On Cissexual Necropolitics, Peer Review, and the Speed of Fascism

This work represents a moment in time. Initially drafted just prior to the election of Trump in 2024, and substantially revised/updated during the first half of 2025, this work was an attempt to quickly qualify the genocidal intentions of the impending Trump Regime. Because the peer-review process for most journals is painfully slow, and the ontological role of speed is so foundational to fascist movements, it became difficult to keep this piece up to date and subject to peer review. It was my wish for this to live in the pages of a respected journal that had sent this over for peer-review.

This work now feels like a historical text rather than a contemporary piece of political analysis. Updating this essay could very well become a full-time job, as every week the Trump Regime takes new steps to attack the bodily autonomy and humanity of trans, gender diverse, and intersex people (TGDI). In only a few weeks, it could become quickly outdated. Still, I hope this essay serves as an imperfect assessment of the first half or the first year of the second Trump Regime and the existential project of genocide it sought to unleash against TGDI people. While the citations capture a sliver of the regime’s attacks on TGDI people’s humanity, the overarching assessments remain the same.

If anything, the prescience of this draft has seemed to be confirmed, as much of what it predicts continues to be borne out in this regime’s many attempts to strip TGDI people of their rights, their dignity, and their ability to exist at all.

This work is a love letter to Achille Mbembe, whose work has provided a field manual for understanding the genocidal intentions of the Trump Regime. It is not lost on me that Mbembe’s work continues to demonstrate the importance of not simply elevating but meaningfully engaging with the work of Black and Brown scholars, ethicists, and philosophers.