The Elephant in the Room
What “Anarqxista Goldman” can Teach Us About the Anarchist Movement, Sexual Freedom, and Sexual Violence

Part 1: The Bright Flame and the Ghost of Emma Goldman

Anarqxista Goldman — self-named after Emma Goldman — was (allegedly) an anarcha-feminist sex worker, writer, and activist who used the handle @Anarqxista on twitter.

On January 9, 2023, Anarqxista Goldman’s private twitter account posted the tragic news of her heroic and dramatic death, having intervened to defend a woman from her abusive boyfriend and been stabbed repeatedly.

“Words cannot express how distraught and heartbroken we are to have lost this bright flame who came to us at the Nude House just less than one year ago,” read the notice.

Individual users and anarchist organizations online immediately began posting heartfelt goodbyes eulogizing “Anarqxista” as well as circulating her obituary, published shortly after the death notice alongside her last writings, written by her ostensible comrades at The Nude House, a “free love commune” where she (allegedly) lived. Curiously, the obituary and final works became fixated on defending the right of adults to have sex with children partway through. (This is not typical of most obituaries I have read, although I suppose perhaps there is a grand tradition of praising the radical liberation of fucking teenagers in obituaries that I am unaware of.) The full document and “last writings” closed by quoting Hakim Bey at length.

And then, on January 11, 2023, anarchist Håkan Geijer, acting on behalf of a group of anarchist researchers, posted a thread on mastodon documenting the evidence that, in fact, Anarqxista Goldman had never existed, and had actually been a catfish persona adopted by a 54-year-old white cis heterosexual British pedophile[1] and Bible Studies major.

The original thread can be read on Mastodon but it has been reproduced (with minor edits for formatting) below. All emphasis is mine.

Part 2: “Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (By Me)”

This is a thread about the persona Anarqxista Goldman, AKA Dionysia Exarchopoulos and other variations on those names.

She was not killed two days ago in a knife fight as claimed by her twitter account because she never existed in the first place. She is a fabrication by Andrew Lloyd, AKA Dr. eXistenZ.

In 2020, a supposed 25-year old sex worker living in a so-called “Nude House” commune of free love in Southern Europe appeared online and began writing books. Her career came to an end when she supposedly died defending a woman from a domestic violence attack on 10 January 2023.

The only problem is that Anarqxista Goldman never existed. Instead Andrew Lloyd or Dr. eXistenZ created her as a fantasy of his mind in 2020 after bemoaning how middle-aged cis white men are never respected or listened to. To decrease confusion, we’ll be sticking predominantly with the pronoun “they.”

This is the post that announced their “death”: https://raddle.me/f/Anarchism/150617/anarqxista-has-died-a-great-soul-has-left-earth

On The Anarchist Library, you find the entry for The Nietzschean Anarchist, https://archive.is/Vfiej, which links to the Dionysia Exarchopouos archive[.]org page (https://archive.org/details/anarchy-and-anarchisms) and the full piece “Anarchy and Anarchisms” by Dionysia Exarchopoulos.[2]

Before 2020, Goldman predominately wrote under then name Dionysia Exarchopoulos, having returned from Germany to the UK and leaving the moniker Dr. Existenz behind. You can find their self uploaded work here: https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Dionysia+Exarchopoulos[3]

You can find references to the Goldman character as Dionysia here: https://archive.is/c3uhx or on the Anarqxista Goldman twitter account.[4]

However, Dr. Existenz sadly forgot to scrub the reality of who they were as they fell further into the fantasy of concocting an attractive 25-year old sex worker with photos stolen from some actual worker.

In “Manifesto: Discussions About Human Beings” Dr. Existenz writes:

“Although I wish I didn’t have to address this before we begin, in a collection of articles that used to be about sex and gender (and in some places still is) it is probably incumbent upon me to say who the author here is. I am a white, middle-aged male from the UK who has lived both in the UK and Europe (specifically, Germany) in my lifetime.”: https://archive.is/p2KiN

They start to use the name Dionysia Anaroqxista in a “Change of Consciousness” and with their piece about Emma Goldman: https://archive.is/5P9BY

On The Anarchist Library, you find the entry for The Nietzschean Anarchist, https://archive.is/Vfiej, which links to the Dionysia Exarchopouos archive[.]org page (https://archive.org/details/anarchy-and-anarchisms[5]) and the full piece “Anarchy and Anarchisms”[6] by Dionysia Exarchopoulos.

For ideas on their actual age, which is again NOT 27, they leave clues throughout:

In “There is Nothing to Stick To,”[7] they mention beginning in biblical studies and having spent over 20 years engaged in research. They also mention in “Nothing to Stick To” that they wrote the “Wisdom of Tao” which is authored by Dr. Existenz and was uploaded by Andrew Lloyd.[8]

Another item of interest is that Andrew Lloyd/Dr. Existenz’s autobiography is the same book as Goldman’s “Dionysia Goth”[9] In it they talk about a sexual encounter after meeting someone online in the “late 90s,” sometime after an earlier sexual experience in their “early twenties.”

In one of books by Andrew Lloyd/Dr. Existenz’s, “Sound and Fury,” they admit to creating a fake profile of a young attractive woman.[10] In this book they list their birthday as in January 1969. If they share the same birthday as their creation, Goldman, January 13th. They will be turning 54 in two days.[11]

Anyway. Andrew Lloyd, I know you’re going to see this because I know you watch my profiles because I habitually shit talk on Anarqxista, so for your birthday on the ominous day of Friday the 13th, I hope you have a shit day and break your ankle stepping off a curb. Fuck you.

“Rest in Power” indeed.

So, in short: “anarcha-feminist” Anarqxista Goldman not only had not dramatically died defending a woman from her abuser, but had in fact never existed in the first place. The “obituary” was a 74-page manifesto using the language of anarchism in “an ethically warped, opportunistic way by pretending that adult-child sex is a natural freedom.”[12]

At this point, we as an anarcha-feminist collective are compelled to ask a number of pressing questions:

1. what motivated Lloyd to “kill off” his character, which had over 4,500 followers on twitter, published multiple (extremely derivative, boring, pretentious) works of “anarchist theory,” and had many devoted fans?

2. How did multiple reputable anarchist organizations, publications, and archives fail to notice that the “obituary” they had published was actually a screed in defense of sex with children?

3. How the fuck did so many anarchists ever buy that this person — whose persona and body of work was overtly devoted to “anarcha-feminist” analysis of sexuality and consent yet was largely devoid of either anarchist or feminist ethics of consent, lacked meaningful or original engagement with questions of power, abuse, or coercion, (and sometimes actively avoided or grossly warped those questions, as with the question of fucking adolescents and children), frequently embraced the sexual politics of anti-feminist backlash, and made bizarrely misogynistic comments about their own namesake Emma Goldman — was an anarcha-feminist in the first place?

I will come back to these questions in time, and propose some answers. But first, it is necessary to document the continuing developments following the exposure of the “Anarqxista” account.

Part 3: Andrew Lloyd: Serial Sexual Predator

Within an hour of the publication of the thread, Andrew Lloyd’s self-uploaded works began being rapidly removed and archives of their existence were even removed from the Internet Archive, resulting in many of the links in the original thread breaking. (Luckily, the researchers who documented the evidence backed all of Lloyd’s writings up as PDFs in a Google Drive.)

But additional revelations continued to unfold.

The same day as the publication of Håkan Geijer’s thread, stories[13] began to spread that “Anarqxista” — in reality, Andrew Lloyd — had allegedly maintained long-distance sexual relationships and exchanged intimate photos with users he had built relationships of trust with.[14] If confirmed, then he had been violating the consent not only of the users he targeted (a form of sexual violence known as rape by deception,) but also of the worker whose sexually explicit images he exchanged with those users without their knowledge or consent. The sexual entitlement entailed in such an instrumentalization of this worker’s body and likeness as a sexual object of exchange is hard to even put into words.

Confirmation came the following day, when documentation surfaced from a previous investigation into Andrew Lloyd.[15]

He had done this before.

The previous investigation was launched because of rumors of a twitter user, @Anarchagrrl, soliciting women for sex via DMs. The account “asked for a finders fee to be introduced to sexual partners of which the woman could then charge whatever she liked to the client, We believe after heavy research that this was an attempt to use the false identity of the woman on the account @anarchagrrl for the below owner of the account to meet women on the premise of being a mutual client.”[16]

The investigation was extensive, and cannot be reproduced in its entirely here, but we strongly encourage you to read the original documentation.[17] It closely documents the different online handles Andrew used during his career as a serial sexual predator who targeted sex workers. We do want to draw attention to the disturbing ways Lloyd habitually talked about sex workers:

Lloyd used a bank of images stolen from actual sex workers on OnlyFans to engage sexually with many users on twitter, including using the likenesses of these real sex workers to coerce other people into providing him with sexual and intimate images. From there, he began a practice of trying to coerce women into sex work.

NOTE: we have blocked out the faces Andrew used in all screenshots because he stole the images of real sex workers. Below, the user blocked out in purple is Andrew.

“It is unclear how he would manipulate the situation so he could be both account and ‘client’, possibly by ‘Dionysia’ pulling out at the last minute, leaving Woman X in a position where Andrew is on the way to engage in the transactional sex work.”[18]

This context certainly sheds new and sinister light on Andrew’s adoption of a sex worker persona as “Anarqxista Goldman,” and particularly on his body of work on “sexual liberation.” It is hard to believe that much insight into an anarchist feminist ethic of “sexual liberation” can be extracted from the obsessively pedophiliac writings of a man who habitually uses shallow, warped, and we must add extremely liberal “feminist” language of “choice” and “freedom” in his own practice of sexual coercion of not only women, (sex workers in particular,) but people of multiple genders, including other men, according to the documentation on his “anarchagrrl” persona. In fact, it is quite hard to believe this body of works exists for any reason other than to pursue that very goal of expanding his own power over others and cultivating opportunities to sexually exploit, oppress, and govern over the bodies of others through the use of various forms of coercion.

Finally, Lloyd harbored fantasies about punishing women by subjecting them to violence at the hands of a fictional attacker. This puts the story of Anarqxista’s death at the hands of a fictional attacker into an interesting new context, for one. But what is striking to us is that he affirms explicitly that for him, this is about asserting power. He imagines himself as the righteous agent of biblical Revelation, as the “powerless” dreaming of victory over the “things” (women) that take his sense of power away.

Now let us return to the three questions posed above.

Part 4: Anarchy, Feminism, and Reaction

Why did Lloyd kill off the Anarqxista persona?

The obituary for “Anarqxista,” published after the fantasized tragic death includes her supposed “last writings” and devotes a significant chunk of its word count to defending “Anarqxista’s” — in reality, Andrew Lloyd’s — rape apologia defending adult-adolescent sex. The obituary accuses “people online” of misunderstanding this “great soul” and especially “…her views about youth sexuality, views she simply thought consistent both with an anarchy that believes in neither law nor government — so how can there be ages of consent?”

It was written by the “occupants of the Nude House,” the imaginary “free love commune” “anarqxista” allegedly lived on, and thus mostly likely authored by Andrew Lloyd himself, whose choice to close by quoting Peter Lamborn Wilson, also known as Hakim Bey, being egregiously wrong about the social context of pirates is hard to overlook. Though the passage borrowed from Hakim Bey is not itself directly about pedophilia,[19] Hakim Bey is the most infamous “anarchist” pederast and pro-CSA advocate who used the language of “anarchism” to promote CSA as an expression of true freedom. He also wrote contributions for NAMBLA.[20]

Unlike “Anarqxista,” Hakim Bey was (unfortunately) all too fucking real, but (fortunately) he died recently. We cannot know exactly what put the idea of a dramatic death and final obituary for his persona into Andrew Lloyd’s head, but we have to wonder whether the glowing eulogies and memorials lavished on Hakim Bey after his death, praising his “lucidity and eloquence,” and engagement with “anarchist ethics,”[21] in addition to the withering contempt directed at anarchists who insisted on dishonoring his memory, may have partly inspired Andrew “Dr. eXistenZ” Lloyd to fake “Anarqxista’s” death. Consider the comments on a post[22] about the news of Hakim Bey’s death, which mix eulogy and apologia to a strange effect:

“Such heady, information-rich work. I’m able to keep an open mind about the pedo stuff.”

“…he said we would no doubt see each other again. Regretfully, we never did. I feel sure he travels well into his next adventure wherever that may be.”

“…he doesn’t appear on any such watch lists, and never got convicted or accused of any sexual deviancy. He appears to get accused of having controversial opinions, i.e. advocating for lowering the age of consent. I don’t agree with that opinion, but can tolerate people having opinions I don’t agree with that don’t hurt anyone. […] Lamborn Wilson was a friend of a close friend of mine […] may he journey in peace.”[23]

Perhaps by transforming Anarqxista from a twitter personality who was continually in conflict with (real) anarcha-feminists into a martyr who died in an idealized fantasy of “fighting abuse,” Lloyd thought to canonize his own fantasies and resentments about cishet men not being listened to enough anymore, and especially his advocacy for adult-child sex, as “anarcha-feminist theory.” Now made untouchable by a heroic death, Lloyd’s personal vision of anarcha-feminist “sexual liberation” as bound to the sexual availability of marginalized bodies, especially the availability of adolescent bodies, to cishet men could be positioned as more authoritative than the voices of the actual anarcha-feminists who were a constant thorn in his side. This seems evident in the obituary, immediately submitted to the Anarchist Library, so much of which was devoted to a lengthy manifesto in defense of child sexual assault. He also already appropriated the name and legacy of Emma Goldman, a real dead anarcha-feminist, to lend his “Anarqxista” persona (Emma’s) credibility even well before the faked death. We note the responses to the news[24] of “Anarqxista’s” death:

“I’m gonna miss you, fighter and lover. There’s so much we could not talk about, our last communication ended so promptly.

I’m gonna miss you by the communication, by the inspirations, by your views on anarchy, by sharing inspiring, personal and hot pictures.

Thank you for everything, we will see us somewhere else… <3 <3″ (emphasis added)

The above was posted by user “Rest In Power My Love,” (who, in our opinion, cannot be ruled out as another Andrew Lloyd sock). The celebration of Anarqxista’s sharing of “hot pictures,” becomes quite disturbing in light of the knowledge that these were stolen images, that Lloyd was “sharing” someone else’s real body without their knowledge or consent.

“damn rip :( i was gonna start reading them after hearing the recent podcast discussion. hate when aname jumps higher on my reading list bc the author died

for those interested: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/anarqxista-goldman” (emphasis added)

“rest in piece, [sic] I’m shocked… might read one of a suggested piece by them within the next week. They sometimes were long but from what I read they were interesting. I was just lazing around too much to appreciate them. A good person left the earth.” (emphasis added)

Or responses on twitter, where anarchists attempted to bring up her history of rape apologia:

“Right in the aftermath of a well-respected anarchist being outed as a serial abuser,[25] another who wasostracized from the community died today defending her friend from an abuser. Goes to show that most of you are terrible judges of character.” (emphasis added)

This comment suggests that anarchists and anarcha-feminists who “ostracized” Andrew Lloyd from our “community” should not have “judged” him so harshly because of his advocacy for adult-adolescent sex. As supporters said of Hakim, “ He appears to get accused of having controversial opinions, i.e. advocating for lowering the age of consent.” In the following, the second quote is directly replying to the first:

“For what it’s worth, I think the accusations against her were overblown, and that most of her internet detractors will never have the courage that she obviously had. I say, let her rest.”

“It was about a 15 year old having a relationship with Alexander Berkman. I would call it just very ignorant to call such thing ‘pedophilia’ when pedophilia is considered for children pre-puberty. Also do not forget the points she made, which isn’t just ‘hurr durr pedophilia'”

To be clear: the “accusations” against Andrew Lloyd as his “Anarqxista” persona were that he had defended sex between adults and adolescents: this is indisputably true and he repeatedly affirmed it, including in his self-authored obituary. This user does not express doubt as to the truth of this fact, but expresses the value judgment that it is an overreaction to consider advocacy for adult-adolescent sex to be a serious problem. The reply plays the “technically it’s ephebophilia,” card in defense of the “nuance” Andrew Lloyd, a sexual predator who targeted sex workers, brought to the topic. These are expressions of personal values, wrapped in defenses of a recently dead “courageous” heroine.

I do not wish to belabor the point any further. Whether Lloyd consciously sought to elicit this response — the active spread of his anti-feminist, anti-youth-liberationist rhetoric among anarchist circles under the cover provided by a heroic anarcha-feminist’s death — that is what seems to have happened.

Anarqxista Goldman’s death announcement and obituary, both self-authored by Lloyd, both signed off with “Rest in Power.”

“Rest in Power” is a phrase coined by Black Liberationists to commemorate their dead comrades who were murdered by the white supremacist state. That alone makes it pretty fucking galling that Andrew Lloyd chose to sign off his self-authored self-indulgent “death announcement” and obituary by telling his rape apologist puppet to “Rest in Power.” But it is especially galling when taken in the context that “power” is exactly what Lloyd lived in; power is what he asserted over a series of marginalized victims. And power — the continuing power of his own voice, the power to overrule and overwrite the voices and experiences of rape survivors, marginalized genders, sex workers, and youth, is what he set himself up to wield even as his “Anarqxista” persona “died.”

In talking about his dreams of revenge against women, Lloyd stated explicitly that taking “back” power from them was the telos of his fantasy. But we can see through his actions that the power women “took from him” in the first place, the power he took “back” was his victims’ own power to refuse consent, their agency, their power over their own bodies. This was the power he felt owed, he felt he had a right to seize through a display of biblical violence.

How did multiple reputable anarchist organizations fail to notice they were publishing a pedophilia manifesto?

This question must be posed as more of an open question for the organizations in question. There were a number of organizations that circulated the manifesto or posted eulogies for Anarqxista. At time of writing, the pedophilia manifest/obituary for a fake person is still listed publicly by the aggregator “anarchistfederation.net” — which is not connected in any way to the more well-known Anarchist Federation based in the UK[26] — with no followup comments or clarification that we are aware of. The actual Anarchist Federation deleted a retweet of the eulogy as soon as they became aware of the context of the hoax, and posted an apology with context; they had not been aware of the abuse apologia. Anarchist News’ (ANews) post on twitter wishing Anarqxista to “Rest in Power” remains public, with a disclaimer about it “possibly” being a hoax. However, ANews has since posted the full text of the Daily Beast’s coverage of the fiasco[27], which is in our view a reasonably good summation[28] of events and also includes some quotes from Lloyd’s statements after the fact admitting to the hoax.

The Anarchist Library swiftly removed the obituary when the news of the hoax broke, and, in a move honestly unprecedented for the Library, later removed the rest of “Anarqxista Goldman’s” writings[29] in a gesture we take in good faith as an effort to scrub not just writings published under false pretenses but also to remove the works of an author known to be ideologically motivated by a fundamentally anti-anarchist agenda of running cover for sexual abuse.

Yet, we must ask why many other reactionary texts remain on the Library’s catalogue for reasons we cannot guess. Take, for example, “The Poverty of Feminism” by Dominique Karamazov, which describes rape as the “consequence” of “irresponsible” women’s attention-seeking behavior, among other things.[30] Or Bob Black’s “Feminism as Fascism,” which describes rape as something feminists “insist has been inflicted on them (or rather, as it usually turns out, on some other suppositious ‘sister’: the typical radical feminist has it pretty good)” — the implication being that feminists’ claims about rape are fabricated, the victims “suppositious.”[31] Or take the communiques of ITS,[32] a group heavily criticized by anarchists for claiming credit for the femicide of 22-year-old Lesvy Rivera, promoting rape and reveling in misogyny, and even attempting to bomb an anarchist squat.[33] Or “The Ideology of Victimization” by Feral Faun, a.k.a. Wolfi Landstreicher, an anti-feminist reaction produced after Landstreicher saw some graffiti reading “men rape.”[34] Articles in praise of infanticide and elevating mass shooter[35] Adam Lanza for his acts of top-down authoritarian, adult-supremacist violence against children and youths remain in the Library’s catalogue,[36] and it is our personal experience that, (as usual when anarchists reject this style of pseudo-radical top-down oppressive rhetoric, especially misogynistic, transphobic, and adult-supremacist rhetoric,) those who see it as a problem are sneeringly dismissed as moralists, hysterical prudes, and so on. In the case of Bob Black, at least the author — snitch[37] though he may also be — is known as an anarchist writer. So also Wolfi Landstreicher. In the case of the communiques of ITS, one can imagine these documents are part of anarchist history and thus important to preserve (though a disclaimer of some kind would be in order, in our opinion.) But we are entirely at a loss why a text like Dominique Karamazov’s “Poverty of Feminism” should ever have been published on an anarchist archive in the first place, let alone remained there long after it was removed from other publications like LibCom. There is almost no part of this text that is not in some way explicitly reactionary, from the rape apologia to the anti-abortion rhetoric in lines like “The problem of abortion is also the problem of the woman’s acceptance of her role as a mother.” “Dominique Karamazov” is a pseudonym used by French left-communist Dominique Blanc, the primary contributor to the ultra-left journal in which the text is originally published, La Guerre Sociale — a journal known for supporting historical negationism and Holocaust denialism.[38] (Dominique Blanc is also published on the Anarchist Library under his real name.) It is not at all clear to us why this document ought to be granted the legitimacy as an “anarchist” text which its listing on the Anarchist Library seems to lend it.

We do not mean to single out the Anarchist Library. There were plenty of others who circulated the obituary, and we want to note again that they quickly removed it and shortly afterward removed all of Andrew Lloyd’s works. Nor do we seek to “scold” nor, as no doubt plenty of people have already yelled at their screens, to demand “purity.”

Concerning the distribution of NAMBLA materials in anarchist bookstores like Bound Together Books, Robert Helms writes, “I do not condemn the preservation of any literature, but I do observe that the anarchist scene provides venue and distribution for pedo-anarchist material and simultaneously refuses to examine the phenomenon.”[39] Likewise, we are not asking for a purge of “bad texts” — We are asking that anarchists be willing to examine the phenomenon at all.

We want only to ask only why rape apologia, pederasty apologia, and anti-feminism are not automatically regarded as anti-anarchist.

Anarchism, as most anarchists I have ever met define the term, is about the destruction of all hierarchies, setting ourselves in opposition to all domination and subordination. It does not follow that texts performing apologia for some forms of domination and hierarchy should be considered “anarchist.”

We wonder also if texts of this nature would be circulated in anarchist milieus, organizations, and archives if they attacked cishet men’s body autonomy in the same way? Valerie Solanas’ “S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto” is not hosted on the Anarchist Library or any other anarchist source we could find, and we agree that it does not belong in any anarchist circle. We certainly do not want it hosted by anarchist operations like the Library out of some warped sense of “both-sidesism” or “fairness.” But if the “S.C.U.M. Manifesto” is rightly excluded, why are texts attacking the body of autonomy of marginalized genders not considered equally unfitting for an anarchist archival project? The Library’s exclusion of the works of Michel Foucault[40] is well-known, and, in our view, entirely justified.[41] It evidently is not the case that the Library maintains a standard of not excluding anything no matter how un- or anti-anarchist it may be. But why, then, are texts promoting the domination, subordination, and sexual exploitation of women, subaltern genders, and children not seen the same way?

What makes these texts different? What makes them exempt from anarchist denouncements of all ideologies that require the domination, subordination, and exploitation of some for the benefit of others?

We hope perhaps that exploring these questions may provide insight as to how Andrew Lloyd’s pederasty manifesto was successfully published on anarchist outlets as a suitable addition to the collective body of “anarchist theory” in the first place.

How was Andrew Lloyd able to pass himself off as an “anarcha-feminist” among anarchists, who ought to know what anarchist thought does and does not accord with?

To address this question we first must make a distinction between those who were sincerely deceived and those who acted as enablers.

It is already known that Lloyd is a serial sexual exploiter and he coerced sexual acts and images from many online victims. These people cannot be held responsible for failing to “see through” the manipulations of a dedicated sexual abuser any more than any other victim of sexual exploitation can be. They deserve our solidarity and support.

Furthermore, simply put, not everyone sees or reads everything that someone else does or says online. Many people interacted with “Anarqxista” without learning about “her” advocacy of sex between adults and adolescents or children. Plenty of people were sincerely shocked after the news of the hoax was publicized, and expressed with horror that they had never known about the abuse apologia in the first place. Andrew Lloyd’s usual daily online activities did not always necessarily veer into obvious anti-anarchism and abuse apologia. Finally, he willfully manipulated the emotions of his many followers to maintain his hoax, and presented a highly curated and manipulative public face. It is not reasonable to hold everyone equally responsible for failing to see through a deliberately cultivated persona. Even the anarchists and anarcha-feminists who were sounding the alarm about the abuse apologia months ago did not predict the twist that the whole thing was a hoax.

But that brings us to those who did see the abuse apologia and continued to support Andrew Lloyd as an “anarcha-feminist,” and moreover a voice for sex workers. We’ve quoted some of their responses to the “death” announcement above and will not lay them all out again. The core failure of this group, as we see it, was a failure to see apologia for adult-adolescent sex (read: rape) as a “big deal,” a serious issue, or as fundamentally inconsistent with anarchist ethics.[42] This, in our view, is the same failure that leads many in anarchist circles to continue elevating figures like Hakim Bey.

It is a failure to take rape, rape culture, youth liberation, and gender liberation as serious political concerns.

Reflecting on the fiasco the following day, Håkan Geijer writes:

“Talking with some SWer friends, and one of the things in the Anarqxista saga that really irked us and seemed incongruous was how she talked about sex.

SWers tend to have two modes for talking about Johns. Being very graphic on their public-facing accounts. Or ripping them to shreds as being gross or tedious on their private accounts.

Anarqxista’s account was not an account for clients, but she talked about doing FSSW with John’s in the most vulgar way that felt like advertising but to the wrong audience. One that really stuck out was her talking about loving taking random men’s cocks into her ass. For a personal account that was talking about Johns and not like dark-room kink party sex, this was just… off.

Most (maybe all?) radical SWers I know are queer, and they are generally accepting of ace spectrum folx. But Anarqxista’s whole deal was “don’t like hearing about me fucking cocks? hmpf. prude much?” Which just didn’t mesh with what most mid 20s anarchist SWers would say.

(She had many other SWERFy and fucked up takes around SW too, but that’s another story)

She conflated this hyper-in-your-face vulgar sexuality with sexual liberation, and when you have the knowledge that it was some mid-50s terminally online socially isolated fucking pedo it makes complete sense that she was his fantasy and the kind of person he wanted to fuck.”[43]

Mastodon user and sex worker @antifastripper replied: “I’m not at all familiar with that account in particular, but a non-client-facing SW account that delights in graphically oversexed commentary is 100% a hallmark of a client pretending to be a SWer. Real SWers are nearly universally jaded, disgusted, or bored. Dead giveaway.“[44]

Anarchist NoBonzo writes: “if you are or were a sex worker, you immediately recognize exactly the type of person Andrew is and know just how utterly creepy, annoying, and disturbing that type of dude is“[45]

We see it as significant that Lloyd was caught relatively quickly when he was operating primarily in sex worker spaces, as actual sex workers quickly recognized the behavior of a predatory john; yet he managed to establish a popular reputation and maintain it for two years when operating in anarchist spaces where the perspectives of sex workers are largely subsumed by liberal and patriarchal stereotypes. Lloyd was selling a fantasy of what “sexual liberation” and sex workers’ liberation means that a large number of anarchists wanted to buy, but which actual sex workers quickly saw through for the client-oriented fantasy it was — a fantasy of sex work as sex, but not work, as uniquely exempt from the exploitative and abusive conditions of capitalist labor relations, because it is sex, and sex is supposed to be liberating per se. His reputation as an anarchist voice for sex workers and authority on anarchist sexuality enabled him to abuse and exploit an anonymous sex worker’s likeness without their consent, even posting their appropriated nudes for display, and enabled him to sexually coerce an untold number of young radicals. In our view, the comments above highlight a second failure of the online anarchist milieu: a failure to listen to the perspectives of actual sex workers on the subject of sex work.

It is a failure to move beyond simplistic liberal empowerment narratives about sex work and sex workers’ struggle, narratives that fundamentally fail to understand the struggle for sex workers’ rights as a workers’ struggle at all.[46]

Finally, we posit that in general these events evince a failure of anarchist circles to be minimally educated about anarcha-feminism at all. In my experience, most anarchists do not know the names of any anarcha-feminist besides Emma Goldman (the very same whose ghost Andrew Lloyd was able to quite easily co-opt for his own predatory purposes, despite making occasional misogynistic comments about Goldman herself). If you are lucky, they might know Voltairine de Cleyre, but it is unlikely they have actually read her works. Almost never have I encountered anarchists on or off-line who are familiar with any anarcha-feminist writing that has been produced after the term “anarcha-feminism” was actually coined in the 70s, or with queer feminist thought, or transfeminist thought. Emma Goldman is fine — although her endorsement of eugenicist ideals in her writings about birth control suggests she is not a very holistic or intersectional source on anarchist feminist thought — but we are begging you move beyond the works of long-dead famous figureheads.

No one who is familiar with rudimentary contemporary anarcha-feminist thought could see advocacy for adult-adolescent or adult-child sex as “sexual liberation,” or as anything but the shallowest demands of patriarchal masculinities, and reactionary retrenchment that accords better with the worldviews of Republicans who persistently support child marriage than it does with anything feminist. While Andrew Lloyd may have been able to pass himself off as an anarchist due to the already existing body of misogynistic and Manarchist writings, there is no very good reason he should have been able to pass himself off as anarcha-feminist to an audience minimally familiar with what that term even means.

Part 5: The Elephant in the Room, or: We Have a Fucking Problem

Finally, it is increasingly impossible to avoid addressing the problem directly:

The anarchist movement has a rape apologia problem.

The Scope of the Problem

This is not unique to the anarchist movement at all, and is in fact something it shares in common with almost every other political tendency, from liberalism to Stalinism to right-libertarianism and fascism. It is so deeply entrenched in the transphobic pseudoscience of sexologists like James Cantor and Ray Blanchard that it would require a separate essay.[47] But We are not addressing ourselves to Stalinists defending the rape and impregnation of Lidia Pereprygina, a thirteen-year-old girl, nor to right-libertarians complaining about the combination of age-of-consent laws and child-labor laws preventing them from legally hiring the sexual services of children, nor to fascists waxing poetic about the sexual dominance of Ancient Greek and Roman rapists and pederasts. We are addressing ourselves to anarchists.

To begin, we have to get an idea of the scope of the problem. Anarchist historian Spencer Beswick provides some important insight[48] on the history and prevalence of “pedophilia” apologia in anarchist discourse, which I have reproduced here (lightly edited for formatting):

“In May-July 1989, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed published a ‘Special issue on children’s sexuality’ beginning with ‘Pedophilia: Views from the other side.’ This sparked years of articles and letters defending sex with children (read: rape) from editors and regular contributors.

This reflects a wing of the anarchist movement that has long defended the ‘freedom’ of people (usually men) to assault children using anarchist language.

I’ve been thinking about this since Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson died a few months ago. As an expose of him put it years ago, Bey “uses anarchism in an ethically warped, opportunistic way by pretending that adult-child sex is a natural freedom.” https://libcom.org/book/export/html/1455

When Bey died, I was doing research at the University of Michigan’s Labadie Collection. I read through numerous issues of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from the 1980s-90s and was shocked to see how central and prevalent the defense of sex with children (rape) was. One anarchist who lived in NYC in the 90s told me that it was an open secret that Hakim Bey preyed on young boys, and that parents warned each other to watch out for him. This is usually left out of his history, and of the history of anarchism in general.

Needless to say, this is a shameful aspect of the anarchist movement which should be ruthlessly exposed, criticized, and rejected. It calls into question the entire political and ethical approach of this wing of the anarchist movement. I refuse to defend or associate with it.” (emphasis added)

What Beswick demonstrates is that Hakim Bey is not an isolated case: defenses, usually by men, of sex with children, were a “central and prevalent” theme in the collected issues of Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed (a fact which certainly lends a grim new interpretation to the concept of “Desire Armed.”)

Let us attempt to answer, in part, the call to ruthlessly expose, criticize, and reject this anti-liberatory wing of the anarchist movement, but with the preface that the following examples are an attempt to broadly survey the terrain, not a comprehensive list of all materials that exist or even that we already know of and have catalogued — these are only the most readily available (and in some cases still widely read and cited) sources.

Wolfi Landstreicher/Feral Faun, the man so incensed by the sight of graffiti reading “men rape” that he wrote an anti-feminist screed in response, included an essay titled “Child Molestation vs. Child Love,” in “Rants: Essays and Polemics of Feral Faun.” Below is an excerpt:

“All of these years of repression and forced acquiescence to authority make the child into a grown-up (more accurately, a groan-up), which, in this society, means a conforming, obedient, and usually anxiety-ridden slave. It is the nature of this education process which makes society define the child-lover as a devil. For to the child-lover, a child is not a lump of clay to be molded to the will of authority. S/he is a god, the manifestation of Eros. The child-lover encourages the free expression of the child’s sensuality and so undermines the entire education process.”[49] (emphasis added)

Compare this to Andrew Lloyd’s remarks about the meaning of the word “pedophile”:

“A conceivable type of sex, we must all admit however much we don’t like it, is sex with children. ‘Paedophilia’, as Julie Peakman points out, comes from two Greek words which mean ‘child’ [so not ‘youth’ or ‘adolescent’] and ‘love’ or ‘friendship’. ‘Paedophilia’ is, linguistically, ‘love of children’. It will be noted there, perhaps with astonishment considering the general moral panic the word ‘paedophilia’ brings up in most people today, that the word does not mean ‘abuse of children’ — although, of course, in modern English usage it very much does mean that today. Today being called a paedophile is about the worst thing anyone can accuse you of — which is peculiar for a word that started out aiming to be about love.[50] […] this type of sexual attraction has been totally demonised even as an abstract idea of children [as non-sexual, pure or untainted, virginal beings] is completely idealised at the same time. One wonders, in fact, what would happen if a child itself genuinely pronounced itself desirous of a paedophilic relation with an adult…” (emphasis added)

During the 2005 San Franscisco bookfair, anarchist collective Bound Together Books was criticized for insisting on carrying NAMBLA publications. When pressed, one member of the collective was quoted saying that, “to force the issue would destroy the bookstore.”[51]

A member of the collective, writing on behalf of Bound Together Books, replied to criticism online by dismissing it as an issue of agreeing to disagree:

“books and periodicals about terrorism, pacifism, animal rights, conspiracy, crime, and a variety of other subjects that some people find repugnant. Not a single collective member agrees with everything in the store. We get along. You can, too. […] The bookfair is not for everybody. If it’s not for you, don’t come. If you do come, be polite and respectful to everyone else there, table holders included, whether you like them or not. If you cause trouble, for any reason whatsoever, you will be physically ejected.”[52]

Semiotext(e), an independent journal heavily influenced by French poststructuralist theory, especially the works of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, is popular among anarchists, especially poststructuralist anarchists, and in particular for its publication of The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee… and it has also been a significant actor in promoting and distributing rape apologia in anarchist and autonomist milieus. We will highlight two issues published in the early 80s, but it must be stressed that these two issues are not the whole picture — rather, pederasty and pedophilia are recurring themes in the journal’s history.

In 1980, the journal published a special issue titled “Loving Boys/Loving Children” which featured interviews between French philosopher Guy Hocquenghem and David Thorstad, the founder of NAMBLA, a “selection of laws on the books in different U.S. states on pederasty,” an interview between Semiotext(e) editor-in-chief Sylvère Lotringr and 15-year-old Mark Moffett about the teenager’s “sexual relationships with men,” as well as the first English translation of an interview with Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, and Jean Denet under the title “The Danger of Child Sexuality.”[53]

At time of writing, the only online copy of the full text of Foucault’s “The Danger of Child Sexuality” as originally published in Semiotext(e), is hosted by the website of a group called IPCE, formerly “International Pedophile and Child Emancipation,” a “pedophilia” advocacy organization.

(It hardly needs to be remarked that the French poststructuralist scene has its own somewhat infamous history with pederasty apologia — most famously the petition to abolish the age of consent, which is the subject of the interview in question.)

The following year, 1981, Semiotext(e) published issue 10, “Polysexuality,”[54] which had a section on “Child Sex,” featuring contributions from Hakim Bey, Tony Duvert (a French philosopher famous for his works defending and celebrating “pedophilia” and adult-child sex), William S. Burroughs (who was friends with Hakim Bey, and quite infamous for his practice of sex tourism, preying on adolescents in colonized and Global South nations like Mexico and Morocco[55]), and Roger Moody, a self-described “pedophile activist” associated with the British organization “Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE).”[56] (On one occasion, writing for a campaign group called Paedophile Awareness and Liberation (PAL), Roger Moody, himself a youth worker, once stated: “If all paedophiles in community schools or private schools were to strike, how many would be forced to close, or at least alter their regimes?”[57])

We emphasize again that although we have focused on two specific issues, that is far from the end of it. Many of Semiotext(e)’s regular contributors, writers, and even editors are or were active proponents of adult-child sex, and even pederasts themselves, like Hakim Bey and William S. Burroughs. Tony Duvert’s “Good Sex Illustrated” and “Diary of an Innocent” were published by Semiotext(e) as recently as 2007 and 2010, respectively, for example.[58]

We could go on — there are endless examples. Decades of “edgy, subversive” spins on the same boring, played-out patriarchal retrenchment. It is a persistent, pervasive problem. We have hardly scratched the surface. But we do not just want to catalogue the problem, but to describe its nature, its source, the source of its staying power.

The Nature of the Problem

⚠ CONTENT NOTICE ⚠

Although we placed a content warning at the beginning of this text, we wish to warn you now that this section contains some of the most potentially triggering or upsetting material, especially for those who have experienced childhood sexual violence and have ever been made to testify in court.

If you wish to skip this section, please click here to skip straight to the next section, “The Crux of the Problem”

I am so sorry that this happened to you. I love you.

Roger Moody’s contribution to No. #10 of Semiotext(e) is strikingly illustrative, and deserves to be compared to the rhetoric of apologia we have seen so far.

Although most other contributions are works of short fiction, Moody’s appears to be an excerpt from his 1979 autobiography, Indecent Assault, about his acquittal for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy named Lee. He uses his control of the narrative to cast doubt on the child’s account of events, claiming Lee is “confused” about the allegation he has made against Moody. Moody says he is comforted in the courtroom by his “love” for Lee, the child who struggles to even look at him, struggles to speak, struggles to recount what happened. Moody says[59] he wishes Lee’s mother could have been there to see how “confused” Lee was:

He recounts the interrogation to which Lee is subjected, and the exchange below[60] will be immediately, painfully recognizable to anyone who has been a child on the stand trying to tell about what happened to them, or who has had to support a child standing before the interrogation of a state apparatus determined to acquit their abuser, or anyone who has ever witnessed a rape trial of any kind. (All emphasis is added.)

Pros[ecution]: what about Roger?

Lee: he tried to come over to my mattress.

Pros: did he succeed at all?

Lee: I cant remember.

Pros: can you remember anything else happening at all?

There is a long silence

Lee: he tried to put his arms a round me.

Pros: anything else?

There is another long silence

Magistrate: do you know why you’re here to give evidence today?

Defence barrister (in an aside): the police officers told him to come.

Pros: did anything else happen you can tell us about?

There is yet another long silence

Lee: he tried to put his penis up my backside.

Pros: did you see his penis?

Lee: yes.

Pros: did he get it in?

Lee: no.

Pros: when he did so, what did you do?

Lee: I moved further away.

Pros: did anything else happen on another night?

Lee: he kissed me and that.

Pros: what does “and that” mean?

Lee: nothing.

Pros: I’d like you to look at two photos. Who took these photos?

Lee: Roger.

Pros: when?

Lee: when he came to the midlands sometime before I came to London.

Pros: did you read any books when staying with roger?

Lee: yes.

Pros: what sort of books?

Lee: sex books.

Pros: was there any question of photos being taken?

Lee: he wanted to. Yes.

Pros: did you agree to those two photos being taken?

Lee: no.

Defence: Lee, you know you said Roger tried to put his penis up your backside? He never touched it did he?

Lee: I don’t know.

Def: you tell us.

Lee: I thought he did.

Def: you’re not sure about it are you?

Lee: yes.

Def: you couldn’t see him could you?

Lee: no.

Def: you can’t really be sure can you? Isn’t that right?

Lee: that’s right. I can’t be sure.

Def: it could have been a hand against you couldn’t it?

Lee: yes.

Def: it could just as easily have been a hand as a penis couldn’t it?

Lee: yes.

[…]

Def: when you say “on other occasions” he tried to kiss you he was doing that rather like a father wasn’t he?

Lee: yes.

Def: not in any other way?

Lee: no.

Def: and when he cuddled you he did so like a father?

Lee: yes.

Def: not in any other way?

Lee: no.

[…]

Def: Roger used to treat you very much like a son didn’t he?

Lee: yes.

Def: your mum and dad don’t live together do they?

Lee: no.

Def: they haven’t done so since you were a baby is that right?

Lee: no, they haven’t.

Def: do you see your dad very much?

Lee: no.

Def: Roger was really like a father to all of you?

Lee: yes.

Def: so when you came to stay in London with roger it was natural for you to sleep in the same room and not in a room—a bare room—on your own?

Lee: yes.

Def: and when Roger was touching you, he was being affectionate like a father wasn’t he? He wasn’t doing anything wrong?

Lee: I don’t know whether he was touching me like a father.

In his commentary on the interrogation to which Lee is being subjected by his lawyer, Moody goes on to say, “I’ve little doubt that what Lee feels I did wrong was to kiss him. […] That Lee wanted me to kiss him, I know. Perhaps he also fantasised my penis coming in contact with his bottom.”[61]

The interrogation goes on at some length and with the same themes repeating again and again. Lee is asked what happened, and then bullied out of his answers by Moody’s lawyer.

For Moody, the child’s “no” is always just “confused” until it gives way, under pressure, to a “yes” (with guidance and correction from a wise adult); the mother is a hysterical woman whose interference between him and his “love” ruins everything; and the father in this Oedipal[62] unit is Moody himself. The affectionate, understanding father who knows what is best and that is why he knows the victim must have wanted it.

This exchange is worth laying out in full, to us, because of what it reveals about the nature of the rape apologia problem the anarchist movement has.

For all the morally self-righteous claims about adult-child sex as an expression of the child’s own “sensuality,” as an expression of their own agency and a liberation from the oppression of the nuclear family, it is still ultimately the very figure and authority of the father that protects the adult cis male Desiring-Subject from the danger of letting the victim’s self-knowledge be legitimized. The authority to touch how he wants and to command the subaltern subject to interpret what he does to their body in the way he says to interpret it, the authority to speak over the subaltern subject and overwrite their narrative, to assert “consent” and “desire” on the part of the subject who physically moves away from him, the authority to insist that the victim “fantasized” an assault.

Keep this story in your head when you consider poetic lines like Wolfi Landstreicher’s “the child-lover encourages the free expression of the child’s sensuality.” Hold it against this image of the abuser sitting in a courtroom, watching the legal mechanisms of the state press his victim to death and silence on his behalf, and pontificating to his audience of pederasts and apologists that the violence was all the victim’s own desire and fantasy, which he merely “encouraged.”

Even in their own sympathetic stories — the stories they tell each other to affirm their cause as emancipatory struggle against the persecution of the state — it is still always a story about cis men taking what they want without asking, without caring what the object of their desire thinks or feels about it, and then exonerating themselves by appealing to the social cult of the father. Still men exercising the technologies of violence proffered to them as men by the patriarchy — physical coercion, social ambush, and judicial advantage[63] — to erase the rest of us from the world, to transform us into bodies available for their consumption, under the fatherly auspices of the very state they claim is persecuting them.

This story ends in acquittal, as most such stories do. The state has never “persecuted” rapists or pederasts, although the state will readily imprison a 16-year-old for killing their father-rapist.[64] The state has always been on the side of the powerful, on the side of the patriarch and his appetites. The wing of the anarchist movement that is enmeshed in the rhetoric of rape apologia is itself merely toadying for the patriarchal state while imagining itself, as Lloyd did, as the oppressed, taking back the power (read: the sexual authority of patriarchy) that has been taken from them by women and children.

We have not even begun to address the broader problem with anti-feminist backlash politics among anarchists and the rape apologia that this backlash produced; let the above brief outline of anti-feminist works by Wolfi Landstreicher, Bob Black, and Dominique Karamazov (whose anti-feminist rape apologia is cited positively in multiple anarchist texts I am familiar with) serve for the time being. Nor have we even begun to address the sexual entitlement and sense of ownership over feminine bodies Lloyd’s use of stolen sex workers’ photographs suggests, and what this reveals about the ways patriarchy figures feminine bodies as the rightful property of cis men, and sex workers’ bodies in particular as free for the taking, possessing no right to boundaries or consent at all. There is so much about these events that reveal the way violence and desire are constructed under patriarchy, and the painful reality that, contrary to popular patriarchal storytelling, the direction of sexual violence and desire toward children is at the very heart of patriarchy.

The Crux of the Problem, or: Why Andrew Lloyd? Why Now?

The crux is this: can we really say that Andrew Lloyd’s arguments are necessarily out of step with all of anarchist writing? Not really. Not with anarchist writing by cis men at any rate. Is it out of step with consistent anarchist ethics, anarchist values? Firmly yes. Is it out of step with anarcha-feminist writing? Again, firmly yes. But that is part of the problem. That mainstream anarchist thought has held anarcha-feminist correctives in contempt, ignorance, or plain incuriosity. The anarchist movement has a long[65] and storied[66] history[67] of misogynistic[68] and anti-feminist gender politics, some of which has been outlined here. And there is a tightly bound relationship between anti-feminism and the kind of rape apologia that has thrived in a certain wing of the anarchist movement; these cannot be separated from each other. (Not least because a significant portion of pro-CSA apologetics rely on figuring feminist anti-rape politics as a moralist hysteria fueled by emotionally overreacting busybody women who interfere with the desires of noble-minded men.[69])Real-world anarchist milieus and communities more broadly have spectacularly failed to address rampant rape, sexual assault, and abuse in their own circles.[70] This persistent refusal to address the problem is a significant part of what allows folks like Andrew Lloyd to thrive in our communities and prey on vulnerable young anarchists.

Andrew Lloyd is not an outlier but only the latest of a long tradition, and only managed to get generally rejected from anarchist circles because he turned out to have been running an elaborate catfish, not because of his persistent rape apologia. Under his false persona, it was the anarchists and anarcha-feminists who tried to call him out and draw attention to his oppressive rhetoric who were likely to be labeled as hysterical moralists, prudes, or even fascists, and subsequently stigmatized by other anarchists. The painful truth is that our anarchist rape apologists have never failed to “rest in power.” Even in death, they have never lost their grip on the power they accumulated in life. Their words and voices continue to carry that power into the present day. Their power hangs cold and clammy over the whole history of feminist and youth liberationist anarchism.

There are still plenty of people, within anarchist communities and outside them, who would agree that, no, Andrew Lloyd’s arguments are not necessarily out of step with all anarchist writing, but who simply do not think it matters, or who approve of it. Who do not care whether the NYC youths who caught Hakim Bey’s eye in the 90s are “journeying in peace” today. Who, if confronted with unforgiving proof that they are not in peace at all, would readily concoct post-hoc consent to impose over the victims’ every word as Roger Moody does. Who do not care that Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed has devoted a significant amount of its publication history to rape apologia. Who simply do not see rape, especially the sexual assault of children, as a significant political issue (unless it can be utilized as a rhetorical weapon.) And maybe that is the real crux of the problem. Apathy. Apathy about the oppression of those — trans people, women, children — who aren’t worthy of consideration as real subjects of liberatory history, only as objects, whose bodies are supposed to available to fuck. Apathy about what happens to us unless we offer ourselves up willingly to be fucked. Or, excuse me, “willing to embrace,” as Andrew Lloyd put it himself.

The history of rape apologia in anarchist movements is not in the past. It is in the present. It is being used as a cudgel against survivors, youth liberationists, and anarcha-feminists even today.

In the grand tradition of anarcho-rape-apologists, they are unable to comprehend anyone having any reason to object to their own right of domination over and de facto sexual access to young bodies other than some abstract “morality,” — “morality” is the only thing they ever considered as a possible barrier, after all — so they call us moralists or moralizers and demand that we debate them in the imaginary free and open marketplace of ideas (where they know that patriarchy is king and they hold all the advantages of hegemonic rape culture.) At the same time, they fabricate their own homegrown moral panic about an epidemic of “pedo-jacketers,” (which is another way of saying “false allegations,” a rape-apologist classic,) and overreacting hysterics “jumping to conclusions.” They create and rigidly police a discourse of entrapment in which to crush and silence the voices of all who speak on behalf of liberation of the oppressed from the oppressive ruthless self-absorbed desires of patriarchy’s ruling pederast class.

And when they claim for themselves the default position of “intellectual high ground” and order the raped women and raped youths telling them they are speaking for the oppressors to “go do some reading,” whose words do you think they are commanding us, (authoritatively, as they imagine themselves to be the authorities, in multiple senses of the word, on raped women’s and raped youths’ “agency”) to read?

The words of cis men, telling us authoritatively that it is and was actually a gift and privilege to be raped by benevolent “child-lovers.” Telling us authoritatively that we are raped because of our “irresponsible female behaviors” that “seek the attention of men and then act surprised at the consequences we arouse.” Telling us authoritatively that when we are or have been raped as teenagers by grown men, it was actually an expression of our own agency, that to be “real anarchists,” we must absolve the men who rape us of their responsibility by whatever means necessary. They are telling us to defer to the real authorities.

From their position defending the throne of the patriarch, they can call our resistance “moralism,” they can discredit our ability to even name the ones who oppress us by dismissing us as “pedo-jacketers” and hysterics, while they call their own sexual entitlement “our agency” and “our liberation” from the “repression” of not being sexually available to them. It is once again a manifestation of Andrew Lloyd’s vision of “anarcha-feminism” as defined primarily by oppressed bodies being willingly sexually available to service cis men’s sexual entitlement on demand, defined by oppressed subjects (insofar as they recognize our subject-hood at all) making cis men’s sexual desires the center of our political projects above all else. To a frightening number of our “comrades,” that is what sexual freedom means: free sexual access to subordinated and subaltern bodies. Not freedom, for us, from them.

It shares a kinship with the long tradition of enforcing “restorative” processes[71] that privilege restoring rapists’ social position within the community over the safety or community participation of survivors.[72] “Freedom” can never be allowed to mean our total liberation from rape and abuse. It shares a kinship with the tradition of closely policing subaltern genders’ words when they try to talk about or analyze the ways they are oppressed by patriarchy (“what about bell hooks!” “are you saying you hate men?” “misandry is just as bad as misogyny!”) while allowing cis men (and the select few marginalized genders who are willing to run cover for patriarchal sexual oppression) like Landstreicher, Karamazov, Hakim Bey, and Andrew Peter Lloyd to dominate the pages of anarchist theory and history with endless thousands and thousands of words waxing poetic about the “liberatory” virtue in every configuration of rape imaginable.

But since children and youth are perhaps the most marginalized of all oppressed classes in contemporary society (and most historical societies)[73] it is virtually inevitable that this violence, like all oppressive violence, flows downhill and lands on their shoulders.

Like it always fucking has.

[1] There is much to be said about the problems inherent to the terminology and common conceptualizations of so-called “pedophilia” — usually thought of in psychiatic, medicalized, terms, as a kind of “paraphilia,” sometimes insistently distinguished from “hebephilia” or “ephebophilia” and so on — and that psychiatric-medical model’s role in undermining feminist analyses of sexuality and desire as socially constructed and produced within and through the social and sexual practices of patriarchy. We don’t necessarily endorse either the term’s accuracy or the essentialist, anti-feminist “psychosexual” model of sexuality it is connected with, but we do not have the space in this essay to hammer out these issues in the detail they deserve. Nevertheless, it is common in casual speech to use “pedophilia” as shorthand for a range of sexualized and erotic desires or behaviors of adults directed at children or adolescents. For the purposes of this essay, when we say “pedophile” we are referring to an adult who sexually or erotically desires or pursues sexual interaction with children or adolescents, and when we say “pedophilia,” we are referring to the broad range of sexualized or erotic desires, ways of seeing, behaviors, etc. adults engage in directed toward children and adolescents. We do not particularly care whether the intrinsically transphobic sexological “science” that has codified the “official” definition of the term agrees with this usage. We also do not abide by the bioessentialist false dichotomies — e.g. between “true pedophiles” and “child sexual abusers” who are not “clinically diagnosed” as “pedophiles” — of the sexological approach. We regard the desires, behaviors, erotics and sexualities generally understood as associated with so-called “pedophilia” to be normatively produced by and through the social and sexual practices, conditions, and hegemonic ideology of allocisheteropatriarchy. (Not, as some analyses claim, a form of deviancy or counter-hegemonic sexuality.) In other words, it is a social, systemic, and structural phenomenon, not an individual, apolitical condition disconnected from social practices, ideology, and material conditions. Gender, Desire, and Child Sexual Abuse: Accounting for the Male Majority, by A. Mark Liddle, is a wothwhile, although somewhat dated, read on the subject.

[2] note that many links from the original thread now re-direct to different content, or have become dead links, since a lot of content originally cited has been deleted or replaced since the revelations Håkan made. The original documents were backed up as PDFs before being deleted and can be found here: [https://twitter.com/rechelon/status/1613353755440984065 and directly here https://t.co/1VLakkZsZZ] but we will also link directly to the PDFs in the body of the text.

[3] at time of writing, the link now leads to a scrubbed page. The documents have been backed up at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qI22gFH4yC2g-0Y4gWxrdSXeOWUmyMDZ

[4] at time of writing, the account has been deleted.

[5] at time of writing, the link now leads to a scrubbed page. The documents have been backed up in this Google Drive collection: Andrew Lloyd (anarqxista goldman etc) back up

[6] Since the page has been scrubbed, you can find a back-up of this “Anarchy and Anarchisms” by Dionysia Exarchopoulos on Google Drive: shorturl.at/bckmY

[7] “There is Nothing to Stick To” back up on Google Drive

[8] “Wisdom of “Tao” by Dr. Existenz on archive today

[9] “Autobiography” by Andrew Lloyd/Dr. Existenz on archive today

[10] “Sound and Fury” by Andrew Lloyd/Dr. Existenz on archive today

[11] This essay is being drafted on January 13th, 2023. Happy birthday, Andrew. You’re fucked.

[12] “Leaving Out the Ugly Part: Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson,” by Anonymous.

[13] EDIT: A direct quote has been removed upon request.

[14] Håkan Geijer on Mastodon, January 11, 2023; NoBonzo on Mastodon, January 11, 2023

[15] Håkan Geijer on Mastodon, January 12, 2023; “Dionysia/Anarchagrrl” on Google Drive”

[16] “Dionysia/Anarchagrrl” on Google Drive, page 1

[17] “Dionysia/Anarchagrrl” on Google Drive

[18] “Dionysia/Anarchagrrl” on Google Drive, page 15

[19] In general, we believe it is inadvisable to underestimate the degree to which “adult men’s freedom to sexually pursue children” is always built into everything Hakim Bey says about “freedom” however.

[20] “Leaving Out the Ugly Part: Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson,” by Anonymous.

[21] For Peter Lamborn Wilson (1945-2022) by Julius Gavroche

[22] Hakim Bey has died, Anonymous

[23] One wonders why any anarchist would take “convictions by the state” as synonymous with truth. In any case, both the author of the article being “disproven” in this comment — Robert Helms — and anarchist historian Spencer Beswick report that the late 90s NYC anarchist scene considered it an open secret that Hakim Bey sexually pursued young boys. We wonder if those children are “journeying in peace.”

[24] Anarqxista Goldman, 1996-2023, by the Collective

[25] this is a reference to an anarchist personality known for participating in the Portland-area protest uprising in 2020. A survivor came forward disclosing his sexual assault of them shortly prior to the events discussed in this essay, followed a few days later by a second survivor.

[26] Thank you to the Anarchist Federation for this clarification

[27] Serial Catfisher Posed as Anarchist Sex Worker to Tweet About 15-Year-Olds, by Kelly Weil, ANews. Originally published on the Daily Beast

[28] despite linking the word “anarchist” to an article about “anarcho”-capitalist crypto enthusiasts

[29] The Anarchist Library on Twitter: “A brief update from the English library project: We have unpublished all Anarqxista Goldman texts from the library.”

[30] The Poverty of Feminism, by Dominique Karamazov

[31] Feminism as Fascism, Bob Black

[32] Communiques of ITS, Individualists Tending to the Wild

[33] Of Indiscriminate Attacks & Wild Reactions, by the Edelweiss Pirates

[34] The Ideology of Victimization, by Feral Faun, in Feral Revolution

[35] EDIT: an earlier version of this essay incorrectly identified Adam Lanza as a neo-nazi. Upon correction from a reader, I have removed this term. However, in double-checking Lanza’s background, I came by additional information about Lanza that is worth adding, even if there is not a convenient place for it in the main body of this essay. In Black Seed #5, writer Mallory Wournos praises Adam Lanza as a rebel against civilization (with a sneering aside about “morally righteous anarchists”), writing, “People who cared to read what he wrote, knew exactly where Adam was coming from when he opened fire in that classroom. He couldn’t have been any clearer about his motivation.” Mallory is right, although not in the way they intended: Lanza wrote a heavily homophobic essay, (which, per Mallory’s suggestion, I did read) laying out a lengthy argument in defense of sex with children — mostly in the form of an imagined back-and-forth debate furiously “debunking” objections to adult-child sex. (It is 35 pages long. He is a bad writer.) In it, he sympathetically portrays men who seek sex with children as persecuted outcasts, rejected even by “their fellow LGBT activists.” He also wrote a screenplay called “Lovebound” about “the beauty in the romantic relationship between a ten-year-old boy and a thirty-year-old man,” as well as a misogynistic screed titled “Selfish,” in which he rants about the inherent selfishness of all women — or as he calls them, “females.” These documents can all be found on https://schoolshooters.info/adam-lanza

[36] Murder of the Civilized by Mallory Wuornos, in Black Seed #5

[37] Bob Black’s letter to the Seattle Police

[38] Gilles Dauvé – Jean Barrot [Philippe BOURRINET], Redacción y Colaboraciones, ser histórico

[39] Paedophilia and American Anarchism – the Other Side of Hakim Bey, Robert Helms, 2006

[40] EDIT: The Anarchist Library does actually list a handful of Foucault writings, but it excludes his major/full works.

[41] Oddly this is likely to be one of the more controversial statements in this essay. I do not have either the space or the wish to fully explore the strange role of figureheads like Michel Foucault in (especially online) debates about anarchist theory, but I will note that I generally agree with various anarchist critiques of Foucault’s theory of power and domination.

[42] Something even the Daily Beast was able to get right.

[43] Håkan Geijer on kolektiva.social, January 12, 2023

[44] Malice on kolektiva.social, January 12, 2023

[45] NoBonzo on Twitter, January 12, 2023

[46] For an excellent work on the struggle for sex workers’ rights, and the intersections of labor, sexuality, gender, and feminist thought, please consult Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes

[47] Anarchasteminist, James Cantor, paedophilia, and the “Gender Critical” movement

[48] Spencer Beswick on Twitter, August 10, 2023

[49] Wolfi Landstreicher: Child Molestation Apologist, by heresydistro

[50] It bears noting that this passage evinces an extraordinarily poor grasp of linguistics in general and etymology in particular, either as a discipline or concerning the etymology of this specific word. This is simply not how semantic histories are traced, and this claim amounts to full-throated disinformation.

[51] Paedophilia and American Anarchism – the Other Side of Hakim Bey, Robert Helms, 2006

[52] NAMBLA, Indybay Open Publishing Newswire

[53] SpecificObject: Semiotexte (e) / Semiotext(e) Special, Large Type Series: Loving Boys / Intervention Series 2 : Loving Children (Summer 1980); Semiotext(e), “Loving Boys” Special Intervention Series 2 (Summer 1980)

[54] Semiotexte 10, Polysexuality (1981)

[55] Joseph A. Boone, Vacation Cruises; Or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism, 2022

[56] Islington Survivors Network, Report #10 Pro-Paedophile Activism in 1970s and 1980s Islington: PIE Central and Peter Righton

[57] Report #10 Pro-Paedophile Activism in 1970s and 1980s Islington: PIE Central and Peter Righton, Islington Survivors Network; Ian Pace, Anton Grey and the Sexual Reform Society 2

[58] MIT Press, books by author, “Tony Duvert”

[59] “The Committal,” Roger Moody, in Semiotext(e) 10, “Polysexuality.” 1981. Page 125.

[60] “The Committal,” Roger Moody, in Semiotext(e) 10, “Polysexuality.” 1981. Pages 126-134.

[61] “The Committal,” Roger Moody, in Semiotext(e) 10, “Polysexuality.” 1981. Page 132.

[62] We have not forgotten that Freud’s Oedipal theory was itself proposed to explain away childhood sexual violence as the victim’s own fantasies.

[63] Sayak Valencia and Olga Arnaiz Zhuravleva, Necropolitics, Postmortem/Transmortem Politics, and Transfeminisms in the Sexual Economies of Death

[64] for more discussion on this topic, please see Thirty-One Theses: a Manifesto

[65] Ray Filar, Notes Toward a Theory of the Manarchist

[66] Spencer Beswick, The “Obnoxious Wimmin’s Network”: Anarcha-Feminism at the 1989 San Francisco Gathering

[67] Courtney Desiree Morris, Why Misogynists Make Great Informants

[68] Kristen Anderberg, a Man’s Heaven is a Woman’s Hell

[69] There is such a complex body of research and primary sources to be examined on this topic that it will require a separate piece of its own.

[70] Betrayal: A Critical Analysis of Rape Culture in Anarchist Subcultures

[71] Lee Shevek, Against a Liberal Abolitionism and Intimate Athoritarianism: The Ideology of Abuse

[72] Various Authors, Dangerous Spaces: Violent Resistance, Self-Defense, and Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender

[73] Feral Children: Settler Colonialism, Progress, and the Figure of the Child, by Toby Rollo