficient, but also honest and reflective on our praxial realities.
Volume Two will examine monsters in a historical sense, and Volume Three will consider praxis in a current framework that accounts for dialectical-material struggles and scrutiny during oppositional praxis. As we move through both, I’ll be covering the modules of monster classes and subclasses, and the creative successes of proletarian praxis vs state praxis. I will mention theory conversationally but also in pieces and modules that draw upon select terms. I will try to stress the ones that feel most relevant, and include additional footnotes and citations whose ideas you can trace back to my older theory-heavy volumes if you wish. But provided you have a good grasp of theory already, that shouldn’t be necessary.
Instead, I want you to use Volumes Two and Three to try and focus on cultivating emotional/Gothic intelligence and class/cultural awareness during the struggle to liberate workers under Capitalism through iconoclastic art; i.e., by focusing on confronting and interrogating state/Cartesian trauma with Gothic poetics to end Capitalist Realism with. Capitalism alienates and sexualizes everything to serve the profit motive; we must reclaim these devices through the Six Rs, thus reclaim and recultivate our socio-material conditions (camping the twin trees of Capitalism) to reunite with nature and our own alienated, fetishized bodies, labor and power as things to play and perform with. But you must go where power is, thus paradox: through chaos, darkness visible, Satanic rebellion, Athena’s Aegis, etc, as a ludo-Gothic, BDSM means of reversing the historical-material process of abjection (and unironic variants of the Shadow of Pygmalion, Cycle of Kings, infernal concentric pattern, narrative of the crypt, hyperreality and astronoetics, etc) through parallel societies (chronotopes), emancipatory hauntologies and revolutionary cryptonymies.
Of course, these occupy the same shadow zone as unironic forms, so being conscious and aware is vital to dodging and upending those who would harm you and enslave the future; i.e. with an imaginary past whose Wisdom of the Ancients serves the same-old settler-colonial system of medieval abuse—its cycles of crisis and decay amounting to endless blood sacrifices that move money through nature, workers, sex and monsters, etc, as cheap, disposable; i.e., a heteronormative commodifying of worker struggles that we must change inside of itself. To liberate ourselves, we must take said struggle—and its violent, terrifyingly hellish language—back from state monopolies/trifectas, making our own pedagogy of the oppressed.
Provided you have a roadmap and some sense of competency and direction when synthesizing praxis to achieve systemic catharsis, the darkness isn’t something to fear inside liminal space and its limitless ergodic motion. Instead, the change of rebellion happens through conflicting thresholds and on the surface of shared images; it becomes, like the stars, something to shoot for while rescuing Hell and its performative darkness from bourgeois forces. This must become second-nature and intuitive, hence without a harness (and rigid game plan) anchoring you down.
To that, the boosters so far have not only given you the energy needed to rush into the raw chaos of unknown spheres; they’ve supplied you with the know-how to both survive and foster sex positivity in dangerous places, making them habitable/pleasurable in ways yet unimagined while striving for transparency in the face of tremendous opposition. The vast, yawning abyss needn’t be terrifying if you know more or less how to proceed: without set shape but instead, like a constellation, connecting the dot-like stars, lighting up the sky.
Heads-Up (a brief refresher)
“Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events but we just got our asses kicked, pal!”
—Hudson, Aliens (1986)
This seven-page heads-up grants several important reminders as we segue into the current volume: to give a small, two-paragraph history of the remaining three volumes after the thesis volume; a refresher on poetics and mimesis (essentially a tiny excerpt from the thesis volume’s symposium); and a small selection of things to keep in mind from the thesis volume overall—namely how this book synonymizes and synergizes its terms and arguments; i.e., reading comprehension pointers.
Reminder one, our volume histories: This volume was initially written before my thesis volume, which now serves as the formalized argumentation on which these more conversational volumes presently stand: Volume Zero (which I wrote in roughly a month [from August 31st to October 8th, 2023] based on years of independent research; older blogposts, essays, and my master’s thesis; and the three previous volumes’ rough drafts). If you haven’t read my thesis argument already or found its more academic approach too dense (it’s essentially the independent-research equivalent to my PhD), you should find these volumes more conversational and poetically engaging; i.e., they literally apply my PhD’s theories to Gothic poetics’ application and history of application unto ludo-Gothic BDSM and different topical areas of research; e.g., Amazons, Metroidvania, zombie apocalypses, etc, but also the tokenization of those things (especially in Volume Two, part two, and Volume Three).
The manifesto/Volume One was written as a looser document that introduces our Gothic-Marxist tenets, manifesto tree coordinates (the scaffold for oppositional praxis) and main Gothic theories that, for the most part, have been on my old blog since mid-2023; but its instruction portion has been expanded on to better account for and help articulate praxial synthesis and catharsis through the cultivation of good social-sexual habits (during oppositional synthesis) that we can develop to better confront and process systemic trauma with.
The second volume, the Humanities primer/Volume Two, is largely about undead/demonic and animalistic monsters and is currently being released in pieces (sub-volumes, per module, and in on-site, per-post promo series; re: “Brace for Impact,” “Searching for Secrets,” and “Deal with the Devil.”). Considering how the application and history of Gothic poetics is nigh-endless, I’ve spent a lot of time expanding on Volume Two, dividing it into three modules with separate releases, each containing a plethora of close-reads, symposiums and mini-thesis arguments; e.g., expanding extensively on my Metroidvania research and ludo-Gothic BDSM scholarship.
Our final volume—Volume Three, which covers the executing of proletarian praxis in opposition to state forms—was the first volume I actually wrote, and has expanded since initially writing my manifesto and Humanities primer; i.e., it was on my blog until around April 2023, when I separated it from the manifesto along with the primer (then wrote my thesis argument). Until I started expanding Volume Two, Volume Three was the book’s longest volume, and is still intended to be the most conversational and applicable in our day-to-day lives.
Newer volumes cite older volumes; e.g., Volumes One, Two and Three all borrow quotations from the thesis volume, and Volume Two, part one will cite Volumes One and Zero, and Volume Two, part two will cite part one, as well as Volumes One and Zero, etc. They also introduce new material in relation to the cited works, but generally will not introduce new foundational ideas that were not previously introduced in the thesis volume; they merely unpack said ideas and explore them further (especially during close-reads, in Volume Two, part two).
(artist: Jean-Baptiste Regnault)
Reminder two, poetics and mimesis (quoted from my thesis symposium): To be clear, as I am a ludologist, Gothicist, anarcho-Communist, and genderqueer trans woman, poiesis wasn’t simply a structure for my pedagogic narrative, like Mikhail Nabokov thought of Jane Austen’s novel, Mansfield Park (1814), in Lectures on Literature (1980):
all talk of marriage is artistically interlinked with the game of cards they are playing, Speculation, and Miss Crawford, as she bids, speculates whether or not she should marry […] This re-echoing of the game by her thoughts recalls the same interplay between fiction and reality […] Card games form a very pretty pattern in the novel.
Nor was it echopraxis (“the involuntary mirroring of an observed action”) according to the kind of “blind” pastiche[2] that plagues canonical thought and proponents of capital; i.e., an empty kind of “just playing” sans parody that stems from what Joyce Gloggin in “Play and Games in Fiction and Theory” (2020) calls “a ‘traditional’ understanding of mimesis” (which we repeatedly alluded to earlier when we mentioned Plato’s cave/shadow play during the thesis argument):
Mimesis or imitation therefore, as one form of play, is an essential element of poiesis, or the “making” of art, which in turn is instrumental in creating what some now refer to as possible or imaginary worlds, that is, fiction.
This traditional understanding of mimesis as an essential element of poiesis places mimetic play at a more distant remove from reality than even the shadows in Plato’s famous allegory of the cave from book VII of The Republic. Related in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, book VII allegorizes the human perception of reality, likening our reality to shadows projected on a cave wall. These shadows are perceived by human subjects, shackled around the ankles and neck and unable to turn their heads to see the puppeteers who cast shadows on the cave wall before them, which they mistake for reality. In other words, what mortals see and know is merely shadow, and this is what mimesis mimics — not reality.
Importantly, this version of mimesis and reality has long informed the marginalization or trivialization of mimetic arts as “mere play,” “just games,” or insignificant ludic imitations of reality. Likewise, the marginalization of play and its rejection as a serious object of study are motivated by the suspicion that play and ludic cultural forms are treacherous and capable of rendering us the dupe (source).
My own mimesis challenged these traditions. As I consumed and learned from older artists/thinkers (and their odes and homages), my own Galatean creations started to change, as did my way of thinking about the process of making them; my countless allusions and allegory became a far less traditional and far more subversively and transgressively playful mode of engagement with others—not just my family in the world of the living but also those long gone, echoing their arguments from beyond the grave: cryptomimesis, or the playing with the dead through perceptive pastiche and reclaimed monstrous language that is then used in place of the original context; e.g., queer people calling everything “gay” (space Communism) or black people using the n-word for everything versus white people wanting to do the same thing in an ignorant or hateful context.
The same basic idea applies to monstrous language and materials as things to reclaim from their original carceral/persecutory monomythic functions (which we will thoroughly examine in Volume Two) or from covert/dishonest regression towards this old medieval sense of compelled BDSM and lack of consent/trust; e.g., witches as traditional scapegoats (exhibit 83a*) versus regressive “cop-like” variants (exhibit 98a3) that iconoclasts subvert through various sex-positive BDSM rituals, ironic peril and Gothic counterculture (exhibit 98a1a); i.e., as a general practice that turns the death fetish or state officer/thug into something other than a fascist-in-disguise through transformative context (e.g., subversions of Shelly Bombshell or Zarya, exhibits 100c2b and 111b). This Gothic-Communist paradigm shift reclaims the unironic imagery at all levels of itself—of actual, non-consenting and uninformed enslavement, torture and rape through their associate handcuffs, leather uniforms, whips or collars; but also insignias and color codes: green and purple as the colors of envy and stigma (exhibits 41b, 94a3; re: “A Lesson in Humility“) but also black-and-red as pre-fascist (the Roman master/slave dynamic), anti-Catholic dogma (exhibit 11b5; re: “Challenging the State“) eventually applied to 20th century fascists and Communists during and after WW2 in videogames (exhibit 41i/j; re: “The World Is a Vampire“) and other neoliberal propaganda (Vecna’s D&D Red Scare schtick: exhibit 39a2a; re: “Escaping Jadis; or, Running up that Hill“). All exist together in the Internet Age along with their assigned roles—as subverted in liminal, transgressive, formerly exploitative ways (exhibits 9b2, 101c2; re: “Prey as Liberators“) that often yield a campy (exhibit 10a; re: “Prey as Liberators“) or schlocky flavor married to whatever unironic forms they’re lampooning (exhibit 47b2; re: “Non-Magical Detectives“). This exists in duality and opposition as a rhetorical device—a conversation, but also an argument.
*Note: Anything past exhibit 60e2 is in Volume Three, whose book promotion “All the World” is currently releasing. —Perse, 4/17/2025
For example, you’ve probably noticed said duality in how I alternate between labels or play around or within them when it suits me (which is often). The reason is to accommodate their natural-material functions. Language is fluid in its natural, uncoerced state; there is no “natural order” of the state’s design, no “transcendental signified” that “just happens” to favor the profit motive. That is installed and enforced through a particular belief system and portioning of codified space and behaviors useful to the elite. Instead things flow in and out of each other quite organically.
Reminder three, how this book synonymizes and synergizes its terms and arguments: Regarding the above organic relationship, I’ve made a little heads-up guide. It includes a few useful reading-comprehension pointers when exploring my work, which has been included in Volumes One, Two and Three from Volume Zero (indented for clarity):
We’ll be code-switching a lot throughout this volume when talking about some very chaotic things. So try to remember that function determines function, not aesthetics. Also remember your parent dichotomies—bourgeois/canon/sex-coercive vs proletariat/iconoclasm/sex-positive—as well as your various synonyms/antonyms, orbiting factors and related terminologies that follow in and out of each other during oppositional praxis; i.e., the productive idea of power as paradox and performance, wherein said performance’s games, rules and play remain incredibly potent ways of interrogating and negotiating power yourselves; i.e., through liminal expression’s doubles thereof, existing inside the Gothic mode’s shadow zone: (sequenced here in no particular order):
the essentialized connecting of biology (sex organs and skin color) to gender and both of these things to the mythic structure as heteronormative/dimorphic, thus alienizing (to weird canonical nerds and everyone else) in service of the state/profit motive > a lack of dialectical-material analysis > willful ignorance/”rose-tinted glasses” to achieve class dormancy through blind “darkness visible” > Capitalism’s monomyth/good war > Beowulf, Rambo > the infernal concentric pattern/Cycle of Kings and Shadow of Pygmalion > carceral hauntology/dystopia (myopic chronotopes/Capitalist Realism) > good cop, bad cop or cops and victims > assimilation > class traitor/weird canonical nerd > Man Box/rape culture > state espionage and surveillance/complicit cryptonomy > babyface/heel kayfabe > war hauntology > subjugated Amazon/mythical copaganda (female Beowulf, Rambo) > TERF > unironic ghosts of the counterfeit and the process of abjection’s symbols of harm > profit, rinse and repeat
versus
the separation of gender and sexuality from each other and both of these things from the heteronormative mythic structure; i.e., Gothic Communism’s monomorphic subversion of all of the things listed above through class war as enacted by our own weird iconoclastic nerds > spectres of Marx > deliberately active, class-conscious/campy “darkness visible” and dialectical-material scrutiny > shadow of Galatea > pro-labor espionage, revolutionary cryptonomy, emancipatory hauntology/parallel societies and chronotopes > reverse abjection > the pedagogy of the oppressed > reclaimed symbols of harm > post-scarcity
As a point of principle, I’ve left out some stuff and these lists in the heads-up are asymmetrical; also, I’m not going to try and include or string everything into a grand necklace/dichotomy that I then trot out each and every time a given topic comes up; i.e., the oppositional praxis of canon vs iconoclasm (as explored during the body of the thesis volume). Instead, I’m using them from a position of internalized intuition that I expect readers to learn, including relating them to parallel parent dichotomies like sex-positive vs sex-coercive, canon vs iconoclasm, bourgeois vs proletarian, as well as their orbiting factors—e.g., iconoclasm emphasizing mutual consent, informed consumption, de facto education, descriptive sexuality and cultural appreciation as things to materially imagine (often through ironic parody and “perceptive” pastiche) in subversive/transgressive Gothic poetics that challenge their canonical doubles during oppositional praxis.
If you can’t parse all of this intuitively then I suggest you familiarize yourself with the thesis proper and “camp map” from the thesis volume (which is available on my website; click here to access my website’s 1-page promo, which contains all relevant download links/information regarding my book) [source: “Symposium: Aftercare”].
The above heads-up guide should be useful, I think, as the organic nature of existence and human society and language is aptly symbolized and demonstrated by chaos. It also, in Gothic circles, elides the organic and inorganic in ways that confound the Cartesian Revolution’s chief aim: divide and conquer, map and plunder the land and its inhabits, all while quaking at the witch as an object of revenge (in both directions) or the pumpkin rotting after the harvest as intimations of Capitalism’s own superstitious mortality. The occupying army is both weak and strong.
(artist: Karl Kopinski)
Concerning Monsters
“Science is real! Monsters are not!”
—the Principal, The Monster Squad (1987)
(artist: Paul Mann)
As the title might suggest, Volume Two is entirely about monsters. Specifically it concerns the modularity of monsters during oppositional praxis as a historical-material concern that evolved into present-day forms under Capitalist Realism: the state vs workers by monopolizing monsters to exploit workers with (and, per my thesis statement, sexualizing everything to serve the profit motive behind state myopias). This historical-material arrangement is profoundly ubiquitous, requiring workers to reclaim monsters (undead, demons and totems) away from the usual state monopolies of violence, terror and hellish morphological expression; i.e., during our own pedagogy of the oppressed—our anger and gossip, monsters and camp—having evolved into itself: a dialectical-material process whose oscillating interrogations (and myriad interpretations) of trauma took centuries while monsters were already evolving into state implements and canonical, singular interpretations thereof. Iconoclastic monsters, then, become flexible and productive critical lenses that raise emotional/Gothic intelligence and class/cultural awareness as something to “turn into”; or, as Volume One argues:
Contrary to Pygmalions and canonical weird-nerd culture, monsters aren’t just commodities; they’re symbolic embodiments of speculative thinking tied to larger issues. You don’t simply buy and consume them (commodifying struggle) but use them as a means, if not to put yourself directly in the shoes of those being oppressed, then to think about things differently than you might normally. It’s an opportunity to empathize with the oppressed and contribute to their pedagogy in ways that, to be frank, make you less stupid, nasty and cruel (source: “Challenging the State”).
Monsters are often seen as “not real” or “impossible,” relegated to the lands of make-believe and pure fantasy. Except this isn’t true. In Gothic Communism, they constitute a powerful, diverse, and modular means of interrogating the world around us as full of dangerous Cartesian illusions meant to control workers by locking Capitalism (and its genocidal ordering of nature and human language) firmly in place. Good monsters become impossible, as do the possible futures they arguably represent.
Instead of saying “in a perfect world,” then, we should say “a possible world”; i.e., in a better possible world, nudity (and other modes of GNC sexual and gender expression) can be exposed and enjoyed post-scarcity and not be seen and treated as inhumanely monstrous (a threat; e.g., bare bodies being a threat to the pimp’s profit margins). Rather, the monstrous language remains as a voice for the oppressed to flourish with; i.e., a de facto (extracurricular) means of good education, deliberately raising awareness and intelligence among intersectional, solidarized workers in the face of state tyranny. As I write in “Bushnell’s Requiem: An Ode to a Martyr” (2024):
terror is a weapon. So is counterterror. The elite mandate and control these voices through violence, which they will use to silence those who speak out; i.e., with the thunder and prolificity of arms. Except you can’t kill monsters, merely adopt them to causes that suit your aims. Like Medusa and her immortal, severed head, Bushnell’s doom isn’t something the elite can ever hope to control because it reverses the [anisotropic] function of terror and counterterror normally envisioned and entertained by Western dogma; i.e., vis-à-vis Weber’s monopoly of violence and Joseph Crawford’s invention of terrorism, but also Asprey’s paradox of terror as a proletarian weapon in a postcolonial age informed by past struggles surviving under modern empires (source).
Monsters cannot be destroyed, then, only repurposed towards different anisotropic[3] aims that guide the flow of power in a given direction, mid-polarity. For the state, a particular arrangement will always come back, and proletarian forms—the spectres of Marx—are equally die-hard. We must replace the former with the latter, camping canon through monsters that channel the status quo as a flow of information, materials, power and education, etc.
Open monstrous sexuality, then, isn’t the end of the world as Capitalist Realism would treat it as (a world where such things are impossible save as shackled commodities that uphold the status quo), but the start to what the elite want us to think is “perfect,” thus “impossible”: humanizing the harvest of fruit-like bodies laid low by Capitalism’s habitual reaping.
(artist: EXGA)
Another point I wish to make before we jump into the primer is the value of monsters, of Gothic poetics during oppositional praxis/synthesis. When limited to singular, essential interpretations, we become inflexible and rigid, but also alienated from what else exists that we could become. Instead of one essential option that never changes, then, we open ourselves up to the realm of infinite possibility with endless potential and options to choose from, insofar as humanizing ourselves through Gothic poetics is concerned (this is my longest volume for a reason; the modules are easy enough to organize, but the number of monsters, like the human imagination, is without limit). It should be enjoyed and appreciated as such, not shunned and punished. Indeed, it is our greatest strength[4]—to transform and resist canonical subjugation by liberating ourselves (and our judgement as trustworthy) with iconoclastic art; i.e., by subverting the means of domination through our own prolific, variable confrontations with and interrogations of psychosexual trauma, a pedagogy of the oppressed: to teach the world to be better by disobeying state mandates, taking control of our own bodies and their potent ability to express our concerns to the world while developing Gothic Communism. Rape is everywhere; so are the monsters we need to free ourselves with—from constraints, from shame, from oppression.
(artist: Harmony Corrupted)
We Are Legion: So Many Monsters, So Little Time
I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain (source).
—Hamlet, Hamlet (c. 1599)
I love monsters and sex (who doesn’t?). I also think they’re the ticket to solving the thing that ails us (Capitalism). Except, while time is of the essence and I want to list all the monsters that I can, we simply won’t be able cover them all. There’s just too many to even remotely consider that. However, I will try to cover as many as possible in liberation of sex workers. In fact, I was trying to, and wanted to limit it to modules, but through my typical backward and holistic approach eventually thought of different ways that monsters can be applied. So already large, the volume ballooned; I wanted to quickly put that into perspective.
(artist: SGT Madness)
I’ve spent my life consuming monsters and later studying them (“benefits of a classical education”), so we’ll definitely cover the classics from different centuries the way I was taught at MMU—in modules. We’ll also go over the Humanities; i.e., as a means of critical thought that predates Capitalism but survives inside it through monstrous signifiers: indicative of schools of thought that, not just promoting a delivery style (the Schools of Terror and Horror from Radcliffe and Lewis), but also more recent critical theories (the Four Gs) with which to look through monsters as critical lenses.
In other words, if monsters are the lenses, then the theories are points of view with which to apply them. Except we’ll also involve non-academic ways to look at, and identify with, monsters; i.e., monsters as emblematic of sex worker identities from different time periods, commercialized by capital mid-crisis through the ghost of the counterfeit and process of abjection (for us, this mainly concerns the monstrous-feminine, but that manifests in a billion different ways—next page…).
So yeah, there’s a lot of ground to cover—a fact not aided by the book’s holistic nature. I could, if I chose, write an entire book about just Frankenstein (1818) or Alien (1979), or just zombies, demons, or anthromorphs; but diversity is strength amid intersectional solidarity so I want to include a lot of different hermeneutics (study approaches) and schools of criticism, to boot! It’s enough to make a girl weep… but I love it! Being a weird nerd obsessed with death rituals designed to relieve stress, fuck hard, and further class war through cultural Gothic signifiers is just my game:
(artist: SGT Madness)
Normally this is manageable, as theory is knowledge to apply in the real world and knowledge is limited. The problem is, the Gothic applies knowledge through imagination, which knows no boundaries a priori, but is further enlarged by Capitalism’s measureless cruelty and Humanity’s sexual desires (which are also endless) as enslaved by capital or at least under it; i.e., the ghost of the counterfeit and the process of abjection tailoring the Gothic towards the British and American middle class; e.g., during hijacked village-life rituals that scapegoat a particular group as the beautiful sacrifice or fetishized object of death: Halloween and witches, commodified by capital to give anxious Americans (and their allies) a means of quick, cheap, replicable release during times of state crisis, decay and moral panic. This extends to and comments on symbols of superstition during witch hunts as speaking to larger aspects of settler-colonial genocide, of intersectional bias and axes of oppression… which of course means there’s a praxial double (canon vs camp). Think infinity then double it:
(exhibit 33b1a: Artist: SGT Madness. There exist endless ways to artistically present anything in the world. For us, that includes one monster from one time period in a particular style tied to a given holiday as combined together in a dialectical-material argument; i.e., Halloween and monster girls; e.g., in a monochromatic 1960s cartoon style with Ben Day dots. Nature is monstrous-feminine, insofar as Cartesian thought alienates and fetishizes both it and labor universally to serve profit through death fetishes adjacent to genocide as abroad, but felt during state crisis at home [fascism is Imperialism come home to empire] to a captive audience: death-sex comfort food in all the traditional ways. Except people can also respond to and during a given cycle in sex-positive or sex-coercive ways using porn-to-art as liminal expression, which again, are all gradients with infinite variation between them! Pastiche is remediated praxis; capitalists use monsters to drive money through a finite web of life; immortal monsters live and replicate endlessly in markets driven by inheritance anxiety and latent rebellion. And so on…)
From the Salem Witch Trials to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, commodifying struggles is America 101. Except beyond Halloween and the ghost of the counterfeit/process of abjection, there’s also medieval expression defaulting to paradox, time being a circle (historical materialism) predicated on dialectical-material forces, and the various reading guides I’ve written and citations from my other volumes and written sources. Also, I just love monsters and could spend my whole life writing about Amazons and Metroidvania (the latter which encourage recursive ergodic motion through boundless Numinous feelings). It was basically if the Grinch’s dick grew three sizes that day and then kept at it with a nasty case of priapism.
(artist: SGT Madness)
Simply put, there’s a million uses to one monster and monsters you didn’t even know (or want to know) existed and kid-friendly versions and adults-only versions (if something exists, there is porn of it, or gender swaps of it, or canon or camp of it…) and palimpsests that stack on top of each other and castles (of castles of castles…). It really just goes on and on and I love it, but wanted to address here just why there’s so much going on with the one’s we have, and why I’ve probably left out your childhood favorite. Any bestiary is, like Hamlet’s commonplace book, a scrapbook to fill to the brim, but is forever incomplete; so was his, and still Hamlet was Shakespeare’s longest (and most quoted/popular) play. It became a madness that seemed to go on endlessly.
We likewise have our own madness, are pushing with our monasterial codex towards something great; i.e., a Communist Numinous we can touch on and brush against its massive vagueness and repetition (the Gothic caters to disintegration) through the monstrous power of suggestion. And yet, we’re also touching on something that can be expressed by any monster through any worker alive (or once alive) to speak to a better future conceived through a shared imagination, a cultural understanding of the imaginary past as endlessly updating itself through constants and variables, mistreatment and healing. I’ve tried to account for that by including as many monsters as possible. For it, this is my largest volume in the Sex Positivity series, and also my favorite. I really hope you enjoy!
About the Author
Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). Persephone has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing on partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with two partners. Including multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). Any money Persephone earns through commissions or donations goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. She takes payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on her Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!
Footnotes
[2] Pastiche is simply remediated praxis (the application of theory) during oppositional forms. This book covers many different kinds of pastiche types under the Gothic umbrella as canonical or iconoclastic: Gothic pastiche, of course, but also blind and perceptive forms of war pastiche, rape pastiche, poster pastiche, monster pastiche, disguise pastiche, Amazon pastiche, and nation pastiche, etc.
[3] From Volume One:
I’ve repeatedly said that function determines function. Another way to conceptualize this is flow determines function. That is, during oppositional praxis’ dialectical-material struggles, terror and counterterror become anisotropic; i.e., determined by direction of flow insofar as power is concerned. Settler colonialism, then, flows power towards the state to benefit the elite and harm workers; it weaponizes Gothic poetics to maintain the historical-material standard—to keep the elite “on top” by dehumanizing the colonized, alienating and delegitimizing their own violence, terror and monstrous bodily expression as criminal within Cartesian copaganda (source: ” A Deeper Look at Cartesian Trauma in Rape Culture”).
Humanizing monsters challenges the flow of power in service of workers, not the state.
[4] From my thesis volume:
State proponents are straw dogs (throwaway effigies)/sacrificial roosters, believing themselves immune to the elite’s gain while the owner slits the faithful worker’s throat sooner or later. Their “greatest strength” is actually what dooms them to an ignominious death: complete alienation driven by a dimorphic connecting of everything to biological sex, skin color and their canonical-monstrous connotations in service of the profit motive but refusing to scrutinize things at a dialectical-material level (willful ignorance/”rose-tinted glasses”). Conversely our greatest strength as class-/culture-/race-conscious warriors is our “darkness visible” doubling theirs through the Wisdom of the Ancients as something to cultivate relative to the modern world; i.e., our deliberate, cultivated ability to critique capital and its agents/trifectas through dialectical-material scrutiny and iconoclastic, campy behaviors that synthesize the Superstructure to our purposes (rehumanizing ourselves by separating from the colonial binary in monomorphic fashion) all while suffering the fools of canonical tragedy and farce within canonical historical materialism. Our aim is to “make it gay” by reclaiming the Base through our Four Gs: abjection, hauntology, chronotopes and cryptonymy—but also our Six Rs, or Gothic-Marxist tenets of Gothic Communism during oppositional praxis as something to synthesize (source: “Pieces of the Camp Map”).