This letter is in response to "Depresentation: Mine Pleasure Bouvar Über Terre Thaemlitz In Der Halle Für Kunste Lüneberg," a review of my exhibition "Reframed Positions" written by Mine Pleasure Bouvar, which you published on September 1, 2023.

Regarding a comment I apparently made during a public performance/talk in association with the exhibition that the reviewer disagreed with, I was appalled to read what can only be described as art journalism advocating for curators to actively censor their exhibiting artists in real-time, as follows: "The curators were negligent in their responsibility to intervene when the invited artist echoed unchallenged arguments of anti-trans* disinformation about the alleged danger of puberty-blocking drugs. (Die Kurator*innen verpassten hier ihre Verantwortung, zu intervenieren, als die eingeladene Künstlerin unwidersprochen Argumente trans*feindlicher Desinformation zur angeblichen Gefahr pubertätsblockender Medikamente echote.)"

I believe the reviewer and your publication have every right to disagree, criticize and thoroughly dissect my work and words. (It's a pity the reviewer didn't bother to take better notes of what exactly upset them so deeply.) However, I emphatically oppose any call for censoring intervention, whether it is aimed at myself or anyone else - including those whose views I may staunchly disagree with. For a journalistic exhibition review published in an established art journal to reprimand curators for failing to actively disrupt and censor an artist in the midst of an exhibition-related talk strikes me as far more offensive than anything I might have said. I would have previously presumed it out of line with your own publication's standards against censorship. You have completely discredited yourselves in this field.

* After much confusion, the quote in question has been identified. I have addressed this in a separate letter of correction sent to Texte zur Kunst and posted on comatonse.com on November 16, 2023. For those interested, I recommend completely reading this letter before proceeding to the second one.

The reviewer provides no exact quote or additional context to what I said, and I am also unable to fill in those details because I have no memory of the topic arising, and the talk was undocumented as is my common practice.^* However, within the context of the exhibition and its themes of gender and sexual variance, I find it hard to imagine my intentions could be so easily mistaken for the kind of reactionary "anti-trans* disinformation" implied. Was I responding to or elaborating upon something said or asked by someone else? Was I speaking in reference to a particular project of mine that specifically deals with medical malfeasance, such as Interstices? Could the fact that I have spent my adult life openly trans and actively generating culturally critical work around trans issues also perhaps inform a broader context - or at least provide a benefit of the doubt - worth considering before publishing a statement that I engaged in some form of transphobic hate-speech requiring curatorial intervention? To be clear, even in the event of hate-speech, my personal views on censorship and freedom of speech would still be opposed to any such intervention, in favor of emphasizing an ability for others to analyze and respond. In that regard, my talk was followed by an audience Q&A session, and yet I have no recollection of your reviewer or anyone else taking that opportunity to ask me about the topic in question. (Or if they did, it was unmemorable and an apparent non-event at the time.) What I do know is that it would be highly unlikely for me to mention something like puberty blockers on their own, without such a reference being part of broader observations about the social devaluation of feminist education for children facing gender crises, such as I wrote about in the text to my project Deproduction:

Most parents have very low levels of awareness around gender issues, starting with their own internalized binary identifications. This is true even within queer communities. When this is combined with the active and often intimidating coaching of medical professionals, it is no wonder that children expressing discomfort with their gender-branding are more likely to be given pills than basic feminist tools. Tools to help them understand that, yes, of course it makes sense for people to feel unhappy about their imposed gender identifications within binding patriarchies. Of course! This isn't difficult to comprehend. Every little girl who kicks and screams when forced to put on a dress is already halfway there.

Regardless of the lack of journalistic detail, I ask you, what absurdist theater in the name of censorship would have placated your reviewer? Should the Australian curator with whom I was in discussion on stage stopped me mid-sentence, brandishing me in public for my views and assuring the audience he does not share them, followed by an official statement of zero-tolerance for anything deviating in the slightest from mainstream LGBT agendas? Should the two German curators have done similar, standing up in the audience and demanding I apologize before making me leave the stage? Should the sound engineers have cut my microphone? When publishing your review of my exhibition, did any of your editorial staff even take a moment to consider how your reviewer's suggestion might play out in reality? I imagine not. I imagine it all just read as good, liberal banter - which is precisely how liberalism unwittingly cultivates "leftist" cultural acceptance for the very acts of "rightist" censorship it claims to oppose.

I would be remiss not to address how the reviewer interspersed their criticism with an italicized personal tale of a friend's positive transitioning experience. The purpose of this creative gesture was to lead the readers to conclude I am pathetically out of touch with the reality of transsexual and transitioning experiences - which the narrative example reassures us are overwhelmingly positive and successful. It also misleadingly implies my views expressed that day had the ability to inhibit medical access, making such a success story impossible. It is a hollow and manipulative narrative tactic. I can say this with certainty because it is the same technique of high morality wrapped in journalistically neutral storytelling that I used critically and sarcastically in the first half of Deproduction (in that case, on the topics of incest and child bearing). In my case it was a constructed voice of neutrality ultimately called into question by the more subjectively manic, analytical text of the project's second half. However, your reviewer deploys the technique with a flair of sincerity, leaving the review ending unchallenged on that lingering note with no other strategic motive than to pull heartstrings. It is the opposite of critical engagement, an emotionally exploitative decoy to soften a call for curatorial censorship. That says a lot about the differences between our critical approaches.

While I am unable to contextualize - let alone identify - the quote to which your reviewer took offense, perhaps I can contextualize this cultural moment giving rise to your publication's call for the active curatorial censorship of exhibiting artists - a call that not unimportantly centers around issues of transgenderism. There are two distinct yet inextricably entwined cultural phenomena enacted by your review. Firstly on the culturally major level, as an established journal of artistic review your publication has now aligned itself with dominant cultural calls for increased censorship. Until recently, censorship and attacks on free speech were overwhelmingly associated in most peoples' minds with far-right conservatives. Such conservatives would justify the inherent problems and restrictions arising from their acts of censorship as public sacrifices that were necessary to protect "traditional values," such as nationalism, capitalism and family. (I realize that within Germany this paradigm of censorship coming from the far-right is somewhat complicated by certain forms of censorship mandated in response to the nation's history of fascism, as a means to restrict the far-right. Even so, it is my understanding that this is understood by liberals as a necessary exception to contemporary Germany's commitment to freedom of expression, and until recently the overall image of pro-censorship advocates was still that of conservatives.) However, over the past two decades we have witnessed a shift in the West as to how dominant cultures defend censorship. Today it is increasingly deployed by governments and corporations in the name of liberalism, and under the guise of defending minorities. Looking back to the start of my career, the cultural sites from which I expect calls for censorship have definitely moved and expanded. Experiencing these movements through the years has only affirmed my longstanding nihilistic view that life is a perpetual motion machine of struggle, and what is presented as "progress" is never more than an attempted momentary displacement of one's own sufferings upon others elsewhere. It affirms the most helpful social analyses are not about left and right, but top and bottom.

The contemporary shift to "protective censorship from the left" is not by chance, but is a cultural redirection that is necessary for selling the public on ever-escalating agendas of cultural surveillance, ideological policing, and the regulation of bodies. Today, liberal moralism is at the core of things such as online censorship bills. Censorship has been repackaged as an ethical duty of the left. As a result, it becomes increasingly foreign to conceive of morality as a cultural force that should always be treated as suspect, both as an outgrowth of existing power structures and a reflection of their biases. That was a much easier observation to make when morality was more associated with the pulpit and radical conservatism. Now, morality is the sword of liberal justice. But make no mistake, at its core this is still all about the defense of conservative agendas such as nationalism, capitalism and family. Simply take a look at dominant liberal LGBT agendas such as same-sex marriage, military enlistment, child rearing, financial investing, home ownership, and so on. Through the witting and unwitting editorial moves of established media, audiences are hypnotized (in the case of social media, literally) into complacency around our own roles as participants in calls for increased censorship and social controls - all the while under the delusion we are fighting a tide of conservatism. In reality we are all pulled by the undertow. Accordingly, it seems your publication has also quietly shifted away from anti-censorship art criticism in favor of advocating for increased cultural controls. But it has not gone completely unnoticed. In case your editorial staff was itself hypotized and unaware of their shift, consider this a wake-up call.

Simultaneously, on the culturally minor level, your review displays inter-LGBT power dynamics that are rarely spoken, not only due to their complexity but also the likely cultural repercussions of doing so. Your reviewer writes in a way that insinuates I was expressing views that put me in alignment with people who would endorse "anti-trans* disinformation" - a position outside LGBT solidarity and experience. To the contrary, I was expressing views as an insider. Beneath the power play of the reviewer's misrepresentation lurks deep and ongoing intra-LGBT cultural tensions - things that a transsexual friend of mine has cautioned me over the years are "conversations to be kept in-house." As your reviewer rendered invisible the context from which I was speaking, let me take this opportunity to try and bring it into focus.

While the majority of people in this world have come to equate "transgenderism" with medically realized "transsexuality," there are actually a wide variety of transgenderisms beyond transsexuality - many of which are not necessarily in political or experiential harmony. For example, whereas transsexuals traditionally turn towards medical industries for help in resolving their gender crises, intersex people traditionally tend to be skeptical of medical interventions as a result of being subjected to procedures against their will during youth. Even among transsexuals themselves there exist radically diverse cultural views. In defiance of LGBT preconceptions of transsexuals as inherently progressive, one need only consider Caitlyn Jenner - a literal MAGA-hat wearing right-wing political endorser and financial elitist who regularly spews mind-bogglingly conservative views on womanhood. This diversity of views can also at times be related to the different experiences that result from treatments, depending on which gender one is transitioning to. For example, it is common knowledge that hormone therapies for masculinization tend to amplify sex drive, whereas those for feminization often result in sexual dysfunction and a loss of drive. Considering feminizing procedures began at a time when the chemical suppression of sex drive in gay men was still regular medical practice, it was surely no mere coincidence that similar side effects among transsexual patients came to be easily dismissed as inevitable - and in many cases still are, particularly internationally. These changes not only affect how people physically experience their sexualities, but how they come to understand those experiences - the latter having direct implications in the spheres of culture and politics. I often recall someone I knew who was suffering from her loss of sexual function and orgasm as a result of hormone therapy. It was at the start of the 90s, when struggles to give voice to women’s sexuality had finally gained widespread visibility in pop culture (think Madonna’s Erotica). The only way she could come to personal terms with her sexual loss was to reframe it as “part of the experience of womanhood.” She embraced traditional views on women’s sexuality as all about a sublimation to male desire, taking pleasure in giving pleasure without reciprocation, and a naturalization of women's sexual experiences as devoid of orgasm. All of this was further complicated by the fact she was economically dependent on sex work to pay her medical bills. To this day I regularly think of her experience, and how it came to be that it was more difficult for her to confront an adverse reaction to a medical treatment than it was to excuse that adverse reaction through conservative mores - mores that are integral to sustaining the social processes of capital, profit and the patented ownership of biology around which contemporary medical industries and research revolve. In these ways, even between various types of transgendered people there can be highly oppositional and nuanced views - including on topics such as puberty blocking drugs - all of which is overwritten by broad-stroke writing like that in your review. Rather than engaging with such questions, your reviewer has taken the dangerously common route of dismissing any deviations from mainstream LGBT talking points by claiming they "echo" right wing talking points.

While today's cultural moment does come with its own characteristics, the actions of your reviewer are nothing new. To the contrary, such things have been a frequent topic in my work over the decades, including deconstructing the prioritization of transsexuality above all other forms of transgenderism. If in doubt such a prioritization exists, and as I mentioned earlier, simply consider how most people consider the two words synonymous. This prioritization comes with tremendous power, both cultural and financial. As I have discussed in various projects and texts since the start of my career, a key reason for the mainstream prioritization and visibility around transsexuality in particular is its underlying conservative preservation of dominant gender binaries. It is about responding to gender dysphoria through an attempted reconciliation with one of the two gender options on offer by mainstream cultures - the "journey" to female or male. In this sense, despite the notion of medical intervention appearing horrifyingly radical to the gender reconciled layperson, transsexuality's core aspiration can be interpreted as one of conformity. (To be clear, I am referring to dominant cultural dynamics around transitioning, and not suggesting all those who undergo transitioning are conformists.) As I have said countless times, societies will always find it easier to physically alter a minority of bodies than to structurally alter the foundations of gender bias upon which patriarchy rests. The propensity for conformity can be seen in everything from the increasingly self-absorbed, affirmation-based language around medical transitioning, to the visual aesthetics and beauty standards physicians aspire to deliver. All of this is aimed at emphasizing the ideological bourgeois ideal of individual self-actualization. It comes at the expense of a collective ability to discuss how these clinical procedures and chemical therapies function within systems of social relations.

The new language around transsexuality is all about concealing any sense of things "being done to" a person. There must be no suggestion of any outside coercion in one's decision making with regard to treatments. It must all appear as a simple process of support networks aiding in the external manifestation of something pure and preexistent within the transgendered body. In a Marxist sense, one might say the greater the social acts being done to people, the greater the ideological inversions required to conceal those acts from consciousness. For over a decade, this has included a ban on the term "transgendered" itself, in favor of "transgender," because according to organizations such as GLAAD and others the "-ed" supposedly makes people feel disempowered through its suggestion that gender is externally acted upon the individual, rather than something under their direction that emerges from within. Of course, acknowledging that gender is culturally enacted upon us, and that process of imposition is an inherent part of the construction of our individual sense of conscious consent or dissent around one's own gender, is precisely why I continue to use the term "transgendered" to this day. In reality, the process of internalizing gender norms under patriarchy is restrictive and uncomfortable for many people in this world, not limited to those who identify as LGBT. To presume we can (or should) all find comfort and empowerment within those restrictions, and that it could be done without further capitulating to the very systemic biases that already destabilize our sense of gender in the first place, strikes me as outlandishly illogical. For such presumptions to be pushed by transgendered people upon ourselves enters into the realm of camp.

Meanwhile, in an absurd twist, a majority of essentialist queer and trans people who go along with such ideological directives have come to justify their faith in "personal choice" by incorrectly invoking the non-essentialist concept of "gender as a social construct." They seem to think it means gender is simply a matter of choice independent of the physical body, perhaps not even "real." This cultural emphasis on agendas of affirmation and choice culturally overwrites material struggles faced by transgendered people regarding things like violence, employment, health insurance and identity documentation. In the mainstream, such topics become sidelined by a sense of urgency around the placation of personal feelings. It is not unlike how the same-sex marriage movement has been reduced from material struggles around partner access to health insurance, housing and medical decision making, down to "people should be free to marry whomever they want." Culturally directing people to focus on self-gratification through personal identity is a classic strategy for keeping us busy with the illusion of social engagement. It guarantees our alienation from the actual socio-material processes of oppression affecting us, to the point most people can no longer even name them. It replaces solidarity with a demand for emotional validation and mirroring, making broad and collective social movements across ideological divides impossible. I understand it also makes the materially rooted solidarity I offer unrecognizable to certain people, apparently including your reviewer. It is easier to project all of the bad feelings conjured by hearing a decontextualized key-word such as "puberty blockers" upon the person accused of saying it, regardless of intent. In fact, it is one of the most common mechanisms through which intent is erased. We are so easily divided and conquered.

As a non-essentialist, I can state with certitude "gender as a social construct" actually refers to the ways in which gender emerges from the external social relations that condition and restrict our capacities for choice. I suppose the common misunderstanding that this in some way implies "gender is not real" emerges from the fact that the reality of gender - albeit related to the body - is not one of physical tangibility like that of a body's sex. Rather it is the reality of a political site - a body's unavoidable placement within social relations that construct its cultural meaning. It is about how social mores are projected upon bodies, and the ideological processes through which we come to internalize and naturalize a given culture's rules for what constitutes a "woman" or "man." The result is a contextually localized sense of gender that appears natural, universal and devoid of contextual bias or boundary. In reality, cultural bias is an inevitability, extending to even the most personal of choices being filtered through internalized norms - as characterized by my earlier example of the person struggling with her medical-related sexual dysfunction, and how her personal understanding of that dysfunction was facilitated through gender and sexual norms to the extent that the chemical-based dysfunction itself was perceived as a natural extension of her newfound gender.

The concept of gender as a social construct took off in the 1980s, and was important to non-essentialist critiques of identity politics because it provided a materially grounded means for identifying the processes through which heteronormative gender binaries were culturally constructed. It also gave language for dissecting the cultural mechanisms through which those binaries are naturalized across a public, often times to a point of collective disbelief in even the slightest possibility of anything outside a binary. It becomes a form of mass formation psychosis. As the mainstream LGBT movement developed within those oppressive conditions and today finds representation through dominant cultural media and economies, it is not difficult to see that mainstream LGBT's intolerance for ideological diversity, and its ridiculous insistence that disagreement is equivocal to violence, is a symptomatic mirroring of this larger cultural dynamic of mass formation psychosis.

For me, an ability to dissect the naturalization of culturally specific gender norms was vital to understanding the lack of tools available for unraveling my own experiences of sexual and gender variance - both of which called into question my "manhood" from an early age, in the eyes of others as well as myself since we were all responding to the same dominant expectations around such things. By understanding dominant cultural systems function in ways that strategically excluded the possibility for thinking through my experiences in other-than-binary terms, a space opened up for strategizing responses to those systems. What had previously only been comprehensible as a private and existential nausea became politically grounded. I came to understand how a sense of gender is constructed over time, in response to social relations that condition our abilities to perceive meaning in bodies - whether by compliance, ambivalence or rebellion. It is a grimly realist view that undermines the foundations of bourgeois individualism and the promise of self-determination. Therefore, it is no surprise that major educational institutions dedicated to the perpetuation of bourgeois ideals are committed to disarming the concept by misrepresenting it. They have diffused it through accredited queer studies programs, turning it inside out and crudely reducing it to a catch phrase, until "gender is a social construct" signifies little more than a belief in the ability to manifest oneself into being. Beneath this belief lurks an ideological reconciliation with the workings of privilege.

One of the unsurprising results of the privilege held by transsexuals above other types of transgendered people is the cultural naturalization of medical transitioning. This results in tremendous pressure placed upon non-transitioning trans people to begin therapies. When we do not - even without expressing anything negative about such things, but simply existing as we are - we more often than not find ourselves ostracized from mainstream trans cultures and support networks. This is particularly painful considering many of us have already faced ostracism from families, church, employers and other spheres of dominant culture. The intra-LGBT ostracism is worse if we vocally deviate from anything other than total support of dominant transsexual agendas. I have also seen friends who decided to stop mid-transition face ostracism for not having gone all the way. As many of us who live with gender variance know, these unspoken and unadvertised internal social dynamics between transgendered people are certainly reflected in mainstream liberal LGBT cultures' demands for all peoples' total and unquestioning support of transsexual agendas. (In fact, I would estimate half of the complaints I have received over the years around my non-essentialist views on trans issues have come from non-trans queers speaking on behalf of transsexuals out of a perceived sense of duty, most of whom have an affinity for labeling this trans person "transphobic." Perhaps one might argue they are phobic of my particular form of trans?) It is a sad complication that those agendas happen to revolve around medical industries with highly questionable legacies.

As I said before, none of this intra-trans tension is new, and trans people voicing concerns around medical transitioning has existed as long as the practices themselves. In Wendy Carlos' 1979 interview for Playboy, she broke her silence around transitioning with unexpected openness, concluding with a heartfelt statement I suspect your reviewer would brand "transphobic":

I don't want to become a proselytizer. I don't want this interview to champion the cause. I think it's very important that my condition be acknowledge as very rare, so that it's seen as a highly unlikely solution for other people with an unhappy life, or suicidal impulses, as I had. The fact that there were some "successful" transformations doesn't erase the many tragic cases in which an operation was not the full solution for particular individuals. No one should follow this hellish path if an alternative exists. Try other options first. [...] Sure, it was necessary for me. But I don't think it's been positive at all. I feel that what I achieved is the removal of one very large negative in my life.

Those old enough to remember the 1990 film Paris is Burning may also recall the ensuing scandal when ballroom queen Pepper LaBeija was branded "transphobic" for saying she would not undergo gender transitioning nor encourage others to do so. In my own history as a New York ballroom DJ of that era, I was always disturbed by the "cancel culture" outrage and moral admonishment directed at her. Based on my own experiences within that multi-generational ballroom scene - experiences that informed my personal embrace of non-transitioning - I understood Pepper's words did not echo the chastisement of transsexuals spoken by outsiders, as those who claimed outrage painted them to be. Rather, I heard them as an insider's response to the endless pressure to transition placed upon her. During my DJ residency at the predominantly transsexual sex worker club Sally's II, the regular harassment I witnessed transsexuals giving non-transitioning queens was so intense that it kept me in the closet about my own transgenderism, only coming to work in male drag. In testimony to that experience, to this day my performances as DJ Sprinkles continue to be done almost exclusively in male drag.

For people of my generation and earlier, the granting of unquestioning space to transsexuals began as an expression of solidarity, understanding and compassion for the particularly hard struggles they faced. Under the conditions of the day - which involved far more severe restrictions on access to medical care than most people today can imagine - we respected a transsexual consensus that the particular combination of social, economic, physical and psychological challenges they faced left no room for acknowledging doubt or regret. Extending unconditional support in a moment of crisis was understood as a means of averting suicide and saving lives. But as the decades have passed, and dominant liberal cultures have found ways to channel LGBT energy into increasingly heteronormative movements with the power to enact moral censorship, the negative social consequences of being enablers to a culture of unconditional support are becoming more and more overwhelming. Even the radical pharmacology movement that rose against the regulatory injustices of mainstream medical industries, such as that discussed by Preciado in the 2008 manifesto Testo Junkie, has collapsed into a new normalcy of alt-cultural body modifications. With time, many such people who start out in rejection of traditional transitioning ultimately go down the same road of gender reconciliation shared by major pharmacology - including Preciado himself. In both sanctioned and unsanctioned practice, medical intervention has become overwhelmingly commonplace.

My concerns about such issues should in no way be interpreted as advocating to deny or restrict medical access from those in need. Nor do I want to interfere with access for those who don't associate with "need," but simply wish to undergo body modification. This has always been my stance. However, I have also always simultaneously taken issue with cultural shifts driven by medical industries that deliberately conceal their workings, including pushing for the censorship of people who discuss those workings. From my position, I would argue it is in fact your reviewer who stands in league with dominant cultural forces and "echoes unchallenged arguments." I can only trust that my decades of work, writings and interviews document an approach of critical minded advocacy for medical accessibility. Part of that approach remains a refusal to restrict myself to one-dimensional discussions of extremely complex issues. A "with us or against us" mentality such as that promoted by your reviewer only leads to more suffering and repressive silence. It also makes historical materialist analysis impossible.

I do have what I - and I think many other transgendered people - consider conspicuous concerns about medical industries with overwhelming economic interests in cultivating "subscription" patient bases who require a lifetime of treatments and interventions. This can have particularly grave consequences - economic, physical and psychological - for people without guaranteed health insurance or socialized health care. As someone originally hailing from the US, a lack of guaranteed health insurance has always played a large role in my sense of these issues (the wealthiest nation in the world, yet they will never approve socialized health care). Based upon the well documented history of medical abuses suffered by intersex people, there is no doubt that these industries have a tradition of pushing easily manipulated gender-normative parents into subjecting their children to difficult-to-reverse or irreversible treatments before reaching an age of consent - all in the name of "protecting the child." The notion that these same undercurrents continue to play a role in contemporary transsexual therapies for children - albeit in somewhat different argumentative forms - cannot possibly be a surprise to anyone. To the contrary, I find it difficult to accept it is not a common point of discussion and investigation among transgendered people first and foremost. Then there is the very real phenomenon of transsexual "regretters," who find themselves consistently silenced within mainstream LGBT culture and often times lose their support networks, including physicians who refuse to continue working with them. All of these issues are further complicated by the fact that the West has not historically been the economic center of transitioning medical marketplaces. The largest transitioning economies have actually been centered in Thailand and Iran, both of which have unspoken and spoken traditions of using transitional therapies in response to homosexuality (in Iran, gender transitioning is literally state sponsored as a way of eluding the fatwa on homosexuality - turning a person's "homosexual desire" into "heterosexual desire" by switching their gender). Given that "curing homosexuality" has overwhelmingly fallen out of favor in the West, such international contexts behind decades of medically refining transitional therapies is something that the Western market does everything in its power to distance itself from.

I do not raise these issues to suggest such problems and abuses are the definitive sum of all that transitional therapies can be. To the contrary, as a trans person interested in reducing harm and violence, as well as improving treatment conditions for those in need, I feel it would be irresponsible not to raise such topics publicly. If they seem overwhelming, that should be all the more indicative of an urgency to lift internal and external LGBT taboos around these deep-rooted topics. Your reviewer's desire to silence me for even the most passing mention of medical concerns in my talk, with no follow-up or elaboration during the Q&A (at least none I can recall nor any noted in the review itself), effectively only leaves the floor for discussion open to actual anti-trans people. People who would surely take joy in seeing us silence one another. I reject your reviewer's attempt to give whatever small power my voice may have over to such people by implying my statements and theirs are one and the same. And I emphatically reject the call to censor anyone. In its place, I encourage discourse.

In case your art critic skills have not already picked up on it, my length in discussing inter-LGBT dynamics is intentional, and stands in deliberate contrast to the vagary and brevity of your reviewer’s reported reasoning behind their call for curators to enact censorship against me. My length on the topic is an insistence upon having an unwelcomed conversation. Perhaps most importantly, it is symptomatic of the ways in which power is granted the luxury of brevity when passing judgment, whereas culturally minor voices must labor endlessly when attempting to become comprehensible to others - only to surely still be purposely misunderstood. To borrow a phrase from Laurence Rassel, it is an obligatory "useless movement."

These are precisely the kind of nuanced cultural problems I am committed to analyzing and dissecting in my work. Your review - and its calls for proactive curatorial censorship - performs this multitude of cultural problems ranging from artistic censorship to transgendered censorship perfectly. However, as that performance comes at the unfortunate expense of your professional credibility, as a courtesy I shall refrain from thanking you for proving my point.

- Terre Thaemlitz, October 1, 2023

 
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