Transphobia Supports Capitalism
You will often hear people claim that the difference between man and woman is natural and that trans people are some sort of contemporary phenomenon. However, investigating this any further reveals that gender roles have adapted and developed throughout history and examples of trans people can be found throughout history
Gender roles
In primitive communist societies everyone mainly did the same tasks together. Differences between genders were not noteworthy. It has been noticed in studying indigenous peoples that their gender roles and sexuality were more liberal than are today. Indigenous peoples often recognized other genders outside of man and woman.
The precise delimitation of people into the two accepted gender roles began only with the formation of private property and class society. Those roles were born to enforce the split between mens and womens labour. They made possible hoarding the family's wealth and transferring it to the next generation.
So, patriarchal gender roles are not in any way a static part of human nature. They are formed to shape people by the needs of the ruling class and mode of production. As society has moved forward these gender roles have also taken many forms in accordance with the needs of a given mode of production.
These patriarchal gender roles need a lot of work to sustain themselves. Right from childhood people are pushed into the gender role assigned to them and gender non-comformity is punished. This is executed mainly inside the family unit but society also plays its role.
Schools and workplaces participate in this by forcing non-comforming people back into the accepted roles, until those people start to see the gender assigned to them as natural and fitting themselves.
In a capitalist society people are divided into two separate and unequal camps with the help of these gender roles. Women do the vast majority of the unpaid labour at home (chores, raising children) at the same time as they are used as a cheaper labour-power. Men, on the other hand, alongside being used as labour-power are used in imperialist wars and as violent upholders of the state machinery, racism and sexism.
At the same time these roles instruct people into families through which the renewal of labour-power and the renewal of capitalist and patriarchal roles is carried out for the next generations.
Transfobia helps society to hide and silence trans people, but it also reinforces the importance of gender roles and drives cis people deeper into the boundaries of their assigned gender.
Transgender people
Examples of transgender people are found from different eras all over the world, from the Scythian Enarei, the Roman Gauls, the transwomen and men who led peasant armies in rebellions in feudal times and from many other places.
Trans people are those who [capitalist] society, with all its effort, can not force to settle into their assigned gender. They rebel and fight against assigned, slowly repressive, roles in order to rid them and to be able to live according to their internal gender.
Already merely the knowledge about the existence of these people who are resisting gender roles questions the naturality of patriarchal gender roles and in this way endangers the patriarchal system and the credibility of its roles.
The surrounding society tries with all its power to crush these trans people back into the assigned roles to them or hide and separate them from society.
Another nowadays common tactic that is used to hide trans people from the public is by allowing transition to the other gender, as long as the trans person accepts to settle down strongly enough to the new binary gender's roles. And at the same time hides their trans identity from being visible.
Transgender people are found in all groups of people and for this reason the vast majority of them belong to the working class. Because of transphohic discrimination unemployment is considerably higher among trans people and their social status is remarkably poor.
Overthrowing capitalist class society would already benefit transgender people because of their class status. Furthermore, only through revolution and communism is it possible to remove the need for patriarchal gender roles brought up by class societies and in that way is possible to remove the discrimination faces by trans people root causes.
The LGBT-movement
From history we see that in those moments when the leadership of the LGBT-movement has set itself to support the bourgeois state that is in power the results have been bad. As an example of this is the period of the First World War when the leadership of the rising gay-rights movement set to support the acts of war of its own state.
On the other hand when the LGBT-movement joins itself in the battle not only for their needs but also for other oppressed people, such as after the Stonewall riots the movement gains more energy, grows, expands and develops as well as is able to, through this, more effectively fight for their own needs too.
Nowadays that militant LGBT-movement has mostly been pacified, monetized and turned on an assimilationist and bourgeoisie-friendly line. The western bourgeoisie is allowed to, through rainbow-washing, use LGBT-minorities rights as an excuse for imperialist wars and sanctions at the same time as in these western nations themselves transphohia and anti-trans legislation are becoming even broader.
In Finland too, the 2024 Helsinki Pride let rainbow [LGBT] police to participate and the event has been critized by many LGBT-people and groups.
Trans RY [an association for the rights of sexual minorities in Finland] has critized Helsinki Pride because it has not acknowledged trans and non-binary people's requests and instead allowed the National Coalition Party [A right wing party in Finland] and other harmful actors into their supporters. Also the AroAce [Aromantic/Asexual] community had lost its block in forefront of the event among other LGBT-minorities, which is why they didn't participate at all.
To be able to effectively bring forward LGBT-people's needs, this movement needs to be lifted up together with the communists to fight against the capitalist state and the whole capitalist system that also oppresses them.
Like we see with the fight against racism or for the status of women in society as a part of a larger struggle against capitalism, we should also see emancipation of gender and sexual minorities as a part of the anti-capitalist struggle.
The goals of these movements are compatible with communism and the achievement of those goals would also help cishet [cis-gender and heterosexual] people's lives and the fight for those rights helps unite us in a broader fight against the whole capitalist system toward communism.
The only hope for real and lasting emancipation of trans people is only achievable after the overthrowing of capitalism in communism.
Vesa Kärjä
A shortened version of a lecture on KTP's [Communist worker's party – for peace and socialism] 2024 summer camp
Translated by Okko