Across the imperialist countries, trans people are facing escalating attacks, not only from reactionaries, but also liberals, social democrats and feminists alike. Fighting back against these assaults, which target trans youth most viciously, is not a distraction from class struggle but a key front in it. By restricting access to healthcare and curtailing bodily autonomy, the ruling class seeks to reinforce the oppressive structures of the bourgeois family, rolling back decades of hard-won progress. Defending trans healthcare, including access to essential medical interventions, is a necessary act of resistance.
Since the start of the year, New Zealand supporters of the IBT have played a leading role in a campaign to combat one of the many expressions of this global wave of reaction, as part of the queer rights organisation Queer Endurance in Defiance (QED). On 23 March, responding to threats from the New Zealand state to place greater restrictions on puberty blockers for trans youth, a united front of QED, the IBT and other groups successfully led a hīkoi (march) of 2,000 protesters to Parliament lawn, united around a call for “puberty blockers and hormones on demand”. Already the right-wing parties have huffed and spluttered at this slogan, but free, quality healthcare without gatekeeping is not even a bare minimum. The oppressed deserve even more.
Revolutionaries work within united fronts for reforms with the full knowledge that their effect will always be inadequate to the tasks they face. A social movement of trans people, or any other oppressed group, is incapable of bringing about its own liberation, without a working-class revolution at its back. Without illusions, revolutionaries enter into such struggles in order to find those who, through the everyday setbacks and exchange of ideas native to struggles for reforms, have some idea of the need to transcend reformism, and tie the fight for the oppressed to the wider fight for working-class power. The following speech by an IBT supporter at the Wellington rally was addressed to such individuals.
Kia ora koutou, my name is Max Schade, I am a trans lesbian, a communist, a founding contributor to QED and a supporter of the International Bolshevik Tendency.
Four years ago when Wellington showed up a thousand strong to protest a transphobic speaking tour, two years ago when Auckland sent Posie Parker running with her tail between her legs, people celebrated. Transphobia was felt to be an insignificant foreign import that refused to take root in this soil.
But here we are. Puberty blockers in jeopardy, a far-right church making constant shows of intimidation against even the mildest of queer events. Seemingly everywhere in the world there’s some growing section of the political landscape deathly hostile to trans existence. What we experience here is not yet on the level of the US, but do not think for a moment that the New Zealand state is immune to such horrors.
As the US led western domination of the world crumbles, the facade of international co-operation and incremental progress crumbles with it. The squeeze that capitalism is feeling compels the rich and powerful to claw back concessions that have become particularly troublesome, whether inadequate gains in Treaty rights or basic workplace health and safety. The worldwide attack on trans people is just one more, wedded to capitalists’ need to get us back in the nuclear family, cranking out the next generation of exploitable workers.
And this need will not decline with Luxon’s approval rating. Whether this government weathers the next election is not the question to ask. We know a return to the tedious tinkering of Labour and their loyal coalition partners won’t protect us, because it never has before. Reaction will regroup, and we will have to handle it ourselves.
We have to claw back a tradition of militant defence, as queer people and as workers. We have to rebuild a workers movement that will defend us in the streets—and take our struggles into the workplace, into the heart of this system. A working class revolutionary party will be what is capable of protecting us when push comes to shove, right now it is a burning need worldwide.
All the rights that we have been granted came from struggle, and in the absence of struggle, they can be taken away. Don’t accept it! We will learn again how to fight. We will learn again how to win!