Owing to reasons beyond my control, I could not attend Pride where I live, specifically “No Kings.” To combat this, I’ve written a short essay in response, one that pointedly reflects on Pride—but also various events surrounding Pride—to consider its performative value; i.e., from a revolutionary standpoint: workers are whores who perform in chains to liberate themselves to varying degrees of failure and success; e.g., Jessie Gender‘s more dove-like ideas of rebellion during Pride, versus my own (as inspired by Bob Ross but also Medusa, Satan, and various other ne’er-do-wells).
Note: This is the NSFW version of the article. Click here to go to the SFW version, on my old blog.
Disclaimer: All opinions are my own; i.e., as part of my research, conducted alongside my book series, Gothic Communism (2023). The material within is written about public figures and popular media for purposes of education, satire, transformation and critique.
CW: police violence, sex work, sexual abuse/rape, fascism, genocide, tokenism, the Gothic and live burial
(source: “Concerning Rings,” 2024; artist: Persephone van der Waard)
A protest that isn’t rude lacks teeth, with nudity—especially female/feminine nudity (above)—a kind of rudeness to cover up and show to varying degrees, mid-cryptonymy (commonly expressed as virgin/whore). To that, are we workers (whores or otherwise) merely dogs on leads, dumbly trotting for the elite, who—kings or otherwise—savagely pull us around by the neck? Or can we subvert such factors in all the usual ways? My argument, as usual, puts the answer somewhere in the middle; i.e., between predator and prey while wearing the usual implements of comfort (anti-predation) and abuse—and all to argue different things at the same time, on and off the same stages: playing with rape to varying degrees of irony or lack thereof (e.g., rings and collars but also cat tails, also above)!
Rebellion, I argue, is like art, and when I think of art, I often think of Bob Ross (one of my idols). “I don’t know where this is going and that it even matters; we can work with it,” Bob says, during one of “his” reruns on Twitch. I feel the same way about Pride and rebellion; re: liberation and exploitation exist on the same performative stages, inside and outside media. People are media, their political/ontological stances shaped by material conditions with social flavors (re: Marx’ Base and Superstructure argument, where my own work focuses on the social side of things, but especially sex work).
We’ll return to Ross, in a bit. For now, so do workers challenge their exploitation through controlled venues of Liberation™ they cannot fully escape. The monopoly is broken inside itself, the paradigm subverted by people under duress tugging on the yoke that state-corporate mergers pacify workers with: by placing “rebellion” in quotes; i.e., through Pax Americana‘s reactionary/moderate framework. Despite the visual split, American fascism and liberalism historically occupy two sides of a false monopoly (therefore argument)—one whose apparent falsehood can simplify to function through different aesthetics: service to the state, however true/false their words are, versus our own (as splendid mendax). In more poetic language, revolutions happen “on the Aegis”; i.e., as a canvas policed by capital, but whose hand isn’t exclusively holding the brush!
To it, my thoughts and feelings about Pride remain similar to those about BLM and similar forms of stolen protest. The process reaches back centuries, but whose corporations survive into recent decades by stealing worker voices through worker participation; e.g., Tom Sawyer asking his friend to whitewash the fence for him; i.e., under neoliberalism, the revolutionary voice sloganized into nominal caricature by corporations: coldly sublimating worker dialogs by framing them as controlled opposition—a semblance of rebellion that is, unto itself, “the presence of negative justice [that provides] an absence of tension” useful to state proponents (source). However you slice it, control is control, but flow (of power) determines function, not aesthetics; re: for the bourgeoisie or the proletariat; i.e., something that serves only a portion of the oppressed is ultimately divisive, therefore suited for bourgeois manipulation (the Omelas refrain).
So does state control vs worker control assume a variety of guises; i.e., on a polity of registers, across time and space. Each iteration appears cosmetically different; the function remains largely the same, insofar as the owner class demonstrably cares: state hegemony at worker expense, Pride something of a dog on leads or bridled show pony whose optional subversion happens while collared in ways workers can selectively control, thus reclaim; i.e., through the dualistic aesthetics of torture and containment but also shelter and comfort with animalized elements (re: “Furry Panic“): that can either further but also destroy or betray their own working-class interests (married to culture and race). All the world’s a stage, one to say a variety of things using the same basic language: obey or resist, play or police. To it, a “dog” can think for itself—less biting the hand that feeds and more using any art (the Superstructure) that takes the process of food (the Base) away from the owner class; i.e., teaching a bitch new tricks. Capital sexualizes all work; we whores use what we got to camp what has become canonized, overtime (above):
(artist: Aria Rain)
None of this is “new,” either—with older protesters showcasing select groups speaking out for themselves (and others, however imperfectly).
In 1963, for example, MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (cited, above) effectively describes the white moderate approach to such things; i.e., regarding the liberation of people of color and the Civil Rights Movement as pushing imperfectly towards partial liberation, back then—with other movements doing so, as well, but often while punching down at each other. Per my arguments, liberation must be universal, hence happen through intersectional solidarity that actively resists assimilation on all fronts. Pride, by extension, must become globally inclusive (minus colonizers in disguise), but also year-round and grassroots; i.e., not through defanged, platitudinal slogans like “No Kings” that corporations eagerly sell—greedy for different televised ratings they proudly trumpet, onscreen, through others taking the risk—but a widespread, transgressive act whose perceived disorder and synthesis will generally not be televised (to borrow from Gil Scott-Heron); e.g., Greta Thunberg quickly “forgotten” by corporate powers the moment she challenged profit in ways they couldn’t control. That’s the banality of evil, and one where all evils that capital ensures orbit around: to regenerate state bodies at worker expense but also all of nature on a planetary scale; re: state shift speaking to capital’s rapidly approaching demise demanding more and more blood, hence scapegoats (re: me vis-à-vis Patel and Moore). This Capitalocene includes Pride; i.e., as a historical casualty of capital, its collars made increasingly enslaving by those standing to profit off their historic, unironic misuse.
The state is straight, as I’ve repeatedly said (re: “Understanding Vampires“), and assimilation is poor stewardship; we must fight despite corporations holding middle-class individuals hostage—i.e., as coerced by their own incremental concessions through policed events like Pride (worker rights being the carrot to dangle in front of state cops, including selective activism: a stochastic form of controlled opposition). We must be sharp in our criticism, but open in our humanity being repeatedly taken from us, mid-dialectic. Hence, why functionally rebellious actors can still turn up at events like Pride, provided their momentum builds on itself; i.e., to surpass whatever state-corporate powers deem “appropriate.” “Rioting is the voice of the unheard,” said MLK (source), and violence—in some shape or form, thus some demand or another (re: Fredrick Douglass)—must play out against those treating with us, in bad faith; i.e., onstage and off, pointing to the usual backroom deals; re: behind closed doors, corporations befriending our enemies while pitting us against ourselves. They likewise plan false ceremonies of resistance, glued by their planners to the earth. We must demand, therefore become, what these people and their systems cannot control; re: a year-around offensive targeting profit while existing in ways that won’t assimilate, defying gravity in the process. As Hays and Kaba put it, “Let this radicalize you.”
(artist: Persephone van der Waard)
This invariably requires sacrifice (re: the Wicked Witch, above), or what Douglass calls “struggle”:
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. / This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both (source: “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress,” 1857).
i.e., inside a system that punishes workers by design, and which minorities—e.g., people of color, disabled people, Indigenous People, queer folk, and women, etc—historically bear the brunt: as a matter of class, culture and race forced, by capital, to reduce and divide into smaller squabbles that miss the mark. United, we stand; divided, we fall.
We can thread the labyrinth as we need to, but mustn’t colonize ourselves; i.e., through said venues that canonically frame punching down as anything but bigoted. Instead, we must launch repeatedly into circuits of decentralized discourse the state cannot police, therefore monopolize; re: our bodies serving as performative extensions of our labor through art as, at times, pornographic and unsightly. The whore embodies the voice of the oppressed, which the state—from time out of mind—will invariably try to pimp by penetrating parallel societies wherever they appear. Conversely, any challenge we offer happens on the same surfaces, ergo the same thresholds’ liminal expression as summoned, like Pride; i.e., as I wrote for another piece, “When the Man comes around, show him your Aegis; decentralize power as something to perceive in ways that reverse profit/abjection, shrinking their outcomes” (source). While any idea survives through the actors portraying it, the idea must carry on through future actors “fireproofing” whatever survives (commonly word of mouth).
In short, corporations commodify Empowerment™ to drug the future to sleep; i.e., as a brand they can sell, dictating Pride as a holiday of whores and positive thinking they divorce from action outside the parade taking place. Actual power lies within us, which we take back through what we can work with, anytime, anywhere—what ol’ Ross would call a “bravery test.” The phoenix must face the flames to be reborn, doing so through calculated risk (re: ludo-Gothic BDSM; see: “Concerning Rape Play,” 2025)! In the absence of material conditions, we criminals become invisible save as victims, hence the parades (a language of the populace since Ancient Rome). And with those, Pride or otherwise, we walk the line between outright exposure and performative assimilation. There’s always danger with struggle, but the rewards will be worth it: a world without sin, a Hell on Earth setting workers free, once and for all. Capital, you say? Let us be rid of it, breaking Capitalist Realism on our Aegis!
(artist: Persephone van der Waard)
Different stroke for different folks. Bob Ross envisioned “an army of artists” that, once taught, would spread across America, teaching the franchise of painting—itself a missionary dialog yielding suspiciously Christianized elements (a defense of nature-already-colonized being defended by the colonizer playing at white savior). But praxis remains thoroughly complex, the reality of opposition being how nothing is strictly neat or clean; re: Bob Ross transitioning as a man born into privilege could, but something that extends to workers from all walks of life: parading their wears in the streets and sheets alike, letting our freak flags fly and whose monstrous-feminine pageantry endures a shadow of oppression informed by daily abuse! The protest is always standoffish, workers versus traitors; i.e., cops recruited from the populace to pimp their own. Doing so has palpable, widespread consequences.
I was suitably affected, for example, by various profound events; re: that occurred in tandem surrounding Pride and “No Kings,” over the weekend: scared by the assassination of several Minnesota lawmakers (source: Victoria Bekiempis), relieved and amused by Trump’s imploding military parade, and proud when Pride—suitably enough—had a high turnout among my queer friends around the globe (Secular Talk). As I wrote in “White Moderates Don’t Challenge Fascism” (2025), I’m a white, middle-class trans woman who works alongside other sex workers, but especially disabled, non-white, fat and/or queer sex workers punching up at status-quo proponents. And beyond us and our own movement, the reality of praxis belies various hard truths; e.g., how Trump (and the American establishment) can afford a bad parade, versus how many workers only turn out to parades when directly affected by state abuse taking away their basic human rights; i.e., from the outside, in—with middle-class workers belonging to a shrunken rebellion that, at its core, must aim beyond Engel’s “working men of all countries” (source), and only part of the time. Fascism harms outwards, going in; we must invert the dialog of concern, reminding privileged workers how futile it is to shout “Iceberg!” after the ship has been struck: repeatedly and felt by groups closer to the hull. Rebellion must become a structure to counter capital’s own bad doubles.
To those, capital insulates to concentric degrees; Gothic refrains evoke live burial, in response, but also confused emotions that, when consciously harnessed, mislead towards desired results—chiefly revelation to break Capitalist Realism with. Corporations want workers to rebel in the Rabelaisian sense; i.e., the “king for a day” sensation, where rebellion is purely a holiday carnival that happens once a year and then goes back to work. The paradox is challenging work enough under a system that demands work (stolen labor) to survive, doing so to move the goal post back in our direction. And this, as I’ve explained before, remains grounded in theatres of rebellion, occurring on and offstage; i.e., through feelings of oppression (therefore danger) the state will turn against us. But it is precisely these feelings we reclaim for ourselves, mid-dialectic (re: of shelter and the alien); i.e., the siphon goes both ways, the timepiece a time space (chronotope) with boundaries that expand to all corners of empire.
(source: Jessie After Dark’s “It Wasn’t a Riot,” 2025)
As I now want to explain (using Jessie Gender as an example, above and below), this includes smaller disagreements among the performers; i.e., with different proponents of rebellion, all seeking the proper balance regarding such matters. “The dose makes the poison,” so what is the correct dosage insofar as rebellion goes? MLK was killed for speaking truth to power in ways he could organize. So are queer people attacked for existing under a state apparatus that, by its very design, pits workers against workers of different types; e.g., people of color vs queer folk (with internalized homophobia being a form of “black skin, white masks”), but also queer folk versus each other as a snake to behead. We must become the hydra, or—like the Gorgon—something that survives beyond its earthly lifespan: to haunt our enemies “on the Aegis,” a snake ball—from Barbara Creed to me to you—whose parthenogenic elements thwart extermination. The best ideas either grow back, or bounce back on the usual mirrors reflecting them to begin with.
Said mirrors are, all at once, everywhere and nowhere. Pride, before Stonewall, largely didn’t exist in America (at least, not to any concrete, mainstream degree; e.g., Jean Malin and the pansies of the 1930s echoing older queer forms—from the British dandies of the 1700s, to the Shakespearean crossdressers of the Renaissance, to “sodomites” punished by the ancient canonical codes, to the two-spirit peoples of various Indigenous cultures, etc); 1970s queer discourse and expression was sexist and racist to varying amounts of exclusion; ’80s Pride was a funeral march, and Pride nowadays threatens to revisit the naiveté of older Free Love—revivals that, unto themselves, were and are routinely coopted by privileged, closeted workers (e.g., men like John Lennon vs Steely Dan; re: “Only a Fool Would Say That“): fear of riots, pacifying them by insisting “peaceful” argument is best. Is that really true when the world’s on fire? Land back and labor back, lest we go down with the ship.
(source: Sam Kemp’s “The Brutal Song Steely Dan Wrote to Mock John Lennon,” 2024)
“Peace” is a white man’s word adopted by tokenized factors I now want to briefly explore vis-à-vis Jessie Gender. Furthermore, such praxial tensions (and their performative realities) spill out of various historical revisionism into all aspects of daily life; i.e., as part of a larger dialectic whose synthesis for workers requires holding ourselves accountable; e.g., myself versus Jessie Gender on YouTube, whose video “No One Stands Alone” (2025) bothered me, given Jessie didn’t address a bad complaint from a political rival I found salient; re: Bad Empanada Live’s “Jessie Gender Should Delete Her Zionist Propaganda Video Immediately” (2024). I don’t even like Bad Empanada; re: his Stalinist talking points on queer people leading me to excoriate him, at length
(re: “Understanding Vampires,” 2024)
but also his, at times, moderately transphobic arguments (Persephone van der Waard’s “Addressing @BadEmpanadaLive‘s Relative Transphobia,” 2025).
Even so, Bad Empanada’s critique came crashing to fore, months later during Pride; i.e., once I heard Jessie talking about peaceful protest; i.e., while insisting to her audience (and her enemies) that the L.A., protestors weren’t rioting. It hit a nerve, prompting me to respond in the comments, and for which the following conversation took place (originally copied and screencapped because YouTube AI now deletes comments to police speech):
Me: Except the Palestinians when you both-sides them, amirite? (coming from a fascist expert, here: Zionism is fascism, and your video [stating otherwise; see: thumbnail, below] is still up even after it’s been widely acknowledged that Israel is conducting a genocide in ways even liberals like Ethan Klein can’t fully ignore). Also, you insist “LA isn’t rioting,” leaning into the peaceful protest rhetoric. But you forget MLK’s (correct) argument that “rioting is the voice of the unheard,” and that peace is a white man’s word and tool to control opposition. If people follow state rules, the state will still punch down to maintain order no matter what. Like an abuse spouse, nothing will ever be good enough; i.e., we are fundamentally violence to state models of order, which it uses to exploit us. It’s important to acknowledge that versus telling the very people attacking us, “we’re not rioting!” By the end, peaceful protest won’t cut it, because they’ll give us no other choice, comrade.
Props on you for saying “Fuck ICE!” at least, and I’m glad you’re using your platform to vocalize dissent versus them. But abolishing them requires means of action, that regardless of what it is, will be treated as violent by the state; re: like the Palestinians by the Israelis, who are fascist like ICE is fascist.
Jessie: I agree with you – Zionism should be fought and is a genocidal ideology, all things will be framed as violence against the state. I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here. Also not sure if you watch that video, I make very clear that Israel is committing a genocide, is fascist and that Zionism – be it its liberal or right wing faces – is fundamentally a settler colonial ideology built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and should be fought.
To be very clear: I have never said that Zionism can’t be fascist. It absolutely can be, and often is. But my point was that it’s not only fascist. Zionism has taken many forms—liberal, right-wing, even so-called socialist or communistic—and all of them are part of the same settler colonial project built on ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The liberal face of Zionism isn’t a kinder version—it’s the mask that helped maintain the system for decades while Palestinians continued to be displaced and killed.
The danger is when people only start paying attention once it becomes overtly fascist under someone like Netanyahu. That’s how we (and by we I mean Americans who ignored or turned a blind eye to Israel, as opposed to the Americans and Zionists who actively and overtly supported the genocide/ethnic cleansing) got into this mess—by letting the violence go unchecked while it wore a liberal face or under veils of IT’S TOO COMPLICATED or “its the only liberal democracy in the region so we must defined it” BS. My argument is that we need to resist all forms of Zionism and the Israeli state itself, not just when it becomes politically convenient or visibly extreme.
If that didn’t come across clearly in what I said, that’s on me, and I own that. But I hope you understand that I’m not defending Zionism in any form. I’m trying to push back on the idea that the only time it’s worth resisting is when it hits a certain threshold of brutality.
(artists: Cuwu and Persephone van der Waard)
Me: That’s fair, and I agree with basically everything you say, here. Largely my disagreements (such as they are) lie within emphasis; i.e., on the delivery of what’s being said/stressed.
To it, I like to stress the underlying fascist elements that are at play under liberal guises. Historically the Zionist label as “socialist” was nominal, making it fascist in practice, ipso facto; i.e., (from my perspective), liberalism is fascist because it does nothing to challenge fascism: they’re two sides of the same imperial coin, but a liberal, when scratched, is fascist versus the other way around (similar to a TERF, SWERF, token cop, what-have-you). So it’s not really a question of “is Israel fascist?” or “can Israel sometimes be fascist?” Israel simply is fascist, liberalism merely fascism waiting to happen/fascism with more/different masks on, defending capital. That’s how I’d argue it, because it cuts to the truth of things, lickety-split. Time is of the essence, and a good thesis gets to the bottom of things [with our bottoms, above].
Also, you’re absolutely correct about Israel always being a settler-colonial project, and Americans ignoring much of this until the Imperial Boomerang comes home to roost, etc. I largely question/needle your overall delivery and sharpness of thesis: from a gay academic to a fellow comrade-in-arms. Please don’t take offense, and I value the work you do, one queer activist to another.
Regarding your past video on Israel (which I have seen), there’s several points to consider. The immediate complaint is the thumbnail, which literally says “Zionism Isn’t Fascism.” However, there’s also the length of the video, which—for an essay—could have been more direct in the fascist elements Zionism exhibits, at home home and abroad, using its length to do so; i.e., I felt like it wasn’t always as clear as it could have been, mainly because you were focusing on a variety of other factors versus hammering the most vital one home: fascism is always what liberalism decays into, any future regeneration merely the state cannibalizing itself to restore a given mask. So I personally find it better to expose the white/token moderate (the enemy of progress; re: MLK); i.e., by de-masking them, Scooby-Doo-style. Call it a difference of opinion regarding that approach.
Jessie: Absolutely—and thank you for this response. I’m really grateful for the generosity and clarity you brought to it. I honestly agree with the vast majority of what you’re saying here, especially around liberalism being the mask that helps fascism maintain itself until it no longer needs to hide. I think you put it perfectly with “a liberal, when scratched, is fascist”—that’s been borne out so clearly in the past few years, especially in the U.S., where even the so-called opposition to fascism often ends up defending the same structures under a more palatable aesthetic.
You’re also totally right that the sharper thesis would’ve been stronger. Looking back, I think I was trying too hard to thread a needle between audiences—between people already radicalized and folks still steeped in liberal frameworks—and the result was that it blurred the clarity of the message. I was trying to walk people there, but I ended up flattening what should have been a more forceful condemnation. I think I’ve gotten better at that since, but it’s something I still grapple with: how to meet people where they are without softening the truth in the process. Your point about time being of the essence is right, especially in this moment where atrocities are ongoing, and clarity matters.
The thumbnail, yeah—that was A/B tested and not the best in hindsight. It wasn’t meant to excuse Zionism or deny its fascism, just to get liberals to even click and start questioning the comfortable narratives they’ve been fed. But I totally get why it landed wrong, and I think you’re right to raise it.
If I’m honest, I would do that video differently if I made it today, with everything I’ve learned in the year or so since. Even if I still broadly stand by its main points, I can see the flaws in tone, emphasis, and structure. But because YouTube is such a toxic space, where bad-faith actors seize on any opening to stir drama or target trans creators like myself, it’s hard to know how to re-address past work without creating a mess that helps no one. So instead, I’ve tried to keep moving forward—to use my platform consistently and clearly in support of Palestinian liberation, not just in this video offhandedly but in others like the recent Andor one, where I spent a full 20-30 minutes of the video talking directly about what’s happening in Gaza (trying to get people who just came for a Star Wars video to actually listen to what’s happening). I’ll keep doing that—naming the violence, standing in solidarity, and continuing to grow and sharpen my own analysis—because that’s the kind of platform I want to build.
Anyway, thank you again. I really do value this kind of feedback and critique, especially from someone who shares the fight and understands the tension of trying to do this work publicly and imperfectly (source).
(source)
Douglass argues how struggle requires concessions from state power. To it, we must critique our darlings and make them concede various points, too; i.e., when they accidently serve state power regardless of intent, lest we stay silent about their flaws when we don’t have to (“the silence of our friends,” as MLK put it). And sure enough, my brief conversation with Jessie about Pride and protest felt surprisingly fruitful; i.e., insofar as Jessie’s current, unfiltered words and actions reflected a more conscious version of herself than her past work (or even current video) had led me to believe.
So despite finding her videos to be overlong and under focused (four-plus hours is pushing it, even for me), I found myself suddenly able to respect her position, however imperfect it demonstrably was; i.e., as trying to change towards active rebellion: coming from relative privilege, while conceptualizing this process through media as an ongoing event inside a structure invading us from all directions; e.g., Star Wars, but specifically Andor during the protest (re: “It Wasn’t a Riot”). That’s how Jessie felt, and how I can respond to in ways that critique her, but also correspond to a shared narrative from different vantage points: the slightly gentrified Trekkie versus Gothic-Commie whore adding to a counterterrorist structure surviving capital’s usual venues. We’re not debating anything we shouldn’t (e.g., universal human rights), but exploring through argument the best ways to go about that; re: Bob Ross painting his canvas one way versus Jessie or myself taking the allegory to socio-political extremes. “Fuck ICE,” indeed. Happy li’l protestors!
Jessie would favor Star Trek. Per the Gothic, any perception of danger is convertibly diametric—its faulty advertisements touching on similar theatrical ideas that Star Trek does (the show peaking at taboos through ancient theatre tropes and modes; e.g., Patrick Steward’s Shakespearean elements lending Captain Picard [and his numerous associates] an air of procedural gravitas); re: a curtain lowered to instill fear as an educational device for different aims. For us, strict compliance = death, our mere existence a crime that cops will punish with impunity during abjection (re: us versus them). Cops serve the state from workers, protesting or not; i.e., they train to commit violence against labor when labor punches up. ACAB, ASAB, ABAB, AKAB, etc.
In canon, for example, the class, culture and race characters are always regressive. Furthermore, Radcliffe’s Black Veil extends to everyday events; e.g., like protest and assembly having conservative, ergo dogmatic, elements; i.e., a fear of pirates and forced enclosure (re: “Radcliffe’s Refrain“). In popular media at large (which Gothic is), these concerns address a forced and fearful inheritance; i.e., in ways Star Trek seldom explores (exceptions including the Borg and similar villains, but also individual episodes flirting with live burial, above): a death warrant, passed down from those behind the curtain to us, inside the Imperial Core—a gag order bound up in ceaseless illusion, bugbear and urban legend, the “ancient” alien home eating the occupant (alluding to sarcophagus meaning “eater of flesh” but also violence against different kinds of workers; e.g., women’s bodies through bad caricature, below). Some pictures are worth a thousand screams; yet, per Gothic, they beg the question: wherefore? (re: the Medusa, “It Began with a Whisper—Now Scream!” 2025). It’s not “just for mood,” but one that begets troubling comparison to feel; i.e., regarding daily life as wherever we call home being threatened by half-seen, wholly-felt hostile forces: the enemy within projected onto all the usual unknowns (what Star Trek calls “the final frontier”).
Just as Star Trek can be Gothic, so can Pride quest for the Numinous, too; i.e., insofar as the Gothic remains replete with rape anxieties centered around the nuclear home and those “of it” as constantly afraid: of replacement, hence “piracy fears,” projected off onto alien states of prescribed violence. Through the West, fakeries of said violence routinely sell back to workers, the latter policing the walls to pimp Medusa, therefore nature as monstrous-feminine (re: “The Puzzle of ‘Antiquity’” vis-à-vis Hogle’s ghost of the counterfeit). In short, everything originates from positions of relative privilege. What Mathew Lewis called “an artificial wildness,” and per an oppositional cryptonymy reversing abjection, canonical subversion demands a polity of (ex)change—not merely of scenery and venue, but perspective wherever workers exist; i.e., often being on different levels of witnessing abuse at the same time, (sub/un)consciously informed as much by dialectical-material imagination: as forever wrestling with darkness visible, the seemingly inert shadows in Plato’s cave magically assuming anisotropic but also plastic elements placed repeatedly in our hands. Consciousness happens through dialogs of oblivion:
Communism is holistic, in this respect; i.e., while interrogating power’s usual heady affects, historically designed to conceal and reveal itself for different aims; re: oppositional cryptonymy having a gradient of subdivisions on either side of canon vs camp, and which Jessie and I fall on the radical side to varying degrees of privilege and oppression. The point isn’t to rank rape, but talk about rape in ways that prevent it, in the future. Per The Matrix (1999) and similar stories, escape happens while inside the prison as felt onstage and off (re: “The World Is a Vampire,” 2024). The same applies to Jessie and myself, Star Trek or otherwise; i.e., two queer people sharing similar views that, when push comes to shove, tend to agree more than anything[1]: as a matter of Pride (and puns).
To it, people aren’t write in stone, but remain works-in-progress; i.e., that can change through steady pressure applied to them: by radicalizing agents debating the value of routine rebellion, which Pride has become. Rebellions touch hearts and minds, in this respect; i.e., by changing them through allegorical currents that flow against opposing forces for which we are not immune, and point in fact are born directly inside (the glass womb). While I can’t (and won’t) speak directly for Jessie, I freely acknowledge how queer folk are commonly born inside worlds for which they don’t strictly fit (save as beings to pimp[1a]), and whose younger selves commonly draw towards radicalizing elements they strive to recreate!
So must Pride routinely become something that corporations (and their benefactors) cannot entirely control; i.e., insofar as our powers (to create) occupy the same larger, ever-evolving conversations. “A spectre is haunting Europe,” wrote Marx; “camp Marx,” I replied: “the tradition of all dead [whores] weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” (re: “Making Marx Gay” and “White Moderates Don’t Challenge Fascism,” 2024 and 2025). Power is something to parade on the same stages; i.e., at cross purposes while using the same aesthetics to make our arguments (re: whores are monsters and monsters are arguments). This bleeds in and out of media and real life as not discrete; i.e., the whore’s paradox speaking to maidens pimped like whores, meaning despite the angelic aesthetic as performatively overwhelmed by the anisotropic fear of rape (and its various revenge arguments; re: “Rape Reprise“). So is Medusa—however fearsome the reputation that proceeds her—a proverbial lamb to the slaughter that must regain its teeth: by performatively shearing off the elite’s junk while passing the lesson of doing that on down the line (a fruit less to eat and more to tempt with as forbidden knowledge, below). JUNK DESTROYED.
For example, my mother survived all manner of sexual assault and abuse from many sexist men, and which they told me about to discourage future abuse. Whether they meant to radicalize me or not, this de facto lesson about consent (and its tragic violation) led me—many years after I grew up—to come out of the closet; i.e., while trying reify a world without “rape” save in quotes, ergo something to push towards in ironic displays of mutual consent; re: not just once a year but with every step I take, my book series not just a marathon, but proud parade of funeral roses. However Sisyphean this might seem, we must walk collectively away from Omelas: through a steady refrain of escaping rape. We achieve this not by turning into trees (as so many legendary women did, before us), but by reclaiming our power inside the Imperial Core; i.e., as gorgons replacing regular submission through acceptable forms of discourse we push the limits of. Rape is canonically unspeakable insofar as testimony goes, yet behold the Medusa turning her enemies to stone. As such, Pride—as least for me—means intersectional solidarity pushing with mounting regularity away from capital’s half-dead, slowly rotting corpse! This takes reclamation, thus visible, monstrous-feminine reminders that present workers (whores or otherwise) as simultaneously human and alien; re: by camping the usual imperial venues that capital invigilates for entirely different aims: antagonize nature and put it cheaply to work. Sex is a weapon, and weapons are dualistic!
To survive, we workers camp our own genocide; i.e., as an idiosyncratic means of profound survival, so far as message goes—not as slaves, therefore unironic dogs on leads, but performers of such things that pass valuable lessons along through preferential code: the kind that makes Pride, once reclaimed, more than a show for ponies to trot out polite discourse alone. In turn, debates with the colonizer are fruitless, insofar as politeness = assimilation; our own bounty (and subsequent harvest) stems from reclaiming our dignity while camping their parades of flesh and force. “Humanize the harvest; expose the state as inhumane” (re: “Nature Is Food,” 2024). So can we whores strut our stuff, meaning for ourselves; i.e., our own cryptonymy subverting the usual humiliations that a conquest parades: the victims put to heel. Such performative history shares the same road, hence stages of theatre, education, and exposure. Amazons are naked and clothed, as are furries (a kind of Amazon, or vice versa); i.e., beings to subjugate, and whose liberation happens during “subjugation.” Our power becomes the ability to confuse and expose state censors; i.e., while lancing us on platforms whose broken rules of engagement become things to witness, record and pass along. “That all you got?”
In conclusion, I don’t want to rain on anyone’s rebellious parade during Pride, but take said parade and make it (thus Pride) functionally rebellious; i.e., as a place of performance where rebellion and labor (thus nature) become one in the same—united against state forces, not ourselves, year round; e.g., paid labor versus unpaid (Persephone van der Waard’s “Activist Responds to ‘Woke Is Dead,'” 2025). Exploitation and liberation share the same stage. Beyond every pimp is a whore yearning to be free, and we’re all whores that capital polices to different degrees and flavors of abuse—trying as it does to trot us out, like obedient dogs on leads. Make workers follow your lead, for a change! Gothic is sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll to give the oppressed a much-needed voice (to make trouble with). A dearth of virtue, not courage, exposure becomes a paradox—a black dog (death omen) to measure and mete out as needed, mid-cryptonymy! Versus once a year or even once a month, our “full moons” (and fearful hysteria, female or otherwise, below) entertain performative freedom: as a black dream, one embodying regular uprising through notably hyphenated poetry (and moral panics) dating back millennia.
Hiding in plain sight, so do workers (of the more rebellious sort, which whores are) turn heads; i.e., whose exposed labor outside the bedroom turns capital inside-out: a force of nature both commanded, and commandeered, by workers at all times—not just during Pride, on Halloween, or for bachelor parties, etc! “Always agree! Now do the rock dance!” We lead you to your doom!
(source: “Informed (Ironic) Consumption,” 2025; exhibit 65: Model and artist: Keighla and Persephone van der Waard. Keighla markets herself as an educated stay-at-home cutie with self-marketed “mom bod.” It’s literally part of her marketing technique. I drew this for them as something we negotiated together.)
Footnotes
[1] A similar effect seen in straight people, too; e.g., Hasan Piker vs Bad Empanada; see: Noah Samsen’s “Hasan Piker and Bad Empanada DESTROY EACH OTHER with LISTENING and LAUGHTER” (2025).
[1a] I’m not calling Jessie a literal whore, here—just that workers like her and I are pimped to varying degrees by state forces.
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, Tolkien and Amazon enthusiast, 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!
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