ngansuril

  I can see that my 'Class Hatred' essay has been receiving some attention. I am heartened by the largely positive response to my work on xitter, and I feel encouraged to keep writing. I write mostly for myself; as I have stated previously, I am passively suicidal. Death hangs over me at all times, and I sometimes wonder if I will be strong enough to keep on living. Leaving my work up on here (and on physical paper) strengthens my sense of embodiment, which is something that male puberty has largely deprived me of. Writing makes my existence feel less ephemeral. Even if I don't make it, I know that I won't be forgotten. Seeing the reactions on xitter, I wanted to clarify specifically what I think people ought to take away from my essay. I went to great lengths to make my writing airtight, addressing every possible counter-argument to make uncharitable rebuttals difficult. The fact that I have not received any criticism founded on close reading (i.e. direct quotation of ...

  Class Hatred in the Trans Community   As the crisis of capitalism escalates ever further, things get worse: the quality of manufacturing and services, imperialist war and genocide, the price of food, the surveillance state, our behaviour towards one another. An idealist might say that it is foolish, perhaps even offensive, to compare these things – but a materialist sees all of these things as connected. Everything is getting worse; it is because of the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and it is getting very difficult for the average person to ignore that. I’ve been consciously trans for around 13 years, and during that time I have seen an evolution in the way trans people talk to one another. The trans community, online and offline, has undoubtedly changed – the words we use, the places we go (cyber or real), the meaning of ‘trans’. These past couple years, I have noticed two things. First, I have noticed an explosion in a kind of language people call ‘/...

  The Ones Who Come Back to Omelas  Asikea Ngansuril This is the second part of an earlier story I published, which you can read here .  I spent many months living by the seaside. I transferred jobs – still clerical work, though now in a department situated by the docks – in the hopes of never again having to see the Mausoleum of Prosperity. But no matter what I did to distract myself, I could not fight off the images that played in my mind: a bowl of cornmeal next to a pile of human faeces, skin stretched taught around swollen organs, the bones of a hundred children crammed in a tiny mass grave. To tell you the truth – and perhaps you may feel the same – I never really enjoyed work. One day, when I could bear the images in my head no longer, I said to a co-worker, ‘Do you have fun here?’ I thought better of my words the moment I said them. It wasn’t normal to say such things. Perhaps I was just flustered; she was disarming, approachable – as if she were fashioned from th...