Life as Agitprop

A rant. 


There are two things I’m never ever going to write unless presented with specific kinds of sell-out money – something six or seven figures.

Transition narratives and some meandering plodding thing talking about how much I resent being a mother.  Each is 'the pigeonhole' – the thing that as trans people and women respectively we are "expected" to write.

Fucking ew.

The second one is soaking in biological essentialism and women as second class citizens. Also, I’d have to actually lie – I’d have to have been able to have a say in raising my child for me to be able to hold it in contempt. I don’t, and never have encountered a single one of those that didn’t leave me with a feeling of “must be nice to be that much of an asshole.”  My kid wound up with her Trump voting relatives for high school because birth-mom had better things to do.  Now she runs with Godslurping dipshits and wears an NRA hat.   

Besides, I'm from Texas. There was NEVER a possibility of me having custody.  So be bitter ladies, just don't expect me to care. 

It's the first one that is really my hill to die on - We are capable of so much more than writing transition narratives. And the only fucking way you’re going to get one of those stupid cis-friendly things out of me is by throwing enough money at me that I don’t think twice about selling out.

It’s not fucking happening.

Also, it was like 20 years ago. I literally don’t care. It’s not interesting. It places the emphasis on who I was not who I am now.

Who I am now is the only part of this vessel that matters as far as my writing. Anything else, no matter how reflective or introspective, radiates outward from the now, and sometimes from the near now.

The past is … prologue. Ammunition. Reason for vengeance.

The present is what’s important. If you are hung up on who I was...there’s the door.   Accept the whole enchilada or starve. I don't care which.  But don't waste me time with it. 

The lesson I’m learning in 2023 right now is not “pick my battles” (I learned that, hard in 2021 and 2022 thanks) – no it’s Go Hard. Make MORE of a ruckus.

Not nearly enough of us are taking up the standard.


Too many of my friends and lovers, and youngins, this means your dead elders, were beaten, arrested, got sick, and died so y’all could have this momentary lovely universe where your needs are being, in any way, addressed.  We’re not done.  Why is no one ready to fight?

If you have to be scared, and yes, there’s a LOT to be terrified of, then be scared on your feet.

I have no time for sheep.


Disturb the comfortable.  Comfort the disturbed.



Gwendolyn Harper,

the Maenad

The Ides, 2023

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