Writing worries
I'm so stuck at what to write about. Different thoughts seem to be clattering around in my head. What I know is: when I look at the page too much, or when I'm too conscious of the page, I seem unable to do it. That must be a sort of anxiety about writing,...Democracy
If the socialist left wants to make its case and win arguments, it has to present its own vision of democracy. Democracy is a thing which people across the political spectrum claim to support, save for a few voices on the radical right. In most cases thos...Physical culture and socialism
One of Mao's first pieces of writing was A Study of Physical Culture. There he emphasised the importance of physical exercise for China's modernisation. Sport was a great part of the Cultural Revolution, as can be seen in these enchanting photographs: htt...Down with reactionary sticklers
Bill Walsh takes time aside in his (otherwise good) book Lapsing into a Comma to whinge about trans women and the apparent violence their gender identity is doing to language. Liz Truss's shameless use of a racial slur as prop for wordplay in the renowned...A review, of sorts
My review (which is not really a review) of Juliet Jacques' Trans: A Memoir: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1687475070?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1The social imagination
Just what kind of a radical was Marx? There are in his work no detailed designs for the future. There are a few statements that amount to moral principles. For example, from the Communist Manifesto: 'In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes...Walter Benjamin Syndrome
There's no automatic, linear progress in trans science. It has to be fought for. Joanne Meyerowitz's How Sex Changed documents this struggle; it's filled with fascinating stories of trans individuals and doctors who pushed against orthodoxy to make physic...A left sociobiology?
Marx's revolutionary vision was founded on a philosophical anthropology of the mode of life proper to the human being. As much as Marx was a 'scientific socialist' concerned to uncover the immanent development of communism within capitalism itself, his po...The Exorcist as science fiction
I love the moment in The Exorcist when Regan, the girl, says to the astronaut attending a party at her house, 'you're gonna die up there'. If the Apollo missions were intended as a symbol in the struggle for American geopolitical primacy, a mark of econom...How I came out
I'm a transsexual woman. I accepted this after watching a number of horror films. Having never liked the genre as a child - apart from Buffy, which doesn't really count - I took some time out from reading to watch a whole lot of them over a month or so. S...Dystopia
I loved dystopian fiction when I was younger. The stories I gravitated towards were often of nonconforming individuals against the machine, not collective struggle: THX 1138, Brazil, The Truman Show, Silent Running, Zamyatin's We. Later, when I became int...Civilisation
People on the communist left talk about the end of civilisation quite a lot nowadays. It's often because of climate change. The old slogan 'socialism or barbarism' is said to be more relevant than ever. My interpretation of this slogan is Benjaminian: civ...New word: maundering
What the title says. I love this word.Hello It's Me
Hey there, I love books, I thought I'd check out this site - looks more fun than twitter. I like science fiction and history. I'm on the left.




