There is no denying these are dark times for trans comrades in the UK. The recent ILGA Rainbow Rankings had the UK as the 22nd most LGBTQ+ friendly in Europe. In 2015, it was first. This drop in the ranking has largely been due to the UK’s contemptuous treatment of trans people. Trans healthcare is inaccessible, doubly so for young people, conversion therapy is yet to be outlawed and is becoming the default “treatment” in gender clinics, and there is a concerted effort to remove trans people from public spaces following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the meaning of “sex” in the Equality Act. All this is enabled by a willing government, a malicious press and a well-funded, well-connected group of radical extremists. It feels totalitarian, it feels overwhelming and it feels absolute.
As Marxists, it is our duty to study the conditions that lead us to this retrograde decade. Social progressivism was good for business in a globalised world. You could justify war and imperialism by decrying your enemies’ treatment of “x” group. Forking out for a pride sponsorship would bring in new clients and provide a fun day out at the queer zoo for respectable companies. TV shows could bring in a token character or queer bait to open up a new audience. It paid to be progressive - as long as it wasn’t disruptive.
The liberal settlement was built on legislation - the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act alongside the repeal of Section 28. They were upheld by well meaning people in public institutions, charities and NGOs but never particularly enforced. They were also extremely limited in scope. These acts have a liberal ontology, derived from a negative conception of liberty and the harm principle - they ignore the need for self actualisation. In simpler terms, it’s freedom from harm without the freedom to realise your potential. Yes, you could take an employer to tribunal if you were dismissed for transitioning but this would require a job in the first place. Yes, you could obtain a gender recognition certificate but only after years of hardship in the NHS gender clinics or at great personal expense. There was no need to interrogate the patriarchy and question our gendered society. They could hide behind a separation of sex and gender, a tacit acknowledgement that “we all really know sex is immutable and determined at birth but let’s try to tolerate people who are different.”
The reactionary anti trans movements of recent years have exposed the flaws of the liberal settlement. It would now require effort to defend trans rights. It would represent an operational risk, a journalistic probe into your private life, a legal challenge and loss of revenue. The tactics of the anti trans movement have now created a cost to be an ally. Britain’s diminished global presence has created an insular, rabid undercurrent where the rights of the hungry, those fleeing warfare and those who are different can be sacrificed for the nebulous and ill defined benefit of “true” Brits. The anti trans movement is incredibly well funded and well connected. The capture of the EHRC ensured the passivity and hostility of the government. Lawfare could now be waged with no threat of legislation to override it. The liberal estates - government, judiciary and the press - had all been taken over, or rather taken back. The anti trans radicals challenged established legislation and threatened to make an example out of anyone willing to defend the dignity of trans people. The Office for Students handed out its first fine under free speech laws. This amounted to fining £585,000 to the University of Sussex over its trans and non binary equality policy after Kathleen Stock voluntarily resigned from her position. Despite being overturned, the shockwave led many higher education providers to rewrite their policies to be less inclusive or more vague over worries of being handed a similar fine. The protections for trans people have been superseded by the competing rights of the bigot.
The liberal checks against this encroachment have been found lacking. Some trans charities have valiantly taken on legal cases and fought to be heard in government reviews and enquiries with some success but predominant failure. Others, such as Stonewall, have given up the fight, with new chair Kezia Dugdale talking of her “respect” for JK Rowling, both sidesing the trans issue, and deprioritising trans advocacy.
The whole of the UK must be written off as a transphobic cess pit and our only strategy must be to flee, right? It is not the case. I have not litigated the above to remind you of the hardship we face, nor to scare you. Rather I seek to show you the limits of a cautious rights based culture rooted in institutions. The transphobes have used their money to be an inconvenience. Yes, they do represent an existential threat to trans people but inconvenience is their tool of enforcement. And surely, we can overcome an inconvenience.
The pessimism of many unpoliticised or depoliticised trans people is perfectly valid. But it is yet to be constructive. We can complain about living on “terf island”, retreat within ourselves, withdraw from public life and ultimately submit. Or we can fight back. As socialists, we look beyond institutions for power. We look to popular sovereignty. The truth is the average person does not dedicate any thought to trans people. They may briefly become sympathetic when a personal relation is affected, or react strongly when trans athletes competing in sports make the headlines again. They are not a driving force. There have been no significant anti trans marches or protests that haven’t been dwarfed by pro trans opposition. The anti trans bubble is isolating, it alienates these individuals from friends, family and spouses. It is not a wide base.
This acknowledgement is an opportunity. People are there to be won over. The first vindication of these tactics was Trans Liberation Group’s success in securing two amendments at the Your Party conference. Most of the Independent Alliance MPs had proven themselves to be against our interests. Outside observers from the progressive liberal left decried our involvement in Your Party seeing these MPs as being indicative of a deeply penetrating rot that would spread among the membership rather than a barnacle to be scraped off the hull - the party was to be written off before it was even formed. This pessimism was fed by those without a material analysis. The TLG strategy was to trust the membership to hear our case and support it, drawing on Partyist thought that these unelected “founders” of Your Party were secondary to the membership.
We should not look for champions to beg to take on our cause, we should make the case ourselves and put anyone who disagrees on the back foot. Yes, Zack Polanski is good on trans issues. He is one man in a party of thousands. He will not be party leader forever. I hope comrades organising in the Green Party take this on board to build a political vehicle for trans liberation that is bigger than any one individual. We passed our Trans Liberation motions with supermajorities. I am not saying Your Party is the vehicle for liberation - it has since proven itself not to be - I am saying you are the vehicle for liberation.
There will be people more familiar with the works of Antonio Gramsci than myself but he wrote “I am a pessimist because of intelligence, but I am an optimist because of will”. Marxists are analytical, we understand the challenge ahead and the forces that work against us. With understanding can come despair, our analyses revealing overwhelming odds.
“You must realize that I am far from feeling beaten…it seems to me that… a man out to be deeply convinced that the source of his own moral force is in himself — his very energy and will, the iron coherence of ends and means — that he never falls into those vulgar, banal moods, pessimism and optimism. My own state of mind synthesises these two feelings and transcends them: my mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic. Whatever the situation, I imagine the worst that could happen in order to summon up all my reserves and will power to overcome every obstacle.”
Gramsci recognises himself as a force for change and that he has autonomy over himself. To be overly pessimistic would be to defeat himself. You can fight the battles in your head and lose them without putting in any effort - any cause can be a lost cause through rigorous enough defeatism, guaranteeing the worst outcome. Or, you can choose to fight. Chomsky phrases it as a chance things can get better, a belief, and David Harvey created the idea of utopian optimism in his Spaces of Hope. You can see this in the popular Green refrain of “make hope normal again”. My Marxism is not a faith. Yes, steel yourself against despair but you must also have a target - blindly swinging with your eyes shut hoping a blow lands will not win the fight. Instead, we should seek to be material optimists. Our optimism must be derived from what sustains us and from our strategy. Be optimistic because you back yourself, because you know how your opponent works, because you have allies in the struggle.
As trans people fighting for our liberation, and the liberation of all oppressed people, we cannot afford to despair. There are ways to win and these victories will be driven by us. You can have faith in a leadership figure or an institution, you can hope they do the right thing, but the true force for change exists within ourselves.