Comrades,
I come before you today as a proud trans woman and an even prouder communist. It was as a consequence of being a trans woman that I myself was drawn to communism. I scoured the histories of our collective struggle for liberation and found but one consistent truth: the history of our struggle as trans and queer people is itself a class struggle.
How many of us have been denied work due to our existence? Probably more than most of us know. How many of us have been discarded by our families as we do not meet the requirements of the family they envision having? How many of us have been forced into prostitution—pimped out by men to the benefit of other men of all class positions? How many of us have lost people to drug overdoses, rape, murder, denial of medical care, prostitution, deportation, arrests, police, domestic violence, and other forms of violence—both social and intimate? I know I have.
These acts of brutality are not recent developments. They are as old as class society, and intensified by the rise of capitalism and modern settler-colonialism.
Our collective struggle today originates in class society. It is a class struggle against the patriarchal male class which exists at all strata of society, a class struggle against the Euro-settler class domination of Indigenous Nations, and a class struggle against the capitalist class.
When class society first emerged, there likewise arose the necessity for a binary, monogamous, gendered division of labour. There was a need for a monogamous, gendered division of labour between so-called “reproductive labour”—which centred on child-rearing and the maintenance of the home—and “productive labour”: that which creates the commodities that surround us.
Reproductive labour became the domain of those whose anatomies were capable of child-rearing—those with wombs and breasts that lactate. It became the domain of the “woman”, whose labour is, and has been, perpetually uncompensated labour. “Productive labour” became the domain of those with penises and those who lacked the ability to bear children. It became the domain of “men”, who are compensated for their respective labour—just enough to survive, to purchase enough to rear the next generation of workers. This we learn from our revolutionary trans communist grandparent Leslie Feinberg:
The secret to our oppression is not a secret at all.
Our oppression lies in this gendered division of labour, which has its origin in ancient slave societies and is maintained and expanded under capitalist society.
Capitalists, in order to be capitalists, require a proletariat to exploit. They arise simultaneously with one another and they likewise will go out of the world together, as the slaver and the slave, or the feudal lord and the peasant do and have done. Thus, the capitalist class—to exist and grow in power and profits—requires workers! They require a reserve army of labour. As many workers as can possibly be produced, in order to keep wages suppressed and profits high. To accomplish this, capitalists maintain the gendered division of labour—though presently more subtly in imperial core countries than previous centuries—and, therefore, maintain the gender binary. It requires women to reproduce the proletarian class, and it requires men to sell their labour-power to the capitalist and produce commodities. To do this, the gender binary must appear as natural and as certain as the earth beneath our feet!
Why do they hate us so much? Why does the settler-colonial capitalist state continuously and systematically work to exterminate us? It is simple. We upset the very gender binary upon which capitalism rests. To quote comrade Winter in Communists and the Queer Question:
Queer expression fundamentally challenges the naturalization of the sex dichotomy. If women can choose to have romantic and sexual relations with women, then the naturalization of female sexual subordination to men is directly challenged. If “woman” is not an immutable natural state—if it can be altered, transcended, or cast off—if a woman can simply become a man, or something else outside the binary dichotomy, then the sex dichotomy is revealed to be materially meaningless. This is a threat to existing class relations, so queer expression is violently suppressed by patriarchal ideology.
Our very existence is a direct threat to men’s class domination over women, and to the capitalist class’s domination over all! This is why both men and capitalists despise us so, and why they seek our eradication by whatever means necessary!
In a settler-colonial state like so-called “Canada”, the binary gender division likewise serves the dual purpose of proletarianizing the oppressed nations of this continent—namely, Indigenous Nations and the Black colony—and of eradicating Indigenous peoples and Nations so that Euro-settlers can accumulate land. Our Two-Spirit comrades face the triple oppression of being proletarians; of challenging the class domination of men; and of being colonized by Euro-settlers, including trans and queer Euro-settlers.
How many more of us must die before we intensify the struggle, as the Black Panthers once did for the Black colony, or as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Ansarallah etc., are currently doing for Palestinian liberation? Or as the Vietnamese, the Cubans, the Koreans, the Chinese, the peoples who rose up against the former Russian Empire—as all oppressed peoples must eventually do when faced with unrelenting oppression?
Comrades, we cannot continue to seek mere reforms as ends in themselves, as though they will liberate us! It is evident that so long as capitalist and colonial domination continues on this continent, our liberation remains impossible. Only by overthrowing the capitalist class, by reducing the settler-state to atoms, aiding in the liberation of oppressed nations, and through the construction of a truly anticolonial, proletarian, and internationalist project can we liberate ourselves from the oppression we face! Look to the States, if you dare, to see the fruits of pursuing reforms alone. They will always seek our eradication—wherever we occur, and for however long patriarchal Euro-settler and capitalist domination rule these lands!
I call on every comrade who hears the truth in my words to come learn from the Atlantic Regional Communists, as we, in turn, learn from you. We seek to take your enthusiasm and channel it into truly revolutionary purposes, with clarity of mind and the most advanced scientific theory. Otherwise, look to your comrade next to you—who came to this event, or who perhaps you do not yet know. Find them. And when you leave here today, come together and Study! Study! Study! Study the works of the revolutionary trans communist Leslie Feinberg. Study the works of Vladimir Lenin. Study the works of the Black Panther Party and Huey Newton. Study from the works of revolutionary Indigenous comrades like Howard Adams!
If we do not study to fully understand our conditions—why they exist, and how to overcome them, as our comrades have historically and currently do—we shall never find liberation. Go and study the works of revolutionary communists together, and turn that theory into concrete practice here in Kjibuktuk!
Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite!