Mori: Carolyn Gage is a radical lesbian feminist playwright who didn't get diagnosed with autism until her sixties and writes about sexual abuse and incest a lot. I first became aware of her years back when a roomy at the time had a book of hers on the shelf, and today I learned she did a one-woman play about Joan of Arc, so of course I had to look what else she'd done.

Then I found her short 1994 article, "Invitation to a Trashing." I immediately had to add it to my self-hate and social justice bibliography.

Damn. Thirty years old, and this woman sums up beautifully what now gets called "cancel culture." (I vehemently disagree with her criteria of “unacceptable targets,” RequiresHate/winterfox was a master of using “you sound white” to shut down women of color, but I DO agree there’s a cynical, cultural calculus at work deciding how to paint a trashee as a privileged oppressor.) Other lesbian feminists talked about these dynamics before Gage, but what I find especially interesting is how Gage cuts to the heart of how dissociation and lingering abuse effects can be used as weapons in these situations, trashee's and trasher's alike. That's something I haven't seen dealt with in other discussions, certainly not with the concise incision she does:( Anything can be a weapon if you're holding it right! )