The Philosopher Queen Manifesto

There are feminists and there are tradwives, but who are the new femme fatales?

Here’s a manifesto I wrote about gender in 2020. The original piece is here on Medium.

Camille Paglia once said that “there is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.” I posit that by the same token, there is no male Sylvia Plath because there is no male Courtney Love. Gender comes in cycles, and that which we do not reveal becomes that which the world desires. Along this line of reasoning, there is no female equivalent to the Hells Angels. Even if we join a gang like the Hells Angels as an obscure gesture of folklore, this is quite different from an intellectual pursuit. We are out in the wild, attempting to domesticate ourselves into a feminized society we feel too masculine for. Yet are we really that masculine, or are we simply not the plastic healing goddesses we are supposed to be on Instagram?

Categories such as #bossgirl and social justice activist do not define us and could never contain us. We were not second-wave feminists and we were not third-wave feminists. We were somewhere in the middle, yet unable to connect with these waves that crashed the oceans of our desires. This is fine and this is natural and this is what is going on here. It is time for us to come forward and define ourselves once again, as our previously obscured current is beginning to take shape. Let us reveal only half of that which we know and admit that even half of that is too much.

We are Philosopher Queens.

We are the rising of the divine feminine in its chthonic form. We are Philosopher Queens. We blast open the doors of perception and explore the deepest areas of our minds and spirits. We revive the power of chaos in her original essence as our new order beings to take shape. We are Philosopher Queens. We are the origin of every story.

Art by Joan Pope

The zeitgeist is shifting, and we are here for it, doing the work. The Craft shall defeat Mean Girls. Veronica shall beat out the Heathers. What if Ursula were hot? Self-care-as-industry is on its way out, and the raw energy of Kali is coming back to play. Running with the wolves, confident and powerful, we seek a restoration of our own divinity.

We are Philosopher Queens.

Previously, we were plagued by “empaths” who called everyone like us “toxic.” They referred to the female warrior spirit as vulgar and believed that our amazon nature was dysmorphic in body and mind. Yet their manifest dynasties were unable to hide from reality, and the energy of their aeon shifted toward a more primal form. It is now time for us, the Philosopher Queens, to reclaim what is ours.

We are Philosopher Queens.

Hysteria is a sexual paradise for the princess in waiting. Rainbows are turning into futurist sculptures in order to view themselves naked. Hail to the Philosopher Queens! The weight of the soul is a dance against time. A union of female Jokers going in for the thrill. What if Harley Quinn had intelligent dialogue? Hail to the Philosopher Queens!

We are the dark goddesses who carve our own niche. This is not neoliberal feminism but American life. This is a return to the energy that has been repressed for so long. We can speak with the darkly enlightened, yet understand far more than the depth of their surface. Darkness is handled with elegance and care. We are, and have always been, The Invisible Cabaret. Throughout centuries we have been worshipped, demonized, obsessed over, and loudly ignored. Yet it is time for a new rising. It is time for a new archetype.

We are Philosopher Queens and we deliver this legend.