Knowledge runs down.

“Anything that says ‘manifesto,’ just stay away,” my brother says. “Back away slowly.”

I have been ranting about Females.

He is right. If my goal was to be pleasant and relaxing for my family to be around, not getting “riled up” by manifestos could help.

Andrea Long Chu says a manifesto is “too serious to be taken seriously.” And, paradoxically, “its call to action is just that: a call, not an act, desire spilling over the lip of the text like too much liquid” (p. 20).

She claims that Females is not a manifesto. “I thought at first of writing this book … in the style of a manifesto,” she writes. “Short, pointed theses, oracular, and outrageous.”

Andrea’s urge to be outrageous marks “a preference for indefensible claims, for following our ambivalence to the end, for screaming when we should talk and laughing when we should scream” (p. 20-21).

Although Andrea’s writing is frequently bizarre and undecipherable, at least for me, I feel she is a kindred spirit who has been told she is being too loud at least as much as me.

After viewing a play, she says that her friends, “let me rant. They had come to expect this kind of behavior from me. Feminism, they thought.”

“This kind of behavior” is what I am also known for.

Even on the holidays when my mother supposes I should be creating a warm and non-controversial environment in which my grandparents, uncle, and cousin can spout ignorant, sexist and oppressive ideologies.

Being an insufferable feminist is a slur. It’s a threat, too, of isolation. “You can’t sit with us if you make us think too hard, or be too conscientious,” it says.

I take pride in challenging people – it is one of my favorite activities. And it does make me exhausting, even to myself sometimes. But it’s the truest way I know to be myself.

Does Andrea think being true matters?

She seems to endorse a hypothetical world in which gender is meaningless, in which art is nothing, really. Because there is no femaleness AKA capitulation to the desires of another. So there can be no “gender” or “art” because these depend upon desirousness to another.

The man who disappointed me with his distaste for Andrea’s bizarre approach to philosophy took issue with the idea of no more art. “Expression is important,” he said.

I agree… but Andrea’s not saying self-expression is not important or valuable or even “good.” I think she would argue that it’s all female, though. There is no such thing as expression for ourselves – only objectifying ourselves for the desires of others.

Is that bad or okay or good or just true and immovable, Andrea?

(I am here being female in desiring for Andrea to tell me what to think rather than answering this question for myself.)

Females is certainly provocative.

And I do hope to answer this and other questions for myself, Andrea. See? Approve of me being less female please… oh no, look I’m being female again.

Is the lesson a Buddhist one? (And here I mean the lesson I am attempting to draw out, not one that Andrea intended because I don’t think she did intend a moral takeaway.)

Buddhism teaches that attachment creates suffering and one should try to be less attached. Certainly that includes attachment to how one is viewed by others. Is attachment the same as femaleness?

Ah, this is what man-who-disappointed was gesturing at when he brought up intimacy. Is intimacy inherently female? To be intimate with someone, do you have to sacrifice to their desire?

If we are all female, are we always being female or is it an underlying condition that only applies sometimes?

If I am trying to deeply learn something because I am delighted by learning, but I have also received positive external feedback for learning new things in the past, can I learn something in a non-female way? Where I am not doing it for external validation?

The benefit of stark, radical writing is there is a lot to push against. You can’t simply agree and move on. There are layers and idiosyncrasies to dissect.

I started listening to an episode of the podcast The Dig where Andrea Long Chu discusses a project to analyze Sex and the City. She refers to the series as a “bad object.”

A bad object is one that does not hide its messaging – there aren’t deeper layers to unpack (it initially seems) and it is a “guilty pleasure” kind of experience. The creators don’t seem to have a social or political or academic agenda, just an economic or fanciful one.

All my favorite writing takes bad objects and takes them seriously. The silliness of Teen Wolf is just as worthy of deeper analysis as the serious social analysis of Parasite.

A manifesto is a good object and a bad one. It is silly in its seriousness. It says what it means right on the surface, and can’t help but create depth and nuance in what it doesn’t say.

(I love Andrea for her extensive use of italics.)

A manifesto is like a teenager. It thinks it knows what is real and true, but in its passionate adherence to that truth, it overlooks other truths and often base reality.

Teenagers are often mocked for their emotional reactivity, impulsivity, and the gravity with which they approach every moment. But I love to live in that age. I still think I’m both more and less capable of serious thought than I truly am. I still take too much in earnest and am cynical at the wrong times.

Is this why I love reading and writing diaries? Teenagers can’t help revealing themselves in everything they do. They aren’t yet practiced at hiding their motives, fears, and insecurities.

Somehow I missed out on attaining that adult skill of superficial chit chat and being less than who you are.

Sometimes I notice myself trying, and am ashamed. In the end, the truth about me always comes out, though, like reading my diary to everyone I interact with.

I have both valorized or condemned that feature of my mind. In general, I think it makes me a better person.

What would Andrea have to say about the concept of a “better person”?

Ah, there I go again.

Love and italics,
Jordie

P.S. I bet trans theory would help me understand why using a different name on here and in kink allows me to feel more like myself when I write.