13. the transsexual empire and the trans masses
on the biden administration and what it might mean for trans people
There’s already been a lot of commentary on the incoming Biden administration, including on what it means for trans people. Some of this, then, will inevitably just be rehashing old news. But I do want to say a few things about what the Biden administration will mean in the u.k., and what it will mean for organising in relation to trans people.
There is already a common narrative emerging that this new administration is good news for trans people, a clean break from the bigotry of the Trump era and a move towards tolerance and inclusion (or whatever your preferred buzzwords are). This narrative is not without evidence, first on the basis of the general associations of the Democratic Party with liberalism, then with Kamala Harris putting her pronouns in her bio and Biden endorsing trans participation in the military, and finally this week, Biden’s executive order denouncing discriminating against trans people, and his appointment of Dr Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary. There are clearly some moves towards increased participation of trans people in at least aspects of public life.
In the u.k., transphobic lobbyists are already responding with outrage. However, it is unclear to me how much this will impede their efforts. Firstly, the key factors in transphobic mobilisation in the u.k. are internal, the product of contradictions in gendered participation in our national economy and governance. A new administration in the u.s. will not change this. Secondly, the key u.s. factors in these u.k. based transphobic mobilisations are part of the american ‘religious right’, not the Trump administration itself. Whilst Christian fundamentalists were obviously given an upper hand by having friends in office, they still have the money and influence to continue to support their allies here in the u.k., particularly since conditions here are clearly so ripe for this. As such, it is by no means clear that the Biden administration is, objectively, bad news for so-called ‘terfs’.
I am further without comfort in that these transphobic networks have emerged and thrive on the basis of a new transatlanticism that has been growing in british politics for decades now. British imperialism is increasingly integrated as a junior partner in the more powerful american empire. The exact future relationship between the u.k. government and the Biden administration is still unclear. As far as post-brexit trade deals go, we need them more than they need us, so the british government are likely to be cooperative with u.s. demands, and there will also be less popular resistance or outcry to such collaboration than there was when Trump was president.
This picture is further complicated by the fact that the Biden administration’s integration of trans people is structured according to the same stratification that orders american neo-colonialism in general. It is not only that without material support in the form of thorough healthcare provision and a democratic economy aimed at fulfilling all the daily needs of the masses[1], ‘anti-discrimination’ measures will not help the vast majority of trans people. It is also that numerous members of the Biden administration have demonstrated time and time again that their governance will include specific forms of trans-antagonistic violence as part of a wider neo-colonial policy. From placing trans women in male prisons, to measures against sex workers (a significant economic support base for trans communities), their record indicates that they are committed to expanding mass incarceration in ways that specifically target trans people - especially poor Black trans people, two-spirit or indigenous trans people, and other trans people of colour - for accumulation and exploitation. Further, the integration of some trans people in the professional life of america’s upper strata will not mean anything for those trans people living under u.s. sanctions or military action, from Yemen and Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, to Mali and Somalia, China and the Philippines, and beyond.[2] Indeed, Biden’s endorsement of trans military participation implies an escalation of the liberal strategy of deploying a rhetoric of unified “trans” interests in representation, whilst simultaneously exacerbating material divisions between trans people on the basis of class and race, especially expanding internationally. Based on the events of the previous year, I might predict a trans cop recruitment programme may be the next step in the project of trans incorporation into neo-colonialism.
Personally, I can see this being a position where transphobes and their liberal opponents might unite; a perfect neoliberal compromise where trans people are permitted to either kill or die..
None of this has gone uncommented on. However, it is clear that as a whole, The Left does not possess the tools to really begin addressing these problems. Primarily, part of the success of liberal politics of representation is that it elevates select individuals to positions of hypervisibility, where they inevitably become the targets of bigoted attacks. The cis left’s own trans-antagonism, specifically transmisogyny and transmisogynoir especially, has made and is making it vulnerable to the tactics of state divide and rule. It is tempting to say here that representation is a distraction from the material position of trans people, when in reality, this tokenism is the most visible expression of real divisions between us. Behind both cis attacks on trans representatives of empire and a trans defensiveness, is the fact that both The Left and contemporary Trans Community (as commonly posited) have become isolated from those most oppressed and exploited by neocolonialism; the trans vanguard among the world’s colonised and incarcerated people. When your vision is focused on the spectacles of empire - even if these spectacles appear as the basis of your own existence - the only options appear to be collaboration or despair. In organising against imperialism across its imposed boundaries - whether the border or the prison wall - other forms of trans politics become visible.
In Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left, Emily Hobson documents some such forms of organising in the gay liberation movement(s) of the long 1960s and after. Organisations like the Gay Liberation Front drew inspiration and organisational lessons not only from older homophile groups and street queen riots in the united states, but from the national liberation struggles in Algeria and Vietnam (from which they got their name), and they forged contacts with these struggles, with underground revolutionaries in and outside of prisons, and with struggles conceived of as internal anti-colonialisms, such as those of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. As I have written about before, in these movements ‘gay’ was not yet fully consolidated as separable from what is now called ‘trans’, and their politics of gendered identity are integral to the circuits of theorising and struggle against homophobia, patriarchy, and colonialism (see here and here).
At the outset of the Vietnam War, the Gay Liberation Front called on people to tell the draft boards they were gay in an attempt to resist inclusion in the war effort. Today, we might query the political efficacy of what seems like a largely symbolic action, and I don’t think this tactic could be easily translated into contemporary conditions in the west. But in contexts where gay people are consistently exposed to real precarity and violence, coming out is dangerous, and this appeal is not only symbolic. This was an act that both contained risk and demanded commitment and support. The GLF were effectively calling for a mass realignment against the imperial war machine that was and is america, and towards solidarity with anti-colonial struggles both internally and across the globe. Lord willing, one day, we can find the strategy and tactics under which we might call this realignment, ‘transition’.
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[1] It should be obvious, but in case it needs spelling out, the masses are already trans, of course.
[2] There are internal factors shaping trans lives in all of these places, and trans lives are by no means the same or similar in any of them, but all of these internal factors are intensified by imperialism. Sorry to be a boring Leninist, but I still maintain that imperialism is the primary contradiction of our times. As such, imperialism represents the sole greatest threat to trans people globally, and bringing an end to imperialism ought to be the primary task of any project aimed at liberation for trans people.