On writing a manifesto

I published something today that I have been calling a manifesto, and then decided not to call it that, and settled on On What Belongs to You instead. Manifesto felt too loud. Too certain. The document is certain about some things but it is also a working document, and manifestos tend to imply a finished position rather than an ongoing one.

I am not entirely sure why I wrote it now. A mix of things, which is usually the honest answer when you cannot pin it to one thing.

Six months of writing had accumulated to the point where I felt the connective tissue needed to be visible. The technical posts and the identity posts and the journal entries are all on the same site and I have always known why, but I had not said why, at least not in one place and at any length. The document is partly that: an explanation to anyone who arrives here and wonders what the connection is between nginx configuration and gender clinics.

It is also partly for me. Writing the six months in post made me realise I had a clearer sense of what this project is than I did in January, and that clarity felt worth capturing before it shifted again. Things are still moving. The gender clinic process is ongoing. February is still being built. The 22-week plan is running. Writing down what I currently believe is a way of marking where I am, so that future me has a record of it.

And partly, I think, it is because the data breach machines article I read this week put me in a frame of mind about authority and infrastructure and who controls what. Reading someone else’s careful argument about the same territory you have been moving through has a way of crystallising your own position.

The document is long. I do not apologise for that. Short statements of belief tend to be slogans. I was not interested in writing a slogan.