Why transgender liberation is a class issue

This is an article in the third issue of New Economics Magazine.You can read the full question here

When most people hear about transgender rights, they hear about bathrooms, pronouns, and confusing legislation, such as the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). But are these really the main issues that affect the lives of most transgender people today?

Fergal O’Dwyer sat down with organizer and educator Nim Ralph to discuss the dangers of ignoring the material conditions that shape trans people’s lives, and why we should advance the vision of transgender liberation rooted in class unity.

FO’D: Hey Nim, let’s get started, can you explain why we seem to spend so much time talking about bathrooms and pronouns-and how this suits transgender opponents?

NR: Topics like this are usually not part of the agenda set by transgender people themselves, but by people who hate us.They are venues for transgender speech directed at the discomfort of non-transgender (or cisgender/cisgender) people: for example, ‘Language error” must be used ‘Strange language”, self-identity (a transgender person is legally understood as a transgender person without skipping the bureaucratic trap), transgender people in sports, and transgender women in the bathroom. All of this is for Arouse feelings of restlessness and ask abstract questions from real people’s lives. Don’t get me wrong, toilets and pronouns are important, but the artificial debate around them allows us to distract transgender people in a structural way and get hurt Attention-through things like homelessness, estrangement from support structures, education, work and healthcare, and experiencing violence from partners, family members, the country, and strangers.

These constructed debates are then ‘Allies of “social mediaization”. Support for transgender people is seen as easy-to-understand voice clips and well-intentioned but often performative ally actions. Responses like this are defined by the cultural agenda set by transgender people, not Solidarity related to the daily material needs of transgender people.

So why is transgender liberation a class issue?

In a very simple sense, because the struggle for transgender liberation is the same as the broader working class struggle.

To give a few obvious examples, Half transgender Unemployed in the UK, and One-third of employers According to a report, they will not hire transgender people. A quarter of transgender people Experienced direct discrimination in healthcare.Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender+ (LGBT+) young people account for at least 24% of young homeless. 16% of transgender women Experienced domestic violence in 2018, compared with 7.5% of women more broadly.

Part of the reason is the unique oppression that transgender people face (of course, transgender people’s experience of these problems can vary greatly depending on gender, race, work, disability, and other factors). But it is clear that transgender people are affected by the same structure that oppresses the working class.We should strive for unity within the working class Pass through Our differences include transgender people.

Yes, of course this is also a class issue, because capitalism shapes our understanding of gender. This is a big question, but I want to know if you can give us a few examples to help us understand this.

There are many things to introduce here! It is certainly true that European colonists used gender as a means of social classification and control in colonial and industrial labor projects.

As capitalism began to develop in Northern Europe from the end of the 18th century, the industrial production of commodities such as steel and textiles required part of the labor force to work, and part of the labor force needed to take care of the laborers and children who would grow up. Become a laborer. Masculinity and femininity are constructed in the economy as a dual economy, where half of the labor force (women) is qualified to be responsible for labor and production for the other half (men), and to undertake unpaid care and housework.no ‘Naturally, the economy is divided by gender-it is designed that way. The division of labor by gender/gender defines our social relationships-so it is not gender that determines our role in the labor force, but our role in the labor force defines and forms our gender. Because they do not fit into these categories, transgender people destroy these gendered social relationships. Therefore, the bourgeoisie thinks that we are not suitable, which often leads to institutionalization. There are few options other than staying hidden, hidden, unemployed, or working in the informal economy.

Outside of Northern Europe, the situation is different.In the so-called ‘In the colonial civilization project, the colonists imposed racial classification (the idea that white colonists are better than the colonized) and gender dualism (the idea of ​​only two genders: male and female) to control population and reproduction. Gender and race combine to create a hierarchy of ethnic groups organized from good to bad (whites above).When colonists encountered a society where the gender system transcended the dual system, it was used to prove their ‘Racial inferiority” and the reasons to conquer them. But racialized groups also ‘A given gender justifies this conquest. For example, colonialists portray blacks as super males, while South Asians are portrayed as women. (This is difficult to unravel in a short interview, and the process is subtle-for more information, please see our further reading section at the end of the interview).

This history helps us understand how capitalism colludes with imperialism, patriarchy and sexism, and white supremacy to determine what transgender means.

I want to go back to what you said about the behavior of allies. I think that many transgender allies now consider transgender liberation from the perspective of winning legislative changes (such as reforming the GRA) or better representatives (such as more transgender parliamentarians or CEOs) for transgender people. What are the limitations of this vision of transgender liberation?

So we have two frameworks here. One is concerned with transgender rights and the other is concerned with transgender liberation. Transgender rights determine the reason for the conquest of transgender people as a lack of civil and legal rights, which hinders us from gaining power and representation in the existing system.Trans liberation It is determined that the reason transgender people are conquered is inherent in the system itself: we are not experiencing transphobia because the system is destroyed, we are experiencing transphobia because the system operates in a designed way.

If we understand that capitalism imposes gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability on our bodies, then representatives in the system cannot set us free. The idea that we can challenge transphobia by gaining more power and representation within the system is a fallacy, because the system is what maintains oppression.

This is not to say that participating in these conflict sites is meaningless. Although it is geared towards a broader transgender liberation framework, I myself have been committed to GRA reform. It is possible to care about our rights and stay true to the liberation project (although it is never easy!)-but only if we critically reflect on the long-term help this will help us, not as a destination.

So back to your question: I think allies represent politics, just like unity is liberation politics.Allies eventually became passive and focused on ‘“Privilege”-and unity recognizes our common class status and builds interdependence in our struggle across differences. In my opinion, we need more unity and fewer allies.

I wonder if it might be helpful to provide some background on how the tension between transgender rights and transgender liberation works in the real world?

Absolute: As I mentioned, the final stage of the transgender rights agenda is usually representativeness and inclusiveness in the existing structure. For example, MI6 recently hoisted the transgender flag for the first time, and many people in the transgender community celebrated it. For me, this is a moment when the unity of shared experience is broken by our vision of freedom. Who is in which camp mainly depends on our safety in and around the UK. When the transgender members of MI6 were the secret intelligence service of the country to maintain its racist, imperialist borders and economic policies, I did not feel liberated because of the transgender members of MI6.

We are currently living under the leadership of a government, and an Indian woman is leading one of the most radical attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers known in the UK. The government has just released a report denying the existence of systemic racism written by black people. In the United States, Caitlin Jenner announced that she would run for governor of California as a Republican as part of her campaign, imitating Trump’s views on homeless and transgender women. If we only care about the rights and representation of transgender people, these are all triumphs, because people from the oppressed class have enough social acceptance or economic privileges to survive without maintaining class unity. However, allowing trans women to collude in a system that suppresses other trans people has never been a victory.

Don’t get me wrong, wider social acceptance is a good thing, but it’s different from liberation.For people who have been socially excluded in history, culture, and society, tolerance will comfort them—I always say ‘If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”. But we should also focus on dismantling the table.

It looks like transgender rights, but the instrumental victory that helps us to emancipate is to take power from the system, not to add more power to it. Therefore, the GRA reform will be an example of transgender people gaining self-identity power and removing some of the power to determine whether we are transgender or not from the state.

The theme of this magazine is “What kind of world do we want to return to”. What major changes do you hope to see in the struggle for transgender liberation after the pandemic?

In general, I would like to see more structural analysis that will bring collective action to all of us. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen the largest one-year wealth transfer in history: workers lost US$3.7 trillion, while billionaires earned US$3.9 trillion. We saw our government hand over contracts for personal protective equipment and ventilators to friends and relatives, but they clapped at the door every Thursday night. Even if we fight differently, the groups and people we fight are the same.

Although data on transgender people is unreliable for many reasons, there are few statistically ‘Exclude transgender people in the population. This makes it difficult for us to find each other and organize. The relentless attacks on our rights and lives in the past few years have brought many transgender people into a survival mode, making us more isolated from each other. But this is not the only story. There are many transgender organizers engaged in anti-poverty, anti-racism, housing and healthcare campaigns across the country. I would love to see other parts of our movement proactively building relationships with transgender people and linking our demands to their demands.

For example, this happens best when I see health workers learning to support transgender people and community transgender health programs outside of professional healthcare settings. Or the feminist collective is actively involved in the transgender movement, rather than waiting for us to tell them that they have not considered our needs. I am hopeful for the excitement of our movement throughout the pandemic, and believe that the more bridges we build between struggles, the better we will be able to win.

Nim Ralph is an activist and educator. They organize a wide range of issues related to transgender liberation, abolition, anti-racism, disability, and the environment. You can find more of their work on Twitter: @NMRLPH

picture: Tamara Yukaz and Gender Spectrum Collection