Posted on

Trans People Excluded from Capitalist Society

By Sally Jane Black

The law provides little protection for trans people. In New Orleans, a recent poll showed that 87% of black trans women had been sexually harassed or assaulted by members of NOPD, and across the nation, the police and other authorities do little to prevent crime against trans people. Since January 2017, 28 trans people have been murdered in the United States, including two in New Orleans. Almost all of them have been people of color. Almost none of their killers have been brought to justice. Furthermore, over 40% of trans people attempt to kill themselves. These statistics do not take into account trans people who are not out, or whose families hide their identities after they died. The real numbers are much higher.

Across the board, trans people have been excluded from capitalist society. Trans people are at higher risk of being homeless, bullied, abandoned by their families, or denied healthcare services or jobs. “Right to work” states, which target all workers, make it possible for trans people to be fired for being trans. Health insurance policies routinely classify necessary medical treatments as ineligible for coverage, for the few trans people who can afford insurance.
Meanwhile, in socialist Cuba, the government has created the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) to advocate tolerance and educate the population on issues of gender, sexuality, and sex. Despite the fact that trans people make up a small percentage of the island’s population, the Cuban government has made promoting support for trans people a priority, and healthcare for trans people—including hormone treatments and surgery—is provided free within the nation’s universal healthcare system.

The contrast between the response from Cuba and the United States could not be starker. The ruling class in the United States sees trans people as a prop to be used to inspire infighting in all who resist it; the Cuban people seek to embrace all members of their society. Transphobia is an inherent part of the capitalist patriarchy; it will not be defeated and we will not be safe until capitalism is gone.

Posted on

Ruling Class Targets LGBT Workers

By Sally Jane Black

Cases before the Supreme Court are threatening to roll back gains won by the LGBT liberation struggle. With the decision to send the Texas case Turner v. Pidgeon back to the lower courts, the Supreme Court has opened the gate for businesses to refuse to pay for insurance and other benefits for same-sex partners, and with Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission currently pending, soon businesses might be allowed to legally discriminate against same-sex couples on the basis of “religious freedom.” What was won through decades of struggle, culminating in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, is now being overturned in pieces.

The fact that the right to marry is being ignored by these laws in favor of revoking the more tangible economic benefits that came with it is telling: the objections being made to same-sex marriage are rooted in greed, not a desire to protect anyone’s freedoms. These cases are blatant attacks on workers. As has been seen before, companies will take every opportunity to push back against workers’ gains. If the courts allow them to deny same-sex couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples, it’s only a matter of time before this is attempted to be used as precedent to make those same benefits inaccessible to heterosexual couples. If a loophole can be found, it will be taken advantage of. The goal is not to protect the freedoms of the religious—who mostly support same-sex marriage in this country—but the owners and bosses who want to squeeze every last penny out of their workers.

What these threats show is how easily concessions won from the ruling class can be lost. Unless the working class stands up to the ruling class and fights in unison against the divisive, manipulative attempts to economically punish queer and trans people, real change will never happen.

In December, the Louisiana courts declared that the state could not extend legal protections to queer and trans state workers as another step in a continuing fight between the governor and the state’s attorney general Jeff Landry, who has used trans people as nothing more than a political victim. Previously, the Democrats had offered to remove trans people from these protections in exchange for keeping them for queer people. This is a repetition of the same failed tactics that have been used for decades, from the fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act at the federal level to the recent “bathroom bills” which have been used to rile supporters and divide the opposition.