Trigger warning: extensive discussion of rape and the power dynamics thereof. Read only when you’re ready.
[This essay expands on ideas from our work-in-progress book about Patriarchy, so if there is a large overlap with what the book eventually contains when it’s published, it’s not plagiarism but from the same minds and hands. Plagiarism is made up, anyways.]
1: There are in fact three genderclasses
In an essay titled Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary, the Sizhen System proposes that there are three genderclasses under Patriarchy: Power, notPower, and FaggotSubaltern.1 Though she steeps her theorizing in Marxism-Leninism, it is readily possible to scrape that varnish off and leave a very powerful idea. By recognizing the existence of the ternary genderclass system we are better able to combat Patriarchy.
Patriarchy on a fundamental level is the differential access to the capacity to rape and to hold power over others via gendered subjugation. Just like how Capitalism functions as a class system—with classes of bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpenproletariat, et cetera—so too does Patriarchy function as a class system. While gender in reality is your individual and communal experiences of yourself, and thus intensely varies by individual and society, genderclasses are relative positions of power and authority under hierarchies of power and authority.
The genderclass of Power (“Power-gc” to differentiate from power as a type of authority) benefits the most from patriarchy. NotPower-gc does not have the authority or power of Power-gc but is provisionally granted power and authority in policing the boundaries of FaggotSubaltern and itself in order to secure its position within Patriarchy. FaggotSubaltern is the wastebin of genderclasses, the position that you must never become and which renders you inhuman. These classes are trivially legible to the gendered system of authority, Patriarchy.
These genderclasses can often overlap with “cisman,” “ciswoman,” and “intersex and trans” but not always and not necessarily. As a system, Patriarchy is perpetuated by individuals, and some individual differences can appear in exactly which individual is in which genderclass: Designations of genderclass are malleable. They are also mutable, in that people can sometimes shift between them. For example, some weirdo fascists and near-fascists view people like Blaire White (self-loathing, conventionally attractive, rich, white trans people) as “one of the good ones.” That is, they view her as notPower-gc. Every other fascist and near-fascist will put her up against the wall with the rest of us. She viciously defends her position as the one “true” transsexual while viciously attacking all trans people (who are invariably way cooler than she is) who fall so little as a picometer short of being a “true” transsexual. She must be so cruel exactly because that is the only way to temporarily secure her position as notFaggot and notSubaltern. On the other end, some straightcismen are faggots, such as the ones who are openly kind to trans people, those who fail the ever-shifting criteria of masculinity, and those who stand up to rapists in ways that actually matter (or at all.)
2: Authority and rape are the same under Patriarchy
The genderclass ternary creates differential capacities for rape, both in who rapes and who is raped, as well as differential access to authority.
Rape is a cruel and inherently violent exertion of the extreme disparity in power2 under the genderclass system. Though any particular act of rape may not be outwardly “violent”—no blood spilled—it is always and necessarily violent. Patriarchy, as the system that necessarily preserves and perpetuates the capacity for, and the mass existence of, rape, is violence on a regularized global scale.
To do such violence and walk away with an intact conscience, the rapist (and those who support them) must mentally and socially turn their victim into bare life:3
The potential to reduce a person to a mere animal existence, to bare life—albeit fleetingly—also confers the privilege of remaining on the threshold, the point at which the person can be killed without the commissioning of homicide.4
The victim turns into a nothuman. They are simply a walking, breathing bag of flesh taking up air and food: property—and you may do anything you so desire to your property. While rape and industrial animal slaughter are not the same, they both operate through similar mental and social processes. Between 0.97 and 2.74 trillion fish are slaughtered every year5—we can only murder such vast, unfathomable quantities of living, feeling creatures because we see them as less or not deserving of life, mere bags of meat existing solely for our pleasure.6
Power-gc has unfettered access to, and capacity for, rape. The unfettered access to rape is one of the main benefits of being in Power-gc, in addition to being able to control notPower-gc and FaggotSubaltern in life, in death, and in the mass regularized homicide between. Though within the imperial core we look down on societies in which ciswomen may not show their faces in public as well as other travesties, that is merely the case when notPower-gc is closer to FaggotSubaltern than it is elsewhere—it is the same system just with different tuning. We here look down on them because of racism, imperialism and more, not because we want something fundamentally different but merely because they’re too blatant about Patriarchy where instead subtlety might allow for more durable perpetuation. Power-gc is used to unfettered rape and unrestricted authority over notPower-gc and FaggotSubaltern. It does not want to change because then it would have less capacity to rape and authority. The system of Patriarchy perpetuates itself exactly because it is a system and the people at the top like it like this, want to rape and want to have maidservant-rapeslave-mommies for wives. Elon Musk has an intense love of raping7 ciswomen—his neoNazi malearyanbreeding “fetish”—exactly because he very close to the peak of authority on this planet.
When Power-gc is raped, they are usually thrown into FaggotSubaltern; how can the aggressor in sex be the aggressed? It makes no sense, so you must be a Faggot.
When notPower-gc rapes, it is invisible, impossible, alluring and desirable. You need only to look at the horrifying, repulsive comment sections on any news article or video about, for example, a ciswoman teacher raping a cisboy. “I wish that were me,” weirdo cismen will say, because they can only see Power-gc in the sexually “aggressive” (violent) and causative role and notPower-gc in the sexually “passive” (done violence to) and receptive role; to flip it is impossible.
They are raped because they are regularly and normally turned into bare life, meatsocks to be ejaculated into. If they are viewed as relationship partners, they must be controlled like mongrels, ignored when they “nag,” beaten when they “disobey,” leashed when they try to escape, bred and neutered at the owner’s whim, out of sight when not needed and forced to perform tricks when commanded.
In general, when FaggotSubaltern rapes and is raped it is viewed in both of the ways above simultaneously. They are seen as both weak—able to be raped without the commission of the crime of rape—and strong—impossible to stop their raping. The anxieties produced by the contradiction in Power-gc’s consciences when they rape are placed onto FaggotSubaltern, perfect aggressors and perfect receivers.
Under Patriarchy, it is good, normal, proper and inevitable for Power-gc to rape; desirable, alluring, invisible and inevitable for notPower-gc to rape; and disgusting, revulsive, typical and inevitable for FaggotSubaltern to rape. In all cases rape is seen as inevitable because under Patriarchy it is—rape is the primary Patriarchal tool for power and authority to effect their ways in the world. It creates a property relation of pure destruction in inter- and intrapersonal relationships, transforming inter- and intrasubjectivity to interobjectivity so perfect in perpetuating authority.
3: FaggotSubaltern contains many types of people
FaggotSubaltern is made up of several types of people, ranging from people more traditionally understood as “faggots” like many lesbians, many gaymen, and almost all trans people, but also intersex people and children. All of these intersections with how individuals exist are treated differently and are not perfectly comparable.
A child can’t rape an adult; raping children is usually understood as bad unless they’re in your own family or you “marry” them, in which case they’re your property. They are Subaltern.
Intersex people have a wide range of conditions (if they even consider it a “condition”) and how doctors coercively assign them a gender and how people treat them is different with each condition and each individual. Coercive assignment of gender and the continual and sustained theft of autonomy of intersex individuals by the authority of doctors and parents is not rape, but it functions to “help” (force, control, compel) you fit into one of two mutually exclusive sexgenders, and thus fits in perfectly as FaggotSubaltern.8
While not exactly fitting within FaggotSubaltern, the gender ternary has heavy intersections with all other hierarchies, like how Black and Indigenous women on Turtle Island are raped at a way higher percentage than white women.
War and genocides are highly efficient methods of funneling humans transmuted into rapeable objects (bare life) to soldiers and colonizers exactly and solely to be raped; rape is not just an unfortunate consequence of war and genocide but is a morale boost for soldiers and colonizers, a morale loss for the hated enemy, and is more-or-less the sole driving reason at least indirectly for most wars and many genocides. Fighting in World War II to kill Nazis was quite a great thing to do (a dead Nazi is the only acceptable form of Nazi,) but every war (even World War II to an extent) either plainly exists for soldier’s increased ability to rape more and more people, or mass rape is a direct and acceptable benefit of war, and similarly for genocides. Joining the IOF is a highly efficient way to rape a lot of people, for one example out of all militaries and genocides. By raping Palestinian prisoners, you become the IOF’s “best heroes” and get defended by mobs and many high-ranking politicians. When American politicians call out this behavior—
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told the media on Wednesday: “There ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee. Period. That’s a fundamental belief of the United States.”9
—it doesn’t affect the IOF’s missile budget by a single cent because if they genuinely cared about the rape of prisoners and genocide victims, they wouldn’t be American politicians. That particular case cited above was the rape of an imprisoned Palestinian man by ten IOF soldiers (so badly that he couldn’t walk afterwards.) Despite nominally being in Power-gc, he is turned into a rapeable object because he is already seen as bare life due to merely existing as Palestinian within Israel.10
4: The lie
The lie that Patriarchy instills is that the ternary genderclass system does not exist while perpetuating it with extreme violence.
Patriarchy is the fence around its property, around its riches. It proclaims that there are two inevitable sexgenders inside while the starving masses surrounding cannot cross the barbed wire. It turns to the people within the border: “If you step out, they will rape you,” it reifies, knowing full well that rape lies in the existence of the fence itself. By the assertion that there are two exact sex-genders—one ideal, perfected, the other its pallid imitation, both rigid and intractable—it lies in direct contradiction with all the humans who do not fit it perfectly, thus creating its own obverse: the genderclass ternary. To resolve this contradiction—more directly, to destroy the system of mass regularized rape—the fence must be melted, its barbs melted away forever.
The first step to destroying Patriarchy and ending rape is to understand what they actually are; the genderclass ternary and bare life can accurately explain the material conditions and functioning of Patriarchy.
5: We must treat rapists like neoNazis
People who either commit, would commit, or at least don’t mind, rape—as well as those under little (but nonnegligible) threat of being raped (Power-gc)—will never be our allies and accomplices in combating rape. Just as the bourgeoisie will not ever meaningfully combat Capitalism, Power-gc will not ever meaningfully combat rape and Patriarchy because they are the primary beneficiaries of rape and Patriarchy.11
The gender ternary is the reification of Patriarchy on the bodies of humans, and rape is the implement which reifies Patriarchy. We must treat rapists like neoNazis, for rapists are the vanguard of Patriarchal terror, the footsoldiers of gendered oppression. Maybe someday there will come about some sort of way to rehabilitate neoNazis; that day is not today, nor anytime soon, and may not actually exist, so today and tomorrow they must be fought with extreme force: militantly, collectively, ruthlessly. It is the same for rapists.
To be raped is one of the worst things a human can experience. It hurts you intensely for years after, tearing apart the foundations of what you thought was real and unreal. Though we were raped half a lifetime ago, it still haunts us every day, waking, dreaming and in between. We were once bare life, and never have been, never will be, are not and cannot be. We have no choice but to stand in solidarity with all other victims and survivors, we cannot return to placidity.
There is a world after Patriarchy, one that has not been but, through establishing bonds of solidarity, equality and liberty, will someday be. There is a world where rape is always a travesty, unusual, not a normality. Just as any oppressed class shouldn’t have to be the ones bearing the brunt of fighting that oppressive system, we are. This is a world that is struggling to hatch, but we will tear out Patriarchy’s throat with our teeth and stand together above its pitiful corpse, alive, panting—someday, sometime, everywhere. The acrid taste of its blood will wash away, soon.
1 The Sizhen System, “Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary: On the Gender Subaltern Class, and the Three-Gender System that Defines Us”, The Sizhen System’s Substack, 2024 <https://thesizhensystem.substack.com/p/faggotization-and-the-extant-gender> [accessed 23 May 2025].
2 Both power over others (authority) and the power found in community (freedom.) Where there is more authority there is less freedom and vice versa.
3 Nerea Barjola, The Sexist Microphysics of Power: The Alcàsser Case and the Construction of Sexual Terror, trans. by Emily Mack (Chico, California, USA, 2024), 23–24, 27–28 <https://www.akpress.org/the-sexist-microphysics-of-power.html>.
4 Ibid., p.28.
5 A. Mood and P. Brooke, “Estimating the Number of Fish Caught in Global Fishing Each Year” (2010) <https://fishcount.org.uk/published/std/fishcountstudy.pdf> [accessed 2 June 2025].
6 Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat—35th Anniversary Edition: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory, 4th ed. (New York, 2024).
7 Just as it is impossible to have consensual and welcomed sex with a slave when you are a slavemaster, it is impossible to have consensual and welcomed sex if you are the richest person in the world and are close to becoming the ceoking of the planet’s hegemon.
8 We write this little section on intersex people because we so rarely see talk of intersex people in transfeminism, let alone in feminism in the first place. Almost certainly it’s due to our own exorsexist biases that we don’t see it—we are perisex—but the gender ternary includes many different types of people and so intersex people must be included in it or risk missing a terribly important part.
9 Simon Speakman Cordall, “‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape”, Al Jazeera, 2024 <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape> [accessed 17 June 2025].
10 For further information, check out: Wikipedia contributors, “Sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians during the Gaza war”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2025 <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_against_Palestinians_during_the_Gaza_war&oldid=1295942199> [accessed 17 June 2025].
11 By being raped or by meaningfully fighting against rape, you are subalternized (forcibly removed from Power-gc and put into either notPower-gc or, more commonly, FaggotSubaltern.) This is to say that straightcismen can and do combat rape, can be and are raped, because Power-gc is not the same thing as straightcismen—to think so is a terrible mistake.