Five Minute Polemic №7: Greg Abbott, the Génocidaire of Texas
“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live… its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual…” -Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
Communists are materialists, and take a materialistic consequentialist view of the ethics of actions. This means it matters little to us what intention is in somebody’s mind when they cause the death of an innocent person- if they cause such a death, and if they can be reasonably expected not to have done so or to have recognized the consequences of what they are doing (even if they are too bullheadedly dogged to ever actually recognize it), we call them murderer! When the ruling class or individual representatives of the ruling class create conditions that lead to death- by starvation, by overwork, by neglect, or by fostering ideas so hostile and reactionary they promote suicide- they are murderers. The ruling class and each of their representatives are murderers many times over. Whereas communist leadership is willing and unafraid to use violence in pursuit of progress but nonetheless has as its highest purpose the benefit of the working majority of people and is willing to sacrifice for them (recall that Mao himself stopped eating meat in the worst stretches of famine in China, so that it could go to the hungriest), the capitalist class murders millions daily with ecological destruction, and with imperialist war, and with homelessness and the distribution of food for profit instead of need-meeting, and does all of this simply to maintain their social and chiefly political-economic rule and control of production. they are mass-murderers not even out of malice, but out of sheer apathy toward the vast majority of the people of the world.
Target a single group often enough with murder and you shall be called génocidaire. The motive and the mechanism of death do not matter, the one who uses political power to sow death for a specific oppressed group is a génocidaire. Bourgeois Texan governor Greg Abbott, then, we shall call génocidaire. Mr. Abbott, now, is targeting the transgender masses with a series of legal proposals that strive to make any transgender medical care for minors legally “child abuse.” The justification his supporters will no doubt provide is the notion that children are “too young” and “too immature” to know their own gender identity and what care they need to take the gender-role in society that the material of their brain motivates them to. But this is objectively false. It is an acknowledged fact in mainstream science that a clear understanding of gender identity, of what material gender-role one wants to take in society, develops remarkably early {1}; it is only fringe elements that insist one doesn’t understand who one is until adulthood. After all, we don’t question a male child when he tells us he knows he is a boy- why, then, should we question her when she tells us she knows she is a girl?
What is child abuse isn’t giving transgender children the healthcare they need, what is child abuse is denying it to them. The idea that the gender-role one is driven to take in society is simply a fad, something one can do without, is an idealistic fallacy. The fact is that the need to transition is a real, material need prompted by the material of the brain. The majority of transgender people suffer from dysphoria and associated psychological ailments when they are denied their right to follow this need; of course, the suffering is all the worse when it affects a young child, who will be confused and frightened by adults making such a fuss over not letting them receive medical care they need. Young people denied transgender medical care frequently commit suicide- I wrote about a case of this in France that received some attention a while ago. There have been reports of very young male children suffering from severe dysphoria and in need of support in becoming girls trying in fits of dysphoria to cut off their own genitals {2}- it is difficult to imagine such a child doesn’t understand her own gender, and difficult to justify denying her the care she needs.
The ones who orchestrate or attempt to orchestrate systematic denial of care and recognition to transgender people are génocidaires of the transgender masses; Greg Abbott is a génocidaire of the transgender masses. Of course, those who really suffer from such efforts and from transgender people’s oppression generally are the trans proletariat. Caitlyn Jenner, that over-emphasized public face of trans people who is also a member of the reactionary bourgeoisie, has never and will never be at risk of transphobic violence, for she can afford safety; it is the transgender children of the poor and working class who really are in danger. If all of Abbott’s efforts succeed, the rich can afford to flee Texas. The masses will be left behind.
It is folly, then, to isolate the fight against genocidal anti-trans efforts from the class struggle, and folly doubly to try to wage it through the legal state which meaningly benefits only the bourgeoisie. Following the example of groups like the old SWMF, we must subordinate the trans rights struggle to the liberation struggle of the whole proletariat, unite the queer proletariat with the broader proletarian movement and especially the cause of working-class women (with whom they have many common issues), and achieve the destruction of transphobia through the establishment of socialism and cultural revolution.
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