Friends! Comrades! Gentlethems! It’s time for the third essay in our Transgender Marxism series.

The PDF is here: https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-07-15_60f0b3d5edcb7_jules-joanne-gleeson-transgender-marxism-1.pdf

If you missed the intro discussion: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/395378

This next essay is Judith Butler’s Scientific Revolution: Foundations for a Transsexual Marxism by Rosa Lee.

Rosa Lee is an editor at Viewpoint Magazine, a graduate from UC Santa Cruz and an active gabber producer.

You know the drill: pulling quotes and making notes.

Don’t hesitate to jump on in and join the discussion <3 Let’s all learn something together!

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

  • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
    4·
    2 years ago

    Hmm, it mentions The Logic of Gender by Maya Gonzalez and Jeanne Neton, making a note to look into that.

    Lee is explaining the use of the term “transsexual” specifically here. While transgender and trans are the more common terms these days, Lee wanted to use transsexual, which evokes medicalisation and pathologisation, to imply a state of direct and ongoing transition. Transition, Lee says, is about remaking yourself, wilful self-transformation.

    • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
      4·
      2 years ago

      “Far from being the solitary resolution of a pathology through clinical treatment, transition as a process can be considered a glimpse of the forging of new forms of solidarity that might breach a new mode of production”

      • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
        4·
        2 years ago

        “We must bring into view the social and temporal nature not only of gender, but also of the sexed body. We must incorporate our intimate understandings of this kind of self-transformation, this work of the self, into our theory. Social theory cannot exist segregated from the practical struggles, affinity circles and unlikely alliances we so often rely on”

        • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
          4·
          2 years ago

          “In a different era, Marxists spoke of the construction of a ‘new socialist man’ as a crucial task in the broader process of socialist construction. Today, in a time of both rising fascism and an emergent socialist movement, our challenge is transsexualising our Marxism. We should think the project of transition to communism in our time – communisation – as including the transition to new communist selves, new ways of being and relating to one another.”

          • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
            4·
            2 years ago

            This was an alright read, had some things I guess I agree with, but I don’t particularly feel like I learned anything from it. Sorry Lee, appreciate you writing this, and I get the point was an argument that applying Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to a wider practice of dialectical materialism could transform Marxism. I don’t completely agree with Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, and this essay didn’t really provide any insight in to how the theory could be applied to Marxism.

            I also don’t really see how the distinction between transgender and transsexual really added anything to the ideas here.

            It didn’t really shift anything in my perspective even after Lee explained why transsexual was chosen. I guess from Lee’s intro maybe it was for shock value or something? But I still know plenty of people who use the term transsexual to describe themselves, so it doesn’t really…evoke anything of what Lee was hoping it would in me.