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 :)

  • LisaTrevor[she/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 days ago

    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)