I wrote a post about transsexualism on the revolutionary left BB. Since it is pretty rare that I write in english and I think it could interest some readers of this blog, I copy/paste it here.

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First, to answer a common argument that "saying you're something doesn't make it true, you are male a female, that's a biological fact": indeed, having a male or female sex is a biological fact, more or less. (Some intersex people who were mutilated at birth so they could be 'male' or female' might object, but on the other hand they are less than 1%, who cares ?socialism is for large proletarian crowds) Being a man or a woman, on the other hand, has pretty much nothing to do with biology. Being called "he" or "she" has nothing to do with your genitals. Human cells aren't blue or pink.

Some people feel better in the gender that is supposedly not the one corresponding to their biological sex. I don't know why. My personal hypothesis is that it's somewhat linked to gender repression : a man must be like this, a woman like that. After years of being told that men behaved a different way than you, it doesn't seem irrational to feel better being a woman. Now wether that does transform into "feeling a woman" or if "feeling a woman" is something which was caused by hormones at birth, or even if it was caused by the apparition of Jesus in a dream, I don't know. And I don't think it's particularly important to know, actually.

Now if you could just say "ok, now I am a woman" and people would respect it, it would be easy. Even if you could actually not say that but you could behave like a woman, I think it would be easier.

The real world is that there are asses who say "you have a penis so even if you say you're a woman, you're a man". There are different levels : it goes from saying that they are tolerant, but still trans(wo)men are not (wo)men, to torturing and murdering trannies that "tricked" them. At the end, it's the same result: there is some very heavy social pressure on trans people so they have a sex which match their gender, or vice-versa.

Hormones and surgery are a solution. It's not the only one (doing your best to be in your assigned gender is another one, as is suicide), but it's a solution. I actually think it's a bad one, but on the other hand it's pretty much the only one.

The fact is, it's not perfect, it has its limits (its surgery and not a magical wand) and so on, but it has the advantages that less people are prone to try to insult or murder you.

And it's then that, instead of analysing why transpeople need to go into surgery, why it becomes so important to them, and, more importantly, what could be done to supress this social pression , we have some lefty or feminist movements that either take a condescending look and explain that it's anti-feminist to have surgery, that it's reactionnary and all this, or at the contrary are completely enthusiast and say that transpeople are subversive per se, which, I think is a bit better since less offensive, but stays quite useless.

I'm not a marxist orthodox but I think that I could use the term "dialectical materialism". I think that, globally there is an oppression, and the answer to opression is submission and resistance. Some transpeople submit and try to be "more (wo)man than a (wo)man", actually reinforcing sexist stereotype ;some resist and struggle. Actually, many do both in their lives, as do workers, homosexual people, women, people of colour or every opressed group.

There is little sense in trying to judge whether it is progressive or reactionnary to work at macdonald to have some bucks, to undergo surgery to have an ID matching your visible gender so you can work at macdonald, to use a name and haircut which sounds and look less "maghrebin" so you can also work at macdonald, or to wear short dress and lipstick so the manager finds you pretty and you can still work at macdonald.

I believe all of these are bad solutions. Now judging people from this is just patronizing, specially when you are respectively rich, cisgender, white or male.

They are not bad solutions because they would be "reactionnary" or something like that, but because they come at a cost for the individual and because they don't really resolve the problem. It's a bit like morphine : it may be necessary to relieve pain, but it won't heal what causes it.

I think the role of revolutionnaries is to show that they are not real solutions, and that there is only a good one : revolution.

I'm not saying to wait until revolution to help workers, trans people, people of colour or women. What I mean is that really fighting for their liberation - our common liberation - imply fighting to radically change the society.

(Now some people may actually want to make hamburgers, undergo SRS, change their first name or be sexy without constraint ; but the only real way to be sure that it is without constraint is to supress the constraint)

And of course, changing this society begins with concrete revendications, e.g. for the transsexuality issue, allowing to have proper ID when it is needed, fighting against discrimination, giving the right to control your body instead of being submitted to paternalist doctors, and so on.