Zoe Baker

Source: Elizabeth Semmelhack, Shoes: The Meaning of Style (Reaktion Books, 2017), p178.

An 1871 editorial article in the New York Times argued that women should not be granted the right to vote or hold political office because they *check notes* wear high heels and so are clearly senseless and just mindlessly follow trends. Misogyny is so bizarre.

Am struggling with rad libs in gender history. Today I read an academic say that women weren't passive victims of the expanding Aztec empire which demanded cloth (made by women) as tribute because they *checks notes* started making stew so they could make other stuff like cloth whilst it cooked.

75% of the gender studies/queer theory stuff I read was so bad that I realised for my book on gender I'd have to start from scratch and build up an empirical model from a systematic evaluation of global human history. Anyway, this is why I'm currently reading a book about the domestication of dogs.

One year of the ACF On the 18th of January 2025, an ‘Anarchist Communist Forum’ was held at Kathleen Syme library in inner city Melbourne. Anarchists hosted workshops on various topics; industrial struggle, imperialism…

Good article summarising Anarchist Communist Federation's (ACF) first year as an org in Australia. We need more stuff like this if anarchism is gonna grow and thrive.

ancomfed.org/2026/01/one-...

A synthetic model of Palaeolithic seafaring in the Ryukyu Islands, southwestern Japan The rise of water transport technology enabled early modern humans to expand their habitable territory to insular environments. However, apart from intensive discussion for Wallacea, developmental ...

Yousuke Kaifu, “A Synthetic Model of Palaeolithic Seafaring in the Ryukyu Islands, Southwestern Japan”

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Of boats and string: The maritime colonisation of Australia For all of hominin history the Australian continent has been separated by at least 70 km of water from other coastlines. Its colonisation about 50,000…

Jane Balme, “Of Boats and String: The Maritime Colonisation of Australia”

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paleolithic eyed needles and the evolution of dress Humans invented clothes to cope with past climate changes, then clothes evolved into dress—one clue is the advent of eyed needles.

Ian Gilligan et al., “Paleolithic Eyed Needles and the Evolution of Dress"

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Olga Soffer and James M. Adovasio, “The Roles of Perishable Technologies in Upper Paleolithic Lives,” in The Magdalenian Household: Unraveling Domesticity, ed. Ezra Zubrow et al. (State University of New York Press, 2010).

Palaeolithic ceramic technology: The artistic origins and impacts of a technological innovation This paper analyses the assemblages of Upper Palaeolithic ceramic figurines and figurine fragments from Czech Republic (“Pavlovian”) and Croatia, whic…

Some sources if you're interested:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Have been reading lots of prehistory and learned that prior to the emergence of agriculture 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers invented ceramics, sewing/weaving, and sea-worthy boats. Don't think they get enough credit for amazing innovations that still impact our lives today.

The more I read about the division of labour in hunter-gatherer societies the more I want to hit anyone who says that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather eg til that among the Yamana women regularly hunted birds and sometimes used dogs to hunt guanaco, the largest prey in the area.

I used to use the language of democracy cause I was radicalised by occupy, but now generally avoid it cause it can confuse people into thinking anarchism is just a ultra democratic government. But I don't think semantic debates about language matter much. Debates about ideas are more important.

Have finally been diagnosed with ADHD. So should get on meds soonish and can then go super saiyan on history of gender/trans liberation book.

Thanks!

Myths About Anarchism, Democracy, and Decision-Making “I have often read writings that attempt to discredit my ideas, but which merely repeat, using different terminology, what I myself have argued and argue. Likewise, I have often seen ideas being at…

If you prefer to read here is the script along with all my sources.

anarchozoe.com/2025/12/30/m...

YouTube video by Zoe Baker Myths About Anarchism, Democracy, and Decision-Making

New big video debunking four myths about anarchist views on democracy and collective decision-making.

youtu.be/9I-TueoyeOY?...

My long essay debunking myths about historical anarchist views on democracy and collective decision-making will be released early next week. Covers their critiques of democracy, views on majority voting, and usage of democratic language in exhaustive detail.

Source: Marina Montesano, Cross-Dressing in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2025), p131-32. The medieval book is called Tristan de Nanteuil.

She answers yes and "became a real man, because God sent her all the nature of a man . . . the [woman's] name Blanchandine will stop right here, for from now on he will be called Blanchandin [man's name], which better suits him. When he saw himself transformed, he praised Jesus Christ."

There's a subgenre of medieval lit that features god turning women into men. The result is incredible passages like this from the 14th century: "Jesus, who made the world, now asks you which you prefer – speak honestly: to remain a woman, as he created you, or to become a man? The choice is yours".

Source: Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 (University of California Press, 1999), p153.

Keep finding links between patriarchy and prohibition of cross-dressing eg in 1843 authorities in Osaka banned the custom of parents dressing girls as boys in order to avoid the expense of buying women's clothing. They argued it harmed a girl's ability to perform 'womanly duties' later in life.

Kropotkin quote from the Conquest of Bread: "Why has woman’s work never been of any account? Why in every family are the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it beneath their superior masculine dignity to think “of those kitchen arrangements,” which they have rayed on the shoulders of that drudge-woman. To emancipate woman is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments, for her, for the “emancipated” woman will always throw domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her share of social life. It will come to pass. As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words Liberty, Equality, Solidarity would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half."

Kropotkin's analysis of women's domestic labour remains relevant over a century later.

This is something I'm researching atm but don't have anything definitive to share yet. Currently I don't think we can know what the origins of gender etc were due to the inherent limits with archeological evidence. Its much easier to talk about how it functions once it is observed in the data.

Quote by Chinese anarchist feminist He-Yin Zhen writing in 1907: "there is not a single woman who has not been ill treated by some man. Consequently, there is not a single woman who does not bear a grudge against men. Critics compare this situation to the political subjugation of a subject to his prince, but I beg to disagree. It is true that men can be subjugated and must submit to an alien group, the will of a king, or some capitalists. When that happens, the people who rule and the people who submit to the rule are both men. With women, however, the subjugation takes on a whole different character. One cannot deny that an empress occupies a highly esteemed position, but she never questions her own subjugation to a man (men). At the other end of the hierarchy, one finds beggars whose social position cannot be more degraded, yet even a female beggar would not question her subjugation to a man (men)".

Me whenever my best friend complains about her toxic ex boyfriend:

What abolishing the state meant to anarchists in the past.

Great article on @intrrgum.bsky.social about how engaging in precarious jobs impacts migrant labourers.

interregnum.ghost.io/from-the-gro...

Source: page 231 of chapter VI.

moses.creighton.edu/kripke/jesui...

Today I read Jesuit descriptions of Wendat Indigenous communities in the 17th century. They claim that chiefs, who they call captains, "do not govern their subjects by means of command and absolute power; they have no force at hand to compel them to their duty".