this feels like a lightning bolt in my brain! I've been having similar thoughts about the structure of mental illness/infirmity as a social category and how racialized/immigrant characteristics are similarly fuzzily treated as infirm within a racial hegemony. I do not know if a similar framework would be useful in describing this phenomenon, but it has set me abuzz with thoughts!
I just want to comment about materialist feminism. IMO I've become convinced disability is the most accurate analogy to queerness rather than colonization. Disability is a social construct rooted in the reserve pool of labor (commonly identified with the lumpen). Gender is rooted in the social division of labor in the family: reproductive labor, domestic labor and sexual labor. Queerness is then a kind of "lumpengender" rooted in the reserve pools of domestic, sexual and reproductive labor. Much of queerphobia is then a reaction to people who are not able to afford to raise kids being demoted to the reserve pool of reproductive labor. Disability is not separate from queerness both changing with the economic conditions.
The other side of the coin of increasing acceptance of queerness is rooted in a drive to increase reproductive labor and produce more kids in a system where most are too poor to afford it.
Hi, I just wanted to say that I think this is a very thoughtful and provocative framing and one that I personally would want to think more deeply about before making strong endorsements or criticisms but that I find as genuinely compelling and valuable. Thank you for sharing your perspective, I think it is genuinely a very enriching contribution.
Thanks, I suppose "Empire of Normality" by Robert Chapman, "Health Communism" by Artie Vierkant and Beatrice Adler-Bolton (haven't finished yet), "The Dangerous Class" by Clyde Barrow have been some of my main influences here. I've mainly been trying to figure out the incel to trans pipeline stuff. I have a big reading list here https://acidmasculinity.github.io/
I have long felt keenly that gender exists only in social interface, and that the idealist notion of gender-as-essence has formed a kind of reality distortion field around how we perceive ourselves, one-another as transgender people, and members of other (as you name them) subalternized gender-forms. I can speak only subjectively, but this is the only sincerely revolutionary analysis of gender I have seen in a decade. To me this is like water in the desert. Thank you.
genuinely, this is such an encouraging and appreciated comment. I'm glad I could articulate things that were helpful, and I appreciate that my work is being taken seriously. thank you, comrade.
This just put words to the massive shift I’ve been experiencing as a newly out trans guy currently in the process of crossing through the nexus of non-passing faggotry for the first time. This is brilliant, thank you for this framework, I’ll be thinking about it daily.
Very interesting and I feel there's a link with what you propose and transmisogyny (especially Jules Gill-Peterson's book "The History of Transmisogyny").
Transmisogyny could be involved in the process of Faggotization.
this is brilliant! i think i need to read this article a few more times to let this sink in properly, but what you're saying makes a lot of sense and is a well-structured, concise analysis
Scintillating theorizing. Although I'd suggest “Subaltern” is not just punishment, but also a stage. It’s the spectacle of transgression, the faggot as theater, the trans femme as aesthetic dissident. This is what the culture consumes while punishing it. Not just a failure state, but a content category. My larger critique though is that if Power is one gender, and Not-Power is a precarious gender defined only by its distance from it, and Subaltern is the discard pile for failed attempts at either, then we’re not looking at a trinary. We’re looking at a monogendered system with shadows. The Monogender is "man": Not as in “cis male,” but as in the symbolic ideal of active, sovereign, desiring subject. Everyone else is cast in relational response: Not-Power: man-as-object (what man desires, owns, punishes, regulates). Subaltern: failed man, failed object - illegible to man, unless eroticized as failure. It's all the projection field of the Monogender. Three names, one gaze. What is missing here is symbolic collapse. Yes, the Subaltern becomes the repository of broken symbols, the gender lumpenprole. Woman is void, faggot is caricature. They're not roles, they're collapsed subjects. What class gets to exist as a subject? There's only ever been one. Let's name it and let's end it.
two things: 1) you mentioned other texts that inspired you; which ones are they?
2) I feel that children can fit into the kind of ternary class structure you describe here, deeply intersecting with patriarchy. Children (Subaltern) are seen as "owned" by their parents (Power) and parents can do whatever they please to children, and everyone who isnt the parent (Non-Power) must ardently defend the status of children as lesser and preserve the power of the parents, less they be attacked in turn by the parents. This is me coming up with this *right now*, so it may not make full sense but I think it may be a good start.
I think my general critique of the faggot-subaltern is that it seems to misunderstand what makes a subaltern or it misunderstands the experience of whiteness. subaltern necessarily implies invisibility within the discourse and at least in my experience as a white middle-class trans woman, my existence has been defined by hyper-visibility. Subaltern status could be applied to for instance, non-white trans sex workers or other people who are marginalized on multiple fronts but it does not apply universally to trans women, and it certainly does not apply universally on the basis of transgendered existence. There isn't necessarily a gendered subaltern imho—there may be a gendered/sexed/racial subaltern, but I would argue that has far less to do with gender/sex and far more to do with race or economic status. Maybe you could argue that intersex people (not people who have willingly become intersex i.e.: trans people) could be a sexed subaltern, I'd probably argue that, but a marginalized gender/sexual identity itself does not by itself constitute a subaltern status.
Just a side-note also, because this construction of a gendered-subaltern necessarily ignores the experience of nonwhite/poor/etc., trans women by assuming their oppression is the same as mine for instance, we necessarily center a white existence. This is just kinda weird to me? considering that the word subaltern itself was coined to discuss colonized people who live outside of the imperial core, applying it to colonizing people within the imperial core seems tone deaf. Not a real critique, but it's most of the reason why i had that initial "hm. okay." reaction to the post. This is not an attack on you or anything like that, i think this construction can be and is useful in discussing the oppression of nonwhite poor trans women, but I think we do need to decenter whiteness and the white experience of oppression when we discuss this.
TLDR: if we just include that this applies to pretty exclusively nonwhite poor trans women, or trans women who are marginalised on multiple fronts, i fully agree.
Absolutely good point. I also found it surprising that Wealth was not included as an axis of measurement for who is included in what class. I think it is pretty clear that extremely wealthy transgender people have a much higher prominence in discourse than us blue-collar and poor trannies.
Also I think it would be worth reading Talia Bhatt's new book Trans/Rad/Fem, she is all over this.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood, a white ethnic immigrant to a British colonial state, and how when I was a child I was treated as tho I was not “white” (using the shorthand of “white” to describe the privileged class) and how over years, as new politics rose, the drummed up fear of “the Asian invasion” and then later the “middle eastern threat” how I was inducted into being “white”. My self and a host of other Europeans, who had up to that point been seen as “non-white”, were gifted the privilege status. But of course this was contingent on us going the line and participating in the “othering” of a new group. The privilege was always something that could be taken away, a waterline that moved with the tides and the sure knowledge that I would be back on the other side of it if didn’t police “the other” as instructed.
Such is the cowardice of “whiteness”. As class consciousness grows, the privileged must induct more and more of those they oppressed in order to shore up their numbers. Dangling scraps to keep them in line. The whole thing reeks of the microcosm of school yard bullying, of mean-girl cliques and college hazing. One thing is certain, no matter how much you comply and do their dirty work, they can always take that privilege away. Here, in the nation that grew out of a British penal colony, the undercurrent that I’m really just “some dumb Irish trouble maker” is always present. And this pressure is a constant force to shape one into conformity.
"Briefly, the history of gay male SM extends back to a time-around the middle or late 1950s, later in some places- when many scenes took place between partners who very definitely did not make any overt agreement about consensuality. That would have soured the scene. Instead, what we now think of as SM scenes took place in these circles between a Top, called "a man," and a bottom, called or loudly suspected of being "a queer." The bottom/queer exposed himself to the risk of being beaten and abused by real men/Tops just by going to the bars, docks, and warehouse districts where they were found. Early gay guides labeled these places AYOR, meaning At Your Own Risk, but put the lie to the charade by listing the places at all. Over time, the men began hauling the queers together for parties where less ego-defensive drama was required to arrive at the satisfying effect both wanted. Social evolution has produced many offspring of these early habits-including the modern SM run-and most of them bear some historic apron-strings."
-- evidence for the Faggot-Subaltern Theory of gender in the vintage bdsm book Leathersex Q&A by Joseph Bean
I love this so much!!! I had a question though (sorry if it is stupid, i’m still coming to grips with thinking on a dialectical materialist basis): if {P, N-P} and {F-SA} are the two pieces whose union of opposition makes up the Gender Hegemony, and (P, N-P) are themselves the pieces whose subunion of opposition makes up the InPower group, what are the components that makes up F-SA? Would it be racialization or disability maybe? Are there any at all? Or does F-SA’a nature as a fail-state within the hegemony eclipse any class opposition whose dialogue might comprise the F-SA and set it in motion?
Again, spectacular essay!!! So genuinely refreshing to see revolutionary gender analysis in a world where practically all academic gender analysis is liberal imperialist, post-structuralist, end of history slop
Something that always stood out to me is the effect this power structure has on the perception of transmascs and transfems, with their intent being the focus; trans men are seeking power, they are presumed to make the transition to escape the "not power" zone and enter "power", which is seen as a "legitimate" reason in the eyes of transphobes, so they are treated with more understanding than transfems, which want to transfer down the power hierarchy. What reason would a man have to resign from his position of power and go into "not power" or even "F-SA" zone. There must then be a malicious reason for it, if not desperation for failing at gender entirely, which is formed into the idea that transfems are "predators" using their transition for advantage in sports, predation etc. Really interesting read!
This is a fascinating and layered discussion on gender identity, social categorization, and power structures, especially when viewed through the lens of language, queerness, and societal resistance. The framing of “faggotization” as an identity category within a gender ternary model raises compelling questions about who defines identity, who enforces it, and how marginalized groups navigate imposed structures.
Expanding on the Gender Ternary
The idea of a gender ternary—with "faggotization" as a distinct third space—seems to challenge traditional binaries while simultaneously creating a new rigid classification. Is this a natural evolution or a societal reflex, attempting to contain deviation within a new framework? Historically, queer identities have existed in fluid, evolving ways, resisting codification by dominant cultural forces. Is the creation of a third gender an empowering move, or does it risk reinforcing the same exclusionary mechanics that necessitated it?
This is something we wrestle with in The Hive Collective—a clothing-optional, freedom-oriented community that actively rejects societal control over self-expression and personal identity. In our spaces, we resist external labels and constraints, recognizing that identity should be fluid, self-defined, and liberated from institutional reinforcement. If queerness is about breaking the mold, does categorization inherently contradict that freedom?
Reclamation vs. Institutionalization
The idea of reclaiming slurs as identity markers is powerful, but also complex and potentially limiting. Words like "faggot" have been weaponized against queer people, but when reclaimed, they become tools of empowerment, resistance, and solidarity. However, at what point does reclaiming a term shift from subversive resistance to institutionalized identity?
Take Nectar Labs, for example—we’re working on tech, AI, and decentralized networks designed to return power to the individual, rather than reinforcing rigid structures. If we allow corporate, social, or political forces to define and codify queerness, does that weaken its radical potential? How do we keep the essence of queerness as an act of defiance and transformation, rather than allowing it to be commodified, boxed, and controlled?
Agency, Subversion & True Freedom
One of the biggest takeaways from this discussion is the tension between acceptance and assimilation. Historically, queerness has been both an identity and an action—a constant process of questioning, resisting, and reshaping societal norms. If mainstream society accepts queerness only by forcing it into neatly defined boxes, is that true progress or simply another form of control?
This is something we constantly think about in our community-building efforts—how do we create spaces that are truly free rather than just slightly less restrictive? The Hive Collective’s model is about radical self-expression, the rejection of imposed labels, and the embracing of personal authenticity. Can queerness remain subversive and free while being widely accepted? Can it exist outside of codified identity markers while still maintaining its power and meaning?
Final Thoughts
This discussion touches on something deeply relevant to both personal and collective liberation. We’re building a physical and digital space where people can exist as they are, without needing to fit into society’s predefined roles—whether that’s in terms of gender, sexuality, technology, or personal expression.
But the question remains:
Does queerness lose its power when it is defined by the very structures it seeks to dismantle?
Or can we create an entirely new paradigm—one where identity is not dictated, but lived freely?
this feels like a lightning bolt in my brain! I've been having similar thoughts about the structure of mental illness/infirmity as a social category and how racialized/immigrant characteristics are similarly fuzzily treated as infirm within a racial hegemony. I do not know if a similar framework would be useful in describing this phenomenon, but it has set me abuzz with thoughts!
I just want to comment about materialist feminism. IMO I've become convinced disability is the most accurate analogy to queerness rather than colonization. Disability is a social construct rooted in the reserve pool of labor (commonly identified with the lumpen). Gender is rooted in the social division of labor in the family: reproductive labor, domestic labor and sexual labor. Queerness is then a kind of "lumpengender" rooted in the reserve pools of domestic, sexual and reproductive labor. Much of queerphobia is then a reaction to people who are not able to afford to raise kids being demoted to the reserve pool of reproductive labor. Disability is not separate from queerness both changing with the economic conditions.
The other side of the coin of increasing acceptance of queerness is rooted in a drive to increase reproductive labor and produce more kids in a system where most are too poor to afford it.
Hi, I just wanted to say that I think this is a very thoughtful and provocative framing and one that I personally would want to think more deeply about before making strong endorsements or criticisms but that I find as genuinely compelling and valuable. Thank you for sharing your perspective, I think it is genuinely a very enriching contribution.
Thanks, I suppose "Empire of Normality" by Robert Chapman, "Health Communism" by Artie Vierkant and Beatrice Adler-Bolton (haven't finished yet), "The Dangerous Class" by Clyde Barrow have been some of my main influences here. I've mainly been trying to figure out the incel to trans pipeline stuff. I have a big reading list here https://acidmasculinity.github.io/
Just read your prose on the site linked above - great stuff
I have long felt keenly that gender exists only in social interface, and that the idealist notion of gender-as-essence has formed a kind of reality distortion field around how we perceive ourselves, one-another as transgender people, and members of other (as you name them) subalternized gender-forms. I can speak only subjectively, but this is the only sincerely revolutionary analysis of gender I have seen in a decade. To me this is like water in the desert. Thank you.
genuinely, this is such an encouraging and appreciated comment. I'm glad I could articulate things that were helpful, and I appreciate that my work is being taken seriously. thank you, comrade.
gender as interface might make sense because even on a desert island, the I interfaces with gender as it would do with any other type of identity
This just put words to the massive shift I’ve been experiencing as a newly out trans guy currently in the process of crossing through the nexus of non-passing faggotry for the first time. This is brilliant, thank you for this framework, I’ll be thinking about it daily.
Very interesting and I feel there's a link with what you propose and transmisogyny (especially Jules Gill-Peterson's book "The History of Transmisogyny").
Transmisogyny could be involved in the process of Faggotization.
Surely, Power is the father (Patriarchy), Non-Power is the mother (Feminism), and the Subaltern is the child (Neuroqueers)? /hj
Also, hence the question asked of homosexuals "but who is the man and the woman in the relationship?"
this is brilliant! i think i need to read this article a few more times to let this sink in properly, but what you're saying makes a lot of sense and is a well-structured, concise analysis
This is an incredible article and had pushed me interest into materialist feminism further
Scintillating theorizing. Although I'd suggest “Subaltern” is not just punishment, but also a stage. It’s the spectacle of transgression, the faggot as theater, the trans femme as aesthetic dissident. This is what the culture consumes while punishing it. Not just a failure state, but a content category. My larger critique though is that if Power is one gender, and Not-Power is a precarious gender defined only by its distance from it, and Subaltern is the discard pile for failed attempts at either, then we’re not looking at a trinary. We’re looking at a monogendered system with shadows. The Monogender is "man": Not as in “cis male,” but as in the symbolic ideal of active, sovereign, desiring subject. Everyone else is cast in relational response: Not-Power: man-as-object (what man desires, owns, punishes, regulates). Subaltern: failed man, failed object - illegible to man, unless eroticized as failure. It's all the projection field of the Monogender. Three names, one gaze. What is missing here is symbolic collapse. Yes, the Subaltern becomes the repository of broken symbols, the gender lumpenprole. Woman is void, faggot is caricature. They're not roles, they're collapsed subjects. What class gets to exist as a subject? There's only ever been one. Let's name it and let's end it.
two things: 1) you mentioned other texts that inspired you; which ones are they?
2) I feel that children can fit into the kind of ternary class structure you describe here, deeply intersecting with patriarchy. Children (Subaltern) are seen as "owned" by their parents (Power) and parents can do whatever they please to children, and everyone who isnt the parent (Non-Power) must ardently defend the status of children as lesser and preserve the power of the parents, less they be attacked in turn by the parents. This is me coming up with this *right now*, so it may not make full sense but I think it may be a good start.
I think my general critique of the faggot-subaltern is that it seems to misunderstand what makes a subaltern or it misunderstands the experience of whiteness. subaltern necessarily implies invisibility within the discourse and at least in my experience as a white middle-class trans woman, my existence has been defined by hyper-visibility. Subaltern status could be applied to for instance, non-white trans sex workers or other people who are marginalized on multiple fronts but it does not apply universally to trans women, and it certainly does not apply universally on the basis of transgendered existence. There isn't necessarily a gendered subaltern imho—there may be a gendered/sexed/racial subaltern, but I would argue that has far less to do with gender/sex and far more to do with race or economic status. Maybe you could argue that intersex people (not people who have willingly become intersex i.e.: trans people) could be a sexed subaltern, I'd probably argue that, but a marginalized gender/sexual identity itself does not by itself constitute a subaltern status.
Just a side-note also, because this construction of a gendered-subaltern necessarily ignores the experience of nonwhite/poor/etc., trans women by assuming their oppression is the same as mine for instance, we necessarily center a white existence. This is just kinda weird to me? considering that the word subaltern itself was coined to discuss colonized people who live outside of the imperial core, applying it to colonizing people within the imperial core seems tone deaf. Not a real critique, but it's most of the reason why i had that initial "hm. okay." reaction to the post. This is not an attack on you or anything like that, i think this construction can be and is useful in discussing the oppression of nonwhite poor trans women, but I think we do need to decenter whiteness and the white experience of oppression when we discuss this.
TLDR: if we just include that this applies to pretty exclusively nonwhite poor trans women, or trans women who are marginalised on multiple fronts, i fully agree.
Absolutely good point. I also found it surprising that Wealth was not included as an axis of measurement for who is included in what class. I think it is pretty clear that extremely wealthy transgender people have a much higher prominence in discourse than us blue-collar and poor trannies.
Also I think it would be worth reading Talia Bhatt's new book Trans/Rad/Fem, she is all over this.
I adore this.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood, a white ethnic immigrant to a British colonial state, and how when I was a child I was treated as tho I was not “white” (using the shorthand of “white” to describe the privileged class) and how over years, as new politics rose, the drummed up fear of “the Asian invasion” and then later the “middle eastern threat” how I was inducted into being “white”. My self and a host of other Europeans, who had up to that point been seen as “non-white”, were gifted the privilege status. But of course this was contingent on us going the line and participating in the “othering” of a new group. The privilege was always something that could be taken away, a waterline that moved with the tides and the sure knowledge that I would be back on the other side of it if didn’t police “the other” as instructed.
Such is the cowardice of “whiteness”. As class consciousness grows, the privileged must induct more and more of those they oppressed in order to shore up their numbers. Dangling scraps to keep them in line. The whole thing reeks of the microcosm of school yard bullying, of mean-girl cliques and college hazing. One thing is certain, no matter how much you comply and do their dirty work, they can always take that privilege away. Here, in the nation that grew out of a British penal colony, the undercurrent that I’m really just “some dumb Irish trouble maker” is always present. And this pressure is a constant force to shape one into conformity.
"Briefly, the history of gay male SM extends back to a time-around the middle or late 1950s, later in some places- when many scenes took place between partners who very definitely did not make any overt agreement about consensuality. That would have soured the scene. Instead, what we now think of as SM scenes took place in these circles between a Top, called "a man," and a bottom, called or loudly suspected of being "a queer." The bottom/queer exposed himself to the risk of being beaten and abused by real men/Tops just by going to the bars, docks, and warehouse districts where they were found. Early gay guides labeled these places AYOR, meaning At Your Own Risk, but put the lie to the charade by listing the places at all. Over time, the men began hauling the queers together for parties where less ego-defensive drama was required to arrive at the satisfying effect both wanted. Social evolution has produced many offspring of these early habits-including the modern SM run-and most of them bear some historic apron-strings."
-- evidence for the Faggot-Subaltern Theory of gender in the vintage bdsm book Leathersex Q&A by Joseph Bean
I love this so much!!! I had a question though (sorry if it is stupid, i’m still coming to grips with thinking on a dialectical materialist basis): if {P, N-P} and {F-SA} are the two pieces whose union of opposition makes up the Gender Hegemony, and (P, N-P) are themselves the pieces whose subunion of opposition makes up the InPower group, what are the components that makes up F-SA? Would it be racialization or disability maybe? Are there any at all? Or does F-SA’a nature as a fail-state within the hegemony eclipse any class opposition whose dialogue might comprise the F-SA and set it in motion?
Again, spectacular essay!!! So genuinely refreshing to see revolutionary gender analysis in a world where practically all academic gender analysis is liberal imperialist, post-structuralist, end of history slop
Something that always stood out to me is the effect this power structure has on the perception of transmascs and transfems, with their intent being the focus; trans men are seeking power, they are presumed to make the transition to escape the "not power" zone and enter "power", which is seen as a "legitimate" reason in the eyes of transphobes, so they are treated with more understanding than transfems, which want to transfer down the power hierarchy. What reason would a man have to resign from his position of power and go into "not power" or even "F-SA" zone. There must then be a malicious reason for it, if not desperation for failing at gender entirely, which is formed into the idea that transfems are "predators" using their transition for advantage in sports, predation etc. Really interesting read!
This is a fascinating and layered discussion on gender identity, social categorization, and power structures, especially when viewed through the lens of language, queerness, and societal resistance. The framing of “faggotization” as an identity category within a gender ternary model raises compelling questions about who defines identity, who enforces it, and how marginalized groups navigate imposed structures.
Expanding on the Gender Ternary
The idea of a gender ternary—with "faggotization" as a distinct third space—seems to challenge traditional binaries while simultaneously creating a new rigid classification. Is this a natural evolution or a societal reflex, attempting to contain deviation within a new framework? Historically, queer identities have existed in fluid, evolving ways, resisting codification by dominant cultural forces. Is the creation of a third gender an empowering move, or does it risk reinforcing the same exclusionary mechanics that necessitated it?
This is something we wrestle with in The Hive Collective—a clothing-optional, freedom-oriented community that actively rejects societal control over self-expression and personal identity. In our spaces, we resist external labels and constraints, recognizing that identity should be fluid, self-defined, and liberated from institutional reinforcement. If queerness is about breaking the mold, does categorization inherently contradict that freedom?
Reclamation vs. Institutionalization
The idea of reclaiming slurs as identity markers is powerful, but also complex and potentially limiting. Words like "faggot" have been weaponized against queer people, but when reclaimed, they become tools of empowerment, resistance, and solidarity. However, at what point does reclaiming a term shift from subversive resistance to institutionalized identity?
Take Nectar Labs, for example—we’re working on tech, AI, and decentralized networks designed to return power to the individual, rather than reinforcing rigid structures. If we allow corporate, social, or political forces to define and codify queerness, does that weaken its radical potential? How do we keep the essence of queerness as an act of defiance and transformation, rather than allowing it to be commodified, boxed, and controlled?
Agency, Subversion & True Freedom
One of the biggest takeaways from this discussion is the tension between acceptance and assimilation. Historically, queerness has been both an identity and an action—a constant process of questioning, resisting, and reshaping societal norms. If mainstream society accepts queerness only by forcing it into neatly defined boxes, is that true progress or simply another form of control?
This is something we constantly think about in our community-building efforts—how do we create spaces that are truly free rather than just slightly less restrictive? The Hive Collective’s model is about radical self-expression, the rejection of imposed labels, and the embracing of personal authenticity. Can queerness remain subversive and free while being widely accepted? Can it exist outside of codified identity markers while still maintaining its power and meaning?
Final Thoughts
This discussion touches on something deeply relevant to both personal and collective liberation. We’re building a physical and digital space where people can exist as they are, without needing to fit into society’s predefined roles—whether that’s in terms of gender, sexuality, technology, or personal expression.
But the question remains:
Does queerness lose its power when it is defined by the very structures it seeks to dismantle?
Or can we create an entirely new paradigm—one where identity is not dictated, but lived freely?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
📞 Let’s connect: 727-699-4023
🔗 Join The Hive Collective: facebook.com/groups/nectarlabs/