It’s a terrifying time to be queer or trans – but especially to be trans.
In the months leading up to this latest U.S. election, unhinged right-wingers called queer people groomers and pedophiles, cruelly politicized the horrific deaths of trans people, and spent $215 million on anti-trans attack ads. (God, can you imagine if that money had gone to something actually useful instead, like housing or famine relief?)
Republicans are unsettled by us, not just because so few of us vote for them (I mean, why the fuck would we?!) but because of what we represent: that sexuality and gender are neither fixed nor binaristic, and that this means gender- and sex-based power hierarchies are, and have always been, artificial and meaningless.
I also suspect there’s a tinge of subconscious jealousy coloring the behavior of these bigots – not because I think they’re necessarily queer or trans themselves, but because I think many of them feel trapped in the scripted tedium of conservative cis-hetero life, and are furious at us for daring to build our own lives and be our own selves, instead of grabbing ready-mades off the shelf.
But while Republicans spewing vile hatred is to be expected, what’s more surprising is when members of the LGBTQ+ community throw each other under the bus. There have always been people who do this, but we’re seeing more and more of it since the election: many Democrats, some of whom are queer, have theorized that trans rights were a sticking point that may have lost us the election, or have essentially argued that we need to “pick our battles” and that basic civil rights for trans people are not a battle worth picking.
This, obviously, is despicable. It’s despicable not only because abandoning an already-disadvantaged community is cruel, and not only because every human being deserves human rights, but also because queer struggles and trans struggles go hand-in-hand. Right-wing zealots hate queer people for many of the same reasons they hate trans people, and vice-versa.
I mean, hell, plenty of them don’t even know the difference between being queer and being trans! They hold a deep-seated hatred toward sexual and gender transgressors (…except for cis male rapists, apparently, to whom they give jobs instead), and they paint that hatred across all of us with a very broad brush. We don’t all get treated the same, and certainly some of us are more privileged than others (myself included, as a white queer cis lady who can ‘pass’ as straight in some situations) – but the hatred levelled against all of us, I believe, originates in more-or-less the same place.
This is why our social and political goals have long been aligned, this is why we have often grouped ourselves under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and this is why it’s absurd to me when cis queers don’t care about trans issues. As the pastor Martin Niemöller reminds us in his famous 1946 poem “First they came…,” your obedience and silence will not save you from the wrath of the fascists. They will come for you, too. The Leopards Eating People’s Faces party will eat a queer face just as readily, and just as happily, as they’ll eat a trans one.
So, when I say that LGBTQ+ people are not going back, I mean that we refuse to give up our hard-won rights and freedoms – and I also mean that we should never go back to being a splintered group with disparate goals and dissenting strategies. We need to band together now more than we ever have before. We need to have each other’s backs. We need to fight this madness and take care of each other and ourselves at the same time. It’s the only fucking way forward.
If you’re on board with that goal, here are some concrete things you can do:
• If you are in the U.S., please contact your senators, your state legislators, and even your local politicians, to state unequivocally that you refuse to tolerate a backslide in rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people, and that you will take your vote elsewhere next election if they cannot commit to action on this. Julia Serano has a script you can borrow if you’re not sure what to say.
• You also might consider donating to organizations that help individual trans people directly, like GLITS, the Trans Lifeline, or a mutual aid fund in your community.
You treat me so much better than my last love
I clearly carry scars from every past love
And though you buy me roses and ask me to dance
I can’t trust this sweet romance
I’m just as scared as ever that I’ll fall
I’m unprepared to tear down this wall
And though you spoil me with affection almost every day
I can’t trust the words you say, ’cause…
Chorus: What if it’s all a lie?
What if you leave me alone like they all do?
What if you make me cry?
What if you block me so I can’t even call you?
What if you, what if you, what if you do?
You had to turn your phone off for a work thing
I couldn’t help but think that you were flirting
And though I don’t believe every feeling I feel
I can’t trust your love is real, ’cause…
(repeat chorus)
I once read a story about some spies
Who had to infiltrate communities in disguise
They must’ve done pretty well, ’cause they got the intel
After years-long relationships built on lies
Oh, what a nasty surprise!
(repeat chorus)
Songwriting diary:
I pulled a couple tarot cards to inspire a song this week and they were the Knight of Cups (romance, charm, beauty, sentiment, expressiveness) and The Moon (illusion, fear, anxiety, intuition, uncertainty). This combination made me think about the recurrent fears I’ve had in most of my romantic relationships that my partner might only be pretending to be into me, whether because they’re just polite or because they’re planning something malicious. (This has never really turned out to be the case but probably stems from a traumatic experience I had in my teens where a mean girl “pretended” to ask me out and then revealed she’d essentially been trolling me for the lolz.)
I wrote a complete set of lyrics inspired by that card pull, and made an a cappella recording of how I heard the melody in my head while I was writing it. A couple days later, I sat down at the piano and worked out some suitable chords for the melody I’d been hearing, making some changes to it in the process.
The bridge section is referencing a real news story about undercover cops getting into relationships with activists under false pretences in order to spy on them. I talked about how this story fuelled my already-troubling delusions in this story on the Bawdy Storytelling podcast.
Song 46/52: “Sisyphus”
Lyrics:
Slow and steady wins the war
Don’t know what I’m fighting for
Moon is pink and sky is dark
Somehow, somewhere, lost the spark
Are you ever gonna hear my echoed words?
Are you ever gonna like the things you’ve heard?
Are you ever gonna love me, love me, love me, love me now?
Chorus: I’m still so small; whose fault is this?
I swear I feel like Sisyphus
I yell and groan when I’m pushing the stone
Every day feels the same
Sisyphus – that is my name
History has much to say
On we who’d rather work than play
River man has lost his oar
Don’t know who I’m rowing for
Are you ever gonna borrow from the past?
Are you ever gonna do what I did last?
Are you ever gonna hear me, hear me, hear me, hear me now?
(repeat chorus)
Time has told me that there’s not much time (Not much time, not much time) It passes coldly, like I did mine (I did fine, I did fine) The conversation, the situation’s wrong (It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong)
But I’ll be pushing until the hill is gone
(repeat chorus)
Songwriting diary:
Another tarot pull inspired this song: the cards were Strength (courage, determination, power, dedication) and the Eight of Pentacles (apprenticeship, repetitive tasks, skill development, hard work, “slow and steady wins the race”). This combination made me think about the myth of Sisyphus, who was cursed to roll a boulder up a hill over and over again forever.
I had been thinking about Sisyphus recently because I’d just finished reading a couple of books about Nick Drake, the British folk singer-songwriter who, like Van Gogh, was plagued by mental health issues and didn’t experience true commercial success until after he had already died tragically. Nick famously had a copy of Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus on his nightstand when he died, and many have theorized that he related to Sisyphus’s plight, seeing both his career and his mental health as a constant, grueling uphill battle.
I wrote some lyrics from Nick’s perspective, ruminating on his lack of success and calling forward to future listeners, begging them to hear him and to be influenced by him. (This did indeed happen; he’s widely considered a cult hero in the music world now and has been cited as an influence by huge artists like Norah Jones, REM, Beck, and Belle & Sebastian.)
I threw in some references to Nick’s music throughout, including mentions of a “pink moon,” a “river man,” and the phrase “time has told me.” (Would strongly recommend clicking those links and listening to his music if you’re not already a Nick Drake convert; his songs are hypnotically beautiful and virtuosically played.) The line in the chorus, “Whose fault is this?” was also taken from a quote attributed to Nick by his producer Joe Boyd, as excerpted in Amanda Petrusich’s book Pink Moon (emphasis mine):
Boyd later described their brief interaction as grisly, telling the BBC: “His hair was dirty and he was unshaved and his fingernails were dirty and he was wearing a shabby coat. … He sat down and he immediately launched into this kind of tirade about his career, about money, and basically it was accusatory. And he said, ‘You told me I’m great, but nobody knows me. Nobody buys my records. I’m still living on handouts from the publishing company. I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Whose fault is this?’ And he was angry. And I tried to explain that there are no guarantees, that you can make a great record and sometimes it just doesn’t sell.”
Song 47/52: “Bad Girl”
Lyrics:
Late night, skin-tight dress gets caught on the
Windowsill mid-climb until it pulls
Free, like me, and off into the dark
My daddy is asleep; he doesn’t know
That he could not keep me dutiful
Doesn’t know I’m drinking in the park
Chorus: I’m not a bad girl, I swear
Just want to let down my hair
When I’m a good girl by day
My other side just wants to play
And she gets carried away
She’s got a lot she wants to say
Beer and wine and kiss me in a tree
You are with the wildest part of me
Pulling you so close against my lips
Why do I feel so rebellious?
Wait, wait, strike that, no, don’t tell me, just
Block out all those questions with your kiss
(repeat chorus)
If I seem nervous
It’s ’cause I’m workin’
To be so perfect
When I feel worthless
If I seem stressed out
It’s ’cause I left out
All the realest parts of me
To be who they want me to be
(repeat chorus)
Songwriting diary:
Third tarot-inspired song in a row! I’ve been finding tarot cards really helpful lately because there is just an infinite number of topics I could potentially write songs about and it can be paralyzing to try to contemplate them all, so instead I pull two random tarot cards, meditate on their meanings, and write about whatever they remind me of.
For this one, I pulled The Emperor (authority, structure, a father figure, power, rules and regulations) and the Seven of Swords (betrayal, deception, getting away with something). That combo immediately made me think about teenagers rebelling against their parents, so I wrote these lyrics and then ended up putting them to music several days later when various other songwriting attempts that week didn’t produce results I felt were good enough.
While the verses of this song are about experiences I never actually had – sneaking out of the house unbeknownst to my parents to drink with friends in the park – I included some of my actual thoughts and feelings about the “good girl/bad girl” duality, something I’ve been discussing a bit in therapy lately. I have the phrase “good girl” tattooed on my thighs and even previously wrote a song called “Good Girl,” so it was interesting to explore the flipside of that goodness and how both of those girls exist within me.
Song 48/52: “Gun Control”
Lyrics:
Another shooting in the news today
Before the last one’s ink is dry
It’s getting old, getting so cliché
Everybody’s asking why
Why all they’ll give us is thoughts and prayers
Why it’s seeming like nobody cares
Give your local reps a ring
So they’ll get off their ass and do something
Chorus: The devil wins – he’s on a roll
Let’s do him in with gun control
Use your conscience, search your soul
The time has come for gun control
Gun, gun, gun control (x3)
The time has come for gun control
It’s not as if the jury’s out
Read the stats; the facts don’t lie
I promise you can go without
So fewer kids will have to die
If I seem mad, it’s ’cause I am
‘Cause no one seems to give a damn
I feel unsafe at bars and malls
So give your local reps a call
(repeat chorus)
How many more lives will we have to lose?
How many more hearts will we break or bruise?
No amendment’s worth this pain
I feel like I’m going insane
(repeat chorus)
Songwriting diary:
I was going to bed one night, checked Twitter (never a good idea before sleep), saw that yet another mass shooting had occurred – there have been over 600 in the USA this year – and felt so angry and sad and despairing that I wrote some lyrics because I didn’t know what else to do with my feelings.
The following day, I grabbed a ukulele and set those words to music. The song was really simple musically so I felt it would be bolstered by some clips of politicians talking about gun control, which I edited in. I’ve long admired the powerful (and often hilarious) songs that people like Jonathan Mann and the Gregory Brothers can create with political clips, so it was an interesting challenge to take a crack at it myself.
This is the closest thing I have to a bookstore pic from 2020 since everything has been closed for so much of the year 😭
One minor silver lining of this hellish year: not being able to go to places I’d normally go, or do things I’d normally do, left me with a lot of extra time. Some of that time was funnelled into video games (look, Tom Nook needed my help, okay?!), and some of it went into reading books instead. I spent many an hour this year stretched out in a hot bath, candles lit and Kindle in hand.
So far in 2020, I’ve read 31 books – here’s the full list, if you’re interested – but these 8 really stand out as my faves of the year. Thanks to my Kindle’s highlights functionality, I’ve also been able to pull a favorite quote from each, to give you a little taste. Read on and read up, bookworms!
I had heard stories of people living in rain forests so dense that their far point was only six or seven feet away. If they were taken out of the forest, it was said, they might have so little idea or perception of space and distance beyond a few feet that they would try to touch distant mountaintops with their outstretched hands.
I went through a major Oliver Sacks phase in the early part of this year. Mr. Sacks, if you don’t know, was a British neurologist who also happened to be a magnificent and evocative writer. Typically, his books are filled with eloquent case studies about actual people he’s helped, usually gathered around a particular theme. The Mind’s Eye is themed around all things visual, and profiles people with various disturbances in the visual sectors of their brain, like face-blindness and neurologically-rooted color-blindness.
In the latter sections of the book, Sacks also tells the story of his own loss of stereoscopic vision when a tumor deprived him of the use of one eye. His books are always fascinating to me as someone who is nerdy about oddities of the brain, and this was one of my favorites I’ve read.
“Has anyone been informed? Who do we call?” “I should call his lawyer,” the producer said. This solution was inarguable, but so depressing that the group drank for several minutes in silence before anyone could bring themselves to speak. “His lawyer,” the bartender said finally. “Christ, what a thing. You die, and they call your lawyer.”
Soon after the coronavirus became an international news story, I started looking into books about pandemics, because sometimes wading right into your fears and worries is the best way to cathartically slough them off. One of the most-recommended pandemic novels on Twitter back in March was Station Eleven, a thrilling story that starts in a Toronto theatre on the opening night of a Shakespeare play, and ends many years later, by which time the world’s population has been decimated and society entirely restructured.
This book felt healing and reassuring to read, because so much of it is about the ways that art, music, theatre, and literature create opportunities for hope, optimism, and connection, even in irrefutably terrible times. It was also just a genuinely fun read, full of unexpected twists, memorable imagery, and well-drawn characters.
By conceptualizing the problem of policing as one of inadequate training and professionalization, reformers fail to directly address how the very nature of policing and the legal system served to maintain and exacerbate racial inequality. By calling for colorblind “law and order” they strengthen a system that puts people of color at a structural disadvantage and contributes to their deep social and legal estrangement. At root, they fail to appreciate that the basic nature of the law and the police, since its earliest origins, is to be a tool for managing inequality and maintaining the status quo.
I reviewed this book just after reading it, so I won’t restate myself too much here. I’ll just say that this book lays out argument after argument for defunding the police in a way that is clear, cogent, and persuasive. If you’re on the fence about this issue – or even if you still think the police are an upstanding institution, despite so much evidence to the contrary – I think this book would be particularly informative and helpful for you.
Reader: Wally Cat is many things, but a fool he is not. What he told me that day was a sales lesson in disguise. The quality of an answer is determined by the quality of the question. Quote that and pay me my royalties.
This brilliant debut novel follows a young Black man as he gets plucked from a low-paying job and hired as a salesman at an almost entirely white startup. It touches on racism, and confidence, and capitalism, and the scarcity of opportunity.
It’s also one of the funniest books I read all year, easy. The voice Mr. Askaripour crafted for his protagonist is sharp and witty, friendly yet dark, goofy but sincere. This was a pleasure to read from start to finish.
It’s a bit hard to put sex to one side when I’m talking about romance: to me romance has usually been a route to sex, like a Valentine’s card with surprise dick joke inside. A love story that doesn’t involve the odd knee-trembling grope or sticky-lubed handjob feels as incomplete as breakfast without coffee.
The sex blogger known as Girl on the Net is a legend – easily one of the best writers in my genre, always smart and often hilarious. This book tells the story of one of her long-term relationships, with a man who luckily happened to be pretty chill about the whole “sex blogger” thing. (Trust me, this is a surprisingly difficult quality to find in a man.)
It’s equal parts romantic and sexy, stuffed with life lessons that’ll help you both in and out of the bedroom. And it’s all written with GotN’s signature wit. If I’d been able to take public transit this year, I’m sure I would have turned some heads by laughing too hard on the subway while reading this.
I will not lie: the work to heal our personal traumas and attachment wounds and the effort needed to build polysecure relationships are not easy. It takes courage, devotion and perseverance, but please trust me in knowing that it is worth it. As we heal our past, we open up new possibilities for our future.
This year I became increasingly aware of the ways my trauma history impacts the way I feel and behave in my present-day relationships. I took Clementine Morrigan’s online class on trauma-informed polyamory, and I read this book, and between those two things + getting a savvy new therapist, I feel that I’m firmly on the path to healing, though there is likely still a long way to go.
In this book, psychotherapist Jessica Fern (who is totally charming – she guested on a Dildorks episode) lays out the ways that attachment wounds can complicate non-monogamy, and what can be done about it. This is absolutely a must-read for anyone who wants to be non-monogamous but finds themselves continually triggered or re-traumatized by their forays into that relationship style.
I understood for the first time that it is possible to lack the experience of sexual attraction without being repulsed by sex, just like it is possible to neither physically crave nor be disgusted by a food like crackers but still enjoy eating them as part of a cherished social ritual. Being repulsed by sex is a fairly obvious indication of the lack of sexual attraction, but a lack of sexual attraction can also be hidden by social performativity or wanting (and having) sex for emotional reasons—and because the different types of desire are bound together so tightly, it can be difficult to untangle the various strands.
I cannot say enough good things about this book. It is a vitally important contribution to the existing body of work on asexuality. In her clear, incisive prose, Angela Chen explains asexuality and its various facets and forms, discusses some of the biggest issues facing the asexual community today, and hypothesizes on useful lessons non-asexuals can learn from their ace peers.
Even though I’ve identified as being on the ace spectrum for a while now, there’s a lot in this book that I had never really thought about before, or at least hadn’t thought about with as much clarity as Ms. Chen brings to the table. It’s really a must-read for anyone who is interested in asexuality, from any angle.
There appears to be little difference between the thrills of seeking public power, with crowds of adoring fans, to seeking pubic power, with an adoring audience of one. The same compulsions that send a man hurtling toward the White House can also send him into a foolhardy tryst with a woman. High political office and dangerous sex are, in fact, all about hubris and power.
I just finished this the other day, and it was an absolute delight. Ms. Herman – who has previously written books on the sex lives of queens, kings, and Vatican bigwigs – has amassed a veritable treasure trove of absurd stories about salacious presidential misadventures. I know more about Lyndon Johnson’s penis and John F. Kennedy’s favorite sexual position now than I ever dreamed I’d learn.
Although she’s not too heavy-handed about it, Ms. Herman makes it clear throughout the book that systemic sexism – and often, men being outright cruel to women they claim to love – has played a huge role in presidential sex scandals. It’s hard to even grasp the number of powerful men who have cheated on their wives, fucked over their mistresses, abandoned their children, lied to the nation, etc. etc. etc. This is mainly a book about shitty men, but it’s also a book about strong women who deserved way better treatment than they ever got.
This month has been a weird one… but then again, I think I’ve been writing some version of that every month here since March… or maybe even since November 2016… *sigh* Anyway, here are some of the things that brought me joy this month! What are yours?
P.S. Uhhh, happy Halloween, I guess? Here’s a couple of relevant things I’ve written in the past, incase you wanna get into the spooky spirit a li’l bit: a review of the “Batcock” Vixen Leo dildo, and some thoughts on what a grown-up Wednesday Addams would keep in her sex toy drawer.
Media
• I re-watched American Horror Story: Cult with Matt this month and could not believe how relevant it felt to our current moment, geopolitically and socioculturally. AHS pulled no punches in calling out the gaslighting, fearmongering, and fascism of Trump-supporting sects, and it all felt eerily prescient.
• Someone on Twitter spoke highly of the 1997 thriller The Game so Matt and I checked it out, and… wow. It’s very unsettling, astonishingly well-acted, and reminds me a lot of the kink concept of “consensual non-consent.” Would recommend if you’re into CNC and/or the feeling of being consensually gaslit by a piece of media.
• The new book Ace by Angela Chen is a must-read if you’re interested in asexuality, whether you’re ace yourself, uncertain, or just want to understand asexuality and ace-spectrum identities better. I loved how this book covered the history of the asexuality movement along with the present-day obstacles it faces.
• If your Thursday nights are wide open these days, due to lockdown or other factors, I would highly recommend you join me in watching the Bad Dog Theatre’s live online improv show Theatresports for the next several Thursdays! It’s hosted by the incomparable and hilarious Tom Hearn (who showed up last week wearing the most over-the-top and beautiful false eyelashes and drag makeup) and really reminds me that, even though I love longform improv the most, shortform can be fall-off-the-couch funny too!
• The virtual play Circle Jerk – produced by Jeremy O. Harris, whose brilliant Slave Play was recently nominated for 12 (!!) Tony awards – was a delightful quick-change satire about, among other things, the problematic tendencies of the white gay male community. I’ve been fascinated by all the inventive ways that theatre artists are using the Zoom (etc.) medium for their art this year, and this was a particularly inventive usage!
• I just started reading Eleanor Herman’s book Sex with Presidents, which tells the tales of presidential sex scandals through the ages, and also speculates on the psychological and sociocultural forces that shape political leaders into sexual rulebreakers (or that lead sexual rulebreakers to pursue careers in politics!). Really interesting stuff for sex nerds and politics nerds alike.
• My favorite porn creator of the moment is Velvet Veronica, a soft-yet-mean femdom with a Canadian accent. She gives some of the best handjobs in the biz (IMO) and is a cocktease extraordinaire. Respect!
Products
• I tried out the Satisfyer app this month when my partner wanted to “go down on me” during phone sex, and it worked way better than I was expecting it to. As much as I adore We-Vibe products, I’ve had a ton of connectivity issues with their app, so I was surprised by how comparatively stable and reliable the Satisfyer one is.
• The Laid D2 granite dildo is still a current fave! My partner likes using it on me, too.
• I bought packing cubes in preparation for my journey to NYC (don’t worry, the airline was actually great about temp checks, mask rules, contact tracing, and social distancing, and there’s even free COVID testing available at LaGuardia now) and they have changed my life. Such a genius way to simultaneously organize all your clothes (underwear in one, T-shirts in another, etc.) and compress them down to a suitcase-friendly size!
• I’ve really been enjoying false lashes lately! (Meandering philosophical blog post on this topic to come, trust.) So far, my favorite pair I’ve tried is these House of Lashes ones in the “Cecile” style. Will prob wear them to my wedding!
• A recent findom gift from my love: this ultra-cute, tiny black leather crossbody bag with a chain strap. It’s kind of the perfect bag for the COVID era, in that I never really need to carry much more than a phone, a debit card, photo ID, and an extra mask when I go out these days… I’m hoping that in some far-off future, I’ll get to carry this to soirées, dance clubs, comedy shows, etc.!
• I mentioned The Sims 4 here last month and it still rules. Just wanted to add that if, like me, you are a non-monogamous and/or slut-positive Simmer, you can hit Ctrl+Shift+C and type in the cheat “traits.equip_trait trait_Player” and it’ll make it so that your currently active Sim can kiss/date/WooHoo with as many people as they want and no one will get jealous about it. Pretty perf.
• Um, obviously I would be remiss not to mention my engagement ring here?! It is still the most stunning thing I have ever owned… or maybe even seen… The other day we went and looked at wedding bands and I spent most of the time just staring at my engagement ring instead, tbh!
Work & Appearances
• The CBC asked me to write a piece on what dating is like when you live with chronic pain. It was fun/sad/cathartic/healing to dig up some of these old stories from the days when I was more active on the dating scene (and didn’t know as much yet about how my pain worked)!
• I was invited onto the What Women Want podcast, along with brilliant kinky writer Daphne Matthews, to discuss the kinds of messages/dates/etc. that put us off people and the kinds that actually excite us. It was an interesting chat that touched on kink, consent, respect, and gender, among other things!
• My friend Brent asked if I’d join him in guesting on the Man-Thing Minute, a podcast that celebrates Marvel’s Man-Thing comic. We had so much fun and I laughed so hard I cried!
• This month I put together ukulele arrangements for, and made videos of, two of my favorite songs at the moment: Alone Again, Naturally by Gilbert O’Sullivan, and Saw You in a Dream by the Japanese House. My partner and I have a new-ish protocol where I have to learn (or write) and record at least one song a month, and it’s been really fun so far!
• Since the U.S. Supreme Court for some reason just gained a member who seems to think people with uteruses should be stuck in the past forever in terms of our rights and freedoms, now would be a great time to donate to an organization that fights for reproductive rights and/or offers sexual health services, such as the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, Arkansas Abortion Support Network, Yellowhammer Fund, or any of the other orgs on this list.
• The ACLU is doing some fantastic work across multiple areas of the fight for civil liberties. Toss ’em your money in this scary time so they can do their best to fend off the darkness of bigoted fascism.
• Please, friends in the U.S., make sure you vote in this election! Obviously I want you to vote for the candidate who’s not a fascist megalomaniac angling for a dictatorship, and who hasn’t been directly responsible for the death of over 200,000 citizens of his own country, but hey, you do you. If you’re confused about voting for any reason (where to go, what to bring, where to drop off your mail-in ballot, etc.), check out IWillVote.com or BetterKnowABallot.com for all the deets. If you plan to vote in person, especially on election day, make sure you bring some snacks + water + entertainment, because you may have to wait in line a while. And wear your mask! (God, I sound like I’m trying to be your mom. Hey, whatever works.)
Here’s one of the whitest things I could possibly say: I’ve never had a memorable encounter with a police officer.
Unlike countless people of color and especially Black folks, I have never been harassed, victimized, pursued, or discriminated against by a cop. My opinion on the police for most of my life has been neutral-to-positive, a fact that makes painfully clear the effectiveness of “copaganda”: media created to sugarcoat and valorize the role of police in our society. From SVU to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to The Silence of the Lambs, much of our media serves to numb white people’s understanding of the havoc cops wreak on Black folks’ lives every day, and have since the birth of their institution.
It was for this reason that I felt compelled to read The End of Policing. Friends of mine more entrenched in the social justice movement than I am have been shouting (and tweeting) anti-cop slogans for years now, and – seeing the violence regularly inflicted on marginalized people by police officers – I agreed with them that something needed to change. But I didn’t know much about the nuts and bolts of the issue: law enforcement’s rampant history of racist profiling and unwarranted violence, and the alternatives being proposed to replace this frustratingly venerated institution. My privilege had enabled me to go a long time without investigating this issue beyond a few cursory Google searches and news articles, but I wanted to fix that, because information is power and can effect change. So when I saw that Verso Books was offering a free ebook of The End of Policing for a while, as per the author’s wishes to get this information out there, I snapped it up and started reading.
It’s worth noting that the author, a sociology professor named Alex S. Vitale, is (so far as I can tell) white. Some books written by authors of color on similar issues include How to Abolish Prisons by Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, both of which I’d like to explore next because they focus more on the imprisonment part of the unjust law enforcement system, while the book I’m reviewing today is all about cops: what they do, where they go, how they operate, and why they’re ill-suited for the roles we’ve slotted them into.
Vitale’s central argument is that the entire way our culture understands crime, and its causes, is wrong. There’s a hugely prevalent “bootstraps” theory of crime that paints it as the behavior of the depraved and morally flawed. Why would someone steal a loaf of bread, this theory goes, unless they were an ethical degenerate? What is there to do for them but throw them in the slammer, give them a shot at self-rehabilitation, and then toss them back out onto the streets when their sentence is done?
This perspective completely ignores the existence of structural inequality – which, newsflash, is a pretty big component of any capitalist society. When you make a law that says “stealing is wrong” (for example) but you put one group of people in a situation where they regularly have to choose between stealing and dying, while another group of people rarely or never even gets close to the maw of that terrifying decision, of course the first group is going to get in legal trouble constantly. And because our culture works how it does, that group – poor folks, and especially poor Black and Brown folks – will be treated as if their thievery was an independent decision based on a moral failing, rather than something they were pigeonholed into doing by the way the world treats them.
I’d heard it said many times in social justice circles that the police’s purpose and function is essentially to keep Black people down, and I always thought that was a claim about the police’s current atrocities rather than an indictment of the institution’s entire foundation and original purpose. But Vitale’s book set me straight on this issue. Police – which haven’t existed in their current form for as long as you might think – were always assembled and deployed with the mission of protecting people who had money, power, and privilege. They would chase down slaves who escaped, for example, and squash workers’ rights movements on behalf of the upper-class whites who didn’t want to have to give their poor employees better working conditions or higher pay. Police, both historically and presently, put a higher premium on protecting white people’s “property” and “wealth” (which, let’s not forget, was stolen from Indigenous folks and built by BIPOC’s slave labor) than on protecting Black people’s lives.
Seeing as their entire institution was literally created for this purpose, it’s no surprise at all that they continue to be one of the most racist forces in a world some people still misguidedly insist is “post-racial.” This is especially true since, as Vitale explains, police are trained (whether explicitly or implicitly) to view perpetrators of crime as their enemy in a war of sorts, so they come to view themselves as heroes when in fact they are usually targeting society’s most vulnerable at the behest of society’s most powerful.
This main idea – that the solution to crime isn’t stricter law enforcement, but instead, the end of structural inequality – echoes through every chapter of Vitale’s book. He looks at topics like sex work, border violations, homelessness, drug use, and street gangs, and systematically explains why police are not a good or even passable solution to most problems. Structural inequality, the likes of which we see between white folks and people of color in North America and elsewhere, leads to economic precarity and, in many cases, mental illness and addiction issues for those who get the short end of the stick. These factors are the roots of almost all the crime police crack down on, and yet the crimes themselves are treated as isolated incidents, related to nothing structural except the supposed moral decrepitude of the “criminal” class. Why are we surprised that we built a dam and now the water is overflowing?
Each chapter of Vitale’s book gives an overview of the area of policing it covers, including numerous horrifying statistics and stories, and then offers some alternatives to the police-based status quo. You’ve probably seen people talking about some of these alternatives on social media a lot lately. Because the law enforcement institution is deeply discriminatory and was built to be that way, reforms aimed at getting the police to behave better will never work. It’s like training a bloodthirsty animal not to eat meat: the best you can hope for is that they’ll successfully suppress their natural desires for a while, not that those desires will actually change. For this reason, police abolitionists – a group that, wonderfully, seems to be growing by the day now – want, instead, for the police to be defunded and for those funds to be reallocated to services and causes that will actually reduce crime, like affordable housing, mental health counselling, addiction treatment, employment programs, social work, and sex work decriminalization. The law enforcement system thinks the best way to reduce crime is to make life harder for those in vulnerable populations; Vitale’s perspective, and that of other police abolitionists, is that making life a great deal easier for those people is the true ticket to crime reduction and a more harmonious society.
One thing that astonished me to learn from this book is that these alternatives are usually much cheaper to run than the current law enforcement system. Vitale produces stats that back this up for a staggering number of issues. It turns out, for example, that it costs the state dramatically less to just give a homeless person a safe and stable place to live for free than it would to continually cycle them through jails and courts for the “crime” of sleeping in a park or urinating on the street. (Where else are they supposed to sleep and pee, when you’ve banned them from so many safer locations?) It would also reportedly be cheaper to supply addicts with treatment and harm-reduction services than it is to send them to drug courts or prison. The tired Republican argument of “Where will the money come from?!?” seems pretty weak when you realize that police budgets are often the highest line item in any city budget and can be billions per year. Do you actually care about “the taxpayers,” or do you just hate the marginalized people you see as intractable criminals?
While this post is ostensibly a review of The End of Policing – which I loved, and would heartily recommend – mostly I wanted to use my platform here to tell you what you can do if you believe enough is enough and the police should be defunded. You can call or write to your local political leaders to demand they take action on this issue. You can donate to, and signal-boost the work of, abolitionist activists and organizations like Critical Resistance. You can loudly question the dogmatic beliefs of your police-abiding friends and family, perhaps backed up by stats and facts you read in this book. You can educate yourself more and more on this issue until you flush the harmful “copaganda” out of your psychological system. I’ve been doing all of these things after a lifetime of relative ignorance on this issue, and I invite you to join me – because contrary to popular belief, if we truly want a safer world, we need to get rid of cops and replace them with actual solutions to the problems we face.
