Is “Trans Ideology” Anti-Materialist?
No. No it isn’t.
This is a response to the various reactionary elements within our global communist movement- Caleb Maupin, the CPB and CPGBML, Jason Unruhe- who propagate reactionary bourgeois lies about trans people like myself. I am going to assume, for the duration of this response, that these people are arguing from a place of sincerity- that is, that they are genuinely seeking truth and it is only by mistake that they are perpetuating bourgeois lies. I frankly do not believe this. I think many of these people- perhaps all of them- are knowingly lying and remaining willfully ignorant because they are bigots. But, for the sake of presenting well-constructed arguments, I am going to treat these ideas as though they come from people who are really trying to be principled communists, and will therefore tackle these ideas in such a way as to prove they are not principled communist ideas.
So, what is the argument that these “communists” make? In short, it is this: because trans people and our allies conceive of gender as a psychosocial phenomenon rather than a purely physical one (what they misconstrue as metaphysics), we are denying material reality and therefore are not materialists. They consider our view unmaterialist in two ways: firstly, they say that in discussing psychosocial gender instead of physical sex, we are denying material reality. Secondly, they say that in constructing our concept of gender as more than purely physical, we are being idealists. Both these attacks on trans identity are built on fundamental misunderstandings of the facts. In the first, they demonstrate that they do not understand the concepts of sex and gender. And in the second, even more embarrassingly, they demonstrate a misunderstanding of the very materialism they claim to espouse.
With regards to the first; these so-called communists are utterly in denial of the basic Marxist principle that one must scientifically study a subject before speaking on it (in Mao’s words, “no investigation, no right to speak”). They have made no study of sex and gender as scientific topics, and cannot even distinguish the two from eachother. Sex, the physical sex characteristics of the body, exists. No trans person denies this. We have often said that sex is more complicated than the rigid binary espoused by reactionary pseudoscientists, and we will continue to say this because it is the truth, but we absolutely acknowledge physical sex as a phenomenon and do not in any way deny its existence. Psychosocial gender is, however, an equally real phenomenon, and it is equally deserving of our attention. If sex is the physical sex characteristics of the human body, then gender is the social role one participates in within society. The two are connected, but distinct. As such, our discussing one very much does not mean we ignore the other, in fact we discuss both. Rather it is these transphobic false communists who are ignorant, as they ignore psychosocial gender and refuse to acknowledge its existence as separate from sex.
Ah, but they will respond to this with their second attack on us: that by acknowledging or considering a phenomenon- i.e. gender- which is not purely physical, we are supposedly being idealists and defying materialism. And this is where the transphobic pseudo-communists truly embarrass themselves, because anyone who makes this argument in sincerity is showing themselves to not remotely understand Marxist materialism. Marxist Dialectical Materialism, as any real Marxist knows, acknowledges things other than the purely physical. It teaches us (correctly) that conflicts of material contradiction are what drives human progress and all other natural phenomena, but also acknowledges that non-material things can arise from the conditions of the material dialectics of the world. Historical Materialism- Dialectical Materialism applied to human society- tells us that everything in society arises from the material reality of the dialectical conflict between the ruling and working classes, but not that things outside the material can’t exist as a consequence or a product of material conditions. Indeed, Marxist philosophy has long acknowledged non-material products of material conditions as real and important- if these “Marxists” say materialist philosophy cannot acknowledge nonphysical things, how do they explain the Marxist theory of Base and Superstructure? Or Gramsci’s work on cultural hegemony? No, refusing to acknowledge nonphysical psychosocial phenomena is not a characteristic of Marxist materialism. The materialism of the transphobic reactionaries is not proper factual Dialectical Materialism, but a kind of Mechanical Materialism: a kind of out-dated pseudoscientific philosophy that refuses to acknowledge anything beyond literal physical objects. This philosophy is incorrect, and it is utterly different from true Marxist materialism.
And the countless other arguments these frauds and bigots have made against us all crumple similarly on inspection. I focused on the false accusation of anti-materialism because it is one that I have not yet seen a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist response to, but there are others which may be easily refuted:
Are we plotting to sneak into bathrooms so we may commit sex crimes? No, there is no record of this ever occurring beyond perhaps a few isolated incidents.
Are we “dividing the working class” with our incendiary rhetoric? Perhaps we are. But communists have never been opposed to the division of the working class. Surely we have always divided the proles between those who are revolutionary and those who are counterrevolutionary, and stated that the latter must be educated to the point of becoming the former. It is just the same with the trans-accepting and the transphobic.
Are we somehow undermining feminism by asking for our existence to be respected? Don’t be absurd! Feminists have always striven for the breaking down of rigid gender divides, and we are doing the same. We are allies.
Is it necessary for communists to be transphobic, simply because past ones were? No! Marxism is a scientific approach to society, and science advances over time. Transphobia may have been acceptable then, but today it is unscientific and must be abandoned.
We can refute these idiotic talking points all day, but here is the point: Transphobia is an old ideology which must be crushed. All arguments for it are at best misinformed and at worst made out of malice instead of genuine thought. The only communist position today is support for the trans proletariat.
