January was a month of public thinking. I wrote and published over 300 pages of a new book on my blog. February is for editing, solidifying, and lining up the publishing.
This book will be the culmination of a lot of the work I’ve been doing for the past few years. Writing about social justice dogma at IPM, attempting a podcast, creating and launching a course, and more.
It’s also, in a lot of ways, a memoir of sorts, following my entire adult life of activism and social justice advocacy – from the beginnings of my time as a professional gender & sexuality educator, social justice comedian, and author, up until today.
My goal has been to write something for social justice people (i.e., my people, me) to advance the goals of social justice. It’s an unabashedly progressive collection of writing, with dismantling oppression in its sights. But the approach I’m taking isn’t one that we’re used to in Social Justice Land.
The book is about problematic activism – dogma, orthodoxy, absolutism, and fundamentalism – and the ways we’re creating problems that stand in the way of our solutions, barriers blocking us from living social justice.
And it’s also an act of problematic activism. The table of contents is basically a long list of things we’re not supposed to talk about, ask about, wonder, or push back against – lest we be cast as “one of the bad ones,” part of the problem.
(I shared a link to the work-in-progress table of contents on Patreon if you want to see what I mean.)
Writing it has felt like walking a tightrope without a safety net.
Fall one way and I’m branded as “problematic” by my fellow activists, canceled; fall the other and I contribute more problematic activism to a movement that’s already struggling.
We’ll see if I can pull it off.
Cross your fingers for me,
<3 sK
P.S. If you want to read a preview, I created a mailing list for the book and you’ll get a .PDF with a few selected chapters.
P.P.S. If you work for a publisher who might be interested in acquiring this book (or are connected to one), I’d love to hear from you. I have some publishing deal-breakers, but I’m otherwise super flexible, easy to work with, and excited to talk details. I’m hoping to have this book out really soon, like Spring 2020 soon, so let’s talk!