Lez be honest. 2025 was terrible. I was never the greatest optimist about humanity, but, wow, humans really suck. People literally turning away from genocide and apartheid. People literally sucking the Earth dry and polluting low-income and racially marginalized communities plagued with data centers because they need AI to type a fucking email or to have a relationship because they are shitty human beings.

Are we redeemable?

In April, I was hit with the death of my grandfather and, two weeks later (after a multi-year campaign to get rid of me, for making SSIR “too woke,” according to the former board chair aka the wife of techno-fascist Marc Andressen), I was laid off by Stanford. The executive director, who I was told had been “gunning for [me]” for a while, pulled the well-worn administrative card of “eliminating a position” to justify my termination. As I was the print editor responsible for most sections of the magazine, I had believed my position was safe — so, of course, when I asked how I could be let go the very day I was turning in the cover story for the summer issue, the ED told me they were getting rid of the magazine. It was a lie. A lie right to my face (via Zoom). Yes, the print magazine still exists. (Proof, you say? Here’s a link to the 2026 Winter Issue.)

Is it a coincidence that I was laid off just hours after my MSNBC piece on that absurd all-female space flight was published? The space flight helmed by Jeff Bezos’ now wife … who had been on the board but, according to shared knowledge, was no longer on the board because she refused to pay the $250K fee? Was this some coordinated effort to woo her back?

The amount of institutional and personal betrayal I have felt has really been shattering. People are cowards. Too afraid to stand up for what is right, whether it be speaking out about a genocide or standing up for your colleague.

I really hated this year.

And the sheer number of middle-aged white women who told me to keep my mouth shut throughout this ordeal; that “you’ll never find a job because organizations will see you as a risk” — SMDH. You stay complicit, ww.

I’m not sorry: If transparency is a quality that threatens your organization, if the values of freedom mean nothing to your organization, then I want nothing to do with you.

I will say that I am very proud of the writing I was able to do and get published — largely thanks to my friend, Tracy Gilchrist, for making sure I had space at The Advocate. I especially loved my articles that criticized the bullshit idea of “fairness” and called out transphobic community betrayers. I also loved my article on the lessons of solidarity work, distilled from new publications by Sarah Schulman and the late Urvashi Vaid.

I am still looking for full-time work, but my self-possession and confidence in myself and my values are stronger than ever. I am fucking amazing, the lesbian Zarathustra, shouting from the mountaintop.

2026 will be better. Why? Well, for starters, I have adopted a new cat — a kitten named Assata, born in the month of her namesake Assata Shakur’s passing. This little kitten will be my daily, fluffy reminder to never stop fighting for freedom.

Happy New Year.

~ mb