https://socialistaction.org/2018/11/05/we-wont-be-erased-say-connecticut-protesters-for-trans-rights/
‘We won’t be erased,’ say Connecticut protesters for trans rights
/ 3 days ago
Nov. 2018 Trans Wash 10:22 (Kevin Lamarque:Reut)
Oct. 22 “We Won’t Be Erased” rally outside the White House. (Kevin
Lamarque / Reuters)
By ROZWELL SIMMONS
— NEW HAVEN, CONN. — In a leaked memo published by The New York Times on
Oct. 21, the Trump administration called for federal agencies to “define
sex as male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that
a person is born with.” Alarmed by this persecuting and transphobic
policy, members of the LGBTQI community across the country have started
to take action, uniting behind the hashtag and rallying cry “won’t be
erased.”
On Oct. 27, over 200 people came together in New Haven, Conn., to rally
for trans rights. Originally planned to take place outside, the
demonstration was moved into the United Church on the Green’s parish
house due to rain. The event was co-sponsored by a total of 36
organizations and activist groups, including the Party for Socialism and
Liberation CT, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, True Colors,
Trans Lifeline, Triangle Community Center. Much of the event was a
“speakout” during which organizations gave speeches.
A University of Connecticut Youth for Socialist Action member spoke at
the rally on behalf of Socialist Action Connecticut:
“In another reactionary swing at our very livelihoods, Trump and his
administration are making moves to systematically marginalize us.
Without any policy even yet being into place, for example, Trump’s memo
erases intersex folks. It is important to recognize why they are doing
this; it’s not as simple as bigotry, although I must say, that doesn’t
really help matters.
“We are being suppressed not because the ruling class sees us as some
weak group that may be snuffed out in one fell swoop, but because they
know we are strong and they feel threatened. They saw the three million
people in the street after Trump was elected and realized what’s going
on. People are on the move. Against Kavanaugh, against deportations,
against police brutality—working people have been mobilizing. The whole
ruling class sees all of this, and they also see what is happening in
Argentina, where socialist feminists in Pan y Rosas are regularly
organizing hundreds of thousands in mass demonstrations against sexual
assault and discrimination, and where there is an open call with broad
support to build an independent party of workers to fight against austerity.
“The ruling class knows that there isn’t really anything stopping
workers here in the U.S. from following heroic examples of working and
oppressed people all over the world. They are terrified. Good! May the
administration and the ruling class quake in their boots! We’re a force
to be reckoned with, and they’re acting now because they know they’re
losing ground.
“Members of the ruling class seek to silence our identities because they
know that we are empowered by the recognition and affirmation of these
identities. They want to strip us of our power and enforce the binary
straitjacket in order to divide, weaken, and more easily oppress us.
Without a binary to polarize us, we are unspeakably strong.
“Just 300 years ago, neither sex nor gender were understood anywhere in
the world as binaries. There was no ‘scientific’ consensus that people
born with certain genitalia or hormones fit the hard and fast
categorizations of “male” and “female”, and that no one could have or be
both or neither. Nowhere in the world. So where did the binary come
from? It came with the whistle of the factory shift clock. It came with
the laws and violence that forced peasants into industrial production.
The binary came with the slave ships and the genocide of millions of
indigenous people and with the force of two world wars.
“Many transphobes hide under the excuse of the preservation of our
language. ‘Look gender up in a dictionary,’ they say, or, ‘transgender
is a made-up word.’ Well, so are the words ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Our
oppressors have fooled themselves into thinking that if we cannot label
ourselves, we cannot manifest. That simply isn’t true. The ruling class
wants exclusive ownership of labels because they want exclusive
ownership of people. The gender binary secures the ruling class’s
control over the bodies of those they oppress; we’ve seen it time and
time again, for example, with the struggle for access to birth control
and safe abortions.
‘Trans people are also being oppressed because we are not profitable. We
present a problem to the nuclear family model that so efficiently
produces and indoctrinates new workers for the labor force. Purely
economically, we are not a good investment for the ruling class; we take
advantage of existing resources only for the sake of our own freedom,
not for the sake of fulfilling an agenda or playing into a systemic
complacency.
‘It is inefficient for the ruling class to exploit us because without
strict categorization we are not easily commoditized. Our fundamental
connection is the rejection of the established structure, a structure
that serves only to benefit the ruling class and oppress all others.
It’s a shame that such a large portion of our population has succumbed
to the acceptance of such a structure. But we have the power to break
this cycle. We won’t be erased!
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November 5, 2018 in Connecticut, LGBT rights.
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
