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I'm truss. Um, from QED. Welcome to our talk. Um, the name of the talk today is fighting for our lives. Trans politics and the working class co-hosted by Queer Endurance Defiance and the Wellington Workers Educational Association. Um, anyway, so the purpose of this talk is to discuss how today in New Zealand the position of trans people is better than it's been in many generations, [00:00:30] but we have not achieved equality. And across the world, the gains of the struggle for trans rights are endangered, pushed back often into a state of affairs worse than what came before. We see violence and oppression redoubled. Why we believe trans oppression is intimately bound up with class oppression. And that is the thesis, as it were of the discussion today. Um, Caden and John from [00:01:00] Queer Endurance Defiance will speak on what Trans. This is where the arguments used to justify bigotry against trans people come from and why those arguments are wrong and the vital face of working class struggle for power in Trans people's fight for liberation. After our three speakers have each spoken, we will have an open, shared discussion, the idea being that anyone who wants to can speak for about two minutes. Um, if the [00:01:30] people in the open discussion have raised questions that we think need to be asked answered by the three speakers, they'll respond. Otherwise, we'll just kind of go around. Anyone having a couple of minutes to speak? We will ding ding ding at two minutes, but we won't, um, sort of try to cut him on off off for another minute. Um, just trying to give everyone time to speak, but also time to get through everyone who wants to speak, and and [00:02:00] that is that's essentially it. Um, So, having set the stage, I would now ask our first speaker kaon to take the call. Kilda, Everyone, I hope you can hear me. All right. I know there are some technical difficulties going on in the chat at the moment, but hopefully, um, they can figure that out. [00:02:30] All right? Good to know. Um, welcome to our discussion on trans rights and in relation to the working class struggle. My name is Kay. I am gender neutral and trans mascular. My pronouns are ZM, and he I will be doing a bit of a trans 101 rundown on what being trans means, which is informed by my own experiences as a trans person as well as [00:03:00] some help from other members of QED special. Thanks to Sarah Allison, who was originally going to do the speech but had to dip out due to work commitments. And she passed on her notes, which I didn't really use. But they did help me, um, build up my my speech in and get, uh, some form of, uh, inspiration. Um, I would also like to thank [00:03:30] gender minorities. Tera, uh, we aren't officially associated with them, but their work and resources have made gathering this information a lot easier. Um, I would also like to warn that some of these talks may be getting into some upsetting territory. Uh, for me, uh, I will be discussing some reclaimed slurs. Uh, LGBT. People have a history of taking words that are being used to delight us, wearing them as a badge of honour and out of respect [00:04:00] for the veterans of our community. I will not be shying away from using these terms as they are. I understand if this may be a bit too much for some people who have had these words used to harm them. Um, you are encouraged to take care of yourself. Take time away if you need. Your needs are important and your support and being here at all is still appreciated. Um, let's get into it. Trans is a broad umbrella term [00:04:30] that is meant to encapsulate the experience of people whose genders differ to what is recorded at time of birth. It is not gone through various um, terminologies, most commonly known now as transgender, which was first recorded in February 1993 in an article about Gay March in Washington. As a concept, though, trans and gender goes back further into the 19 sixties, [00:05:00] where in 1965 psychologist John F Ollivant Quins transgenderism to connote the urge for a gender or sex change. A Trans woman known as Virginia Prince would build upon the term more due to frustrations of the term transsexual being defined by medical and surgical procedures to change their bodies. She wanted something which encompassed more of her own experience as one [00:05:30] who dressed as a woman and lived full time as a woman without the intention of undergoing any surgery or hor hormonal therapy. She isn't without her controversy, though, as she seemingly upheld a lot of heterosexual and patriarchal beliefs. And she would often reject transsexuals and homosexuals, asserting that a true transvestite is a heterosexual who is comfortable [00:06:00] with their genitalia, which is not 100%. True, as, uh, trans people can be of any gender or of any genital reconfiguration or sexuality. It's really up to whatever person ends up being. That said, the modern history of Trans goes back even further to a German physician and sexologist Magnus Herd [00:06:30] of 18 68 to 1935 Magnus was quite the trail blazer for understanding, gay and Tread's identity. In the 20th century, Hirschfield pioneered the use of hormonal therapy and trans surgeries. He also coined the term transvestite in his book Dives in 1910, where he shares his research and discovery on trans and [00:07:00] gay people. Noting that not all transvestites were homosexual, Magnus worked extensively towards improving the understanding of gay trans and intersex people, as well as advocating for gender equality and reproductive rights, including abortions. He helped create one of the first films to sympathetically depict a gay couple, much of which was much of which, along with a lot of his work, was destroyed [00:07:30] by the Nazis in World War II. UM, he co founded and founded some of the first sex and gender rights organisations and regularly petitioned the German government to overturn laws which targeted sex and gender minorities. So I've talked a bit about the modern understanding of Trans and where some of the terminology came from. But I want to stress that this is just the modern understanding of [00:08:00] what transgender is, and it is also a Western understanding of what transgender is. There exists a vast history of trans identity throughout all of human history and in many different cultures. Some other cultures. Identity includes sister girls and brother boys from aboriginal communities in colonised Australia. These terms originally were created for use by trans aboriginal people in Australia, but has [00:08:30] expanded to encompass all other expressions of non standard genders and sexualities in the context of aboriginal cultures within Australia. Here in Aotearoa, we have Takata, which is a term recorded in early Maori dictionaries as early as 18 32 and defined as an intimate partner of the same sex, which has since expanded to include all expressions of non standard gender [00:09:00] and sexuality. That said, there are terms specifically for gender diverse Maori people, and I apologise in advance if I get any of this wrong. Um, for starters, uh, exists specifically as a real word for transgender and words like and or er, er, men and women, [00:09:30] uh, exist for men and women. There have also been words which include other Gedi diverse, um, experiences such as I know I know who. Uh, I I, Iraqi, Ira Hori and Tahini and I. I very much apologise for [00:10:00] screwing any of that up. I'm still learning my Rio. Um, I would also like to shed some light on other terms for trans experiences that don't come under the binary descriptors of men or women, um, or some which do, but only partially or as a mix of the two, or even both at the same time. Under the trans trans umbrella, there exists yet another umbrella term of non binary [00:10:30] or gender queer, though I also want to state that not all non binary or gender queer people identify as trans due to how complex both the experience of being trans and the experience of being outside gender norms and sexuality norms can be in, um, heterosexual dominated patriarchal society. Gender Queer is a term that has existed longer than non binary. [00:11:00] It really found its footing in the LGBT movements of the nineties and even eighties gender queer as a term that exists for all LGBT people with non normative expressions of gender to rally behind. In 1995 Ricky Anne Wilsons helped pop the term by saying, It's about all of us who are gender queer diesel dykes and stone butchers, leather queens and radical fairies, [00:11:30] Nelly fags, cross dressers, intersects transsexuals, transvestites, transgendered, transgressive gendered and those of us whose gender expressions are so complex they haven't been named yet. Gender Queer was a big part of reclaiming queer as a term used to harm LGBT people and instead as a term to empower us a term to rally behind and as a means to directly challenge patriarchal heterosexual norm. As for non binary, I [00:12:00] actually couldn't find an origin for its terminology, specifically in the time I had to put this speech together. But as of 2012 and the 14th of July international non binary day, was created so and to give some examples of gender queer expressions of gender, I'll now talk a little bit about some of the more well known terms. A gender is a term comprised of the Greek prefix A, [00:12:30] which means without thus it means to be without gender. Some other times you might hear typically come under on Come under. A gender is gender blank, gender free, genderless, gender void, non gendered, un gendered or null gender. In the late nineties, people typically called themselves un gendered, and it wouldn't be until the two thousands that a gender surfaced as a term. And in 2014 13th of February, a [00:13:00] gender became available as a custom gender on Facebook, and it also became available as a gender option on OkCupid on the 17th of November. Bi gender is defined as a mix of two genders or as both at once. There is also tri gender, which is very much the same with a third or poly gender. To go even further by gender isn't necessarily tied to the typical gender binary with the ways it manifests. That is to say [00:13:30] that it doesn't necessarily mean to be man and woman. It can instead be an expression of differing gender, queer genders or even of men or women with a gender queer gender. By gender, people can experience it either as both at the same time. Or maybe it fluctuates in a similar way to gender fluid. The term bi gender was first knowingly recorded in 1988 in abstracts of [00:14:00] a symposium on gender issues for the nineties. Demi gender is somewhat related to bi gender, as typically defined as a partial connection to a certain gender but also another gender. For example, there is a Demi girl or Demi woman for someone whose gender aligns partially with being a girl or woman or Demi guy or boy for people whose gender aligns with being partially a boy [00:14:30] or man, these terms exist regardless of whether the person's gender recorded at birth might be. One can be Demi gender, partially connected with their gender recorded at birth. Or they could be partially connected with trans womanhood or trans manhood. Uh, Demi guy and Demi Girl were added to the A VEN gender. Different missions Maslo list in 2010 on December 12th. Gender fluid is defined as an experience [00:15:00] of gender, which fluctuates. It is a dynamic mix of gender. The word gender fluid has existed since the nineties. One noted use of it was from Trans activist Michael M Herdez, who wrote Gender Fluid, means that means that their gender identity or expression encompassed both masculine and feminine. Gender fluidity is becoming commonly known as transgenderism, the ability to [00:15:30] transcend gender, whether biological, emotional, political or otherwise truly mixing male and female. Those who are gender fluid desire to be flexible about their expression of gender. They might experience multiple genders at the same time or can find themselves changing gender to gender at different moments in time. It's a lot about expression. From what I've personally experienced [00:16:00] myself as sometimes I have a little bit of fluidity in me. Um, is also known as, uh, neutral gender. It is an expression of neutrality, that of the binary man and woman. New Troy often comes in pretty close with age, gender, and some might even define that as neutrality towards gender as a lack of gender in the same vein so personally as [00:16:30] someone who is neutro myself. I tend to reject that association. I prefer the definition of, um, what a gender that isn't either male or female but just kind of exists in a neutral space. Um Troy is also typically a transsexual identity, meaning it is generally used by trans people who do seek a medical transition through hormones or surgery. But this is an absolute one can be Troy and not medically transition [00:17:00] at all. The word new Troy was created by H a Burnham in 1995. It is also recognised, much like a gender by Facebook in 2014 on the customizable genders list Trans Masculine and Transfeminine, These words are some more umbrella terms that come onto transgender. They can often be shortened to trans mask and trans fem. [00:17:30] They describe the transition pathway a trans person takes away from their gender recorded at birth, for example, I am trans masculine. My transition journey was one where I was recorded at recorded at birth as female, but I later transitioned into a more masculine presentation and began a medical transition where I take injections for testosterone to masculinize my body. Um, [00:18:00] it is also important to note that these terms do not necessarily mean one plans to medically transition, but many of us do. So in conclusion, I want to say that Trans folks have been here as long as gay and lesbian people have. We have always been here. We will always be here. We exist and matter as much as anyone else, even if personal, even if personally, you may not believe that [00:18:30] people can change gender or sex. It doesn't really matter, because we will still be here. And you can't make us go away. There will always be people challenging gender norms being weird with their expressions of gender and all that. It's part of the human condition. It's a part of human expression. We don't think of ourselves as being special. We would just like to exist safely, happily as everyone else. [00:19:00] Um, thank you for listening and to all who came and please stick around, uh, for El Up next. Um yeah. Thank thank you. That was amazing. Um, I just wanted to jump in and say for anyone who came in after my introduction. If you're not speaking, please mute your microphone so we don't get interference. Um, like we got just before. Sorry. That's all Good. Um Yeah, that was [00:19:30] basically it, Um, and on to, um I will, uh, make a note of anyone who raises their hands. Um, for the order of, um, open discussion after speech. Thank you, Chris. And thanks, Caden. Um, and thanks to the Wellington Workers Education Association for putting this together with us. Um, So Cayden [00:20:00] has talked about what Trans is and a bit about its history and what it's like to be Trans. Um, I'm going to talk some more about transphobia about what it is and why it exists and what its ideas are. In New Zealand, 20% of trans people experience homelessness in many cases as a result of being kicked out of home by family because of being trans, um, trans people in New Zealand face sexual violence at more than [00:20:30] twice the rate of the general population adjusted per gender. Trans women earn less on average even than CIS women do, and trans men earn less on average than sis men. We experience discrimination in health care access and in interactions with the police. Trans kids report bullying in schools at four times the rate of the general population. All of this results in high statistics of social disconnection, poverty, poor health outcomes and poor mental health. [00:21:00] This is to say that in New Zealand society, trans people are oppressed over and above the problems that most people, and particularly working people have in this world. Trans people have special kinds of problems put on us by society and the immediate cause of this. The reason why a parent would throw their child out of home for being trans or why someone would assault someone else for being trans. The immediate cause is transphobic ideas. Ideas that trans [00:21:30] people are worth less than other people are shameful or transgressing against some important standard, uh, maybe are dangerous to society, maybe should be punished. These ideas can be conscious or unconscious or somewhere in between. Often they are justified by religion. Trans people are an affront to God, or they're justified by traditional family values. The trans movement is an attack on the stability of the family, and increasingly, these days, transphobic political movements justify themselves [00:22:00] from a feminist angle. Patriarchal society forces women into transition into life as men by its sexist violence, and it encourages men to transition and live as women to appropriate women's social gains against sexism and commit violence. Conservative politicians now aren't just concerned with maintaining strong and healthy families. They are worried about the danger to women of male predators in women's spaces and the pressure on vulnerable girls to permanently [00:22:30] alter their bodies through transition to the more honest forms of bigotry. We can just say bullshit. We have rights. But to these appeals to justify 10 depression as the protection of women's rights, a bit more work is necessary to show what's going on. It is possible to not know much about clase issues. To hear these arguments and accept in good faith that cleans rights genuinely are dangerous to women. So I'll take some time to go into these arguments. [00:23:00] First of all, is it true that there is pressure on youth and particularly girls, to transition? We have good data that trans youth face higher rates of discrimination and prejudice both at home and at school, including hostility from family bullying from peers and resistance from teachers and school systems to accept social transition. So it seems unlikely there is any widespread pressure for transition sources. Meanwhile, access to transition related health [00:23:30] care poses difficulties for all trans people, but far more for youth. Access to puberty blockers, for example, is heavily restricted in most countries, including New Zealand, despite extensive research showing this treatment is safe and improves outcomes for trans use. So the medical system does not really apply pressure to transition in any meaningful sense, and it is unlikely looking at the oppression that trans men face in society and the background transphobia present in most social [00:24:00] circles, it's unlikely that girls should see transition as an escape from the experience of sexism, when transition more often results in an intensification of the experience of sexism in a new form, anti trans arguments often highlight the phenomenon of det transitions, particularly trans men. Who det transition. It's true that some studies show as many as 8% of trans people Det transitioning at some point in their lives. But the reasons [00:24:30] supported for det transition are overwhelmingly not regret about having transitioned but rather feeling unable to live as a trans person in a place of social circumstances. Only 5% of Det transition is report regretting having transitioned if we take the 8% estimate for total det transition numbers. This gives us 0.4% 1 in 200 trans people Det transitioning because they regret having transitioned in the first place. This is not [00:25:00] a high number. Using the same stats, it would compare to 7.6% of trans people, about one in 13 feeling forced or pressured to de transition by hostile circumstances and further in terms of medical care. We know that almost one in five trans people in New Zealand want hormones or puberty blockers, but have either been unable to access them or have not accessed them because of fears of discrimination. It is true that recently far more youth than previously have been taught in [00:25:30] schools or in homes that trans people exist. This is the result of increasing social awareness of trans people. To say that this amounts to pressure on Children to transition is to say that it is not safe for Children to know that trans people exist. There are people who have said that for a long time about gays and lesbians, but we don't see those people now as champions of the oppressed. OK, then so is it true that the social acceptance of trans [00:26:00] women as women hurts the fight for this woman's rights. Well, first, we have to acknowledge that trans women have been accepted as women for a long time, so long as we pass as sis. The games for women's rights of the last century have been won not just for sis Woman, but at least for a section of trans women, too. This is nothing new, but it's true that the modern trans rights movement is pushing for securing and legally protecting [00:26:30] trans women's social position as a woman. So what does this practically mean? Anti trans arguments run that this means bringing into the social group of a woman a great mass of privileged, potentially violent people. But according to most studies, trans women make no more than 1% of women, probably less and a 1% who, according to the statistics we have, are not visibly more violent than other women. But [00:27:00] on average, do suffer more violence than other women, including more sexual violence, and are paid less and employed at lower rates than other women and have worse health outcomes. So trans social acceptance means giving more of this particularly vulnerable 1% access to women's refuges, UH, forcing less of them as Children into boys schools, forcing less of them into men's prisons. And these are all places where trans women have [00:27:30] always been in some numbers. But mostly this means striking against the system of ideas, which justifies violence and discrimination against all trans people. And we can see that increases in social acceptance for trans people, including self ID laws, do not cooperate with increased violence against women or worse outcomes for women. Further, the movements, which achieve social [00:28:00] acceptance for trans people are often also involved in the fight for women's rights, for example, in Argentina, where trans groups were heavily involved in the recent victory for the right to abortion, and here, where many of the groups working for reproductive rights are also working for trans rights and vice versa. By contrast, ostensibly feminist anti trans activists in New Zealand have refused to take part in recent campaigns for reproductive rights and against sexist violence. Specifically because of these campaigns, [00:28:30] links to the Movement for Trans Rights in the US, the same conservative religious forces currently working to overturn Vo versus Wade, are campaigning against trans healthcare and social acceptance in Britain, the nerve centre of the anti trans feminist movement. Feminist anti trans groups have allied with conservatives in the attempt to overturn the legal principle of Gillet competence, which under British law allows minors to consent to the prescription of puberty blockers and [00:29:00] which also, under British law, allows minors to consent to abortion. OK, so I've talked about a few different transphobic arguments coming from quite different places. But there is a basic premise of transphobic thought, which is common between religious conservatives and fascists and anti trans feminists. And the basic premise is that the sex binary we see in society is stable and people's position [00:29:30] in it. The position we are given when we are born cannot be altered. Perhaps the social sex binary is rooted in biology, or perhaps in patriarchy, or perhaps in defined law. But by all of these views, the fact that a person's sex may actually change across their lives that they may go from life as a woman to life as a man or as an own binary person, or vice versa. This fits into the scheme only as something wrong, a mistake or a pretence of some kind. [00:30:00] Now. One argument we have against this is just well, we exist. Social sex does change other people's lifetimes, and the only problems this seems to cause come from people thinking it shouldn't Non binary people exist, including people who don't fit at all into either side of the social sex, binary. And again, the only problems this seems to cause are from trans phobia and intersex people exist. Most current science suggests that even excluding all [00:30:30] social elements of sex, the sex binary is more about common forms, with a lot of variation than a rigid opposition. But another argument we have against the idea of a rigid sex binary is to point to the range of extra binary sexes that have existed across the world throughout history. And this is something that Caden mentioned in his talk. One argument Trans Forbes make in the modern day is that Trans people are a recent and aberrant phenomenon produced [00:31:00] by the particular twisted of modern society. And to an extent, we can say yes, sexism has conditioned the whole modern sex system. Sis sex expressions are deeply bound up with it, of course. So are trans sex expressions. But What the trans verbs mean is that the sex binary was untroubled by deviations before the modern day. And that's just not true. There is extensive evidence for social forms diverging from [00:31:30] a sex binary not just in the modern day or in capitalist societies, but throughout human history and across the world. The Christian European colonists of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries tended to share this view of the modern anti trans advocates that the sex binary was stable and without exceptions, or at least it should be. And they were shocked to find across Asia and Africa and the Americas and the Pacific, often quite respected and accepted [00:32:00] sexes within many different societies who were neither women nor men. This is not to say in all societies, but rather in some societies in all regions of the world. For example, the Hira, or Kawahara of the Indian subcontinent, the warrior of Indonesia and many different third sex traditions of the North American peoples, like uh, the In a Picasso and is is the Inuit Nic Elsewhere, the in [00:32:30] the the in, in in Uganda, the of the, uh, and in the Pacific, the Mau of Hawaii, the of Tahiti, the vaka of Fiji, the and of Tonga. Apologies for any mispronunciations there. All these, among many others, were and in many cases are now socially accepted. Sexes outside, the binary and the imposition [00:33:00] of European colonial rule often involve suppression of the sexes, just like the church in Europe suppressed peasant traditions of sex variance as going against the divine order of men and women. Now these extra binary sex forms are certainly not equivalent to modern trans. Many of them are associated with a religious function or are otherwise held in some social esteem. Only some of them include institutions of body modification, [00:33:30] and in some it is hard to make out where sex forms integrated with social life emerge among customs of virtual sex performance separated from the bulk of social life. But together with the data we have on modern sex diversity and on how these other cultural traditions of sex diversity interact with modern trans, we can say that as well as humans, showing a tendency towards forming at least a loose social sex binary. Over the last several 1000 years, [00:34:00] humans have also shown over this whole span a tendency towards forming social sex forms outside a binary, and this has been not always but often in stabilised social forms. Trans people are just the latest manifestation of this tendency, specifically the manifestation of this tendency in the circumstance of the mass foible suppression of its traditional expressions. [00:34:30] I talked a lot about transphobic ideas and counterpoints to them, but we don't just need to argue against these ideas in our own circles. That's important. But we also need to fight transphobia politically as a movement. That is the only way we've attained social recognition and the rights that we have. It is the only way we are going to defend and extend these rights, and for that we need strategy on the basis of sound analysis. We [00:35:00] need to understand not just what Transphobia looks like and what immediate forms it takes, but where it comes from and why it is reproduced and what it is not just in an ideological sense, but socially. It seems pretty clear that the function of transphobia in this society is to justify and maintain the social structure of a rigid sex binary, in which women are oppressed and controlled against the actual fact of sexes outside and [00:35:30] part of meaning this binary, and this has a logic to it. There is nothing about trans people that sets us against the basic social order of capitalism. Personally, we don't threaten you interest of the ruling classes we want to assimilate. And we see in the modern day that great strides can be made towards a reintegration in society without any damage to ruling class poverty or real change in how society works. But by existing, we [00:36:00] damage the ideology of binary sex system, which legitimises the oppression of women. And, of course, to control reproduction is a key prerogative of any class which gets its living off a labour force. This is being acted out in the United States as we speak, we see it around the world, and it was unfolding in the early agricultural societies where the religious codes of women's inferiority were born. So what we are fighting [00:36:30] has material roots that go very deep, and that raises important questions for our strategy because clearly we can achieve gains for trans rights within the current social system, and we must struggle for these gains. But it also seems like Transphobia is very deeply involved with our social system in a way that brings equality beyond the scope of just the and [00:37:00] I will leave that discussion to John. Thank you. Thanks. That was that was excellent. And just a reminder to anyone who's coming in late. Please mute your microphones if you're not speaking because we've had a little bit of voice at the end of both of those speeches. I'm so sorry is on. I'll turn it off. That's right. Thank you so much. Um, so I'm going [00:37:30] to hand over to John now. I'm just going to have to briefly, um, drop out for about 30 seconds, because Spiro does that. So I'm going to leave the other Spiro chair in my absence. I will be back in about 30 seconds. Um, John, before it's yours. Thank you, Tris. And thanks. Also, Kate and and hi, everybody. Um, my name is currently John, but I'm thinking of changing it, [00:38:00] and I am a supporter of the international Bolshevik tendency. Uh, Caden has spoken to the nature of Trans and L has talked about the various manifestations and ideas of transphobia. The question I'm going to speak to is essentially finishing the title of our forum. Uh, what is the connection between trans liberation and the struggles of the working class? So to answer this question, we need to talk about the relationship between [00:38:30] queerness and class society, as well as the relationship of those things with the capitalist state. Now it is true that queer liberation struggles have in recent decades made strides against depression within the framework of the capitalist state. But as we can see from recent anti queer reactions in places like the US and Britain and many other countries, these gains are fragile and reversible. And it's interesting to note the crossover [00:39:00] between reactions against queer people and against women's liberation. Most anti trans groups are also anti abortion. For instance, uh, anti trans campaigners in the US will openly link their campaign to the fight against bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Turfs are sneakier about it, but as Elle mentioned, they're happy to throw women onto the bus to get at trans people. This confluence of anti rands and antiwomen politics points to these oppressions having [00:39:30] the same root. But what is this route? Um, Marxism locates the basis of social oppression and material causes. So what need does trans oppression serve materially? It is the maintenance of the nuclear family. At the Marxist view of the family under capitalism is that it is a vehicle for producing the next generation of workers, a structure in which property is passed down the generations an incubator of bourgeois [00:40:00] ideology and a system that subjugates women to unpaid domestic labour. The family is the main social institution of women's oppression. The social superiority of man over woman but baked into the family is the division of humanity into man and woman on grounds of their perceived role in human reproduction and the subjection of both men and women to the need to reproduce to ensure the smooth [00:40:30] generational transition, transmission of private property and the production of new generations of workers and consumers. To keep the system going, individual autonomy must be subordinated to the socioeconomic need. Hence the oppression of queer people whose lives and needs require alternatives to this strict system. And trans people, who both represent an alternative to the family and threaten the binary division of humanity [00:41:00] on reproductive lines, are doubly oppressed. The nuclear family didn't always exist as mentioned. It was pushed on the workers of Europe and imposed on the colonised world at gunpoint specifically because it is the most favourable relationship structure for capitalism's needs. Historically, the trans struggle has been against forces seeking to trap people within these confines. A right wing obsession with Trans men's fertility is a good [00:41:30] example of this. Anti trans bigotry and violence is cruelty for its own sake, but it is also meant to discourage others from taking the same road. Now there are those who look to the existing capitalist state to protect trans people from this violence to uphold their material conditions and guarantee equal rights. And some countries, usually forced by collective action, have improved the conditions of trans people. [00:42:00] The question is, is it possible to carry these reforms through to a place where trans people are actually free, equal and safe from persecution under the capitalist state? Well, to answer that, we need to consider what the state is and whose interest it serves. Marxists regard the state as an instrument of class, rule the mechanism through which a ruling class formalises and maintains [00:42:30] power over one or more subject classes in capitalism. The ruling class is the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie. Capitalists own the productive forces of society, or means of production as their private property. The capitalist state is the tool they use to oppress and exploit. The working class workers own no productive forces and must work for the capitalists or starve. The state [00:43:00] passes laws which guarantee capitalist rights to own private property and uses armed force, the police but also the army and prison guards, and so forth to keep the working class from appropriating property or power for themselves. Capitalists need to exploit workers to make a profit. But because workers material needs are opposed to capitalists best interests, they need the state to keep workers in line, often through violence. So [00:43:30] the capitalist class uses the state to shape society in its own interests, which includes fostering the family model so workers keep reproducing and creating more workers to exploit. Social progress in bourgeois society usually comes from mass movements of the working class, oppressed minorities or both, pressuring the state to pass reforms which go against capitalist class interests. These reforms are good things, and Marxists should defend them. [00:44:00] But every one of them is a balance between the opposed interests of the capitalists who control society and the people and groups who forced them to make the change. Thus they approach equality but never quite reach it, because a truly equal society is incompatible with the private ownership of the means of production by a privileged few. Queer acceptance is one such reform, and like all reforms, it is unfortunately [00:44:30] only partial. It represents an uneasy truce between the rights of queer people and the needs of capitalists. Queer people can exist openly, so long as they can be exploited like everyone else, conform to bourgeois norms and don't challenge bourgeois social structures, including the family. The more we exist outside those confines, the fewer rights and protections we have. The gains we make under capitalism [00:45:00] will thus never be complete. They can only ever be partial. But this isn't our only problem. Last week, as you will all have heard, the news broke that Roe, V Wahed and thus the American right to an abortion, which was long thought. A settled argument by many liberals will likely be overturned soon. We should take from this impending disaster that concessions granted under the pressure of mass political mobilizations are always subject to reversal [00:45:30] when a different configuration of social forces arises. The struggle against sexism, like the battle against transphobia, or racism or any other form of social oppression, can never be finally victorious under capitalism, because the maintenance of privilege and inequality is an inevitable corollary to private monopoly of the means of production. That isn't to say meaningful reforms under capitalism aren't possible, only that they aren't sustainable. [00:46:00] Reforms represent inefficiencies in the capitalist system and that they make society less profitable for capitalists. But the high, productive base of technology and capitalism leaves room for some inefficiency. However, when the profitability of that system is in crisis, and between the war in Ukraine, covid and climate change, there are major crises looming. These reforms start to look like dead weight, but capitalism [00:46:30] has means of resolving this problem. Crisis periods breed fascism, the mass mobilisation of the petty bourgeoisie that is micro scale capitalists like small business owners, small farmers and self-employed sole traders whose businesses are normally the first to collapse in an economic crisis, as well as disaffected backward sections of the working class to stabilise capitalism by violently stamping out any rogue elements that exist in contradiction [00:47:00] with capitalism's basic needs. The various fascism of last century had many differences, but they were united by a commitment to rigid enforcement of capitalist norms against what they perceived as moral and social decay, including the strict embrace of the family weaponized against the independence of women and the existence of queer people. Modern fascists share this drive, too. The existing capitalist [00:47:30] state is not only incapable of stopping fascism in the long term, it is unwilling everywhere. Fascists have historically come to power. They have done so with the connivance of the capitalist class, which controls the state. This class sees fascism as a means of solving its difficulties and forcing order on a rest of populace in the grip of social crisis. No matter what reforms we win from it, the capitalist [00:48:00] state will always be more compatible with social forces that want trans people gone. Queer oppression is baked into the bones of capitalism, and since the capitalist state ultimately def exists to defend the capitalist system, it can never be relied on to defend our rights. It cannot be permanently reformed into a configuration that will protect us from fascism. In the long run, it must be smashed. But who [00:48:30] will do the smashing? The only force to ever halt fascist advance is the organised working class in 19 thirties France and Britain. Mass movements of workers beat the fascists before they could take power well. In Russia, the Bolsheviks crushed an attempted fascist coup on the path to the October revolution. The overthrow of capitalist state power by the working class, the establishment of workers [00:49:00] power in Russia dealt a terrible blow to the family, granting it a stroke. The legal emancipation of women. Soviet Russia was the first state in Europe to decriminalise abortion, while the revolutionary government worked hard at freeing women from the kitchen and laundry by socialising, childcare and domestic labour. But it was also the first state in the world to decriminalise homosexuality, making the workers state the most advanced state in the world for queer rights. For a [00:49:30] time, many gay people lived open lives in Soviet Russia, while doctors studied trans people scientifically and were optimistic about a future in which medical sex change was possible. Though the techniques were wildly beyond them at the time, it was by no means a utopia, and there was a lot of controversy about it. But for the time, it was extraordinarily progressive. Now the Bolsheviks ultimately did not spark a world revolution that would have overthrown [00:50:00] class society altogether, which was their objective. The workers took power, but they could not keep it while they overthrew capitalism. Russia was too isolated and economically underdeveloped to build the material basis for an equal society which hollowed out workers democracy and eventually brought Stalin to power. As the working class lost control of political power under Stalinist counter revolution, many of these gains were reversed, including queer rights. [00:50:30] Nevertheless, the fact that the early Bolshevik assault on the family came with attempts towards gay and trans liberation far earlier than in the West, even though the Bolsheviks themselves did not initially plan for this demonstrates the link between Socialists, struggle against family structures and the liberation of queer people. Freeing the Soviet workers from the grip of forced reproduction directly opened the road to struggle against compulsory heterosexuality [00:51:00] and sickness. When Stalin reinstated the family's central place in Soviet society, he placed those shackles back on the working class. Our task as revolutionaries in the modern day is to finish the job. The Bolsheviks started to build a World Workers Party with a revolutionary programme that can ignite global revolution and smash capitalism for good. The destruction of capitalist power and the seizure of economic control by the working class [00:51:30] will create the conditions for a democratically planned global economy that will give all humans an equal share of prosperity and thereby eliminate class division. In human society. Trans people are as old as humankind, but the oppression of trans people is as old as class society itself. Only through the struggle to overturn class society will trans people realise their own emancipation. But the fight to eradicate class [00:52:00] society is the fight to eradicate the material basis of class society, the system of private property and all its revolting extrusions, including the family and the norms and mores that enslave us to domestic servitude and the need to reproduce. And so the fight for trans liberation is inextricable from the fight for socialism as a final thought. The aim of a revolutionary society is ultimately the full autonomy and development [00:52:30] of the individual, free of social coercion and control. We cannot know what concepts like sex, gender or sexuality will look like under communism. As our understanding of those concepts is limited by the material condition of our society, we therefore can't know what trends or people in the future will look like. Our task is to fight for the world in which they're free to define that for themselves. Ultimately, this can only be a revolutionary [00:53:00] struggle. Thank you. That was all.
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