STOP MEN (to the point): clip from full length interview with Xara Thustra

Living in this Queer Body

[audio transcription] STOP MEN.. I've been probably writing it and it's been a part of my work for about 15 years. During that Gay Shame time and during a lot of my protesting and, and engaging with the Mission Anti- Displacement Coalition for, you know, a couple of years and the Coalition on Homelessness and working for all these or organizations and advocating for different types of people and everything. Everything I did lost, you know, everything. Like every single fucking thing I participated in failed. Everything, everything. I like, if I breathed the thought, it would come back negative, like it was just like, wow, like nothing's coming. You know, nothing I'm doing is working in any kind of way or helping anything. I was like, what is this all about? You know? And I just basically like, I don't wanna protest laws that are unjust to people and jails unjust to people and, and health as a right or not, you know, like I don't wanna protest a hundred things or question a million things. I just wanna go right to the source and who the fuck is running all this shit. And men are making all these decisions, creating this whole framework and are unchecked, you know, the most violent men, unfortunately, in the country are shaping our reality. And so I just really quickly was just like, oh, well stop men. that's obvious, you know, I'm just like stop men is where I'm at with that. That's what I wanna say, which is stop men. All men need to check themselves. And so from there, and I'm completely comfortable with that with myself. Like, I've been checking myself and trying to learn how to be a good, healthy person for luckily, most of my life, you know, not all of my life, but luckily, most of it. And the heavier way . . sometimes I have a little spit that I say, you know, which I maybe can't get through it perfectly, but a lot of times I answer like this, which is, uh, stop men is the avocation of silence of all men in regards to decision making and leadership over any and all other living things. And men are totally chill to do whatever over their person, you know, make any decisions you want over your person and whatever the fuck you wanna do, but in terms of making decisions or participating in decisions over other living things, it's, we're at a full stop right now. The planet is coming to an end and everything on this planet has been shaped by male violence. We're off that page and we're flipping that page, starting something new. And it starts with men being silent and dealing with listening and not making any decisions of power over leadership of anyone. And this is just like an immediate stop. And from there, I'm not really suggesting who is to take power or whatever I'm out of that, but I'm saying that that needs to happen and that if men are making decisions over other people, if they are forcing their opinion into a conversation, they are identified as non revolution. These are non revolutionary men that need to be stopped. -Xara Thustra on LITQB