i’m a wild and an untamed thing. i’m a bee with a deadly sting.

– Dr. Frank N. Furter

liberals have co-opted the term “queer”. the assimilationists insist on slotting a Q into their LGBT_+ slogans and signs. the very “movement” (if you can call the push for myopic legislation, and corporate rainbow-branding a “movement”) that we set out to distance ourselves from, and criticize, has now almost entirely subverted queer subversion, and absorbed the terminology of queer dissent into its bloated parade of rainbows and cops.

our movement was kickstarted by ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Queers: Read This pamphlet, and was further shaped by Gay Shame parades, Bash Back! pink-and-black blocs, the “queer negativity” of No Future and Bædan, the Queers Fucking Queers dance-party-riots, essays put out by the Mary Nardini Gang, and, more recently an “orgy of vandalism” in San Francisco.

reference to these pillars of queer rebellion is not intended to be taken as an attempt to deify anyone involved, or to imply that we agree with everything said by every one of them, but to establish a history and trajectory.

since the inception of the movement, “queer” has always signified rejection of, and opposition to, not only straight society, but also all the ways cishet norms have been adopted into the LGBT+ scene.

We will fight both against heterosexism as well as the assimilationist gay mainstream.

– Bash Back! DC (in a flier introducing themselves)

there are several ways liberalism has wormed its way into queer resistance, seeking to supplant subversive ideas with progressive ones.

now, as much as ever, queer violence is needed to put an end to the queerphobic violence that’s directed toward us every day, but the gays won’t stop claiming that “violence is not the answer” and extolling the virtues of civil democratic society, as if civilization and democracy aren’t what got us here in the first place. now, more than ever, queer nihilism is needed to dismantle the identity frameworks that are constantly forced on us, but we keep hearing that “all genders are valid”, often from people ironically labelling themselves and their platforms as “queer”.

it’s long past time for a Judith Butlerian Jihad

republican talking heads are pushing for trans identity to, again, be labeled by psychiatrists as a mental illness. to an extent—we agree! the illness is called gender, and no one is exibiting symptoms more strongly than the cissies fantasizing about institutionalizing trans people.

some of those same conservatives insist that doctors are brainwashing kids into being trans. we counter; it’s not just kids! they’re brainwashing adults into their gender ideology too! we’ve experienced it ourselves, with doctors, therapists and psychiatrists who simply refused to take “No.” for an answer to the question of whether we identify as men or women.

many people are unable to get hormone therapy or surgery—denied autonomy over their own bodies—unless they conform to transgender ideology. yes, doctors are brainwashing people to be trans. but, probably not cis people. they just want queers to give up our gender-nihilism in favor of a more traditional trans identity. the liberals are trying to brainwash us to be more conservative.

while it should go without saying, we don’t expect any of our opponents who got their hands on this diatribe to have the necessary analytical skills to grasp the nuances here, so we will reluctantly clarify; any real agreement with the reactionaries would imply an acceptance of the foundations their views are built on—gender, the idea of “mental health” put forward by the DSM—and support for the institutions they’re invoking—the mental health industrial complex—all of which we wholeheartedly oppose. we don’t agree with the fascists on anything. they just have a tendency to blindly stumble backwards into positions that could almost be taken as technically correct, if they’re stripped of all context and deeper meaning.

even our own statement—that gendered people, as a whole, are mentally ill—risks endorsing the mental health framework that was established by capitalism, partly to marginalize and medicalize queers. maybe this is what CrimethInc. meant about aporia? who knows.

and of course, the rhetoric of trans identity as mental illness is really an attack on all gender-nonconforming people, and could have a wide range of effects, starting of course with elimination of access to HRT and body-altering surgeries, and extending to children being medicated and brainwashed into cis identity, then potentially to things like incarceration as involuntary commitment in psych wards on the grounds that someone may be a danger to themself if they want to get genital-altering surgery, or even a danger to others if, for instance, trans people are also labeled terrorists…

as far as we’re concerned,

being any gender is a drag

we “agree” that trans-gender is silly, but no moreso than cis-gender is. and, at least trans people had the self awareness to question the label they were assigned, and the courage to defy it, in spite of a hostile world that threatens their lives every day for doing so.

there is a common assumption that all of us who are not cisgengered share the same, or similar views regarding gender. nothing could be further from the truth. if we define “trans” as “identifying as a different gender from the one assigned at birth“, there is an inherent and permeating point of contention between the trans and queer positions.

We view queer as the blurring of sexual and gender identities. Queer is the refusal of fixed identities. It is a war on all identity.

– Bash Back! (in the introduction to Queer Ultraviolence)

a transman attends a pride march, and is disgusted to see marchers holding signs quoting RuPaul; “we’re born naked and the rest is drag!” the transman confronts the disrespectful revellers with the accusation that their rhetoric is insensitive to the trans community, and minimizes their experiences and struggle. the signholders respond with a question; what is gender, if not a performance? to the transman, it’s a deeper essential part of one’s selfhood and lived experience, and it’s treated as something sacred, which these marchers have specifically set out to profane. the gender-nihilists are accused of transphobia, the transman is accused of gender-essentialism, and in response, grabs at the signs, trying to tear them in half. fists fly, someone gets bitten, everyone involved is accused of bigotry.

a liberal Ally™ sees this conflict and interjects that it’s our moral obligation to respect all identities. a queer sees the commotion and insists that, no, in this instance—and possibly only in this instance—RuPaul is essentially correct; our task is to subvert all identities, as well as the sociopolitical machinery that produces them.

this isn’t a hypothetical fictional scenario, but a real life conflict we’ve witnessed, and been involved with, several times. one particularly irate transwoman once tried to have me killed for saying gender is fake. i’m gonna keep saying it.

in a book criticising queer analysis, trans author Julia Serano writes; “If one more person tells me that ‘all gender is performance’ I think I am going to strangle them.” they go on to insist that it’s easy to make assertions like that when you aren’t (for instance) facing the threat of being sent to a men’s prison, despite occupying a position on the femme side of the gender spectrum. we respond by questioning what world Julia has been living in, in which genderqueers aren’t doing HRT and undergoing the same surgeries as trans people? in what world are queers safe from sexual violence? when has cissexism ever left gender-abolitionists unharmed?

a neo-nazi once tried to stab me for my “gender presentation”. after breaking their face, i had to run from the cops responding to calls from spectators. another time, my gender-deviance attracted the attention of a group of about 7 or 8 straggots armed with baseball bats. luckily i was carrying pepper spray that time. they couldn’t bash me very well while blind and choking. unluckily, another onlooker called the cops, and i had to disappear again. i could tell more stories, and others have had a much harder time than me, but, tragically, those with the most upsetting stories are no longer here to tell them. the only reason i can tell my stories is that i’ve been fairly lucky, all things considered. point is, queers are not safe from the violence transpeople have to deal with.

we get attacked by transphobes on one side for “being trans”, and thenattacked by trans people on the other side for “being transphobic”.

it’s easy to write off criticisms of people with a worldview that contradicts your own if you simply imagine that they haven’t been through what you have, and therefore, you reason, they have nothing of consequence to add to the discussion. but that’s not reality.

many will say—have said—don’t queers and transfolx have more in common, in terms of struggles and goals, than they have against one another? to these people we say; we thought so too! you might want to tell that to the transpeople who keep accusing us of transphobia, and trying to silence us and exclude us from “progressive” spaces, every time we criticize gender.

and to the handful of trans-shitlibs who nonsensically accuse queers of adopting a gender-nihilist stance as an excuse to indulge in a secret inclination toward transphobia; get over yourselves. your genders are no more offensive or absurd to us than those of Andrew Tate, JK Rowling, Lierre Keith¹, and Jeffrey Star. but our response to their gender rhetoric is generally delivered with a brick or a baseball bat.

there are, of course, many people who use the word “trans” more broadly, to mean “anything other than cis”, which, of course includes queers. but “trans”, when conceptualized as an alternate identity within a gender framework that oppresses all of us (what Monique Wittig called “the myth”²), and especially when those trans people are willing to fight to defend that oppressive structure, must be recognized as a reactionary component of the status quo. trans represents progressive gender-reform whereas queer represents anarchic gender-nihilism.

there are two queer genders;

The Creative Nothing³ And The Destructive Nothing⁴

Against the safe interpretations offered by the academy and its theorists, we embark on an elaboration of queer negativity that means nothing less than the destruction of the civilized world.

– Bædan

Trump’s FBI has established a new vocabulary for gender-deviant terrorists; NVE’s, or Nihilistic Violent Extremists—”individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability”—proving once again that the fascists, who aim to eradicate us, understand us better than the liberals who aim to assimilate us. only, in repeatedly describing the people they’re referring to here as trans, they show that they’ve conflated trans people with queers.

Many blame queers for the decline of this society—we take pride in this. Some believe that we intend to shred-to-bits this civilization and its moral fabric—they couldn’t be more accurate. We’re often described as depraved, decadent, and revolting—but oh, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

– Mary Nardini Gang

there are, undoubtedly, some kindred spirits who identify as trans, who also fit perfectly in the FBI’s description of NVEs—words can be tricky, and identities like “trans” are used by a wide variety of people—but the definition provided for NVEs is almost verbatim the way queers have been defining ourselves, and our insurgency, for decades.

obviously we won’t act surprised that they’re labeling us terrorists, and accusing us of wanting to destroy society when we state that we’re terrorists out to destroy society. but, by the same token, they can’t reasonably pretend to be surprised that we want to destroy a society that’s built to oppress and kill us.

it’s late 2025. in the past few months, in the US, science and healthcare have been derailed, trans prisoners have been moved to the prisons associated with the genders they were assigned at birth, the LA Pride office was vandalized, Daquane “Dream” Johnson was shot dead in Washington DC for being trans, four people were arrested on felony charges in Florida for putting rainbow chalk on a crosswalk, and most recently, Amtrak security has been arresting hundreds of people in their “cruising crackdown“; which even New York senators have condemned as “Stonewall era tactics”, and at least 20 of those arrested have been turned over to ICE for deportation, illuminating clearly the intersectionality of queer and anti-racist struggles.

expanding our view globally…Ciara Watkin was recently imprisoned for “sexual assault” for “lying about their biological sex” to a sexual partner in the UK…which is exactly the sort of ruling UK queers warned us about when courts there redefined physical sex to legally refer to the sex assigned at birth, earlier this year. in Ghana, queerbashing attacks are on the rise, paralleling the intensification of prison sentences for not being straight. any non-hetero sex act there can now lead to a three-year prison sentence, while production or distribution of materials deemed to “promote homosexuality” can land people in prison for up to ten years. any non-cishet identity or behavior still carries a death sentence in many places in the Middle East and some African nations, and in other places, it’s punishable with a prison sentence – which for many queers is just a death sentence by another name.

the gays tell us that violence begets violence, and will only lead to the conservatives branding us all terrorists and coming after us—which, of course, is exactly what they’re already doing!

“queer” has always meant terrorist. queers are the sexual and gender deviants who, when faced with the choice to lie down and die, or fight back, choose to fight. we know, as well as anyone, that we very well may still die. some of the best of us already have. but if we’re lucky, we can take some of those smug bastards down with us.

sviluppate la vostra legittima stranezza

the first edition of the DSM classified “sexual deviation” (including specifically “pathologic behavior, such as homosexuality, transvestism….”) under the heading of “sociopathic personality disturbance”. while that specific entry has been removed in more recent editions, the medicalization of queerness continues, unchanged, under different names, like Antisocial Personality Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. everything that defines the queer position—rejection of social norms, sex-positivity, defiance of authority, and a willingness to fight back against a hostile world—these are the traits that the concept of “mental illness” was invented to attack.

the DSM-1 spelled this intention out clearly when it said “Judgment that a given behavior is abnormal and requires clinical attention depends on cultural norms.” psychiatry was established, primarily, to maintain cultural norms. the reason “trans” and “homo” were removed from the DSM is that they stopped being a threat to society. and that’s the most damning thing that could be said about the movement.so instead of railing against the conservatives for being homophobic and transphobic—which, of course, they are—we’d prefer to focus (for now) on calling out the LGBT+ community for being society-apologists. get antisocial. be oppositional and defiant. “Be Gay, Do Crime” was a cute slogan, but it’s time to stop being gay and start being queer.

“queer” is a verb, meaning “subvert”

we don’t want trans people to be incarcerated in the prisons that match their identities; we want to raze every prison to the ground (after locking the cops inside them, of course!), and we don’t want acceptance within a system that arbitrates who’s considered “sane” or incapacitated, and determines what legal rights each person is entitled to on those grounds; we want to put the DSM to good use for once, as kindling when we put their asylums to the torch.

“queer” is not “spicy gay” or a catch-all for LGBT+ identities, but a rejection of identity, and revolt against the ideologies and infrastructures that shackle physical and mental traits to arbitrary categorical boxes. we recognize gender itself as a product of sexism, and we fight for a future in which no one is required to choose one of two (or even three!) ambiguous, amorphous labels to define themself on a government ID…in which science and medicine are not inhibited by vague terminology like man/woman, female/male, etc., which fail to take into account the complexity and diversity of bodies…a world in which no one is told how they must dress or behave, what body parts they must or must not have, and what lifestyle, aesthetics, personality traits, and lovers are acceptable for them, based on what genitals they were born with.

Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability — an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity.

– Mary Nardini Gang

every component of our modern world was shaped by religions that condemn us to death for our desires and our refusal to conform to the lives their gods deem proper for us, yet countless gay, bi, and trans people continue to defend a society that hates us. they spend so much time trying to prove to the authorities that their propaganda is wrong that they never consider the idea that they’d be better off proving them right! the traditional queer flag is pink and black, but that’s redundant; a black flag is already inherently queer. the negation represented by a black flag is precisely what defines the queer project, and any anarchist, nihilist, or egoist philosophy that isn’t fundamentally queer simply is not logically consistent. anarchists refuse to allow their lives to be shaped by any ruler—corporeal or abstract—that has to include gender roles and social norms. nihilists aim to negate every convention and subvert all forms of oppression; if their analysis stops at desire and identity, they just aren’t nihilistic enough. and all egoists know that gender is a spook.

Feuerbach raises the question: ‘Are you also more than male?,’ one must indeed write off the entire masculine position.

– Max Stirner

queers are nihilists. we are violent. anything that wouldn’t be regarded as “extremist” by society’s defenders isn’t extreme enough to qualify as queer.

we despise capitalism, and religion, and the society they’ve created. the reactionaries are right about us. but they’re trying to paint everyone who’s not one of them as one of us. if you’re reading this and you’re not a queer, it’s time to change that. shed your gender(s) and your morals and inhibitions, and anything else that places limits on your endless potentialities, and start fighting back. you’re getting queerjacketed by the nazis either way. at this point, you have nothing to lose but your virginity.

this world has denied us the possibility of being safe.

so don’t be safe. be dangerous.

on second thought,

we are renaming this piece to The

Manifesto of the Nihilistic Violent Extremist Party

and we cordially lecherously welcome you to the NVEP. these are our points of unity;

• sex is cool.
• the choice to not have sex is also cool. both choices are equally cool, so long as they’re made freely, and not coerced or forced.
• any ideology that attempts to instill shame for sex or sexual desire is not cool.
• i’m being informed by my sappier comrades that love and romance are also cool. imagine the previous bullet points repeated, with sex swapped out for love.
• we fight (with whatever means are available to us) for bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and the destruction of any systems, ideologies, and people attempting to limit our self-expression, or punish us for breaking their parochial rules.

we have no membership dues or hierarchical structure. if you agree with our points of unity, you’re already in, and we can’t wait to see what kind of shit you’ll get up to.

if not, you have until we catch up to you to change your mind.

be queer. do terrorism. become nothing that does anything.

_{1. TERFs like Lierre Keith have attempted to co-opt the term “gender-abolitionist” for themselves. this is nonsense. cissexists like Keith fail to understand that sex (sometimes called “physical gender”) is just gender applied to physical traits. gender-abolition requires sex-abolition.}

_{2. Monique Wittig’s work repeatedly referenced what they named “the myth”; the idea that there are essential differences between men and women.}

_{3. “I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.” – Max Stirner}

_{4. “For revolt without object or measure. Towards the destructive nothing.” – CrimethInc.}