29.08.2024

Number of radical youth who identify as trans has markedly grown

Solidarity, not sectionalism

While communists want to abolish existing gender hierarchies, it does not follow that we should want to abolish gender as such. Mike Macnair responds to proposals for a communist programme on trans liberation

This article is a response to the exchange of letters in the Weekly Worker between Brunhilde O and Jack Conrad on the alleged absence of ideas for trans liberation in the Communist Party of Great Britain’s current Draft Programme (July 25, August 1, August 22). Since they are also immediately pertinent to this issue, I also respond to Roxy Hall’s Ten theses on the gender question - revisited, which has been published in June 2024 by The Partyist website, since The Partyist has made the issue of trans rights a point of difference with the CPGB; and to the Marxist Unity Group’s February 2023 Statement on trans liberation.¹

I select these pieces for response because both The Partyist and the MUG are in some respects politically close to CPGB, as is the Revolutionary Communist Organisation (Australia), of which comrade Brunhilde O is a member - in particular, around partyism and the centrality of programme. There is utility in polemicising with people whose views are far-distant from your own (including the right). And there has been an enormous mass of leftist literature on the ‘trans question’ over the last 30 years, which contains at least useful discussions of theory and historical information, even though usually framed by the Eurocommunist anti-class and anti-materialist premises of the dominant left discourse. But there is some particular benefit to a discussion where there is substantial common ground on general politics.

Here the common ground, as I understand it, is that we agree on the need for a Communist Party - grounded not on agreement to some body of theory, but on a short, summary political programme. Secondly, we agree that the nature of the programme needed is maximum-minimum: that is, that it contains both an outline account of the goal of communism as a classless, stateless society and a body of immediate demands that are the minimum conditions on which the party would be prepared to enter government.

Thirdly, the central core of the minimum programme is democratic-republican in character; the economic and/or ‘social’ demands of the minimum programme are more adapted to local circumstances, but are generally aimed at strengthening the position of the working class as a class in a society that remains either capitalist or a ‘mixed economy’ under workers’ political rule.²

In this context the issue is, first, what material on the trans liberation issue should be incorporated into the party’s maximum or minimum programme? And, second, beyond that, should we be adopting a set of theses or a statement on the issue, as we have done on a number of issues where we think it appropriate to adopt formal positions, but not to incorporate them in the party programme?³

The several texts I propose to discuss in this article have this character. Comrade Brunhilda O’s first letter put to us the relevant immediate demands contained in the RCO’s Road to workers’ power draft programme. Roxy Hall’s Ten theses is largely a theoretical text, but certainly carries implications for programme (at least for the maximum programme). The MUG statement is precisely a public statement about the distinct issue. I will discuss each in turn, rather than attempting a thematic approach that might weave them together.

As I said in my series on trans rights issues last year,⁴ this article is my personal view, not a CPGB formal position. And it is to a considerable degree tentative. It tries to draw issues out of the articles studied: not, yet, to formulate a clear, positive line.

Theses?

I should begin by saying that, first, I do not think a major amendment to the CPGB Draft programme is appropriate. The reason for this will largely appear in my discussion of the RCO text that comrade Brunhilde O put to us. There is a real danger of over-specificity, and this is not just a matter of too much text, but of constructing the programme as a sort of intersectional coalition agreement based on the cumulation of the specific demands of specific groups. This latter approach is anti-solidaristic: not just in relation to trans, but equally in relation to women, racial minorities, and so on.

But, second, there is a significant case for us to try to draft theses or a public statement on the topic. The context for these views is, in essence, that down to 2017 trans rights was a pretty much acceptable liberal cause, with three positive US TV portrayals in 2015-16 (most notably I am Cait on the Republican former sporting figure, Caitlyn Jenner).⁵ In 2017 Conservative prime minister Theresa May proposed the reforms to gender recognition legislation that later became controversial.⁶

In the late 20-teens, however, US conservatives’ recent defeats on race and sexuality led them to cast around for a new topic for a culture-war political wedge, and they hit on the issue of trans as a threat to women and to ‘family life’: whether in the form of trans women as ‘actually men’ in relation to sports and to single-sex facilities, or in that of gender-affirming medical treatment, especially of teenagers, as destroying fertility and leading to regrets.⁷ As a result, ‘gender-critical feminists’, or, to their opponents, ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ (terfs) suddenly obtained a mass-media platform that they had not previously had. The Murdoch press has been a major promoter of this culture-war operation in the UK.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, there has been a marked increase in trans identification among radical youth. A 2023 UK study found a general rise in trans identification between 2000 and 2018, “from about one in 15,000 in 2000, to just over one in 2,500 in 2018”, with the largest increase among those between 16 and 29.⁸ In the USA, a 2022 study finds significantly higher proportions of teenagers identifying as trans in recent years.⁹ Quinnehtukqut McLamore argued plausibly in January 2023 that this development was primarily a result of the removal of prior obstacles to trans identification, leading to understatement of numbers at the earlier period.¹⁰

The absolute numbers remain very small; but there is overrepresentation among radical youth. The explanation for this is probably that the late-20 teens turn to conservative culture-war operations round the issue has produced more general radicalisation among trans youth, in response to being targeted. But there certainly exist, and have existed since the 1990s, left trans rights activists who argue that gender transition is in itself an act of resistance against the capitalist patriarchy regime. This is a mistaken idea, like 1970s arguments that homosexuality was in itself an act of resistance, or the arguments of Pat Califia in the 1981 book Samois that BDSM activity could be in itself an act of resistance.

Our reluctance in the CPGB to taking formal positions on the issue came about at an earlier stage of this story: in the first two decades of the century, when the politics was not on a mass scale, and ‘terf wars’ appeared as a pure piece of ‘intersectional’ sectarianism among small groups of radicals, like ‘cultural appropriation’ and other forms of sub-western-soft-Maoist ‘trashing’ operations.

I think that the more recent developments, taking the issues into mass politics, mean that we do have to try to formulate positions. In fact, I had hoped that comrades who disagreed would respond critically to my 2023 discussion series on trans rights issues, which might have progressed the discussion towards definite positions.

Instead, one comrade chose to split from us, insisting on no-platforming as a principle - and this demand for no-platforming remains a substantive issue of difference with The Partyist, who assert in their Founding statement that “The [Weekly Worker’s] editorial apathy towards allowance of transphobia and queerphobia in the journal is not only condemnable, but thoroughly brings it into disrepute”.¹¹ I am not in this article going to defend the CPGB’s position on the no-platforming issue. If it is not obvious to comrades by now that no-platforming ‘terf hate speech’ politically aids the imperialist state’s (far more effective) efforts to no-platform anti-Zionists for ‘anti-Semitic hate speech’, it is unlikely that any polemic now will help.

RCO

Comrade Brunhilde O quotes trans-relevant demands from The road to workers’ power, in section 3.8.8. ‘Sexual and gender freedom’:

Full provision of healthcare for trans people, paid by the state. For community control over gender clinics, easy provision of hormones and access to medical support and advice. Expansion of youth gender clinics.

For state protection of intersex individuals, and a prohibition on unnecessary ‘corrective’ surgeries on intersex children.

State funding for fertility treatment. Full rights to adoption for queer families.

Against any attempt to criminalise sex workers. For the self-organisation of sex workers to improve their conditions. Sex workers should have access to specialised healthcare and other services to reduce the hazards of their work.

Abolition of legal recognition of gender with regard to government documentation. The right to change name or identity to be made simple.

I should begin by observing that comrade Brunhilde in her second letter objects to Jack Conrad, in his letter, connecting trans rights to sexual freedom: “trans rights are not ‘sexual freedom’: they are an entirely separate issue”. But the RCO itself makes the connection, in the section where it places the trans-relevant demands.

And it is impossible not to make the connection. First, because gender itself as a social practice is - however indirectly - connected with heterosexual conduct. Second, the right wing’s culture-war operation is about trans women as a supposed sexual threat to cis women and about trans men (and less so, trans women) as tragically losing their fertility (and hence their parents’ chances of grandchildren). Hence, to treat the right to transition as an entirely separate issue, while leaving standing the general public regulation of sexuality and reproduction, will inevitably fail to win mass support.

Turning to the specific demands, the first bullet point on health services largely duplicates what is already in section 3.8.2, ‘Healthcare and social care’, and in the CPGB’s Draft programme in 3.9, ‘Health’. Some differences arise from the fact that the NHS remains (so far) a tax-funded public health system, while the Australian system is a public-private, compulsory insurance-based system.

The major difference is “easy provision of hormones”. The problem with this formulation is that it sounds like “easy provision of antibiotics” (overprescription of antibiotics is a notorious problem). The problem the formulation attempts to address is doctors using their authority as gatekeepers against trans people for religious or political reasons.

There is a problem of method here, which arises also in bullet point 3 (fertility treatment and adoption rights). In bullet point 3, the existing law allows fertility treatment, and adoption, by queer families, both in the UK and Australia. The practical problem, as with access to hormones, is that doctors and social workers are both prone to use their gatekeeping authority to promote christianist and conservative agendas - as are police officers and lawyers. The practice applies not only against trans people (and lesbians and gay men) but also against women (whether ‘cis’ or trans) and against racialised minorities. The slogan of “easy provision of hormones” attempts to address the specific problem of conservative abuse of power by professionals against trans people, while leaving standing the general problem of conservative abuse of power by professionals.

The second bullet point is a strong one after the comma: “a prohibition on unnecessary ‘corrective’ surgeries on intersex children”. But what does “state protection of intersex individuals” mean? It appears on its face to be a demand for increased state repression of some sort, going beyond the second point. Communists do not in general place trust in the capitalist state to police backward ideas among the population. The fourth bullet point, on sex work, is substantially the same as the CPGB’s Draft programme, except it omits the point that “Measures must be put in place to give prostitutes wider social opportunities”. This addresses the fact that a great deal of sex work is a matter of economic necessity rather than free choice.

The fifth bullet point is excellent as to its first sentence: “Abolition of legal recognition of gender with regard to government documentation”. Far better than “gender recognition” legislation. The second sentence, though relevant in Australia, which has variant name-change rules affecting the Federal government and the states, is irrelevant in the UK, where legal name can be changed easily under existing law.

Hall

Roxy Hall’s Ten theses is a summary version of a complex theoretical argument about the gender issue. The first thesis - “Neither sex-essentialism nor gender-identitarianism offers a constructive path for a revolutionary account of gender” - is certainly correct, and the argument offered in support of it is broadly sound. I would offer only the minor point that the ‘sex-essentialist’ standpoint is not only concerned with “the social category of woman”, but also with the social category of man.

Thesis 2 asserts - also correctly - that “the question of gender is ultimately that of a social division of labour”. The argument in support is, however, much more problematic. To begin with,

With the emergence of the familial mode of social organisation, and thus patriarchy, reproduction and production are systematically disconnected, with this connection reaching its apex in capitalist societies. This produces interrelated but separate modes of production, and modes of reproduction.

This formula identifies a “familial mode of social organisation” that is undefined. It then projects back onto this “familial mode” phenomena specific to capitalism: that is, the separation of production and reproduction: the large bulk of production in ancient and feudal society is sited in the family household. It should, I guess, also be flagged that capitalist production, except insofar as it produces a social surplus product, is also reproduction.¹²

The text goes on to point out, correctly, the existence of a variety of ‘third gender’ positions in pre-capitalist societies. Missing are the episodically documented cases of biological women who lived as men and vice versa outside these ‘third gender’ frames, and on a larger scale, forms of ritual gender inversion in public festivals. But then it goes on to a most peculiar claim about the division of labour:

The forms of labour ascribed to each gender in contemporary capitalist societies are well documented (men dig, women weave, men build, women clean, men philosophise, women admire), but the core of the problem is not simply a division - it is a hierarchy. The labour of women is systematically undervalued and marginalised, reflecting its position as part of the secondary, ‘domestic’ sphere that is removed from public life.

This projects onto “contemporary capitalist societies” an ancient Athenian (upper class) sexual division of labour, and possibly the image of the suburban family of Victorian England or the 1950s USA, perhaps as theorised by Eli Zaretsky’s 1976 Capitalism, the family and personal life; comrade Hall also relies on Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 The second sex, which starts from the analogous conditions of mid-20th century France. It is wildly disconnected to today’s world of a heavily feminised workforce, with men having a higher unemployment rate.¹³

At the same time, it omits the fundamental basis of labour-market discrimination against women: that is, pregnancy and childcare. It is peculiar to analyse gender in terms of a division of labour (correct) in which women’s labour is downvalued (correct) and yet leave out the biological-social aspect that is central to this construct. There is a real risk that taking this approach gives hostages to fortune to the ‘gender-critical feminists’.

Moreover, is gender in itself hierarchy? I have referred before now to the argument of Camilla Power and Ian Watts that gender as distinct from biological sex begins with ritual gender inversion in hunter-gatherer society.¹⁴ Hunter-gatherer societies are the nearest approach known to a non-hierarchical or anti-hierarchical social order, and the ritual gender inversion they discuss is itself anti-hierarchical. Communists should, certainly, want to abolish gender hierarchies, but it is not clear that we should want to abolish gender play in this sense.

Thesis 3 is: “Gender is more than just identity, but identity plays a central role in its construction.” This formula is question-begging about what is “identity”, and this remains true in the argumentation, which deploys elements of Freudian psychoanalysis (“ego-ideal”) and of Althusser (“ideological interpellation”). I am not persuaded that this is operatively useful. The argument ends with the proposition that “ultimately people live as gendered agents, being gendered by society and their peers, and their condition is internalised through that process. We are all in the process of becoming gendered through our lives …” That is to say, that gender is an aspect of social relations, which have to be analysed in their contradictory and hence dynamic aspects; and neither Freud, who makes claims about deep transhistorical human psychological structures on the basis of limited and questionable late 19th-early 20th century evidence, nor Althusser, whose foundational arguments are against a dynamic understanding (synchrony overdetermines diachrony) can provide method for this approach.

Thesis 4 is: “It is not possible to define gender in unitary terms, because it has no singular point of origin.” The argument offered is that gender is an abstraction, like ‘chair’ as a general class. This is true, but adds nothing to the argument (all theorisation involves abstraction).

Thesis 5 is that “The cult of ‘biological sex’ is itself a manifestation of gender ideology.” This is a half-truth and unhelpful. On the one hand, the conservative and ‘gender-critical feminist’ insistence that gender begins and ends with biological sex is obviously fatuous. In the case of la plume de ma tante (‘my aunt’s pen’), my aunt might be biologically female, but her pen has no more than an ascribed gender. From a different angle, in Olive v Ingram (1739) the question was whether a woman could be elected parish sexton, and whether women could vote in the election. Kettleby, the barrister for the defendant (the woman who claimed to have been elected) began his argument with the statement: “Though women are not allowed to wear breeches, it is to be hoped that their petticoats shall not be taken from them.”¹⁵ The gender rules about what men and women could do and wear stated in this argument are now wholly obsolete - with the exception that men wearing dresses remains dodgy to official society.

On the other hand, comrade Hall claims:

… in the relationship between sex and gender (the sex-gender dyad) it is gender that overdetermines sex. For sex (meaning the sexed body) is regularly intervened in in order to maintain a gendered world. Intersex conditions are ‘treated’ and the children that have them are ‘restored to normal’. Women around the world shave their legs and armpits, remove facial hair, and otherwise practice merciless beauty standards on themselves and others in order to perform to a standard of femininity necessary to be treated as proper women. Men modify their bodies, often with hormonal treatments, to better embody a masculine ideal. These interventions - leaving aside trans experiences - are clearly attempts to make the body conform to the ideal of gender: the body is sexed by gender, not the other way around.

These practices do not in the least show that “gender overdetermines sex”. What they show is that body modification is commonplace. With the exception of intersex conditions, the modifications listed are not about being “treated as proper women”, but about competition for sexual partners. Other gender-specific body modifications may be religious or due to medical fads (eg, male circumcision) or simply patriarchalist (female circumcision).

What follows is a polemic against gender-critical feminism’s commitments to biological sex, ending with a misconceived claim about “feminist revolution”:

The aim of the feminist revolution is not to reify and defend womanhood as a concept, or to uphold ‘females’ as a caste - just as it is not the role of the proletarian revolution to maintain and uplight the social category of ‘worker’. It is the role of the feminist revolution to break the chain of signification between the sexed body and the gender system, between certain genitals and certain kinds of work, between certain relations and certain ways of dressing, or living. That revolution is against biological sex as ideology, not in its defence.

This is a false analogy and an arbitrary conception of what counts as ‘feminism’. Certainly, in Marx’s conception of proletarian revolution the proletariat aims to abolish all classes and therefore itself as a class. The reason behind this is that the full emancipation of the proletariat as a class is only possible through superseding the wages system and with it the order of classes as such. But there is no equivalent political obligation on feminists, who claim as such only to defend the interests of women as a group, to abolish the differences between men and women. There can be and is conservative feminism, libertarian feminism, liberal feminism, radical and revolutionary feminism, ‘socialist’ (meaning Eurocommunist) feminism, and Marxist feminism, to name only some of the possibilities. None of the feminist trends have sought to abolish women, though some radical and revolutionary feminists imagined a tech breakthrough that could abolish men.

Thesis 6 is: “Women are the null-space within which resistance to gender germinates.” This draws on de Beauvoir, but adds nothing to the argument already made. Thesis 7 is: “Gender-rebels negate gender’s hierarchy.” I have already discussed this sort of argument briefly above: the same mistake as the idea that homosexuality as such was a rebellion against gender hierarchy, by virtue of the fact that homosexuals were targeted by gender-policing conservatives and so on.

Thesis 8 is: “Trans identitarianism is an obstacle to the abolition of gender.” Comrade Hall argues that “The project of constructing a fixed, politically palatable transgender identity, which is at best ignorant of, and at worst hostile to gender abolition, revolutionary feminism and psychoanalytic Marxism, is a project of liberal integration with the existing order.” That this is a project of liberal integration is certainly true. But I would argue that there are excellent reasons for rejecting “revolutionary feminism” (at least in the meaning this has traditionally had: that is, as a very radical form of separatism), and psychoanalytic Marxism (IMO an oxymoron). As I have argued above, the abolition of gender hierarchy is a proper aim; it is not clear that all gender is gender hierarchy. Thesis 9 is that “The meaningful existence of transgender people is self-evident”; this is obviously true.

Finally, Thesis 10 is: “Transfeminist Marxism does not seek to overturn women’s liberation, but to complete it.” Much of this is merely rhetoric; but the conclusion is:

the emancipation of women and queer people will come only when the proletariat can organise as a class to seize power and establish its class dictatorship so as to ensure the transition to a classless society - a society that must, by definition, be free of gendered hierarchies too.

For a revolutionary transfeminist Marxism, the abolition of gender itself is the only goal that makes sense. In such a revolutionary struggle, all old identities and categories will be broken apart, and new, emancipated humanity will take its place. The twilight of the patriarchs will be the triumph of queer liberation, and herald the coming of communism.

That the fundamental aim is general human emancipation and a classless society, and that this can only be achieved through proletarian power, is clearly correct. That this entails “the abolition of gender itself” depends on the analytical claim, in Thesis 2, that gender is in itself hierarchy.

MUG

The Marxist Unity Group’s Statement on trans liberation is a lot shorter. It begins with identifying the right’s campaign against transgender people, using both legislation and extra-legal terrorism. It goes on:

It is the Democratic Socialists of America’s duty as the vanguard of democratic revolution to fight for the liberties of transgender people. This means advocating for the self-defence of the community, for DSA representatives to put forward legislation protecting trans people, and for DSA to create programs supporting the needs of working-class LGBTQ communities.

The basic point here is plainly sound. But “advocating for the self-defence of the community” is hopeless in relation to a small minority group, not geographically concentrated, which is under attack. Certainly, the labour movement should defend trans people who are victimised by prosecution for self-defence against attacks. But the larger argument should surely be for the labour movement itself to organise defence of trans people against far-right pogromists.

The other two points - “to put forward legislation protecting trans people”, and “for DSA to create programs supporting the needs of working-class LGBTQ communities” are both valid, but far too indeterminate to draw a clear line.

The statement goes on to reject left support for conservative rhetoric on the issue, and the separation of trans liberation from socialism. It asserts that, as I said earlier, trans people are “in the vanguard of every struggle”. It ends with a ringing declaration:

Liberty means the collective development of all human beings, free from domination. It consists of the power to do whatever does not injure another. It is the Promethean drive of humanity that pushes us beyond the limits seemingly set by nature, the arbitrary dogmas of religious bigotry, and the conservative gender norms of the bourgeois family. Under socialism, all of us will be free to alter our bodies as we see fit, no longer bound by property, patriarchy and the tyranny of the state.

The grandiose aspiration for socialism (communism) expressed here is to be celebrated, as is Roxy Hall’s call for a society free of gendered hierarchies. They are great examples of what thinking with the maximum programme can allow.

I would be a little more cautious about the limits set by nature, since with human-induced climate change we are running hard up against the natural limits on our activities. And I would add that communism will free us not only from “property, patriarchy and the tyranny of the state”, but also from the various fetishisms created by generalised commodity production. The result is that it is probably as hard for us today to identify what we will want in full communism as it would be for radicals of the 1500s to imagine 19th century Britain.

We should be bold in aspiring to the liberation of trans people, and to the overthrow of sex and gender hierarchy in general. At the same time, we should be careful in promoting a politics of solidarity - not a politics of sectionalism.

thepartyist.com/2024/06/02/ten-theses-on-the-gender-question-revisited; MUG statement, linked at www.marxistunity.com/statements.↩︎
I am less than entirely clear that this last point is common ground; it is not made so explicitly in MUG, RCO or Partyist texts online.↩︎
communistparty.co.uk/resources/theses-resolutions.↩︎
‘Devolution non-recognition’ Weekly Worker February 2 2023; ‘Clearing the ground’, February 9; ‘Moving towards the positive’, February 16; ‘Gender, class and capitalism’, February 23; ‘Effective collectivity is key’, March 2; ‘Tailism cannot deliver’, March 9.↩︎
There is, of course, a more complex story here. Wikipedia has a useful outline discussion with references to more in-depth literature: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_portrayals_of_transgender_people.↩︎
‘Theresa May plans to let people change gender without medical checks’ The Guardian October 18 2017.↩︎
www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/christian-right-tips-fight-transgender-rights-separate-t-lgb; and useful reporting of Terry Schilling, president of the conservative think tank, ‘American Principles Project’, at abcnews.go.com/US/culture-wars-identity-center-politics-america/story?id=100768380 (July 7 2023).↩︎
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/nov/increase-number-people-identifying-transgender-uk.↩︎
JL Herman, AR Flores and KK O’Neill How many adults and youth identify as transgender in the United States?: williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf.↩︎
aeon.co/essays/the-real-reason-why-theres-a-global-rise-in-trans-youth.↩︎
thepartyist.com/2024/06/02/the-founding-statement-of-the-partyist.↩︎
Besides a variety of references in Capital see, for example, the recent article by PM Rey-Araújo: ‘Social reproduction theory and the capitalist “form” of social reproduction’ New Political Economy Vol 29 (2024), pp432-46.↩︎
On women in the workforce globally: ourworldindata.org/female-labor-supply; for the UK: www.statista.com/statistics/280236/unemployment-rate-by-gender-in-the-uk.↩︎
‘First gender, wrong sex’ in HL Moore, T Sanders and B Kaare (eds) Those who play with fire London 1999, chapter 4.↩︎
Modern Reports Vol 7, p263, in English Reports Vol 87, p1230.↩︎