WORLD WORLDWIDE AUSTRALIA News Journal Update - (en) Australia, MACG: The Anvil Vol 12 #4 - One struggle one fight - defeating transphobia (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Trans people are under attack in Australia and across the world. The

Christian right has pivoted in its war against LGBTIQ+ people and is
trying to import a US style trans panic into the Australian context.
---- The Christian right has been on the back foot in Australia since
2016's marriage equality plebiscite. When 61.6% of Australians voted to
support marriage equality the conservative right were forced to retreat.
The Liberal Party, a bastion of anti-queer and homophobic politics,
quickly tried to reinvent itself as the party that delivered marriage
equality. Anti-queer forces are now regrouping by pivoting to attacks on
trans people.

This pivot was well underway at the May 2022 Federal Election when Scott
Morrison selected the rabid transphobe Katherine Deves as the Liberal
candidate for Warringah. Deves lost in the seat she was contesting and
the Liberals failed to make progress in the outer suburban seats they
were targeting. The Liberals managed to use the election as a platform
to advance and promote transphobic politics, though, and anti-queer
forces resolved to redouble their efforts.

In March 2023, anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull - also known
as 'Posie Parker' - organised a rally in front of Victoria's parliament.
The absurdly titled Let Women Speak rally drew in a rogues' gallery of
Liberal party politicians, the Christian right, so-called "Radical
Feminists", and of course the neo-Nazis.

Across April and May, Victorian local governments, libraries, and
schools, quickly bowed to a coordinated campaign of threats from the
transphobic right. More than ten drag storytime and other LGBTIQ+ family
events were cancelled or moved online as Victoria Police pressured local
governments to cave in to far-right threats.

A coalition of right wing anti-LGBTIQ+ Christians, so-called Radical
Feminists, and assorted fascists and neo-Nazis are now cohering into an
anti-trans movement in Australia.

Origins of Transphobia

Transphobia, the oppression and marginalisation of trans people, is
useful forcapitalism. In capitalist society, the ruling class seeks to
maximise profit by minimising the cost of workers and by maximising the
amount of work each of us performs.

Capitalism needs workers, both today, tomorrow, and into the future.
This means that the working class has to be reproduced, homes need to
exist, children need to be raised. Capitalists need this 'social
reproduction' to occur at the minimum possible cost.

The solution for capitalism has been to reproduce a deeper and more
rigid gendered division of labour, with clear roles for 'men' and
'women'. The gender ideology favoured by capitalism casts the work of
social reproduction as 'women's work' (and unpaid of course).

The existence of non-conforming gender and sexual minorities threatens
this gender order. Capitalism has responded with all manner of
queerphobia and transphobia.

The fight for trans rights is a working class fight

In Australia and around the world, the state maintains the gender
structure of capitalism with laws that target and marginalise trans
people. The war against trans people increasingly takes the form of new
laws to target trans identity and reinforce the gender binary. The
resort to the state by anti-queer forces is, in large part, a response
to their slipping hold on public opinion.    Where family and social
pressure falters, organised violence has to step in.

People born a particular sex (or, in the case of intersex people, simply
assigned as male or female) are forced to continue on a predetermined
path of identity, expression, and behaviour, with any deviation from
this path heavily discouraged.

Trans people face marginalisation and exclusion in employment. A recent
study ("The Health and Well-Being of Transgender Australians: A National
Community Survey") shows that the current unemployment rate for
transgender people in Australia is 19%, compared to the average
unemployment rate of 3.7% across all of Australia.

Australia's public health system routinely fails to serve the needs of
trans people. Trans people who wish to physically transition are forced
to endure an increasingly expensive bureaucratic hellscape. Throughout
this process, trans people are often subject to ignorant doctors, and
moreover an apathetic healthcare system that harms trans people by
pathologising them.

Physical transition is, of course, not a necessary part of
transitioning, and gender dysphoria is not a prerequisite to identifying
as transgender. Each person's decision on this matter is entirely their
own. We must realise that the true work of a revolutionary is doing away
with the enforcement of a false gender binary and deconstructing gender
roles.

Transphobia on the 'Left'

The Left is not immune from transphobia. Elements of the left have
bought into the argument that the fight for trans rights is simply
'identity politics'. Some view trans activism as a self-absorbed
political "ideology" of an entitled cultural elite, despite the majority
of trans people suffering from severe economic disadvantage.  These
transphobes act as if we can separate the struggle for the rights of
trans people from the working class struggle.

Even worse are the 'TERFs'. These Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists
appropriate the language of feminism whilst attempting to enforce
debunked pseudo-science about 'inherent' sex-characteristics. These
so-called radical feminists now readily line up with their fellow
reactionaries, conservative Christians and neo-Nazis.

Anti-trans politics within the left harm our efforts to build
solidarity, and create convenient scapegoats for the ruling class.

One Struggle One Fight

The institutional, social, and    physical violence that trans people
face is not simply a matter for trans people only.  The fight against
transphobia is not something separate to the class struggle. Trans
rights are vital to the working class.

We say this for the following reasons. Firstly, transphobia supports the
capitalist system and is an obstacle in the way of overthrowing it.
Capitalism generates transphobia just as it generates gendered
oppression. Transphobia enables capitalism to pit one group of workers
against another.

Secondly, the overwhelming majority of trans people are working class.
In fact, working class trans people suffer more from the effects of
transphobia. Those few members of the ruling class who come out as trans
do not experience oppression and marginalisation in the same way as
members of the working class. Wealth will always shield ruling class
trans people from the worst effects of marginalisation and discrimination.

Thirdly, a united struggle by the working class can only take place if
people are mobilised on the basis of fighting all oppression and
exploitation. A working class movement that casts aside trans workers
can only be a weaker and more divided movement.

We stand in complete solidarity with trans people against the attacks
against them by the State and the far-right. However, we maintain that
trans liberation must be part of a broader revolutionary struggle.
Neither trans people - nor any other person - should aspire to be equals
in a world where people are dominated and exploited by bosses and
governments. The capitalist-state system, and the racism and sexism that
it engenders,    degrades the vast majority of those who participate in
it, and threatens the very survival of the planet. It must be overthrown
so that we can all be free.

Complete autonomy over our bodies, free universal healthcare, housing
for all, sexual freedom, and power concentrated in the hands of workers
rather than the ruling class. These all form part of our struggle for
the construction of a stateless, classless society, where we co-operate
to meet human needs, rather than enrich a tiny minority. The fight for
trans liberation must be part of this social revolution.

All workers must back the struggle for trans rights on the basis of
"Touch One, Touch All".

Cover photo: International Transgender Day of Visibility rally,
Melbourne, 2023, photo by Chris Hopkins (The Age).

https://melbacg.au/one-struggle-one-fight-defeating-transphobia/
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