Who am I? An abbreviated introducction

Fire, Magic, Madness, and Change!

The Maenad is a transgender goddess who creates art with words, pictures, motion, and flesh

The Maenad (She/her/hers, also My Dread Majesty,, or simply my Queen) is the pen name of Gwendolyn Harper a Maenad, perceptual explorer, supernaut,  and Class V Full Roaming Slut who writes poetry, prose, rules, and essays.  Her work has appeared @fahmidanjournal @redplanetmag @wickedgayways @365tomorrows, the Gongfarmer’s Almanac and Madwomen in the Attic. Her first chapbook, the Ishtar Cycle, is forthcoming from @lupercaliapress

An independent DIY e-publisher, model, camgirl, and sex worker, the Maenad writes about gender, class, sex, inequality, mental illness, and the intersection of these points, sometimes also writing about culture, games, space, futurism, and the human condition. Thinking of other worlds and how best to help this one 

Trans queer poly kinked, mad, and Proud,

Troublemaker

Everyone gets liberated or not at all”

No nazis

Fuck gender

Black lives matter

Find her 

@dreaminggynoid

https://dreaming-gynoid.itch.io/

https://www.patreon.com/DreamingGynoid

https://maenadicbonegarden.blogspot.com/

This place is pretty much a placeholder post until I get this site more firmly established.  Sorry for all the short hand.  

Something more practical - 

An early beacon that helped me get to where I am was when Madwomen in the Attic liked Maenadum enough to make me their featured writer for May of this year.    I think this is a good introduction to, overall, where my work has been to this point.   It's a  good introduction to what I've been scribbling about in the last  year.  

Here is the link - https://madintheattic.org/2021/05/17/gwendolyn-harper/

Please check Madwomen in the Attic out!   I don't mean my stuff.   (Well not just.)   Mad pride

Okay so a lot (most) of my verse and poetrics, espeically7 to this point have dealt with a fairly  narrow selection of topics.  

Medical abuse

Trauma

Transphobia

Psychiatric abuse  

Connecting with my inner Goddess (yes I am serious)

Sacred sexuality

Trauma recovery 

Liberation

However briefly, let me unpack those.

 Medical abuse -

Trauma -

Transphobia -

Psychiatric abuse - All of these are all tied up because of Things.  I am almost 50 but I am unashamed to say that I am still sorting all of this out.   Things that went on for years intersected with other worse things that happened periodically but were abominations.   In a light patina of vague parenting, early 80s “education,” and enough Haldol and a galaxy of other drugs to medicate an elephant being given to a child of seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.   Induced seizures, experimental drug therapies, oh and a lot of hot spicy sexual abuse and rape.  Super double bonus points for being the first medical – psychiatric people I ever mentioned my gender to (and the last for nearly thirty years)

A hot tangled mess full of overlapping trauma memory tricks and soil fertile for scores of later people to gaslight me with as an adult for the rest of my life.  

Connecting with my inner Goddess as both a psychiatric (Jungian) tool and, honestly, my path to spirituality.   This is strongly influenced by the path I took to get here.

Sacred sexuality as a way of trauma recovery, also as a tool of liberation, and a celebration of life itself.

Trauma recovery, which is a thing I’ve needed all my life but did not acknowledge or allow until I was in my forties.  It also strongly informs my views on 

Liberation – liberation. LIBERATION.  LIBERATION FOR ALL. Liberation for me, for mine, for you, for yours, for theirs, and theirs, and hers, and his, and everyone.  Liberation at all times, liberation is elevation, freedom, and agency for all. IN this are all my politics contained – I am not left or up or right or whatever, I am following the words of Bruce Lee

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.