Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic - ProleWiki
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I've been noticing a trend with certain comrades, where said comrades (particularly whom are cisgender) are supportive of transgender people, yet their analysis of the woman question didn't change much from the 1960s.

I am unfortunately not at a point yet where I can write my own additions to this piece but I wanted to start venturing into gender and gender roles because there are a lot of marxists who repeat, no doubt because it seems to make sense on the surface, that gender is a social construct or that it should be abolished. A lot of it is Butlerian in nature and I highly recommend Leslie Feinberg who was positioned against the butlerian view of gender.

The sense of self is completely omitted in the Butlerian view of gender (as a performance), in that as a (cis) man if I acted (performed) like a woman and put on women’s clothes, then that theory states I would be a woman. But I would not feel like one, because I know I’m not a woman. And if I lived in a false reality that forced me act like a man all my life from childhood to the point that I also believed I was a man (say in the same way you can make someone believe the sky is red if you berate them enough), then what explains that trans people specifically are able to “break out” of this mold? A lot of common (in marxist circles) feminist theory is unfortunately completely dismissive of trans people, trans men especially - if gender is a construct to pit oppressors and oppressed then why would anyone “choose” to be part of the oppressed group? Everyone ought to perform as men if that were the case. As for gender abolitionism, the author makes the case in their essay :)

  • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlOP
    5·
    24 days ago

    Thank you for posting! I also struggle to understand gender fully, and that essay (and talking to the author, since we are both on prolewiki) is further confounding it for me lol. That’s why I didn’t add too much in the text box. I’ll check out the video from philosophy tube.

    I think gender is a social construct in so much as it loses all meaning without a concept of social interaction, but just like money or class can have a huge impact on one’s life. It is also rooted in one’s core sense of self and not a choice.

    I wanted to add something to that part you wrote but it left my mind as soon as it entered. That’s why I have trouble wrapping my head around gender in details, any time my neurons fire off a valuable insight I lose it seconds later 😵‍💫

    I think what I wanted to say was that if there is an innate sense of gender (in the self), then it cannot solely be a social construct and there is material reality to gender outside of what we make it conform to be, or something like that.

    • SmallBear@lemmygrad.ml
      7·
      23 days ago

      So… speaking as someone who is trans myself, I think the part of this that makes it difficult to make that last assertaion is… how do we know that there is an innate sense of gender (in the self) that is separate from the social construction of gender? I have a very strong sense of what my gender is but… how do I know that didn’t develop it at least partially from my interactions with the society I live in? I don’t know where my “sense of gender” came from, and I don’t know if it’s innate or learned. Either way it’s a very real experience.