The original, prototypal text that would become Necromanhood was written on November 5th, 2019. It was a scrawled-together series of ideas that mostly came from casual conversations with a certain arachnid friend. That text underwent a series of intense and obsessive edits and rewrites, turning into something very different, and much more definitive. I was surprised to discover that this version of Necromanhood was last edited on November 12th, 2019 – the metamorphosis only took a week. I was sure it was much longer. In that short week I had become much more familiar with gender accelerationism, and had reconsidered many of my specific positions on transmasculinity.
Then it sat. Tracing its history, my friend had asked if it was in sufficient shape for publication when I proposed doing so to her on November 19th. I am not entirely sure why I hadn’t worked on it for the week between its final edit and then; I am also not sure why, after having its completeness questioned, I continued to neglect it.
Okay. That’s a lie. I know exactly why I neglected it. Around that time, I was deep in the beginning of a massive breakdown – a breakdown fueled by guilt over misogynistic actions and entitlement. Things got progressively worse and more complicated, and I was almost completely out of commission for another year. Matters have since been resolved, but my take on patriarchy and maleness has shifted.
It next came up in April of 2020, when my friend proposed finally publishing it. We discussed polishing it, and again discussed it on November 19th, 2020 (a year after the first time we considered it); despite this, it was never released. The reason this time was as simple as both of us being busy, and getting distracted by other projects.
I don’t propose to understand, or want to understand, the flow of time. All I know is that after another period of dormancy, Necromanhood returned to the forefront of my mind once again at the end of 2021, and has shifted its presence up to now. Both myself and my friend/editor/almost-publisher/co-conspirator went through a lot between November 2019 and now, and the “right moment” to publish or even work on Necromanhood came and went repeatedly, moving like the tide. The difference is that this time, I’m determined to ride that wave.
Despite being in need of polishing and added nuance, I find myself oddly hesitant to edit Necromanhood itself. Much of it, I believe, still stands; perhaps my stance on transmasculinity hasn’t actually changed very much.
A large part of my hesitation is the bizarre optimism underlying the paper. In the almost 4 years since I wrote it, I have become much more jaded and cynical, especially when it comes to manhood and transmasculinity. Necromanhood, at its core, has hope for the subversive potential of trans men; meanwhile, I find myself increasingly alienated from other trans men and transmasculine people, and frustrated with my own patriarchal tendencies. All of this should make me want to revise the paper more, shouldn’t it? Instead, I find myself endeared to this almost naive optimism. It’s something I struggle to find now, and erasing a work laden with it feels wrong. Hope is not inherently a bad thing – as my friend moves more towards numogrammatics that support the lemurs and communion with angels against death cults and self-destruction, that need for hope against the forces of annihilation feels more vital than ever, and less contradictory with accelerationist philosophies than expected.
I am still new to all of this, finding my footing within the numogram and my understanding of the lemurs. That is my second hesitation when it comes to making changes to the paper: losing the grounding that it was placed in. This is also why I put off both making edits and publishing the paper. I was seeking a more solid ground in accelerationism, beyond the basic response to Nyx Land’s Blackpaper that Necromanhood was. By putting it off until I reached an arbitrary, undefined point of being a “true accelerationist,” Necromanhood was doomed to remain in stasis.
The answer to these conflicts came in the form of this document: an append, where I can argue with the “me” of so many years ago. Instead of editing the paper or releasing it wholly as-is, I have created a sort of Talmudic response, allowing me to expand on the text like a series of benign tumours. I just hope this works.
(You can read the appends in one go on this page, or click back to them while reading the main text.)
The origins relating to Nyx’s Blackpaper are readily apparent here. I start the paper entirely built around the thesis of cis men losing testosterone and feminizing. It’s slightly jarring to see a meme theory of sorts positioned so centrally and seriously, but the reality of it doesn’t matter in the face of belief. I won’t dwell on this much.
Situating transmasculinity and trans manhood, codifying it and giving it tropes, is still a struggle. Part of this struggle is that I have grown to understand my own conceptions of trans manhood as specifically influenced by being autistic: a faggotard identity. In some ways, I have more in common with autistic trans women wracked by the same neuroses as me, than I do with trans Aidens who understand neurotypical-cis manhood and can conform to archetypal “normie” masculinity. The types of trans men who are popular and palatable, your Kalvin Garrahs and Elliot Pages, have nearly nothing to do with me. I have seen similar sentiment in transfem spaces about the world of difference between terminally online autistic weirdo trans women, versus Kim Petras or Hunter Schafer.
Of course, media tends to be obsessed with vilifying and objectifying brainfucked weirdo transsexuality specifically. From AGPs and autism to Abigail Shrier’s world of poor vulnerable autistic girls who are too retarded to fight the Trans Agenda, all the ills of transsexuality are inherently the brainweird “freaks.” The public perception of transness is that of autism and schizophrenia, so those on those fringes cyclically embody it.
My proposed transmasculine iconography drawing from The Joker or Tyler Durden definitely exemplifies this: I latched onto figures who are just as emblematic of mental illness as they are of maleness. Is trans manhood a schizophrenic manhood? Probably.
Then comes the rejection of blaming trans women, which I still see all too often amongst trans men. It has been explained before by others far more informed than me that “representation” and fetishization is not privilege, and that transmisogyny is a far more violent force than whatever trans men go through. To try to position trans women as having privilege over trans men is idiotic.
That being said, part of the purpose of Necromanhood is to question the neo-Baeddel notion that trans men are as destructive as any other moid, and just as counter to reaching Outside. Though transmasculinity and feigned equality (synonymy) of oppression has been weaponized against TMA people (see the case of Isabelle Fall, for example), the idea that trans men are privileged on a broader societal scale is laughable. If anything, I see currents in trans manhood that I am opposed to–conformance to normie maleness, or a tenderqueer-feminist obsession with proximity to femaleness that ends in transmisogyny and co-opting women’s spaces under the guise of “oh I’m AFAB”–as counter to the subversive potential of trans manhood, i.e. Necromanhood. You cannot fuck manhood from inside like a gender chestburster if you either decide that manhood is fine, or refuse to associate with it. I do address this at the end of this section, but am much too kind in my language. Frankly, trans men could benefit from less bootlicking, and being more faggy.
There are some errors here. First, I’m not sure if meta without vaginectomy is actually more common than meta with. Meta can also happen with urethral lengthening, and in general is more complex than just freeing the clit-dick from other tissue. Phalloplasty can also happen without vaginectomy, and thus also exists as a phallus alongside a vulva, rejecting the solemnity of the phallic symbol. I also now know that the idea that trans phalluses look different from cis phalluses isn’t necessarily true, though all the statements around function remain relevant.
I also take issue with my statement that “the neo-phallus cannot deny culpability under lack of control of erections.” Though strictly true in the anatomical sense, it is dangerous to deny the way trans men can deny culpability for sexual assault. It is often blamed on hormones (“testosterone made me too horny”) or waved away as impossible due to still trying to have it all and claim experience with misogyny as making transmascs incapable of assault. This would need to ignore the fact that cis women can and do commit rape; it falls into the rape-as-penetration rhetoric that TERFs weaponize against trans women (see a certain cis female rapist and porn star ironically claiming trans women are rapists for existing); and it ignores a particularity of the transmasculine experience that I will get to later.
A minor note, but “femboy” as a label is so much more complex now, and almost the opposite of what I describe here. It’s become synonymous with femininity and female bodies with a phallus, much like “trap” before it. This has the double effect of being basically another slur for trans women, and becoming inaccessible to trans men. The effects are insidious all around: self-loathing trans women and girls who internalize transmisogyny and deny their transition under the guise of being “femboys” (even vilifying trans women and accusing them of denying gender nonconformity, or being groomers), and trans men and boys are chased out of spaces under the reification of “boy = penis,” which is both transmisogynistic and crunches down upon trans manhood. I believe this is part of the trend of so many trans men who were proud or excited to be GNC men now identifying as “nonbinary lesbians” (despite previous attraction to men) or “female-aligned enbies.” This is most likely a patriarchal autoimmune response, attempting to attack the virus against maleness that is transness, reifying genital essentialism with “woke” terminology and accusing those who point out the transphobia of being bigoted against nonbinary people.
(It is my position that the nonbinary TME rejection of manhood is a force of the AOE.)
I actually have no issues with this segment. The only thing I wish to add is a familiar phrase: in reading through the Ccru Collected Writings, footnote 16 mentions a description in which “the Lemurians had ‘huge feet[‘].”
The most glaring problem in the paper. I don’t deny the statistics of trans men and transmascs being common victims of sexual assault and rape. I stand by that. The issue is less what is there, and more an omission.
It has been my (admittedly anecdotal) experience that trans men are relatively often the perpetrators of sexual violence (assault, harassment, etc). I have been tempted to bark at TERFs before that they’ve got the wrong trans people to accuse of sexual assault. Especially within my beloved intersection of autistic trans men, I have seen issues around sexual boundaries and consent. This has been targeted at transfems, other transmascs, cis women, and even cis men.
This issue is not mere coincidence, nor does it contradict the high rates of victimization. I believe that autistic trans men are very used to having their boundaries (sexual or not) violated, and thus interpret it as normal behaviour, especially when entering manhood. Though trans women don’t experience “male socialization” as imagined by transphobes, their childhoods morphed and victimized by inherent transness, trans men also have a particular childhood and socialization, that is neither female, nor male in the cis sense. Especially when attempting to be “one of the guys,” the barrier of entry is often sexual gratification for cis male peers. Corrective rape is common. All this goes doubly for autistic trans men.
As a result, bypassing boundaries and overfamiliar sexuality are normalized for the autistic trans man. This is even presented as a condition of maleness: engage in misogyny, or you will be misgendered and punished, often violently. This is not to excuse this behaviour. Instead, it is vital to shed a light on it, and to call out the misogyny and sexual entitlement of trans men when we see it. Victims can also be abusers, and ignoring the ouroboros in the room just lets it proliferate.
That being said, giving up in the face of the “enact violence or face it” problem does nothing. Wallowing in the guilt of maleness negates any potential to corrupt it. Shame begets inaction and normalization of these roles. You can’t die and escape if you give up on trying. In fact, the guilt reaction to trans manhood of denying it and attempting to claim a female AFAB transsexual identity causes even more problems. This denial is weaponized against trans women as the previously discussed deflection of blame, and moving trans female spaces and resources away from those who are TMA. It allows for cultures of shaming trans women for being sexual, for denying culpability, and for abandoning the project of fucking with manhood. You cannot stop being an abuser by plugging your ears and claiming you’re too good for it.
Trans manhood is more complex and fucked up than the original Necromanhood gave it credit for. There are contradictions, traitors, and cultural antibodies against it. This complexity, however, is a site for disruption. Breaking yourself to pieces and building yourself up again is fundamental necromancy. Necromanhood is still a force, a dance with the undead that punches holes in the illusion of a predestined reality of Man. Paraphrasing, Necromanhood has a place for you.
It’s just that nobody ever said it would be easy.