I am a trans woman. I am also a Communist. These are inextricably related.
The haute bourgeoisie, i.e., the billionaire class, the big finance capitalists, have lately taken a heel turn towards transphobia, racism, and general reaction. Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos are the face of this movement. The corporate powers which make up the flesh and blood of the U.S. empire, threatened by anti-trust breakups of their monopolies, have now (in a transparent effort to kiss Trump’s ass) begun to cast off the friendly DEI mask they used to wear. Transphobia is now specifically and explicitly allowed on Facebook and its subsidiary platforms.
State after state is striking down trans protections, banning our healthcare, banning our public existence, banning speech advocating on our behalf. It is a fervent frenzy of fascistic reaction against our existence. The reactionaries, largely from the privileged middle class, call us child predators for the crime of standing up to protect trans children. They cheer when trans kids are murdered. They intend to push us back into the margins of society, out of employment, out of our apartments, to rot on the streets. They intend to murder us through homelessness, prostitution, suicide, gay bashing, imprisonment, rape. We will call this what it is: a systematic targeted campaign of extermination. This is genocide. Trans liberation activists have been warning us of this for years.
When I chose to transition in November of 2023, I made that choice with the full conscious knowledge that this was on its way. In fact, I made that choice in part because I knew this was on the way. I have studied Marxist theory for my entire adult life, I’ve internalized its methods of dialectical and historical materialism, the methods of scientific socialism (the study of the development of human society). When I finally worked up the courage to admit to myself that I am a woman, I knew in that moment what this meant for me — transition meant discarding the privileges of the oppressor class and openly siding with the oppressed. I would no longer belong to the class of men and of cisgender people. I would be so much more vulnerable to the violence of society. I would experience hardship, suffering, perhaps death. I accept this eagerly. Trans children suffering under this regime need people like me to look up to and to advocate for them, and our history has shown us over and over that liberation only comes through struggle.
Many of us did not see this wave of transphobic reaction coming. It was unexpected and inexplicable, and so many of us are terrified. We’ve seen what they do to those who resist. We watched 15 months of live-streamed systematic industrial genocide against the Palestinians because they dared to stand up to oppression.
But Palestinians know the truth of resistance: it is the only path for the oppressed to reclaim their humanity. They chose the path of resistance because the only alternative is deliberate submission to slow extermination. I will not submit!
What did the liberal trans rights movement bring us? Was all that effort wasted? No, it brought us consciousness. More of us are now more conscious of the conditions of our oppression than ever. Trans people are no longer a tiny minority, we are now a distinctive class. We have consciousness. We have community. We can take action.
The age of liberalism is over. The era of “trans rights” is over. The days of “tolerance,” “inclusivity,” corporate “diversity” are gone. And of course this was going to happen! We’ve been hearing all our lives “the middle class is shrinking,” and what did we expect? That cispatriarchy, our oppressors, would allow themselves to be squeezed out of their privilege alongside us? Did we expect we could remain among their ranks so long as we swore obedience to the empire, followed all the rules, obeyed and submitted? That’s exactly what we did when we lived and died in the closet, and that was so much more comfortable for them. Of course they want us to go back. And more will follow. We are only among the first to be subject to their rollback of imperial privileges.
I refuse to go back! Moreover, I refuse to play by their rules any longer. I refuse to beg and scrape for “rights” ever again, I refuse to “debate” the merits of my existence, I refuse to allow their sense of entitlement to dictate the way I live my life and express my soul. I refuse to justify my body to their regime of death!
It is clearer than ever that we can never attain liberation by appealing to the morality of our oppressors. The moment their comfort is threatened they’re happy to feed us to the machine of destruction that guards their lifestyle. Our struggle lies only with those who resist this global order of death. Our enemy is not merely one or another particular individual, and our enemy is not overseas! Our enemy is the system that empowers bigotry, reaction, and oppression. The system that devours the environment and humanity to feed its mindless accumulative drive. Our enemy is the international system of imperialist finance capital, with its heart in New York City and what passes for its brain in Washington D.C. Our liberation can only be attained by its overthrow! Our friends are all those who stand against the imperialist system, our enemies are all those who stand with it.
If our friends don’t yet see us as their friends, it is because we have yet to build that relationship of mutual trust and support.
The people of Palestine have been fighting and dying for their liberation for a century, and today they stand closer than ever to attaining it. The whole might of the empire and its international vassal states rained down on them for 15 months and they stood and fought and won. And the imperialists tell us “they hate queers” as if they’ve ever had a chance to even think on the question. They hate those who murder them, and they love those who stand with them. They have no time to give a damn about your gender. If any of them believe we’re worthless it’s because we are, because we’ve stood and watched for a hundred years while their land has been stolen and their children murdered.
If you care about Queer people, you care about people all over the world who are oppressed by U.S. imperialism. Our failure to stand up for their interests has long allowed the left wing of capital to use mistreatment of our siblings overseas to justify regime change operations, sanctions pressure, and other hostile actions to violate national sovereignty. The right wing of capital has used this to claim that “gender ideology” is a tool of imperialism. This is how they divide and conquer us.
Put an end to it! Supporters of U.S. imperialism, american/canadian nationalism, NATO, zionism, and “israel” have no place in the Queer community! Participants in these institutions have no place with us, we stand for all human rights or we stand for none!
Today the heartland of the colonial system that began in Europe and which birthed the monstrosity of “israel” is the United States of America. The U.S. empire’s continuous ongoing genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this continent served as the blueprint not only for the establishment and expansion of “israel,” but for Hitler’s war of annihilation against Jews and the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Hitler’s rabid opposition to Communism in turn paved the way for the U.S. empire’s so-called “Cold War” against Communism, in which it butchered millions upon millions of Natives of Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, West Asia, the African continent, and everywhere else the human struggle for community, cooperation, and liberation — in a word, Communism — stood up against the inhumanity of Capital.
Did you know many of the Indigenous peoples of this land did not have gendered pronouns at all in their languages before colonization? They never had a reason to care. Colonists care because they want to enslave half of us to the other half to exploit us for our reproductive labor. It was colonists who imposed “gender ideology” on us, and it is those same colonists who today are tearing down our reproductive healthcare and our gender-affirming care. The end of capitalism requires the end of colonization.
Trans liberation requires Landback.
You know the 2028 election doesn’t hold anything positive in store for us. The Democrats don’t give a damn if we live or die, and if it gets them more money from their rich donors they’ll happily kill us themselves. The system is against us, so we must be against it!
The movement is growing: 2024 saw the establishment of the international All-Empire Worker’s League, which aims to build the conditions for international unity among all the oppressed, towards the forging of a revolutionary Party capable of going on the offensive to at last smash this system. The movement for liberation needs you just as urgently as you need it. Our biosphere is collapsing under the weight of the imperialist system. The people in this empire are beginning to rise up to meet this challenge, and standing at the vanguard of the movement are trans and other Queer people following the leadership of the nationally oppressed.
Every empire in history thought it would last forever, until it didn’t. We all feel the collapse of this empire in our bones.
It is with that that we must remember, they set the terms of this conflict: Transition or death!
We say in response: Communism will win!
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