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 :)
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.
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:
Thanks for replying and I am enjoying the civility.
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.
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…