Comrade Candle
I Have Based My Affair On Pussy
My genital dysphoria has been a lifelong struggle. The earliest memories I possess include desires to dress more femininely, arguments with the staff of my Catholic preschool. While I never shared my desire to wear skirts and dresses, not at that young of an age, I do recall arguments about God, as Catholicism understands this construct, not having made me right. My challenge to the idea of an omnipotent, perfect being was not well received, more so when I grew too shy to elaborate on what was no perfect about me – I was, after all, made in His image.
I was talking, as I can now proclaim to the heavens, of my pussy. The pussy God denied me, the pussy that my body and mind are designed for. How could I doubt God? Well, I went a bit further – I killed Him. My pussy killed God.
The saying goes “Slay, Queen.”
From my earliest years, I have had this awareness of genital dysphoria, gender dysphoria. The language for my feelings would take some time to come, some long 18 years closeted and hurting. It is scary being a trans youth. Most of my exposure to the ideas of questioning gender, in popular media and the larger social environments I found myself within, was very overly-sexualized or negative. It was very hard to feel safe when I had evidence I would be a controversial minority. What changed?
My politics, primarily.
I grew radically left-wing towards the tail-end of high school, giving me knowledge of some important trans women in queer history. I began to speak with tons of trans women online, and I think they saw the signs as I was gaining the wordage to unearth my pain. I did not want to be a man, nor did I want what was between my legs – I wanted, have wanted, a pussy. I could finally outright say it.
It has been a long journey to get where I am. My journey is far from over, but the progress towards understanding myself and what I want has been hard, strenuous. Far beyond the scope of this project, frankly. I desire, currently, to talk about anarchy and my pussy to come.
Vaginoplasty, the surgical procedure that would reconstruct my genitalia, is an understandably exhaustive procedure with a similarly exhausting recovery process. Without insurance, it also proves very pricey. I have never been in a stable enough environment to both afford and recover from the procedure. The life of an insurrectionary has proven to come at odds with the demands of surgery in a capitalist world. I imagine a non-stationary life of rioting and armed robbery is a far-cry from the traditional life, the typical trans woman. I’ve never bothered to check.
Working at Starbucks, or the like, to obtain an insurance plan, one that would cover the operation and post-operative care, presented itself to me as the beaten path. I could never. The sale of most of my time and energy hardly felt a worthwhile trade. You may hate me, but I hate work more. Starbucks windows tend to have an aversion to anarchists, anyhow.
Am I to be surprised my existence was so contrary to what-is? I am an anarchist, the State has quite the relationship with us – we desire to abolish States. Now in prison, I will reside in custody of the State until 2029; Propaganda by the deed.
I will, likely, undergo vaginoplasty while in custody of the State, covered by my State insurance. I will recover within the confines of prison. I will not pay a dime for my gender-affirming surgery, nor the post-operative care – as it should be?
After a life of striving to feel complete, I will make this large leap while living within the confines of a locked-box. I had to go to prison to attain gender-affirming care, surgery. I will be released from prison at 32 with a brand new, virgin pussy, giving an absurd end to my genital dysphoria.
Part A: Propaganda of the pussy
“We are beginning to see the perils facing a growing trans woman, or maybe not. My life has been tainted by a deliberate denial of medical care. Well then, let’s make propaganda with this new pussy.”
1. Healthcare
I have chosen to medically transition so-as to treat my dysphoria. This necessary decision, for me, has entrenched my well-being within the grisly politics of the American healthcare system. So be it.
Capitalism plagues us with many problems. As like many basic facets of human existence based around the generation of profit, medical care has proven troublesome to navigate as both a trans woman and militant anarchist. Most insurance plans fail to cover a large portion of surgical procedures typically underwent by trans women. How one could ever conceive of the need to gatekeep surgical procedures at all is beyond me, though for most of my life the large majority of the surgeries I’ve needed have been classified as cosmetic procedures, ergo no coverage afforded by my insurance plan.
Our healthcare system creates some very unique problems. Thankfully, for the time being, Oregon Health Plan (or whatever derivative I’m afforded of it within prison) covers vaginoplasty, the priciest of the surgical procedures I need. I am shit-out-of-luck in regards to most of the other procedures I need, such as Facial Feminization Surgery, Mammoplasty-Augmentation, etc... I want this to change, obviously, yet am afforded little as far as effecting medical consensus, prison policy, given my incarceration and felony record.
Specific to my circumstance as an incarcerated trans woman is the degree to which my entire being is controlled. This level of control extends all the way to what medical care I am afforded, allowed, though I figure this is not shocking of a system that demands to intrude on my daily bodily functions. This presents more red tape – as I understand, mammoplasty-augmentation would have been a real possibility, even in prison, were my captors to not have employed a de facto blanket ban upon almost-all feminizing gender affirming care; so-called cosmetic procedure. Only vaginoplasty is realistically to be allowed during my captivity; One must consider Sofia happy.
I hope to highlight some of the real problems presented to trans women in prison. Some of these problems likely reflect larger problems of society, less so the specific circumstance I am in. Prison creates a particular context for these issues. I live in a locked box. I am constantly surveilled. I am denied my humanity, often-to-always. Am I shocked transmisogyny and sexism prevail in this environment? Not really. Not at all.
Vaginoplasty was more-so what has been shocking – prison has now become a defining aspect of my transition. I am, of course, happy to have found such a use for prison. I will be captive within its clutches for a great amount of my wake – may as well.
I will have personal nurses and chefs to augment my 24-hour security task force, all so-as to facilitate my recovery from my life-altering procedure. You can make things sound a lot better than they are, truthfully, and I will likely never tire of such jokes.
You can certainly maintain a positive outlook on confinement overall, and I could extend that towards my extremity as a propagandist by the pussy. I see no need to do so – my circumstance is grim and absurd. I remain motivated, but I see this as far different from being hopeful. My world is far too cold to have false hope. Rather, my pussy’s becoming is my Will to Power – my Will to Pussy, if you will.
No matter what comes, I have plans to leave my confines healthier and better off than I was at capture, to the best of my ability and in spite of prison’s cruel design.
I entered prison with a 90 month sentence and next-to-nothing to my name to return to. You are not able to really change much in prison in regards to your life, materially. I am allowed my pursuit of academic interests, of a degree, and am otherwise gifted a non-material/nihilistic existence. Many leave prison, if motivated, as skilled writers or artists. Many more merely perish, prison ultimately being where their dreams ended. I refuse to be broken by the State. 7 and a half years of my life are irreplaceable and beyond valuing, so I want to have more than just a decent or good means of utilizing the corrupt system depriving me of my precious life. I want to be the best, to leave this facility as no one ever has.
Prison is punishing by design, dehumanizing. This becomes even more apparent as prison butts heads with the concept of healthcare, of caring for another human’s well-being. It has not been easy to attain my care that I receive, there have been bumps, and healthcare could be substantially better. Not just healthcare afforded to prisoners, obviously, but especially healthcare to those held in prison and denied any alternative. I cannot see other doctors, rather my captors decide upon doctors. I get little say in the manner or quality in which I receive care; there are approved practices and procedures. I frequently compare it to care of an animal, as do many – I am treated like cattle, too costly to intentionally kill and yet death occurs with leniency far too often regardless.
There are many issues with prison healthcare.
Prison healthcare is my reality.
I. Hormone Therapy
These little blue pills changed my life, thankfully for the better. I started on hormones on March 23rd, 2018, with no interruption since. No interruption within my control, rather.
There were several weeks where I lacked hormones due to my abusive ex-wife stealing nigh-all of my possessions. This is, how you’d say, a drop in the bucket.
During my first month in custody, my captors did try very hard to deny me access to my hormone replacement therapy. For a while, they were successful. Had my lawyers not had an inkling of how to handle this all, I may not even have hormones now.
The jail I landed in refused to recognize my prescription as valid, continually moving the goalpost so-as to deny me my hormones in perpetuity. Eventually, they reissued the prescription after pressure from my attorneys: get a lawyer.
Hormone therapy has been lifesaving. I don’t know how I managed without it, ever. Being prevented from having access to my little blue pills was rough – the brief periods I’d suffered without prior were brief, this circumstance was made more troubling than merely the adverse effects of a halt in care.
What proved more troubling was the sheer feeling of helplessness. Nothing I could do on my own would ever get me my medical care. I was totally and entirely dependent upon pigs whom hated me far beyond your everyday criminal – the queen of antifa suffers for her good name. It was the same callous discussion, time-after-time. No one cared about the harm they were actively causing me.
I will, to my understanding, need these pills for the remainder of my wake. They do really help me, way more than I could have anticipated. I would be far worse off without them.
Oregon has proven to be a relatively progressive state, at least as far as a term like progressive can go towards the captivity of living human beings in locked boxes. During my time in prison, as an Adult-in-Custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections, I have had only one rather large lapse in hormone therapy.
In a brief communication with our medical staff, where I was attempting to have a professional discern if my scalp was healing from having been given the George Floyd Treatment, I shared some minor COVID-like symptoms I had been experiencing. Following 3 negative test results, I was placed, for reasons I can only guess, on a housing unit largely comprised of COVID-positive individuals. The conditions were abysmal; we were often given no time outside of our cell. I will return to this time shortly.
When I was initially transferred to Coffee Creek from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, I was placed in our infirmary, as per transgender housing statues. It took around 3 or 4 days before I started receiving my hormones, around a week before I was issued a blister pack with my hormones. With an in-cell blister pack, the chances of being denied my medication diminished. Given I had a months-supply, the only hold-up would be a seizure (spelled as a lawsuit) or some grave mishap in the continued supply of said blister packs.
Most of our facility runs on paper. Our opportunities to have face-to-face communication with staff are limited. We are instructed, required, to utilize paper forms for the purpose of communication. These are issued for free and range from incredibly general to the ultra-specific – the kyte system.
This has all the problems you can imagine – welcome to life in an institution.
I am privileged enough to have a sharp pen (I like to think), most are not as fortunate – it doesn’t take any real qualifications to land oneself in prison for a long time. Forms are regularly returned, after a lengthy wait, with no response or a complete misinterpretation of what was written: Staff love prewritten responses, it goes hand-in-hand with the presumption criminals are of a lesser intelligence. I find I often have to dumb down what I am asking, include a God-bless even, otherwise my written communications get replies that allude to the idea of the contents having, at best, not been read. Even then, it is difficult to be heard, entirely by design.
Need I compare how easy it is to ignore a sheet of paper versus a real human? There is no comparison.
In-cell medication distribution is done in a rather convoluted way, much like the entirety of prison. The specifics? Well, roughly a week before a medication is set to run out, one goes through a tired prison procedure: fill out a specific form, drop it in a locked box. If you’re lucky, around the time your medicine runs out will accord with being scheduled to receive a new blister pack. Luck is the key word, as your medical needs are ultimately subservient to the reality those with power hold e.g. those with power deflect all responsibility with the assertion it is just a job. Everything progresses very slowly; the powerful don’t live in a cage.
Navigating problems in an institutional setting is difficult, by design. Our captors would much rather prefer we just go to sleep, suffer, die.
Adding more complexity to the guaranteed right of receiving needed medical care is that our prescriptions do, in fact, expire. Prior to a prescription expiring, there is (again) a specific form one must fill out so-as to schedule an appointment to renew said prescription. Why doesn’t it happen automatically? Well, if we’re to believe authority, then we must understand this is a supposed teaching of responsibility. My stab at a real reason?
I find the entirety of prison to be structure as to maximize the amount of suffering, actual and possible.
Prison is where most dreams go to die, it is designed to destroy lives and entrap individuals forever within its clutches. Every aspect of prison is cruel and dehumanizing. As you will come to learn, should you not already by privy, prison is slavery. Do you expect it to be easy for a slave to receive healthcare?
Receiving hormones should not be quite the fight that it’s been.
The 8th amendment drives my argument, as to my guarantee of medically necessary care – hormones. Over the length of my sentence served so far, I have grown very familiar with this and other rights I am supposedly afforded by our benevolent tyrants. Rights don’t protect me from bad actors in practice, staff looking to cause harm work well within allowable limits. Instead, the 8th amendment has, thankfully, served as a minor deterrent and a guarantee as to my hormones in theory.
Late January and all of February started the first denial of my hormone therapy by the Oregon Department of Corrections.
The procedure itself was a classic case of bureaucratic prison nonsense. During my confinement in what us prisoners have dubbed the “COVID [housing] unit”, my initial supply of hormones, a 30-day supply, was set to run out and expire. I was nervous, as we were often confined to our cells for entire days, not even leaving for meals. I had gotten my hands on the appropriate forms, filling them out appropriately. Paperwork was not proving to be too confusing for me.
Structurally, it felt needlessly complex, seemingly with the intent of shifting the blame of medical malpractice onto the prisoner.
Anyways, the logistics of attaining more hormones, to me, seemed doable.
I was trapped in my cell during the timeframe wherein I had to deposit said forms. My solution, as to this very particular problem, was, as usual, the only option I had at hand: I handed these forms directly to members of the prison’s medical staff, given we were still afforded face-to-face interaction with them due to cell-to-cell COVID testing being conducted. I communicated my issue clearly with this person, long forgotten in the faceless haze of institution life. Having understood my circumstance, they were seemingly willing to help with taking my forms where they needed to go.
I had one of those dreadful feelings things wouldn’t work out well.
It didn’t; I was being placed in another fight to secure my hormone therapy.
In one way or another, one of the forms I submitted had been lost. My request to receive new medication had been received, yet due to no form, allegedly, having been submitted to renew my prescription: I was not being given my hormones. Classic. Should be an easy obstacle to surmount, seemingly; nothing in prison is easy.
Around a week passed before I had any clue something had happened, alerted by an unsurprising lack of new hormones. Sigh. What did my struggle look like, for a little over a month? Paltry.
After submitting several kytes, it became apparent quickly this would be a lengthy issue to resolve. As I mentioned prior, paper is easy to ignore. This proved true, as the responses I received were incredibly slow to roll in. I was told a multitude of things, starting with the explanation that this circumstance was entirely due to the COVID epidemic our facility was experiencing. I tend to not believe authority with evidence to the contrary.
As these responses came in, they all had some similarity to them: they were callous, snarky, jaded, cold, detached, and ignored what had happened in an effort to substitute an alternative reality wherein I was to blame for my suffering, for the trauma inflicted via the continued denial of my hormones. I was frustrated, understandably, and began to wage a multi-pronged attack on the prison (lack-of) healthcare system.
Given the suggested means of resolution amounted to “write-and-be-patient”, I decided to do more with my time than merely twiddle my thumbs. My first means of attack involved getting some human interaction involved, as I was fully aware this would be a continued denial of medical care. Having since been taken out of the incredibly restrictive COVID unit, I was afforded the means I was looking for via our facility’s method of distributing nigh-all medication disallowed in-cell.
Procedurally, it is likely familiar to anyone who has ever gotten medicine from an institution: we wait in a line, a line we are called to at designated times, where an actual-human-being will read your ID card so-as to hand you the medicine you are allowed. As an avenue of establishing dialogue, this satisfied my criterion, a human.
This endeavor was not terribly successful. I tend to be very nervous skirting rules, toeing the line, during my captivity for one main reason: I am a trans woman in a woman’s prison. Being deported to a men’s facility is a truly terrifying thing to have hung over my head. My methodology of agitation amounted to periodic (non-daily) discussion with these members of the medical staff, for brief periods of time – treading lightly.
Basically, I’d wait in line and bug them about not having my hormones several times a week. I’d get some response amounting to “send a kyte”, a total disregard for my pain and suffering, and some vague acknowledgment that the ability to resolve issue was above their head. Obviously they had more power than I did in that regard, bureaucracy notwithstanding, as employees of the prison don’t have to struggle to overcome the dehumanizing grip of criminalization.
Life really becomes small in prison. I am continuously reminded I have exactly as much liberty as I am willing, able, to take.
I had sent in around 15 kytes, staff began to just not return them. My kytes began to quickly evolve into quotations of my rights, efforts to primarily document the great distress caused by the deliberate indifference to my lack of hormones.
Initial responses were pretty gross. Somehow this was all teaching me a lesson, I was being prepared for my release, and above all proved how irresponsible I was. You have to put up with a lot of bullshit as both a trans woman and a prisoner, clearly.
I ended up writing a somewhat humorous sonnet to the medical staff, setting the stage for what I was hoping to be an impending lawsuit – this was returned with a ton of forms, all stamped and signed with some vague, generic message: An appointment had been scheduled.
My appointment was incredibly anti-climactic. The medical staff had no real leg to stand on, as the prison had diagnosed me with gender dysphoria independent of my prior diagnoses. I had gone a little over a month with no hormones, ultimately some staff member clicked two small boxes and solved the whole conundrum. Two clicks had caused me all that suffering, eh?
Of his pity for man – God. Going without hormones was tortuous, chilling.
Going without had induced some terrible effects, contrary to many of the very reasons I started them. Random erections, rapid facial hair growth, increased sperm production, rougher skin, you-name-it. The ordeal was awful. Undoing, reversing, my imbalanced hormonal levels is proving a lengthy process as well – blood work has revealed my time without reverted the effects of nearly 4 years of hormone replacement therapy.
I was entirely powerless to prevent this terrible exercise of power onto my person, to prevent this gross and traumatizing experience.
Since this fiasco, I’ve had only minor interruptions in hormone therapy, of the sort that is far more typical of institutional life and bearable. My skin is soft again, I no longer deal with erections or sperm, and my facial hair is manageable. Prison life has, in regards to hormonally transitioning, returned to some state of relative-normalcy. Really, how normal can living in a box, through the forceful hand of the State, be?
I’ve lost what little muscle I had, am slowly regaining weight that was lost during the 3 months spent in solitary confinement in jail (solely for being trans, mind you). It appears things can only really improve, as I develop more structure, coping, and routing into my day-to-day. Such a hefty toll to exact upon the State during my captivity, in requiring that I receive hormone replacement therapy.
II. Exploration
Prison secludes you, gives you a lot of time with yourself, alone. Though I mostly occupy my person with creative projects, propaganda, this is not sustainable for the entirety of the time I am confined in isolation. Fatigue becomes a limiter, whether physical, mental, or emotional. Outside of sleep, which occupies roughly a third of my total sentence, time alone with my thoughts encroaches upon the remainder of my time.
I’d say most of my time spent merely thinking is dedicated to furthering my creatives works. This, in turn, gives me more to occupy myself with ad nauseam.
When I can’t find it in me to work tirelessly, for any reason, I tend to think of my own gender identity, my sexual orientation even. It is a very complex, abstract idea that requires a lot of time to describe, articulate. Description is, in many ways, a limiter. No one else can figure me out, they are not, never will be, privy to my inner emotions and romantic inclinations. I only have myself to thank for any progress I am to make in the formation of an identity.
What is Gender? Well, I’d rather not establish myself as an authority on the matter; not yet, or maybe ever. Particularly, what can I say of my gender identity?
Broadly speaking, I use terms like Non-Binary, NB, or enby, to attempt description of myself. I don’t feel like I entirely align with either of the traditional binary genders – Woman comes close, and I don’t mind it per se. I do entirely, wholly, utterly reject any labeling of myself as a Man. I have taken, currently, and have for considerable time, substantial measures to vanquish my own apparent masculinity.
There is a considerable amount of mental and emotional work involved in transitioning, and prison makes it all difficult. Our library has nothing on gender, our prison has rejected feminist literature I’ve been gifted, I am denied access to internet and community resources, and the predominate views and opinions from the majority of prisoners are reactionary. What is, to many, a social process with plenty of love and support has instead turned, for me, into a struggle against the prison system. War with the State presents itself as a matter of survival.
Rather than fixate on what I cannot perform, of which I could populate book-upon-book and not truly encapsulate, I hope to highlight what is afforded to the transgender prisoner – me.
Letters, phone calls, emails fill the hole of community support. I can write friends, talk of gender and how I am repressed. I attempt to gather perspectives that are impossible to acquire within prison.
Really most, and I mean most, of my introspection is done alone in my cell, occasionally with my journal. It is a long and hard procedure, in trying to find words for feelings and ideas no one around me is discussing.
Around the time of my arrest, I was adamantly lesbian, with naught but frustration to thank men for I largely had, until that time, dated trans women due to our commonality. Nowadays, if I was to test a label, I’d call myself pansexual. Gender is far too subjective for me to base my attraction, romantic or sexual, around it – “I like what I like.”
The flame of insurrection burning, ever-bright, deeply within a person is still the most attractive thing to me; the fiery insurrectionist.
The State’s control will force me into a stationary, “traditional” life post-prison: realism is also attractive.
All in all, a viral divorce has set my standards pretty high and my attraction, desires, are largely rooted in what I aught have moving forward in my life. I am an ends oriented type of gal.
I apologize dearly for asking you to bring roses to our insurrection. Make them as black as the flags, I guess?
Prison is a terrible environment to explore your identity, let alone sexual attraction or gender. I’ve done what I can, obviously, but the State demands a celibate existence – Incel in-cell?
In the words of Nietzsche, one is punished best for their virtues.
The punishing repression of prisoners’ sexuality is cruel and felt especially hard as a trans individual. Sexual desire, attraction, is not merely a thing one can turn off freely – if it’s there, it’s there. Cis prisoners have little to fear sleeping around in prison, and I do applaud their efforts in defying the cruel intentions of authority.
As consequence if caught in the act, a cis prisoner can expect a slap on the wrist, at worst some time in solitary. All physical contact is forbidden by rule, everything from hugs/hand-holding to more explicitly sexual activity. Little care is usually given to these strict guidelines by cis prisoners. On occasion, the same can even be said of staff, with loud sexual activity filling the quiet of the night to attest.
As one of a literal handful of trans women at the facility, the respect for my gender identity is still relatively controversial, rare. I largely am assumed to be here through some facade, my 4 years of hormone therapy the long con for my supposed true aim of preying on cis women. I’m sorry I didn’t want to get shanked and raped in a men’s prison?
Prior to our prison updating my name and gender within their systems, a process delayed over a year past the courts themselves certifying it, I was regularly privy to prison staff calling me a man, demanding I sign or use my deadname on forms. The legal system became a justification for their transphobia.
I have a lot of self-restraint. I keep most everyone an arm’s length away. I don’t have sex in here like everyone else does, nor do I so much as hold anyone’s hand – the risk of being deported makes the reward inconsequential.
Yeah, it’s frustrating. I hate being controlled, denied joy and my sexuality. This pious existence of punishment and penitence is contrary to most of my belief system. You get no real way of dialogue with this policy, as a prisoner you have a right to obey, not call into question. I don’t ascribe to hedonism, could in live suffering were that merely the extent to which things were. What proves especially frustrating is the aspect of this grave denial of my humanity particular to my transness.
I will be blunt: I’m hot. From my deeds to my physicality – many women take my boundaries as a challenge. Really, I could be quite ugly: I am reduced to my genitals and women who fetishize me as such see boundaries as a challenge to overcome. An uncountable number of women have professed their supposed undying love for me, countless try to get into my pants. Even being aware of what’s at risk, my aversions, my hard boundaries: they don’t care!
There is a severe rape culture in prison. To these would-be rapists, I seemingly fulfill the dreams they’ve had of “a man” in their prison life. They are persistent, relentless, and I can only assume they are not used to hearing “no” given the environment.
Being objectified and reduced to my genitalia is not a terrible, unique experience for me, sadly, though prison makes it different, worse. I keep my romantic and sexual desires to letters and journals, entirely uninvolved with my immediate surroundings, as it would be a terrible tragedy to be deported before I can build these walls.
III. Surgery
I have elected to pursue propaganda by pussy – vaginoplasty. My pussy will be. I most certainly went to prison to get some pussy; my own pussy.
My surgery is terribly gatekept with all-means of red tape. It is to be several years of hard struggle to have even a hope of attaining it. While there has been a prisoner who has underwent vaginoplasty, no one yet in Oregon Department of Correction custody has.
I am told that I will be scheduled some 3 years after my consultation with a surgeon, the one surgeon the OdoC is willing to utilize, to receive vaginoplasty. Electrolysis is to start around a year before my surgery.
The OdoC won’t currently consider any other medically necessary gender affirming surgeries, nor allow them, prior to my completion of vaginoplasty. So while I can claim I won’t pay for vaginoplasty (the taxpayers, Americans, will), nor the post-operative care: no one has gotten this surgery and I would be a fool to think it would occur without considerable pressure onto the system actively seeking to generate profit from my enslavement.
Can I even trust a prison to adhere to a schedule years out when my continual and perpetual suffering from genital dysphoria is so unimportant to them as to demand such a practice be normal? A lot is out of my power, as a prisoner: I am property of the State, the State is grossly cruel. My surgery may become a matter of community support, outside pressure, to hold the State to what I am legally entitled.
Am I scared? I can’t be, as it would be used to deny the procedures. Now is not the time to be afraid, meek, timid. This struggle is perpetual. I am done with my closeted existence, I am as proudly queer as one could ever hope to be. Truthfully, I’m prepared for my future Fox News segment: Tranny Makes America Pay.
My aim is for everyone else to be prepared, too.
My pussy, in existence, will have cost Americans more money than most would feel comfortable affording to a prisoner. Is America ready for a pussy of the rarest breed, of the highest caliber, a pussy so fiery with the flames of insurrection having forged it in its very inferno? My pussy will be.
That is, should I have the power to realize it.
2. Criminalized
Criminalization details the manner in which the State so-coldly turns an individual into a criminal by means of Law, the legal system. Once you have been labeled a criminal, criminalized, you are seen as the abstraction of criminal before you are ever to be considered human. Even the most kindred spirits of the prison system, in their heart-of-hearts, see you as a criminal – you are a criminal.
I am, rather; criminal.
I. Perceptions and Reality
What is it, to be criminal? Being criminalized shapes the way in which nigh-every individual forms opinions of you. Every manner of propaganda placed within the mind is now to cultivate preconceptions about you, the criminalized individual. In a blunter means of explaining, before we dive into specifics, you are seen as the most irrational actor – animal.
All means of your control are justified; I live in a box, one where I often peer out into a very brutal world. I sleep less than a foot away from my toilet. Authority, who hold your life and well-being in their very hands, assume you to be violent and conniving. Those with power over you can do nearly anything to you, justifiably. Especially within the framework of what I see as allowable harm.
You, the criminal, must be controlled, corrected, punished, rehabilitated. Those who commit State-sanctioned violence are clearly good. Everything you were, and quite possibly are now, is wrong – conform. The criminal must obey the crack of the whip; the sight of the badge.
Your rights as a criminal are minimal and difficult to assert. The grievance system here, as with nearly every-prison, is rigged to the criminal’s detriment. We must depend upon the very judicial system that criminalized us to benevolently bestow us our rights? It seems more likely that a camel travel through the eye of a needle. Power is indifferent to the suffering of those it has under its control, of their humanity, of – the criminal.
The box I live in can be traversed in 5 steps, from end-to-door. I am surveilled, whether I am sleeping or should my body be performing its basic needs. I am trapped, behind a lock, a barbed wire fence. The cold eyes peering into the inner-most portion of my day-to-day existence do so not out of any care for me, my humanity, but out of sheer terror at what my unsurveilled being could supposedly desire to create. I am a danger, to peace and order. I am a threat a priori merely by virtue of my criminality.
Most have brought this narrative of the violent criminal, the benevolent ruler, in its entirety and no thought of any reality outside of it exists. I may consider it weird, cruel, to observe humans defecate and urinate behind a locked door, and not to even comment on the practice of placing humans behind a lock per se, but I am a criminal so this practice is not only good to practice upon me: it is a pillar of our amazing, civilized, God-blessed society – America
II. Dehumanization
The prisoner, the inmate, the Adult-in-Custody are all just semantic terms groping at the idea of the criminal as a lesser, distinctly separate form of human. This classifying of humans, paired with tasking a small portion of humans with the duty of controlling the many, forms the backbone of the dehumanizing elements pivotal to the maintenance of the prison-industrial complex. What manner of treatment, environment, care is allowed with the caveat it be done to criminals.
The unsaid, of course, that it is not done to humans.
III. Traumatized
Prison is inherently traumatizing by design. Your worst enemy is tasked with punishing you, someone who pride and job duties take priority over your humanity. There is no pretense to the contrary – in prison, the criminal is to suffer.
All conceivable harm is inflicted upon criminals in prison. Prison is, after all, designed to punish those deemed criminal.
I am, for most days, confined to an incredibly small space, with little care placed by my captors in everyday comforts as to said space’s design – steel. It is a struggle.
Creative work, immersing oneself within it, is the most potent means I have found for coping with the harm done unto me. My ability to study anarchist theory, write essays and pamphlets, is hindered but still feasible. I can contribute to the anarchist struggle, dig deep into history or philosophical inquiry – create propaganda.
I still find ways to bring myself joy.
Part B: Star Spangled Slavery
Lest we forget that prison remains an industry, that profit is wrought from the blood spilled, lives destroyed, trauma born.
1
Slavery is as American as Red-White-and-Blue. Perhaps the only thing more American than Christianity – slavery. What is it to be American? Let us not concern ourselves. America has been born of slavery, on the backs of those never able to behold what the nation has stolen. From its very formation to the very immediate nation. Has slavery not been abolished, by our benevolent conquerors? Certainly in name, lest one be duly convicted of a crime. All’s fair in the persecution of the criminal; the powers that be. Power, and certainly it can be seen, demands total subservience in this lopsided arrangement formed by a criminal’s captors, slavemasters. A captive criminal has no say, de facto, in the rule of their person, but must instead plead with vile, callous tyrants for an iota of the humanity robbed of them. To what end? Will I open the prisons, free the slaves, with mere words? Far more likely that words seeking compassion heat the tempers, boil the blood those whom hold the chains and crack the whip. I, a criminal, demand you free me, see me as human? – “Get back in your cage, slave” – permit me to, and I shall. One begins to allow their person to be used for all manner of activity, by bullmaster or school-teacher, when the alternative fails to be presented – violence. I bide my time and shall exact my toll. This system of slavery rests on bloody grounds, with its shallow facade of righteousness eager to be pulled aside. I may be poor, privy to all manner of coercion and violence, but I refuse to have my labor exploited of me in these arduous times. No one, to be confined by the very same whom, should be put to work for pennies. America seems to have quite the love of entrapping bodies, controlling their entirety from clothing to food and shelter, and labeling the ensuing practice of coerced-or-forced labor as anything-but-slavery. Prisoners do not work to better themselves, should not be grateful for supposed free housing and sustenance. Rather, they are held captive to a system upheld through terror and moral dogma. When the prisons crumble, let freedom reign.
2
A person is held captive for year long stretches, while work is demanded of them. They see little to no gain from their servitude, the reaping is solely reserved for those who grasp onto this person with an ever-desperate grip. Much is wrought by this person’s hands, as they directly create value for their master and conversely negate the need of labor-related investment expenditure. Would this person ever dream of being used to this end were they free, were the yoke not securely fastened around their neck?
3
Are most captives given a choice in their exploitation? Any? The idea seems counter to the idea of confinement. Little-to-nothing is controllable by the incarcerated, in the best of circumstance, where work remains non-compulsive, can we truly call it voluntary? If one is given no alternative? To the poor, starving, and desperate, the idea of a slavery scant wage, and only strictly speaking, becomes enticing. With no alternative, you decide to pay extortionate prices for all-manner of commodity. It is not voluntary, it is coercive.
4
Restricting someone’s movement, so harshly, directly controls that which they may use their person for. Control. The terrible ugliness of the lock, the barbed wire fence, create an environment rich in punishment and pain, less of compassion and opportunity. It is expected of prison. Punitive punishment is merely Christian for revenge, it is no accident or surprise America boasts the world’s highest number of incarcerated. When there is so much to financially gain by depriving one’s serfs of life, of liberty, there need be no pretense. Prevent your slave escaping, by any means.
5
Open the prisons and freedom will follow. Lay waste to the idea of exploiting any human, of subjugating any to tyranny regardless of moral character, of any ever having deserved or earned an existence confined, and we will have encroached on the necessary precursor to a truly egalitarian life. Fais ce que veux – Take our control into the hands of the only character whom should ever have say: one’s own self. Have we ever known of freedom under the regime that so-readily deprives humans of their autonomy, their right to self-determine? As the prisons stand closed, so does the whip clenched in closed fist – irons.
6
Those who command need not obey. Must we relinquish our very lives, to the coercion of violence, that we exist servile and in anguish? Why should one who has never gone a day without bread damn those without to be mere fettered animals, kept under tight surveillance and only as it proves profitable, politically or economically, to do so? Because the bread needed is theirs, too. And in challenging this dastardly right so, too, I become. The hungry are to be whipped into complacence or, of those less docile, made an example of. Feed my mouth, my heart, and my free spirit.
7
The slave has every right to rise up against slavemaster; our right to an egalitarian world. It would be a fool’s errand to impose the regulations of slavemaster onto the slave’s task – freedom. Yet everyday many damn the poor and vulnerable to a life of servitude, asserting it has been their choice to elicit the icy-wrath of the coldest-of-all-monsters; the State. Does one choose to starve, or are the conditions to starve rightfully imposed on the many? In a more regular circumstance, I am afforded the privilege to rent my very person some-large-chunk of my waking days for a pittance of that wrought forth by my very hand. Under what circumstance would one willfully agree to this exchange? Prison more sharply contrasts these aspects, as the prisoner is susceptible to far worse conditions. Negligible pay, and I am to live in the institution placing me into slavery? By removing my freedom, you have killed me, and you would still ask more? These bricks are bespeckled bloody, as one day my masters will be.
8
It could hardly be spoken of, prison, as halting crime. Halting crime would exist as a change to its causes, not merely a response-to its occurrence aimed at dissuading. Prison is an industry commodifying the occurrence of crime. As a huge, life defining sentence is graciously bestowed from the benevolent, all-knowing courts, one can rest-easy knowing the State lie ready to deprive any who similarly fall victim to an unchanging circumstance.
9
The prisoner resides a great amount of time in a relatively small space with no amount of control over the lock that makes this so. “If you would use your person as such to such an end, we will place your person in greater space” – our masters are so kind to let us make use of their property, to let us not be confined to our box. Living in a cell is certainly possible, that much is apparent. If I merely exist in my cell, foregoing further exploitation, profit is still gained from the burden I placed on my captors – taxes. I can only imagine the harms caused to my person by means of long term confinement to a cell. Realizing the humanity of a slave is rarely profitable.
10
Most of a prison’s day-to-day operations are undertaken by those held under its very heel. Feeding, clothing, cleaning, and much more, are tasks beneath the barbaric brutes who would much rather occupy themselves with the large degree of bureaucratic nonsense (or the more traditional role of strongman, guard, keeper-of-peace, what-have-you). Does it truly teach a skill, some form of obedience and loyalty? Cutting corners is rarely of good intentions, born of philanthropy and altruism. This is indeed one of such normal circumstances. You either rot in your cell, shine brilliantly with pen and paper, pencil and canvas, or the yoke is fastened and you maintain the functioning of the grisly beast.
11
Give life to the prisoner and their plight, the reality present at their very first moment awake until they lay down their weary head; restless trauma. Prison itself is contrary to humanity, to the respect deserved of our fellow-creatures. You are rarely asked – commanded. The worst of the worst, lowest of the low. Garbage, to be collected and set ablaze. I am no trash, but I have chosen to burn. My fire burns bright, in this small dark place I am confined. So long as I breathe oxygen, I will give light to the prisoner – shining.
12
How many companies, corporations, businesses, what-have-you, make use of, profit from, prison slave-labor (convict leasing)? More than aught. Prison has proven a lucrative means of supplying obedient workers with lowly wages. In our God-gifted economy, still suffering at the loss of its plantation slaves, what better way to fill this hole than the moral good of criminal justice? The narrowness of the moral stamps down its tracks everywhere, upon which I now raise my immoral war – abolition.
13
No prison can crush the mind of an insurrectionary, and may that prove to be its downfall. We are far more resourceful and daring than those overcome with supreme cowardice. Persistence! When your enemies are tasked with breaking you, this trait is tested most. Has the anarchist cause no first-rate persons? I will try my ideas by fire, with no lies as to my goals, views, aims: If you are a prisoner you should be free and your captors left jobless at best. Authority rarely chooses to relinquish its power, even a King’s son will wear a bloodied crown – Le roi est mort, vive le roi. What can we expect of a post-prison world? Will some new manner of enslavement, subservience, catch hold? Prison abolition certainly fits the criterion for progression to a different state, are we courageous enough to try it? Though we have largely allowed prisons to exist in our inaction, we have always possessed the ability to act with the ferocity of a lion, albeit one that may at first demonstrate inexperience due to inactivity. Silence and inaction serve the same end. Prisons will remain alive, at cost of all those it robs of their lives, until it is seen for what it is; star-spangled slavery.
14
What is prison? If I were to quarter you and demand you work, it would be inconsequential if I still fed and clothed you, it would not matter what reason I gave as to why you could not leave, you would justly title it as slavery. When this practice, prison, so closely parallels slave labour, there is no helping labeling a spade a spade. If you ask of me what prison is, I will tell you: it is slavery.
15
Will your moral objections to abolition stand time’s timeless test? Are you prepared to be looked back upon as another slavemaster, or perhaps your good life will have justified the ruining of many more?
16
The safety and security of a prison, the peace and order of the Nation, the Law and Justice we know of, are tantamount to the preservation of slavery, by extension the capitalist economy presently beholden to us. These brazen attacks on individual autonomy prostrate many, consumed by moral dogma and revenge-seeking sadism, damning any new challenges with the lazy appeal to tradition. Do you lie prostrate, must you bend-the-knee to the police, their cohorts, the State, or have you the mind to bring about your personal insurrection, to dance on the knife’s edge? I have learned most are afraid to live, though I do not share in their fears. My whole life I have been dying to live. Born of this, my contempt of authority, of obedience, of government, of the courts, of all that would tell me how to be – you want me servile, not alive. The calls for my death, for my imprisonment, have done naught but embolden me. I will leave this world having gifted it. Can you say the same of your punitive punishment, of your supreme cowardice? I am all-too human, so I may incite you: a moment in the cold, terror-filled grip has shown me what living aught be, of the sheer-terror sown into our ruler’s hearts by mere disdain for the ploy the beneficiaries of this state erect as Truth. Your king has lied to you, serf, but no fear – you possess the capability to free yourself. It is always time to act, even alone; bring your life out of another’s hands and back into your own. Do not be so easily led, and we may all one day know of life.
17
It can prove disastrous to will beyond one’s power, clearly. The continuation of subservience, of the relation between the slave and the master, of consumer and capitalist, shall always be within the power of the coward to will. Will oppression recur ad nauseum? Until our will becomes strong, our desire to be free stronger than our inclinations to simply subsist in the repressive state of affairs we find ourselves born into. Slavery is not natural, one submits to it? Prison is seen as just how it is, a state upon which you, the individual, must conform to, accommodating it into your worldview, your belief system. We, us free spirits, can achieve far greater than the world we are born to. I tire of the false promise of a heaven-after, that I must know my place, that something greater than myself should exist to me: Don’t you? Or do you wish to see the world painted Red-White-and-Blue?
18
Our humanity is something to surpass, not limit nor rule the human being we know of. Our own lives are so rarely allowed to be our own, and this is such a terribly low standard. Are you content to live most of your life to make another powerful, to attain power knowing others’ entire lives will be as no more than tools to this end? I choose, have chosen, to behold my beautiful self, to make opposition to this repressive regime my self-interest. I own worlds, so be damned your inability to realize, even to imagine, something greater than your misery; the unknown is miserable to know of, so why only know of it? Be greater than you were, than you were told to be. We should not know of slavery, shall we make it be? I refuse to be made a slave, as should you – in any way. Nothing will lay claim to my person, if I can help it. The bonds that chain me to what-is, that would shove me headfirst into the captivity of a fixed idea require my will to strengthen them. Why would I allow myself to be content with this? I will not. I abhor the idea of ever being no more than someone’s servant, their slave. No human is innately superior, deserving to command others to their chosen ideal, their sense of modesty, to assert their morality as absolute truth. Slavery, its vile filth, is not Truth. Slavery is a tired American tradition. Our nation is predicated on subservience of the many, the ultimate realization being our enslavement to property while the State coldly lies of representation – where there is a State, one will not find peace. Born from the State is naught but icy terror; a clear view of the grip firmly on one’s neck is present as one travels into the cold. To all you proud tyrants – get your hands off me!
19
With prison equivocating punishment with good, many look to the State for affirmation of their moral character; you likely find joy in the fruitless endeavor of representative democracy if you depend on a powerful minority to, somehow, act within your interests and not within their own interests; rule is rule. I look to myself as to my interests, for the very reason I know them to be my own, not some attempt at representing me. Nothing should rule me, nor you – Law. Enough harm as come from this centralizing of power; us free spirits were never created to be governed. If I lend you power to punish, you gain complete control – What is good? That which the punished have no say, no power, no stake in, the prevailing ideas and desires of the dominant moral system, as it most happens to be: what our rulers want us to be. I do not want to be told what to do, what’s your issue with that? My immorality?
20
Of what do I gain by allowing myself to be governed? I relinquish my entire being to this slim hope of fairness, with no proof to this truth, this unalienable right to rule, being to my benefit. I consent to be governed? I am ruled, and must choose to rid myself of my mind. I must conform to what-is, must be controlled by rulers, or I will take a trip to their jails. Will I obey? Not if I can help it. I do not willfully subject my being to threats, violence, coercion. The State is afraid of me, violently afraid.
21
I don’t see the death of the State, end of capitalism, a stoppage of slavery as inevitable. There is no glorious revolution on the horizon, a first-rate hero on their way to save us. Our world is indifferent to our dispositions, worse yet our rulers – are. We are afforded to ourselves what we are willing to create; you and I.
22
Anarchism is innately anti-ideological in the disposal of government, of authority, in favor of freely formed bonds, voluntary association, mutual utilization – not wanting to rule another, even by word or idea. In the denial of authority, we do not speak of humanity as perfect, but recognize how far-from perfect our rulers are, those whom we would otherwise, in absence of anarchy, entrust with power over far too many. Anarchy cannot be achieved through the abstraction of the State, and may require we overcome a violent opposition to this squashing of the powers that be. Anarchy will be, I say to demonstrate my motivation, my determination. Now – I would die for the anarchist cause and the chances are likely I very well may.
23
Many die toiling under the capitalist boot.
24
A militant mind, of egoistic virtue – noble. Omitting the scruples of a capitalistic upbringing, I see taking up arms as the only way our world shall ever be rid of subservience. Is it enough to hoist high the heads of our rulers, their heirs? We may very well still be acquainted with those of weak will, easily led; rule, for some, may well be all they can imagine. How will you teach the budding free spirit, accustomed to the whip, the badge, and gun, to never be ruled again? With limitless opportunity, an unknown magnitude of freedom presented to each-and-ever, will some be overwhelmed while others flourish? I would hate to see any not reach their full potential, whatever that is.
25
There is nothing as opposed to our God-given American slavery as anarchy.
26
God feared me, so I had to kill Him – wrath. Faced with my own immorality, I have finally freed my conscience from the guilt of sin. I embrace what I am rather than fearing any gods; I wanted to be free when all my surrounding was, is, naught but slavery. Not much exists within my power to will, as frustrating as this can prove – our world grows ever-cold as one ascends into the heights. My aims are smaller in scope, larger in impact. I unleash my nihilistic decadence into the world, my lust for a pussy – mine. Propagandists of the deed have often lost their life or freedom, while most trans women in need of surgery are unable to realize it. I have given the world my beauty and I am committed to attaining my desperately sought pussy. Am I pussy whipped? I, this unique, have created myself, the human being, from the creative nothing, and as I actualize my propaganda of the pussy, I may say:
I have based my affair on pussy.