A chairdre! I’m leading a discussion group on this collection of essays, and I thought this might be of interest to some of my Internet comrades.

Firstly, the essay collection in question: https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-07-15_60f0b3d5edcb7_jules-joanne-gleeson-transgender-marxism-1.pdf

Alright, so I’m reading through this in order to prepare some notes for my discussion. Thought it might be fun to have a few discussion threads here. This first thread is for the lengthy editors’ introduction. I will make a separate thread for each essay as I read them.

I’ll grab some quotes, type up some thoughts, hope I can spark a discussion! If not, that’s fine, I at least hope someone will benefit from having the link to the PDF.

I’ll edit this post with links to the subsequent posts (though I’m only going to be doing the intro and the first essay today, I’m a busy lady).

Edit 1: The discussion for the first essay by Noah Zazanis is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/396403

Edit 2: The discussion for the second essay by Michelle O’Brien is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/397671

Edit 3: The discussion for the third essay by Rosa Lee is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/401480

Edit 4: The discussion for the fourth essay by Jules Joanne Gleeson is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/402441

Edit 5: The discussion for the fifth essay by Nat Raha is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/408500

Edit 6: The discussion for the sixth essay by Virgínia Guitzel is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/412487

Edit 7: The discussion for the seventh essay by Kate Doyle Griffiths is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/414322

Edit 8: The discussion for the eighth essay by Farah Thompson is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/417377

Edit 9: The discussion for the ninth essay by JN Hoad is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/424986

Edit 10: The discussion for the tenth essay by Zoe Belinsky is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/437038

Edit 11: The discussion for the eleventh essay by CAACD is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/444545

Edit 12: The discussion for the eleventh essay by Nathaniel Dickson is here - https://lemmygrad.ml/post/508468

  • Seanchaí (she/her)
    OPM
    3•2 years ago

    “Interventions into the lives of intersex infants and children take a symmetrical form: surgeries and hormonal treatments justified primarily by how well they will serve to sustain an approximation of dyadic sexual division.”

    This is always so absolutely infuriating. The common argument against trans people is that we want to give permanently body-altering surgery to children. Not only is gender affirming surgery incredibly rare for minors, not only is that never the fucking argument but it always, always, always ignores the way in which non-consensual, and often secretive irreversible gender surgeries are performed on intersex children

    It is completely disgusting. No trans person is out there arguing for their toddlers to get bottom surgery

    But bottom surgery is routinely performed on intersex infants, often without their parents even knowing

    And so while doctors mutilate intersex children with no accountability in the name of enforcing the binary with one hand, they demand a stop to consensual, informed surgery of trans adults with the other

    • Seanchaí (she/her)
      OPM
      4•2 years ago

      “Trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson notes how contemporary discussions of ‘gender identity’ largely efface its origins as a conservative response intended to suture over the epistemic crisis of sex as a clinical category. Rather than appearing through an emancipatory concern, ‘gender’ in this sense served as a sexological speculation, ushered in by eugenic experiments on trans and intersex children and adults. To their evident horror, clinicians discovered that neither genotype, gonads, hormones, genitals, internal organs, nor secondary anatomical features proved decisive. No one isolatable feature could provide the foundational, determining, and unambiguous influence on which binary sexuation could depend.”

      This is imperative to point out. That through it all, through all the contemporary discussions of “sex” as biology and “gender” as identity and social structure, that at the heart of the matter, there is no physical binary

      It’s all bullshit. Smoke and mirrors

      When it became desperately obvious that there were no organs that could prove definitively a binary, they instead sought to foist the responsibility onto the literally invisible DNA. We were told to believe that at last the binary was proven, that despite the fact that chromosomes are not something that can be seen in social interaction, somehow, in some way, there were people with one set of chromosomes that were inherently socialized one way, and people with a second set that were inherently socialized another. And that, through some miracle, even after transitioning those little bits inside you that no one can see still set you apart

      And even then it was a lie. XX, XY binary is not true.

      There are more permutations of those chromosomes alone, and more than that, it is a complete and total fabrication that those chromosomes are the sum total of sexual biological expression

      And we didn’t even know about chromosomes until the freaking 1880s. Yet somehow throughout all of history (ignoring the multitudes of plural-gendered societies that came before us that were suppressed by colonialism) those invisible little things that no one knew about definitively and eternally separated humanity into a binary.

      • Seanchaí (she/her)
        OPM
        3•2 years ago

        “The wrath ‘trans ideology’ triggers among reactionaries is not simply mindless contempt. It is not reducible to psychodrama. Instead, capitalism’s right wing treats apparent breaches of continuity in the operation of its private households for good reason. This open contempt will not be quieted, however skilfully the left wing of capitalism offers hollow promises of accommodation, of an ever more encompassing bourgeoisie featuring reformed households, modernised subjectivities, and gender enlightened oppressors.”

        I see this a lot, people acting like transphobes are just “behind the times” and that equality is inevitable. But the attack on transness is an attack on anti-capitalism and radicalisation itself, and no amount of integration into capitalism will ever bring queer liberation.

        Reactionary thought must be excised from society, and revolutionary progress must be the goal.

        • Seanchaí (she/her)
          OPM
          3•2 years ago

          “This wounding across generations will not find itself mitigated through any institutional shift, or any movement that falls short of the commune. To emancipate trans people requires, above all else, overturning class divisions, reversing our separation from the means of production, and developing new forms for nurture beyond the family.”

          Queer liberation is, at its very core, liberation for all from the constraints of a capitalist and class-based society

          • Seanchaí (she/her)
            OPM
            3•2 years ago

            “Property appears as natural through patterns of ownership and entitlement, both of which are simultaneously deeply gendered and racialised. And so it is that those abdicating their expected role for new, self-fashioned positions are read as a mortal threat to the continuity of capitalism. To transition is to renege on agreements that were previously assumed, albeit never actually signed for.”

            It is through these terms that we see the common struggle between queer liberation and racial equity, a struggle against the stratifying hierarchies of capital accumulation that favour the centralization of wealth into the families of the capitalist settlers

            • Seanchaí (she/her)
              OPM
              3•2 years ago

              “The dissonance between these simultaneously surging forces cannot be answered by left-liberal proposals for ‘trans rights’, nor even the busted flush of social democracy, which has time and again offered the illusory prospect of thrashing the right and installing economic equity via the ballot box.”

              You can’t vote oppression away.

              • Seanchaí (she/her)
                OPM
                3•2 years ago

                “Transgender Marxism leads us not to deny the joys, or ourselves, while equally never allowing ourselves to be deterred from the path of internationalist revolution. Our end is not just a more rigorous understanding of our social afflictions, but fuel for the abolition of what has long been intolerable. What we have suffered was logical, but never necessary. What has been made can be unmade.”

                • Seanchaí (she/her)
                  OPM
                  3•2 years ago

                  PHEWF! What a long introduction!

                  If you read along, or just skimmed what I was writing, thanks for joining in the education and discussion!