How to fight fascism

I felt annoyed when my friend texted me in a panic about losing her job with the federal government. She wanted me to call my representatives. I live in Alabama. My representatives are the problem.

I felt angry when I saw yet another post from another friend complaining about Instagram censoring their art. I raged, silently, at the hashtag #dontdeleteart. Because, I added, it’s fine to delete porn. (I like getting mad at things people haven’t actually said.) Art is different. Fuck me, a pornographer. But art, art is worth saving.

Also, the guy who runs CPAC keeps sexually assaulting young men. Because of course he does.

I didn’t write much about porn bans or free speech or digital privacy over the past year or so because I wasn’t making porn or doing sex work. It wasn’t my lane anymore.

Then, after getting back on OnlyFans, I thought about organizing local sex workers. I thought about it after I realized, watching Clean Slate, that I didn’t know that I knew one single solitary Black trans woman in all of North Alabama. Maybe, I thought, I’ll start a local SWOP chapter. Then I remembered the email I sent when I first moved to Alabama.

I looked for it for a long time. In essence, I had asked a lawyer I found on Google or something whether OnlyFans was legal in Alabama. He told me, in essence, that he’d have to look at every image I posted to determine its legality and that was a task his wife would likely prefer he didn’t take on. It was a very cute and sweet way for a stranger to confirm that I had chosen to reside in a fascist hellhole of a state.

My ability to make a living and stay out of jail depends on the powers that be continuing to leave me alone. If they couldn’t get me on Alabama’s obscenity laws they could get me, surely, on a million other things. Civil asset forfeiture empowers the police to steal my computers, my boyfriend’s car, anything of value. They don’t even need to charge me with a crime. No one is required to even pretend I’m any kind of threat to anyone. They don’t even have to choose among the thousands of technicalities available to them to justify economically disemboweling me. They can just do it. Anytime.

I’ve been saying it for years now, that sex workers are the canaries in the coal mine of censorship, fascism, scapegoating, and moral panics. It’s never been about porn – for us or for them.

The same people who are coming for the sluts, who are making the war on porn the new war on drugs, they will come for you too. The Nazis burned academic books about trans people for the same reason Alabama is legislating who “counts” as a woman. It’s the same reason Meta is allowing Nazis while censoring nipples. It’s the same reason the right is redefining masculinity away from any trait that is remotely admirable or noble.

A fascist cannot allow anyone to question the hierarchies of identity because they cannot withstand any level of honest interrogation.

Why should men, especially men who are not even masculine, lead? What makes a person “native?” Who gets to count as a man? What does skin color have to do with fitness? What makes the immigrant with six kids who works two jobs less “American” than the white 26-year-old playing video games in his mom’s basement? What is the exact, defining difference between art and porn? How is wife-shopping in a developing country different from paying for sex with extra steps?

In a capitalist hellscape, the people in charge pretend to care about merit. We all act as if it just so happens that the best and brightest are also mostly white, straight, cis, heterosexual, good Christian monogamous husbands and fathers. Or, they’re at least willing and able to play the part.

In a fascist hellscape, the people in charge take off their masks. They’re in charge because they’re white. Or if they’re not white, at least they’re straight. And if they’re not white or straight, at least they’re cis. So on and so forth. Or, they are, at least, willing and able to play the part.

It doesn’t make sense. But it doesn’t need to because everyone who questioned it is paid off, disappeared, disemboweled, or sitting quietly and hoping that the powers that be keep deciding they’re not worth the modicum of effort it would require to shut them up for good.

The guy who runs CPAC keeps sexually assaulting young men. Being a man will not save you. Being white, straight, cis, heterosexual, Christian, monogamous, married, a parent. These people do not care about art or science or literature or music or talent or skill or merit or morality. Nothing will save you but compliance and luck. The leopards are eating faces out here. If delusion stops keeping you in line, fear will. If fear fails, they have other ways.

I’m mad at everyone else because I’m just like them.

There’s a small part of me, a part that used to be bigger, that loves the idea of someone coming in and just cutting everything down and starting over. Elon Musk is just a tankie whose accidental self-immolation is happening in public and in slow-motion. He’s teenage Cathy bringing home a “Don’t just rebel, start a revolution” bumper sticker and not understanding why her mom lost her shit. You put me in public school in Alabama. Of course I didn’t know any history.

At almost 40, I know that even a fascist dictator starts with foreign aid because it’s got the smallest, least powerful lobby. No one had indiscriminately and immediately cut foreign aid yet because they knew it would literally kill people. There are always reasons, both good and bad, that things get and stay fucked up in a complex system. Anyone with a heart wants to burn the fucking system to the ground. Anyone with a brain knows that the reason you protect the fucking system is that existing at the mercy of any person who is willing to watch untold numbers of people die over a miniscule portion of the federal budget is worse.

The only people who genuinely want revolution have never read any history whatsoever or rightly see that any system that even pretends to reward merit will always exclude them from the power they believe they deserve based on who they think they are.

I’m angry because I’m learning the truth about myself in real time. I’m no hero. I’m not even a villain. I’m just another person who will start texting my friends, shouting for help, when they come for me, directly. In the meantime, I’m keeping my head down. I’m keyboard warrioring. I’m mostly complying and hoping my luck continues. Just like everyone else.

We cannot post our way out of fascism. We must find the helpers, right here wherever we live. Show up to the protests. Get involved in mutual aid. I’m raising money for a homeless shelter. Here are 30 more actions you can take.

My default is to feel like I’m never doing enough. I feel that way right now. But that’s a hard way to live. There’s an equally motivating, and far more pleasant, way to see myself.

Here’s my best piece of advice for how to fight fascism right now. Celebrate yourself lavishly for every single tiny act of resistance. Did you wear something gender non-conforming today? Fuck yes. Did you leave the house at all for any reason for any amount of time? Incredible work, comrade. Did you make pornography? Or just look at it? Yes. We love that. Did you hold hands with your bro? Being openly queer is even more important if you’re not even queer. It makes it harder to tell who is us and who is them.

Whether that’s “enough” isn’t, ultimately, up to us. None of us can control, or even predict, the outcomes of our actions. We can only try every day to reinforce in our own hearts and minds the truth of who we are. We’re all good people who are doing what we can, with what we have, where we are.