The Pocket Knife and the Firebomb
Abandoning Pacifist Feminism
With blow after blow raining down from the whitest house it’s more important than ever for militant feminists and separatists to really take stock of our situation. For the last 50 years feminists of different stripes have put together vital analyses of patriarchal civilization, history, political economy, religion, culture, the left, and much more. Feminist praxis however, whether liberal or radical or separatist, remains firmly stuck in a pacifist gear.
Liberal feminists seem desperate to revive the 1990’s, or maybe the Obama days. Safe and sterile essays criticizing long dead feminist thinkers for their sex negativity or decrying separatism as “divisive” (that’s the point, sister) still find paid spots in lefty magazines. Settler women who eagerly threw on their pussy hats in 2017 now demand that Elon Musk take his hands off of NATO, all while still wearing Elizabeth Warren t-shirts. That “nevertheless she persisted” crap. All of them proclaiming that joy is itself an act of resistance. Little puffs of smoke, no fire.
Radical feminism, born after a massive upsurge of autonomous women’s activity in the late 60’s, was in decline by 1979. Even Andrea Dworkin noted the decline of feminism’s influence. What remains of the radical feminist movement has either gone down the path of complete crank transmisogyny or is still cribbing Women Against Pornography’s right wing playbook. Still begging the police to protect women. All that promising analysis of rape and sex and pornography and sex work and not an ounce of useful praxis.
The separatists of the last century had the right impulse. Break off from patriarchy, go attempt to build something real and women-centered away from prying male eyes. But groups of white women eagerly laying claim to “unused” stolen land in the settler colony does not a revolution make. No attempt at taking territory from men, no rear base areas for women’s armed struggle, no legacy but decaying transmisogynist communes in the woods. The clip is well and truly empty.
There are examples of rudimentary forms of resistance all around us though, we just have to know where to look. From the self-defense of Jaia Cruz to the widespread firebombings of Jane’s Revenge, there are full clips for militant feminists to reload with, once we make the choice to do so.
Death Before Detransition: Free Jaia Cruz!
Jaia Cruz is a trans woman of color in her 20’s who lives in New York City. On January 2nd, 2025 Jaia was attacked in a deli in Harlem by a man who took issue with her transness. Calling her a “tranny” and a “faggot,” the man grabbed Jaia by her hair and punched her in the face repeatedly. Jaia Cruz defended herself with a pocket knife she carried for self-defense. Jaia survived, her attacker did not. Now she faces 15 years in prison.
Jaia’s case echoes numerous others going back through the years. Cece McDonald, Aileen Wuornos, Joan Little, Inez Garcia, the list could go on forever. Women, trans women of color especially, do not have a right to self defense. Three of the women mentioned above, Cece McDonald, Joan Little, and Inez Garcia, were eventually freed after strong feminist campaigns. Aileen Wuornos died in prison, still slandered by the “serial killer” label to this day. No large-scale movement to free Jaia Cruz has developed so far.
But it has to, if we’re really going to learn the lesson that her case teaches us: transmisogynistic violence can only be stopped by revolutionary transfeminist violence. The man who attacked Jaia Cruz will never attack another trans woman ever again because he’s fucking dead. He’s dead and Jaia Cruz is alive. Sit with that for a minute. Really consider the simplicity of it.
Except that now Jaia is in prison. For her self defense to be worth it we have to support her in prison, make sure she’s never forgotten and fight for her release. The prison support movement has to be strong if our movement is going to require people to risk serious prison time. Older revs have been telling us this for decades. It’s time we got serious about it.
Kill Your Local Rapist: Free Chelsea Perkins!
In March of 2021 Chelsea Perkins, 30 years old at the time, lured her rapist, Matthew Dunmire, into the woods in Ohio and shot him in the back of the head, killing him. The two of them had gone to highschool together and in 2017 Perkins reported to the police that Dunmire had raped her. The pigs, of course, did nothing. So some four years later she reconnected with him on facebook, booked an airbnb, and took him to the woods. Simple as.
Much has been made in the media of Perkins’ job as an onlyfans model. Most of the headlines about the case refer to her as an onlyfans model or a porn actress. This is an obvious attempt at misogynistic degradation. We’re meant to think of her as not only disposable but as available for the free use of men. Sex workers are amongst a special class of women considered unrapeable by patriarchy. As such they are subject to incredible levels of sexual violence. Trans women also fall into this class.
What is a woman supposed to do when the police refuse to act (as they almost always do) or when the police are themselves the perpetrators (as they very frequently are)? What is she supposed to do when she knows that not only did a man rape her but he’s raped other women and has no incentive to stop? Not only is the so-called justice system completely uninterested in stopping rape but so too are the activists, themselves more interested in horseshit “restorative” justice processes that let rapists off the hook and alienate victims. It’s hardly surprising that women will start to take matters into their own hands.
But there should have been a group of women for Perkins to go to. She should have had support, should not have been so easy to catch, should not be so easily slandered in the media for what she did. Perkins did the right thing but we as feminist revolutionaries have yet to catch up.
A Soldier Against Black Genocide: Free Rodney Hinton Jr.!
Black genocide and male violence against women are inextricably linked here in america. Where one rises the other will assuredly follow. On May 1st, 2025, in Ohio an 18 year old Black teenager, Ryan Hinton, was shot and killed by police who alleged that he was riding in a stolen car. The next day Ryan’s father, Rodney Hinton Jr., struck and killed another police officer with his car after seeing footage of his son’s murder. Charged with aggravated murder, Hinton was surrounded by pigs at his hearing, the marks from a police beating visible on his face.
Fundraising attempts to support Rodney Hinton Jr. began immediately, with so many appearing that GoFundMe took them down and apologized to the pig union for their popularity. Many people wondered what the implications were for the popularity of rich whiteboy assassin Luigi Mangione after he killed a healthcare CEO earlier this year. Would the widespread support for him translate to support for anti-pig violence as a whole? Would it translate to support for say a Black man who killed a police officer? If GoFundMe’s formal apology is any indication, the answer might almost be yes.
A grieving Black father isn’t as instantly meme-able as a boring Italian boy with thick eyebrows and a stupid name. Certainly Rodney Hinton Jr. doesn’t have the same number of white supporters as Luigi does. But he does have the visible support of much of the youth of the Black Nation. Instagram slides providing info on how to put money on his books and write to him exploded in popularity after May 2nd. “If you support Luigi Mangione you better support Rodney Hinton Jr.” is the general sentiment.
Many have rightly pointed out that Hinton was acting in line with a Black radical tradition that stretches from him to Assata Shakur back to Nat Turner and beyond. The tradition of enslaved and oppressed Africans to rise up and kill their masters. A tradition that in the 1970’s was called the Black Liberation Army. If the support for Hinton Jr. is any indication, it seems from my outsider’s perspective that the BLA might be ripe for a comeback.
The summer of 2020 and its aftermath proved that Black genocide can’t be stopped by marches or even riots. That summer was the hottest in a generation and for five years it’s seemed that no one learned a thing from it. The Rodney Hinton Jr. case is proof otherwise, welcome and ready to be built on.
Build the Women’s Army: The Jane’s Revenge Arson Campaign
In May of 2022, Dick’s big nine accidentally let their plans to overturn Roe v. Wade slip. The country, still reeling from the 2020 insurrection and successive COVID waves, seemed to be stumbling violently into the fascist abyss. Two days later a group calling themselves Jane’s Revenge firebombed a Madison, Wisconsin “crisis pregnancy center” (a religious center masquerading as an abortion clinic in order to pressure and traumatize desperate people into keeping their unwanted pregnancies). Their communique was clear:
This is not a declaration of war. War has been upon us for decades. A war which we did not want, and did not provoke. Too long have we been attacked for asking for basic medical care. Too long have we been shot, bombed, and forced into childbirth without consent.
This was only a warning. We demand the disbanding of all anti-choice establishments, fake clinics, and violent anti-choice groups within the next thirty days. This is not a mere “difference of opinion” as some have framed it. We are literally fighting for our lives. We will not sit still while we are killed and forced into servitude. We have run thin on patience and mercy for those who seek to strip us of what little autonomy we have left. As you continue to bomb clinics and assassinate doctors with impunity, so too shall we adopt increasingly extreme tactics to maintain freedom over our own bodies.
We are forced to adopt the minimum military requirement for a political struggle. Again, this was only a warning. Next time the infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive. Medical imperialism will not face a passive enemy. Wisconsin is the first flashpoint, but we are all over the US, and we will issue no further warnings.
For the next 11 months firebombings and vandalism plagued these fake crisis centers, all issuing communiques as Jane’s Revenge. It’s clear that JR isn’t one centralized guerrilla group but a more decentralized anarchist-style leaderless resistance, similar to the Earth Liberation Front from the 90’s or some cells of the Black Liberation Army. This can make resistance terrifically difficult to suppress, but also make activity difficult to continue.
When the most active Earth Liberation Front members were busted in the 2000’s they did something that had, for the most part, been avoided by the guerrilla movements of the long 60’s: they snitched. ELF operations ceased. Eco-militants continued but wouldn’t have a fraction of the reach that ELF actions had until Indigenous nations upended the table with oil pipeline blockades in the 2010’s. The Earth Liberation Front now mostly serves as a cautionary tale for exactly this kind of organizing.
Four people have so far been convicted of participating in attacks claimed by Jane’s Revenge. The group has gone quiet since April of 2023. But this brief spark is exactly the kind of work that we as feminists and revolutionaries need to be learning from and escalating. Combined with the lessons of the militants above, the example of Jane’s Revenge could be an important plank in the building of an actual women’s army, and such an army is more necessary now than it has ever been.
Women and gender-oppressed people cannot afford to be as atomized as we are, nor can we afford to try and safely hide out in whatever oppressive institutions might still shield some of us. White trans women are learning this lesson in real time as the hetero-settler state, having long practiced trans genocide on the most vulnerable trans women, mainly Black trans women and street-level sex workers, is now targeting trans women as a people. We still have that good old white power consciousness, but it isn’t helping us much anymore. We can either insist that we’re the right kind of tranny as they bury us alive or we can commit to becoming a new kind of woman, to protracted struggle, to stepping out into the wilderness and really finding out who we can be.