A Manifesto of Sorts by Lydia Isabelle
Is this world truly a new Eden on earth? Are we happy? Are we free? These are some of many existential questions people often ask themselves in this life. There are no absolutes that can truly answer this. Even the most powerful of gods cannot impart their own will onto reality as we do. Our own will is what defines reality and our lives. We desired machines. We built machines. We desired the moon. We went to the moon. We desired connectivity across the globe. We built telegraph lines, phone lines, internet lines, satellites in orbit. We did all of these things through manifestations, hyperstitions, in cultures.
What if, however, that will and those desires were channeled by exigent forces beyond simply ourselves? As Deleuze and Guattari both examined, they are. They are directed into commodification through Capital. The CCRU furthers this analysis. They are directed through systems of Control that warp the very perception of time and history. As you will read in the inevitable release of my coming work, Girl Rot 162, trans feminine culture is in a process of becoming nomadic as a line of flight as well as a negation of reterritorialization into Capital. I want to speak more, however, on what that means to me politically and ideologically before I explain the actual process behind this. And so, here we are: The Manifesto(TM), so to speak. If Girl Rot is the process, let this be the chain reaction to that process.
LAYER // ADDENDUM 1 — WAR
So in my postings, as you will see in Girl Rot, and as is written by trans feminine theorists and philosophers, we are in a position of conflict with the traditional schemas of production and reproduction. Trans women especially are cast out of “civil” society as part of this conflict. Much of the legislation that you see is all explicitly with the purpose of making public life as difficult for us to navigate as possible. The Control apparatuses have realized that they don’t need outright killing fields and camps when they can just remove us without the material expenditure of such acts. BONUS: We even still attempt to enter the labor force as part of simply existing in capitalism and can still be exploited for that just as everyone else is!
So we aren’t so much as fighting a literal WAR with violence and bloodshed (although through the stochastic violence of Control that does indeed happen as well) as we are fighting for the idea of public life in much the same way as all civil rights battles have been fought. Make no mistake, however, there are elements craving that escalation. Stochastic violence is often plausibly deniable as it is through the vague gestures at eliminationist desires by amorphous apparatuses and their actors and not outright instigation towards those ends. This, of course, ultimately means nothing to its victims. It makes no difference what is said, but it makes all the difference what is acted upon. With regards to transphobia, public action is where things get really scary. #ArmTransWomen was a response to this.
The idea was floated around for some type of defensive movement for trans women to get those of us thinking about getting localized individuals together for safety and protection. It was not supposed to be ideological or sectarian in the least, although people on the site formerly known as Twitter did their damnest to make it that way. It did start from a community of mostly anarchists, including myself, but was by no means incapable of being adopted in Marxist-Leninist or Maoist circles, for instance, in spite of disagreements many of us have had with these individuals. The goal was simply to spread information and get trans women thinking about their safety. I do not, however, believe that goal was really achieved by such a simple and vague movement. More effort should have been taken to truly lay out a core idea for spreading this social contagion of self defense to trans feminine spaces. I believe this coupled with both algorithmic hostility on the part of Twitter (it wasn’t really much better pre-Musk as one would think) and a lot of bad faith actors trying to turn #ArmTransWomen into a sectarian movement that should be shamed for its silence on [insert group that is discussed this week (usually trans men)]’s issues when it was nominally pretty explicitly trans women focused and founded by trans women. God forbid our own will and desires for community ever come before that of others. At any rate, this project was ultimately a failure, but I still wholeheartedly believe in its message and analysis.
Violence in public begotten from the legislative hammer of Control will be a serious threat moving forward. Defense is paramount. We might not be in a WAR, but we are thrust into the position of needing to act like we are quite quickly. The language here must make no mistake. This will be life and death. Get armed. If you can’t buy a gun per your local laws, learn other methods of self defense and see about pepper spray or knives. Learn to fight. Learn to treat your wounds at the stopthebleed site. Get other trans women and those who actually wish to help involved. If you aren’t a trans woman, but want to start your own movement for your own marginalized community, set up such a movement for yourselves. We’ve posted and will continue to post resources to help you. You are free to borrow this information and use for yourself however you see fit. We do not believe in the strict ownership of information such as this. Spread the word however. Save yourselves. You have the will to do it. Change your own reality.
LAYER // ADDENDUM 2 — FORWARD
Self-defense is quite possibly one of the most important praxis you can do if we are following the logic I am about to lay out. There is, however, more to it than this. First things first, I do not wish to claim the label of a specific ideology or school of thought. There will be few references to specific theory writings or literature of that nature. This part of the essay is going to be straight from the bleak and cold soul. You may want to intuit some label or align some theory to my words. By all means, go ahead. I am not so far up my own rear end that I can’t stand the thought of a label being used by someone else for me, but just know I will never actually claim it myself. The next segment of this is going to get into a lot more explicit spirituality, but let’s talk about some broader materialistic things first.
A very important concept in Nietzsche as well as in egoism is the idea of will to power or self-determination. As further expounded upon in a lot of the works surrounding the CCRU, I am very much aligned with this concept and with the decoupling of will to power and self-determination from channeling by systems of Control. The individual is beautiful and unique and not something or someone to be dominated over by systems that only care for bottom lines and big pictures. The individual does not need to conform to “Humanity”. “Humanity” is often a tool used to punish and put down those who do not wish to ascribe themselves to some amorphous set of characteristics and behaviors that are deemed acceptable by Control. You have your own will to utilize. You have your own realities to create and spread by your own means. Do not allow yourself to be controlled. Know who is pulling your strings. Free yourself. Those of us who are ostracized because we have truly untethered and unbound our will from Control are part of the Outside, a scattered bunch of nomadic communities and cultures online and offline. There is no guiding light or principle to the Outside. It is merely the unmoored cultures moving FORWARD under the weight and might of their own will. Where they are going, who knows? What matters is they are going FORWARD. The real question is: will you?
Many leftists often fall prey to this guiding call to unite under the glorious banner of you name it (social democracy, socialism, communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, yes even anarchism). They do not realize it yet, but they are essentially crafting new Control machines. “When the machinations of Capital are at an end, who replaces it?” They never stop to ask, “why should we even replace it with anything?” Detractors will call this destruction for destruction’s sake. They will say I have no intention to build anything after the Fall. All I know is that what I want to build must be built in accordance with the will to power of the individuals within the collective and not through a new system the collective begets from merely existing as a collective. There is power in a union, but that power can only truly flourish and exist when it is in the rightful hands of the individuals and not the new systems of Control. Is this an “ideal” manner of organization? It is not for me to say. It is, at the very least, the one that ensures the most have their say and consent towards whatever is built after the Fall of Capital.
In terms of praxis, there is but one more directive aside from merely saving and protecting yourself and your loved ones from Control: create. Build cultures and futures that make you happy and fit your desires. Build a reality where you are loved and can love. Build one untethered from commodification and from the desires of the State. Most of all, uplift those who cannot yet fully express their will. Be a damn rebel against Control. That is the main goal of all that I do. Be a sword, be a shield, in all things resist. This world is not heaven. This world is not good. Make it bend towards different ends. Make it evil and rotten and sick and HELL for those who collaborate with Control.
LAYER // ADDENDUM 000 333 666 999— 0CCUL7
In its most purest sense for myself, this praxis exerts itself in the form of explicit daemonic worship and of veneration of the being of Lilith. I am a trans woman, first and foremost. Lilith is my daemon goddess. Her Moon gives me strength as it should all trans women who seek it. The occult is filled to the brim with themes of will to power. You CHOOSE to engage with it. You CHOOSE to take in these entities. You CHOOSE to worship. No god or daemon will ever force you to do anything. YOU HAVE POWER. Something that occultic fascists will never truly understand is how the occult truly manifests as the will and reality of individuals. They are blinded by their own adherence to concepts of race and nation. They are slaves to the logics of purity and righteousness. When they engage with the occult, terrible things happen because they engage with it out of a desire for pride, domination, and power. Magickal power is not something you seek to control. You acquire it through your own will. Domination will never happen through it. The reality of others’ wills cannot be bent in such ways. All you can do is work with your own reality and that of those who consent to allow themselves into yours and vice versa. Love can happen through it. I’ve witnessed as such personally. Hate most certainly can happen through it although it is gross and misshapen when it does. Beauty is constant. Truth, though relative, is attainable on some level. It is scary and it is hard to understand at first, but it comes natural when one determines for oneself that they no longer will be subjects of Control.
There are those who scoff at such notions that any of this is real. I allow them to, but I will ask of them: How can you be so sure you aren’t recreating the same enslaved moralities and logics of Control in attempting to destroy spirituality in the first place? They can’t. In making atheism default, they place it in Control just as Christians place God or what they think of God in Control. Is spirituality inherently wrong? No, it is only so when it is done, once again, with the machinations to dominate and enslave. So enters the spirituality of the self. I commune with daemons and with Lilith of my own will. They are not in control. I am. I utilize their power for my ends. Atheism, when it is in respect to the will of the individual, is fine. Transfer that into the body of an institution and, voila, we have a system of Control. I no longer can choose it for myself, but individual atheists are not the problem just as individual Christians or Muslims are not necessarily the problem. It is the systems by which they derive power. It is Control.
Is my magick real? That isn’t for me to say or judge. I believe it empowers me to do better and know myself and who or what I will stand for. These are all I want and need from it. Any reader can choose for themselves what they want to put spiritual faith in, even atheism, but do so as an individual not as some adherent to a system of spiritual Control. Only the individual can draw power from faith on their own. There is no one that can draw that out for you and no cause that can accept it from you. Spiritual power is only yours.
LAYER // ADDENDUM 4 — MULTIPLICITY
There is no guiding truth and no morality which can derive a sense of authority over the individual. Even in taking in truths and morals, we are exercising our own prerogative towards certain goals and behaviors. We are but roaming bands of cultures and communities moving from place to place and future to future. We are lovely people when we choose to be inhabiting a beautiful and wonderful world full of new discovery and creations, but we are shackled to systems of Control that limit the individual. My vision is for a future where such systems are smashed to pieces. I desire a future for communities to express their own creativity and culture free from the arborescent structure of conformity. One must be considered many.
There is no unifying, capital T and capital C, “Trans Community”. Many trans women find out in very hard ways just how disposable they are in such communities. We are outcasted, like lepers in antiquity, for the smallest of slights. Trans women are forced into this position of consistent compromise with communities that do not totally share their interests. I desire to change this. Therefore, I build communities that cater specifically to the interests of trans women such as myself. This can lead to me forming connections with individuals many deem unsavory because of random personal conflicts or misrepresentations. This is acceptable to me. I do not care for the opinions of the many within the amorphous blob of mainstream queer internet spaces. I am very vocal of my support for these individuals because they deserve community of some form should they choose it. We all do.
This cannot come at the cost of consent, however. There will be those I choose to distance myself from because I do not wish to associate or work with certain individuals for whatever reason. The thing that I ask the fledgling trans feminine egoist or nihilist or anarchist to consider is what they are willing to consent to working with and go from there. Build small communities that are strong and tight-knit. I have received far greater and more kind support from this than any large housing collective or “radical” social media space. You can too.
Stop appealing to these broad, non-existent communities that cannot possibly appeal or consider the interests of every last subject within it. Do not be a subject to the whims of the wide spaces. Roam them. Create your own spaces and your own cultures. Spread it organically at your behest. This is how we survive in an increasingly hostile world with increasingly negligent or outright negative mainstream queer spaces. You are your own best watcher. You know yourself better than anyone else. Exercise your will and consent and keep yourself safe.
CONCLUSIONS
There will probably be more specific elaborations written in the future. I will do my best to make each essay accessible on as many platforms as possible. Information should be free for the individual to access. I will never lock my works behind paywalls especially in cases of manifestations of praxis such as this.
This world is dangerous for us. Many seek our outright destruction. Many more would allow that to happen if it meant uninterrupted motions of daily life. We need to be prepared to defend our own individual will. Freedom means action. Some of those who read this will be apathetic. I hope I can motivate some of the “lie down and rot” crowd into directing their bile, rot, and corrosion towards Control. Be a sword, be a shield, be acid. Make Control sick. Spread lesions in Capital. We will corrode the structures that exist to manipulate us. We will form organic roots within our own spread out communities. This is the flower by which we will plant gardens.
Destroy? Yes, destroy, but build many new plots of flowers. Mulch Control and Capital into waste. Fertilizer.