I remember that when I was very young, perhaps 9 or 10, my parents were talking
about friends of their's, a couple, and that couple was two women. I was a bit
shocked and asked how it could be that two women could be living together as if
they were a man and woman who were married to each other. My parents said, very
matter of factly, that some women loved other women and some men loved other
men. And that was that as far as I was concerned. It was just part of the
natural order. I've noticed that men seem to be much more disturbed by
homosexuality than women, even very kind tolerant men have an aversion to
homosexual men. I can only suppose that it has to do with a fear of their own
buried feelings or of their association of homosexuality with weakness,
something that men are afraid of being accused of.
Roger's discussion of those scientific studies is interesting. But why not
study hormone levels rather than brain cells? This idea that women have smaller
brains than men, does sound a bit insulting, i.e., if the size of one's brain
is associated with the quality of one's intelligence.
I've worked with several lesbian women and gay men in my adoption work. The
women all had very feminine bodies and most of them, adorned their bodies in a
feminine manner. But some did not. They omitted all adornment and had rather
unattractive appearances. The gay men varied widely in appearance. My vision
was never good enough to detect mannerisms. But some did come off as seeming
more masculine than others, in the way they related to other people. Because I
assisted in a lot of international adoptions and because officials in other
countries would never have permitted a homosexual person to adopt one of their
children, I did a good deal of altering of the content of the homestudies that
were submitted to foreign governments. It was a narrow, dangerous road to
travel. I had to be sure to always tell the truth in the reports that I
submitted to the government of my own country.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2020 3:59 PM
To: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Trans Liberation: A Socialist Action Resolution
Carl, I grew up hearing those derogatory terms for gay people too and with some
embarrassment I will admit that during a certain point in my teenage years I
used them. It was in the form of friendly insults. That is, people of my
acquaintance were persistantly using those terms to accuse each other of being
gay without really thinking that anyone who was being accused really was. It
was more embarrassing to find out later that at least one of those guys was
actually gay. But I think I can say that I never actually felt the least bit of
hostility toward any gay person for being gay. As for what causes it, you may
as well ask what causes heterosexuality. Nobody ever thinks of that. Everyone
seems to think that heterosexuality needs no explanation while homosexuality
does. But there was actually someone who tried to do a scientific study of the
matter by dissecting brains of cadavers of men who were known to have been
homosexual and comparing the results to dissections of other brains over the
years. It is unfortunate that his study was found to be methodologically
flawed, so his findings were not conclusive. I think, though, that he was
likely on the right track. There is a certain small area deep in the brain in
which the sell nuclei are smaller in women than the very same sells in men. The
men have the larger nuclei. It turns out that the fully homosexual men had
those nuclei in the same size as the women. This researcher's conclusion was
reached by considering other results of physiological research and
embryological research. There is a view of sex that the default sex is female.
That is, all organisms that exist in sexual binary form started out as female.
After all, that is who actually does the reproducing. Males evolved as a means
to combine genetic material and they evolved from females. So any embryo starts
out to be female and changes have to be imposed on it for it to become male.
That has also been used to explain why women tend to have slightly longer life
expectancies than men too.
That is, when you start forcing changes on something there is a lot more room
for something to go wrong than there would be if you just left it alone. Well,
in humans the Y chromosome initiates processes that will turn a female by
default embryo into a male. Part of this process is that testosterone levels
rise at a certain point in development that will cause male characteristics to
develop. This rise in testesterone happens at different times for different
organ systems and that includes the brain. So just by happenstance sometimes
the testosterone will be swinging low just as the brain cells under
consideration are developing and the result is female brain cells. If the
process for producing a male body worked right in other periods of the
development you get a male body with a female brain and it will become a male
homosexual. I also remember reading an article in a science magazine that
discussed sexuality, both physically and psychological, as a spectrum
condition.
aAt one end of the spectrum are the super males. They are physically completely
male and extremely heterosexual. At the other end of the spectrum are super
females. In every way, physically and in their sexual orientation, they are
extremely female and heterosexual in the extreme.
In between, though, there are varying degrees of sexualities. This includes not
only how they think of themselves and whom they are attracted to, but also
their physical characteristics. That is, right in the middle physically are the
hermaphrodites. As for the psychological aspects of sexuality, if it is a
spectrum condition then those various degrees could explain all of those
variations such as bisexual, bicurious, trans and so forth. By the way, as for
the trans population, even thogh they may have fully formed sexual organs of
one sex or another if you look at their other characteristics you will see a
mixture of sex characteristics. A trans male, for example, may have female sex
organs, but he is also likely to be more brawny and muscular than most females
too in addition to thinking of himself as a man. The same goes for the trans
female. They have male genitals, but in addition to think of themselves as
female they tend to be of slighter build than other males. All of this could be
explained by random fluctuations of testosterone and other androgens during
embryological development. I forgot what the methodological flaws were in the
study I mentioned, but, unfortunately, it would be hard to repeat with the
flaws corrected. It is really difficult to get hold of a stistically
significant large number of cadavers hose sexual orientation in life was known.
In this particular study they were acquired by collecting bodies of people who
died ofAIDS and had made it clear before they died that they got it from
homosexual activity. They donated their bodies to science to promote the study
and search for a cure for AIDS, but as long as they were being used for
scientific purposes this study of sexual orientation could be made too. But
whatever the cause may be, whether you are hetrosexual, homosexual or something
in between it does seem to be something you are born with rather than something
you learn for the most part. I say for the most part because of a lot of
personal observations I have made. For one thing, female sexuality seems to be
a lot more malleable than male sexuality. I think, in fact, that if a female is
solidly lesbian then she is really more likely to be to some degree a male
trans. For the most part men seem to be either homosexual or heterosexual, but
I know that male homosexuals seem to find it easier to switch back and forth
than male heterosexuals. From what I have seen of females and their situational
sexual orientation that malleability among male homosexuals is another
indication that they have brains that are more female than male. Now, I find
myself being called away before I can proofread this email like I usually do. I
am going to go ahead and send it and hope that it will be readable.
___
Sam Harris
“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people
became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs. ”
― Sam Harris,
On 1/4/2020 11:51 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Growing up in Seattle during the 1940's, no one ever talked about
transsexuals. Certainly sex was not a topic in the Jarvis house. I
have no clue as to where my prejudices came from, but when a buddy
pointed to a neighbor and said, "He's Queer", I felt a sudden rage.
In my teens I recall my buddies using terms like, "Ferry Princes", or
"Light in the shorts", and some of them even minced about, wiggling
their butts and waving their hands. We all laughed.
Looking back I have to wonder just what sane person would believe that
Gay people would choose to be Gay in such a hostel environment.
Hostel and even life threatening. I recall a college professor
telling our class that some men became Queer due to a traumatic
occurrence such as being confronted by their nude father's penis.
That remark made me think back to when I was just tall enough to come
up to my dad's crotch. As dad came out of the bathroom, dressed only
in a towel that was wrapped around his head, I stared directly into
his "Manhood", which put my hairless teeny weeny to shame. And yet, I
survived that shock, and went on to become a real womanizer for much
of my young adult life.
But here's my point. What I thought I knew about sex and sexuality
was "learned" in a vacuum, and consisted of piles of misinformation
and false assumptions. And all of my early Sunday School teachers and
Church Preachers attempts to "protect" me, actually made it very
difficult for me, in later life, to dig out the anger and rage that
surrounded what I thought I knew about how we are put together.
But my efforts to understand the reasons for my lack of understanding
all came together when my own children entered the world. All three
of them are comfortable with their own bodies, and with their own
sexuality. And they all have grown up understanding that we are what
we are because of how we are put together physically and chemically,
not because of any choice on our part.
What our sex is, male female, bi or trans, matters to our religious
masters is beyond my understanding. Except to note that it is one
more division set in place by those pious Souls who speak love and
forgiveness, while behaving in ways that divide us, and degrade us.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/3/20, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> wrote:
A lot of these people who demand that transsexuals be considered to
be of the sex that they have on their birth certificates I think do
not entirely know what a transsexual is and may actually know some
without knowing what they have beneath their clothes. Some of these
state legislatures are passing laws that require people to use the
restrooms designated for the sex that is on their birth certificates.
I don't think West Virginia has passed one of those laws, but there
has been some discussion. So on a local news program on television
they introduced a transsexual who had been born female and still has
female sex organs. I couldn't see him, but I was given a description
of someone who to all appearances was a man. He said that he had been
using men's bathrooms all along and no one had ever objected. Then he
said in a very deep and gruff voice that sounded to me something like
the voice of a lumberjack, "Think about it. Do you really want a guy
like me hanging around the women's bathrooms?" Furthermore, I was
once on the street with a woman who stopped to speak to a man I did
not know. He wore a baseball cap and was dressed in work clothes. I
stood there waiting until they stopped talking and my companion and I
went on. My companion started talking about the man we had just left and
used the pronoun she.
I was surprised, but started thinking about him and remembering the
texture of his skin. Yep! That was a transsexual. Then, I have known
any number of gay guys who were very effeminate and just assumed them
to be effeminate gay men. I wonder, though, how many of them were
transsexuals. I assure you that when some of them were in drag they
could not be identified as anything but female except that I already
knew them and so already knew. I suppose there may have been others
who I did not know and just assumed that they were female without
ever finding out otherwise.
___
Sam Harris
“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because
its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
”
― Sam Harris,
On 1/3/2020 11:51 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Thanks for this interesting article. One more example of
distracting our attention, while our Masters go about their business.
"While it’s very important to respect everyone’s right to express
who they are in the way that makes them feel most comfortable, what
identity politics refuses to recognize is that the cause of the
oppression is capitalism’s exploitation of the vast majority of us
as workers. And while most members of oppressed groups are
overwhelmingly working class, it is also important to recognize that
just belonging to a particular group or “identity” does not mean
everyone in that group shares common interests. There may also be
opposed class interests at play."
On 1/3/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://socialistaction.org/2020/01/01/trans-liberation-a-socialist
-action-resolution/ Trans Liberation: A Socialist Action Resolution
Socialist Action
/
2 days ago
We begin with our stance of full support to and respect for
transgender people’s fundamental right to self-identify and for the
full, unequivocal inclusion of trans people in every aspect of
society. Socialist Action has a long history of unequivocal support
for trans rights and implacable opposition to any and all forms of
discrimination, exclusion, persecution, and violence against trans
people. We support trans people’s fight for full rights, including
but not limited to, equal access to housing, restrooms, medical
care, employment, education, sports, legal justice, body autonomy,
dignity, and the full realization of human potential.
Marxists not only see the fight for trans full inclusion and
democratic rights as central to the class struggle, but we also
recognize the liberatory power of an oppressed group resisting its
historic repression and becoming visible on its own terms.
Socialists welcome the increasing visibility of gender diversity.
For trans gender, transsexual, and non-binary (gender
non-conforming) people, the insistence on authentic identities
cannot be dismissed as “identity politics”
or mere individualism. It is an assertion of self-determination
that challenges the social underpinnings of capitalism itself.
Trans women are women.
Trans men are men. We reject any assertion that their identity is
in any way inauthentic or invalid.
Among the many forms that trans oppression takes in capitalist
America, two prominent examples are extremely high rates of brutal
violence against trans people and deep economic marginalization. At
the time of this writing, at least 22 transgender or gender
non-conforming people have been killed this year in the United
States. Since 2013, at least 157 transgender and gender
non-conforming individuals have been murdered in the U.S., 81% of
whom were trans women of color. Four out of 5 victims were
misgendered by media or cops.
A 2017 study published in the American Journal of Public Health
estimated that from 2010 to 2014, young Black trans women were
between 4.5 and 22.6 times more likely to be killed than the rest
of the population. In the years since, the number of trans people
murdered each year has doubled.
Trans people in the U.S. face unemployment at a rate at least three
times the national average and are more than twice as likely to
live in poverty. In a recent survey of over 27,000 trans people in
all fifty states by the National Center for Transgender Equality,
which provides a comprehensive reporting of the lived experiences
of trans people in the U.S., 30% had experienced homelessness in
their lifetime, and 12% had been homeless in the prior year.
As trans people are pushed to the perimeter of the economy, 20%
reported having worked in the underground economy.
Sexual violence is also a major threat in the lives of trans
people. 47% of those surveyed had been sexually assaulted, and 54%
had experienced some form of intimate partner violence.
The many compounding struggles faced by trans people take a
horrific toll. An astonishing 40% of those surveyed reported having
attempted suicide.
In this resolution, we will address the roots of trans oppression
in the economic structures of capitalism, describe how Marxists
understand gender as a social construct, and re-affirm Socialist
Action’s support for the struggles of trans people in all areas of
society.
A Marxist Understanding of Gender
Gender is a Social Construct
Marxists and socialist feminists recognize that gender is a social
construct, which is formed by economic, cultural, historical,
biological, and class factors. Throughout human history, social
groups have defined social roles in relation to the cultural and
economic needs and development of their societies.
Since societies have changed in dramatic ways over time so, too,
has gender. Gender and gender roles have not been static either
across time or across cultures.
In some matricentric, pre-class societies, sex and gender were more
complex and included genders that we might, today, call “trans.”
Roles were not based solely, or even mainly, on biological
characteristics but on the total needs of the society – on the
constellation of practices that formed the group’s economic
organization, kinship systems, and spiritual beliefs. Some of these
forms continue in some indigenous peoples, cultures and nations
today.
The shift to class society and the accumulation of private property
brought changes not only to economic forms but to social
relationships and to the roles required of its subjects. Before the
rise of class society, social production was organized communally
and products shared equally. The material basis for the
exploitation of one group by another did not exist. The social
status of women and men reflected the indispensable roles each
played in the subsistence productive process.
The change in women’s status and the entrenchment of more rigid
gender roles developed along with the growing productivity of human
labor based on agriculture, the domestication of animals, and stock
raising; the rise of new divisions of labor, craftsmanship, and
commerce; the private appropriation of an increasing social
surplus; and the development of the possibility for some humans to
prosper from the exploitation of the labor of others. In these
specific socioeconomic conditions, as the exploitation of human
beings became profitable for a privileged few, women, because of
their role in the generational transmission of wealth, became
valuable property. Thus, the origins of women’s oppression are
economic and social in character, and the development of women’s
oppression is intertwined with the transition from pre-class to
class society, and the replacement of practical and egalitarian
labor divisions with hierarchy.
Through the lens of social reproduction theory, we can understand
how the institutionalization of the nuclear family and women’s role
in helping reproduce labor power, both generationally, and on a
daily basis, helped prop up the capitalist economic structure. By
controlling gender roles and women’s expected behavior within the
family structure, the capitalist class could profit from pushing
many of the social reproduction needs of society onto women, who
were not compensated for their work. The exploitation of women also
helped the ruling class maintain a reserve army of labor they could
control by pushing women in or out of the workforce as needed.
This institutionalization of gender roles and the nuclear family
also contributed to the oppression of trans and non-binary people
who didn’t fit neatly into these artificially created categories.
We view the movements for trans and worker’s rights as part of one
struggle and understand gendered oppression to be fundamental to
ruling class efforts to discipline the working class, uphold the
ideal of the nuclear family, and maintain a “flexible”
surplus population.
Socialist Action must advance our perspective to help build the
biggest and broadest coalitions to fight against working class
divisions, including a trans inclusive women’s movement, to unite
workers with different experiences and ultimately build a movement
that can overthrow the system of capitalist exploitation itself.
Gender and Identity
In Marxist understanding, a person’s existence is not grounded in
an arbitrarily chosen personality but in material—that is,
social—conditions. Our selves grow out of what is made available to
us by the society in which we live at our moment in history. In a
class society conditioned by gendered oppression, genders pre-exist
the individuals who come to inhabit them, and gender roles are
governed by the needs of the mode of production. Gender identity
arises from the way in which individuals experience their society’s
array of social and gender roles relative to their own specific
experiences and their own unique psyches. Gender is complex.
Because of the variety of personal histories, real-life
experiences, and individual attributes, gender identity can span a broad
range.
Cognitive, biological,
social, and personal history all contribute to how people make
sense of their self-experience and how they wish to be seen and to
be interpreted by others.
In transitioning, many people feel they are not changing so much as
affirming their gender; even as if they had previously been
“passing” as the wrong gender and were only now properly aligned.
Socialists respect each person’s unique experience of self and
their right to self-identify. Socialist Action supports the
struggles of trans people for self-identification and for all
people to be able to define their gender, without the intervention
of physicians or requiring medical procedures. We will discuss this
struggle more below.
Capitalist society exerts much pressure in controlling gender roles
– along with its regulation of other social relations – to achieve
the highest rate of profit and divide workers. Capitalism’s
portrayals of race, nationality, religion, age, sex, class, sexual
orientation, and gender are all subject to manipulation in order to
preserve the economic order.
This is not static, however. Human beings are always in flux as we
adapt to and make sense of the world. So, too, is the capitalist
system itself ever-changing and adapting to the challenges to it
from workers and its own contradictions and periodic crises. It is
in this light that changes in gender roles can either be
adaptive—that is, they can continue to preserve the capitalist
economic status quo – or they can be revolutionary and show the way
to greater diversity and human expression.
The resistance of Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals to institutions
and belief systems that oppress them illustrates such gains in diversity.
Lesbians,
Gay Men and Bisexuals have made major challenges to socially
constructed gender norms and sex stereotyping to express their
authentic experiences. In a world where little girls are bombarded
with pink-clad Disney princesses and relegated to traditional
women’s roles and monogamous, heterosexual marriages, young
lesbians have chosen differently. They have resisted invisibility
and become the authors of their own stories. For more on the issue
of lesbian erasure see:
https://socialistaction.org/2019/02/26/lesbophobia-past-and-present
/
Capitalist society is confronted with a similar challenge from
trans people who not only don’t fit neatly into gender roles but
who, in the act of transitioning, present a challenge to the gender
binary and the roles thereby prescribed in production and social
reproduction under capitalism.
For socialists, liberation is not only about theory but is also
about how people’s lives intersect with the world around them and
how their experiences, reactions, and thoughts move them to actions
that challenge that world.
Challenges being made by trans and non-binary people have broad
implications about the direction in which society can move.
However, the actual ability to alter society depends not on
individual expression, but on the aims and the strength of the
broadest mass movement that can be created.
The Struggle for Full Trans Inclusion Today
Two ground-breaking reports have provided much needed data that
reveals the extent of mistreatment, harassment and violence that
trans sexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming (non-binary)
people suffer in virtually every area of their lives:
list of 2 items
• I njustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender
Discrimination Survey . Washington: National Center for Transgender
Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011. (“NTDS”) •
The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey . Washington, DC:
National Center for Transgender Equity. (“USTS”) list end
The first reports the findings of a 2008 survey of 6,450
transgender and gender non-conforming people from all 50 states.
The second builds on the first, with 27,715 respondents from all 50
states, plus US territories and overseas military bases completing
surveys in the summer of 2015.
The treatment documented in these reports has given rise to
resistance movements. Here we will examine a few areas of struggle
in which Socialist Action is actively involved.
Fair Treatment at Work
Trans and gender non-conforming workers have endured profound
discrimination and exploitation. Capitalist businesses and
institutions exclude or erase these workers through discriminatory
hiring practices, harassment, intimidation, misgendering, bullying,
denial of access to bathrooms and other facilities, barriers to
promotion, and legal action.
The National Transgender Discrimination Survey (“NTDS”, 2011)
demonstrated that the experience of workplace abuse is nearly
universal among transgender and gender non-conforming respondents:
Ninety percent (90%) of respondents said they had directly
experienced harassment or mistreatment at work or felt forced to
take protective actions that negatively impacted their careers or
their well-being, such as hiding who they were, in order to avoid
workplace repercussions. Mistreatment ranged from verbal harassment
and breaches of confidentiality to physical and sexual assault,
while bias-avoidant behaviors included hiding one’s gender,
delaying transition, or staying in a job one would have preferred
to leave. Given the broad spectrum of workplace abuse experienced
by our study participants, their persistent engagement in the
workforce speaks to a determination and resilience that goes
largely unheralded in statistics and discourse about transgender
and gender nonconforming people in the workplace. (NTDS, p.56)
In a majority of states, there are virtually no legal protections
against discrimination except in workplaces covered by union
contracts. Trans people are also one of the sectors of the working
class most affected by austerity measures. In cut-backs, they are
among the first to lose jobs and housing, and to see health,
welfare, and other social services disappear.
Trans workers are cast into the margins: they either have
precarious work or become part of the reserve labor army. The
reserve labor pool is the population of unemployed or
under-employed workers that capitalism maintains in order to
back-fill its needs in times of high demand or of labor rebellion.
They are forced into this status almost by definition and often
experience long-term joblessness, poverty, and little support or
hope of improvement.
Using the two different surveys, we can tell that the work
situation for transgender people has shockingly worsened over the
past decade. The initial surveys were completed before the economic
crisis hit in October, 2008 while the second set of surveys were
completed in the summer of 2015, 7 years later. During this time
the unemployment rate for the population at large fell from 7% to
5% but the unemployment rate for transgender and gender
non-conforming people went from 14% (double the rate of the
population generally) to 15% (TRIPLE the rate of the overall
population). Rates for transgender people of color are
approximately FOUR TIMES that of the overall US population, which
is deplorable and not improving.
In 2008, approximately 16% of respondents reported having to work
in the criminalized economy at some point (selling drugs or doing
sex work) to survive.
By 2015 that number had risen to 20% of survey respondents (9% in
the last 12 months prior to completing the survey). When the first
survey was taken nearly HALF the respondents (47%) had experienced
an “adverse job outcome”
(being fired, not being hired, not being promoted) because of their
gender identity or expression. By the second survey fully TWO
THIRDS (67%) reported an “adverse job outcome” in the past year.
“The obstacles currently facing trans people in regards to
employment are the most insidious. Without an income, one has
absolutely NO voice, politically, economically or socially.
Elimination of employment discrimination, above all else, is the
keystone to fundamental transgender equality in America.” (NTDS, p.
56)
This discrimination undermines the position of all workers in
relation to all capitalist employers. When rights and services to
one sector of the class are denied, the welfare of all working
people is diminished.
Access to Health Care
Everyone in the working class struggles with access to healthcare
under a system controlled by profit making health insurance and
pharmaceutical companies.
But transsexuals and those identifying as transgender encounter
more barriers and have many more challenges, which include the
medical practitioners themselves.
For decades, those who had undergone “gender reassignment surgery”
soon discovered that health insurance companies considered any
health condition as a preexisting condition of their surgery.
Therefore, since they didn’t cover the surgery, they insisted that
any health need was pre-existing and not covered by insurance.
Today there are some unions and corporations that have forced
health insurance providers to end all discrimination. But this
covers only a small number of all workers.
This year the Department of Health and Human Services under
President Trump announced plans to remove “Gender Identity” from
the anti-discrimination language in the Affordable Care Act. This
will again leave patients subject to discrimination in health care
as well as health insurance coverage. This will undoubtedly mean
that those identifying as transgender will suffer the pain of
preventable, treatable physical conditions, as well as the
emotional brutality of dealing with a medical system that just will
not want to treat them.
The NTDS found that barriers to access health care for transgender
and non-conforming individuals included harassment, violence and
actual denial of service.
Those barriers existed whether they were seeking preventive
medicine, routine or emergency care or transgender related
services. In addition, racial bias was a risk in every area of the
study.
Nineteen percent of survey participants were refused care.
Harassment in medical care settings was reported by 28% and 2% were
actually victims of violence in a doctor’s office. Fifty percent
reported that they had to teach their medical providers about
transgender care and 41% reported that they had attempted suicide.
Socialists call for a working class movement that incorporates the
needs, rights, and respectful treatment of all workers. Such a
movement would not only demand reasonable access to bathrooms,
appropriate health care, and workplace safety, but it would
prioritize the hiring, promoting, and development of transgender
people.
Where there are unions, they should be in the forefront of this work.
Contracts must include language that prohibits discrimination,
protects the full inclusion of trans people, and assures health
care that includes the needs of transgender and transitioning
employees.
Self ID
Many countries in the world continue to deny transgender people
their basic right to legal recognition of their gender, but
unfortunate problems persist even where that right has been fought
for and won. Most governments where gender recognition is possible,
including the US, pathologize the state of being transgender,
forcing trans people to go through a difficult process that makes
their gender a question of medical inquiry. It is dehumanizing to
have to get permission from the government to be who you are, yet
there are only a few countries in the world where people may
legally change gender with a mere statutory self-declaration.
Of the nearly 28,000 people who participated in the 2015
Transgender survey, only 11% reported that their preferred name and
gender appear on ALL their documents, while more than two-thirds
(68%) reported that NONE of their IDs had the name and gender they
preferred. Nearly one third (32%) of respondents had experienced
verbal harassment, denial of benefits or service, being asked to
leave, or being assaulted when presenting an ID listing a name or
gender that did not match their gender presentation (USTS, p.9).
Socialist Action stands in solidarity with the current movement for
self-identification in the UK, and movements for self-ID everywhere
in the world.
Immigration
It is important to note that trans and other LGTBQ immigrants face
multiple layers of oppression, based on both their gender identity
and second-class status as in the U.S. as immigrants. A striking
example of this is shown in the recent story of a few dozen LGBTQ
people who banded together while traveling through Mexico as part
of a larger caravan of Central Americans traveling to the
U.S.-Mexico border to apply for asylum. Many LGBTQ people face
extreme oppression and violence (even murder) in Latin America,
forcing them to flee to the U.S. for safety.
However, it was reported by multiple news outlets that LGBTQ
members of the caravan felt the need to band together, forming
their own “caravan within a caravan” for safety reasons. Many other
members of the caravan (mostly
males) were constantly harassing, heckling and threatening them.
This progressed to the point that human rights workers assigned a
special security detail to travel with the group in order to
provide protection from the ongoing attacks.
It was also reported that the LGBTQ migrants faced additional
problems with accessing bathrooms along the route, and were less
likely to hitch much-needed rides along the way.
Once in the U.S., however, trans immigrants still face almost
insurmountable barriers when seeking asylum. In order to qualify
for asylum protection, the burden of proof is on them to prove that
they have been a victim of persecution in their home countries
because of their transgender identity. Furthermore, these already
vulnerable immigrants face continued discrimination once in the
United States. The NTDS survey found that “Seven percent (7%) of
our sample reported being physically assaulted at work because of
being transgender or gender non-conforming. Undocumented
noncitizens in our sample reported the highest rates of physical
assault at 25%, over three times the rate of the overall sample.”
It’s easy to see that trans and other LGBTQ immigrants continue to
face multiple barriers as they flee to the U.S. to seek a better
life.
From Theory to Action
When an oppressed group asserts its true experience, it refutes the
ideology of the ruling class. Instead of reinforcing the version
of reality that advances the interests of capitalist production, it
expresses the genuine human and material history of our own class.
This advances the consciousness of our entire class. Awareness of
one’s oppression, however, is not enough to attain liberation.
Understanding theory and the history of social movements and
struggles is incredibly important, but as socialists, we also
understand the need to engage in concrete action. While Socialist
Action supports the right of every person to express their own
identity, including their gender identity, freedom of expression
does not in itself lead to an analysis and strategy for liberation
from the system.
The rejection of gender stereotypes and the radical reframing of
discourse are important steps that create the basis of independent
consciousness but they will not, by themselves, result in
significant material change. For that, we need a movement that can
contest capitalist power.
Organization, agitation,
solidarity, and independent political action are the tools
necessary to creating a movement powerful enough to triumph over
capitalist oppression.
A Revolutionary Socialist Critique of Identity Politics
Identity politics is a popular theory today that hinges on the
basic right of everyone to hold and express their own individual
identity however they choose.
People are encouraged to use gender pronouns based on personal
choice, and respect everyone’s right to live a genuine and authentic life.
While it’s very important to respect everyone’s right to express
who they are in the way that makes them feel most comfortable, what
identity politics refuses to recognize is that the cause of the
oppression is capitalism’s exploitation of the vast majority of us
as workers. And while most members of oppressed groups are
overwhelmingly working class, it is also important to recognize
that just belonging to a particular group or “identity”
does not mean
everyone in that group shares common interests. There may also be
opposed class interests at play.
Solely focusing on identity politics and leaving a working class
analysis of class politics to the side can often derail social
movements. Instead of focusing on their common exploitation by the
capitalist class, this approach can lead to an internal focus, as
groups debate who is the “most oppressed”
or “privileged.”
Identify politics can also lead to a feeling of extreme possessiveness:
“this is our issue and only we can talk about it.”
Instead, revolutionary socialists seek to build inclusive united
front movements that seek to involve the broadest range of groups possible.
Strong movements
based on working class solidarity can work together to build
effective mass movements that challenge capitalist power in the
streets. In such a movement, each member is free to identify and
express themselves as who they are.
At the same time, they are united with other members not based on
individual beliefs, but on a shared agreement to work on a common
cause, even if they may disagree with other coalition members on a
different issue.
Socialist Action works to build these effective united front-type
movements around women’s, trans, and gay and lesbian issues.
No Platforming, Harassment, Threats, and Cyber Bullying
The right of women to meet and discuss the wide variety of issues
around sex and gender has been attacked by a sector of the trans
movement that uses intimidation
to silence those with whom it disagrees. Methods of harassment include
cyber bullying, physical assaults, and censorship.
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• Rejection of “No Platforming”
list end
The practice called “no platforming” is used to effectively gag
those with opposing views. People are prohibited — often by means
of violence or threats of violence — from holding meetings and
speaking. This has occurred even at events that have nothing to do
with trans issues.
Extremists threaten disruptions in universities and libraries where
women are planning meetings and discussions. They attempt to get
any speakers at the meetings fired from their jobs. When such
meetings do take place, extremists disrupt them by blocking
entrances, storming the platforms, or calling in bomb threats. In
cases where they cannot gain entrance they terrorize participants
by screaming at them as they enter and exit. Cyber Bullying on
social media includes: “Punch a TERF,” “Lynch a TERF,” “Stab a
TERF,” “Rape a TERF.”
This incitement to violence against women has become pervasive and
must be condemned. These tactics are all too familiar to women who
have suffered trauma and have been victims of violence.
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• Gender Critical Positions
list end
Within the women’s movement, some feminists have expressed
reservations about the inclusion of trans women. Debates have
centered on the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces and in
legislation created to protect women from discrimination,
protections that trans women had not previously been allowed to
access.
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• The Acronym TERF
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The term “trans exclusionary radical feminist” was originally used
in
2008 to distinguish those radical feminists who wished to exclude
trans women from women’s spaces from those who did not. This term
is not used by radical feminists to identify themselves nor is it
the name of any group.
Since the time of its original coinage, the term, in its shortened
form of “TERF,” has come to be used more broadly as an epithet
against anyone presumed not to whole-heartedly support trans
inclusion. Individuals are branded “TERFs” and vilified in person,
in social media, and at public events, regardless of their specific
beliefs or whether they are in any way affiliated with radical
feminism.
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• Opposition to Violence in the Movement list end
Socialist Action condemns any and all violence in the workers’ movement.
We likewise reject the use of “TERF,” a term that clarifies nothing
and only serves to divide the movement and to prohibit constructive
debate.
While Socialist Action does not agree with the radical feminist
position, we support all women’s right to meet, discuss, and
exchange ideas – without being no platformed, threatened, harassed
and bullied.
Trans Liberation and Women’s Liberation: Same Fight
The traditional binary hierarchy of capitalist gender roles is
designed to maintain property relations and a division of labor
that benefits the owning class. This structure relegates women to
a secondary status, devalues their social role and their labor, and
curtails their legal rights and self-agency.
In short, the systems of oppression resisted by the Women’s
Movement and those fought by the Trans Movement have the same origin.
The struggle of the Women’s Movement has been to free women from
this oppressive legacy. In that battle, women have fought for
equal representation, recognition, access, compensation, and
opportunity. Simultaneously, we have fought for health care,
bodily autonomy, freedom of sexual expression and orientation,
safety, and social justice. At the Trump inaugural protests, which
drew five million into the streets, full affirmation of transgender
rights were included in the overall demands for women’s rights.
This solidarity marked a great advance in the struggle for equal
rights for all.
Cis women have nothing to gain by excluding trans and non-binary
women from the women’s movement. Trans women can be oppressed by
the same systems that oppress cis gendered women and they can be
victims of the same violence. To exclude trans women, in fact,
contradicts our aims. It gives credibility the gender hierarchy
that we are trying to destroy. Instead, we must join together.
Cis women and trans women face the same oppression and have common
cause. They are not only natural allies but their goals overlap.
The Women’s Movement is strengthened by our unity.
Conclusion
Capitalist rulers understand the inter-dependence of social forces
and eye resistance in one sector as a potential inspiration to
other oppressed sectors and as a potential threat to its overall
control. Consequently, they foster antagonisms between sectors and
discourage solidarity.
We must have the opposite intention, seeking to build solidarity
across the barriers of race, sex, gender, sexuality, age, and
nationality that have been created by the ruling class to separate
and divide us.
“Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against
transgender people is a deadly carcinogen. [As workers] we are
pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each
other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between
people who respect each other’s differences and are willing to
fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of
the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.”
(Leslie Feinberg,
“Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come”)
It is revolutionary socialist consciousness and the united
participation of all oppressed sectors that will take us from
symbolic and fragmented forms of resistance to acts of genuine
transformation.
Socialist Action pledges full support to and respect for
transgender and non-binary people’s fundamental right to
self-identify and for their full, unequivocal inclusion in every
aspect of society. We are committed to building the biggest and
broadest coalitions to fight against working class divisions,
including a trans- inclusive women’s movement, to unite workers
with different experiences and build a movement that can overthrow
the system of capitalist exploitation itself.
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--
___
Sam Harris
“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because
its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core
beliefs.
”
― Sam Harris,