@anarchozoe.bsky.social
Historian of political thought. Trans woman (she/her). Author of Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States. For all my work see https://linktr.ee/zoebaker
Interview with Iranian anarchists:
"the liberation of the people of Iran cannot be the result of projects imposed by foreign powers. Freedom can only emerge from the struggle and will of the people themselves".
freedomnews.org.uk/2026/03/10/i...
Interregnum interviews @jacobengelberg.bsky.social on his new book, Cinemas of Bisexual Transgression. The book argues that the way we look at queer film centres the gay/straight binary and considers what happens when bisexuality breaks the rules.
interregnum.ghost.io/the-dangerou...
#bisexual
Source: Margaret Law Callcott, ed and trans., Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert 1795-1821, (The John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 334, 340.
Read a 1819 letter by a white woman complaining about how overwhelmed she is by domestic labour because her husband doesn't help around the house and she has to manage 'the servants' by herself. What she called 'the servants' included slaves. One wonders what the slaves thought about this.
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.
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-...
Yousuke Kaifu, “A Synthetic Model of Palaeolithic Seafaring in the Ryukyu Islands, Southwestern Japan”
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Jane Balme, “Of Boats and String: The Maritime Colonisation of Australia”
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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).
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!
If you prefer to read here is the script along with all my sources.
anarchozoe.com/2025/12/30/m...
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'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.
Me whenever my best friend complains about her toxic ex boyfriend:
