The following text comes from notes for an educational for Anticapitalistas that I have reworked. The aim was to look back at the “polemics” posed by the new transphobic currents in feminism, from a theoretical and strategic point of view and in the context of the debates on the “Trans law”. It is not, therefore, a text that goes into the issues explored in depth or that claims to be exhaustive, but rather an introduction to the theoretical and strategic problematization of trans oppression from a Marxist perspective.
Trans Liberation and Socialist Feminism
28 June 2021, byOur understanding of the term gender is that it is separate from the term sex, the latter refers to physiological features, the former to a socially constructed role. To quote Simone de Beauvoir: ‘one is not born but rather becomes a woman’. This has always been the general position of Marxist feminists – oppression is not a direct result of physiological features but the social role assigned in general to those who have those features.
Sex and the Russian Revolution
8 March 2018, byThe big question surrounding the centenary of the October Revolution: Is this event a hundred years ago still relevant for the left today?
Queer sexuality, labour and nation
3 November 2017, byTalk at the International Meeting Against Homophobia and Transphobia, Kaos GL, Ankara, 13 May 2017.
Homonationalism, Heteronationalism and LGBTI Rights in the EU
6 October 2016, byThis year’s pride marches in Europe have taken place under the shadow of a threat, compounded by the recent terrorist attacks in Western Europe (Paris, Brussels and now Germany) and the slaughter at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. We have been urged not to give in to fear, while at the same time we’ve been told that undisclosed security precautions are being taken. The route of the Paris pride march was drastically shortened, supposedly for security reasons. It’s not clear whether the attack in Orlando was motivated by religious fundamentalism or was more the product of anger and anguish about the attacker’s life and sexuality. Either way, it could be just a matter of time before a similarly murderous anti-LGBTQI attack takes place in Europe.
Rainbows and Weddings
18 August 2016, byJust three days before the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision to legalize same sex marriage, president Obama ordered that an undocumented transgender woman be escorted out of the White House Pride celebration because she interrupted the President to raise her voice against the state-sanctioned torture and deportation of LGBT people.
Homonationalism and Queer Resistance
4 May 2016, byI arrived in the United States prepared to talk about why and how queers need to fight Islamophobia: the fear and hatred of Islam and of Muslims. But [on November 13] the day after my plane landed, Paris was hit by a wave of terrorist attacks. So I can’t give quite the same talk that I prepared.
Tearing Down the Walls
28 December 2015, byForty-six years ago patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a popular New York City gay bar, fought back against abusive police, and in doing so launched the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement.
The Intersectional Conundrum and the Nation-State
10 June 2015, byIt is not an easy task to reconstruct succinctly the main problematics that have traversed Marxist feminism in the last 40 years, without risking simplifications or serious omissions, or without producing a mere summary that avoids critically engaging with the subjects that it raises. And yet, I believe Arruzza’s text “Remarks on Gender” accomplishes the task very well: her reconstruction of the key theses on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism proposed by different currents within socialist and Marxist feminism from the 1970s onwards is not only lucid and informative, but also extremely clear and accessible. Furthermore, her partisan critique of the different positions on the table, alongside an indication of the most promising questions for debate, give us – as feminists who locate ourselves in the Marxist tradition(s) – a great opportunity to begin and/or deepen a much needed discussion and exchange. A new generation of Marxist feminists has emerged in the last years; it begins to question, re-articulate, expand and criticise the theorizations and disputes it has inherited from previous generations.
Closing the Conceptual Gap
10 June 2015, byThis text raises the question of a unified theory of social relations. Cinzia Arruzza’s essay “Remarks on Gender” reminds us of the debates, left dormant for decades, around creating a unified theory of capital. However, Arruzza’s path toward that unification is one that abdicates the possibility of locating gender and race as part of the abstract, logical, or “essential mechanisms” of capitalism, opting instead to incorporate these pervasive relations as aspects of capitalism’s historical and concrete unfolding.
