Marxism and Social Reproduction II: Transmisogyny and Social Reproduction

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Criticism is the lifeblood of the movement. A prior article released in August of last year, “Marxism and Social Reproduction,” received some pointed criticism that, although it was never submitted to Unity–Struggle–Unity, the Red Clarion, or to the author, should be addressed by expansion and clarification of the initial thesis. The criticisms, not all in good faith, appear to approach two general points: 1) the article doesn’t make any mention of transmisogyny and acts as a kind of epistemic erasure of the theorists who have been working on social reproduction theory, and 2) the article has been read as being overly concerned with analytical categories to the point of being adjacent to eugenics or phrenology.

This is an attempt to broaden and deepen the theory involved by addressing these issues. First and foremost, the boundaries between types of labor-appropriation that are set out in the initial article are maintained and enforced by an identifiable, single, social force: transmisogyny. Where boundaries between cis men and women are concerned, misogyny is merely the attenuated form of this social policing. It is necessary to elaborate the ramifications of the fundamental social force that supports and enforces the gendered division of labor (which is the material basis of the social force itself) and creates the sex-division in society.

Transmisogyny As Foundational

The objective basis for the division of human beings into categories of sex is neither found in the field of medicine or psychology but is, rather, the result of labor expropriation. In fact, this labor expropriation appears to be the foundation of class society itself. So that some could benefit from the labor of others, early human societies established the social order of sex, or rather, the expropriators founded this division. Those that society sexed as “women” became the subject of labor expropriation by those sexed as “men.” All other “markers” of sex serve merely as justifications for this fundamental fact of basic material oppression.

In order to maintain that machinery, human society (now firmly in the control of its triumphant and self-created patriarchs) developed social tools and technologies needed to police the system of patriarchy. The need for clear lines dividing those who are subject to expropriation and those who benefit from it necessitated the formation of a social police force to uphold the boundaries of maleness and defend the patriarchal expropriators from encroachment. We might just as well replace the terms “man” and “woman” here with “domestic oppressor” and “domestically oppressed.” The boundaries being policed are first, between cis heterosexual men and gay men; then, between cis men and trans men; lastly, that boundary between cis women and trans women. “Am I allowed to exploit you without social consequence?” is the question that this social regime seeks to provide an easy answer to.

Misogyny is the way in which those who are performing the social process of sexing others – those who are, in other words, trying to sort individuals into the categories of “those I am permitted to exploit” and “those I am not socially permitted to exploit” – enforce the boundaries of those categories. Women are forcibly classed (sexed) into the category of domestically oppressed and as a result are subject to labor expropriation. The most intense and most basic form of this regime is transmisogyny.

Transmisogyny is the combination of misogyny and transphobia; transphobia being the way that those found to be in violation of the arbitrary and inconsistent standards that society judges one be “man” or “woman” are coerced into conforming to the standards of those categories or otherwise punished for such transgressions. The violent disgust performed by the transmisogynist serves to police each of those barriers, at the same time forcing the subject into a subaltern position vis-a-vis cis individuals and forcing that subject into the exploited sex-relation between exploited and exploiter; in essence, shunting all women into the role of domestically exploited.

The Economic Woman

Thus, we must not only corral our analysis in narrow categories, but rather remain alert that these categories are representations of complex inter-relations. The categories put forward in “Marxism and Social Reproduction” are the combination of two axes (man/woman, legitimized/suppressed) into four broad groups:

1. Legitimized men: cisnormative heterosexual men;
2. Legitimized women: cisnormative heterosexual women;
3. Suppressed men: trans men, “effeminate” men, men who are not strictly perceived as heterosexual or who are in actuality not strictly heterosexual;
4. Suppressed women: trans women, women who fall outside the cisnormative or heterosexual categories or who are excluded from white settler-colonial womanhood.

Here again we can replace the above “men” and “women” with domestic labor expropriator and domestically expropriated. As stated in the prior article, this system of categorization is based on the action of being socially sexed; it is the act of sexing that places someone into one of the categories. The manner in which they are sexed depends on the perceptions of the person doing the categorizing and what they “observe” or read into the behavior, appearance, etc., of the person subjected to sexing.

Because sex orders class, we can apply this analytical structure as a shorthand across the class boundaries to understand gradations within each class. That is to say, the only “real” economic woman – the group most subject to the oppressive structures of the social order – are proletarian women who fall into the fourth category of the suppressed woman. By working to liberate the suppressed woman, we challenge and attack the entire structure.

Forms of Liberation

How can we work toward the liberation of the suppressed woman? We must work toward the organization of women-as-women and bring about the subjective awareness of legitimized women and suppressed women who belong to the non-proletarian classes of the necessity of allying with and supporting their suppressed proletarian sisters. In order to bring this about, however, we do not begin among the legitimized women, but rather through the organization of suppressed women in the proletarian class while at the same time uniting the proletarian organizations of workers with the organizations of suppressed women. 

That is to say: we must organize the proletarian women, and in particular the trans proletarian women, as women first. From this base, we must then elevate the subjective awareness of non-proletarian women that they must join with their sisters; that they must annihilate their class to embrace their gender and work toward liberation. This truth must be laid bare: that one may retain the privileges of class or may liberate oneself from the oppressive structures of gender, but one cannot do both. At the same time, proletarian organizations of workers must be joined to this fight, understanding that the battle for total liberation has many fronts. Organizing where the contradiction is sharpest gets to the root of the problem.

Of course, more concrete analysis is needed. This is merely the outline of the problem and does not represent the myriad ways in which it may manifest; nor does this represent a timeless understanding of historical events, but rather is grounded in the ways in which gender and gendered oppression operate today. It is always possible that they will be different tomorrow, just as they were yesterday, on the historic scale.

This means that we should be forming trans defense organizations. They should begin among the suppressed women: combat brigades, medical networks, transportation, and alternatives to appealing to the bourgeois police must be established in all localities. These organizations can then ally with and incorporate suppressed men, maneuvering the economic/material man/woman contradiction into a non-antagonistic position while strengthening solidarity along the lines of the suppressed/legitimized contradiction. Finally, these organizations can and should become integrated, armed, wings of class-organizations struggling for total liberation.

None of this should be pursued in a mechanistic fashion or according to a formula; each locality will have to navigate the order of operations and the actual conditions and each organization will have to determine when and how to integrate, progress, and advance its local struggle. At some point in the near future, all local struggles will then need to fuse to an all-empire struggle.

From the point of view of legitimized-sex Communists, they must make all efforts to bring their struggles in line with the struggles of their suppressed-sex siblings. This means ensuring that their organizations have strong backstops against chauvinism: functioning self-and-community criticism is, of course, the foundation stone in this area, but is insufficient in and of itself. Dedication to suppressed-sex causes and physically putting themselves on the line for their suppressed-sex comrades – between them and the state as well as between them and “red” chauvinists – will go a long way toward bringing the movement into line.