WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #338 - Antipatriarca, Transidentity: Is community health revolutionary? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The trans community has for decades equipped itself with its own support and

socialization structures, including its own knowledge of health, to the point of
making hormonal treatments in secret. A kind of self-management of necessity. We
can therefore catch ourselves dreaming: what if these practices independent of
the state foreshadowed a revolutionary organization of society? Sometimes good
fiction is better than a pamphlet. ---- France, March 2028. The biggest social
movement in years has turned into a general strike. Ports are blocked, production
is at a standstill. Among the revolutionaries, we say to ourselves that this one
may be the right one. As for trans associations, we are following events closely.
While the vast majority of trans people support and even participate in the
movement, concerns are mounting about hormone shortages.

Of course, the transport unions maintain a service for essential foodstuffs, but
that means considering hormone treatments (THS) as such. However, for many
pharmacies, ill-informed or transphobic, part of HRT is comfort medication,
intended for cis women to counter the effects of menopause.

It is therefore necessary to train, inform, negotiate. The reception of trans
associations is sometimes harsh, sometimes benevolent. Tensions arise because of
the central importance of these treatments for the survival of many trans people.
And then we wonder: will importing remain possible for a long time? Will the
bourgeoisie of neighboring countries be ready to impose embargoes to kill the
revolution? Or will it spread internationally, and shut down laboratories and
logistics routes?

We realize that we have to play on several fronts. Fortunately, the community has
historically learned, under duress, to take charge of its own health. A few
clandestine labs are already packaging HRT, better suited to the needs of trans
people and without requiring the approval of a doctor, which is always difficult
to obtain.

The challenge is to increase this production tenfold and transport it throughout
the country. It takes materials and manpower. So the associations organize
themselves, in an emergency, mainly through strong interpersonal ties, for lack
of suitable formal ties. No time to structure yourself, you have to act quickly
and efficiently; we'll deal with the details later.

France, October 2028. The revolution is finally victorious. The new organization
of society, on socialist bases, is solidified. A host of new questions, posed by
the real perspective of a world emerging from capitalism, are agitating society.

The same thing happens, on its own scale, in the trans movement. It emerged
strengthened from this complicated sequence: a structured organization was born
of national cooperation, and unites all the associations, on a democratic basis.
An operation that did not go smoothly, the logics of affinity causing concerns
about ego and the distribution of power, despite their usefulness in the fabric
of solidarity.

A long-term struggle
But now, what to do? Capitalism fell, but patriarchy did not die, and neither did
transphobia. The links created with the unions and with the new social security,
if they are not perfect, are a basis for work: there is a real opportunity to
develop the training of doctors on trans issues, to change prescription practices
, and launch the production of suitable treatments.

Hormone replacement therapy is essential to the health of many trans people.
Access to them must be considered a fundamental right.

Because clandestine laboratories have their limits, in terms of capacity and
quality control, or control of the chain. They are only able to carry out the
last stages of the process, and therefore depend on imported raw materials. And
on the other hand, the existence of these labs, as well as mutual aid and
community self-training, are valuable guarantees, ensuring the autonomy of trans
people in the event of a decline in their rights or in a situation of crisis.

A promising path: make the trans organization a real mass counter-power. An actor
able to weigh in society; a place of mutual aid and transmission of knowledge by
and for trans people; an international support force. A structure working as
equals with the pharmaceutical unions, to jointly define the needs and take
advantage of the industry's state-of-the-art equipment. And who also ensures that
knowledge is not lost and that fallback solutions are ready.

Even if we project ourselves on a world free of oppressions, such a model of
joint management makes sense, beyond trans issues: that doctors do not acquire
undue power because of elitist structures and the privatization of knowledge, but
that patients do not necessarily need to build up expertise in order to access
treatment.

Build now
France, May 2023. Back to the present and to reality.

There is always a tension at the heart of mutual aid and community health spaces:
on the one hand, these initiatives carry a revolutionary seed; on the other, they
are campaigning for their own disappearance. They are indeed places where
self-management and solidarity can live, but by necessity, to make up for the
shortcomings of the State.

Because the objective should be to be able to transition without having to become
an endocrinologist and a lawyer. Each step taken for the advancement of rights
therefore makes these spaces a little more obsolete. However, community knowledge
is a precious weapon, and not only in the event of a revolution, as the situation
in the United States unfortunately demonstrates.[1]

Here, the two legs of the "double task" oppose each other. It is up to the
revolutionaries to reconcile them via a long-term strategy. But we should not
wait for bright tomorrows to strengthen and unite our structures, at the risk
that the shaky tomorrows will arrive before them.

We have everything to gain by joining forces: a stronger weight in society, a
pooling of resources, more vital forces and therefore external actions beyond the
essential internal mutual aid.

Such a federation will not be easy to build, and will require reconciling
divergent opinions and political strategies, but the game is worth the effort.

Chloe (UCL Grenoble)

To validate

[1]In Missouri, trans patients have been without prescriptions since April 27,
due to a drastic law. Similar attacks are taking place all over the country.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Transidentite-La-sante-communautaire-est-elle-revolutionnaire
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