M. E. O'Brien
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genderhorizon.com
M. E. O'Brien
@genderhorizon.com
6.9K followers 1.2K following 1.9K posts
author. towards trans communist futures. Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (Pluto, 2023) and Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (Common Notions, 2022). Editor at Pinko
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genderhorizon.com
This Tuesday I’ll be joining this online panel about trans futures and healing, possibly with an in-world interview about Everything for Everyone.

forge-forward.org/event/healin...
Illustrated space scene in purple hues, with “Healing Trans-missions / messages from the past, present, and future / Tuesday Dec 2 a 6:30-8 PM EST / Forge”
December 1, 2025 at 2:47 AM
genderhorizon.com
Lacan comments on Bluesky discourse, 15 February 1956
Cropped screenshot of text from Lacan, Seminar III, page 157: “whenever we spell something out, we always have this feeling of discordance, of never being completely up to what we want to say. This is the reality of discourse. We are nevertheless well aware that the signified is sufficiently captured by our discourse for everyday purposes. It's when we want to do a bit better, to get to the truth, that we are in total disarray, and rightly so. It is, moreover, why most of the time we give up the game.” The first sentence fragment and the penultimate sentence are highlighted.
November 29, 2025 at 2:14 PM
genderhorizon.com
Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

Maybe not a meme but so my moral philosophy
New York Post cover from Mamdani’s mayoral election, incorporating Soviet constructivism. Totally over the top. “On your Marx, get set, Zo!” The Red Apple
November 18, 2025 at 12:08 AM
genderhorizon.com
stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness
Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred in costume as the 7th Doctor and Ace, with sweet mischievous smiles, circa 1988
October 21, 2025 at 2:16 AM
genderhorizon.com
I had the honor of once organizing a dialogue between Miss Major and Tourmaline for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, hosted by the NYPL. Major was a people’s hero, a tremendous force of revolutionary commitment and love.
@genderhorizon speaking at a podium in a New York Public Library event space, with the back of people’s heads in the audience Tourmaline and Miss Manor on a stage at the New York Public Library, sitting in dialogue
October 14, 2025 at 10:21 AM
genderhorizon.com
Culture victory screen from Civilization 5. Depicting a future utopian city skyline with text: “You have achieved victory through the awesome power of your Culture. Your civilization's greatness the magnificence of its monuments and the power of its artists - have astounded the world! Poets will honor you for as long as beauty brings gladness to a weary heart.”
October 6, 2025 at 4:09 PM
genderhorizon.com
Next weekend in Aarhus Denmark
M.E. O' BRIEN INSURGENT CARE AND THE UTOPIAN HORIZON ROOM: STAKLADEN in Courier, excerpted screenshot from a conference program
September 29, 2025 at 11:07 AM
genderhorizon.com
I co-wrote an essay on how fleeting our experience of community is in a world based on commodity exchange. Our efforts to care for each other keep falling apart because our primary dependency is on our employers and landlords.

www.pinko.online/analyzing-th...
Screenshot of text excerpt: “Community can rarely be adequate to our hopes under capitalism; it is simply not congruent with the actually existing web of human interdependency. This web, constituted by the domination of impersonal market forces, or instantiated directly within the dictatorship of the workplace, can never offer a community. This is not just because it is too cruel or too oppressive, it is also because it is always mystified, opaque, and alienated. All other collectivities, insofar as they do not overlap with actually existing practices of material survival, are readily torn apart as each participant must seek a means of self-reproduction. Because a core activity of collective human life is so absorbed into market relations, non-market relations become hollow, shallow, and fragile. You may love your friends, but you still have to pay rent. Your community may provide housing for some months or years—through a rental party, friends offering you their couch, an independent autonomous squat, a generous roommate—but in a capitalist society, eventually you will do”
August 2, 2025 at 7:02 PM
genderhorizon.com
After Accountability book panel
Wed, 8/6, 7 PM Eastern, online book event

With @pinko.online editors Lou Cornum and myself and interviewees Kim Diehl, Emi Kane, hosted by @haymarketbooks.org.

www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...
Reads "Pinko Pinko After Account-ability / a virtual roundtable / M. E. O'Brien / Emi Kane / Lou Cornum / Kim Diehl / Haymarket Books / August 6th, 7 PM ET" on a background of pink with grey horizontal lines, drawing from the cover of the book After Accountability
July 28, 2025 at 4:28 PM
genderhorizon.com
Splendid ratio
July 16, 2025 at 6:34 PM
genderhorizon.com
This poster, from the Wikipedia, illustrates its three-fold opposition well
Caption on Wikipedia: A widely publicized election poster of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1932, with the Three Arrows symbol representing resistance against monarchism, Nazism and communism, alongside the slogan "Against Papen, Hitler, Thälmann" Displays three red hands clasping arrows like spears, nearly piercing symbols of the crown, swastika and hammer and sickle
July 2, 2025 at 9:58 PM
genderhorizon.com
UC Davis students being pepper sprayed while sitting in 2011.
June 11, 2025 at 10:54 AM
genderhorizon.com
I’m definitely not having these people
June 10, 2025 at 11:59 PM
genderhorizon.com
I’ll be speaking on this panel tomorrow in the Bronx! The old Critical Resistance crew I used to know may turn out. Should be killer. @pinko.online @realdiehl.bsky.social @estebanitos.bsky.social

Sat, 6/7, 1-4 PM, Andrew Freedman House, 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx

pinko.online/after-accoun...
After Accountability Conversation and Reading // Join Pinko Magazine, Take Back the Bronx and Critical Resistance for an afternoon of conversation // Andrew Freedman House / 1125 Grand Concourse / The Bronx, New York // Saturday, June 7, 1-4 PM // Featuring Kim Diehl, Danny Gill, Esteban Kelly, Pilar Maschi, Trevor Nicholas, ME O’Brien, Lisa Ortega, Jaime Rivera, Sachs’s Thompson
June 6, 2025 at 9:52 PM
genderhorizon.com
For his podcast Speaking Out of Place, radical scholar @palumboliu.bsky.social interviewed @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social and me about Everything for Everyone, with unusually astute and inspiring commentary and questions. It was an honor.

speakingoutofplace.com/2025/06/02/t...
June 3, 2025 at 2:16 PM
genderhorizon.com
In the bizarre world of rising organic composition of capital in manufacturing, my cheap medium sized office arm chair cost as much to transport in a Lyft from Manhattan to Brooklyn as it originally cost to buy new a year ago.
May 8, 2025 at 11:45 PM
genderhorizon.com
I'm speaking tomorrow at McNally Jackson Books in the South Seaport about Malcolm Harris' extraordinary and inspiring book. I'm representing one of the three world-saving tendencies he skillfully lays out. Event is sold out but buy the book.

www.mcnallyjackson.com/event/04152025
Author photo of Malcolm Harris and the cover of "What’s Left" in psychedelic colors, with some additional text: "APR 15 | 6:30pm at McNally Jackson Seaport Malcolm Harris presents What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis"
April 14, 2025 at 2:51 PM
genderhorizon.com
Best Star Trek crew, wrong answers only
A black and white photo depicting the cast in costume of Alien (1979), with the full seven initial crew members of the Nostromo: Captain Dallas, executive officer Kane, warrant officer Ripley, navigator Lambert, science officer Ash, and engineers Parker and Brett.
March 21, 2025 at 3:07 AM
genderhorizon.com
Palestinian solidarity student activists have been the leading force in radical anti-fascist struggle. This is an attack on all our movements. If we can’t stop it, they will deport our leaders, our organizers, our friends, our fiercest militants.
Screenshot of a Tweet from Secretary of State Marc Rubio stating “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported” with photo of Mahmoud Khalil, negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment protests at Columbia university. APNews.com headline “ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Colombia University protests, his lawyer says”
March 10, 2025 at 1:41 AM
genderhorizon.com
Jadzia Dax! Brilliant, competent, wise, level-headed, hot, very very queer and trans, Jadzia Dax is the science officer above DS9. So skilled, so brilliant, so inspiring! (Art credit to @bajoran-orbison.bsky.social, link to purchase in alt text.) 3/9
Illustrated image of Jadzia Dax from Strek Trek DS9, with "Friend of DAX" under, and a trans flag in the background. Purchase as a vinyl sticker from artist https://willburrowsart.com/product/fod-sticker/ Star Trek DS9 characters Jadzia Dax and Lenara Khan kissing in episode Rejoined (S04E06). Two hot trill women making magic. Classic meme of Jadzia Dax being greeted and hugged by Kor, a Klingon character from Star Trek DS9. 1st panel, "Curzon, my beloved friend" 2: "I'm Jadzia now." 3: "Jadzia, my beloved friend."
February 28, 2025 at 10:15 PM
genderhorizon.com
At long last! In celebration of reaching my max twitter follower count, I will now reveal my favorite Star Trek character! And say a few words about communist strategy! 1/9

bsky.app/profile/gend...
In BlueSky display font, reads "M. E. O'Brien / 5,693 followers"
February 28, 2025 at 10:15 PM
genderhorizon.com
the day is nearly at hand bsky.app/profile/gend...
Just reads, in the Blue Sky display font, "M. E. O'Brien 5,632 followers"
February 21, 2025 at 9:10 PM
genderhorizon.com
This Saturday, Rise Up for Trans Youth in NYC. 2/8, Union Sq, 1 PM

“A space to uplift and empower trans youth and their families. Come listen to speakers and show your support.”

ACT-UP, Gender Liberation Movement, Trans formative schools

Pls share around
Text reads “Rise Up for Trans Youth Saturday February 8th Union Sq (NYC), 1 PM A space to uplift and empower trans youth and their families. Come listen to speakers and show your support. ACT-UP, Gender Liberation Movement, Trans formative schools” Cartoon image of hands holding pro trans signs
February 4, 2025 at 8:15 PM
genderhorizon.com
Every time writing is so brutally hard. Almost impossible

Today finished an essay on family abolition and psychoanalysis, the last third on Hortense Spillers. This quote from her “All the Things…” feels like the closest psychoanalytic theory gets to thinking the communist horizon.
In other words, the discontinuity that the abandoned son demarcates here must be carried out as a kind of new article of faith in the non-Traditional, in the discovery of the Law of the living, not the dead, and in the circulation of a new social energy that confronts the future, not the past….Carrying out that line of thinking, we might be able to see in an apposite psychoanalytic protocol for the subjects of ‘race,’ broken away from the point of origin, which rupture has left a hole that speech can only point to and circle around, an entirely new repertoire of inquiry into human relations. (From Spillers, Hortense J. “’All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother’: Psychoanalysis and Race." Critical Inquiry 22, no. 4 (1996): 710–734.)
January 26, 2025 at 1:32 AM
genderhorizon.com
Being old and isolated, I learn about books like Dorley Hall from near strangers on social media. The Goodreads description ends with a trigger warning which functions in exactly the way it is suppose to me, but obv not everyone else.
Content note: this story engages with some reasonably dark topics, including but not limited to torture, manipulation, dysphoria, nonconsensual surgery, and kidnapping. While it isn't intended to be a dark or dystopian story, the perspective characters are carrying a lot of baggage, and the exploration of the premise might be triggering for trans readers. Genres Queer Transgender Fiction LGBT Mystery Horror Thriller ...more
January 10, 2025 at 7:24 PM