There is nothing progressive about opposing self-ID

Once the golden ticket to public office and personal fortune, the job of Conservative leader has become considerably less glamorous. Guiding the wiped-out party through the years of the wilderness isn’t nearly as much fun as plundering the ship of state while gleefully tossing renegades overboard.

Unsurprisingly, Suella Braverman ruled herself out of the competition as rumors swirled about her defection to Reform UK. Braverman’s strategy has become clear since last year’s Conservative Party conference, when her inflammatory and toxic speech included a phrase – “gender ideology” – often heard at the rallies of Georgia Meloni, Viktor Orban and, of course, Donald Trump. But these populist contenders are not the main concern of this article, as the phrase is also used in the pages of the Morning Star.

Gender ideology is a pejorative term for gender self-identification (self-ID), the principle that a person’s legal sex is determined by their gender identity, how they live in the world, and not by the sex assigned at birth. be made possible without the need for invasive medical diagnoses or humiliating legal procedures. Although it has been implemented in 20 countries so far, its introduction in Britain has been fiercely opposed by those who believe it is a harmful conflation of biological sex and gender identity, erasing material reality in favor of appearances.

Braverman and her ilk argue that self-identification is a dangerous attack on the normative family and the class-based status quo. That is not the criticism expressed in this article. Rather, it is seen as a Trojan Horse, designed to undermine class consciousness by hindering the ‘collective and united struggle to address the exploitation and oppression central to sustaining capitalist class society’, to quote Professor Mary Davis.

If self-identification is an existential threat, does it seem likely that both criticisms are true? Why would a ruling elite enthusiastically and loudly torpedo gender ideology if that ideology is a weapon of its own dominance?

Left-wing critics of self-identification need to explain why the Tories have not enthusiastically promoted it as a means of overcoming class struggle. Have these ambassadors of the ruling class been engaged in a charade of bravura complexity? Such a claim would sit uneasily with a fundamental respect for material reality.

In a positive review of Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd’s book Sex and Gender – a loud call against gender recognition – Professor Davis uses the words materialist (twice), biological (twice), scientific and scientific as if these alone can solve the matter. The book itself contains a chapter written by two biologists, including culture warrior Dr. Colin Wright, whose scientific wisdom (some would say opportunistic opportunism) has been praised by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, no less. Facts are simply truths, independent of politics, or so it seems we are told.

Claiming the authority of science is a common rhetorical tactic. For those of us who respect trans identities, it is disappointing to have to refute the claim that we deny biological reality, and annoying to have to state the obvious: it exists. Recognition of gender is a political debate, not a scientific debate, just as gender is political, and left-wing critics of self-identification must contend with the uncomfortable fact of political reality. The Tories and their media forerunners actively oppose gender recognition; But what about the current government?

Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labor was willing to stand up for the trans community. The party offered unconditional solidarity and promised in its 2017 manifesto to reform the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for transgender people to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate. But in July 2023, the party officially returned to its pre-Corbyn position on sex and gender, as part of Keir Starmer’s wholesale rejection of everything he claimed to stand for during the leadership election. The party is now happy to do almost anything to appease the establishment. interests.

The media class has taken up the case against self-identification with cheerful abandon, and some trans-exclusionary feminists have been happy to support this effort. Kathleen Stock, Victoria Smith, Helen Joyce and Julie Bindel (to name but a few) enjoy considerable fame in Critic magazine, funded by asset management magnate and major Tory and Reform UK donor Jeremy Hosking (net worth: £375 million), and/or in UnHerd, the plaything of hedge fund magnate Paul Marshall (net worth: £630 million), who generously donated £500,000 to secure Boris Johnson’s victory in 2019 and to whom GB News – the courageous and frequent exponent of gender ideology – exists thanks to his continued support. Are these plutocrats interested in women’s rights? Or could there perhaps be another motivation at play?

To answer this question we must look at the establishment’s vilification of migrants. “The Tory government in Westminster, the far right and the corporate media are using every weapon at their disposal to stigmatize migrants and asylum seekers rather than tackling the real economic and social problems facing working people and their families,” he said. the political party of the Communist Party. committee in March last year.

Unfortunately, some on the left are reluctant to admit that the above statement applies to transgender people. That same month, the CPB Executive Committee released a statement defending the Tories’ decision to block the gender recognition reform bill passed by the Scottish Parliament. It concluded: “Gender identity ideology is well suited to the needs of the capitalist class, emphasizing individual rights rather than collective rights, thereby enabling and supporting the super-exploitation of women.”

There is no mention of the fact that the political wing of the capitalist class has explicitly waged a culture war against trans rights, and not in their favor. There is also no attempt to explain why the Tories – our class enemy, last time I checked – blocked the very legislation that, some say, advanced their insidious plot to undermine class consciousness with identity politics. But let’s focus on collective rights.

The statement recognizes cis women as a separate and oppressed group, but rejects a similar recognition of transgender people, whose campaign for gender recognition apparently embodies a misguided quest for individual rights, itself a result of “the growth and rise of neoliberalism and attendant ideological attack on collective identity and unified class struggle,” to quote Professor Davis.

The implication seems to be: transgender people are not a separate group, but rather a collection of individuals; if they dare to reject such an analysis and organize for gender recognition, they can only do so under the banner of identity politics, undermining women’s collective rights.

Yet the Communist Party of Ireland has no qualms about rejecting individualism, recognizing the super-exploitation of women and “the central role of the working class… in the revolutionary struggle” while supporting gender identities. Moreover, the vast majority of transgender people do not border on an “ideological attack” on the united class struggle, but under capitalist class society.

Transgender people suffer from high poverty rates; trans women suffer from sexual violence and transmisogyny; too often they are killed or take their own lives; their very existence undermines the gender-based norms that support and perpetuate the dominance of the ruling class.

“Refusing binaries means challenging the harmful systems that keep them in place and that make our lives miserable by dictating what we can and cannot do,” says feminist writer Lola Olufemi. “Refusing the world as it is also means refusing racism, capitalism and a host of related acts of violence.”

Why have some on the left made trans liberation the sole exception to a proud tradition of the labor movement? When the powerful demonize a particular group, we stand shoulder to shoulder with that minority, rather than imposing limits and conditions on our support.

Very little can be achieved together if the emancipation of a community that endures relentless hostility is seen as a distraction from or an obstacle to our collective struggle against capitalism. For many of us, the submissions are inextricably linked; the struggle to overcome them is the definition of solidarity.

Tom King

People take part in a demonstration for trans rights outside the British government office at Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh. The British government took the decision on Monday to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill passed by the Scottish governor.