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 :)
I usually think of gender abolition as absurd. Sometimes it is brought up and I have no clue who it is supposed to help or how its abolition can even make coherent theoretical sense. Imo it sounds radical but is often just nonsense to say that gender exists because of oppressive human systems.
It reminds me of the “masculinity is a prison” line that is repeated, yet isn’t it the goal for many trans men to be sentenced to this prison? I know gender is potentially quite an unpleasant “prison” to be in even for cis folks due to oppressive systems, but isn’t there risk of much greater harm in being misrecognized or being targeted as non-compliant?
But it’s not all completely absurd I suppose even if it is not how I think it is best said. I feel as if it is possible for the same gendered aspects to elicit both a feeling of gender euphoria and a sense of resentment depending on how human systems work.
Certain aspects of masculinity give me a strong sense of self, but the same aspects can become a prison if I’m not allowed to perform differently. Imo the fun parts about gender are soiled in this way and thus gender can be used against us. If we remove or reform the unrelenting pressures that exist in our respective cultures then perhaps in some way we have “abolished” gender, but really it actually seems liberated via revolution.
this essay hinges on the fundamental misunderstanding that something being a social construct makes it “fake”. copying from wikipedia:
A social construct is any category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Socially constructed realities are contrasted with natural kinds, which exist independently of human behavior or beliefs.
you seem to use the term ‘social phenomenon’ as a replacement for ‘social construct’ without a clear definition for it. is the distinction only in that a ‘social construct’ is a social phenomenon constructed for the sole purpose of oppression?
Firstly, Gender is not a social construct. It is however, a social phenomenon, but so race in this regard. However with race, we call it a “social construct” because it was constructed (by intention) to discriminate people and support colonialist ideas. Gender on the other hand, would not be considered as such because while gender is a social thing, it is not a thing which was constructed to artificially oppress people.
Thank you for adding your critique, but just to be clear it’s not my essay haha.
On the definition of social construct, the wikipedian definition actually makes the case that it is “fake”. Yes, social constructs are real in that they exist in the material world. The definition wikipedia provides however puts them at odds with independent reality, i.e. objective reality, implying that gender or other social constructs don’t have an objective reality to them.
In another ressource I read to see what the ‘laymen’ so to speak (non-marxists) say of social constructs, they posited that money was a social construct, but we know it as a commodity. To call money a social construct is certainly helpful to open the topic, but it’s also insufficient to only call it a social construct. Through these shortcomings a lot of diverging in thought can happen, and lead people to widely different conclusions.
Not everyone in the ‘social construct camp’ is transphobic (and I’m not accusing anyone here of being one to be clear!), but an alarming amount of people are when it comes down to it - I didn’t believe it before I saw them for myself. That is because if it’s solely a social construct, then where do trans and non-binary people fit on it? Did their gender come about as a result of social interactions or is it in the self? A lot of trans people will say they knew their gender before they even knew about gender roles, rather in their case it was gender roles that was forced upon them to conform, but not gender itself. Even when made to perform as cis, they still know they are trans.
I think this is the distinction the author is making, or as a question: did gender conform to the social construct, or did the social construct (gender roles, patriarchy, etc) conform to gender? In the first case, it means that gender is a product of oppression and exists to exploit people and labor. In the other, it means the social construct arose from objective reality. I don’t know if I’m being confusing - if we take societies that recognized more than two genders for example, the ‘common’ view is that they had different social constructs. But my scenario is rather that they recognized the real existence of more than two genders and fit the social part around that objective existence. Basically one came before the other.
I don’t know the origin of the term social construct and the tradition around it but if that’s the case it should be scrapped because it is useless and even harmful. Literally speaking it makes sense but if the meaning has been distorted to insinuate detachment from reality then using phenomenon as the author suggests might be better. We can add it to the list of left concepts that liberals have coopted and made useless.
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.
This is not what performative means!!! Gender is a social construct! Why wouldn’t it be? Gender being a social construct doesn’t make it less real. I guess everyone is an amateur social scientist nowadays and basic concepts just can meet whatever.
I’d be happy to hear more! In butlers influential essay, they describe gender as “stylized repetition of acts through time”, but I am not sure what exactly repeated refers to here: repeated by the individual or societally reproduced over centuries or what.
This is why I said this definition leaves no room for the self. What of gender fluid people? It conflates gender roles with gender itself - or at least that’s how people usually read it.
Gender being a social construct doesn’t make it less real
On the contrary I would say, the definition of a social construct (it’s not solely a Marxist thing) means that it is literally invented reality. Yes, it’s real in that materially speaking, we can tell the social construct exists in the material world. I had another argument I wanted to add but I forgot before I could type it down lol so I’m leaving this like this and if I remember I’ll add it*
human language is a social construct. is it “fake”?
I don’t think language is a social construct, but under the dictionary definition of a social construct, it would be considered invented reality as it would be “existing not in objective reality but as a result of human interaction,” “an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society” and “a category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement; Socially constructed realities are contrasted with natural kinds, which exist independently of human behavior or beliefs.” (Verywellmind, merriam-webster, wikipedia).
I believe that gender is going to wither away in communist society eventually. As it is a construct tightly coupled with patriarchy.
Abolishing gender in any society existing today is as idealistic as abolishing Christianity in yankeeland though. Social roles and expectations imposed by patriarchy are part of people’s reality. We need people’s consent to abolish gender and to be able to consent, people need to have awareness of gender first.
Also, gender doesn’t exist in isolation. Dismantling patriarchy will be more nuanced than dismantling its elements separately. And it will require material basis we might not currently have anywhere in the world to address it properly. (inheritance is part of the patriarchal system too!)
For now we should respect people’s struggles within the patriarchal framework and give trans people our critical support.
Gender will wither away with material conditions changing, not with us saying it shouldn’t exist.
I think that’s what the author wants to challenge; with gender withering away, then trans people will simply cease to exist - not as people of course, people will still be born with consciousness (sapience? I’m not sure how you call it in english), but their gender will cease to exist, and what will they be? The author’s theory is that being trans is not only important to them, but precedes patriarchy and thus gender abolition will not fix oppression - gender is not the product of oppression and can exist without it.
I do agree, personally, that it’s a very far off event, but I have also changed my mind on whether it’s “important” to talk about now. By which I mean, I used to think that because it was so far off, then it wasn’t really urgent to worry over it - it will happen long after I’m dead, there’s nothing to it now. But I have since changed my mind after I saw for myself gender abolitionists who are ultimately transphobic, and they didn’t come to this conclusion by accident. Can we say that they are only using gender abolition to confirm their transphobic views? Maybe, but it’s still important to talk about and understand gender, because trans people (and non-binary people) exist right now.
I think we can distinguish between gender withering away under different material conditions and gender being “abolished”. Abolition is a political project, gender withering away would happen passively as the material conditions that underpin gender cease to exist and the contradictions are resolved. Actively trying to abolish gender is prefigurative idealism, which is why it attracts transphobes.
I don’t mean to put words in anyone’s mouth but my understanding through experience is that gender abolitionists promote the withering away view - I take this from the various vetting tickets I handle on marxist spaces such as this one or discords. They’re not quite out there actively trying to abolish gender, but see it as something that will cease to exist eventually, in one way or another.
So in that way (again not saying every gender abolitionist/withering away is transphobic!) I have come to understand that gender abolitionism and the view that gender will wither away (whether it actually will is another question) are one and the same. Some people might put more urgency on it than others. Like I said in possibly another comment a lot of it seems to come from seeming like a common sense conclusion.
I don’t remember meeting strict ‘withering away’ theorists so I can’t speak as to what they think if they exist!
I think I’m in the ‘withering away’ camp and don’t think abolition is a useful framework. Gender contradictions aren’t antagonisitc, or at least, they don’t have to be. Non-antagonistic contradictions can simply be managed until the contradictions achieve a higher unity in synthesis (and then produce new contradictions that we probably can’t even imagine in our current gender paradigm).
I also don’t think gender withers away simply because we get rid of family, private property, and the state. I think those are some of the material foundations for gender as we know it and they are much of the foundation for gender roles, but gender itself can’t be resolved without addressing the technological limitations of gender affirming care. I know in my case I will probably never get bottom surgery, because even though I might be interested in it conceptually I don’t think the technology can give me exactly what I want. Gender can never wither away as long as we are so limited by our own bodies and gender affirming technology.
But eventually we will surpass these limitations. I envision a day that “transition” won’t even exist as a concept because we can just change ourselves at will, there will be so many genders and so many gender expressions and gender will be so fluid and dynamic that people today wouldn’t even recognize it as gender anymore.
I think we’re going to have gender for a long time, even after we defeat capitalism, but I also think there is a horizon where we’ll leave it behind because it isn’t useful anymore.
But I have since changed my mind after I saw for myself gender abolitionists who are ultimately transphobic, and they didn’t come to this conclusion by accident. Can we say that they are only using gender abolition to confirm their transphobic views?
I imagine these people are the same or close to those who say “they don’t see color”.
Actually all of them were very steeped in radical feminist literature!
yeah but terfs are lying. when they say they want to “abolish gender” they’re really saying they want to keep gender and just call it sex while abolishing gender roles
when I, a marxist transfeminist, say that ultimately gender should be abolished, I more accurately mean that sex assignment and categorization should be fundamentally deconstructed and reformed without the cishetero patriarchal baggage (typing this on my phone so I can’t really go into detail right now but I’ll try and make a proper response to this piece later)
You know how marxist-leninist differ from liberals in how they define capital - rather than an immutable object we consider capital as a relation (very specifically it is labour - embodied in the relation between the worker and those who own the means of production ie the capitalist. For example, a hammer is only defined as capital once we confirm its relationship between the worker and the bourgoisie).
In that same line of thinking, dialectial materialists would consider gender as a coercive hierarchial social relation that reproduces capitalist exploitation and it is this what is sought to be abolished. One is only a certain gender only in relation to other genders. It is not an immutable charecteristic atomised from society.
I think what might be wrestled here in the article is maybe the contradictions of the liberal conception of empancipation.
Let’s make the abstract concrete. In the west one could consider that gay rights was “accepted” because they had to succumb to patriarchial concepts of self ie they were born gay as an immutable characteristic and it is because of this characteristic therefore they should be given rights. What if it was not an immutable characteristic?
This conundrum (for liberals) stems from the bourgoisie conception of what feminism should mean; emancipation means taking space at the table of the bourgoisie white cis-male. Liberation for the liberal ends up meaning to have the power of the bourgoisie to exploit, or at least have a fair chance of aquiring this power to exploit.
With that in mind what would liberal conception of trans liberation then look like? It essentially means equal oppurtunity to become bourgoisie too and the cultural dynamics in the proletetiat to uphold this hegemony.
So how would marxism sublimate this? What would marxist liberation for trans/queer folk look like? Where will that journey take us? Would we be still be upholding gender as defined above? I think the road will take us to the abolition of gender.
I strongly suspect that the default is that we are all on the spectrum but those who consider ourselves straight and cis have a greater ontological adherence to gender and sexuality as defined by our bourgoisie society. I strongly suspect that these characteristics aren’t as immutable as we “straight folk” think we are.
I had a similar thought that you put into words better than I would have done. I have seen “gender abolition” in a Marxist sense as the result of achieving a classless society where class (in any form, including gender) no longer exists and class exploitation is eliminated.
In that same line of thinking, dialectial materialists would consider gender as a coercive hierarchial social relation that reproduces capitalist exploitation and it is this what is sought to be abolished
But I think that’s the point of contention for the author, and I’ve come to agree with them on that. This view would mean that trans men are oppressors, with all the baggage that comes with it - that they not only choose to be oppressors, but that they become oppressors even though trans men are also discriminated against.
Additionally, where do non-conforming people fit? If gender exists only as an oppressive social relation, then they should not exist, but they do.
That’s why I don’t think it necessarily follows that gender itself is a product of oppression, which also puts into question whether it should be or will be abolished/wither away (not exactly the same thing for some abolitionists, but not all). The premise of the essay is that gender can exist without an oppressive structure. It also means it doesn’t automatically follow that abolishing gender (in any way) will also destroy the oppressive structure built around it and the answer must be found somewhere else for proper praxis.
But thank you for writing out and sharing your thoughts. I don’t mean to come off as combative in my reply, I think the essay (and the overall point it makes) introduces a lot of things to rethink and reexamine and not take gender abolitionism as the “default” marxist conclusion. I think a lot of people come to gender abolitionism because of “classless, stateless, moneyless” - at least I used to before I started struggling with the subject. Feinberg had a lot of interesting things to say in Transgender Warriors:
“No wonder you’ve passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society,” a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women’s oppression—period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t predict human behavior in a distant future. But I know what she’s thinking—if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much.
I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely a product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development.
Thanks for replying and I am enjoying the civility.
This view would mean that trans men are oppressors, with all the baggage that comes with it - that they not only choose to be oppressors, but that they become oppressors even though trans men are also discriminated against.
I would argue that this is only true if we consider patriarchy the same as misogyny. Liberals do. Marxist-leninists shouldn’t. And I would argue because it stems from liberal conception of liberation is rooted in hyper-individualism rather than the correct understanding of patriarchy as a structural concern.
Let’s again make the abstract concrete. You can see how the above plays out in real life in bourgoisie society. It is not uncommon for liberal feminists to do the following: they equate a non-white man who is part of an ethnic demographic that is oppressed under white supremacism is part of the patriarchy if he is a misogynist (or for some for just being a man) and then you will see liberal feminists end up using white supremacist racist tropes to describe men of people of colour as inherently violent/dangerous etc even if the liberal feminist themselves are non-white. This is categorically wrong, but why?
Let’s take the US for example. The black person is not in charge of the patriarchy that suppresses them as a group. The black man is often actually targeted for state violence because he is a black man. They are victims too of that patriarchy.
The same can be applied all over the world: the Palestenian man or boy in Palestine under Israel or the Dalit man under hindutva patriarchial society etc are not agents who rule the patriarchial society - they themselves are also victims of the same patriarchy. Palestenian men for example are targeted because they are plaestenian man. How many times have seen in media, in order to attain sympathy from the reader, explain that the Israelis are killing/torturing women and children, ie excluding the adult palestenian male with the subtext that a level of brutality against the latter is more acceptable. Do we really think the Palestenian man is then part of that patriarchal superstructure, here manifested in genocide, just because he is a man? Of course we shouldn’t.
Conflating the violent misogyny of the individual with the patriarchal structure that enables it not only ends up effectively absolving the superstructure of its sins which means one could be amplifying the patriarchal society often manifested above as white supremacism while nominally one says they stand for say women’s rights - effectively whitewashing the oppression of patriarchy just so one can uphold the few - one ends up with liberal feminism, TERFs etc rather than the marxist conception of true liberation which submlimates all of the above. We should understand that patriarchy, inherited from feudalism before it, in our society amplifies capitalist exploitation and immiseration.
It’s got so bad some marxists are now no longer using the term feminism to equate with women’s liberation.
And I need to read more Kollantai.
That’s why I don’t think it necessarily follows that gender itself is a product of oppression, which also puts into question whether it should be or will be abolished/wither away (not exactly the same thing for some abolitionists, but not all). The premise of the essay is that gender can exist without an oppressive structure. It also means it doesn’t automatically follow that abolishing gender (in any way) will also destroy the oppressive structure built around it and the answer must be found somewhere else for proper praxis.
In reference to my previous comment, by gender “withering away” in a communist state, I don’t mean gender will not exist, just as race won’t disappear. I mean the distinction between class won’t be really relevant anymore. A communist state will likely be in the distant future, a society we can only predict under science fiction. I imagine technology, social relations, cultural and social norms will evolve to a point we may not be able to perceive very well today. I imagine that we may have the ability to change our DNA, or maybe go through transhumanism and become cyborgs/machines, etc. The concept of gender may not be as relevant because people will be able to easily change to whatever they are comfortable with using future technology, and there will be cultural acceptance of everyone. There won’t be a denial of trans/gender-fluid/non-conforming people, but it may be ubiquitous that the distinction and class differences/exploitation between people won’t exist as it does today. Before then and when we are still developing in the early stages of socialism, we won’t be “abolishing” or “withering away” gender, nor will gender completely not exist.
As for now, I agree that so-called “gender abolition” is irrelevant and out of scope at this time.
Yeah we will all be robots and won’t need gender once we finally get to heaven…
Edit to add: Thank you for posting this. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot, but have struggled to find good material on.
I both agree and disagree with different parts of this. I’ll break this in two parts.
—=== On Judith Butler (not nesisarily anyone claiming to be Butlerian) ===—
I believe Butler was pulling from performative language and not trying to imply that gender is a conscious act or performance in of itself. It is more along the lines of what society perceives as gender is the result of actions, culture, perceptions, and feelings. Additionally, something being a social construct does not mean that it isn’t real or inpactful, money is a social construct after all.
Actions can convey meaning beyond what they imply in isolation. Just as a judge pronouncing a verdict in a trial carries different meaning and impact than a drunk dude at the bar saying the same words, a cis man dressing in women’s clothes is different than a trans woman doing the same.
This is the type of performativity being referenced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
This is a good overview of Butler from Philosophy Tube (She is clear that she had previously misunderstood Butler): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVilpxowsUQ
—=== On feminism and trans people ===—
I struggled with the purity tests, hatred, and general bad takes under the banner of feminism for years (I’ve unfortunately had personal experience with people who makevstraw feminists look like amatures). This probably added years to the time it took for me to come out to myself aa trans, and it wasn’t until I came to the understanding that “feminism” is more accurately thought as a collection of related ideologies/philosophies, or “feminisms”, that I became comfortable considering myself a feminist.
Essentialism is something that has strong roots in many feminisms, including, sometimes especially, ones that claim to be gender abolitionist and the like. One would think that trans people would be sought after for their perspectives from both sides of the fence, but in my experience that is rarely the case. By their very existence, trans people make the nice neat boxes used in the us vs them arguments fall apart. I think this is why trans women are often expected to toe the party line if they want to be accepted as women and trans men are so often either infantalized or treated as defectors to the enemy.
Gender also takes quite a bit of effort to understand, and cis people are far more often than not unwilling to put the effort in that understanding would require. Especially since it would require understanding and even empathy for the enemy.
—=== Misc ===—
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.
People in power will use whatever is available to oppress, but it doesn’t mean that those things were invented for that purpose.
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.
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.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Succinct and very important article thank you for writing this comrade
Thanks but it’s not mine!
