Ten of Swords

Be Not Afraid, my new horror comic series about terrible angels, is coming out in June. Please pre-order it at your comic shop.

My non-fiction book DILF: Did I Leave Feminism is due out in October. You can pre-order that everywhere, but the way to support your local bookshop is Bookshop.org.

I strongly urge you to get hyped for DC Pride.

I’ve reached the point in the book process where I wish I had never heard of “books,” let alone tried to write any. For those unfamiliar with my journey, I have two things coming out this year — a horror comic and a non-fiction book about trans issues — and the actual writing is done, on both projects, so all I have to do is sit here and attend to the final adjustments and experience bouts of life-destroying terror and despair about either or both of them. 

It’s the book about trans issues, this week, that is really making my heart rate spike. The book centers on the relationship between trans issues and feminism, and I have tried not to give any pat or easy answers. I’ve researched and written up shameful chapters of feminist history, like the expulsion of Beth Elliott from the West Coast Lesbian Conference, or the quasi-feminist rhetoric of mother’s rights that comes out of places like Mumsnet.

I’ve also dug up parts of feminist history that were way more trans-affirming than you’d think: The first-ever female separatist group, for instance, was a particularly scary group of radfems named Cell 16. They wanted women to embrace celibacy and learn martial arts, and they were so extreme that all the other feminists were scared of them. At this point, you roll your eyes and think “oh, wow, Jude’s going to sell us on political lesbianism,” and you fill in the requisite history of TERFery, but here’s the thing: Cell 16, the first and scariest separatist feminist group, had trans women in it. They were so committed to having trans women in the group that, when they came under fire from the rest of the movement for trans inclusion, they shut down, rather than comply with the mandate to kick them out. 

This is not my original research — I learned about Cell 16 from an interview with Cristan Williams — but it is something that you deserve to know. TERFs have been very effective at convincing the world, and young queer people, that the natural outcome of feminism is TERFery, and it simply isn’t true. Even in the second wave, even in parts of the movement we now view with deep (and earned) skepticism, trans people were part of the feminist movement, and their exclusion was not inevitable — it was a power grab by a specific group of self-proclaimed leaders who wanted to steer the movement, and who got what they wanted. 

Here, though, is my larger point: This is a massively fraught and emotional topic, which routinely results in huge blowups, and what I’m presenting is going to ask both cis feminists and trans readers to stretch their sympathies in uncomfortable ways. For cis feminists, it’s about confronting the shame of what the movement has done and been for trans people, and the ways it’s failed us. For trans people, it’s the call to extend curiosity and the benefit of the doubt toward a movement that has often been cited to justify our elimination. Someone is going to get angry at me, when they read this book, and they will take that anger out on me. That’s a given. 

There’s also just the reality of being a trans person publishing a book about transphobia in 2025, when even harmless YA graphic novels can generate years-long hate campaigns. In the dead of night, when I lay awake staring at my ceiling and thinking about this book, what I realize is that there is no best-case scenario. The options are either: 

(A) Nobody reads the book, and it gets ignored, in which case I’m a failure, or

(B) Everybody reads the book, and it gets attention, in which case Chaya Raichik posts my address online. 

There just isn’t a lot to look forward to, is my point here. My community feels betrayed, or the cis feminists think I’m a misogynist, or I become a punching bag for the worst people in America, or I recede into the background thanks to Transmasculine Invisibility(TM) and my career ends from lack of interest — I mean, you tell me which one of those sounds like fun.