Identity and class: the road to transgender liberation
By: Evelyn M.
Tags: Intersex, Socialism, Transgender, Liberation, Sociology

Introduction

This is a rough essay outlining theory regarding trans, intersex, non-binary and gender-nonconforming liberation. Although this essay is complete itself, it is intended to be a road map for a much larger work on the topic, and this should be kept in mind while reading it.

Identity and class

Class defined

Class is — as Marx defined it — a fusion of 2 aspects. The first of these aspects is the concrete relations of production that a group manifest themselves within. This is to say, the group has a set of objective interests that stem from their relationship to the organization of property in society.

The second aspect of this dialectical unity is the subjective interests and political organization of the class. To quote Marx:

“Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class.”

Subsequently for a group to form a class it must have an identity of its own interests, a collective recognition of its subjective interests alongside a separate culture from other classes, and it must be in hostile opposition to other classes. To further quote Lenin:

“From the standpoint of Marxism the class, so long as it renounces the idea of hegemony or fails to appreciate it, is not a class, or not yet a class, but a guild, or the sum total of various guilds”

The objective interests give rise to the subjective interests, and through the interaction of objective and subjective, political organization emerges in the subjective to manifest the class’s interests.

Before class consciousness is achieved, this organization may manifest itself in simpler forms. It may manifest in the form of trade unionism among workers, support for a labor party, and protests to reform the system.

However, as class struggle develops and becomes more militant, it eventually manifests in the form of a proletariat party who leads a revolution against the bourgeoisie.

Identity defined

Every aspect, however, has an opposite, and every opposite impacts upon and shapes its other half. Furthermore, opposites, through impacting one another, transform into each other. The ruled class become the ruling class, etc. Opposites additionally exist in a unity. They define each other and without the aspects of one, aspects in the other would lack definition.

Class is a unity of subjective and objective interests, but class too has an opposite that it is in a unity with. This opposite is identity.

Like class, identity is a unity of the subjective and objective. With class, the objective plays the defining role, this is to say, it is divisions in the objective that define the subjective. With identity, we see the opposite pattern. The subjective aspect — although it comes from objective conditions — is what defines the division. This division is then reflected in the objective conditions.

In other words, the economic base gives rise to separate identities within the superstructure, and then the superstructure acts back upon the base to give those identities an economic character in addition to its already existing superstructural character.

Coming about through the reverse of the dialectic that gives rise to class results in identity struggles precisely being the opposite of class, in the same way, the base is the opposite of the superstructure.

The transformation of identity struggles into class and vice versa

As opposites, class and identity define and impact upon each other. Firstly, the evolution of class, class struggle and class hegemony leads to the creation of new identities.

The first obvious instance of this is the struggle of the bourgeoisie in amongst themselves resulting in the establishment of nations and national identities. Using the objective distinctions between groups such as differences in language, the bourgeoisie carved out separate zones to limit market competition, to ensure their hegemony over a certain sect of the bourgeoisie without having to struggle with other, potentially more developed, bourgeoisie.

The second obvious instance is the creation of the colonized and colonizer identities. As capitalism and class hegemony evolved, the capitalist system eventually grew to need to expand outside of its national borders. This expansion required the conquest of foreign lands, and the settling of them. Then from this conquest came a need to justify it, alongside a need to justify the violent treatment and exploitation of the natives. We thus got race and racism, colonizer and colonized, as new identities. To quote Frantz Fanon:

“Looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides this world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. In the colonies, the infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect. You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why a Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue. It is not just the concept of precapitalist society, so effectively studied by Marx, which needs to be reexamined here. The serf is essentially different from the knight, but a reference to divine rights is needed to justify this different status. In the colonies, the foreigner imposed himself using cannons and machines. Despite the success of his pacification, in spite of his appropriation, the colonist always remains a foreigner. It is not the factories, the estates, or the bank accounts which primarily characterize the “ruling class”. The ruling species is first and foremost the outsider from elsewhere, different from the indigenous population, ‘the others’.”

These identities then acted back upon how property and goods were organized and distributed. In the case of nations, it meant property and markets being restricted to the bounds of a nation, alongside oppressed national identities being deprived of such property and self-determination. In the case of the colonized and the colonizer, it took the form of property being reorganized along the lines of race as well as class, as Fanon said, “You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich”.

The indigenous population lacks control over the means of production they work, whereas the foreigner has such control. There may be an indigenous national bourgeoisie, but ultimately such a bourgeoisie is submissive to the foreigner and does their bidding, making them nothing more than a puppet. The colonized-colonizer distinction may be in the superstructure, but the material division that is reflected from it is very noticeable.

This then impacts back upon class. As the objective organization of property is changed by the influence of identities, and as these superstructural divisions equally imply a change in the superstructural aspects of class, old classes whither away, and new ones are born. The colonizing proletariat is no longer proletariat, they no longer hold proletariat subjective interests, nor do they necessarily hold proletariat objective interests. They now hold subjective interests in line with the colonial bourgeoisie, while holding objective interests that are somewhat in line with theirs (their interest in maintaining colonialism) while also somewhat opposed to theirs (their interest in ending their exploitation by the colonial bourgeoisie such that they can have the spoils of colonialism all to themselves).

This places the working colonizer in a unique position, they are a class of their own with their own objective and subjective interests, while being in an alliance with the colonial bourgeoisie against the colonized subject. They themselves are not the ruling class, but they are a ruling class, a class above the indigenous population that must be overthrown to achieve liberation for the indigenous.

The indigenous on the other hand form a new class, a class of the colonized with an interest in overthrowing the colonial system. However, the inner workings of the colonial context — which was expertly analyzed by Fanon — is not the primary focus of this analysis.

Rather, the primary focus of this analysis is on transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and intersex people. Our struggles have often been neglected, and our position in history has often been ignored; an error that must be corrected immediately.

Gender and class

Our basic realities

Let us proceed from the realities we face. We face housing discrimination, employment discrimination, pay discrimination, public and workplace harassment (which reduces our ability to work and subsequently increases our chances of being fired), healthcare discrimination and many of us lack access to the healthcare we need in the first place.

Transgender, gender non conforming and non-binary people are often misgendered, have the wrong pronouns used, are harassed when trying to use the bathroom, have their gender policed by others, and subsequently, our psychological states often demonstrate elevated levels of stress and paranoia. This often leads to suicide and self-harm among trans and non-binary people.

On our official documents, it is often necessary to have a gender marker. Many of us find it impossible to have this changed, and if it is this itself can have damaging consequences for nonbinary people as it can become impossible to find an accepting job.

We additionally face police brutality and sexual assault at elevated rates, creating a constant state of fear and terror that we live under. For many, the constant harassment and mistreatment leads to us being shut-ins. It leads to us never leaving the house to avoid discriminatory experiences.

As children, many of us face abuse, unacceptance, physical and sexual violence, neglect, and attempts to force us to behave as though we were a cishet gender-conforming child. In school we often face bullying and harassment, leading to difficulty getting through education.

Intersex people, in addition to facing much of this, have additional barriers to medical treatments, as well as many being abandoned as babies, or having their life taken from a young age. Intersex people often also face mutilation and a lack of bodily autonomy.

These are the basic economic and superstructural conditions transgender, intersex, gender non conforming, and non-binary people face. We live under a reign of terror by cis people.

Where these realities come from

These realities are a result of three factors, not having autonomy over our means of existence, the structures of cis domination, and not having autonomy over ourselves.

The first is obvious. We do not control the means of our employment, nor do we control our pay, nor do we control our healthcare, or our housing, etc etc etc. Instead, these things are all controlled by cis people, which leads us to be in a position of lacking self-determination. The divide is firstly in the superstructure, but its secondly reflected in the base of who owns what, and this creates different economic conditions for us from cis people.

It is true however that some transgender bourgeoisie exist. However, to get business deals, loans, sales, and all else that’s needed to maintain and expand production, they must assimilate into the cis system as much as possible, lest they be isolated and ousted from the rest of the bourgeoisie class. Subsequently, they take on assimilationist, exclusionist ideologies such as TERFism and trans medicalism, they gatekeep who can and can’t be a “real woman” or a “real man” and they are especially exclusionary to non-binary people. Even non-binary bourgeoisie ultimately end up with such exclusionary views.

The result is that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex bourgeoisie ultimately are the puppets of cis bourgeoisie, and they serve the cis bourgeoisie by acting in all the same ways as they do. Just as the colonial bourgeoisie is not an ally to the colonized, the transgender bourgeoisie is generally not an ally to the transgender struggle for liberation.

In addition to lacking economic control over the means of our existence, we are oppressed by the cis structures of domination. Everything that is established in society is ruled by cis people and cis ideology, be it the state, political parties, companies, or other organizations. The reason for this is two-fold: Firstly, for a trans person to be admitted into a structure they must be accepted by the cis people already within it, and secondly because all established policies, laws, regulations, ways of management, etc are formed out of cis ideology.

As for the first aspect, this is enforced through a variety of means. Whether it is requiring to be voted in by cis people, requiring to be bureaucratically chosen by cis people, or being surrounded by cis people who are abusive and will attempt to force non-cis people out of the body. All of these means ensure that cis people remain on top, while non-cis people are pushed down. In order for a trans person to be accepted into a cis body, they must accept assimilationist ideology. Either this will be a requirement for becoming a member of the body in the first place, or they will be harassed until they eventually adopt such ideology.

The non-cis people who are in such organizations having such assimilationist ideology means that they effectively end up reproducing the cis system, despite themselves being rejected by such a system. This leads to them then also only accepting those with assimilationist ideologies into the organization. This applies to parties, the state apparatus, companies, etc. The already empowered position of cis people maintains their power over the non-cis.

As for the second aspect, this is manifested particularly noticeably in the state. The judiciary, laws, and the functioning of the legislature are designed from the ground up to be fundamentally cis in nature. Reforms to these can only bring short term gains, and the reason for this is two-fold: Firstly, any reform can be reversed by the next cis executive, secondly, any reform that happens will be happening within the context of the greater cis legal system, it will have to conform to laws, language, and the whims of a judiciary that are all fundamentally ideologically cis.

The combination of cis systems of domination with cis people controlling the means to our existence results in the third aspect: We lose autonomy over ourselves, cis people become our masters. Cis people control what laws are in place over us, cis people control if we have a job, cis people resist our gender expression and presentation, cis people control our access to things such as HRT, etc etc etc. Both economically and superstructurally, our autonomy over ourselves is non-existent.

There is but one solution to this, the revolutionary overthrow of the cis system, both economically and superstructurally. This should not be confused with separatism. We do not want to be separate and segregated from cis people in an apartheid-like system. We want control over the political and economic institutions we need for self-determination as opposed to cis people controlling them, such that we can achieve liberation.

Understanding our liberation

The cis-trans distinction, gender conformity, the gender binary and the bourgeoisie concept of biological sex are all in the superstructure, and thus far we have discussed how this superstructure acts back upon the economic base and how this must evolve to liberate us. However, to fully understand the road to our liberation, we must also understand the contradictions that give rise to this superstructure. These conditions are the property relations within the family alongside the gendered division of labor.

Men benefit from the exploited labor of women, and men equally benefit from inheritance. To maintain the lines of inheritance and the exploitation of women’s labor, certain conditions must be met. Firstly, sex must be considered in gendered terms, rather than as just an arbitrary collection of characteristics. Secondly, gender must be binary, it must be a divide between the empowered and the disempowered, the exploiter and the exploited. Thirdly, gender must be assigned in accordance with sex. Fourthly, gender roles must be in place that both genders are expected to follow. Fifthly, men must be the head of the family. These conditions together solidify the lines of inheritance and ensure the exploitation of women.

Cisgender heterosexual men who are gender-conforming have an interest in preserving this system, and subsequently, all challenges to it are perceived as a threat to men’s interests. This is to say, gender non-conformity, fluidity, transgender people, intersex people, and non-binary people, are considered a threat to this system of exploitation. Additionally, non-conforming forms of sexuality are considered a threat, such as lesbianism, bisexuality, and asexuality. Subsequently, these groups are suppressed as much as possible in all spheres by which men have majority power, be it via the state, violence by men themselves, or via the police force.

But it is precisely these conditions that create the basis for groups outside of them to exist. In creating a gender binary, cishets have created the potential for people to exist outside of the accepted genders, thus creating non-binary people as a group and thus creating the oppression of non-binary people. In creating gender roles, they have also created roles to avoid conforming too, in a way facilitating the conditions for gender non conforming people to exist. In assigning gender at birth, they have created cis and transgender people, in having a binary gendered conception of sex, they have created the category of intersex people, etc etc etc.

The goal of our liberation is subsequently to abolish these structures that define our oppression and define our oppressor vs us. Its to abolish the distinction between cis and trans, to abolish the distinction between intersex and binary sex, to abolish the distinction between binary and non-binary, etc.

Something that must be additionally understood is that — as these divides come from the organization of property, and as they then impact back upon property to ensure that it remains in the hands of our oppressor, we do in a way form a class, the highest expression of which will be a political party. We have the common objective and subjective interests required to be a class, or to be part of a class, and this class is ultimately one for revolution and socialism.

Other identity groups, such as the colonized, equally manifest themselves as having both objective and subjective interests in socialism. For this reason, it is necessary to ally with them to realize our shared interests in socialist revolution. It is also necessary to recognize the contradictions of colonialism, ableism, etc within our own movement, and this means ultimately putting colonized and neuro and physio divergent LGBTQIA-GNC people at the forefront of our actions and leadership.