In tandem with racist attacks on Black voting rights like SB 202 in Georgia, the ultra-right is waging war on transgender youth in state legislatures across the country. Specifically, numerous bills have been introduced to deny young people’s rights to gender-affirming health care and to participate in public school sports programs. 

Like the attacks on voting rights, these measures target some of the most vulnerable members of our working class, and with the same goal: to divide and conquer.

At least 174 anti-LGBTQ2S bills are currently under consideration in state legislatures. “Of those, 95 directly target transgender people, and about half of those would bar transgender girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. Many of the other anti-trans bills seek to ban gender-affirming care for minors,” the Advocate reports.

On April 6, Arkansas became the first state in the country to ban gender-affirming health care for trans youth after the state legislature overrode Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto. But Hutchinson is no friend of trans people; just days before, on March 26, he signed a law banning trans youth from sports teams, paving the way for the anti-health-care measure.

Mississippi banned trans youth from sports on March 11. Tennessee then enacted an anti-trans sports law, while South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — a notorious COVID denialist who has especially waged war on Indigenous peoples’ health during the pandemic — signed two executive orders banning trans people from participating in public school and college sports programs.

The right-wing hopes to exploit backward ideas and prejudices about trans people to throw a wrench into the class struggle. The whole capitalist ruling class was panicked by the Black Lives Matter uprising following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor last year. Black, white, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Indigneous people united in the streets in defense of Black lives and against officially sanctioned white supremacist terrorism. 

Now more than ever, sowing division is the top priority of the bosses and their political agents.

Build unity, defend the most oppressed

The job of all class-conscious workers, progressives, socialists and communists, on the other hand, is to counter the bosses’ divide-and-conquer plans by building unity. 

And unity starts with defending the most oppressed members of our class: Black people whose lives and voting rights are on the chopping block; prisoners and migrants in COVID-ridden cages; Asian communities facing violence; and trans youth who are being demeaned and scapegoated.

Just look at who is promoting the wave of anti-trans legislation. It’s the same politicians and anti-people forces that want to ban the right to protest for Black lives, who deny the need for public health measures against COVID-19, and supported Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. 

They are being aided by opportunist Republicans who opposed Trump’s coup attempt but are now desperate to get back in the ultra-right’s good graces before the next election cycle. And they are further helped by mainstream centrist and liberal Democratic politicians who give lip service to trans rights while trying to exploit the crisis for their own electoral gain.

Denying health care kills

Trans people have had to fight tooth and nail to have their identities acknowledged and to be treated respectfully by health-care institutions. Taking away the right of young trans people to be treated with respect, and to have the agency to seek hormone therapy, choose sex-reassignment and other affirming care, is a life and death matter. 

According to a 2020 study by the University of Pittsburgh, about 85% of trans adolescents reported “seriously considering suicide,” and over half had attempted suicide. A 2019 study by an crisis-prevention group found 1 in 3 transgender youth reported attempting suicide.

Institutionalized prejudice not only hurts — it kills.

Before the COVID pandemic, the U.S. was already awash in an epidemic of violent attacks and murders of trans people. Young trans women of color are the most frequent targets.

Thirteen murders of trans people have already been reported in 2021. Last year saw 44 murders of trans people, the highest number recorded since the Human Rights Campaign began tracking them in 2013. The true numbers are likely much higher, since police and media often misgender victims. 

Efforts to deny trans youth the right to affirm their identities through participation in sports programs fuels these acts of bigoted violence, just as Trump’s and Biden’s anti-China rhetoric fuels anti-Asian violence.

‘An attack on the humanity of trans people’

Champion soccer player Megan Rapinoe is known for her commitment to solidarity. An out lesbian, Rapinoe supported Colin Kappernick’s crusade for Black lives in professional sports and other anti-racist causes. 

Rapinoe wrote a powerful op-ed in the March 28 Washington Post, “Bills to ban transgender kids from sports try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist”:

“You may not know that a person in your life is trans — you may not be aware of the fullest self within your co-worker, friend, relative or even the child playing in your living room. Trans people contribute meaningfully to our society: our schools, neighborhoods, communities and families. Trans people deserve dignity, respect and opportunity. These bills are an attack on the humanity and belonging of trans people, and that’s why this issue is important to me as a member of the LGBTQ community.

“For some, discrimination is the point. But we can celebrate all girls and women in sports while ensuring trans people aren’t discriminated against. That is why all women must stand up and demand that exclusion is not done in our name.

“The value of participating in sports is well-documented. Transgender kids deserve the same chances to enjoy sports; to gain confidence, self-respect and leadership skills; and to learn what it means to be part of a team. When we tell transgender girls that they can’t play girls’ sports — or transgender boys that they can’t play boys’ sports — they miss out on these important experiences and opportunities. And we lose the right to say we care about children.”

Numerous legal challenges are being prepared to fight the anti-trans state legislation. That’s important and necessary, but it’s not enough. Workers’ and community organizations need to take up the struggle, and take it to the streets. 

Take it to the streets!

When the COVID health emergency subsides, the working class and its organizations need to take up the urgent need for a massive civil-rights mobilization like those that pushed forward lesbian, gay and bisexual rights in the 1980s and 1990s. These militant, proud manifestations helped to educate the whole working class and created a sea-change in support for gay rights.

Revolutionary socialist Leslie Feinberg, who used Marxism to understand the basis of transgender oppression, suffered serious and ultimately fatal health problems in part due to the lack of respectful and gender-affirming health care. 

In the pamphlet “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” Feinberg wrote:

“The institutionalized bigotry and oppression we face today have not always existed. They arose with the division of society into exploiter and exploited. Divide-and-conquer tactics have allowed the slave-owners, feudal landlords and corporate ruling classes to keep for themselves the lion’s share of wealth created by the laboring class.

“Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry toward transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies.

“Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other’s differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.”

In the spirit of Leslie Feinberg, we say: Defending trans youth is a fight for the whole working class!

The GOP’s latest culture war is focused squarely on the nation’s transgender community, specifically transgender youth. It isn’t a new war, simply a new front in an old war that can be traced back to the famed “bathroom bills” from some years ago that spread across dozens of states. Those bills were introduced in tandem with former President Donald Trump’s targeted federal government-led attacks that included the overturning of anti-discrimination statutes protecting trans people and an outright transgender ban in the U.S. military.

Now, in the wake of Trump’s humiliating electoral loss, Republicans have accelerated the state-level attacks to a breathtaking level. In just the first three months of 2021, GOP-led state legislatures introduced more bills aimed at transgender people, especially youth, than they did over the entire previous year. There are now more than 80 bills introduced this year alone that, according to Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, “are not addressing any real problem, and they’re not being requested by constituents. Rather, this effort is being driven by national far-right organizations attempting to score political points by sowing fear and hate.”

I recently spoke with Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of the award-winning book Histories of the Transgender Child, in an interview, and she echoed this claim, saying, “A lot of authoritarian political movements are using trans people as their scapegoats.” She called the latest wave of anti-trans legislation “an unprecedented assault in terms of just the magnitude of the bills and the severity of what they propose to do in terms of criminalizing basic access to health care and equal access to education.”

She explained that “due to perhaps their general political incompetency, a lot of [Trump’s attacks on transgender people] didn’t really end up making it into practice.” However, “on the state level, as is often the case, the GOP is much more successful at pursuing an anti-trans agenda than they ever are at the federal level.” Gill-Peterson sees this as a culmination of efforts that can be traced back to North Carolina’s 2016 passage of a bill banning transgender people from using facilities of the gender they identify with.

On April 5, North Carolina Republicans continued what they began five years ago, introducing a bill called the “Youth Health Protection Act,” which blocks transgender minors from accessing the health care they need upon deciding to transition. Just as the GOP has often couched its attacks on communities under the guise of protecting them (think of anti-abortion legislation presented as “fetal personhood” bills), this bill, like several others in states like Arkansas, purports to protect trans youth.

Republicans also claim they want to protect “fair competition,” in the words of Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, by banning transgender kids from sports. Lee, along with the governors of Arkansas and Mississippi, signed bills into law this year banning trans youth from playing sports in school. These transphobic bills are based on a theory that transgender kids, especially girls, have an unfair biological advantage over non-transgender girls.

Just as the GOP’s stated war on voter fraud is based on an imagined assault on the nation’s democracy in order to disguise the real war on voting, the conservative party’s stated reason for going after transgender children’s access to health care or participation in sports is based on an imagined crisis. Gill-Peterson said, “most of these lawmakers will admit, they’ve never heard of any issue with transgender participation in sports in their state, and they’ve never heard of any issue around trans health care in their state, and they don’t actually know any trans children.”

The GOP’s war on voting offers another analog. If the GOP really cared about democracy, they would make voting easier, not harder. Similarly, if the party were truly interested in the safety of girls, it would offer up bills that protect transgender girls in particular, who face very real dangers. Gill-Peterson said, “young trans girls and trans women are extremely vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence because it’s not taken seriously.” Instead, the bills banning access to health care and sports only fuel greater violence against them. Every year, dozens of trans women are killed, and more transgender people were killed in the U.S. in the first seven months of 2020 than all of the previous year. It’s no surprise that the spike in violence has coincided with legislative attempts to dehumanize the community.

Just as with anti-voter and anti-abortion bills, the GOP’s tactic of pursuing transphobic legislation involves wasting legislative time and money by passing clearly unconstitutional bills that are invariably legally challenged, remain tied up in the courts for years and ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. Last summer, justices ruled against an attempt to legalize workplace discrimination against transgender employees, and then in the winter, they left in place a public school’s accommodation of transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.

Whether the GOP wins or loses on this issue in the nation’s highest court is almost beside the point because the party’s goal is to distract its anxious base from the fact that their leaders do little to nothing about pervasive problems around inequality and depressed wages, a stagnant job market and the ever-rising cost of living.

Moreover, the GOP’s anti-trans bills fulfill part of a larger conservative agenda to create evermore exceptions to government-provided services such as health care and education, whittling away at the state’s responsibility for resources to be available to all and rights to be respected universally. If hormone treatments, abortions, and medical treatments for immigrants are exceptions to government-provided health care; if public education is for everyone but transgender kids; then those services are weakened in service of libertarian fantasies of how society should function.

How to combat this brutality and inhumanity? Gill-Peterson pointed out, “the folks who are on the same side of this debate as the Republican legislators include a wide swath of extremist groups: white nationalists, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-immigrant groups.” To meet this threat will require an equally broad coalition of progressives to stand guard against attacks on transgender people.

The state of South Dakota has been a testing ground for state-level legislation aimed at trans rights. Bill after bill has failed in that state, thanks largely to a coalition that has stood firm at every turn to protest them. Alongside transgender activists are parents, teachers, and doctors as well as national organizations like the ACLU and the National Center for Transgender Equality. Having a president like Joe Biden who has reaffirmed the humanity and dignity of transgender people, rather than targeting them for violence as Trump did, is also a huge help. “We need to see trans rights as integral to a broader agenda for democracy, justice, and public good in this country,” said Gill-Peterson.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

January 29, 2021

For four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, the LGBTQ2S community had dealt with a near constant erosion of our democratic rights and legal protections. In tandem with this came a rise in hateful sentiment against us, with trans people in particular standing in the crosshairs of American reaction and facing the violence that comes with it.

Naturally, when the Trump administration banned transgender people from military service, the message was loud and clear: Trump and his base believe that trans folks don’t deserve to serve in an institution that is regarded with honor and respect, and must be barred from doing so. Through executive process the Trump administration enshrined this outright discrimination into law. While military service is widely considered a democratic right, it’s well known that many enlist for the sake of economic security. Given that some of the biggest challenges facing trans folks in the U.S. are access to employment, housing, and healthcare, denying them entry into an institution that guarantees these is, for many, of more immediate importance than democratic rights in the abstract.

While we stand against this blatant discrimination against our trans siblings, none of this is to say that the Anti-War Committee endorses military service. We maintain that the U.S. Military is the armed wing of U.S. imperialism whose purpose is to exercise the political and economic will of the United States by force. As such, we believe that the talents of people of conscience would be better served elsewhere.

Part of the reason for this is that the supposed stability offered by the military is paper thin. Once recruited, enlisted personnel face higher risk of suicide, chronic injuries, a culture centered around alcohol that leads to rampant alcoholism, and overwork. Women face sexual assault at astronomical rates. The military takes the desperate masses yearning for their basic needs and forces them through a grinder before discarding them; veterans of military service are often left to their own devices without adequate support for reintegration into civilian society.

Given that 1 in 5 of the rioters that broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are military veterans, we can’t ignore one of the most potent sources of the military’s toxicity: the fact that the desire for military experience and skills has historically led large numbers of white supremacists to join the armed forces. These violent racist extremists are doing work shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else in the military. The broad rise of extreme right wing ideology is much more potent within the ranks, leading to large numbers of active and former servicemembers to join militia groups and white nationalist organizations.

The repeal of the transgender military ban isn’t the beacon of opportunity for trans folks that the Biden administration makes it out to be. For those of us who would qualify, it is the opportunity to trade one set of dangerous circumstances for another. The U.S. has repeatedly shown that it that won’t bat an eye as our transgender siblings are villainized as deviants and killed in anti-trans hate crimes. They won’t guarantee us dignity and safety, they won’t guarantee access for our basic human needs, but they’ll guarantee for us the opportunity to die for empire.

The Anti-War Committee has always advocated that money be spent on human needs, and not for war. We demand that oppressed people in the U.S., including our trans siblings, be provided with the resources necessary to survive, instead of being given more opportunities to die.

Source: Anti-War Committee

Speakers on this webinar, held on June 28, included:

Andre Powell, a leader in the LGBTQ2S movement. He was a founder of Labor for Reparations and traveled to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Powell resides in Baltimore and is an organizer for the Socialist Unity Party and the Peoples Power Assembly. He has been in the streets leading protests ever since George Floyd was murdered.

Lizz Toledo, a Latinx LGBTQ2S fighter who lives in Atlanta. She is the founder of the Atlanta Peoples Power Assembly, which took up the case of Renardo Lewis, who was assaulted by the police. Toledo also contributes to Struggle-La Lucha and is a member of the Socialist Unity Party.

Please check out  the new book “The Social Evolution of Humanity: Marx and Engels were right!” by Bob McCubbin, author of the groundbreaking book, “The Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression: A Marxist View.” McCubbin is a member of the San Diego branch of the Socialist Unity Party. Read an excerpt from the book.

New York, June 28 — For the second year in a row, the Reclaim Pride Coalition held a protest march on the last Sunday of June, traditionally the day of the city’s massive LGBTQ2S Pride March marking the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. This year, according to the coalition, an estimated 50,000 people marched from Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, past the Stonewall Inn and ended in Washington Square Park.

Despite the official Pride parade being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Reclaim Pride decided that it was essential to march this year in support of the Black-led uprising against racist police killings. This year’s protest was proclaimed the “Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality.”

Tens of thousands gathered in Foley Square, where many of the city’s courts are located, including the United States Courthouse, where communists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death 69 years ago. They marched out past New York City Hall, in support of a weeklong occupation demanding defunding of the New York Police Department.

Many marchers held signs saying “Black Lives Matter” or proclaiming the role of Black and Brown trans people like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in launching the modern struggle for LGBTQ2S liberation. Giant puppet images of Johnson, Rivera and other LGBTQ2S leaders of color towered over the colorful demonstration.

Since mass protests began, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the NYPD has been on a rampage of brutality. Today was no different. As the march approached Washington Square Park — just a few blocks from the Stonewall Inn — police charged into the crowd, swinging batons, punching and pushing protesters, and using pepper spray. They claimed to be trying to apprehend someone who had written an anti-racist slogan on a police vehicle.

Eventually, the massive, angry crowd was able to push back the police. Several people were detained by the cops, including a vendor working at a neighborhood fruit stand. Four people were arrested.

Protesters were outraged to learn that at the very same moment that the NYPD was attacking LGBTQ2S people, pro-cop Mayor Bill de Blasio’s twitter account was sending out “congratulations” to the community!

For decades, Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit organization that heads up the official Pride events, has been dominated by upper-class white faces catering to Big Business and capitalist politicians. Many in the LGBTQ2S community grew weary of the commercialization, promotion of mainstream politics and uniformed police being allowed to march in an event that is supposed to celebrate a rebellion against police brutality.

So last year, Reclaim Pride called for a real protest march on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. At least 35,000 came out to that historic action. The explicitly anti-racist character of this year’s march made it historic as well.

Mensaje del Partido de Socialismo Unido

Abrazando el significado auténtico del “espíritu de Stonewall”, el año pasado en la ciudad de Nueva York, la Coalición ‘Reclaim Pride’ (Recobrando el Orgullo Gay) organizó una enorme marcha, militante, multinacional, multi género y multigeneracional dirigida por jóvenes que reclamaban la esencia rebelde del levantamiento de 1969 fuera del Stonewall  Inn en el vecindario de Greenwich Village.

Al demostrar el alto nivel de conciencia política que existe dentro de las comunidades LGBTQ2S y sus organizaciones, las demandas de los manifestantes de Reclaim Pride reflejaron no sólo cuestiones de preocupación inmediata para esas mismas comunidades, en particular, la violencia continua contra las personas trans, especialmente las mujeres trans de  color, sino también las políticas imperialistas militaristas de los Estados Unidos, como los intentos en curso de derrocar al gobierno pro-socialista democráticamente elegido de Venezuela.

Y ahora, un año después, ese mismo alto nivel de conciencia es visible en las magníficas movilizaciones masivas de jóvenes contra el racismo y sus aliados en todos los rincones de este país y, en manifestaciones dramáticas de solidaridad internacional en todo el mundo.

Los activistas LGBTQ2S están trabajando fuertemente para organizar muchas de estas acciones antirracistas y anti policía.  Los ajustes necesarios por la pandemia de coronavirus han hecho que la organización del Orgullo Gay sea más difícil, pero el movimiento no se desalienta.  En San Diego, por ejemplo, que tiene una gran marcha del Orgullo Gay cada mes de julio, la marcha misma ha sido cancelada para proteger a la comunidad del contagio. Pero, en un acto significativo de solidaridad con el levantamiento liderado por el pueblo negro contra la violencia policial, los organizadores locales del Orgullo han anunciado la prohibición de la participación de “fuerzas de seguridad del estado” en todas las actividades del Orgullo.

¡Solidaridad!  Como debería ser ahora, el enfoque de las personas revolucionarias decentes en todo el mundo es evitar que la policía asesina racista de los Estados Unidos asesine a personas de color.  Pero esa lucha también plantea cuestiones básicas de injusticia racial y de clase: la necesidad de educación gratuita de grados primarios a universidad para todos;  atención médica de calidad gratuita, cuya falta ha sido expuesta por el alto nivel de muertes por COVID-19 entre las personas negras y marrones;  vivienda digna y el derecho a trabajos bien remunerados para todos.  Merecen la atención especial de todos los que buscan un mundo justo el llamado a la compensación por la esclavitud y el reconocimiento del estatus colonial “settlers” de los Estados Unidos en tierras indígenas.

El movimiento de liberación LGBTQ2S y el movimiento de liberación Negra son aliados naturales.  Ambos nacieron de la misma furia.  Ambos comenzaron como una rebelión contra la brutalidad policial continua en una comunidad oprimida.

En un voto de 6-3, la Corte Suprema acaba de dictaminar que las personas LGBTQ2S están cubiertas por las protecciones de los Derechos Civiles contra el despido.  Esta es una gran victoria y no es casualidad que dos jueces de derecha rompieran con Trump sobre este tema en este momento.  Es por la rebelión liderada por el pueblo negro.  ¡La lucha de los más oprimidos eleva las luchas de toda la clase trabajadora!

El Socialist Unity Party/Partido de Socialismo Unido saluda la creciente unidad entre las comunidades LGBTQ2S y el movimiento Black Lives Matter.  El objetivo de abolir las injusticias económicas, políticas y sociales que afectan al mundo capitalista sólo puede superarse si se continúan construyendo estos puentes inspiradores de solidaridad y lucha.

Embracing the authentic meaning of “the spirit of Stonewall,” last year in New York City, the Reclaim Pride Coalition organized a huge, militant, multinational, multigender, multigenerational, youth-led march reclaiming the rebellious essence of the 1969 uprising outside the Stonewall Inn in the city’s Greenwich Village.

Demonstrating the high level of political consciousness that exists within the LGBTQ2S communities and their organizations, the Reclaim Pride marchers’ demands reflected not only issues of immediate concern to the communities themselves — in particular, the ongoing violence against trans people, especially trans women of color — but also the militaristic imperialist policies of the U.S., like the ongoing attempts to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government of Venezuela.

And now, a year later, that same high level of consciousness is visible in the magnificent mass mobilizations of anti-racist youth and their allies in every nook and cranny of this big country and, in dramatic shows of international solidarity, all across the globe. 

LGBTQ2S activists are hard at work in organizing many of these anti-racist, anti-police actions. Adjustments made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic have made Pride organizing more challenging, but the movement is not deterred. In San Diego, for example, which has a huge Pride march each July, the march itself has been cancelled in the interests of protecting the community from contagion. But, in a significant act of solidarity with the Black-led uprising against police violence, the local Pride organizers have announced a ban on the participation by “law enforcement agencies” in all Pride activities. 

Solidarity! As it should be right now, the focus of decent revolutionary people all around the world is on stopping the racist killer police of the U.S. from murdering people of color. But that struggle also raises basic issues of racial and class injustice: the need for free education through college for all; free quality health care, the lack of which has been exposed by the high level of deaths from COVID-19 among Black and Brown people; decent, affordable housing; and the right to good paying jobs for all. Deserving the special attention of all who seek a just world are the call for reparations for slavery and recognition of the settler-colonial status of the United States entity on Indigenous land.

The LGBTQ2S liberation movement and the Black liberation movement are natural allies. They were both born out of the same fury. They both began as a rebellion against continuous police brutality on an oppressed community.

In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court has just ruled that LGBTQ2S folk are covered under Civil Rights protections against being fired.  This is a great victory and it’s no accident that two right-wing justices broke with Trump on this issue right now. It’s because of the Black-led rebellion. The struggle of the most oppressed elevates the struggles of the whole working class!

The Socialist Unity Party/Partido de Socialismo Unido salutes the growing unity between the LGBTQ2S communities and the Black Lives Matter movement. The goal of abolishing the economic, political and social injustices that plague the capitalist world can only be overcome by continuing to build these inspiring bridges of solidarity and struggle.

On June 14, the LGBTQ2S community in Los Angeles chanted and shouted their anger over police racism and violence in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in a huge march. 

Thousands of handmade signs and banners expressed the rage that erupted and continues over the police murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, and took up the epidemic violence against Black Trans and Black Queer lives.

The march snaked its way through the heart of Hollywood past the famous sidewalk tributes to movie stars and into the LGBTQ2S city of West Hollywood.

https://www.facebook.com/strugglelalucha/videos/1504030429775054/

My partner has been pushing me to do TikTok lately. I personally hate TikTok, Vine and all other similar platforms. I think they represent humanity at its absolute worst, but I also have been pushing her to make our lives into a reality show, so that could be a bit hypocritical of me. I want to be seen and understood though. Or at least to have someone like me seen and understood. So I feel like celebrity is the only way to become normalized in this day and age.

If you can’t understand why it’s so important to see someone like yourself featured in the media and pop culture, then you should really start by checking your privilege, and then read on while I break it down for you.

Name your favorite married cishet white mom. It’s difficult because there are so many you know and you can turn your TV to any channel and find dozens more telling their stories. Now, name your favorite Black transgender mom raising babies with her partner and her partner’s husband. Take as much time as you want, but the answer is me by default because I’m the only one you can think of and that’s exactly my issue.

There aren’t any families like mine on TV even though it’s the perfect show already. We’ve got a transgender parent like the Kardasians, a trans child like Jazz, and the most parents you’ll find in a family outside of the Sister Wives (without their weird religious baggage). We’re a trust fund and a beauty pageant away from being a full TLC primetime lineup.

We have all the makings of a reality show without any of the benefits, so instead of people coming up and saying “Oh my god. You’re the woman from that show!” they talk mad shit behind my back and tell CPS I’m forcing my kids to be trans (because obviously after being suicidal for years due to my own gender dysphoria, I thought it’d be fun if my kid had to deal with it too.) Without any celebrity to normalize our life, we remain an oddity and people still think it’s fine to look at us like a circus sideshow. We’re still a joke, a cry for attention, or a perversion because that’s the only way anyone like us is portrayed in the media.

Worse still though is that we aren’t protected. In most states you can be fired, denied housing, and even denied medical treatment if you are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Many of those states are pushing to take away even more rights from us. Around the country, bills outlawing life saving medical care for trans youth are being pushed through the state legislatures. Parents of trans youth could soon be charged with child abuse for following the advice of the medical community. There are only nine states where a cishet man can’t receive a more lenient sentence for murder if he claims his attraction to the victim made him question his fragile sexuality.

I’m lucky enough to live in a state where LGBTQIA+ rights are protected by law. However, this same state has some archaic bigamy laws, essentially banning committed poly partners from cohabiting. Polyamory has yet to be given any real consideration by mainstream America. (When it is, it’s often centered around religious and misogynist bigamy practices.) When people hear about polyamorous relationships, their thoughts go to oppressive cults, or hedonistic sexual deviance and debauchery. The reality is much more mundane for many of us. My day looks very similar to that of most stay-at-home moms. With seven-year-old twins and an extremely active two-year-old, I don’t really have much time for cults or hedonistic sexual debauchery (at least not until my toddler is in daycare.)

I think by the time my kids are my age, our family won’t seem so weird. Multiracial families become more common every year. More people are becoming aware of transgender experiences. Most people believe that discrimination based on someone’s sexuality is wrong. Polyamory is becoming less of a taboo as people realize there can be options other than monogamy. I truly believe that families like mine won’t always be looked at as outsiders and freaks. It would be nice though if we had a celebrity spokesperson for families like mine.

Here is Chapter 30 from “The Social Evolution of Humanity: Marx and Engels Were Right!” by Bob McCubbin, a study of the evolution of humanity focused on human social/sexual relations (including “marriage”) and, in particular, the changing social status of women. McCubbin is the author of “Roots of Lesbian and Gay Oppression: A Marxist View.” First published in 1976, during the first flush of the modern LGBTQ2S movement, McCubbin’s unparalleled achievement was to offer a historical analysis of when, where, why and how LGBTQ2S oppression developed. “The Social Evolution of Humanity” is available at Amazon.

In her book “Trans Liberation,” author, communist activist and transgender warrior Leslie Feinberg writes:

We are a movement of masculine females and feminine males, crossdressers, transsexual men and women, intersexuals born on the anatomical sweep between female and male, gender-blenders, many other sex and gender-variant people, and our significant others.

In this listing of gender-variant folk, and in the thousands of reports of sex and gender diversity found among the populations of the world’s cultures, we find a type of human being and a manifestation of human culture unaddressed by the founders of Marxism.

Feinberg’s important contribution to Marxist theory was to contextualize this part of the human family within the framework of the unfolding of the global class struggle. With convincing anthropological and historical evidence, she demonstrated how gender expression, like sexual expression, came to be manipulated, restricted and repressed by ruling-class forces with the onset of patriarchy.

In “Transgender Warriors,” a stunningly attractive book whose beautiful page layouts complement Feinberg’s rich prose, she outlines her historical materialist analysis of gender expression, opening with a question:

But did these cooperative [foraging and hunting] societies only have room for two sexes, fixed at birth? It has become common for social scientists to conclude that the earliest human division of labor between women and men in communal societies formed the basis for modern sex and gender boundaries. But the more I studied, the more I believed that the assumption that every society, in every corner of the world, in every period of human history, recognized only men and women as two immutable social categories is a modern Western conclusion. …

Our earliest ancestors do not appear to have been biological determinists. There are societies all over the world that allowed for more than two sexes, as well as respecting the right of individuals to reassign their sex. And transsexuality, transgender, intersexuality, and bigender appear as themes in creation stories, legends, parables, and oral history.

As I’ve already documented, many Native nations on the North American continent made room for more than two sexes, and there appeared to have been a fluidity between them. Reports by military expeditions, missionaries, ethnographers, anthropologists, explorers, and other harbingers of colonialism cited numerous forms of sex-change, transgender, and intersexuality in matrilineal societies — societies where men were not in a dominant position. In these accounts — no matter how racist or angrily distorted by the colonial narrative voice — it is clear that transsexual priestesses and other trans spiritual leaders, or medicine people, have existed in many ancient cultures. (43-44)

‘Gender and sex diversity are global in character’

In the following several pages, Feinberg provides examples of trans spiritual leaders in Asian, African and South American cultures. She concludes:

I’m not arguing that all of these examples from diverse cultures are identical to modern Western trans identities. Nor am I trying to unravel the matrix of attitudes and beliefs around trans expression in these societies. The importance for me is the depth and breadth of evidence underscoring that gender and sex diversity are global in character, and that trans people were once revered, not reviled. How else could a trans person be a sacred shaman? In communal societies, where respect could not be bought or sold or stolen, being a shaman, or medicine person, was a position of honor. (47)

“So how and why,” Feinberg asks, “did attitudes towards trans people plummet so drastically?” Guided by Engels, she finds the answer in the development of early class societies in the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent. She remarks that, as a Jewish person, the anti-trans passages in Deuteronomy and the anti-homosexual passages in Leviticus bothered her. But they, like the campaigns against cross-dressing deities (e.g., the Syrian goddess Atargatis) and rulers (e.g., Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut and Assyrian King Ashurbanipal), were co-existent with the development of private property and the amassment of private wealth in the hands of men, as Engels so masterfully elucidates in Origin.

Hostility to transgender, sex-change, intersexuality, women, and same-sex love became a pattern wherever class antagonisms deepened. As a Jewish, transgender, working-class revolutionary, I can’t stress enough that Judaism was not the root of the oppression of women and the outlawing of trans expression and same-sex love. The rise of patriarchal class divisions were to blame.

And I found that wherever the ruling classes became stronger, the laws grew increasingly more fierce and more relentlessly enforced. (Feinberg’s italics; 53)

This writer would only caution that Judaism, like the other patriarchal religions of the world, has been a powerful ideological force since the overthrow of mother right and continues to be presently. The patriarchal religions exist most fundamentally as reflections of existing class relations, which, as Feinberg notes, are based on existing property relations: the private property relations of slave and feudal societies in the past, and presently, the global dominance of capitalist private property.

The existence of sex and gender variation among Indigenous people, especially among Native North American peoples, has received much attention, perhaps because of the stark division posed by their clear acceptance among tribal people in contrast to the prevalent homophobia and transphobia of capitalist society that is only now being challenged by a movement of the people who have been traditionally targeted and their allies.

Resolving an important issue involving word choice

Walter Williams’ “The Spirit and the Flesh” offers a vast array of material highlighting the existence and importance of sex and gender-variant folk among Indigenous peoples. Criticism of his work by Native writers focuses on his uncritical use of the word “berdache,” his importation of the word “amazon” to refer to both lesbian and two-spirit women in Indigenous cultures and his assumption that homosexuality was an essential ingredient of the berdache/amazon experience. These criticisms are raised by a number of the contributors to the book “Two-Spirit People,” most of whom, however, also acknowledge the trailblazing importance of Williams’ research.

In the Preface to “Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology,” Randy Burns of the Northern Paiute people and co-founder of Gay American Indians writes:

French explorers used the word berdache to describe male Indians who specialized in the work of women and formed emotional and sexual relationships with other men. Many tribes had female berdaches, too — women who took on men’s work and married other women. The History Project of Gay American Indians (GAI) has documented these alternative roles in over 135 North American tribes. …

As artists, providers, and healers, our traditional gay ancestors had important responsibilities.

Women hunters and warriors brought food for their families and defended their communities, like the famous Kutenai woman warrior who became an intertribal courier and a prophet in the early 1800s, or Woman Chief of the Crow Indians, who achieved the third highest rank in her tribe. Among the Mohave [sic], lesbian women became powerful shamans and medicine people.

Male berdaches specialized in the arts and crafts of their tribes and performed important social and religious roles. In California, we were often called upon to bury and mourn the dead, because such close contact with the spiritual world was considered too dangerous for others. Among the Navajo, berdaches were healers and artists, while among the Plains Indians, we were famous for the valuable crafts we made. 

However, it’s important to take seriously the controversy that has arisen over the use of the word “berdache.” In the Introduction to the book “Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality,” editors Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and Sabine Lang write:

“Berdache” is now considered to be an inappropriate and insulting term by a number of Native Americans as well as by anthropologists. 

In its place:

 The term two-spirit (or two-spirited) was coined in 1990 by Native American individuals during the third Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference in Winnipeg. … Originating as a term for contemporary Native American gays and lesbians as well as people who have been referred to as “berdache” by anthropologists and other scholars, it has come to refer to a number of Native American roles and identities past and present, including contemporary Native Americans/First Nations individuals who are gay or lesbian; contemporary Native American/First Nations gender categories; the traditions wherein multiple gender categories and sexualities are institutionalized in Native American/First Nations tribal cultures; traditions of gender diversity in other, non-Native American cultures; transvestites, transsexuals, and transgendered people; and drag queens and butches. (the editors’ italics; 2)

A relatively new term, an ancient concept

M. Tiahui, a Native activist and co-leader of United American Indians of New England, offered a very precise explanation of “Two Spirit” in her contribution to the 2019 Pride edition of Struggle-La Lucha newspaper:

Perhaps you have heard the term “Two Spirit” used along with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other terms. If you are not Indigenous, this may have made you think that “Two Spirit” refers to Indigenous people who are lesbian, gay or bi. But being Two Spirit does not necessarily mean that someone is lesbian or gay since it does not refer to sexual preference.

 “Two Spirit” is a pan-Indian umbrella term that describes Indigenous people who have mixed or nonbinary gender roles. …

While the term is relatively new, the concept has existed among hundreds of Indigenous Nations for thousands of years. Some Native Nations have terms for up to 4 or 5 different genders, for instance. Two Spirit people are considered to be nonbinary and to hold sacred elements of both feminine and masculine within them. …

 A Two Spirit person may be lesbian or gay, but being lesbian or gay does not necessarily make someone Two Spirit. …

Traditionally, in many tribal nations, Two Spirit people were held in high esteem. They were leaders, warriors, medicine (spiritual) people. They often played a special role with youth, including adopting children and giving special sacred names to babies. (2019: 2)

Many people who have seriously considered the evidence, hold the opinion that LGBTQ2S, gender nonconforming, gender fluid and gender nonbinary folk have always been an essential part of the human family exactly because of the unique contributions they have made to our species’ survival and well-being.

The present writer remembers, in a long past moment, reading a passage (but lacking memory of its source … a book? a journal article?) that highlights the crucial role that two-spirit people have played in Indigenous societies. The cited dialog between a young anthropologist and an elderly Native matriarch went something like this. The young investigator asks the woman, “Did there used to be special people in your tribe, people who married their own sex and perhaps dressed differently than other members of their gender?” The matriarch’s face lights up. “Of course there were people like that. They were our problem solvers. They were the glue of our tribe.”