How to Love Like a Leftist

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Comrade Zoe (23 years old, Taiwanese and Indonesian American, cishet she/her, leftist, mentally ill, occasionally disabled, failing academic) is a Canva-based organizer and wannabe writer. After four years of half-assed activism and grad school rejections, she's turning to Substack in one, final, flailing attempt to "make a name" for herself. Check out her Substack & Insta, both of which can be found at @zoefuad!

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I wish I could call what we do revolutionary. That all the times we ghost people are actually radical acts of self-care, or that by showing up late to every hang-out, we’re somehow staging a refusal of capitalist temporality.

I want to believe that, by bumming cigarettes off ugly men at the bar, I’m practicing a sort of mutual aid: my attention, for their nicotine. And that perhaps, by sleeping with all the people I sleep with, I’m not so much “cheating on my partner,” but rather developing networks of care that extend past the monogamous, heteronormative coupling. Which is to say, I’m working to abolish the nuclear family.

I once attended an anarchist film screening, that was also a political workshop, that was also a singles dating meetup, that was also, it turns out, a place to buy ketamine under the table. While there, I met this really hot Latino guy, who asked me, “Hey, what kind of Asian are you?” Then, as an afterthought, “And what’s your name again?”

I told him, I’m from Texas, but my dad is Indonesian. To which he replied, “Oh, wow… a third world feminist. I love it. You and I should get together sometime, build some transnational connection.”

Isn’t that charming? A leftist mating call. And, dear reader, of course I slept with him. He was like a crunchy, hippy, HeForShe kinda man, wrapped in communist buzzwords and a condom. Afterward, he told me that he actually has a boyfriend, but don’t worry, because they’re “technically” polyamorous. What he meant by “technically,” I still don’t know.

There’s something so romantic about the ways in which we’re terrible to each other. How we do all the things that white men have always been allowed to do, like cheat, and lie, and backstab, except we cover it all up with Audre Lorde quotes and a misuse of the erotic. And what is our movement for, if not to protect our right to be just as messy, contradictory, and shitty as everyone else?

In making this argument to others, I’m often accused of not taking our politics seriously enough. I’ve had leftists, with their bleach-dyed mullets and plucky little mustaches, tell me that there’s nothing funny about their communes, polycules, or nudist zines, but rather that these creations are unprecedented and transformative. That polyamory is a uniquely Gen Z invention.. They tell me, I should really read these zines and take them seriously. That I might learn a thing or two. All of this, while we’re standing in a basement in Bushwick, trying to sage cleanse over the smell of old weed.

I’d counter, however, that I actually take these matters more seriously than any of them. Serious enough to recognize that not only does so much of our affection fall short of being radical, but it’s often messy, impolite, and impure. I love my comrades enough to see them as the full, contradictory, and imperfect humans that they are, and to recognize our love is, as a result, also imperfect. Sometimes, it’s even funny. But learning to laugh at our mistakes does not make them any less worthwhile. We are, at the end of the day, deeply flawed 20-something year olds, fumbling to cultivate love without a model to follow from or a system to stick to.

And perhaps the mistakes themselves are not revolutionary, but the willingness to acknowledge them, to build on them, to make better ones tomorrow, could provide the foundation for a revolution indeed.